July 26, 2025 • 23 mins
Let’s get real—sometimes leaving isn’t about giving up... it’s about growing up!
In this episode, I’m breaking down four reasons why walking away from a relationship isn’t just brave—it’s proof you’re evolving.
We’ll explore how childhood patterns, attachment wounds, and self-abandonment show up in relationships—and why outgrowing someone doesn’t mean the love wasn’t real... it just means you’re done shrinking to stay safe.
You’ll hear how:
→ Voicing your needs (instead of fawning) signals real growth → Self-trust becomes louder than your fear of being alone
→ You stop settling for “attachment” and start craving depth → You refuse to betray yourself just to feel “loved”
If your relationship can’t hold the version of you that refuses to stay small? That’s your sign. What if choosing yourself is the most loving—and badass—move you can make?
Ready to stop self-abandoning? Want support? Enquire HERE: https://calendly.com/d/cnqf-jcc-p72
Or check out my website: www.veronicajayne.com and Instagram: @veronicajayne_
🎥 YouTube your thing? Watch episodes at @veronicajayne
~ In love and learning,
Veronica Jayne
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Because I had to change the environments where I had to be
an old version of myself to be safe.
It wasn't his fault or my fault fault.
That was an enabled thing we'd created.
We had attached from a place of fear.
We're both afraid of being rejected, abandoned.
And so we stayed in an environment, in a relationship,
in a container where neither of us could grow.
(00:26):
Ready to ditch the old stories and limiting beliefs and step
into your embodied knowing? I'm Veronica Jane.
You're fierce, fiery and deeply compassionate embodiment,
empowerment and relationships coach and mentor.
And this is This Isn't Me podcast.
Hi, welcome to another episode of This Isn't Me podcast.
I am Veronica Jane and I am pumped about this episode.
(00:49):
So pumped. Extra ironic is that I'm filming
it in my religious parents home,which feels a little rebellious
in a way that's probably making this episode even more fiery.
The episode that I'm calling Stop Shrinking for reasons why
leaving is your next level. And this has come into my
awareness again, not only because of my own experiences,
(01:13):
but because of what I'm watchingin the communities that I'm
around. So if you know my story, you
know, I grew up in a very conservative religious community
where one of the highest values is marriage.
You say those vows and you're infor life, no matter how shit it
gets. And that meant that even though
I left my religious framework when I was older, I still had
(01:34):
this value like so embedded in my body and in my unconscious
mind in a way that had me stay in a relationship that wasn't
healthy anymore. And The thing is, I'm watching
people in relationships where itis well and truly time to go.
But because of the way that they've been indoctrinated and
hypnotized like we all are through culture, religion,
family, society, they don't evenknow why they're staying other
(01:58):
than they have so much guilt about going.
And there are people I love thatI'm watching in relationships
that are exhausted and not just exhausting to watch.
The relationship is Finito. And I want to talk to you about
why. So if you're one of those people
who's in a relationship that's perhaps met its expiry date and
(02:18):
yet you're riddled with the skill around leaving or you
don't know why you chose what you chose or you have this like
belief that's like, but it's supposed to be hard and you're
supposed to like hustle through it and like never give up.
This podcast will change your mind and it may invite you to
finally see why leaving is actually the most loving thing.
(02:40):
So you've been warned. I'm going to speak truths, hard
truths. I'm going to explain the
attachment theory around it. I'm going to explain the
personal growth. And I'm going to explain to you
what's possible for you if you desire it, if you're ready to
keep growing. Because what if leaving is your
(03:02):
next level? So the Internet loves like 4
reasons to X, right? So I'm going to sit here in my
wifey shirt with this wifey painting in this wifey as fuck
house and explain to you why maybe you're done being a wife,
at least to this man. All right, four reasons to prove
that you're growing. Yeah, and why leaving the
(03:24):
relationship might be the most powerful next step.
Number one, you're no longer shrinking to keep the peace.
I'm going to give you catchy little phrases for each one.
Yeah. OK.
And then explain it. So what if you're done
shrinking, playing it small, pretending?
Yeah. What if that's the only way that
this relationship works to keep the peace?
You walk on egg shells, you playnice.
(03:46):
So let's explore why, how this works.
Yeah, as a child, according to attachment theory, which is a
well proven lived, expressed theory, when you're in an
emotionally unpredictable or unstable or even volatile
environment as a child, you learn to fawn.
(04:08):
You learn to people, please. You learn to be a nice good
girl. And that is what maintains the
safety. It's what maintains the
connection. You learn to fawn.
Yeah, from a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response, you
learn to fawn, which looks like people pleasing, being nice,
saying the right thing, being the good girl.
Yeah, and that's what helps maintain the safety.
(04:30):
Maybe your parents were quick toanger.
Maybe they were unsafe for you. Maybe they drank.
And you learned that if you justdid what they said, if you
played their game, if you put onthe masks, if you pretended,
then that maintained your safetyor maybe even it just maintained
the connection. Yeah.
So by you quieting down or beingwhat you knew like it was
(04:53):
pleasing to them, it maintained the connection.
They were kind to you, they smiled at you and they loved
you. And from a survival perspective,
that's all your brain is lookingto do as a little child.
You literally need these carers to give you milk, to give you
food, to keep you safe, to give you a safe environment.
So you learn the strategies froman animal perspective to keep
(05:14):
them wanting to take care of you.
And for many people that looked like being small, drinking,
being quiet, speaking in the voice of the tone that their
parents liked, putting on the shows, their parents liked
bringing home the report card. Their parents wanted, you know,
managing things around the home in a way that worked.
(05:36):
And so this evolves into an anxious or disorganized
attachment style, which means you will do whatever it takes to
come towards this relationship or you'll come to words and pull
away. So The thing is, as an adult, if
you've chosen your partner from this place unconsciously in your
nervous system, if you've chosensomeone you have to shrink for
(05:56):
fawn and people please to stay in connection and safety with.
It makes sense that as you evolve, you undo this pattern.
And like with all of these, if you can break this pattern in
the relationship, great. That's the goal, right?
It's for you both to evolve together.
So it comes to this radical responsibility piece of you
(06:17):
stopping being this way. As you grow and evolve and
uncover these patterns, you break them.
The thing is, a lot of times when you start dancing a new
dance in a relationship, the other person doesn't know how to
dance that way with you. And so you get to determine for
how long and with how much effort and how much abuse or
hurt or suffering will you maintain to evolve.
Yeah. If you grow and evolve and break
(06:37):
these patterns and they're unwilling or unable to break
them with you, that's when I think these reasons for leaving
mean your next level. So when you're undoing this
pattern as an adult, that means no more suppression, no more
masking, no more fawning and people placing, no more walking
on egg shells. It means you in your authentic
expression. If you can't hear and feel that
(07:00):
from me, that's not always how I've been.
I haven't always been this person who speaks so boldly,
speaks so loudly, says her truthand lives it.
And from this most recent mini relationship that I was just in,
I got to see and feel. But I no longer do that.
I no longer people please. I no longer fawn.
I no longer say what he wants tohear just to keep him happy and
(07:23):
so that his ego isn't wounded. I say the fucking hard things.
And that's where I know I've grown.
I couldn't enter into this relationship any deeper and be
authentic in my expression to myself.
And that's growth, right? So I didn't even enter into a
long term committed relationshipwith this person because I can
already feel the only version ofme they want to love is 1, where
(07:44):
I have to fawn. So no, thank you.
And I wonder if that's you, are you in your authentic
expression? And how can you start being in
this relationship? Yeah.
And if you have been and there'sno space for it, the question
becomes if you're speaking up, if you're and that disrupts the
relationship. If you speaking up disrupts the
(08:04):
relationship, perhaps it's time to leave.
That's not dysfunction when you're self expressed.
It's development when you're youliving truly who you are.
That's the only thing that makeslove really available.
When you start voicing your needs, your desires, your
boundaries. If that disrupts things, girl,
(08:25):
run for the hills. When you're willing to have
uncomfortable conflict, that's what makes a relationship work.
That's self respect. You have to be willing to get
uncomfortable, not walk around and sit in the cozy niceness all
the time. Saying hard things is a huge
piece of love, isn't it? So if your growth is met with
(08:47):
resistance, if it's met with blame and manipulation, you'll
feel it. Once you're tuned into your
nervous system, that's a sign the relationship can't hold the
version of you that you truly are, the one that you're
becoming, that it needs you to be shrinking and small.
That's a sign it's time to go. OK, reason 2 yourself.
(09:10):
Trust is louder than your fear of being alone.
OK, so this is having to do withan attachment style that has a
fear of abandonment, fear of rejection.
When you choose whatever will work, the nice guy, the good
guy, the safe guy, the guy that provides whatever it is for you.
Because you're so afraid to be alone.
You're so afraid to be rejected.You don't hold a standard or a
(09:32):
boundary. You don't have values that are
yours because you just want someone.
And you might not even be aware of this until you find yourself
tolerating shit, getting constantly irritated, constantly
on edge, just aching inside for something else.
This was me. I was so afraid to be alone and
I didn't know it that I just kept compromising who I was to
(09:54):
kept trying to be everything I thought he wanted me to be,
shape shifting and forming myself to be what he wanted.
Because I didn't know how to be alone.
I didn't know I could be. So as an adult, as you start
trusting yourself, as you find yourself as the home, as you
make a home and a safety in yourself, as you become the
(10:16):
constant in your life, you're not afraid of other things being
disrupted. You don't need certainty.
Yeah, the other person is not your constant.
You are. You know that you can regulate
your own nervous system. And that's why embodiment
practice it and embodiment practices and nervous system
(10:36):
regulation is so important in relationship because every time
you have a fight, if you need him to regulate you to feel
good, to feel OK again, of course you're going to stay.
If you don't know you can be OK on your own, you'll put up with
anything you need to meet your own needs or know that you can.
And that's the intricacy, right?Because once you can meet your
(10:56):
own needs and feel safe in that,you'll feel safe enough to let
him meet your needs too. And that's powerful, right?
That's empowerment to know. I got me.
I'm OK, I'm great actually. And I want to now create safety
with you, but not safety that causes me to abandon myself.
(11:17):
I'm OK with being rejected by you and abandoned by you if it
means I get to maintain my relationship with myself.
So leaving this instance isn't proof that you failed.
It's proof you finally got your own back.
You finally know how to self regulate you finally how to know
how to hold your own and make a home in yourself rather than
enmeshed and dissolved into another person.
(11:41):
You find peace and freedom in that.
Yeah, when alignment with who you are means more than
security, you trust yourself. You trust yourself enough to
walk away from what's familiar and what no longer is
nourishing, safe, expansive, or healthy.
(12:04):
OK, rule, rule reason #3 you're craving depth rather than this
attachment. So maybe as a child you confused
attachment with love. In fact, I think we all do,
right? Because we need attachment as an
infant. We can't walk, we can't feed
ourselves, we can't protect ourselves.
So we work from attachment. And like I said earlier, then
(12:25):
most of us end up choosing a spouse or a partner from
attachment rather than love. But what is love?
And all my Christian friends love saying love is patient,
love is kind, and that's why they stay.
OK. Is love shrinking?
Is love abandoning yourself? Is love not living to your
values? Is love tolerating?
Is love enabling? I don't remember reading any of
(12:47):
that in the Bible. So maybe it's staying, but not
at the compromise of all of those things, is it?
So when you are choosing a partner from something other
than love, when you're choosing from attachment, when you're
choosing from survival and safety, that's not truth.
That's not respect. Real love is truth.
(13:10):
It's respect. It's shared growth, isn't it?
You might be great at attaching,but now you want intimacy, not
just proximity. Yeah, when you're craving that
depth, you'll feel it. You'll feel contained.
Traps, stacks, small, limited, on edge.
(13:32):
And when you open up to truly growing what your spiritual self
desires, what your true essence,what your soul, whatever that is
for you, what your deepest energetic self needs, attachment
won't feel like love anymore. You'll feel trapped in that.
You'll crave as you grow, this quality connection.
You'll stop chasing like just being together and spending time
(13:53):
together. You'll deeply crave mutual
expansion, mutual growth. That'll be one of your highest
values. So anything that counters that
won't be worth staying for, anything that counters that
won't feel like love. And that's why you might be
quick to leave. And that's why others might
judge it because maybe they're still in the attachment.
(14:14):
Maybe that's their safest space.Maybe they don't get it yet.
And so if judgement's what's holding you back, can you attune
to you, to your values? If personal growth and expansion
are one of your highest values, then attachment won't be love,
will be real love. You won't have an attachment
attachment. You'll be OK to hold your own
(14:36):
and you'll desire to let others hold it with you.
Real love. Real love elevates you both.
You're done settling for that surface level bullshit.
It might be time to leave if you're done staying in a
relationship where he numbs out every night.
It might be time to leave if you're done staying an
(15:00):
emotionally unavailable attachment, not a real
relationship. It'll be time to leave reason #4
you're no longer willing to betray yourself for love again.
As a child, love might have beenconditional for you.
Yeah, you're loved when you're good, when you're quiet, when
(15:22):
you're nice, when you go to church, when you wear a
pantyhose, when you smile, when you dance, when you perform,
when you win the trophy, when you run, when you make enough
money, when you mow the lawn. Whatever.
It is subtle ways that we learn Love is about performance, it's
about success, and you start accommodating your truth to
receive that love. If you're not watching, I'm
putting that in quotations. So you learn to abandon
(15:45):
yourself, to stay connected. But then as an adult, if you
want to grow, healing means realizing that love without
authenticity isn't love at all. It's performance.
It's a show. It's masks and honoring your
values, your needs, your desires, your truth over keeping
someone else comfortable. That's what needs to occur.
(16:06):
You can't keep someone comfortable if it's abandoning
who you truly are. Choosing to leave is a radical
out act of self loyalty. You see that, right?
You watch these people, their eyes begin to dim.
The connection's gone. They're out at a social event.
They're not looking at each other.
They're not touching each other.The spark is gone.
The bags under their eyes are bigger than ever before.
(16:27):
They look tired. They're drinking, they're
smoking. You know they're dissociating.
They're watching TV every night.That's a life.
That's love for you. When you insist on expanding
beyond that on beyond that comfort, that's where love is
truly available. But The thing is, so many people
are just staying, enabling each other to hide from their own
(16:48):
growth. And so then it's an unconscious
complicit agreement that they have that's like, stay here with
me, stay quiet, stay small drink.
Let's just watch TV. Let's just smoke weed.
Let's just get drunk most nights.
Let's just have boring, quick toorgasm sex or one of us orgasms
(17:08):
and the other doesn't. Let's just not worry about
what's next for us. Next career expansion, the next
opportunity, the next possibility.
Let's not invite each other intowhat else we could achieve.
Let's not travel anymore, explore anymore, learn anymore,
grow any more. And let's just die slowly
inside, staring at the TV or watching our kids have fun, or
(17:29):
watching other people we love dowhat they want as we live
vicariously through them. When you're ready to grow, when
you're no longer available to love that costs you yourself,
you stop self abandoning, stop negotiating your values,
(17:52):
ignoring red flags. You stop silencing your
intuition. Girl, if your body is screaming
out with an inflammatory condition or an autoimmune
disease, please look. Please look at where you're
containing yourself, where you're inflamed, where you have
anger, unexpressed, hurt, unwitnessed.
(18:12):
Because choosing yourself is themost loving and bad ass move you
can make. Sis.
You're no longer shrinking to keep the peace yourself.
Trust is louder than your fear of being alone, your craving
depth, not just attachment. You're no longer willing to
betray yourself for love in all this.
(18:32):
Can you see it's not your fault if you made a decision before
you were who you are now and watch people trap themselves in
this marriage agreement? But I gave my word.
I gave my vows. OK.
Would you do that with a career?Would you sign on for a lifelong
career without knowing if you'llever get promoted?
(18:54):
What happens if you sign on for life and they decide they want
to pay you less? Never get promoted.
You never have opportunities to expand.
Or if they decide you're moving everywhere you don't want to
move, they decide who your colleagues are.
They decide you're uniform. But if you have no control, no
sense of self, no way to honor your own growth, would you stay?
(19:18):
Would you stay in a career whereyour boss starts talking down to
you, manipulating you, controlling you?
Would you stay in a career that limits you becoming the next
version of yourself? Would you realize that you can
agree to something and then you can change and in that you can
change your mind? And wouldn't you want that for
the person you love to? Would you truly want to contain
(19:39):
them? You know, I don't know if I've
said this in the podcast before.I hope I have.
But a few years after my divorce, one of the most
powerful and freeing things my ex-husband said to me is thank
you for being strong enough to leave because I don't think I
ever would have. And he saw the growth possible
for both of us. He saw the freedom that.
(20:01):
That gift of me choosing to leave gave him and you know that
brought me back deeper and deeper into my truth, into my
intuition, into trusting my body.
For years I struggled with autoimmune conditions and health
health conditions in a way that I have 0 symptoms of any of that
before anymore. I'm back in Canada, eating
(20:22):
dairy, eating wheat, like re fulfilling my subtle addiction
to Tim Horton's. And everything's fine in my body
because my nervous system is so calm.
I have such a safe space in my whole body and being because I
had to change the environments where I had to be an old version
of myself to be safe. It wasn't his fault or my fault
(20:45):
fault. That was an enabled thing we'd
created. We had attached from a place of
fear. We're both afraid of being
rejected, abandoned. And so we stayed in an
environment, in a relationship, in a container where neither of
us could grow. I was using him to stay shrunk.
Don't get me wrong, sis, this isnot a him thing.
This is an US thing. And all these reasons show you
(21:08):
where you unconsciously in your mind and nervous system may have
chosen for the wrong reasons, may have chosen for what's not
really love. And if you are of the faith and
you believe in love, I invite you to really look at your
relationship. This is the way you're loving,
(21:29):
really love? Is that how Christ would love?
Is that how Divinity would love to enable, to hold someone back,
to keep them in an old version of themself?
Leaving isn't about giving up, it's about growing, making the
(21:52):
space for it. When you stop shrinking and step
into self leadership that shows you love and that love with you
that lasts and that makes real love available.
I hope you'll love yourself enough to know your truth, to
(22:14):
tune into that, to honor your values, your needs, your
desires. Because all I want is for each
and everyone of you to find yourtruth.
And do. I hope that that's within a
relationship, Yes. Do I see that it's potentially
not the one you're in now? Absolutely.
(22:39):
And will I be OK to leave as many times as it takes until I
find someone who can honor all of me and be in the mess with me
as we endlessly grow? Absolutely.
Do I know that it'll be tough? Fuck yeah.
Do I know that it'll be the mostintense mirror reflected back to
me? Absolutely.
(23:00):
But The thing is, Boob, I'm no longer going to shrink.
It's time to stop shrinking and find your next level.
Thank you so much for being here.
If you got value from today's episode, it would mean the world
(23:21):
to me. If you would like it, give it a
five star review, share it with a friend or share it on your
socials. And I would love to connect with
you on my socials at Veronica Jane under score on Instagram
and www.veronicajane.com where you can access links to all my
offers and events. Remember, we're always
unbecoming what isn't us to become what is.
(23:43):
This isn't me.
Because I had to change the environments where I had to be
an old version of myself to be safe.
It wasn't his fault or my fault fault.
That was an enabled thing we'd created.
We had attached from a place of fear.
We're both afraid of being rejected, abandoned.
And so we stayed in an environment, in a relationship,
in a container where neither of us could grow.
(00:26):
Ready to ditch the old stories and limiting beliefs and step
into your embodied knowing? I'm Veronica Jane.
You're fierce, fiery and deeply compassionate embodiment,
empowerment and relationships coach and mentor.
And this is This Isn't Me podcast.
Hi, welcome to another episode of This Isn't Me podcast.
I am Veronica Jane and I am pumped about this episode.
(00:49):
So pumped. Extra ironic is that I'm filming
it in my religious parents home,which feels a little rebellious
in a way that's probably making this episode even more fiery.
The episode that I'm calling Stop Shrinking for reasons why
leaving is your next level. And this has come into my
awareness again, not only because of my own experiences,
(01:13):
but because of what I'm watchingin the communities that I'm
around. So if you know my story, you
know, I grew up in a very conservative religious community
where one of the highest values is marriage.
You say those vows and you're infor life, no matter how shit it
gets. And that meant that even though
I left my religious framework when I was older, I still had
(01:34):
this value like so embedded in my body and in my unconscious
mind in a way that had me stay in a relationship that wasn't
healthy anymore. And The thing is, I'm watching
people in relationships where itis well and truly time to go.
But because of the way that they've been indoctrinated and
hypnotized like we all are through culture, religion,
family, society, they don't evenknow why they're staying other
(01:58):
than they have so much guilt about going.
And there are people I love thatI'm watching in relationships
that are exhausted and not just exhausting to watch.
The relationship is Finito. And I want to talk to you about
why. So if you're one of those people
who's in a relationship that's perhaps met its expiry date and
(02:18):
yet you're riddled with the skill around leaving or you
don't know why you chose what you chose or you have this like
belief that's like, but it's supposed to be hard and you're
supposed to like hustle through it and like never give up.
This podcast will change your mind and it may invite you to
finally see why leaving is actually the most loving thing.
(02:40):
So you've been warned. I'm going to speak truths, hard
truths. I'm going to explain the
attachment theory around it. I'm going to explain the
personal growth. And I'm going to explain to you
what's possible for you if you desire it, if you're ready to
keep growing. Because what if leaving is your
(03:02):
next level? So the Internet loves like 4
reasons to X, right? So I'm going to sit here in my
wifey shirt with this wifey painting in this wifey as fuck
house and explain to you why maybe you're done being a wife,
at least to this man. All right, four reasons to prove
that you're growing. Yeah, and why leaving the
(03:24):
relationship might be the most powerful next step.
Number one, you're no longer shrinking to keep the peace.
I'm going to give you catchy little phrases for each one.
Yeah. OK.
And then explain it. So what if you're done
shrinking, playing it small, pretending?
Yeah. What if that's the only way that
this relationship works to keep the peace?
You walk on egg shells, you playnice.
(03:46):
So let's explore why, how this works.
Yeah, as a child, according to attachment theory, which is a
well proven lived, expressed theory, when you're in an
emotionally unpredictable or unstable or even volatile
environment as a child, you learn to fawn.
(04:08):
You learn to people, please. You learn to be a nice good
girl. And that is what maintains the
safety. It's what maintains the
connection. You learn to fawn.
Yeah, from a fight, flight, freeze or fawn response, you
learn to fawn, which looks like people pleasing, being nice,
saying the right thing, being the good girl.
Yeah, and that's what helps maintain the safety.
(04:30):
Maybe your parents were quick toanger.
Maybe they were unsafe for you. Maybe they drank.
And you learned that if you justdid what they said, if you
played their game, if you put onthe masks, if you pretended,
then that maintained your safetyor maybe even it just maintained
the connection. Yeah.
So by you quieting down or beingwhat you knew like it was
(04:53):
pleasing to them, it maintained the connection.
They were kind to you, they smiled at you and they loved
you. And from a survival perspective,
that's all your brain is lookingto do as a little child.
You literally need these carers to give you milk, to give you
food, to keep you safe, to give you a safe environment.
So you learn the strategies froman animal perspective to keep
(05:14):
them wanting to take care of you.
And for many people that looked like being small, drinking,
being quiet, speaking in the voice of the tone that their
parents liked, putting on the shows, their parents liked
bringing home the report card. Their parents wanted, you know,
managing things around the home in a way that worked.
(05:36):
And so this evolves into an anxious or disorganized
attachment style, which means you will do whatever it takes to
come towards this relationship or you'll come to words and pull
away. So The thing is, as an adult, if
you've chosen your partner from this place unconsciously in your
nervous system, if you've chosensomeone you have to shrink for
(05:56):
fawn and people please to stay in connection and safety with.
It makes sense that as you evolve, you undo this pattern.
And like with all of these, if you can break this pattern in
the relationship, great. That's the goal, right?
It's for you both to evolve together.
So it comes to this radical responsibility piece of you
(06:17):
stopping being this way. As you grow and evolve and
uncover these patterns, you break them.
The thing is, a lot of times when you start dancing a new
dance in a relationship, the other person doesn't know how to
dance that way with you. And so you get to determine for
how long and with how much effort and how much abuse or
hurt or suffering will you maintain to evolve.
Yeah. If you grow and evolve and break
(06:37):
these patterns and they're unwilling or unable to break
them with you, that's when I think these reasons for leaving
mean your next level. So when you're undoing this
pattern as an adult, that means no more suppression, no more
masking, no more fawning and people placing, no more walking
on egg shells. It means you in your authentic
expression. If you can't hear and feel that
(07:00):
from me, that's not always how I've been.
I haven't always been this person who speaks so boldly,
speaks so loudly, says her truthand lives it.
And from this most recent mini relationship that I was just in,
I got to see and feel. But I no longer do that.
I no longer people please. I no longer fawn.
I no longer say what he wants tohear just to keep him happy and
(07:23):
so that his ego isn't wounded. I say the fucking hard things.
And that's where I know I've grown.
I couldn't enter into this relationship any deeper and be
authentic in my expression to myself.
And that's growth, right? So I didn't even enter into a
long term committed relationshipwith this person because I can
already feel the only version ofme they want to love is 1, where
(07:44):
I have to fawn. So no, thank you.
And I wonder if that's you, are you in your authentic
expression? And how can you start being in
this relationship? Yeah.
And if you have been and there'sno space for it, the question
becomes if you're speaking up, if you're and that disrupts the
relationship. If you speaking up disrupts the
(08:04):
relationship, perhaps it's time to leave.
That's not dysfunction when you're self expressed.
It's development when you're youliving truly who you are.
That's the only thing that makeslove really available.
When you start voicing your needs, your desires, your
boundaries. If that disrupts things, girl,
(08:25):
run for the hills. When you're willing to have
uncomfortable conflict, that's what makes a relationship work.
That's self respect. You have to be willing to get
uncomfortable, not walk around and sit in the cozy niceness all
the time. Saying hard things is a huge
piece of love, isn't it? So if your growth is met with
(08:47):
resistance, if it's met with blame and manipulation, you'll
feel it. Once you're tuned into your
nervous system, that's a sign the relationship can't hold the
version of you that you truly are, the one that you're
becoming, that it needs you to be shrinking and small.
That's a sign it's time to go. OK, reason 2 yourself.
(09:10):
Trust is louder than your fear of being alone.
OK, so this is having to do withan attachment style that has a
fear of abandonment, fear of rejection.
When you choose whatever will work, the nice guy, the good
guy, the safe guy, the guy that provides whatever it is for you.
Because you're so afraid to be alone.
You're so afraid to be rejected.You don't hold a standard or a
(09:32):
boundary. You don't have values that are
yours because you just want someone.
And you might not even be aware of this until you find yourself
tolerating shit, getting constantly irritated, constantly
on edge, just aching inside for something else.
This was me. I was so afraid to be alone and
I didn't know it that I just kept compromising who I was to
(09:54):
kept trying to be everything I thought he wanted me to be,
shape shifting and forming myself to be what he wanted.
Because I didn't know how to be alone.
I didn't know I could be. So as an adult, as you start
trusting yourself, as you find yourself as the home, as you
make a home and a safety in yourself, as you become the
(10:16):
constant in your life, you're not afraid of other things being
disrupted. You don't need certainty.
Yeah, the other person is not your constant.
You are. You know that you can regulate
your own nervous system. And that's why embodiment
practice it and embodiment practices and nervous system
(10:36):
regulation is so important in relationship because every time
you have a fight, if you need him to regulate you to feel
good, to feel OK again, of course you're going to stay.
If you don't know you can be OK on your own, you'll put up with
anything you need to meet your own needs or know that you can.
And that's the intricacy, right?Because once you can meet your
(10:56):
own needs and feel safe in that,you'll feel safe enough to let
him meet your needs too. And that's powerful, right?
That's empowerment to know. I got me.
I'm OK, I'm great actually. And I want to now create safety
with you, but not safety that causes me to abandon myself.
(11:17):
I'm OK with being rejected by you and abandoned by you if it
means I get to maintain my relationship with myself.
So leaving this instance isn't proof that you failed.
It's proof you finally got your own back.
You finally know how to self regulate you finally how to know
how to hold your own and make a home in yourself rather than
enmeshed and dissolved into another person.
(11:41):
You find peace and freedom in that.
Yeah, when alignment with who you are means more than
security, you trust yourself. You trust yourself enough to
walk away from what's familiar and what no longer is
nourishing, safe, expansive, or healthy.
(12:04):
OK, rule, rule reason #3 you're craving depth rather than this
attachment. So maybe as a child you confused
attachment with love. In fact, I think we all do,
right? Because we need attachment as an
infant. We can't walk, we can't feed
ourselves, we can't protect ourselves.
So we work from attachment. And like I said earlier, then
(12:25):
most of us end up choosing a spouse or a partner from
attachment rather than love. But what is love?
And all my Christian friends love saying love is patient,
love is kind, and that's why they stay.
OK. Is love shrinking?
Is love abandoning yourself? Is love not living to your
values? Is love tolerating?
Is love enabling? I don't remember reading any of
(12:47):
that in the Bible. So maybe it's staying, but not
at the compromise of all of those things, is it?
So when you are choosing a partner from something other
than love, when you're choosing from attachment, when you're
choosing from survival and safety, that's not truth.
That's not respect. Real love is truth.
(13:10):
It's respect. It's shared growth, isn't it?
You might be great at attaching,but now you want intimacy, not
just proximity. Yeah, when you're craving that
depth, you'll feel it. You'll feel contained.
Traps, stacks, small, limited, on edge.
(13:32):
And when you open up to truly growing what your spiritual self
desires, what your true essence,what your soul, whatever that is
for you, what your deepest energetic self needs, attachment
won't feel like love anymore. You'll feel trapped in that.
You'll crave as you grow, this quality connection.
You'll stop chasing like just being together and spending time
(13:53):
together. You'll deeply crave mutual
expansion, mutual growth. That'll be one of your highest
values. So anything that counters that
won't be worth staying for, anything that counters that
won't feel like love. And that's why you might be
quick to leave. And that's why others might
judge it because maybe they're still in the attachment.
(14:14):
Maybe that's their safest space.Maybe they don't get it yet.
And so if judgement's what's holding you back, can you attune
to you, to your values? If personal growth and expansion
are one of your highest values, then attachment won't be love,
will be real love. You won't have an attachment
attachment. You'll be OK to hold your own
(14:36):
and you'll desire to let others hold it with you.
Real love. Real love elevates you both.
You're done settling for that surface level bullshit.
It might be time to leave if you're done staying in a
relationship where he numbs out every night.
It might be time to leave if you're done staying an
(15:00):
emotionally unavailable attachment, not a real
relationship. It'll be time to leave reason #4
you're no longer willing to betray yourself for love again.
As a child, love might have beenconditional for you.
Yeah, you're loved when you're good, when you're quiet, when
(15:22):
you're nice, when you go to church, when you wear a
pantyhose, when you smile, when you dance, when you perform,
when you win the trophy, when you run, when you make enough
money, when you mow the lawn. Whatever.
It is subtle ways that we learn Love is about performance, it's
about success, and you start accommodating your truth to
receive that love. If you're not watching, I'm
putting that in quotations. So you learn to abandon
(15:45):
yourself, to stay connected. But then as an adult, if you
want to grow, healing means realizing that love without
authenticity isn't love at all. It's performance.
It's a show. It's masks and honoring your
values, your needs, your desires, your truth over keeping
someone else comfortable. That's what needs to occur.
(16:06):
You can't keep someone comfortable if it's abandoning
who you truly are. Choosing to leave is a radical
out act of self loyalty. You see that, right?
You watch these people, their eyes begin to dim.
The connection's gone. They're out at a social event.
They're not looking at each other.
They're not touching each other.The spark is gone.
The bags under their eyes are bigger than ever before.
(16:27):
They look tired. They're drinking, they're
smoking. You know they're dissociating.
They're watching TV every night.That's a life.
That's love for you. When you insist on expanding
beyond that on beyond that comfort, that's where love is
truly available. But The thing is, so many people
are just staying, enabling each other to hide from their own
(16:48):
growth. And so then it's an unconscious
complicit agreement that they have that's like, stay here with
me, stay quiet, stay small drink.
Let's just watch TV. Let's just smoke weed.
Let's just get drunk most nights.
Let's just have boring, quick toorgasm sex or one of us orgasms
(17:08):
and the other doesn't. Let's just not worry about
what's next for us. Next career expansion, the next
opportunity, the next possibility.
Let's not invite each other intowhat else we could achieve.
Let's not travel anymore, explore anymore, learn anymore,
grow any more. And let's just die slowly
inside, staring at the TV or watching our kids have fun, or
(17:29):
watching other people we love dowhat they want as we live
vicariously through them. When you're ready to grow, when
you're no longer available to love that costs you yourself,
you stop self abandoning, stop negotiating your values,
(17:52):
ignoring red flags. You stop silencing your
intuition. Girl, if your body is screaming
out with an inflammatory condition or an autoimmune
disease, please look. Please look at where you're
containing yourself, where you're inflamed, where you have
anger, unexpressed, hurt, unwitnessed.
(18:12):
Because choosing yourself is themost loving and bad ass move you
can make. Sis.
You're no longer shrinking to keep the peace yourself.
Trust is louder than your fear of being alone, your craving
depth, not just attachment. You're no longer willing to
betray yourself for love in all this.
(18:32):
Can you see it's not your fault if you made a decision before
you were who you are now and watch people trap themselves in
this marriage agreement? But I gave my word.
I gave my vows. OK.
Would you do that with a career?Would you sign on for a lifelong
career without knowing if you'llever get promoted?
(18:54):
What happens if you sign on for life and they decide they want
to pay you less? Never get promoted.
You never have opportunities to expand.
Or if they decide you're moving everywhere you don't want to
move, they decide who your colleagues are.
They decide you're uniform. But if you have no control, no
sense of self, no way to honor your own growth, would you stay?
(19:18):
Would you stay in a career whereyour boss starts talking down to
you, manipulating you, controlling you?
Would you stay in a career that limits you becoming the next
version of yourself? Would you realize that you can
agree to something and then you can change and in that you can
change your mind? And wouldn't you want that for
the person you love to? Would you truly want to contain
(19:39):
them? You know, I don't know if I've
said this in the podcast before.I hope I have.
But a few years after my divorce, one of the most
powerful and freeing things my ex-husband said to me is thank
you for being strong enough to leave because I don't think I
ever would have. And he saw the growth possible
for both of us. He saw the freedom that.
(20:01):
That gift of me choosing to leave gave him and you know that
brought me back deeper and deeper into my truth, into my
intuition, into trusting my body.
For years I struggled with autoimmune conditions and health
health conditions in a way that I have 0 symptoms of any of that
before anymore. I'm back in Canada, eating
(20:22):
dairy, eating wheat, like re fulfilling my subtle addiction
to Tim Horton's. And everything's fine in my body
because my nervous system is so calm.
I have such a safe space in my whole body and being because I
had to change the environments where I had to be an old version
of myself to be safe. It wasn't his fault or my fault
(20:45):
fault. That was an enabled thing we'd
created. We had attached from a place of
fear. We're both afraid of being
rejected, abandoned. And so we stayed in an
environment, in a relationship, in a container where neither of
us could grow. I was using him to stay shrunk.
Don't get me wrong, sis, this isnot a him thing.
This is an US thing. And all these reasons show you
(21:08):
where you unconsciously in your mind and nervous system may have
chosen for the wrong reasons, may have chosen for what's not
really love. And if you are of the faith and
you believe in love, I invite you to really look at your
relationship. This is the way you're loving,
(21:29):
really love? Is that how Christ would love?
Is that how Divinity would love to enable, to hold someone back,
to keep them in an old version of themself?
Leaving isn't about giving up, it's about growing, making the
(21:52):
space for it. When you stop shrinking and step
into self leadership that shows you love and that love with you
that lasts and that makes real love available.
I hope you'll love yourself enough to know your truth, to
(22:14):
tune into that, to honor your values, your needs, your
desires. Because all I want is for each
and everyone of you to find yourtruth.
And do. I hope that that's within a
relationship, Yes. Do I see that it's potentially
not the one you're in now? Absolutely.
(22:39):
And will I be OK to leave as many times as it takes until I
find someone who can honor all of me and be in the mess with me
as we endlessly grow? Absolutely.
Do I know that it'll be tough? Fuck yeah.
Do I know that it'll be the mostintense mirror reflected back to
me? Absolutely.
(23:00):
But The thing is, Boob, I'm no longer going to shrink.
It's time to stop shrinking and find your next level.
Thank you so much for being here.
If you got value from today's episode, it would mean the world
(23:21):
to me. If you would like it, give it a
five star review, share it with a friend or share it on your
socials. And I would love to connect with
you on my socials at Veronica Jane under score on Instagram
and www.veronicajane.com where you can access links to all my
offers and events. Remember, we're always
unbecoming what isn't us to become what is.
(23:43):
This isn't me.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.