389. How to experience healthy love after toxic love

00:00:04
Speaker 1: Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here. Back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today, we are talking about a pain I think a lot of us carry around in our twenties, but really, at any age, at any age, you can have this deep sadness and frustration around how do I love again when I've been hurt so badly in the past, how do I love again when I have learned that love is not something that I can trust, And just saying that, there's so much hurt in those states. There's so much pain and trauma in those statements, especially when the love you've experienced in the past has been toxic. I think this goes beyond heartbreak. It goes beyond somebody you know you and somebody else just not working out. There is this reprogramming that occurs when you experience toxic love. It changes how you interpret every single detail, every single thing somebody does. It changes how you respond to closeness or even how safe you feel with somebody when they're kind to you and when they do everything right and when they are the one. It can just train your body to, even after a relationship is over, associate love with panic and love with hostility, so that when maybe one day you meet somebody who is very calm and lovely, instead of feeling bliss and instead of feeling safe, you just feel suspicious and you just feel restless, like you're waiting. You're waiting for the catch, You're waiting for something to go horribly wrong. I've been there myself in my relationship before I met Tom. You know, it really did something to me. Sometimes it felt like love was just something that could be manipulated and taken advantage of. That's what that relationship left me feeling. And when I met Tom Tho, those past experiences really caused me to be really suspicious, very suspicious. So I kind of wanted to, i don't know, reflect on my own experience in a way and bring that to this episode on experiencing healthy love after toxic love. What we're going to explore is what toxic love does to your nervous system, what it does to your self esteem, to your biological wiring, to your attachment patterns, and then as well how we can slowly, practically relearn how to feel safe and how to feel excited by the potential of a relationship. So, without further ado, it's going to be a big episode. Strap in, let's get into it. So the first big question of the day, what does toxic love actually look like? There is no Oxford Dictionary definition for this. I'm sure you guys probably don't even need me to describe it. You know what you felt it. But it basically just represents a relational or a relationship dynamic that is consistently and insidiously harmful to your well being. It's not necessarily about one person being evil or about the occasional argument. It is often about a pattern of things like chronic invalidation, emotional inconsistency, jealousy, contempt, nastiness, betrayal that makes you feel very small, and that there's just a part of you that feels, even in those moments, that this isn't how you're meant to be treated. In toxic relationships, there will likely be repeated to cycles of rupture without repair, or kind of emotional chaos that makes you feel destabilized and very insecure. It's never resolved. You just either stop thinking about it or you move on to the next thing. It's very intense, it's very time consuming, emotional, emotionally consuming, and it's very hard to leave. Not because you're scared, although that can be a part of it, but sometimes just because you're really actually hooked on the highs and lows and kind of in a way you're addicted or you're hooked to this like potential. It's the hope that really kills you in these situations. It's the hope that keeps you hanging around, Hope that it's going to get better, hope that it's going to transform into the thing you want it to be. You might be thinking, ah, a lot of huh, A lot of that sounds like abuse, just with a less intense name. And that's a really valuable point. So let's quickly discuss the difference here, abusive love or just straight up abuse. Cut the love part.

00:05:17
Speaker 2: Just abuse.

00:05:19
Speaker 1: It's fundamentally about power and about control. It's again a pattern where usually one person's autonomy gets eroded over time, and the other person is the one who obviously does that erosion, but they might toor your phone. They isolate you from friends, they control your money, they make threats, they coerce you into things, they intimidate you, they emotionally punish you for any signs of independence. That's really what abuse looks like. And toxic love and abusive or just abuse can definitely overlap. But I think toxic loves it's like sits a little bit below. Some relationships are toxic but not abusive. It's just two people with poor boundaries, two people with poor conflict skills, lots of insecurity, lots of reactivity, people who hurt each other but aren't necessarily engaging in a pattern of domination. And some relationships also worth acknowledging, begin as toxic and then slide into abuse, slide into fear and control and coercion. But I think a lot of us live in that messy middle, relationships that are just tumultuous, where there's just true people whose needs and wants are different, and one person is really putting themselves more in the middle, and one person is really calling more of the shots not to dominate you. Maybe to dominate you, but more so just because there's a selfishness there and there's a lack of communication there, and it's just messy and there's not a clear definition of what exactly is going wrong, but you know that something is. I think what's difficult is that we look at those kinds of situations and because they're not abusive, we don't want to sound dramatic or make too big of a deal of them or the way that they've impacted us. But they do still leave a mark, and toxic love leaves psychological wounds pretty deep ones. It can really significantly change how you see love, especially if it is in your twenties. It's not something to kind of be brushed aside. Your twenties are already very much dictated by high change. They are a high learning stage of life. People often think that childhood is our most malleable time. It definitely is for some things, but your relationship blueprint continues to develop into adulthood, and especially in your twenties, it can be shifted. When a relationship, I don't know how I can word this, but when it doesn't have a stable center, when it doesn't have a stable core, it can throw you off your mark and scramble what you think love should be. Basically, I think when two stories are being told about love at the same time in the same relationship, one where you feel good and the second story where you feel terrible, and they keep switching and you keep thinking this is amazing and I feel safe, and then I feel exhausted and I feel dismissed and I feel like I'm not wanted and I feel terrible. They come into conflict and they clash, and your brain only wants one story to be true, so it doesn't really know what a place, what's going on, and it doesn't really know I guess how to adapt your expectations of love Accordingly, there's just a lot going on that kind of scrambles our blueprint. The biggest impact of this is that it can lead us to normalized dysfunction and almost emotionally just or emotionally rebrand a tumultuous kind of relationship as exciting simply as a way to endure it, meaning that eventually again, when we do encounter this healthy, safe love and it doesn't contain those rapid ups and downs, it can feel really boring because it contradicts what we've come to expect sometimes, you know, after chaos, And I've seen this in so many people's relationships that I know stability feels really just dull, not because healthy love is dull, but because you've learned to associate love with intensity and with stimulation and excitement. These relationships include so many highs and so many lows. And that pattern is very similar to the pattern that most addictive substances rely on to get you hooked. This pattern of stress, intensity, and then euphoria and relief at consuming the substance or experiencing the stimulus, and then it eventually plummets back. The relief is gone. You're scrambling for a higher dose. This is why toxic love and I think addictions sometimes go.

00:10:16
Speaker 2: Hand in hand.

00:10:17
Speaker 1: There is a real neurochemical level to it. It's exhausting, but it's also familiar, and more importantly, it can really interrupt and harm the part of your brain that deals with the interpretation of danger, that deals with fear, that deals with regulating heightened emotions. There's a concept in polyvagal theory called neuroception, which basically talks about how your body is constantly or unconsciously in a state where it can detect threats, So essentially, at any given time, there is always a part of you that's going to be able to sense danger. The thing is is that when people feel safe, that reaction, those reactions are down regulated, so they're not taking up all your mental, physical, cognitive resources. Your body's able to stay mobilized, You're able to stay in the present, You're able to feel safe. After trauma, after something like a really intense relationship, especially one that felt very harmful, neuroception can become just regulated, so you perceive danger and you perceive this intensity as the new normal. Even in safe situations, your body remains in that heightened state of alertness and that becomes basically your new equlibrium. Your new equilibrium is one whereby everything feels like at any given moment it could turn terribly wrong. And the research does show again, just to nail this point home again, after experiencing relation or trauma, people struggle, because of neuroception and because of many other processes, to read safety correctly, and often they will confuse safety with something else. A twenty twelve paper in the journal Neuropharmacology actually suggests that people with PTSD, for example, struggle to downregulate or switch off fear and anxiety responses, and so because this low level of anxiety becomes the new normal, when safe situations come along, sometimes those can actually feel the most scary because they are so counter to what is familiar. Sometimes the healthy, safe relationship can feel the most bizarre and terrible and fearful because it's so different, it's so different from what you expect. You don't have to have experienced or have PTSD for this to be the case. My point is just that, essentially, when your brain has learnt that in the relationship, in the relational context, closeness is dangerous, it becomes harder to feel safe even when you are safe, because that doubt is your insurance, and the feeling of safety is not normal and therefore feels unsafe, uncanny, and so you interpret even the most harmless, wonderful situations as things that are threats. Someone predictable comes along, someone who doesn't play games, someone who is just really into you, and you think this is a fantastic They give you all the reassurance you need, they give you everything you need, and then your nervous system cuts in, and because it's so used to scanning embracing and suddenly there is nothing wrong. That feeling of peace is unfamiliar, and that feeling of peace can feel I know, I've said uncanny the most times, but can be anxiety inducing in its own way. So what that basically means is that after toxic love, you are approaching healthy love and the potential for healthy love with an entirely new perspective and with an entirely new I don't want to say brain, but set of neurological and psychological habits that mean you can't and you feel like you cannot always trust your judgment of the person in front of you, or your judgment of the situation you're in. There's also the combined element here of perhaps the chronic invalidation and the instability you most likely experienced in your last relationship that has probably conditioned you to distrust your own perceptions and experiences in these kind of dating scenarios. There's this weird I guess hindsight bias that occurs in these situations where we look at the past knowing how it's turned out, and we wonder why our past selves couldn't have foreseen this and didn't know, which is ridiculous because they hadn't lived it yet. But this hindsight bias causes us to begin to question whether our judgment is broken, and therefore, as a result, it causes us to mistrust anyone and everyone in a kind of better safe than sorry, I guess kind of way. It's honestly so twisted. It's so twisted that you have to experience this and that this is kind of this is what love feels like now, and I'm sorry, it's really really sucky.

00:15:37
Speaker 2: I remember my.

00:15:37
Speaker 1: Boyfriend when we first started dating. I must have had some I guess it must have been a work achievement.

00:15:44
Speaker 2: I can't remember.

00:15:45
Speaker 1: That's bad for me. But something really big had happened. And he sent me this like big box of sunflowers to my office. And this was when I had an office with some of my friends, some of my best friends, and they were all gosh, they were like, this guy is amazing, this.

00:16:02
Speaker 2: Guy is so great for you.

00:16:04
Speaker 1: And I was like looking at these flowers, and I just couldn't help but think, like, what's this guy's angle, Like what's this sick go up to you?

00:16:13
Speaker 2: Like what's he buttering me up for? Like? Look at this love bombing going on here?

00:16:18
Speaker 1: It just I feel like I was at that stage where I hadn't been with my ex for years, and in that moment, I had such a wave of anger towards him, like you're going to fuck this up as well and you're not even here, Like you have created these reactions and these patterns now in me, and am I going to sabotage this incredible thing because of you, like because of the past. And there was definitely this distance between me and Tom in the early days, and I'm so glad he could see that for what it was, which was not disinterest but caution. And I know a lot of people have a similar experience. This amazing person is in front of you and you're like, what's the catch. I guess what I'm saying is that after toxic love, really what it is is that having hope feels irresponsible because you had hope before and look where it got you. And it's not a nice feeling being that pessimistic because you probably want that pessimistic. Before this last person, you probably really believed in love. And if you're going through that now, I know it can be very hard.

00:17:23
Speaker 2: It can be.

00:17:24
Speaker 1: Very hard to feel like either they're gaslighting you, or you're gas slighting yourself. But I promise it does most certainly get better. The other thing, and probably the final thing I'll touch on here, The other thing toxic relationships can do to you is that they literally change your attachment style, even if you're an adult, even if you're in your twenties or you're in your thirties or your forties. I know a lot of us try to categorize ourselves into three prescribed you're either anxious, you're avoidant, or you're secure. And we box ourselves into these based on how we learnt about relationships growing up, and we kind of assume and we talk about our attachment style as though it's completely fixed and unchangeable after childhood. It's formed in childhood. It's impacted by childhood only. That's what the original theory by Bolby and Ainsworth says. And then once you're eighteen, you're locked in for life. If you're insecure, you're insecure for life. If you're secure, you're secure for life. And that's just the cards you're dealt. But your attachment style isn't fixed. It's actually influenced by relationship experiences across your life, across time and a toxic experience can shift your system radically, almost overnight. You know. It's also really interesting. There's actually I read this paper recently. There's research showing that attachment security and your attachment style can actually fluctuate, not just day to day, but depending on the person that you're with. Essentially, your attachment style can be different just for one singular relationship. Which sounds preposterous, but you could be secure in all other relationships, in your friendships, in your previous relationships with your parents, But with this one single person, this toxic love, suddenly you have all these anxious traits, all these avoidant traits. You are terrified just for them nobody else. One study I cited actually in my book and I still cited a lot, talks about how those early experiences of your attachment style being shifted by one singular relationship can take somebody who has had an overflowing amount of love in childhood, who is deeply cared for, and just completely twist them into someone who I don't know, acts like the survivor of childhood trauma, especially if this was their first relationship or their first significant relationship. Parents aren't the only one and aren't the only blueprint for how we think love should look. Young love Early love is also a milestone and is also a core bonding and learning experience that can, I guess, twist your interpretation of.

00:20:38
Speaker 2: The behaviors that are normal.

00:20:40
Speaker 1: In a relationship and what a relationship should make you feel like.

00:20:44
Speaker 2: Should it make you.

00:20:44
Speaker 1: Feel safe and happy or should it make you feel anxious and hostile. If you've noticed yourself becoming more anxious and more hypervigilant after being in a relationship that was chaotic or with somebody who was just like impossible to read, it's likely that you know this is what's happening to you. Your nervous system has been changed by that relationship. Your attachment system has been changed by that relationship, and your attachment system is doing what it has evolved to do. It is trying to teach you how to best bond with other people so that you don't get hurt. And in this situation, you were hurt. That doesn't mean that every situation is going to be like that, but this is why your brain learns to prevent things from the past happening again, and it makes generalizations. It makes you believe that every other love you're going to encounter in your life must look the same. But I think that if our attachment style and our nervous system and all these other bonding systems can change to become more alert and more anxious and more avoidant, it's only right and it only makes sense that they can also change in the other direction, and that when the right person comes along, or maybe not even the right person, just a really kind person comes along, that can shift us into being more secure and feeling safer as well. Relationships can also increase a sense of security over time. There is so much evidence out there that partners can actually co regulate each other that healthy love, if we push through maybe some of the feelings of boredom or feelings of fear and anxiety over the past, healthy love can heal us in a very unique way. And I know there's definitely this like ongoing narrative that anything you don't heal before a relationship will harm that relationship. But I also think that I don't know. I just don't always believe that. I think love is very healing, and sometimes the wounds left by previous situations, Sometimes the wounds left by love can be treated by nothing else, not to be like poetic about it. But you know that is the thing that we'll I don't want to say fast track you're healing, but I think that it's something that can be very beneficial if you've gotten to the state of pessimism and hostility towards relationships. Not to say get back out there and get back on the horse, but sometimes the thing that you're avoiding doing the most, and the thing that you fear the most, and the reason you fear relationships the most, is the reason you should get back out there. So as not to maintain this avoidance and so as not to further indoctrinate this narrative in yourself that the only kind of love I'm going to experience is the unhealthy kind, and the only kind of people out there are the kinds that will hurt me or will hurt others. I'm telling you that is not the case. I'm telling you there are brilliant people yet to be discovered by you and many others. So what does that feel like? What does healthy love feel like? And how can we actually lean into that without like trying to fix ourselves with a relationship, because that's definitely not what I'm saying. How can we just get some exposure to healthy love and know it when we see it. That's what we're going to be exploring after this short break. Once you understand what toxic love has trained in you, I think the next question or reminder I guess, is what does healthy love actually feel like? And how do we practice recognizing it and staying in it long enough for our body to believe it and to believe that we are safe. I know you guys hopefully know a lot of this, so not to sound I don't want to sound patronizing. You don't want to sound patronizing or anything like that. But just because we have to, let's do a mini checklist of sorts around what.

00:24:58
Speaker 2: Is healthy love?

00:25:00
Speaker 1: Like a checklist that you could sit in front of somebody and be like, is that what we've got going on for us here? First up, healthy love is not built on guessing. If you ever ever have to guess, does this person want to be with me? Does this person see us going in the same direction? Why haven't they labeled it? Why don't they like me back? Text me back? Why won't they include me in their plans? And you don't feel like you can clarify that's not healthy love. You guys aren't in a relationship like you do, not have the essential ingredient. Yes, people take their time in relationships and people move at different speeds, but that position should be communicated, and so should their reasons. It's literally the most cliche thing you will see in every marriage book, every relationship book. Communication is key. It's not that they won't commit right now. It's not that they don't know where you, guys, are going, it's that they're willing to talk to you about it.

00:26:03
Speaker 2: There is no confusion.

00:26:04
Speaker 1: The other thing healthy love or the beginnings of healthy love will often show you as well, is that this communication we're talking about doesn't always have to end in an argument or something that's emotionally twisted or uncomfortable. I think that does actually become especially clear during these kinds of early on what are we, what are we doing here? What do you want from me? Kind of conversations. When you have these conversations, I think a lot of the time, toxic love may have conditioned you to expect this rupture, this blow up, this dismissiveness, this silence lies icing you out. You know, all these things that you've seen in the past. You begin to expect it. So a lot of the time, I think we go into these conversations with a new relationship, in a new relationship with a lot of apprehension and nerves and anxiety, and then when nothing happens, when it's all calm and respectful, we're a bit like, huh, is that what that's meant to feel like? Honestly, sometimes that can feel like a trap, like, oh, we've sorted this argument out, They've given me all the information I need to know. Where's the rest of this? Where's the rest of the drama? The thing about healthy love is that sometimes when you are arguing and when you are communicating and you're expecting the worst and the worst doesn't come, it's weird. It doesn't give these emotions a place to go because those emotions didn't belong in that space to begin with. But in the aftermath, like you've come in so hot and expecting something so terrible, sometimes it can feel like you are unconsciously the one who is escalating things and like suddenly you're the toxic one in the relationship, if that makes sense, because I don't know, if there's this whole stored up fear and anticipated anger that doesn't have an outlet. That was my experience at least, like I had to learn how to fight with my partner. I felt like when I entered this relationship, I was spreading patterns from my past relationship because that was my operating manual. And it made me feel like, in the beginning, at least, like am I the toxic one? Am I now becoming the person who previously hurt me. Some people call these survival behaviors. Some people call it emotional reactivity. I think the best label for this is just predictive processing. Your brain operates on a set of expectations determined by prior experiences, and it's constantly trying to predict what's going to happen, what's coming for me, what's this fight going to end up like? And so it gets your body already and all hyped up for that situation, that anticipated situation, and then when it never comes, there's such a crash. There's a lot to unlearn because you basically have to stop predicting the worst case scenarios and the worst outcome, and you have to remain open to a better scenario, which can leave you feeling really vulnerable and really unprepared. When you're walking into these conversations with Hope being like, I really think I know, but what if I don't know? And what if I should anticipate this worst case scenario. But I think the beautiful thing about healthy love is that you come into it maybe with fear, and then you come down together, you emerge knowing each other more honestly. And I really hope he doesn't mind me saying this, but some of the moments I've just felt closest to Tom have been in the days after a fight, because I feel like he knows me better and I know him better because everything was so raw, it was so honest. I never felt that way with any of my exes.

00:29:49
Speaker 2: Never.

00:29:50
Speaker 1: It was just panic, panic for days. And I remember I used to mute their messages and then unmute them and then mute them again, and I would turn my phone off and I would like check it again and just just in case the messaged me. And it was this whole toxic pattern of like, I knew that getting into a fight and bringing things up would mean that we wouldn't talk for days, and it would always feel like my fault. You know, this one particular X I'm thinking about I remember he literally forgot it was my grandfather's funeral, and that was my fault. I remember saying, and I've said the story so it doesn't hurt anymore. But I remember telling him I loved him, and he told me he was going on a date with somebody else, and we had this big argument, and that was my fault. I remember, like, if he had an emotional outburst, if he said something rude, that was still my fault. How I don't know. I always justified it back then that it was but healthy love. On the other hand, you know, it's just it's just very easy, and it's very quiet, and there isn't.

00:30:50
Speaker 2: This blame game.

00:30:53
Speaker 1: Sometimes people describe it as feeling because of that, like almost too calm, like something is missing, it's too and that can bring up a lot of anxious questions about settling and questions about compatibility, like shouldn't there be a spark, shouldn't I feel electricity? Isn't the fighting a sign that we like each other, that we're willing to push through together. But I always used to question that, and I still question that. You know, was it really a spark or was it just anxiety masquerading as excitement. Was it really a spark? Or like, is this just this feeling of anticipation without resolution? Is this is this really a spark? Or were just fighting all the time? This thing that you think you're missing with this new person, I don't think it's a connection, because there's obviously something that's keeping you in this healthy relationship. I think what you're missing when you feel this like boredom or like is this person not the one? Because we're not arguing and there it's not that passion. What you're missing is adrenaline. What you're missing is hypervigilance. And I think the funny thing about hypervigilance is that it can feel remarkable, like presence and like you're really in tune with the other person. Because that's what hypervigilance does. It keeps your nervous system and your attentional systems on high alert, picking up on everything that's not love. Though that's not love. That intensity is not the only thing that can make a relationship survive. Here are some things that it does need. Here's that continuation of that list we were talking about, what does healthy love feel like? Healthy love, amongst all those other things we've said, is also not conditional. It is not conditional on you being good or behaving in the right way to receive attention, or they only treat you right if you do what they want you to, or they only treat you right or give you what you need if.

00:32:50
Speaker 2: You don't ask for too much.

00:32:52
Speaker 1: It is not conditional on some kind of behavior that works best for them. It's also a situation where there is a quality. One person doesn't have more of the power, one person isn't the one calling the shots. And you know that, you know that like each of you comes in equal. There is not somebody in this situation who could completely destroy the other person because they are completely unattached. And there's not one person who is in the situation who is willing to give everything and get nothing in return.

00:33:24
Speaker 2: It's equal.

00:33:25
Speaker 1: There is equal investment, there is equal time spent, there is equal yeah, disrespect, And I also just think it's meant to be fun. You know, healthy love isn't always easy. It's not like you don't have these bumps. It's not like you don't occasionally have doubts.

00:33:43
Speaker 2: Even looking at.

00:33:44
Speaker 1: Your parents, for example, if your parents are still together, or your grandparents, or if you think of an example of healthy love in your life, Like there are still things that sometimes go wrong, but you are actually at the end of the day enjoying yourself in that relationship authentically and you feel like you can be here is something a therapist friend of mine actually reminded me that we have to be aware of though sometimes those things, all those examples of healthy love I just gave, they actually lose their appeal after toxic love. They don't feel the same way. They don't have the same kind of drive. We don't have the same drive towards them. Our I don't want to say our desire systems, but like our preferences after toxic love in many ways can change. And that's you're definitely not responsible for how someone treated you, especially when you were so ready to give them everything and you were so invested in the relationship, Like, you're definitely not responsible for that. But sometimes those experiences can actually change what we find ourselves attracted to, just based on on patterns and what feels known. Research, including a recent paper published just last year, tells us that we love what feels familiar, and so if what is familiar is hot and cold behavior, if what is familiar is passionate, all consuming chemistry, and not much else. If what is familiar is major highs and major lows and the promise of potential and the promise of the chase. Sometimes, guess what, sometimes you can continuously feel drawn to that, even if rationally you know better. It's just your brain being both having adapted to this new kind of love and also feeling compulsively drawn to it because of how comforting it feels because it has the manuscript and it has the manual for that healthy love. It doesn't have the manual for that, or maybe it did before, but it's kind of lost. It's that kind of feel outdated to you. So the last thing, if the last thing you experienced was this toxic situation, of course you're gonna feel drawn to that because at least you know how it ends, and at least you know how the storyline goes. I will also say, and this is a hot take I have, I honestly think that people who are very intelligent and are high achievers are often more susceptible to that kind of chase me hard to get type behavior because they are used to feeling like if everyone else can have it, it's not worth having and they're used to this feeling of like, if something is really worth it, it will make me chase it a little bit and it should be a little bit out of reach to test me. And so sometimes those relationships that feel very like based on potential that ask you to work, they it feels like they're just asking you to work a little bit harder, and it feels like they're more desirable because you can't get it easily. And it's like this weird I don't know, capture or like achievement drive you have, Like why would I want the easy thing when the hard thing? Surely it's going to be more valuable because it's making me work harder, like that effort is a sign of value. This may be a hard truth to swallow, but as much as you should be cognizant of other people's intentions when you are encountering or dating again after toxic love, you also have to question your own intentions as well. Are you just replicating what you have experienced in the past, Are you just self sabotaging here? Are you just giving or are you not giving the right people a chance because of past patterns and what you've learned from previous relationships. You have to be aware of other people's behavior, definitely, but you also have to be aware of.

00:37:51
Speaker 2: How you're maybe behaving.

00:37:53
Speaker 1: And I think a big part of that is just giving yourself more time to date, slowly giving yourself time. I'm to be honest, this person I'm falling for, do they match the old blueprint or the new blueprint for healthy love that I'm setting for myself? Are there behaviors the kind that I really want in a partner or just the kind that I'm used to after toxic love? You know, there is this real urgency often this real sense of like.

00:38:23
Speaker 2: Pedal to the metal to like.

00:38:25
Speaker 1: Lock down a relationship, or like as soon as you meet somebody you really like to push for commitment. You know, you feel like you want to fuse very quickly. You feel like, you know, maybe you've been strung along in the past, this previous relationship was really hard on you. So anything that can give you a sense of reassurance that this person isn't going to do that Constantly texting, constantly sharing, becoming exclusive, immediately being really vulnerable, that can create like this artificial connection and closeness so that you know, unconsciously you know they won't walk away. That's a real habit I see. Or you like find yourself kind of playing games, or not even games, but like being very protective, or like doing things that you know you shouldn't be doing just because of anxious patterns. You have to be aware of that, and you have to be able to interrupt that before it becomes a more entrenched pattern of behavior. Let's just try getting to know somebody across time and very very slowly. Let's just take how you would normally approach that relationship and dial it back a few paces and a few kilometers just after toxic love. If you meet the right person, if you meet a person who you think is really great, appreciate and pursue the slow burn, and treat it almost like you are gathering information or that you are conducting kind of like a study in those first couple of weeks or months.

00:39:56
Speaker 2: As well as dating, I think a.

00:39:58
Speaker 1: Helpful way to safeguard yourself from this like zero to one hundred love bond in the early stages of dating is to actually just break up time between your dates and to just not make them the center of your whole world. If you've been conditioned into thinking that the only worthwhile connection is an immediate one, and is those intense bonds where like your mind is immediately sure they're the right person and filled with hope, and you're excited by them, and you spend all your time with them, and it's just like this incredible passionate fire. Try your hardest to space out the dates, try your hardest to just really give yourself the time to reality check. Is that really what's happening here? Or is it just the passion of a new beginning. Leave at least a four between dates, and during that week, especially in the early months, continuously ask yourself. Do I feel more like myself around them? Do I feel like I have to change anything about myself? Do I feel grounded? Or do they make me feel anxious? Do they make me feel very low? And is that them or is that me projecting? Do I feel calm or do I feel frantic? What is it about the relationship that is making me feel either of those things? But especially if you're feeling frantic, work to identify. And this is something I definitely had to do. Am I feeling frantic just because love is scary these days? Or am I feeling frantic because of something in their behavior that's creating that in me. And also, and this is a big question to ask yourself, are you actually into them? Are you actually curious about them? Or are you just chasing assurance? Is it just because you like the attention? Is it just because they like you back? Give yourself time, time to actually sit on the answers and the truth of the relationship. Then later, you know, if things move into a more established thing, follow the six month rule. This is really key if you are very much prone to merging your life with somebody and with you know, a love interest, for six months, just put off any big decisions, any major decisions moving in, getting a pet, making financial commitments, crafting your future around them, even traveling. Give it six months. At the six months mark, then you can make a decision around where this is going. Slow everything down, give your self space and time to assess, Give them time to prove themselves to you. I feel like this strategy, even if it feels unnatural at first, I also think that it's pretty marvelous because it lets you savor the love story a little bit more. You know, say this person is the one, Especially if you're in your twenties, you know, you have the rest of your life to be with them fifty to sixty plus years. Maybe you know you have the rest of your life for those big, bold moments, But those first six months, three to six months where you're just curious about each other and you have the skiddiness and you're excited about each other, that doesn't last forever. I just think the slower you go, everybody wins. The more you get to draw out that really beautiful beginning feeling, the more you get to really know somebody, the more you get to ease your anxiety into this new situation, the more you get to unlearned patterns. I've never heard anybody say I regret going slow at the beginning of my relationship.

00:43:57
Speaker 2: Nobody.

00:43:58
Speaker 1: I've heard a bunch of people say they regret moving too fast. I've heard from a bunch of people who say they regret rushing through the honeymoon stage. I haven't heard anybody say I regret taking my time and really knowing this person the way I would get to know a friend, or the way I would get to know Yeah, I think a friend is the best way to say this.

00:44:19
Speaker 2: The way I would get to know a friend.

00:44:21
Speaker 1: There's no rush if they're the right one, you have plenty of time. Okay, we are going to take another short break here, but when we return, let's talk through some more ways to approach healthy love from a psychological perspective, especially after toxic love, and especially in your twenties.

00:44:39
Speaker 2: Stay with us.

00:44:46
Speaker 1: A huge habit I found myself picking up from past relationships was making myself smaller so it would be easier to fit into somebody else's life, rather than seeing if they would and could fit into mind. And that is something that you definitely need to unlearn. Toxic love often teaches you that again, love is conditional, and it's conditional on you being easy for the other person and you following their guidebook or their guidelines. I think when you encounter healthy love after that, you now have to work on not shrinking, brag about yourself, ask for more, make sure they know you expect to be a priority, and make sure they know that you like yourself and you are cool, and you are nice, and you are fun, and you are somebody they would be lucky to know.

00:45:42
Speaker 2: You are a very big soul, You're a very big heart. You're expecting big love.

00:45:46
Speaker 1: That is a very easy way to weed out people who won't be able to meet those deeds. Yes, as much as we want to be slow and conscientious, that doesn't mean you don't get to express what you really need. And it is a great way. It's a great litmus test for who is not going to be able to meet the mark and kind of meet the performance metrics to love you and to be in your life. I want you guys to remember this and even repeat it as an affirmation to yourself. If they are the one, they would want as much of me as they possibly could get. And that doesn't just include the good stuff. It includes the emotions. It includes the depth, boundaries, the vulnerability, the hard things, maybe even like the disagreements, all of it. You are deserving of a love that is so full and complete it is like bursting at the seams. And if they cringe at that, if they can't handle it, if they don't have room. I just don't think your lives are aligned. And it shouldn't be anything you read anything more into. It's nothing more and nothing less than this is just you're incompatible. You have to continue to believe after talk love that big things are out there, even if it feels helpless. This also includes, I guess knowing the importance of being direct, which is really really hard. But dating and the love game for me had the most dramatic shift once I learned that just saying what I needed because I trusted myself and because I wanted more for myself was going to get me better outcomes. And it genuinely changed my dating life and.

00:47:29
Speaker 2: My love life.

00:47:30
Speaker 1: Do you know how I knew my boyfriend was the one and last story about him, I promise It was when we had maybe been dating for like a couple of months, and he came over to my house and we were drinking Apparol spritz is on my balcony and we went to dinner, and at dinner, I was like, Okay, I'm going to give it to you completely straight. And I fully expected him to kind of be like, I'm out, but I didn't really I kind of knew, right, I was like, but I just had to say that. I was, I'm gonna give it too straight. I'm looking for a relationship and that doesn't mean you have to promise one to me.

00:48:04
Speaker 2: Now.

00:48:06
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean that like we need to go all in because we're taking it slow. But if that is not your goal, just let me know now, And it was like we'd had a lot of fun. We were two months in. If I was going to go any further, I just needed to be I wasn't going to like I needed to be prepared and I needed to have by Leeds met, and I remember his reaction was a bit he was a bit shocked, but he was like, all right, honestly, like I'm all in. That's we're on the same page. And that was early days. So I felt slightly uncomfortable, like coming to him with this demand, being like, this is what I want. But I also knew that directness would scare away anybody who wasn't the one, because I'm a direct person, right, I'm somebody who really us and likes what they want. So I wasn't going to go through that whole terrible situation again of hoping that he would maybe give it to me one day. I know a lot of us think that like the person we should end up with is would read our minds and we should be in complete sync with them and they should know exactly what's going on with us, and there's this emotional link, but you know, the science isn't there yet. I'm sorry to say they can't read your mind. Sometimes they can't take the hint. You just have to be very utilitarian and direct about it and ask the answers you need, or ask the questions you need the answer to, in order to move forward without playing KOI and without playing games. I think my final slightly controversial thing I will say when approaching healthy love after toxic love is just to actually question your gut instinct if it's telling you this person isn't the one, and the only reason it believes that is because you feel bored. Trust gut instincts that say I don't think this person is a nice person. Trust gut instincts that say I think this person is using me. But especially after you've experienced toxic love, if there is a part of you that's like, oh, this person's just like a little bit too boring, or I'm settling, or like, ugh, I don't know, I feel like I should be I should be more like really into them, just pause, pause for that intuition, and that intuition only. I just think when you have become so used to again the major psychological games and the major psychological and emotional highs and lows of a toxic relationship. That feeling of calm can be unsettling because not because I should say, not because the relationship is wrong, but because your interpretation of what it is and what is right for you has been kind of messed with. Take a moment. If you are feeling this right now and you're like, I can't tell whether it's just because of past experiences or because I am actually settling, Just write down what is actually wrong with this relationship that is causing you to want to leave it. What about this relationship isn't working or living up to your expectations. And if the only answer you can give is I just feel a little bit bored, or this just feels a little bit like it feels a little bit too easy, or I feel like I'm settling, maybe just reassess and give it a little bit more time. And I know there'll be people coming at me being like, that's terrible advice, that's awful advice. I just feel like, if there is nothing else wrong with this person, maybe give them a second chance, if that's the only thing you can think of. And yes, sometimes you'll do this exercise and you'll realize, Okay, something is genuinely missing and that's like actually an equally good outcome. Like I think, whatever clarity this gives you, healthy love does still need chemistry, and it does still need alignment. But if you have alignment, and if you do enjoy them and it's just because you're bored and they're otherwise a really nice person and they're really incredible and they really make you feel great about yourself and you're having a lot of fun.

00:52:02
Speaker 2: Stick with it.

00:52:04
Speaker 1: Just stick with it and see how it goes. Worse comes to worst, you stay, You end up being with somebody for a little bit longer who treats you really really well and allows you to move back into a secure pattern and a secure way of seeing love. Worst comes to worse, you know it doesn't work out, But at least you have this example that there is somebody out there who was really amazing and will treat you well and we'll give you what you need, even if it's not. Like, even if it's not, it doesn't end up being the one. Just those examples of love, I think are really really brilliant. So give the easy and safe love a second chance. If your intuition is going wild with it, maybe question how your intuition has been shifted by emotional chaos. I hope you enjoyed this episode. I hope it has been in a good, honestly introduction into what toxic love may or may not do to us and how it changes us. There was a lot of rambling going on, and I'm sorry, so if you have made it this far, I do very much appreciate it, and I hope that whatever situation you are in, you're doing all right, and that you are feeling more and more optimistic by the day about there being wonderful love out there for you. Maybe it's not the one just yet, but I hope you're feeling more optimistic that there are just good people who will love you well, and that you do have a lot of options, and that you are deserving of wonderful things. Even if this past situation has made you think that everybody's out to get your or like everybody's out to hurt you, or all love ends. I promise that is that's not the case. Why would we have somebody beautiful love stories. There's always hope out there, and I don't think it's necessarily the thing that kills us all the time. I think it's healthy to be optimistic about the future of romance and about finding someone who's incredible. So again, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, make sure you give us a five star review. If you're in the US or Canada, you can also watch on Netflix. So if you like video podcasts and you want to check this one out, go and watch it that. I feel like it brings a whole new vibe. If you've ever wondered what I look like, and you've only ever seen or heard my voice, there's a good opportunity for you to go. And I don't know, it's kind of weird, go and judge my appearance, but no, just go and check out the studio, check out the vibes. It's very nice, calm, peaceful set, a very nice, calm, peaceful video podcast. So yeah, tell me what you think about it. Make sure as well you're following us on Instagram. You can also get transcripts of these episodes on our substack. If you are subscribed over there, I would really recommend it. You get cool articles in your inbox a couple times a week for you to expand your information horizon and your knowledge Horizons. Thank you, as always to our researcher Libby Colbert for her help with this episode. She's incredible and she did an amazing job researching a lot of that neurobiological and neurochemical those neurochemical interactions we were talking about, so we appreciate her greatly. But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself. We will talk very very soon.