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Ever sat ruminating obsessively over something you could have or should have done differently in your relationship?
Something you said, something you did, or something you wish you’d have done more?
It’s a dreadful, sickening feeling. I know because I’ve felt it. It leads to regret, anxiety, self-loathing… not to mention a lack of appetite and insomnia. We turn over every memory, imagining where we could have been with that person had we just behaved differently.
And this feeling isn’t limited to situations that have ended. Sometimes we are still seeing someone but we have this crippling anxiety over having irreversibly damaged the relationship. We feel we’ve created a perception of ourselves in that person’s eyes that we can’t now undo.
If for any of these reasons you are currently torturing yourself, this video will be life-saving for you today. Trust me when I say it is essential watching.
In this video, I break down for you why you don’t need to be wallowing in pain, and why, despite everything that destructive voice inside is saying, you actually have reason to feel good today.
Please also share this with someone you know who may be beating herself up right now. Life’s too short for any of us to suffer needlessly.
I’m with you, friend. You’re loved.
Transcript provided by YouTube:
00:00
one of the most fearful thoughts that
00:02
people have in their lives is will I
00:04
ever meet the love of my life
00:08
perhaps one of the most painful thoughts
00:11
that people experience is did I just
00:14
lose the love of my life we meet someone
00:18
we fall in love we want it to work we’d
00:21
give anything for it to work and then we
00:24
lose that person or that person
00:25
threatens to leave and our entire body
00:30
and mind is screaming that we’re losing
00:35
the thing that was meant for us I have a
00:38
phrase in my mind that I believe is
00:40
extremely important in creating the lens
00:44
that you look at your relationships
00:46
through the right relationship isn’t
00:50
brittle I look at the situation right
00:58
now in the last few months and the
01:00
pandemic has precipitated what we hear
01:04
in the news an extraordinary number of
01:06
divorces in different countries and I
01:08
think to myself yes this situation may
01:12
have brought people to the edge it has
01:14
certainly created an extreme scenario
01:17
and there’s no doubt in my mind that
01:19
even in the best relationships there are
01:21
times where it will have raised the
01:23
temperature of an argument of a conflict
01:25
I don’t believe that coronavirus created
01:30
divorces I believe it revealed
01:34
difficulties in relationships I believe
01:37
that even if those things were
01:39
unconscious until two people were forced
01:42
to be together for that amount of time
01:44
three months in a room together does not
01:47
end the right relationship so when
01:50
someone tells us they want to leave that
01:54
they’re considering leaving all that
01:56
they’ve made their mind up there are two
01:58
things to consider number one they’re
02:01
leaving because they’re not good at
02:04
dealing with tough times in a
02:06
relationship maybe you are having an
02:08
argument maybe you are having a
02:09
difference of opinion but that doesn’t
02:11
have to be relationship ending if
02:14
someone is leaving over something that
02:16
could be saved it may be a reflection of
02:19
the fact that
02:20
they’re not the type to go through
02:23
difficult times with you and that’s
02:25
important to know now
02:26
I think it’s a good thing for someone to
02:28
leave now if they don’t have staying
02:30
power because that’s many years it could
02:33
have saved you you don’t want someone
02:34
five years from now leaving because
02:36
that’s the first time you had a
02:37
difficult situation or conversation in
02:40
that sense this year has been a blessing
02:42
for many relationships because it’s
02:45
created a pressure that has revealed
02:49
relationships that shouldn’t be far
02:51
earlier than it would have been revealed
02:53
otherwise there are couples that should
02:55
have broken up and did break up this
02:58
year that could have taken another five
03:00
years to break up the second reason
03:02
someone may be leaving is because they
03:04
feel that fundamentally you are not
03:06
meeting what they perceive to be their
03:09
needs now this may not be communicated
03:13
to you in fact the argument you just had
03:17
may have been blown up into something so
03:21
big and so severe that that’s the reason
03:24
they’re leaving but many many people
03:27
break up where the argument that
03:30
preceded that moment becomes the
03:34
ammunition that someone needed to end
03:36
something that they were thinking about
03:38
ending for some time you may feel that
03:40
when I say that that is just a tragic
03:43
horrible heartbreaking thought the
03:46
question you have to ask yourself is was
03:49
I doing my best have I been doing my
03:54
best if the answer is yes why would you
03:57
want to be with someone whose needs you
04:00
can’t mean even on your best day or
04:03
someone who you have to struggle so hard
04:07
to meet the needs of see a relationship
04:11
isn’t
04:13
gymnastics at the Olympics where someone
04:17
does a flawless three-minute routine on
04:19
the mat and then beats themselves up
04:21
because they didn’t stick the landing
04:23
perfectly at the end of the routine
04:25
giving them an 8 out of 10 instead of a
04:27
9 a relationship is real human stuff yes
04:33
it shouldn’t be easy I don’t think that
04:35
the right relationship is easy any more
04:37
than being fit and healthy is easy it
04:39
requires conscious effort to make
04:41
something great and to keep it great
04:43
over time but that doesn’t mean that you
04:46
should be fighting every day to win a
04:50
gold medal just so that the relationship
04:53
survives being with someone whose needs
04:55
you don’t feel you can meet or you don’t
04:58
feel you can meet consistently is a slow
05:01
form of torture that will erode your
05:03
confidence over time until you forget
05:06
who you were and by the way even as I’m
05:09
saying this there may be this creeping
05:11
part of you that says but I didn’t do my
05:15
best I messed up you know there were a
05:19
bunch of times where I acted badly where
05:21
I was
05:22
– jealous where I was too needy whereas
05:25
too desperate where I asked too much
05:27
where was high-maintenance where I
05:28
didn’t make that person’s life easy this
05:31
may be a complex philosophical point to
05:35
convey in what I’m trying to make a
05:38
short video but failing but I think that
05:41
we’re even too hard on ourselves when we
05:45
recall how much better we could have
05:48
done I think there’s an imagined idea of
05:51
how much better we could have done
05:54
that we think why I could have been
05:57
doing this and I could have been doing
05:58
that and I could have said this like
05:59
that we have all these imagined ideas a
06:02
fantasy version of ourselves that would
06:04
have kept that person but maybe what you
06:09
were doing even if it wasn’t objectively
06:12
the best you could do maybe it was the
06:15
best you could do at the time with your
06:18
resources with your current wounds with
06:22
the things that you’re dealing with
06:24
internally with the knowledge that you
06:26
had in the moment maybe that was your
06:30
best at the time maybe it’s not your
06:32
best a year from now or five years from
06:35
now ten years from now but maybe it
06:37
really was you doing your best even
06:39
though you feel your best fell short
06:41
that’s normal so remember that when
06:44
you’re torturing yourself over something
06:46
you should have done differently or said
06:49
differently that that idea you have in
06:51
your head of what you could have been in
06:54
that moment is theoretical it’s true
06:58
that we can evolve in each relationship
06:59
it’s true that the previous relationship
07:02
you had will allow you to bring a wiser
07:05
you to the table in the next one but
07:08
just remember this when you find your
07:10
brain laser focused on something you
07:14
think you did wrong the right
07:18
relationship is not brittle
07:21
[Music]
07:24
before you leave today please understand
07:27
that the deep work that we do in a video
07:30
like this is so so important I love the
07:34
videos where I get to give fun practical
07:38
thing that you can say to someone or
07:40
text someone a technique that works but
07:45
this kind of deep work is absolutely
07:48
crucial to making our love lives work is
07:51
crucial to making any of our
07:53
relationships in life work if you want
07:56
to invest more in the deeper side of the
08:00
conflicts you face internally the ways
08:02
you beat yourself up the ways you don’t
08:03
allow yourself to feel good about
08:06
yourself or move on or feel confident my
08:09
retreat program is where I do the
08:11
deepest work with people on what’s going
08:13
on inside if you want to come and check
08:16
that out for yourself we have the
08:17
at-home version now that you can do so
08:19
you don’t have to make it to a live
08:21
retreat you can do it from home where
08:22
you are right now I’ll leave a link here
08:24
check it out and thank you for watching
08:28
[Music]
08:40
you
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This post was previously published on YouTube and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video