People Can Only Meet You Where They Are

I'm about to share something with you that will completely change your relationships and just change your life. And that is this. People can only meet you where they are mentally and emotionally, not where you want them to be, not where you think they should be, but where they actually are. And once you really understand that, all your relationships, your life will literally change and you will stop taking things so personally. I'm going to read a question that was submitted to me and my answer to it that is going to beautifully illustrate this point. Someone wrote in and said that they started dating someone. She said he was lovely, very persistent, but, but one thing was wrong. He had a dependency on drugs and alcohol. Even though he had that dependency, he did ask her to be his girlfriend and a week later, he was in rehab. She writes, "Which is great for him, but now he says he no longer wants contact with me, and it really upsets me. I did nothing but be really loving and encouraging to him and his recovery. And I feel like he has just tossed me aside. I have so much anxiety around abandonment for my childhood. It has stirred everything up in me and I just can't figure my way through it. Do you have any tips on how to face and deal with this?" Yes. And then this is what I responded to her. I want you to know that I say this with complete compassion and empathy. You can't make this about you. I understand why you would, but you can't and let me tell you why. Alcoholism and drug addiction is a very big deal and his rehab is an even bigger deal. He cannot be in a relationship right now. He doesn't matter how loving you are. It doesn't matter how perfect you may be for him. It doesn't matter. He needs to focus on his recovery because it's a matter of life or death. And you need to be with someone who's ready for you. I know the timing sucks and it feels sudden, but he did the best he could with the emotional resources that he had. The best tip I can give you is this. Don't make this about abandonment. Don't make it about you and your childhood. Let him go knowing he is making the only choice, literally the only choice that he is able to make. And I use this example as just a metaphor for many different other scenarios, which is we often take things so personally. And then we go into our wounds, our abandonment that we get triggered. And we are not seeing the reality of the situation, which is that people can only meet you where they are mentally and emotionally, not where you want them to be. And this is particularly poignant for people who have a tendency, and this might be you, to get into relationships with people who need to be rescued. We think I can love this person into healing. I can nurture them into healing. I can be so supportive. I can be their rock, their champion that they will be healed. And if they can't see that in me, then I am not good enough. And this is how we play a really dangerous game with ourselves, because we think I'm going to get love because I am this amazing supportive person without me recognizing that I am trying to heal someone into their potential as opposed to seeing what's right in front of me. And I use this as an example because it's a fairly extreme example. If you meet someone, and they are within the throws of their dependency, of their addiction, meaning they're not sober, they haven't done any healing work, that is someone who needs to be rescued. They can only save themselves, but they can't be in a relationship with you. I mean, even though they may want to. And so, yes, in a perfect world, he would have said, you know, I'm not in a position to be in a relationship. In a perfect world, he would not have pursued you. But also, in a perfect world, you would have known that arm. To not get involved with someone who needed to be rescued. In a perfect world, both people in this scenario would have done things differently. But we are all human beings flawed doing the best that we can with the emotional resources that we have. When we're drawn to someone, when we have a strong connection with someone, we can become very irrational. You know, that is why it's called rose colored glasses, because we are seeing everything in technicolor and we're not seeing the reality. That is when we don't make the best choices. And it takes a lot of wisdom and strength and discernment to be able to make good choices for ourselves when we are feeling attracted to someone. And it also takes wisdom because over time, you know, we just, we start to just know better. It does not matter how much potential you see in someone. You can love someone's potential or you can see that someone has amazing potential. And you also have to love where they are now and you have to accept where they are now. If you want to be in a relationship with them and you don't want to drive yourself insane. But we don't want to accept where someone is now because to accept where they are now means that we may have to walk away or not be in a relationship with them. But instead, we stay. And then this is again, where we get so, get so dangerous, we make it about us. We take it personally. And then the next thing you know, we're up at night thinking about how we were abandoned as children. And then we are quote unquote triggered when what's really happening here is someone can only meet you where they are mentally and emotionally. And when we can see that, we free ourselves from the story that creates so much suffering. We create that we, if we free ourselves from the story that says, I'm not good enough. And then we can step back a little bit more and say, Oh, what's my role in all of this? What's my participation in this? Because people can only meet me where they are mentally and emotionally. But I also have a responsibility to make good choices. So this isn't about shaming myself. This is about me learning from some mistakes, learning from really tough decisions. I had someone else write into me. And she can't seem to get out of the angry stage of a breakup. She was with someone, you know, he was not abusive, but he didn't treat her great. He wasn't, he had one foot in, one foot out. She grieved a little bit, but then she was just so angry. And you have to go through anger. It's part of the stages of grief, but that's where she was stuck. She couldn't, she knew she was there too long. And what she had to realize is that she played a role in whatever was not working. She played a role in the decision. One of her roles was just choosing someone, choosing to remain in a relationship with someone who didn't, who didn't treat her with the total love and respect that she deserved. He had one foot in and one foot out, but also he had a lot of things going on in his life. He just couldn't part of it, I think, was that he, it wasn't the right relationship for him and part of it was just the timing was very off. People can only meet you where they are mentally and emotionally. Do you want them to be, but actually where they are? This episode is sponsored by Masterclass. I love Masterclass. First of all, it has the world's best teachers and instructors. Literally unlike other learning platforms, Masterclass puts you in the room with the people who have defined their fields, so they are not just experts, but they're actually the best in the world. There's over 200 classes across 13 categories, business, writing, cooking, creativity, wellness, and more. And with plans starting at just $10 a month, build annually. And if it's into any schedule, you've got audio mode, turns your commute, or work out into a classroom. And so if you are a learner, and you love to grow, and you love to learn, Masterclass is for you. I learned how to make the best omelet. No, I'm not joking. My friends are literally told me that it's better than five-star places that they have gone to. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com/JOL. That's 15% off at masterclass.com/JOL. Head to masterclass.com/JOL to see the latest offer. Using not to date until you are in a healthier place after a breakup is emotional intelligence. It means you're taking the time to reflect and to heal instead of reenacting the same patterns with just a different person. A lot of people, they jump from one relationship to the next because they are lonely, they're bored, and they don't want to look in the mirror. And looking at ourselves and looking at our patterns is very uncomfortable. But if we don't take that time to do that, then we just end up with the same person who's in a different body because we take ourselves wherever we go. And then there are people who get really stuck, really stuck in the self-examination, really stuck in the healing, stuck in wanting to grow and to fix themselves and to be perfectly ready before they're in a relationship again. And I understand that a lot of people do that because they're so afraid of experiencing the pain that they experience in their past relationship. It's not like we heal first and then we're fully ready for a relationship. A big part of the healing process is healing inside of a relationship where our nervous system is given something new to work with like stability and emotional presence and honesty. There is no magic time to wait after a breakup when to date again. You know, I've known people who, they were married for 20 years and after they divorced, it's like they were really ready to get back out there again because for them, the last five years of their marriage felt like they weren't even together. They felt like they were strangers to each other. And then I've known people who got out of six-month relationships that were like not even that, they didn't even live together and they felt destroyed from it because it was so incredibly triggering. It was one of those relationships that pulled every, every deep wound that they have all the way up into the surface and then they really had to look at themselves. And then again, I've known people who they just don't want to take any time to self-reflect. I think if I'm with someone new, then everything will be fine. And then here's the truth. Sometimes it really is a matter of just being with the wrong person. You know, sometimes it really is about meeting someone new and starting a new relationship and just being with someone who is just a better match for us and we're a better match for them. Sometimes and not, it's not just, let me find a new person and then I will have a better relationship. It's usually a combination of, let me be with a different person, but I also have to change too. And this is why for people who are watching this or anyone you know who is in a committed relationship and they are considering ending it and they are caught in this very, it's like purgatory, this ambiguous place where there's consequences to staying and there's consequences to leaving. There's stress about staying and there's stress about leaving. And that is one of the most difficult places to be because in a way, it's easier to leave a relationship that's just bad and so glaringly wrong. But it's much harder when you care about someone and you just think, well, maybe I can't do any better. And so I just always say, look in the mirror first, do whatever it is that you can do to make the relationship better by changing yourself and what I mean by changing yourself is changing your reactions, changing some of the stories that you have about your partner, communicating differently, maybe showing up to the relationship with a little bit more patience and kindness, maybe taking some time to have a little fun. Do that first and then maybe you influence the other person and maybe you don't. You want to be able to say before you end a relationship that you did everything that you could. If you're wondering whether or not you should start dating after a divorce or a breakup. Just ask yourself, if you've taken some time to self-reflect, if you have some understanding of what went wrong and the other relationship in your past relationship, if you have a greater understanding of yourself and what it is that you really need, not so much what you want but what you need in order to function in a relationship. If you found it necessary and you've taken some time to really, you may have had to look at some old stuff with your parents and old patterns and things that have brought you a lot of suffering and maybe have brought your relationships a lot of suffering. You just don't want to go to the next relationship with all the baggage of your past relationship resting heavy on your back and then laying it down before another person and then them having to deal with it. Because not only is it not fair to them but it's actually not fair to you. Because like I said, then you're just going to repeat the same pattern with another person and it may not seem like it the first few months but sooner or later the same issues will come up. You can't make a relationship work with someone who thinks love is just a feeling and not actually a choice and action a practice because the people who think that love is just a feeling are the ones where the moment there's any friction, any tension, any argument, they think something's immediately wrong with the connection. They start to doubt you, they start to doubt the relationship and then they start to pull away or they start to sabotage. And look, I think we've all been under the spell of the conditioning that says that love should always feel like rainbows and lollipops and this intense feeling which is really lost. But here's the truth. In a long-term relationship, you have to choose to show up even when you're not in the mood. You have to decide to have hard conversations not because you want to have the hard conversation but because you know that avoiding it is not good for the relationship. You have to choose to be loving when you may not feel madly in love in that moment. Love really is a choice and it's a skill. It's the practice of showing up, of overcoming our egos, of overcoming our pride, of apologizing, of listening when we want to talk over the person. When you're in a relationship with someone who does not understand it, you're in a relationship with someone who's never going to be a good partner to you. When you're choosing a partner, choose wisely and choose the person who understands that love is not just effortless and being madly in love all the time. Love is not the same thing as lust. It is actually a choice because when you are in that relationship with that person over the long term, you are going to have to make the choice to love them many, many, many times throughout your relationship with them. This episode is sponsored by Jeviti. Jeviti is the first all-in-one precision health membership. Most people get blood worked on, hit the same wall. come back, they get a nod and like, you know, and everything looks fine, and they're just sent on their way. Or something's flagged, and then they're on their own to figure out what to do about it. It's actually ridiculous. Jeviti closes that gap. Your membership includes access to a functional health expert and long Jeviti clinician who review your blood work and build a personalized protocol. Then the actual interventions, custom supplements, prescription therapeutics, are shipped to your door every month. Testing, clinical support, and ongoing optimization in one membership. 93% of members see meaningful improvement from their first to second round of blood work. Listeners of this podcast get an exclusive 20% off the membership with promo code Jillian. And all you have to do is go to gogeviti.com/jillion. That's geogeviti.com/jillion. You're not just choosing a partner. You're choosing how you're going to feel about yourself every single day. Your partner is a declaration of what you believe you deserve. And that is why when we choose partners, they are rarely random. They are actually mirrors that reflect our conditioning, our beliefs, our self worth. The partners we choose, they are actually a reflection of our relationship with ourselves. So like choosing a partner is a really serious decision. This is the person who's going to be the co-architect of your life. And your partner is going to impact your nervous system, your sleep, your beliefs. They're going to impact the day to day. And so if you are consistently coupling with people and choosing partners who never make you feel seen, then you are basically living in a chronic state of higher alert. And so you could exercise every day. You could drink all the green juice. You could meditate. But none of that is actually going to help when you're in a relationship with someone who-- where it's just not healthy. And you always have to question where you stand in their life. This is how much a relationship impacts our entire world. So when you hear the words choose a partner wisely, there's no perfect person out there like there is in the movies. That's like waiting to be found by you and is going to come into your life and make everything better. And-- and there are definitely people out there who will know how to love you and know how to respect you. When we keep choosing partners who don't respect us, it is a reflection of how we see ourselves. Even though no relationship is perfect and no partner is perfect, and we are all responsible for bringing our best selves, at least as much as possible to a relationship. And we are all accountable for our behavior. Only choose someone who you feel emotionally safe with and who you never have to question where you stand in their life. And you never have to question your worthiness with them. And obviously, or hopefully, obviously, they never have to question their own worthiness when it comes to being with you. And when you make that shift from choosing people who are unavailable or disrespectful or just unkind or just not that invested, and you make the switch from not to choosing a kind, emotionally generous person who is direct with you, who doesn't make you question where you stand in their life, who's very clear with you about their feelings, that kind of choice completely rewires your system. It rewires your beliefs about love. It rewires your beliefs about yourself. It is a life-changing decision to choose someone who is 100% choosing you back. It is a completely transformative experience to be in a relationship with someone where your nervous system can be calm as opposed to it constantly sounding the alarm. So be brave and raise your standards and choose people who bring that level of generosity and respect and kindness to the table. One of the biggest lies that women are taught from a very young age is if we are agreeable enough, if we are low maintenance enough, if we are sweet enough, if we don't speak too many needs, we will then be rewarded with love and emotional safety. The message is, don't ask for too much and then you'll get more. Act like you don't care and then you'll be chosen. And the spoiler alert is you won't. By acting like you don't care, by acting cool, by acting like you don't have needs, that's not what gets you chosen. That's not what leads to healthy relationships. That's not what gets someone to fall in love with you. What works is having a voice inside your relationship, being empowered enough and safe enough in your body to be able to say what it is that you want and you need, to have clarity about what it is that you want and having a certain level of fearlessness or courage to be able to express what it is that you want. It's not that being agreeable and sweet and low maintenance. It's not that those are bad traits and I'm certainly not encouraging being in a relationship and being angry and confrontational because that's not going to get you anywhere either. But it's about having an authentic voice and recognizing that you have needs and that wanting your needs to be met or expressing your needs does not make you needy. It is breaking through the barrier of having to be the good girl, having to be that sweet girl or having to be the cool girl who is constantly strategizing and capitulating so that she can be accepted and loved and cherished and given emotional safety by others and nothing could be further from the truth. And this conditioning runs deep. It is very, very old. It is deeply ingrained. And it starts with the fact that so many girls are rewarded for being nice and sweet and easy but they're not rewarded for being brave. They're not rewarded for being passionate. They're not rewarded for knowing what it is that they want to do and what they want to say and being assertive. And so again, it's not that being sweet is a bad thing. I don't, again, I do not want anyone going into a relationship being competitive and confrontational. That just makes you exhausting to the person who has to be in a relationship with you. But what it does mean is you don't have to be sweet and nice and pretend like something doesn't profoundly bother you when it does so that you're not going to be abandoned so that people don't think that you're too much or you don't come across a certain way. Empowered women are not defined by how easy they are. They are defined by how well they accept themselves. And that's really at the heart of it. It's accepting who you are and what it is that you need and not being afraid to scare people off. Endating, it's being very direct and clear about what it is that you want and what it is that you need. And will that scare some people away? Yeah. But the ones who matter will stay. Because there are far more people out there who are going to be attracted to your directness than they're not. Believe it or not, it's really, really true. Again, it's not about coming on to dates or coming into a relationship with aggressive and tense energy. You can be sweet and have strong boundaries. You can be nurturing and know how to say no. You can know how to meet your needs and also be unapologetic about stating what it is that you need from someone. You can do both. But I promise you that if you are dating, someone or you're in a relationship or even if you're in some sort of work circumstance, it doesn't even have to be romantic. You're not going to get more of what you need by giving more to someone who's giving you nothing. And this lie that we've been sold that if someone is not investing in you, whether that's romantically or in another kind of scenario, if you are just giving more to them, if you're just nurturing more and then you're showing how much value you can give them that you're actually going to be chosen. No, it's actually going to be a turn-off because there is no bigger turn-on than our authenticity and being comfortable enough in who we are and what it is that we want and not fearing what someone else is going to say or do in response to that. There is nothing more attractive than that. And if you meet someone who is thrown off by your directness, if you meet someone or you're in a relationship with someone, whether it's a romantic relationship or otherwise, who does not want that part of you, go find someone else. This episode is sponsored by Indeed. If you're a small business, the right higher can actually be a maker break. Hoping that the right people see your job posting is definitely not the best strategy because when the pressure is on, you need the right higher. And this is a job for sponsored jobs with Indeed. So if I had to hire, for example, a new editor, I wouldn't just say must edit audio. I'd want someone who's worked on conversational podcasts, knows the software, understands our style, someone who could jump in and handle all of it. And lucky for me, this is a job for sponsored jobs. So stop struggling to get your job post even seen on other sites, match with quality candidates with Indeed sponsor jobs. You get matched with and hire quality candidates who can drive the results you need. People are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In fact, in the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. So join the 3.3 million employers worldwide that use Indeed to connect with quality talent that fits their needs listeners of the show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your job at the premium status it deserves at Indeed.com/podcast. That's Indeed.com/podcast The road to unhealthy relationships is paved with charming people who haven't done any work on themselves and therefore have very little self-awareness and are pretty selfish. And here's the thing. Some of the most intelligent, attractive, charming, magnetic people you will ever meet will also be emotionally immature. And just because someone does yoga all the time, just because someone is in therapy, believe it or not, just because someone has gone on a bunch of personal development retreats just because someone meditates, it doesn't actually mean that they are self-aware, emotionally mature, or even right for you. And I think that we've gotten like too caught up in well, they have to be in therapy and they have to do this and they have to do that. It's not that those are bad things, but sometimes we got to throw away all those rules and and replace those rules with someone who shares my values and someone who I actually like as a human being and someone who's kind and generous. Charm is not a bad thing. In fact, that's a great thing. It's nice to be charming. I like to be charming and I like charming people. But you have to have your antenna up and really realize that just because they're charming doesn't actually mean that they have what it takes to be a good partner. What are the signs of someone who is very charming but emotionally immature? Well, emotional immaturity, I think not an easy thing to say, but really important for us to all recognize that every single one of us have areas where we can actually grow and be more mature, especially when it comes to being in a romantic relationship, because that tends to be where some of our biggest issues come up. But typically, emotionally immature people, they have no really no self-awareness or they take responsibility for very little. They pick a lot of fights. You can't have a productive conversation with them, even if you are very mindful of not blaming or finger pointing. They immediately go into the defensive. And these are people who don't ever have any interest in having conversations that scratch below the surface. And there's a spectrum. Obviously, on the far end of the spectrum is someone who maybe is incredibly narcissistic and maybe somewhat of a bully, very toxic, someone who mistreats you. And then there are just people who don't have what it takes to sit down and work through problems together. Every argument becomes the blame game. Charm is very seductive. There's something fun. Charm people can be very engaging. They can have a sort of magnetic energy about them. They can be really good in a social setting. But what you're really looking for is not just someone who's in therapy and can have and can say a whole bunch of therapy speech and recite stuff and constantly quote their therapist. You're not looking for someone who's only focusing on themself and doing all this personal development stuff. You're looking for someone who can sit down and work through problems with you. You're looking for someone who can sit with your vulnerability and has the ability to open up to you as well, provided that you are both creating some emotional safety for each other. You're looking for someone who has an awareness of how they impact others. They are aware of the fact that their energy and what they bring to any sort of circumstance or a relationship matters. They have some awareness of and some responsibility and accountability of when they're in a bad mood and not taking it out all on you. These are the things. These are the things that we need to all work on in ourselves. It's just strengthening our character. Being more generous with their time and just generous with our affection and generous with our compliments and making people, especially the people we care about, feel good about themselves and truly just being responsible, being accountable for your own BS, being accountable for the mistakes that you've made. Because we are going to make mistakes in relationships, but can you say, "Hey, I really messed up then. I wasn't acting as my best self. I'm really, really sorry." These are the things that you want to look for. These are the things that you want to cultivate inside yourself and never fall for someone who is just charming. You have to really get under the hood of the car and take your time to get to know someone and to see if they can actually show up, have hard conversations, be emotionally available, be receptive to your emotional availability and actually be someone who you're not just attracted to but who you actually like and when you're around them, you like yourself too. So throw away all those rules. It's not again that's necessarily bad and go for someone who has a sense of self and understanding of their impact in the world. Someone who actually cares about contributing to the world and contributing to their relationship with you in a positive way. Someone who you can sit down with and be open with and be yourself with. This is what matters. This is what leads to healthy relationships. Falling in love with someone is not the same thing as truly loving them. Because anyone can fall in love. That's the easy part. But to truly love someone is to want the best for them. It's to want their happiness as much as you want your own happiness. It's to want to meet their needs as much as you want to meet your own. It's caring about their well-being as much as you care about your own. So when we're falling in love with someone, it's an amazing feeling. It's like this feeling is if all our problems have disappeared and we're like finally healed and we've met this incredible person and we're elated and we feel alive. And maybe we feel alive for the first time in a really long time. But to stay in love with someone is to recognize that It's not just about the feeling that they give you. It's understanding that love is a verb, it's an action, it's a practice, it's wanting to be there for someone. Falling in love is easy, staying in love is a whole other skill. And when we are in the beginning stages with someone and there's a lot of chemistry and there's a lot of lust, it's easy to think that we love this person because it's like we just almost see them as perfect. We're looking at them, we're experiencing them through the lens of how they make us feel. And then we think we found the one. When really we just found someone who's triggered something inside of us, that aliveness that we haven't felt in a really long time, you'd be look exactly how we want them to look, they smell how we want them to smell, we have all this physical attraction to them. And like I said, it's an amazing feeling. But the reason why so many relationships don't make it past the three to six month mark is because once things start to get real, once you recognize that this person is not perfect, right? Or your bad moods come back and you're thinking, you know, why am I not as happy or why am I, why don't I feel as addicted to this person as I did in week two? And then we start to think, maybe there's something wrong with them or maybe this isn't the one. And then we end it and then we have to another relationship and it's the same cycle over again. It's incredible in the beginning and the three to six to eight month markets, like, oh, something's wrong because we don't realize that we take ourselves wherever we go. Crazy feeling that we feel in the beginning is very ungrounded and it doesn't last. And what happens after that is, like I said, you see the person is real and then you actually have to get into some arguments. Repair after arguments or even be confronted with the fact that sometimes they're going to disagree with you or sometimes you're going to feel overwhelmed about something in your own life and then you're not going to feel like I said is addicted to them. And so you're going to think something's wrong with the connection rather than understanding that that's just part of life that the beginning of a relationship is never a representation of the whole relationship. And then we fall into another pattern, which is we actually stop doing the things that we did in the beginning of the relationship. And then we wonder why things don't feel the same. Anyone with a pulse can fall in love. But staying in love means that we actually have to create the conditions for love to have enough oxygen to grow. We have to show up like we did in the beginning. We have to pay attention. We have to overcome our pride when we're having arguments. And we've been so conditioned to believe that a relationship is sort of like a rom-com. Like in a rom-com, we just see we just see the chase. We see all the tension that's happening between two people and then we are fully satisfied by the end because the rom-coms at by the end, it's like they finally get together. And so we scratch that itch of like these two people coming together. But we never see what happens after. There's no rom-com about what happens five years down the road. And so many of us do not have good examples or any examples of enduring love. For a lot of us, our examples of a relationship is a lot of resentment and a lot of anger and a lot of frustration and a lot of conditional love and a lot of miscommunication and disconnection and lack of growth. And so we don't have many examples of what it's like to to really love someone where we would really do anything for them. We would even let them go if we knew that they would be happier without us. Like that's a level of love that is so that far surpasses our attachment. If we want to have healthier relationships, you have to understand that lust is about what can I get from you? How can you make me feel? It's addictive. It can be fun. All of those things. But love is something different. Love is I want to meet your needs. I want to be better for you and for us. And when I'm not in the mood to show up for you, I'm going to show up for you at the core of loving someone. It's selflessness. It's not about giving up on your boundaries. It's not about betraying yourself or abandoning yourself. Because you certainly don't want to do that for someone who's not loving you. But just never confuse that falling in love stage and that lustful stage for what actually is needed in a relationship. Because there really is no one soulmate. You choose who your soulmate is going to be. A soulmate relationship is a relationship that involves a lot of attention and intention. And if you're going to be with someone over the long term, you're going to have to choose this person again and again, even when it's inconvenient. And so I really truly hope that you choose the person. And you continue to choose the person who has your back and is really in your corner and truly cares about you. Julian on Love is a Q-code production executive produced by David Henning and Steve Wilson, produced and edited by Travis Howe, Music by Will Tendi. Thank you for watching. I'm Shopee Fais. See you in the next episode.