40. FALLING IN LOVE: Is there really “the one” or is “the one” YOU?

Speaker 1 What if you could bleach and color without wrecking your hair? With K18 Molecular Repair Hair Mask, you can. It's not another quick fix with false promises, it's hair science.

Speaker 1 The patented K18 peptide repairs hair at the molecular level. That's really, really deep.
So you can keep coloring and still have hair that feels soft, strong, and bouncy.

Speaker 1 Because yes, we can do hard things, but your hair doesn't have to be one of them. Shop K18's mask at Sephora Sephora or get 10% off your first purchase with code hardthings at k18hair.com.

Speaker 1 That's code hardthings at k18hair.com.

Speaker 2 To be loved we need to be known.

Speaker 2 Hello

Speaker 3 listeners that we love so much. Welcome back to We Can Do Hard Things.

Speaker 3 I think we have an interesting show for you today.

Speaker 3 We'll see.

Speaker 3 First of all, I want to tell you how we think of these topics, okay? So that we're going to discuss each week.

Speaker 3 Usually

Speaker 3 we just try to come up with ideas that drive us all nuts in our lives.

Speaker 3 Like, what are the things that we all think about incessantly that we're convinced if we just nail one way or another, our lives will be fixed?

Speaker 3 It's never true. And yet, here we are.

Speaker 3 And then what happens is,

Speaker 3 I think usually I've usually thought of something that we've, I've been discussing with friends or with, okay, let's tell the truth with myself or with Abby.

Speaker 3 And then I picked.

Speaker 2 You tell the truth because you don't have friends. Yeah.
I was like, wait, who the hell? What am I saying? What? On all my picnics with friends and like all my coffee dates and

Speaker 3 get-togethers and such.

Speaker 3 No, it's what I'm thinking about by myself and then with Abby and reading about usually.

Speaker 3 And then I pitch the idea to sister and Abby and then we think about it for a few days. Everybody goes and thinks.
I only think. They do other things also.

Speaker 3 And then

Speaker 3 Abby and I usually go for a walk. We go for a thinking walk together.

Speaker 3 So this consists of me saying, okay, we're going to go and we're going to talk about, let us say, falling in love, because that's our topic for today.

Speaker 2 Okay. We're going to, we're going to talk about falling in love.

Speaker 3 What the hell is falling in love? What does it mean? What does it mean to fall out of love?

Speaker 3 What does it mean when we get to the phase after the wild falling in love part, which we're calling on the pod landing in love? And what is all of this even for in our lives?

Speaker 3 All of this drama and trauma and beauty. So we go for a walk.
We did this last week.

Speaker 2 Tell them what happens when we're on our walks almost every single time.

Speaker 3 Oh, this is the most meta fun wonderful thing: is we're walking, we have this path, okay, near our house, and it's a walking path. And so, everyone in our area walks on this path every day.

Speaker 3 Some people roller skate, some people bike, some people are walking. Okay, so Abby and I are walking every all the time, and we're preparing our pod.

Speaker 3 She's talking, I'm taking notes while I walk, she's guiding me so I don't run into things.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 every time

Speaker 3 a group of women or two women or a woman stops us, sometimes someone points to us and gestures towards her ears to tell us that she's listening to the podcast right now.

Speaker 3 As we are passing her preparing the next podcast, the last time, babe, remember during the loved one,

Speaker 2 a group of women.

Speaker 3 stopped us and were like, this is our pod squad. We're talking about the pod right now.
No way. Really? Yes.

Speaker 2 Yes.

Speaker 3 it was so awesome

Speaker 3 so that always feels really cool and and then of course i get my oh my god this is so stressful how do we make it i it has to stay good has to stay then i get my anyway we're letting that go

Speaker 3 so we're on our thinking walk

Speaker 3 about falling in love

Speaker 3 and i say to her because abby is i don't know anyone on earth no one is a bigger romantic than abby abby believes She has believed her whole life in this idea that there is someone out there for her and that it was destined.

Speaker 3 She just, her favorite, her favorite movies are what?

Speaker 2 The notebook.

Speaker 3 The notebook.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 3 Titanic. Titanic.

Speaker 4 She is the Ted Lasso of love.

Speaker 3 She's the Ted Lasso of the world.

Speaker 2 She is.

Speaker 3 She really is.

Speaker 4 True believer here, people.

Speaker 3 She's the true believer. And so I asked her what that was like.
And she said, she kind of slowed down on the walk and she said,

Speaker 3 you know, I don't know. I just remember when I was little sitting outside in my backyard looking up at the stars and just knowing that someone was out there for me, like my soulmate.

Speaker 3 And I just stopped walking because

Speaker 3 one of the earliest memories I have in my life is sitting outside in our backyard, sissy.

Speaker 3 So with that little like brick patio that we had in the back, because I wouldn't have actually gone into the yard.

Speaker 3 I actually used to get grounded outside.

Speaker 2 Oh my gosh. Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 Yeah. If I got in trouble, I was grounded outside of my room because inside is where I want to be.
Okay.

Speaker 3 And I remember at night sitting outside, looking up at the stars and knowing that something was out there for for me, but it was never a person.

Speaker 3 I was always yearning for like God, for this like divine love.

Speaker 3 I know there's a God somewhere out there for me, which is so interesting that you were always yearning for romantic love. I was yearning for a divine love.
So, babe, here's what I want to know.

Speaker 3 This soulmate that you believed was out there for you as you stared up at the stars. What did you believe that this someone, this soulmate was going to do for you? Like, what was the point of them?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 2 at the time,

Speaker 2 I didn't have the words for it because I couldn't conceive of the fact that I was broken.

Speaker 2 It just felt an unalignment that was happening inside of my body. That was happening inside of me based on all of the

Speaker 2 whatever you want to call it, like sitting in those pews as a kid and hating myself, like all of my childhood stuff,

Speaker 2 um,

Speaker 2 and just feeling like

Speaker 2 I was broken. So, I thought maybe somebody out there could fix me, truly, truly.

Speaker 2 Um,

Speaker 2 because surely what was happening in my current life, where I was sitting, I'll never forget it.

Speaker 2 I was like on my driveway looking up and just knowing my friends, my high school friends were sitting around me, and we were just talking about how they're like where that person is and that person is doing something right now

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 i just have always been fascinated by it you know i think that

Speaker 2 for me

Speaker 2 i felt like somebody out there was going to help

Speaker 2 stop the hurt

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 That is what I thought about this God

Speaker 3 I was yearning for, that I was

Speaker 3 jacked up in some way or another.

Speaker 3 That if I could just

Speaker 3 figure out this God and love this God the right way, I would have like solved the puzzle of life, of myself. I thought those answers, like life was hard.

Speaker 3 And if I, if I found this thing, it would suddenly get easier. It would stop the earth.
So I thought that the answers were in a God in the sky and you thought the answers were in a girl on the earth.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Right.

Speaker 3 What about you, Sissy? Did you, how did you think about this idea of

Speaker 3 love or falling in love when you were younger?

Speaker 2 I don't think I really did, actually.

Speaker 2 Like, I don't,

Speaker 4 I don't remember like daydreaming or fixating on anything

Speaker 4 like this.

Speaker 4 But I do,

Speaker 4 I do think that I was thinking about me a lot. Like, I think that I was like thinking about becoming a person

Speaker 4 that was

Speaker 4 unequivocally worthy of love, you know, like the kind of person that was going to get all the things in life and be worthy of the kind of love that would be awesome to have.

Speaker 4 But I don't remember thinking a lot about what the other person would be. And I wonder if that.
I mean, I also think you said the puzzle to

Speaker 4 that's going to fix you. And I think that based on some early starts there in my life, that there were cases where I clearly somehow thought I was going to fix other people's lives because

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 4 relationship was clearly not adding to mine.

Speaker 4 So it was like, like, kind of, I was the missing puzzle piece that was like going to come in and take the shambles of their lives and somehow like make it right.

Speaker 4 If I'm being super honest, I think when it came right for me, like the times that I was like,

Speaker 4 yep, there,

Speaker 4 that's it, was when I felt like I'd kind of met my match, where I didn't,

Speaker 4 like, it's kind of embarrassing to say, but it not based on like compatibility or

Speaker 4 tragically, you know, any kind of wellness associated with it, but kind of someone that was unequivocally worthy of me and kind of like a superhero

Speaker 4 way

Speaker 4 that made for a good story as I saw it, but not necessarily like a great

Speaker 4 warm relationship.

Speaker 3 Ah, sometimes it can be a good story and not a good life.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 3 But it's also so interesting, this idea of either you're the one who thinks you need to be fixed by love or you think that you're the fixer in love.

Speaker 3 You're either, even whether it's romantic or divine. right i'm i either desperately need god or i am god

Speaker 2 because you think that romantic and divine love are almost the same?

Speaker 3 I don't know. Maybe it's just different ways we think about what we need and forms.
But it's so interesting.

Speaker 3 When you said that, Sissy, it made me think of like, okay, so what's the difference between neurotic and narcissistic love? It's like, and we throw these words around narcissism and neuroticism.

Speaker 3 Those are actual things that have actual meaning. So

Speaker 3 as an aside, I once asked a friend who's a therapist if I was a narcissist because there was this time when everyone was throwing that word around.

Speaker 3 So especially any women who dared to talk about their lives publicly, they were, we were all called narcissists for a while.

Speaker 3 Because, like, if you're a man who talks about the world, you're a philosopher, but if you're a woman who talks about the world, you're a narcissist, right?

Speaker 2 Like, that's it.

Speaker 3 So,

Speaker 3 so I actually asked my friend if I was a narcissist, and she was like, I need you. She said, please don't ever tell anyone this.
So here we go.

Speaker 3 Because this is not a clinical way of

Speaker 3 analyzing whether you're a narcissist. But here, she said, do this little experiment.
Okay, Glennon,

Speaker 3 you send an email

Speaker 3 to somebody, okay?

Speaker 3 And it's an important email to you, and that person doesn't respond to the email.

Speaker 3 What is your automatic go-to assumption?

Speaker 2 A,

Speaker 3 you think you did something bad,

Speaker 3 and that person

Speaker 3 is mad at you.

Speaker 2 B,

Speaker 3 you think that person is a jackass asshole asshole who doesn't respond to things.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 Automatically, 100%, I think I've done something wrong. I hurt this person's feelings.
I stay up about it for five nights in a row. I go into a huge shame spiral.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 If you chose A, you have more neurotic tendencies than narcissistic tendencies. This is not clinical, which is why my friend asked me not to share this,

Speaker 4 which is why I'm sharing it with millions of people now.

Speaker 3 So she said, Glennon,

Speaker 3 you are not a narcissist. You are a full-on neurotic.

Speaker 2 That's what she said to me.

Speaker 3 But we get back to this idea of: do you tend towards neurotic love? Oh my God, someone please save me. I'm broken.
Or, oh my God, here I am with my superhero cap. You're broken.
I choose you.

Speaker 3 You are my project.

Speaker 3 Neither tend to end well.

Speaker 3 If

Speaker 3 that's, if, if all everyone I know is is a test case

Speaker 3 here's what i want to know

Speaker 3 actually from both of you okay because i this is the part that i've been looking forward to of this particular conversation because my wife abby is a hopeless romantic hopeful hopeful see she won't even let me say a negative connotation of that

Speaker 3 Okay, she's a hopeful romantic.

Speaker 3 She believes that there was that we were predestined to find each other. That her whole life there was, I was out there and that we found each other, and that is why things are good.
The one.

Speaker 3 She believes in the one.

Speaker 3 Sister,

Speaker 3 not

Speaker 3 so much.

Speaker 3 So, and I don't know what the hell I think anymore. So, what I want, babe, can you talk to us a little bit about your belief in the one

Speaker 3 and what that feels like to be that sort of person?

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 2 I have to start this off with making this claim that I completely understand

Speaker 2 the absurdity

Speaker 2 of all of which I will say about how I feel and what I believe. But just this is my body.
This is my opinion. This is, this is truly, this is, this is my choice.

Speaker 2 And the only way I can explain it is is

Speaker 2 very similar to that like experience of looking up at the stars.

Speaker 2 A lot of a lot of which people

Speaker 2 say

Speaker 2 they believe in God. I feel like

Speaker 2 this has been my experience. I'm a very optimistic person just by nature.
I see things happening well.

Speaker 2 I think part of my training at soccer, like I experienced a lot of times, a lot of failure in my life. And I was always able to figure out how to manage through that optimistically.

Speaker 2 And I think that that plays a big role in, I think my personality plays a big role in me being able to actually believe in this idea

Speaker 2 of the one.

Speaker 2 Because

Speaker 2 logically, it doesn't make any damn sense. It just doesn't.

Speaker 4 However, is it that like one in 7.6 billion thing that throws you off?

Speaker 2 Okay. Just wondering if that's the logic.
Because I've also had relationships

Speaker 2 that have

Speaker 2 not

Speaker 2 continued on, that have ended.

Speaker 2 And some of those relationships, I believe that

Speaker 2 those

Speaker 2 people were the one, but maybe they were the one at the time. I don't know.
I digress. I just feel like

Speaker 2 I've always felt like

Speaker 2 there was a person out there for me.

Speaker 2 You know what we don't talk enough about? Sleep. I mean, we spend a third of our lives doing it, and it literally impacts everything.

Speaker 2 Your mood, focus, workouts, even how you show up for the people you love. But here's the thing.

Speaker 4 Not all sleep is good sleep.

Speaker 2 That's why I'm obsessed with my Coupe Sleep Goods and my Coupe Adjustable Pillow. It is revolutionary because it's an adjustable pillow where you can remove or add fill to fit your sleep needs.

Speaker 2 Back sleeper, side sleeper, stomach sleeper, this pillow actually adapts to you, not the other way around.

Speaker 2 I got two of these king-size original adjustable pillows after I completed the short sleep quiz, which I highly recommend everyone do. You can ensure you're buying the exact right pillow for you.

Speaker 2 I love it. I love being able to take out the fill until it was perfectly adjusted to my neck and spine.
You can feel the difference, and I want all of our listeners to try this pillow.

Speaker 2 Upgrade your sleep, visit coopsleepgoods.com slash hard things to get 20% off your first order. That's C-O-O-P sleepgoods.com slash hard things.

Speaker 3 What I want to know is what does it mean that you believe that there's a one for you? Did you believe that there's one person that's predestined on the earth?

Speaker 3 I want you, if you could describe in a few lines your belief in the one, what is it?

Speaker 2 Well, I think that, of course, I believe that you are the one.

Speaker 3 Okay, that's what I'm trying to get at. Just

Speaker 2 I believe that everything that I did in my life prior to meeting you led me to be able to see you and you able to see me at the that exact moment. It's like fate.
It's like

Speaker 2 there's no reason behind it. There's no, you can't, there's no facts.
It's just I know in my, in my bones that the reason we met was because I kind of also even believe that we met in a past life.

Speaker 2 And so it was like a, it was like a remembering like, oh, here you are again. Thank God I've been looking for you this whole fucking time.

Speaker 2 Like, why did it take, I mean, how many times in a week do I say, why did it take us so long to find each other?

Speaker 2 Like, why did I have to go through all of that suffering and learning to find you?

Speaker 2 It's really how I feel. I don't know.
I understand.

Speaker 3 Every couple of days you say that.

Speaker 2 And she's not joking.

Speaker 3 And also, at least once a day, she looks at me and she goes,

Speaker 3 I can't believe you married me.

Speaker 2 I did it last night, right before bed. I actually cannot believe that you also,

Speaker 2 because

Speaker 2 you don't really necessarily believe in the one other. Like, that's not like in your DNA and in your belief system, but here you are.
You jumped right on in as and as the as a big believer also.

Speaker 3 I know. It really surprised me.
Do you think this is all just total horseshit, sister, that Abby and I have that, well, what do you say to Abby's belief that it was fate?

Speaker 3 that there is one and she was spending her life trying to find it. And once she found it, she had some peace.

Speaker 4 I honor and celebrate Abby's

Speaker 4 belief about that. I really do.
I think it's wonderful. I also note that the entire time she talked about the one, she was actually talking about herself and her view of the world.
And that I think

Speaker 4 for me, I think that when we set it up kind of in the culture as there is the one, it's just a very uninteresting notion to me.

Speaker 4 It's just an uninteresting way to live because I think for me, it's very fear-based. Like it's, it sets up this whole kind of like scarcity panic life of like, will I find the one?

Speaker 4 How will I know if they're the one? Did this person just do something that whoever my the one is wouldn't do?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 4 I understand that people think that's a romantic notion, but I don't think it's a romantic notion to think of your life as like, do you happen to have now

Speaker 4 or will you ever find the the one that holds these kind of like elusive keys to the kingdom?

Speaker 4 And it's much more romantic to me to believe that like, you are the fucking kingdom. Like you,

Speaker 4 you can do this lifelong journey of diving into your fears and your pain and your dreams with yourself or you

Speaker 3 probably.

Speaker 4 Sorry, Abby, a fair number of one of those 7.6 billion people. Like it's not a magic person.
It's like a magic journey. And that's romantic to me.

Speaker 4 And I feel like so many of us are just making ourselves miserable searching for Oz when everything we're looking for was right here with us all along. Like it, it really is us.

Speaker 4 And I think it has these other weird things that kind of

Speaker 2 the

Speaker 4 like we're in it with someone and we're like trying to decide.

Speaker 4 the whole time instead of being with them and seeing how we're feeling and seeing how it's going we're like are they the one are they the one are they the one and we're like looking for this mystical distinction to fall upon us.

Speaker 4 And then when something does go wrong in our relationships, we're like, well, not the one.

Speaker 4 Onward with the search for the one. And then we never do an autopsy.
We never figure out like what the hell led us there, why we stayed there, how it ended.

Speaker 4 We're just like onward with the search as if we had nothing to do with that, as if the other person,

Speaker 4 their like cardinal sin of being not the one was solely responsible for for that relationship. And it doesn't make any sense.
And for me, it also has this like

Speaker 4 kind of fucked up effect on our whole lives. It like disassociates us from

Speaker 4 our whole experience where

Speaker 4 it's this singularity of the one that counts and that needs to be the one that lasts longest and ideally forever. And

Speaker 4 like Glennon, what if someone told you that you had to pick one book that was the one for you?

Speaker 2 She would pick one of you. That feels absurd.

Speaker 2 Right?

Speaker 4 That feels absurd. That feels insulting.

Speaker 2 That feels sweaty.

Speaker 4 Yeah, that feels sweaty. Because there are books that like rocked you and

Speaker 4 comforted you and grew you exactly where you were, exactly when you needed them. And Ramona Quimby.

Speaker 4 was everything to you when you were eight. And are you supposed to just disavow Ramona Quimby just because right now you feel like not reading her at 45?

Speaker 3 Never. She was the one for me.
She was the one.

Speaker 2 I love this because she helped me know myself at the age eight.

Speaker 3 Yes. Ramona Quimby, age eight, helped Glennon Doyle age.

Speaker 3 Let's be honest, probably three because I was such a good reader. So early.

Speaker 3 But that's what I know myself.

Speaker 4 That's what I mean. And it's this, this one notion forces us to just dispose of some really great loves and some really wonderful times that we had with people.

Speaker 4 And they get thrown on the same compost pile with all of the assholes because they have the audacity to not be the one.

Speaker 4 And it's actually not true. We like get to claim all the loves.
We really do. And if we're lucky enough to have

Speaker 4 a lot of great loves, then we get to like collect them all and keep them with us and

Speaker 4 not like be threatening whoever we're with now. And I think that's

Speaker 3 library of loves. We keep

Speaker 3 a library of loves.

Speaker 2 We keep them all.

Speaker 4 And I just feel like it's just, that's a more interesting way to

Speaker 4 live. And I just,

Speaker 3 I think it's Dave, I know you're the goat, but I just feel like slightly sister won that one, just a little bit.

Speaker 2 I knew before we got into this that she was going to win this.

Speaker 2 And it's funny because we actually didn't talk about what sister was going to say.

Speaker 2 And I think after having a lot of days to think about this and talking to you, Glennon, I mean, I told you last night what I was thinking, G, but

Speaker 2 I do think

Speaker 2 over the last five years of finding this person in you, Glennon,

Speaker 2 I have understood that

Speaker 2 I think that I wanted to go through life. in this fairy tale kind of way like that there was always this option this like thing out there.
And so I've had loves.

Speaker 2 I've gone through them and they were not the one for me

Speaker 2 because I was never, because I think I was still so afraid of myself.

Speaker 2 And so one thing that I've learned deeply about being with you is that you are the one that I have found that has made me not scared of myself to do the work.

Speaker 2 internally that I think that I am supposed to be doing on this planet. I've been avoiding myself like the plague.
I mean, this is why addiction was so prevalent in my life. And

Speaker 2 so I think that the one has everything to do with the journey you take to be able to find yourself. Like you said, sister, you said fear, like this is a fear of whatever.

Speaker 2 And I think that I could also flip that on you, that maybe it's very scary for some people to surrender to the unseen order of things. And I think that love is so

Speaker 2 complicated and twisty and turning that we can't like put it in a box.

Speaker 2 And though we might have many loves, I just think that the one true love that we are all here to figure out is the one that we have with ourselves. I think that it's confusing.

Speaker 2 And I know that I'm still ridiculous, but like, I still love the notebook.

Speaker 3 Well, you said last night, and it's, you said, some people need realism. And that's, and he said, I need mysticism.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's what, that's what moves me. That's what keeps me going here.

Speaker 3 And there are people who are comfortable in the mystery of things.

Speaker 3 And while sister's points make so much sense to me, they also make sense to someone who prefers control also, like me and sister, because then it's all me inside me.

Speaker 3 And there's nothing to surrender to really between two people. It's all the keys are inside me.
But I do love the point.

Speaker 3 I think in the idea of the one plays into this whole narrative that makes us think that any love

Speaker 3 that doesn't last forever was a waste.

Speaker 3 It was wasted.

Speaker 3 And that I think is the most dangerous, ridiculous. You know, we used to talk about it as

Speaker 3 it's like some loves are,

Speaker 3 which is the annual and perennial, you guys, like annuals, do they come up every year? That feels like that would be right.

Speaker 4 But then, perennials. I think it's the opposite.
It's so tricky because it feels counterintuitive. I think the perennials are the one that comes back every year, and the annuals are just one shot.

Speaker 4 The annuals are like spring break 2000.

Speaker 2 Okay, that was a nice annual.

Speaker 4 We Can Do Our Things is brought to you by Bumble, the app committed committed to bring people closer to love. I went through it in my first marriage.

Speaker 4 I was desperately in love, and then in a whiplash of a moment, it was gone. I felt abandoned, betrayed, crushed.

Speaker 4 A while out from the divorce, when a friend asked me whether I was ready to date again, I said, listen, I love men, but I also love hamburgers.

Speaker 4 And I just had the juiciest burger and it gave me food poisoning. And I don't even want to look at another burger for a very long time.
When I was ready to look, I was terrified.

Speaker 4 How in the world do you put yourself out there after that?

Speaker 4 I don't think there are a lot of people more courageous and cool than those folks who have been through the depths of heartbreak and are brave enough to reveal their heart again.

Speaker 4 It starts with that first step, a shaky voice inside of you that says, I want this even more than I don't want that.

Speaker 4 I want to share life and this beautiful banged up heart with another beautiful banged up heart. These days, that first shaky step often happens online on a dating app.

Speaker 4 In celebration of you brave ones, we want to tell you about Bumble. What I love about what Bumble is doing is they are making that first step feel a tiny bit less scary, more possible, more human.

Speaker 4 They make you feel more safe.

Speaker 4 New Bumble users have to add multiple layers of verification like mandatory photo, phone number, and ID verification so you can feel more confident that the people you're seeing are who they say they are.

Speaker 4 Plus, profiles aren't just about photos. They highlight personality, interests, and passions.
So you can get a sense of whether you will actually connect with someone.

Speaker 4 You can be shaky and scared and show up anyway. You can start again.
Bumble helps people do exactly that. Start your love story today on Bumble.

Speaker 3 It's so annoying when words don't make sense. Just as an aside, yesterday I was finally going to be really like healthy and take a vitamin.

Speaker 3 So I found this bottle of vitamins that was in my Panshee probably for like 16 years and has made it through four moves. So I'm not sure it's like the most healthy vitamin at this point.

Speaker 2 The gummies are stuck together.

Speaker 3 The gummies, they're all stuck together in one thing. And so I'm reading the freaking, the all the directions to try to figure out how many to take, right? And I can't find it.
I can't find it.

Speaker 3 I look at the whole front. It says one a day.

Speaker 3 The whole thing, one. I'm like, oh, there we go.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 3 It's called one a day. I'm supposed to take one a day.

Speaker 3 Then I look in the small writing on the back of the thing and it says, shoot two tablets a day.

Speaker 2 I'm like, is this not some bullshit?

Speaker 3 This is like the story of my life. It's called what a day.

Speaker 3 Small print.

Speaker 2 For sure, take two a day.

Speaker 3 Back to the story. I really have,

Speaker 3 you know, when people would call my previous marriage a failure, like, how did it feel to go through all of that?

Speaker 3 It would always blew my mind because there's no part of me that felt like that was a failure, that my marriage was a failure. Like, I went into that marriage with Craig, like totally busted up.

Speaker 3 Absolutely, you know, I've been sober for a hot minute.

Speaker 3 He had his own stuff going on. We helped each other grow.
We

Speaker 3 changed each other. It's like some loves

Speaker 3 are those

Speaker 3 perennials and they just keep coming back and they keep growing and they're long and long and long and last forever. And some are those annuals where they just like

Speaker 4 die out.

Speaker 3 But then what happens with those plants? Like they, all of those nutrients that they like disintegrate into the soil, they become the soil beneath you. That love informs you.

Speaker 3 It decomposes and goes back into your veins and your blood and it changes who you are for the next part of your life. It never leaves you.
Like there is no friendship or love that is ever wasted.

Speaker 3 Just because it lasts for a short time doesn't mean that it changes you any less. And maybe the point of love is not that it lasts forever, but maybe it is that it grows us and changes us.

Speaker 4 Exactly. And that's why I think this whole like the one question out there with if everyone is spending all their time like analyzing their relationship to figure out, are they the one? I don't know.

Speaker 4 Maybe, ah, maybe not. And that's where all the mental load is going.

Speaker 4 I'm just saying that I think

Speaker 4 that if that's the line of inquiry we're taking to our relationships, it just seems kind of wasteful because I feel like there's wherever relationship you're in,

Speaker 4 you can do a lot of that digging and figuring out and figuring out where you are in it. Because really, honestly, if people are being super honest, it has nothing to do with logic.

Speaker 4 The only common denominator in all of your relationships isn't like the way they love you, or the way you love them, or whether they're a good fit for you, or whether it's working out. It's you.

Speaker 4 You are the only common denominator in any of your relationships. And so it's you, you get to figure out

Speaker 4 what am I reacting to here? What does, what does this thing that's happening actually have nothing to do with them? What has something to do with them?

Speaker 4 Like there's, there's things you can figure out in any relationship you're in that is much more interesting to me than just,

Speaker 4 is this,

Speaker 4 is this the one? And how do I determine it? It's like asking the wrong question in some ways.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And it's this idea also, the magic part of it, babe, the magic, I mean, we can be forgiven for thinking of it as magic because

Speaker 3 that initial part of falling in love

Speaker 3 feels like such wild magic. Like, can we talk about that for a minute? Like the beginning of falling in love? Because we think of it when we talked about the three of us.

Speaker 3 There's two different parts here. There's the falling in love part, which is when you lose your damn mind.

Speaker 3 And then there's the landing in love, which is when your brain chemicals start to like

Speaker 3 normalize and stabilize. And you're like, oh, wait, this is just another person and I'm still me.
And

Speaker 3 so that magic part tricks us into thinking that

Speaker 3 this love is saving us, which is what we were kind of

Speaker 3 thinking with this magical thinking.

Speaker 2 Which is what we were hoping for.

Speaker 3 Which is what we were hoping for. But I, but like, I'm not joking.
Like, the more I thought about this,

Speaker 3 when

Speaker 3 this is why,

Speaker 3 when we say falling in love, when I say lose our, my mind, I'm serious.

Speaker 3 My

Speaker 3 desire to escape my own self

Speaker 3 has been my greatest quest

Speaker 3 since I was 10 years old. Yeah.
Just like, save me from living in this brain. Save me from living in this body.
Save me from this intense discomfort I feel being myself.

Speaker 3 That's why I reached for the booze. That's why I reached for the binging.
That's why I reached for the drugs. That's why, like, I disappeared.

Speaker 3 It numbed me out. I disappeared.
My mind, I was not in my mind anymore. My anxiety was gone.
My depression was gone.

Speaker 3 I was in this

Speaker 3 place of of fake peace but it felt like peace and that in retrospect is how i felt when i fell madly in love for the first time in my life which was when i fell in love with abby it was an obliteration of self

Speaker 3 i was gone it was like being totally wasted It is like being totally wasted.

Speaker 4 The levels of dopamine in your system when you're falling in love have the same effect on your brain as taking cocaine?

Speaker 4 Literally. So, I mean, you are high as a fucking kite that whole thing.

Speaker 3 Can you tell us? Okay, just sweet, sweet listener.

Speaker 3 I just need you to know that when I fell in love with Abby and lost my mind and was high as a fucking kite, a sister would say,

Speaker 3 it happened to intersect. with the weeks and months right before the biggest book I'd ever written was coming out called Love Warrior.
And so, sister's job was to manage publicly a wasted person.

Speaker 3 And when I tell you that I, I actually, sister, I don't know if you guys remember this, but I did an IG live about Love Warrior at that time.

Speaker 3 And people wrote to us asking if I had fallen off the wagon.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 They were deeply concerned that you were drinking again because you did a couple of IG lives.

Speaker 4 And they wrote very concerned about that because, well,

Speaker 4 you were clearly high and you were.

Speaker 2 And you were high on love. Let's

Speaker 2 be clear.

Speaker 4 But they wrote, they wrote a lot of emails. Very concerned.

Speaker 3 Oh, that's so sweet.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 3 Well, what was your experience of me at the time? Because I didn't know.

Speaker 3 I knew that I felt different and I wanted to feel this way forever. Okay.
The same way I did the first time I was started drinking, the same way the first time I did drugs.

Speaker 3 I wanted to feel this way forever. I believe this starts in a really good place.
It's like that yearning for joy, for peace, for the divine, for the whatever. This,

Speaker 3 you know, the a lot of people feel that way, that like the beginning of addiction is an earnest search for an escape from self.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 what was your experience of us at that time?

Speaker 4 So I would say

Speaker 4 it was like a night out with your bestie, and she

Speaker 4 is out of her head living her absolute best life, like flailing wildly about on the dance floor.

Speaker 4 But you are the designated driver and you are doing everything you can to ensure that she doesn't get kicked out of the club.

Speaker 4 But you're also trying really hard not to mess with her buzz that she's having. But

Speaker 4 it was like that, but the club was a business meeting and it lasted for three straight months.

Speaker 4 And it was so public.

Speaker 3 I was on like TV shows and at tables with New York fancy people and I did not give a shit.

Speaker 4 You were just gone. You were out of your head.
You were under the influence of euphoria. And it was like, John had an

Speaker 4 outpatient procedure recently, and I had to pick him up because he had medication. And his discharge papers said,

Speaker 4 this treatment may affect your judgment in the immediate period do not operate heavy machinery or make any life-altering decisions

Speaker 4 that

Speaker 4 was like how I felt about you at the time I just kept saying to you like I'm so happy for you this is so wonderful this is I'm just so happy and also you are literally high right now and you have no idea that you are and for the immediate period i will be operating all of the heavy machinery and we will be avoiding as many as possible life-altering decisions.

Speaker 4 Thank you very much. Because you were just.

Speaker 3 But you could protect me from life-altering decisions. So it was like your drunk friend who's wasted, but then she has to go on Good Morning America.

Speaker 2 Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 4 That's right.

Speaker 4 That's exactly what it was like.

Speaker 3 Do you, okay, this is what I want to circle us back to here.

Speaker 3 Because if you are a person, who is eight years old and wishing or 10 years old looking at the stars, wishing that there was something out there there that would save you from yourself

Speaker 3 and then you find this falling in love situation that saves you from yourself meaning you are gone you are obliterated you are

Speaker 3 no longer you you are this us-ness you are this we-ness that you've always been searching for

Speaker 3 you are in a fugue state that is where all of your anxiety and your neurosis is gone and you are just in this love place.

Speaker 3 You basically don't exist anymore.

Speaker 3 What I find, that is what you were looking for.

Speaker 3 And so you think you found the Holy Grail. And what I think is so interesting about you,

Speaker 3 when we talked this through, is that you said

Speaker 3 that the shadow side, one of the shadow sides of believing in the one and then having this falling in love experience is that when that fugue state wore off,

Speaker 3 you would always end up in a breakup.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Right away. And that was because

Speaker 3 when the fugue state wears off, you are back.

Speaker 4 You're chasing the high.

Speaker 3 Oh, you're chasing the high. You are the one who's not.
This isn't the one.

Speaker 2 This isn't the one. They didn't fix me.
I don't feel good.

Speaker 2 Also, like, where's that high? They don't treat me that good. Because when you're in love, too, you just, you're completely blinded to

Speaker 2 the realities of certain circumstances. And when the, when it rubs, when it wears off, it's like, you know, here I am again.
I don't want to be with me anymore.

Speaker 4 That's also chemical. Like when you're falling in love in that state, it turns off the part of the brain that

Speaker 4 activates negative judgment. So you literally are incapable of making negative, i.e.

Speaker 2 accurate assessments of the person during that initial period. So that it wears off.

Speaker 4 And you're like, wait, have you been like this the whole time? And they have, by the way, been like that the whole time.

Speaker 3 Yeah. That's the stage where you're seeing red flags and you're just taking your big green marker and you're just coloring all those red flags bright green.

Speaker 2 Well, Glennon, tell them what I actually told you during just about the end of that like falling in love stage.

Speaker 4 Oh, you were so pissed, Glennon.

Speaker 2 You were so pissed.

Speaker 3 You were starting to.

Speaker 3 So, so imagine you're sitting on the couch. You've been wasted in love for like a few months.

Speaker 2 And Glennon's never fallen in love before.

Speaker 3 No, I thought I was fixed. I thought I had found the thing that would make me gone forever.

Speaker 2 And so I'm getting anxiety.

Speaker 3 I wrote a poem about it in Untamed. It was like, I've always been midnight blue, and you were this pearl color.

Speaker 3 And then now we were just sky blue mixed together forever. And I was never going to have to be midnight blue ever again.
My midnight was gone. I was just going to live in this sky blue place forever.

Speaker 3 I was gone. And then a few months in, or I don't know how long, honey.
I'm not trying to pinpoint it. It was like

Speaker 3 slowly becoming midnight blue again

Speaker 3 and being like, shit, it was like the high wearing off, coming down.

Speaker 2 And I could see it happening on you. And I was, and I had to actually step in and be like, listen, because I've had experience of falling in love before.

Speaker 2 And I was terrified of the come down for you that you would then be like, I'm out of here you know yeah I can't do this anymore so I like started preparing you said okay

Speaker 3 yeah it was almost like you would see me suddenly look at you and be like are you still fucking chewing ice on the stage

Speaker 3 like is this for real is this the love wasn't covering up my little idiosyncrasies this no longer feels like crystals you know, shining in the ether.

Speaker 3 This feels like somebody who's choosing to chew ice next to me.

Speaker 3 It was like the daggers you'd see from my eyes. And then you started talking to me about this next phase.
You said, there's going to be

Speaker 3 this, this, this fugue state, this, whatever it is, this is going to wear off and we're going to be in a new place. And I remember saying to you, wait a minute, are you, I was mad at you

Speaker 3 because first of all, I felt panicky, like I don't want to be myself again. And also,

Speaker 3 Are you telling me that we're going to go into this next phase where we're going to love each other less?

Speaker 3 Like, that's what I felt like you were telling me. And you said, no, we're going to go into this next phase where we are going to have to love each other more

Speaker 3 than we do now.

Speaker 3 Because it's not going to all be just serotonin or whatever is happening in our brain. It's going to have to be our choice to like stay in this and love each other.

Speaker 3 And that was

Speaker 3 so upsetting to me. I felt like we were wasted at a club and you were like, so we're going to to have to do our taxes now.
Like, I felt like you were just like bringing me down

Speaker 3 and I didn't like it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, you were, we're just going to have to be like all these raggedy other people that are just

Speaker 4 doing it off of sheer will.

Speaker 3 Oh, actually, sister, that's the point of it. Like, I felt like we were different.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 We were magic. We were

Speaker 3 every Disney movie. We were the thing.
We weren't like normal people who chew ice and get annoyed with each other on the couch, but in fact, we were. Okay.

Speaker 3 And this is why

Speaker 3 it feels to me like

Speaker 4 you,

Speaker 3 you cannot ever have real love if you are not someone who can be alone with yourself.

Speaker 3 If you are not someone who can be with your midnight blue or whatever color you are, then you can never actually land in love with someone else because you are only using the other person to protect you from your own loneliness.

Speaker 3 which and the other person can always sense that desperation, and that other person can sense that it's not personal, it's not about them. Yep, it's about you not being alone.

Speaker 2 You literally explained every relationship I had before you, every single one,

Speaker 2 really. That like I just couldn't be alone with myself, and I was using this other person so that I didn't have to be alone with myself.
And then, when I met you, and if you

Speaker 2 can see yourself in my story in any way, listener, know this also:

Speaker 2 that i didn't get fixed and then met glennon like i met glennon and then as our love progressed the falling in love stage went into the landing in love stage i started to believe that i was worthy and that i wasn't actually in fact broken And it wasn't, I didn't do the work beforehand necessarily.

Speaker 2 I was doing it while we were starting, while we were falling in love. So So I just, I think.

Speaker 3 And before, because

Speaker 3 you had gotten sober. Right.

Speaker 2 I think what's really important is in my life, if you out there, listener, see yourself in my story, that you've used somebody else as a way to find out who you are or to fix something that's broken inside of you, it is okay that

Speaker 2 you've done that, number one. But The truth is, and the freedom will come when you understand that

Speaker 2 you are not broken, that nobody out there can fix the world that's living inside of you.

Speaker 2 And if you are in a relationship right now, you can start doing the work right now to free yourself from the belief, first of all, because it's a belief system that we think that we're broken individually.

Speaker 3 That we need fixing it all.

Speaker 2 That we need fixing it all. And also it takes a while.
I mean, look, we're five years in, almost five years into our marriage, six years into our relationship, Glennon.

Speaker 2 And like, I'm like just now starting to scratch scratch the surface of like my own

Speaker 2 internal interior world that has terrified me my entire life and sister maybe you would would think that I've been using love as a way of avoiding myself and I would agree I would absolutely agree with you

Speaker 2 babe but finding

Speaker 2 Finding you, Glennon, though, finding you.

Speaker 2 What I really think is so important is that that I have had loves before, but I've never had a love that gave me the space and honored who I was with all of my current imperfections.

Speaker 2 So that the mirror that you've shown me

Speaker 2 has been

Speaker 2 safe for me to actually go, oh, okay, maybe it's time that I start this work. Maybe it's time that I start doing this.
You can

Speaker 2 believe in love and also work on yourself because I do think, sister, you're right. I mean, I think that this is all about loving ourselves as much as we possibly can.

Speaker 2 And then that love and sharing that journey with somebody else. And Glennon, I actually don't think that I could find myself the way that I have without you.
And so that's why I also believe.

Speaker 2 I think maybe both can be true. I'm not sure.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 show is brought to you by Alma. I want to start with a truth I've learned the hard way.
Taking care of your mental health isn't a one-time decision. It's a daily practice.

Speaker 4 And even when you know you want support, the hardest part is often just figuring out where to start. For me, finding the right therapist changed everything.

Speaker 4 But getting there was kind of overwhelming. Endless searches, phone calls, dead ends.
It's wild that the thing that's supposed to help you can feel so hard to reach. And that's why I love Alma.

Speaker 4 Alma, A-L-M-A, takes all that chaos out of the process. It's a simple, easy-to-use platform where you can search for licensed, in-network therapists who actually feel like the right fit.

Speaker 4 You don't even need an account to browse and you can filter by what matters most to you, their background, specialty, therapy style, and more. And here's the part that really matters.

Speaker 4 This isn't just about checking a box, it's about real connection. 97% of people who found a therapist through Alma say they felt seen and heard.

Speaker 4 And that's the heart of good therapy: someone who gets you, not just your symptoms. Better with people, better with Alma.
Visit helloalma.com/slash we can to schedule a free consultation today.

Speaker 4 That's hello A-L-M-A dot com/slash W-E-C-A-N.

Speaker 3 I think it's

Speaker 3 interesting that we both have had sort of like rock bottom moments in our, in our, in your romantic search, you've had rock bottoms. In my divine search, I've had rock bottoms.

Speaker 3 And they have both been parallel in that this belief that the answer is out there.

Speaker 3 Because then you end up giving away every bit of your, of your power, of your intuition, of your whatever to the chase. And you did that with humans and I did that with religion.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 The shadow side of believing the answer is out there is that you can find yourself in a freaking cult.

Speaker 3 Like you really can. Like you, you, and it started, those people that get lost in those things, like it starts with a beautiful desire for this divine connection, for this deep, deep thing.

Speaker 3 But when you're, what I have figured out is that this divine thing that I've been searching for all the time,

Speaker 3 my whole life was real and was beautiful, but it is inside of me, which is the exact same thing that you have discovered at the end of this romantic search of, oh, it's out there, it's out there, it's out there.

Speaker 3 Like, yes.

Speaker 3 I think you're both right. Like there is, there is one.

Speaker 3 The one is real and the one is you.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 4 For me, it's like the most interesting way to think about it is just, because I think so many people are waiting to start their story until they find the one or they're waiting

Speaker 4 or they're throwing away old drafts because they're like, well, that wasn't the one.

Speaker 4 And I think it's just so interesting to think of, just think of your whole life as a love story and all of the chapters in it. Like, you know, it's your family.

Speaker 4 It's the, it's like all of these beautiful chapters that make up your whole life. And then it's like, if loves come.

Speaker 4 And they were great. And loves come and they were real hard.
The way you got through all of them and the way you showed up and the way you continue to survive, that's your story.

Speaker 4 Like no one else gets to own it and no one else gets to disavow it. It's all your story.

Speaker 4 And it's okay, no matter what is happening next month or next year in your life, that none of us know what it is. Like if you just.

Speaker 4 believe that your life is a love story and you don't know how it's going to end. And that's fine because let's be really fucking honest.
Nobody knows how any of this is going to end for any of us.

Speaker 4 I mean, except for you, Abby, and your past lives and your future lives that you clearly already have figured out. But like, it's just, I feel like it just gives us a reframing of our whole lives that

Speaker 4 is just more interesting and satisfying to me than this idea that we just wait and search, right?

Speaker 3 No, that is a beautiful thing. Let us let that be our next right thing.
That we are just going to consider our entire lives from beginning to now as a love story.

Speaker 3 And at the end of the day, the love story isn't really a group project. The love story of your life is just an autobiography.

Speaker 3 And it will stop at different places and intersect with people's stories at different places.

Speaker 2 And all loves,

Speaker 3 no love is wasted. And this idea that romantic love is the only love that is worthy is so ridiculous.
All three of us on this pod have had some of the most

Speaker 3 life-changing relationships with friends, with children, with dogs, with

Speaker 3 dogs.

Speaker 3 We love you. Your life is a love story.
You are the sole writer of it.

Speaker 3 When life gets hard this week, don't forget that we can do hard things. We'll see you soon.

Speaker 3 I give you Tish Melton and Brandy Carlisle.

Speaker 2 I walked through fire, I came out the other side.

Speaker 2 I chased desire,

Speaker 2 I made sure I got what's mine.

Speaker 2 And I continue

Speaker 2 to believe

Speaker 2 that I'm the one for me.

Speaker 2 And because I'm mine,

Speaker 2 I walk the line.

Speaker 2 Cause we're adventurers, and heartbreaks are map.

Speaker 2 A final destination.

Speaker 2 We stopped asking directions

Speaker 2 to places they've never been.

Speaker 2 And to be loved, we need to be known.

Speaker 2 We'll finally find our way back home.

Speaker 2 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 2 that our lives bring,

Speaker 2 we can do a heart game.

Speaker 2 I hit rock bottom, it felt like a brand new start.

Speaker 2 I'm not the problem,

Speaker 2 sometimes

Speaker 2 things fall apart.

Speaker 2 And I continue

Speaker 2 to believe

Speaker 2 the best

Speaker 2 people are free.

Speaker 2 And it took some time.

Speaker 2 But I'm finally fine.

Speaker 2 Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

Speaker 2 Our final destination

Speaker 2 we lack.

Speaker 2 We've stopped asking directions

Speaker 2 to places they've never been.

Speaker 2 And to be loved, we need to be known.

Speaker 2 We'll finally find our way back home.

Speaker 2 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 2 that our lives

Speaker 2 bring,

Speaker 2 we can do a hard pain.

Speaker 2 Cause we're adventurers and heartbreaks on that.

Speaker 2 We might get lost, but we're okay with that. We've stopped asking directions

Speaker 2 in some places

Speaker 2 they've never been.

Speaker 2 And to be loved, we need to belong.

Speaker 2 We'll finally find our way back on.

Speaker 2 And through the joy and pain

Speaker 2 that our lives

Speaker 2 bring,

Speaker 2 we can do hard

Speaker 2 things.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we can do hard things.

Speaker 2 Yeah, we

Speaker 2 can do

Speaker 2 hard

Speaker 2 things.

Speaker 3 We Can Do Hard Things is produced in partnership with Cadence 13 Studios. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 3 Especially be sure to rate and review the podcast if you really liked it. If you didn't, don't worry about it.
It's fine.