In other words, they’re doing the bare minimum in terms of effort, and yet you’re still hooked.

When you talk to them for a few minutes, flirting and feeling connected, your heart races. They finally make plans that are concrete, you end up having an amazing night, and you begin imagining what the rest of your life might look like together.

They introduce you to a friend, and you think, We’re getting closer now. Perhaps now we’ll make it official. But it never goes that way. You continue to hope, pray, and imagine that things will get more serious, or that they’ll finally want more.

More can mean so much, by the way, all depending on where we are in the relationship. It can be more dates. More time. More consistency. More communication. More, whatever it is you want.

We deserve more. And we often know we deserve more. Deep down, we get the feeling that we should close this chapter, end the relationship, and find someone who gives to us the way we give to them.

But then our brain tells us, “Well, maybe I can give it more time for them to come around. I don’t want to push on things. In time, they will see how wonderful / cool / interesting / different I am.”

I’m here to tell you that sticking around is not going to change anything.

If they’re not willing to put in the time and effort, they don’t want to be with you. You could stand on your eyelashes, and that person still wouldn’t be impressed with you or want to be with you. It’s that simple, and also that emotionally complicated.

From a psychology standpoint, why do we wait around for crumbs instead of going for the full experience?

Subscribe now

The first reason is that we believe something will change, because we’ve received some kind of connection or affection from this person in the past.

This is operant conditioning, and specifically what psychologists call a variable ratio reinforcement schedule.

Behaviorist B.F. Skinner found that when a reward arrives every single time, the behavior is easy to unlearn once the reward stops. But when the reward comes at random, sometimes yes and sometimes nothing at all, we keep going far longer. It’s the same thing that makes slot machines so hard to walk away from. If a machine paid out every single time, we’d get bored. If it never paid out, we’d leave. It’s the not-knowing that keeps us sitting there.

Which means the inconsistency isn’t necessarily something we’re putting up with. The inconsistency is the reason we stay. If they were cold all the time, we would have likely left months ago. It’s the occasional amazing night or sweet text that keeps us hoping for the next one.

There’s an even more uncomfortable finding here, called the partial reinforcement extinction effect. Behaviors learned through unpredictable rewards take significantly longer to fade than behaviors learned through consistent ones. So the person who gave us the least is often the one we take the longest to get over. It isn’t because the love was bigger. It’s because our nervous system never got a clear answer.

The second reason we settle for breadcrumbs sits a bit deeper. I believe it’s when we haven’t healed our hearts enough, and that in some way we still believe we aren’t worthy of someone choosing us. Of someone prioritizing us and our time together, or caring for us fully. Most often this originated in childhood, and it has led to that blockage.

Attachment research points to something similar. When care in early life arrived unpredictably, sometimes warm and sometimes absent, children didn’t respond by detaching. They responded by working harder for it, staying hyper-vigilant to the adult’s moods, and reading every small signal for evidence of where they stood. That strategy made complete sense at the time (we had a biological need to be cared for). It’s just that we carry it into adulthood, where it looks like waiting three days for a text, and calling it patience.

So instead of being attracted to the person who does make plans, who makes it clear that we’re worthy and that we matter to them, we choose people who do the opposite. We choose people with whom we feel the need to showcase our worth. Where that conditioning of sometimes feels like enough, because it’s also a reminder of what we felt growing up.

And this is why the connection can feel so intense. We tend to read that intensity as evidence of something rare, when a lot of it is just our anxiety about not knowing. Intensity is not the same as intimacy. Real intimacy is quite calm, which is exactly why it can feel boring to a nervous system that learned love was something you had to earn.

I’ve been in this place. I dated countless guys who were quite nonchalant about me. Who really did not show me that they cared all that much. It was always hot and cold, and I didn’t know where I stood. I had no idea if something would materialize, but I held onto a false hope, because I felt something different with them. I felt an intensity and connection, and in some cases, I knew they did too.

But they didn’t act on it. And action is the only viable way to see if someone’s words, behaviors, and feelings all coincide.

I’ve made excuses for the breadcrumbs I received in relationships, too. I always wanted to see the possibility in things, in giving things time, but honestly, it never came from those people. It only came from the ones who were truly emotionally available. (More on how to spot emotional availability, here.)

In order to draw in someone else who’s emotionally available, we, too, have to become ready for that. We have to become aware of our own patterns, heal our wounds, and begin to choose differently. Once I recognized my own patterns and healed the unworthiness wound within myself, I opened myself up to romantic relationships that were both emotionally safe and simultaneously exciting.

I’m a big believer this is the only way we draw better romantic (and platonic!) people into our lives. And that’s the only way we move forward, ready for real connection, not just breadcrumbs.

(Side note: Although I’m writing about early-stage relationships in this piece, the same goes for long-term relationships. If we’re stuck in something that’s giving us the bare minimum, it’s time we have deeper conversations about it, potentially re-evaluate the connection, and also look within ourselves to notice why we settle for crumbs.)

To me, it was incredibly bizarre because the connection felt clear. To him, it was completely normal. He felt the connection’s strength too. But he was taking the carriage, not the speed train, as he likes to say.

Had I been rigid about how that first interaction was supposed to go, I might have missed out on the most beautiful love story.

When it comes to life, love, and relationships in general, humans like to control.

We like to control how we show up, what’s said and what isn’t said, and what could have been said instead. We like to control our conditions and have things go according to plan. (And really, it’s to give ourselves some sense of safety and comfort.)

There’s a lifelong practice that sounds very passive in nature, and in truth is incredibly difficult for us to master.

It’s learning the art of letting go.

Letting go comes up in relationships more than anywhere else. Letting go with others is difficult because it requires that we first work within ourselves and allow situations to unfold as they need to, versus how we want them to.

We need to let go of expectations. Yes, we can be clear about what’s important to us, but so often we have a preconceived notion of how something should go. How someone should ask us out. How the first date should be. How the relationship should flow and how the other person should act. We stick to these rigid ideas and concepts, and it’s possible we miss out on the true magic of what a relationship could even be. (Case in point, my first meeting with my fiancé.)

We need to let go of who we think we should be with, and instead have the curiosity to see the uniqueness of the person in front of us. Maybe six-foot-five with blue eyes and a job in finance isn’t actually good for us. Maybe the extroverted person is very exciting at parties, but would be draining on a regular basis. Perhaps we don’t recognize the beautiful elements of the person right in front of us, because we’re too busy imagining a false image of what we think we want.

Subscribe now

Psychology has looked at this exact predicament. Researchers Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel asked people to describe exactly what they wanted in a partner before a speed dating event, and then tracked who those same people were actually drawn to that night. What they found is that their preferences had almost no effect on who they ended up wanting in person.

The list we carry around doesn’t always predict who we fall for. The criteria on the dating app can be so rigid we may not give someone great a shot. We need to let go of the story we created around who we want to be with and go in with more curiosity. (Plus, curiosity is even more important to cultivate in long-term relationships, not just in the beginning.)

We may also need to let go of our timelines. Married by 30, first child by 35, isn’t always the right thing for us and our personal story. Sometimes it’s single for seven years, which was my own situation, and then meeting the love of my life.

Or my mom, who got divorced 17 years ago. Most recently, she had convinced herself that she was too old to get into a relationship. Just last year she was planning her life in a very different way, and then she met someone at the age of 62. She’s now in love with a man she met while walking their dogs in the neighborhood; a type of love she says she’s never felt before. He’s wonderful, caring, and adventurous, and she’s so glad she let go of the timeline.

When we’re in relationships, we need to let go of always being right, and focus instead on clear, honest, and open communication. I’m a big believer that we should be fighting against the problem, not against one another. The best relationships aren’t about keeping score or trying to be right. They’re about letting go, and recognizing that there are two people with different opinions and ideas, and that we will disagree at some point.

We need to let go of our negative relationship stories, otherwise we’ll always stay stuck in victim mode. There are so many people who focus on how things were, or on how someone treated them or didn’t treat them, that they forget they have the power to change the story in their own mind. Just because our parents acted a certain way, or because we experienced something in the past, doesn’t mean it has to happen again. We have the power to choose differently and change the course of our relationships.

The same goes for when we’re already in the relationship. We can’t assume someone will do what others have done in the past, and we can’t keep replaying the stories that keep us small.

We also need to let go of the relationships that don’t serve us. The ones that are clearly misaligned. The ones that make us feel smaller or less than ourselves. The ones that don’t allow us to grow and change. Because truthfully, we deserve more. By letting go of the crumbs we’re being offered, we make room for something far more aligned to come in. (More on this soon.)

Letting go isn’t only useful in the early parts of a relationship. It matters just as much over the long term, when we can allow the magic of life and the connection to shine through on its own, rather than forcing it into the shape we had imagined in our heads.

Not only do relationships become more enjoyable and vibrant this way (let’s be honest, anything we grasp at too tightly rarely turns out well in the end), but they also allow true connection, real expansion, growth, and the greatest possibilities to occur.

So the lesson is simple in theory and difficult in practice. Have the boundaries and standards (of course!) and also learn to let go.

Would love to hear any stories where you’ve let go and something far greater has come through.

Leave a comment

(Side note: When I say let go, I’m not referring to letting someone treat us badly, walk all over us, or abuse us in any way. What I’m referring to is the examples I’ve shared above.)

It went further than that, though. I also studied the person in front of me and became more of who I thought they wanted. It wasn't always conscious. Once, someone told me his ex was high-maintenance. I heard it as instructions of how not to be. I became the girl who was down for whatever, no plans needed, zero expectations. The guy thought that I was easygoing, but really, I was just editing myself. Other times it started smaller: a remark about something they liked or disliked became filed away in my brain and I would slowly reshape myself around it.

What I didn’t understand back then is that being an easy or idealized version doesn’t make us more lovable. It makes us lose ourselves in our relationships, and it ensures that the relationship is built on false ground. (Sometimes, it even means that we’re in relationships with the wrong people.)

Many of us learned a similar version of love early on: that to be loved, we have to be easy and compliant. So we disappear in two ways.

The first is silence. We say something is totally fine when it isn’t; we tell someone we don’t mind, even when we do; we stop bringing up the topics that matter to us.

The second is harder to see, and I think it’s the more dangerous one: we mold ourselves. We go with the flow, try to like what they like, dim the parts of ourselves that seem less likable.

Subscribe now

Silencing suppresses our voice; molding hides our authentic self.

It might work for a while, because people like the easy, agreeable version of us. We get told we’re really laid-back, so chill, really nice to be around, “different than other people.” (I collected these types of compliments like little trophies!)

But every time we say “it’s fine” when it isn’t, we tell the person closest to us that they can overlook us and our needs. Each time we mold ourselves into what we think they want, we teach ourselves that who we actually are is not enough. And in time, we slowly disappear. (We might even build resentment towards the other person in the end.)

Psychologists call this self-silencing. Interestingly, the people who silence themselves the most (in the name of connection!) tend to feel more depleted, anxious, and less satisfied in their relationships.

My partner always says that if we only show 40% of ourselves to someone, we’re not only withholding, but we’ll always fear that the love isn’t real, because that other 60% isn’t being shown. I agree with him. Intimacy isn’t built on an idealized version of someone. It’s built on being known and understood.

(Side note! This is also why so many people talk about finding themselves or finally feeling like themselves after a breakup. For the first time in a long time, they feel that they don’t have to perform or be something someone else wants.)

A friend once described a healthy relationship to me as two trees standing side by side. Each is rooted in its own soil, but growing toward the same sky.

I love this image, because I’m a big believer that the greatest relationships allow two people to stand next to each other, rooted in themselves. The best relationships aren’t with someone who needs us to shrink or to reshape into their image of the ideal partner. The best relationship is with someone who gives us the space to make us more us than we’ve ever been.

So how do we come back to ourselves?

If you’ve been reading my work for a while, you know that I believe we always have to start inward. If we don’t honor our own nos, preferences, or boundaries, we can’t expect anyone else to honor them either.

The connections that are right for us aren’t asking us to be easy and perfect. But they are asking us to start from a baseline of being ourselves.

(P.S. None of this means abandoning kindness or compromise in our relationships; these elements are needed in any healthy relationship. The difference is in meeting someone halfway, versus slowly erasing ourselves.)

💌Have a question that’s been sitting with you? 💌

Share it here. I read every question and often turn them into Substack posts or notes.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:

It’s about whether you agree on the things that actually build a life: telling the truth when it’s hard, repairing after conflict, choosing growth over comfort, acting like a team.

We’ve all inherited different ideas of what “the one” means. For some, it’s the person who makes them feel most alive. For others, it’s the person who seems to understand every crevice of who they are.

I’m a big believer that “the one” was never a person we’re destined to find. It’s a way of approaching a partnership (and there are multiple people who could be good for us!).

So how do you know if someone’s actually right for you, versus just familiar, exciting, or convenient?

Below is the checklist I’ve used to guide my own thinking (listed in no particular order!).

1. Your body feels safe in the relationship. Our body often knows faster than our mind whether someone is good for us. Before you can even articulate why, notice: do you feel settled around this person, or do you feel like you’re bracing for something?

2. You feel like you can speak up about things that bother you. You’re not afraid to share what you feel. Yes, there’s a right time and place for every conversation, but you don’t withhold things out of fear that the other person will get defensive, shut down, run away, or gaslight you.

3. You have common values. Values are the thing that keeps people together longer than anything else. Not hobbies, not favorite music. It really is about recognizing whether you both value the same things: prioritizing family, telling the truth no matter what, treating growth as something to expect. You don’t need to align on all of your values, but you need a few that really root the relationship, because that’s what you’re building on.

4. You want the same things out of life. If one of you wants to live on the other side of the globe while the other wants to root where you are, this person is unfortunately not the one (at least not at this point in time!). The one includes building a life together, and for that, you need to be aligned. (If this is something you’re navigating, that’s exactly what A Love Plan was built for.)

Subscribe now

5. You feel understood. Sometimes people feel lonely sitting right next to someone else, and that happens when they don’t feel understood. But to be understood, we have to be vulnerable enough to share, and we have to be with someone curious enough to keep asking questions. No one has a magic ball that tells them what we’re thinking and feeling. Most of the time, we’re the ones who have to say it out loud first.

6. You can accept them for who they are. You’re not going to change someone. We also don’t change that much. Are there little things? Sure. But we have to take someone as they are. If you’re in the relationship hoping they’ll become someone different, they’re not the one. (Side note: I’m a big believer that people only change when they themselves want to change. Not because someone else is wanting them to change. More on this here.)

7. You can have difficult conversations. You’re not afraid to say how you really feel about specific situations. And instead of a rupture that goes nowhere, you’re able to find your way back to each other, stronger.

In Japanese culture, when something breaks, they use kintsugi to repair it, filling the cracks with gold instead of hiding them. The object changes, but it becomes even stronger and more beautiful for having broken. I’m a big believer that relationships work the same way.

8. They let you be who you are without losing yourself; they’re non-judgmental. So often we don’t say what we want to say, don’t do what we want to do, because we’re trying to do good by the relationship and be “easy”. But that’s just withholding, and eventually, withholding unravels. If you’re not able to be yourself in the relationship, they’re not the one.

9. You feel like you’re on the same team. It’s not about winning an argument or being the one to make the last call on a decision; it’s about aligning. If there’s a winner, there’s a loser, and in a relationship, that’s not the game to play.

10. You enjoy your time with them. It sounds simple but it’s so important to enjoy life with another person. When it’s “the one” you can genuinely have the highest highs and lowest lows with them, because that’s what life is, and that’s what life will bring your way. Which leads me to the next one…

11. You can be bored together. Not every moment needs stimulation or plans. You can sit in silence, run errands, do absolutely nothing special, and still feel content just being near them.

12. They make you want to be a better version of yourself (without demanding it!). Growth feels self-motivated, not like you’re performing for approval or because there’s an ultimatum at stake. You feel motivated to show up more fully, for yourself and for the relationship.

13. They’re open to your viewpoint, but don’t need to share it. “The one” doesn’t need to agree with you to respect you. They can hold a completely different opinion without imposing theirs, and still make you feel heard. Relationships aren’t about merging into one mind, but rather about two whole people, thinking separate things, and still choosing each other anyway.

Is there something I missed, that you’d add to this list?

If you enjoyed this post, send it to the person who is “the one” for you. Or send it to the friend who needs to see it.

And if you’ve already found “the one” and want to learn more about designing the relationship of your dreams, check out A Love Plan.

And it’s easy to do so. At the start of a relationship, we’re flooded. We can’t stop thinking about the other person. We replay the conversations, re-read the messages, feel our heart speed up when their name lights up our phone. We’re sure this one is different. This feeling is going to last.

I hate to be the one to say it, but that feeling is not going to last.

Not because something is wrong with us, or them, or the relationship. Because it’s chemically impossible.

In those first weeks, the brain floods with dopamine, the chemical behind that euphoric, can’t-eat-can’t-sleep feeling. Add some adrenaline and norepinephrine, and you get the racing heart, the sweaty palms, the butterflies. As psychologist Stan Tatkin explains, this cocktail is designed to be temporary. Over time, the obsessive focus fades. The fireworks go quiet. This happens in every relationship.

Most people experience that fading as the beginning of the end. The spark’s gone, so they think: maybe we’re not right for each other. Maybe love has an expiration date.

This might be the biggest misunderstanding in modern relationships. The fading of those intense feelings isn’t the end of love. It’s the invitation to start actually building it.

A reframe that changed how I see connection came from my now-partner. It’s the difference between fireworks and a fire.

Fireworks are exciting, dopamine-inducing, and often spectacular. They’re also over in seconds, and we have nothing to do except watch. A fire is different. A fire is something that has to be built. We gather the wood, we tend it, we protect it from the wind, we feed it over time. It’s far less dramatic than fireworks, but it’s also the one that’s long lasting.

Subscribe now

Most of us enter relationships as consumers of love. We show up for the high, and when it dims, we go looking for the next hit somewhere else. The alternative is to become a nurturer of love, instead. Someone who understands the fireworks were always going to fade, and chooses to build the fire anyway.

Here’s the part nobody talks about: you can start building that fire while the fireworks are still going. In fact, you should. On purpose. Even though it sounds like the least romantic thing two people in a relationship could do, especially this early on.

When I met my partner, that’s exactly what we did. We sat down and talked for four hours about everything that could go wrong. We talked about our upbringings. About what we’d survived in past relationships and didn’t want to repeat. We asked each other the questions most couples avoid until it’s far too late:

What are our values? What’s most important to us, and what will we prioritize? Do we want to build something together, or just enjoy each other’s company? What will we never settle for in this relationship, and how will we honor ourselves?

This conversation could have killed the mood, but it actually did the opposite. It gave us more understanding of one another and a deeper sense of compatibility from the start.

In life, we plan everything that matters to us. We write business plans before we launch companies. We set goals, define a vision, build in check-ins so we can course-correct. We spend weeks planning a two-week vacation down to the dinner reservations. And then, for one of the most important decisions of our lives, we go on vibes. We fall into the dopamine, follow the path society hands us, and somehow expect that the most complex thing two humans can attempt will work itself out.

The four-hour conversation we had didn’t take the mystery away; it created more of it. More discovery, more honesty, more of the safety my partner and I needed in order to keep revealing ourselves to one another. It turns out the unromantic conversation was the most romantic thing we could have done. In the words of Esther Perel, we weren’t trying to have a love story, the kind that burns bright and ends. We were trying to build a life story.

None of this means the feelings don’t matter. Chemistry is very real, and it’s wonderful, and we should absolutely let ourselves fall in love.

But the couples who last aren’t the ones who felt the most at the start. They’re the ones who, once the fireworks faded, knew how to build a fire, and had actually talked about how they wanted to build it.

So if you’re early in something and the high is still going: enjoy every second of it (please!!). And then “ruin” it on purpose. Have the four-hour conversation. Ask the questions you’re really curious about. Find out if you want to design the same kind of life, and go in the same direction. You’re not killing the magic. You’re giving it somewhere to go once the chemistry simmers down.

Falling in love really is the easy part. Staying in love is a decision you make, on purpose, again and again. That’s the part worth getting good at.

Leave a comment

My partner and I eventually turned that messy, four-hour conversation into an actual framework: the questions, prompts, and tools we wish someone had handed us at the start. We put it all into a workbook called A Love Plan, designed to help couples have these conversations on purpose, whether you’re on date three or year thirty. If this article resonated, you’ll love it.

And if this post moved something in you, feel free to like, comment, or share it with someone who needs to read it. It genuinely helps this message reach the people it’s meant for. 💛

It took me years to realize we were looking in the wrong place.

Emotional availability isn’t a trait we can spot and cross off a list. It’s a capacity, and it’s most visible not when things are easy, but when they’re difficult.

And the part no one warns us about: if we ourselves aren’t emotionally available, the moment we finally meet someone who is, something pulls us back. Their openness feels like a lot. Their temperament seems boring. We mistake our own discomfort for a lack of chemistry, and we drift back toward the familiar. (I was in this space for a long time, constantly connecting with emotionally unavailable men, only to realize that I myself wasn’t really emotionally available to something deeper, either.)

So the most reliable way to find an emotionally available partner isn’t to keep searching for one. It’s to become one.

Below are the five signs of an emotionally available person. I recommend using them as a guide for a partner, but, as with most things, it’s worth reading them about ourselves first.

1. We can recognize what we actually feel.

It starts with the ability to pause and ask, what is it that I’m feeling? Where is this coming from? Why do I feel the way I feel?

It sounds simple, until we notice how often we reach for “I’m fine,” “I’m stressed,” or “I’m good,” when something way more specific is happening within us.

Psychiatrist Dr. Dan Siegel describes a simple practice he calls “name it to tame it,” which is the idea that putting language to a feeling helps soften it, engaging the thinking brain instead of letting our raw emotions run the entire show. And Marc Brackett, who founded the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence, builds his work around the idea that emotional literacy is a skill we can learn and strengthen, not just a fixed trait we’re simply born with or without.

Being emotionally available doesn’t mean we’re perfect, or that we can name every feeling in a heartbeat. It means we’re willing to keep building our capacity to understand our emotions and to tune into our own humanity rather than outrun it.

2. We can regulate and stay with whatever is intense.

Recognizing a feeling is the first step. The second is staying with it.

When we can’t regulate, we turn away from our emotions to keep them from becoming too intense. We distract ourselves, we numb, we change the subject, we even leave. Emotional availability means we don’t flinch from the things that hit deeper: the experiences that are more intense, more painful, or less than ideal. We have the capacity to make room inside ourselves for all of it: the good and the bad, the easy and the difficult.

Brené Brown said it best: “We cannot selectively numb emotions.” When we numb the painful feelings, we numb the beautiful ones right alongside them. The capacity for sadness and the capacity for joy are interconnected. The amount of difficulty we can feel and move through is directly tied to the amount of happiness we ultimately let in.

Regulation isn’t about staying calm and happy at all costs. It’s about being able to feel something difficult without being swept away by it. (Which takes me to the next point…)

Subscribe now

3. We can move toward the difficult conversations.

Emotional availability means we don’t run from difficult conversations. We move toward them (in our own time, and in a way that feels right, but we always move toward them!).

When someone else wants to talk about something uncomfortable, we don’t shut down. We don’t go cold, deflect, or slowly disappear. We stay open enough to really hear them, to take in what they’re saying, and to try to understand, even when what they’re bringing might be hard for us to hear.

I’m a big believer that the ability to have difficult conversations is one of the clearest signs of emotional availability, because hard conversations are the one place avoidance has nowhere to hide.

4. We can hold space for the other, too.

The first three are about our relationship with our own inner world. This one asks whether that capacity extends outward, because, in love, it has to.

When it comes to relationships, especially romantic ones, emotional availability means the other person can hear us, stay with us, and build something alongside us. They can hold space for a second perspective or create room for us to have ours. Someone who is only in tune with themselves won’t be the right partner, no matter how great they sound in all the new-age emotional therapy-speak.

I dated so many men who had all the right vocabulary. They’d read the right books. They could speak about attachment styles and their inner child and nervous systems. But when it came down to it, they were either uninterested in, or simply unable to, make room for me and my emotions. (And often, these same men disappeared the moment there was a more difficult conversation.)

(P.S. Holding space for someone is not the same as carrying their feelings for them. Being emotionally available doesn’t mean we hand our emotions to a partner and ask them to manage what we’re feeling. We each stay responsible for our own inner world and then, from that place, we can make space for one another.)

5. We can stay present when intimacy deepens.

One of the biggest signs of emotional availability is the ability to stay when something feels unfamiliar. Many of us say we want intimacy, but intimacy often feels surprisingly uncomfortable when it arrives.

If we’re used to inconsistency, stability can feel boring. If we’re used to earning love, healthy interest can feel suspicious. If we’re used to distance, closeness can feel overwhelming.

Emotional availability means we’re willing to get curious about that discomfort rather than immediately treat it as evidence that something is wrong.

Sometimes a lack of chemistry is a lack of chemistry. But sometimes what we’re calling “no spark” is simply the feeling of encountering a healthier dynamic than we’re used to.

For years, I thought the challenge was finding emotionally available people. What I eventually realized was that emotionally available people had already crossed my path. But I wasn’t always ready for what they offered.

Real connection asks more of us than attraction does. It asks us to stay. To communicate. To be seen. To let another person matter.

That’s why emotional availability isn’t just something we look for in a partner. It’s something we need to practice ourselves. And like any practice, we can get better at it over time.

Perhaps that’s the real question we should be asking ourselves: When healthy love arrives, will we recognize it, or will we mistake it for a lack of chemistry and walk away?

Leave a comment

I’d love to hear from you: of the five, which one feels the most difficult for you right now? For me, it was the second one for the longest time. Feel free to share in the comments, I love reading them.

I’m also offering 1:1 HeartHealing™ Sessions for those who are ready to clear out stuck relationship patterns and let more love into their lives. You can learn more about the process here.

If you enjoyed this piece, you may also like:

From now on, we should never make the same bad judgment call again. Never make the same mistake, lose our temper, or get into a similar type of relationship.

But healing and growth are not linear.

Just because we’ve experienced something before doesn’t make us masters of it. Often, the same lesson often returns to us again and again, each time asking us to meet it from a slightly different place.

A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with a stranger that didn’t go the way I wanted it to.

She made (what I perceived as) a passive aggressive comment, and it didn’t land well. Instead of moving past it, I matched it. I said something back that was equally cold and stubborn. It isn’t who I am. But in that moment, I was tired, stretched thin, and a little irritable (and almost six months pregnant!) And it’s what came out.

For the next two days, I looped that moment over and over again. I’d be making tea or taking a shower and there it was again: the stubborn way in which I had acted, the look on the woman’s face, why I didn’t listen to my higher voice when it urged me to behave differently. I knew I could have handled the situation with more grace and kindness.

After walking it out and journaling about it, I finally released it, along with that still-pesky, often-present desire to always be on my best behavior.

What I kept coming back to was a teaching I return to often: If I’m still learning and evolving, that’s the whole point. I’m here on this earth to evolve.

Subscribe now

What matters most is that I have taken the situation, integrated it, and recognized how I would (and wouldn’t!) act in the future. Beating myself up about it at length does nothing for the situation or the fact that the moment has already passed; I can’t change reality. I can only move forward.

This applies to the small moments where we don’t show up as our best selves, but also to the bigger decisions we carry guilt or shame around: relationships, life choices, and the moments we wish we had handled differently.

Success was never about behaving perfectly. It’s about what we do with (and after!) the imperfect moments. Whether we let them harden into shame, or let them teach us something. Perhaps next time we’ll wait a moment before reacting. Maybe we’ll catch the old pattern before we repeat it. Or we’ll listen to our higher inner voice versus letting a lower level emotion take over.

Researcher Kristin Neff has spent her career studying self-compassion, and one of the ideas she shares is that “imperfection is not our personal problem; it is a natural part of existing.” Her work shows that meeting our mistakes with kindness rather than harsh self-criticism is what actually helps us grow and change.

We are not flawed because we make mistakes. We’re simply human.

Personal growth includes recognizing that we can’t make something different than it was. We can’t keep beating ourselves up over what happened (or, sometimes, over what didn’t!). But we can hold ourselves accountable for better decisions and kinder behavior. As long as the intention is there, that counts as growth. That can still be healing.

(Side note! I’m not suggesting that accountability doesn’t matter. It does. Growth isn’t a free pass to excuse the moments we know didn’t behave well. It’s the difference between learning from what was done and punishing ourselves for our mistakes.)

Sometimes when we’ve grown and changed, we expect others to act the way we now would. But we can’t hold other people to our standards. Just because we’ve learned a lesson and integrated it, doesn’t mean someone else has had the chance to. Acting as though we’re all-knowing doesn’t serve anyone, and it actually limits the amount of care and compassion we extend to others.

In the end, growth is about using life and its different situations to learn. Each one has the opportunity to bring us closer to becoming more self-aware, compassionate, and aligned with who we truly want to be, if we let it.

So if there’s a moment or situation that you keep replaying, one you’re not proud of, I’ll leave you with the questions I asked myself:

• Have you integrated the learning?

• Do you know how you’d like to show up next time?

If so, you haven’t failed. You’re still evolving. And that means you’re right on track.

Leave a comment

Thank you for taking the time to read Project Love. If this resonated, feel free to share it with someone who might need it today. x

It’s the partner whose love language stopped looking like ours. The friend who didn’t reach out the way we hoped. The family member who forgot the thing we thought they’d remember. The person we’d grown used to receiving something specific from, who stopped offering it.

A story starts to unfold in our mind. Why aren't they showing up the way they used to? Maybe I’m not as important to them. Did I do something wrong? Disappointment settles in. So does sadness. Sometimes resentment even pops up.

But it’s not that something has actually changed between us. It’s that we’ve unconsciously built a set of expectations for how the other person should behave, and we’re suffering every time those expectations go unmet.

The interesting thing is that we rarely stop to acknowledge that the expectation was something we created ourselves.

We expect someone to communicate in a way that works for us. We hope for a certain kind of gift on our birthday. We look forward to a milestone being celebrated in a specific way. We count on texts to be returned in the timeframe that feels right to us.

When these expectations are met, we feel good, we feel loved. The other person has met (or even exceeded!) what we hoped for.

From a psychology perspective, we become conditioned to certain responses and behaviors, and what lives within our expectations tends to make us feel safer and more comfortable. Our minds are wired to seek predictability, to hold tightly to the version of reality we’ve decided we want.

When there’s a gap between what we’ve decided we want and what actually unfolds, suffering shows up. This is often referred to as the Expectation-Reality gap.

But expectations are not fact. They’re interpretations, preferences, assumptions, not reality itself.

(Side note! The other person is always operating from their own set of expectations, formed by their own life and experience. Until our two inner worlds meet and communicate, we're each just measuring the other against an invisible ruler.)

Subscribe now

Early in my relationship with my partner, I used to write him monthly cards. They were little love notes that recapped our month together: the small moments, the things I appreciated, what I wanted him to remember. I wrote one every month, for the first year and half.

And then, somewhere before our second anniversary, I stopped.

It wasn’t that my feelings had changed or that I’d consciously decided to stop. It just slowly happened. Our life evolved, my way of expressing love started to take different forms, and the monthly cards fell away.

Later, I realized that I had created an expectation in him, without ever talking about it. He had come to look forward to those cards.

We spoke about it soon after the cards stopped. It opened the door to a conversation about expectations in a relationship, what each of us was hoping for, and what we’d never said out loud. (We even ended up writing a workbook about it to help other couples have these same meaningful conversations. You can find more info here.)

I’m not suggesting we don’t have boundaries or standards for how we want to be treated. But there’s a difference between having standards and values, and creating unspoken expectations.

With unspoken expectations, it’s as if we’re waiting to see if the other person will magically read our minds. And if they don’t, we punish them for not being able to connect the dots.

As my favorite spiritual teacher Michael Singer shares, “If you’re only happy when things match what you want, you’re setting yourself up for a lifetime of struggle.”

When it comes to relationships, it’s important that we hold compassion and openness for the fact that other people live and do things differently than we do. They often have their own expectations, too. This is true in romantic relationships as much as in friendships and families.

Releasing our expectations isn’t easy. It’s part of human nature (or at least how we’ve been taught to interact with the world!). But we can reframe how we handle them. When an expectation goes unmet, the best thing we can do is talk about it. Not hide it, not wait for an apology that may never come, because there’s no guarantee the other person even knows how we feel.

We'll never be perfectly aligned with another person. Not with our partner, not with our closest friend, not with our family members. The work isn't finding someone who matches us perfectly. It's continually choosing to reveal ourselves, asking the real questions, and speaking the things we'd rather leave unspoken. That's where real connection lives.

(P.S. There’s a difference between communicating an unmet expectation and tolerating behavior that consistently disregards us. What I’m describing here is for the everyday gaps that arise between two people who care about each other and are genuinely trying.)

Leave a comment

💌 I wrote a relationship workbook with my partner called A Love Plan for couples who want to have more intentional conversations like these. You can learn more here.

We think it looks like physical closeness. Long nights and shared beds and something that arrives more easily in the dark. We’ve been taught by films, love songs, and almost every story we’ve ever consumed, that intimacy is something that happens between bodies.

And so we pursue it that way. We move quickly toward the physical, believing that proximity will eventually become depth.

But there’s a different kind of intimacy. The kind that is rarer (and more difficult!). It’s the kind that has nothing to do with how close we are physically, but what we do in the moments when staying is more difficult than leaving.

These moments arrive in every relationship, when something challenging surfaces between us and the other person. Perhaps it’s a misunderstanding, a conversation goes somewhere uncomfortable, or a version of ourselves appears that we didn’t intend to show (we get angry, short-fused, dramatic). Sometimes it isn't even about the present moment at all. An old fear resurfaces, or a wound from the past makes itself known.

In that moment, every instinct inside us tells us something along the same lines: Leave. Shut down. Go cold. Change the subject. Make a joke.

Our mind tells us to bring out the version of ourself that is composed and unbothered.

But staying in the midst of discomfort (emotionally and physically!) with our heart open and our defenses lowered is one of the most intimate things a human being can do for the another. As Brene Brown has said, “Staying vulnerable is a risk we have to take if we want to experience connection.”

Most of us close, instead.

Subscribe now

I spent years believing I was an emotionally open person. I could talk about my feelings easily. I was curious, I asked good questions, and I created a safe space for people to be honest with me.

What I didn’t realize, was that I was only fully open when things were easy. When conversations flowed, the other person was receptive, and things didn’t get too deep. I was most open when the version of me showing up was one I liked.

The moment things became difficult, something else happened. I would become careful and measured with my words. I called it being rational, never escalating things. But what I was really doing was disappearing. I was protecting myself, not showing all of myself, so I couldn’t get hurt.

A coach I worked with once told me: “If you can’t be honest, you can’t be intimate.” Intimacy isn’t the version of us with perfectly chosen words and a perfectly practiced poker face. It’s the version of us that shows up in the uncomfortable moments. It’s when we turn toward someone instead of away.

That type of behavior takes courage, and most of us were never taught it was safe to try. In fact, most of us have learned that certain versions of ourselves are safer to hide.

So we hide them in relationships, even with the people we love. We pretend everything is okay while things goes unspoken (and then we wonder why we feel so alone in relationships!).

I was recently on a flight, seated next to an older gentleman. Somewhere over the Atlantic, the conversation turned to love and regrets.

The man told me that one of his greatest regrets was never fully opening himself to the women he had loved. He always held something back. He was worried that if he said the wrong thing, revealed too much, showed the parts of himself he wasn’t sure were lovable, they would leave.

He looked out the window for a moment before he said: “I was so afraid they’d leave if I showed them who I really was. But they left anyway, probably because I never truly showed up. Either way, I ended up alone.”

He said it very matter-of-factly, without self-pity. I’ve thought about his experience often since.

When it comes to relationships, the invitation is to practice staying. The moment you want to shut down, stay soft and release. The moment you want to deflect with humor, choose honesty instead. The moment something hurts and your instinct is to pretend it didn’t, allow yourself be seen.

And the flip side also holds true. If we want relationships that are more open and intimate, we must be willing to hold space for other’s imperfections. For receiving information or feedback that’s less than ideal. For the moments when someone doesn’t behave exactly as we would have liked.

We can’t shut ourselves down or run away from a connection because the other person didn’t act exactly as we would have wanted to. If we want deeper connection, we must have compassion and grace for the other person.

The people who love us well are the ones who stay in the room when we show them who we are. And they’re also the ones who are grateful that we stayed in theirs, despite their imperfections.

Ultimately, intimacy will grow in proportion to what we’re willing to reveal.

(P.S. I want to acknowledge that staying in the room is not the same as staying in a situation that causes harm. I am speaking about the everyday moments of emotional difficulty or disagreement that arise in healthy relationships, not about tolerating cruelty, emotional manipulation, or behavior that diminishes you. Knowing when to stay and when to leave is its own form of wisdom, and one worth honoring.)

Leave a comment

Acting like a team can look like cooking dinner for the other person when you know they're overwhelmed. Taking something off their plate without being asked. Handling the boring logistics, because you know it reduces their stress. Backing them up in a room full of people, and dealing with the nuance later, in private. Remembering what's a lot for them right now, and adjusting how you show up.

Acting like a team is about making decisions with “What's best for us?” instead of “What do I want in this moment?”

In the moments, it feels obvious. We’re on the same side and we’re moving in the same direction.

But sometimes something goes sideways. A booking gets messed up, a plan falls apart, something happens in an inconvenient way (pretty typical of life!), and suddenly, we’re no longer on the same side.

We get annoyed, frustrated, angry, and instead of seeing the challenge as something to solve together, we end up pointing fingers, getting defensive, and building resentment.

The team mentality dissolves, and we don’t always notice it happening.

True partnership means staying on the same side, not just when it’s easy, but especially when it isn’t.

It's the shift from “You did this” to “Okay, this happened, so let's handle it.” It's not you versus me. It's us against the problem. (And I'll be the first to admit, this is often easier said than done. I've been in situations where it's so tempting to point a finger and to focus the frustration on the other person. But that behavior does nothing for the relationship except create more distance.)

I’m a big believer that real team-type love lives in the smallest, most ordinary moments. It’s doesn’t have to be a grand declaration. Instead, it’s the way someone doesn’t make you feel stupid for breaking a glass, or forgetting something at the store, or booking the wrong night at the hotel. It’s the way a frustrating situation becomes our problem to solve, not your issue to own.

(Side note: “Acting like a team” gets misunderstood sometimes. It doesn’t mean becoming one person, or absorbing all of your partner’s emotions as your own, like taking on their anxiety, their frustration, and their bad days. That’s enmeshment. And honestly? It’s exhausting. We’re talking about facing challenges together. Same direction, but separate selves.)

Subscribe now

Last week, I was cooking in the kitchen, and an entire glass bottle of cinnamon fell out of my hand and dusted every inch of the newly-cleaned kitchen floor.

My fiancé heard the noise and ran into the kitchen right away.

He wasn’t frustrated, he wasn’t bothered by what had happened, nor was there any blame. Instead, he grabbed the vacuum while I grabbed a wet rag, and we both handled the issue together.

It sounds so small. But it meant so much to me, especially because this kind of behavior was something I never witnessed growing up at home. It helped me realize that this is what being a team looks like; it’s in the ordinary moments of life.

Psychology research agrees that couples who navigate stress together, who adapt to each other’s needs and face challenges as a single unit, are more resilient, more connected, and more satisfied in their relationships. (Source: University of Tennessee and eHarmony.)

When you’re genuinely on someone’s team, something shifts. You stop keeping score. You stop looking for evidence that the other person is failing you. The missed booking stops being about who was careless. These things simply become what they are: small inconveniences in a life you’re building together, with someone.

This is what real, conscious love is all about. It’s not about grand gestures or perfect communication or the absence of messiness. It’s about looking at challenging or annoying moments and saying, “We’ve got this, together.”

That’s the team. And that’s the only game worth playing.

Teamwork is one of the most important values my partner and I share, and we built it through intentional conversation. Getting aligned on what we each need, how we handle stress, and what we actually want from our relationship and our life.

That’s exactly what A Love Plan was born from. It’s a workbook I co-wrote with my partner to help couples get aligned, go deeper, and build the relationship they actually want, through prompts, conversation starters, and research-backed tools. It’s available in digital and physical format. You can grab A Love Plan here.

I’m curious, what does "acting like a team" look like in your relationship? I'd love to hear your version of the cinnamon moment.

Leave a comment

There’s a story that author and spiritual teacher Gary Zukav shares. It goes something like this:

A couple of travelers arrived in a small village and asked an older man sitting at the edge of town, “What are the people like here?”

The man replied, “Well, what were they like where you came from?”

The couple said, “They were mean, selfish, and hard to be around.”

The older man nodded. “Yes, you’ll find the people here are much the same.”

A few weeks later, a different couple came through town and asked the man the same question. “What kind of people live in this town?”

Again, the older man asked, “What were they like where you came from?”

They replied, “Kind, welcoming, and generous.”

He smiled and said, “You’ll find the people here are just like that.”

Life is about perception. The way we see the world, relationships, and opportunities colors our reality.

Subscribe now

A couple of years ago, one of my first weeks in Lisbon, I was sitting at a dining table when two men started telling me how impossible dating in the city was. “Lisbon is the land of Peter Pans,” they insisted.

I had just left LA in search of partnership and deeper romantic connection, so I looked at them and said, “I refuse to believe that. I just came from La La Land, it doesn’t get more Peter Pan. Plus, I don’t need a whole city of emotionally available men. I just need one person with an open heart.”

I believed that there was a person out there for me. And a little over a month later, I met him! (Side note: it took a lot of time and rewiring of belief systems to get to this place, but I’m a big believer that our subconscious beliefs are really crucial to the process. I write about self limiting beliefs here and also about manifesting love here, if you’re interested.)

The world reflects our energy and validates our beliefs. What we look for, we tend to find. This happens in love, in friendship, and in life.

Since I like to weave different worlds of thought together, I dug deeper into the three worlds that I’m immersed in: science, psychology, and spirituality, and how we can explain this phenomenon of belief in both rational and more ethereal ways.

The Science: Perception and Confirmation Bias

From a scientific perspective, our brains are prediction machines, constantly filtering and interpreting sensory input through the lens of prior experience and expectation. This process, known as confirmation bias, means we don’t see reality as it is, but as we expect it to be.

The mind selectively notices and remembers information that supports our existing beliefs.

For example, if you believe people are generally unkind, your attention will unconsciously gravitate toward rudeness or rejection, reinforcing that worldview. On the opposite hand, expecting generosity often makes you more likely to perceive and elicit kindness. In this way, perception reflect and constructs reality.

The Psychology: The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

In psychology, this dynamic is often described as a self-fulfilling prophecy: when our expectations influence behavior in ways that make those expectations come true.

If you anticipate disconnection in a relationship, you might withdraw slightly, interpret neutrality as disinterest, and create the distance you feared. In contrast, expecting warmth makes you more open, expressive, and likely to invite connection.

The cycle is subtle but powerful: our internal assumptions shape our actions, our actions shape others’ responses, and those responses confirm our beliefs.

In love, work, and friendship, we continuously co-create the reality we think we’re merely observing.

The Spiritual: Resonance and Reflection

From a spiritual lens, this principle is expressed through the Law of Resonance. This is the idea that the energy we carry inwardly vibrates outward, drawing experiences that mirror our state of being.

It’s not about magical thinking, but about frequency and alignment: fear attracts resistance, an open heart invites flow and connection. When we live from scarcity, we tend to see lack everywhere; when we embody gratitude, life reflects that abundance.

The outer world becomes a mirror of the inner one. As we shift internally, our environment reorganizes to match our new vibration, revealing that perception and creation are one and the same.

(Side note! If you’ve had painful or unfair experiences in love and life, that does not mean you caused them. There is real suffering in the world, and so much of it is undeserved and deeply confusing. What I’m speaking to in this piece is the part of us that can become conscious of the belief systems formed through early childhood and later experiences—and, with care and support, decide whether or not they still get to run the show. This difference matters.)

I recently came across the word pronoia. It’s the opposite of paranoia. It’s defined as the belief that the world, life, or the universe is actually conspiring in our favor.

It’s the idea that life is working behind the scenes for our good, whether that’s in love, opportunity, or meaning.

In the end, you see what you believe. You draw in what you expect.

If you believe you’re right on time, you’ll move with peace.
If you believe love can heal, you’ll allow it.
If you believe you are enough, you’ll stop performing and start living.
If you believe life can surprise you, it will.
If you believe people are good, you’ll meet the ones who are.
If you believe life’s happening for you, you’ll start to grow from every experience.

There’s a modern saying (often misattributed to Einstein!) that suggests the most important decision we make is whether we see the universe as friendly or hostile.

What are you choosing to believe in love and in life?

Leave a comment

We go along with things. We don’t mention our small annoyances. We don’t readily speak up. We want to be easy, to be liked, to be loved without friction.

I spent years trying to be the least difficult version of myself in relationships. Very chill. Super adaptable. No real needs. No complaints. I believed, somewhere deep inside, that if I could just stop taking up space, if I was super easy to be around, someone would choose to stay.

What I didn’t understand, is that connection doesn’t work that way. Eventually, life happens, and the real versions of us show up.

The more time we spend with someone, the more they will see our moods, our habits, our particular ways of needing things. That’s what time and proximity does. It shows us reality.

Early on in relationships, biology helps us miss it. This is because attraction chemicals are high and our brains focus on what feels good. We notice the sweetness, the excitement, the connection we have with this person. Then, months later, when things start to feel different, it’s rarely because the other person changed. It’s simply that we began seeing the full person, not the edited version.

Subscribe now

We get short when we’re tired. We repeat ourselves when we’re anxious. We carry stress from work into our conversations. We get sensitive about things we can’t always explain. We shut down when we feel hurt. We want reassurance in ways that don’t always make sense to the other person.

None of these things makes us bad (and they definitely don’t make us bad in relationship!). They simply make us human.

A friend of mine has been with her partner for over a decade. I once asked her what positively changed her relationship the most. She said: “I stopped trying to fix the things that annoyed me about him. I just started seeing them as ‘the price of admission.’ Yes, he’s grumpy in the mornings. And he’s impatient with certain things. But that’s who he is. The rest of him is worth it.”

(Side note! the term “Price of Admission” was first coined by columnist Dan Savage.)

My friend’s reframe stayed with me.

Relationships aren’t about finding someone who’s never difficult. They’re about finding someone whose difficult parts you can understand, and ideally, someone who can understand yours. Someone who’s willing to work through friction, instead of pretending it shouldn’t exist. (Perfection in relationships is completely unrealistic, and honestly, would be quite boring!)

Seeing our own difficult parts clearly is one of the most loving things we can do for ourselves and for the people we’re with. When we develop that self-awareness, we tend to take responsibility more quickly, repair more easily, and offer our partner something genuinely rare: the same grace we hope they’ll also extend to us.

This isn’t about resigning ourselves to our patterns or giving up on growth. Growth still matters — a lot, actually! But there’s something beautiful about releasing the idea that love is supposed to be effortless. It isn’t. And that’s okay.

Love isn’t the absence of difficulty. It’s the choice we make to stay present through it and choose one another, again, and again, and again.

Leave a comment

(Side note: when I refer to difficult behavior, I'm never talking about extreme anger, violence, or emotional abuse. I mean the everyday stuff— jealousy, frustration, clumsiness, the moments where we're less than our best selves.)

That might sound obvious, and yet most of us are still measuring the success of our relationships by one metric: did it last until “death do us part”?

Somewhere along the way we, absorbed the idea that if love does not carry us into our eighties or nineties, then it must have failed.

But that was never the only definition of love. It was just a culturally convenient one.

Relationships (romantic, and also friendship!) require two people choosing one another, again and again. Sometimes one person grows in a direction the other cannot follow. Priorities shift. A realization emerges that a different kind of life is needed. We wake up to the knowing that certain needs have been voiced for a very long time, and still aren’t being met. And sometimes, the most honest thing we can do is admit that staying would require us to abandon too many parts of ourselves.

From a psychology perspective, we often try to hold onto relationships past their expiration date, because uncertainty feels more dangerous to the nervous system than unhappiness. We’re also faced with the sunk cost fallacy, believing that because we’ve already invested all this time and energy into the relationship, we should continue on with it.

Sometimes, when relationships end, there’s no villain. Just timing, capacity, readiness, nervous systems, life stages, or truths that took longer to surface than we expected. (Side note! This idea holds true for both romantic relationships and friendships. We don’t talk about friendship breakups enough, but they happen for very similar reasons.)

Subscribe now

A decade ago, I went through a breakup with someone who I cared deeply about, but knew I couldn’t be with long-term. Nothing dramatic happened; there was no betrayal, no intense arguments. There was a mutual recognition that who we were becoming no longer fit together. It was a very painful year of breakup conversations, but we eventually came to the conclusion that we’d be better off going our separate ways. (We even commemorated our time together with a final sushi dinner.)

We need to realize that we’re not failures when relationships end.

When we are the one who ends a relationship, there can be guilt and fear. There can be a disorienting feeling of stepping into the unknown after investing months, years, and sometimes decades in that relationship. Even when we know, deep down, that leaving is the right thing, there’s still grief. Loss doesn’t only belong to the person who was left. The one who leaves also mourns the routines, the inside jokes, the future that once felt certain.

And when we are the one who wanted the relationship to continue, the pain hurts in a different way. Rejection has a way of piercing our deepest wounds. It can make us question our worth, our lovability, and the story we tell ourselves about who we are. Sometimes we even wish we could go back and rewrite something, say something differently, be more or less of who we were, just to keep the connection alive.

But growth lives beyond a relationship ending.

Every relationship shows us something — what we’re capable of feeling, what we’re willing to tolerate, and what we’re no longer willing to tolerate. The ways we communicate when we feel safe, and the ways we communicate when we feel threatened. The parts of ourselves that open and expand, and the parts that contract.

Even relationships that end carry evidence of love. Perhaps they introduced us to new emotional depths or revealed wounds we didn’t know we had. Sometimes they gave us affection we had never experienced before. Sometimes they made us believe what’s possible in partnership. Sometimes they simply changed our taste in music, or food, or books.

Relationship endings often looks like inner transformation.

There’s an idea that I come back to often: relationships are part of the curriculum of our lives. Some people are semester long courses. Some are multi-year degrees. A few become lifelong collaborations. None of them are meaningless simply because they ended. Sometimes we’re simply graduating.

If we can shift our perspective from relationship success meaning forever, to success meaning we both grew while we shared our time together, so much unnecessary shame would fall away. We would allow ourselves to honor what was real without forcing it to be permanent.

Some people are not meant to stay for the rest of our lives, they’re just messengers helping us change and evolve. And sometimes that is the most loving thing that could have happened.

Not all relationships are meant to be forever. But for the connections we want to deepen, grow, and evolve, we can ask the right questions, have the right conversations, and get into alignment.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into relationship alignment tools and having meaningful conversations, you’ll love a A Love Plan. It’s a workbook (available in digital and physical format) that I co-wrote with my fiancé. It’s designed to help couples create the relationship they dream of through thoughtful prompts, conversation starters, and research-backed tools. It’s on sale this month, in honor of the month of love.

Grab your copy

If this post resonated with you, feel free to like, comment, or share it with someone who might appreciate it. And if you’d like to reach out to discuss a recent breakup or anything that’s on your heart, please feel free to dm me❣️

Leave a comment

I’ve put together these questions to help you get to the heart of a relationship, whether you’re reflecting on a current connection or preparing for one you want to build. These questions have been incredibly helpful for me and those around me when trying to get to the heart of a relationship.

1. Are we both emotionally available?

Emotional availability means having the capacity and willingness to engage in the emotional work a relationship requires. Relationships involve conversations, compromise, and, at times, disagreements.

Are we both able to consistently show up for one another, or does one person shut down when things get tough? Can we speak about our feelings clearly and honestly? Are we able to listen and support one another without overreacting? Can we accept vulnerability in ourselves and the other person?

It’s important to make sure that both hearts are open to love, even with the scars of past hurts or heartbreak. We need to make sure we’re ready and willing to show up, be present, and truly invest in the connection.

2. Do we want similar things?

In other words, are we both heading in the same (general) direction?

This applies to the relationship itself. Do we both want the same type of relationship? Do we view partnership in the same way? Are we aligned in what we’re looking for, or are we approaching the relationship from different perspectives? (For example, if one person is fully invested and the other isn’t, it’s a clear sign of misalignment. If one person wants a monogamous relationship, and the other wants to keep things open, again, probably not the right connection).

The same goes for broader life goals. If one person envisions being married with children in five years, while the other dreams of traveling the world without commitments, it’s crucial to have these conversations early on. Without clarity, there’s a high risk of unmet expectations and disappointment.

We don’t need identical views, but we do need honesty and alignment. Misalignment can lead to confusion and hurt feelings. The more upfront alignment and honesty there is, the better the chance for a deeper, more fulfilling, and longer-lasting relationship.

3. Do I genuinely enjoy spending time with this person?

We spend a lot of time with our partners. Sharing meals at the kitchen table or trying out a new restaurant down the street. Going on walks in the park. Discussing work wins and challenges over coffee. Exploring our own cities on weekends and adventuring through new ones on vacation. Navigating tough moments and celebrating a big milestone. Building a family, a cozy home, or a creative project.

That’s why it’s so important to genuinely enjoy one another’s company. To laugh at one another’s jokes. To have conversations that light us up and challenge our thinking. To be curious about our partner’s perspective on the world — because, let’s face it, we’ll be hearing about it, a lot.

Relationships are built in these everyday moments, and the joy we find in them together is what compounds.

4. Can we talk about things openly and freely?

Speaking openly means sharing our inner world: the dreams, fears, and thoughts that make us who we are. But it also means being able to talk about the hard things; when something happens that doesn’t sit right with us, when we feel hurt, or when we’re struggling (whether it’s with their behavior or even our own).

For example, if we’re upset about how our partner handled a situation, can we bring it up without worrying it’ll turn into a fight or be brushed off? Or if we’re feeling overwhelmed and need support, do we trust they’ll listen and try to understand, or are we afraid that they’ll be dismissive?

Ask yourself: Do I feel like I can share myself fully and honestly with this person? Can we both voice our hurts, disappointments, and struggles without fear, without the feeling of walking on eggshells?

Subscribe now

5. Do we share the same core values?

Values are one of the strongest predictors of healthy, long-lasting relationships. It’s not about having the same hobbies or even identical political views; it goes much deeper than that.

Do we both value family? Do we prioritize quality time together? Do we value honesty, even when it’s uncomfortable? Do we share a desire for a life filled with adventure and curiosity? Do we care about growth and learning?

Shared values create alignment, and alignment is what builds a foundation for longevity in relationships. When our core values are in sync, it’s easier to navigate relationship challenges and build a connection that feels meaningful and sustainable.

6. Are we compatible in how we handle conflict and repair?

Every relationship is going to have its hiccups—nothing (and no one!) is perfect. In fact, I believe some level of tension is healthy, because it’s through tension that we grow and evolve.

What matters most when conflict or disagreement arises is how we repair.

As John Gottman has shared, the quality of our relationship depends on the quality of our repair. Repair is what allows us to reconnect, to acknowledge what happened, to understand one another, and to figure out how to move forward. It’s not just about saying the right words, but about genuinely changing behavior and rebuilding trust.

(Side note: When I talk about repair after conflict, I’m never referring to situations involving physical or emotional abuse. I’m speaking about the everyday disagreements and challenges that naturally arise in relationships.)

7. Do I feel seen and understood? (And do I understand them?)

Sometimes, we project an image of who we want someone to be, rather than truly seeing them for who they are. The same can happen when we hold back and don’t share ourselves openly; it creates a gap where real understanding can’t grow.

True understanding feels different. It’s in the little things: the nuances, the curiosity, the effort to truly know someone. It manifests by remembering their favorite coffee order, noticing their quirks, or understanding what makes them light up or shut down.

Real intimacy comes from this kind of understanding. It’s about being seen for who you are and seeing the other person in return. Not just the version you wish they were, but their authentic self.

I dive deeper into the idea of understanding as peak intimacy, here.

8. Is this person genuinely kind?

Kindness matters more than we realize. Life will bring change, disappointment, stress, and loss. In those moments, we need someone who isn’t just on our side, but who shows kindness through it all.

Kindness is less about the grand gestures and more about how the person treats us (and others!) during the difficult times. Through disagreements. Through rough nights, and even rough weeks. Through moments when neither of us is at our best.

Ask yourself: Is this person’s heart in the right place? Do they approach challenges with compassion and care? Do I believe they are a good person?

9. Can I stay curious as this person changes? (And can they give me space to change as well?)

There’s a saying that if you’re with someone long enough, you’ll attend dozens of funerals for their many identities. We all change. It’s the one constant in life, no matter how much we may want the person—or the relationship—to stay the same.

Because of this, it’s essential to give each other space to evolve. To grow. To explore. And to follow our own paths, in our own timing.

This also means that we can’t force change in another person, but we can hold space for it. We can support their growth, get curious about the changes taking place, and allow the relationship to adapt as both people continue to become who they’re meant to be.

Temporary chemistry fades, and lasting relationships need a foundation of practicality and intentionality to truly thrive. For the connections we want to deepen, grow, and evolve, these questions can serve as a guide. From there, we can intentionally create the relationship (and life!) we want, together.

If you’re interested in diving deeper into relationship alignment tools and having meaningful conversations, you’ll love a A Love Plan. It’s a workbook (available in digital and physical format) that I co-wrote with my partner. It’s designed to help couples create the relationship they dream of through thoughtful prompts, conversation starters, and research-backed tools. It’s on sale this month, in honor of Valentine’s Day.

Grab your copy

If this post resonated, feel free to like, comment, or share it with someone who might appreciate it. Your engagement helps me know what topics to explore more deeply and allows this message to reach others who might need it.

Leave a comment

We tell ourselves with confidence: this time, I’m choosing differently.

And then, weeks or months later, the person begins to show a familiar pattern. Maybe they’re emotionally unavailable. Maybe they cling too much. Perhaps familiar communication issues appear.

And we wonder… Were we attracted to a wolf in sheep’s clothing? Were they hiding this from us, only to reveal it later?

The answer is likely no.

The uncomfortable truth is that the only constant across all of our relationships is us.

This isn’t about blame or thinking, “It’s all my fault.” Instead, it’s an invitation to get curious. If we want our relationships to change, we have to examine our own patterns first.

(Side note: we can’t change other people. The only thing we can change is our awareness, our patterns, and ourselves. This is the foundation for choosing different relationships.)

Subscribe now

Psychology suggests that we’re often attracted to wounds that haven’t fully healed within us. For instance, if we experienced abandonment in childhood, we may feel drawn to partners who recreate that feeling. If we had an emotionally unavailable parent, we may feel magnetized to that same unavailability in a romantic partner.

We think we’re choosing someone who is “our type,” but often our type is shaped by our wounds. We choose based on those wounds, because our brain plays a larger role in who we love than we realize. The part of the brain responsible for early attachment teaches our body what love is.

So if love felt safe and steady, a relationship that’s calm feels like belonging. If love felt conditional, chaotic, or distant, our nervous system may associate love with tension. In this case, love feels like work, love feels risky, love is a rollercoaster of emotions.

Ultimately, our brain seeks comfort. And comfort doesn’t always mean healthy. It often means familiar.

Even when we know we should choose differently, our subconscious can still pull us toward partners (and friendships and even business colleagues) that replay old emotional patterns. That’s why “fireworks” often feel like chemistry, even when the relationship isn’t healthy.

This isn’t about judging ourselves or our past, but about becoming aware of the patterns that shape our relationships.

It’s difficult to experience deep fulfillment in partnership without some degree of inner work. If we’re carrying unresolved pain, even the most incredible person (someone who checks every box!) may still not feel right. We might struggle to receive love fully, or even sabotage the relationship.

When I first started looking honestly at my own patterns, I had to face a hard truth: I kept choosing people who weren’t actually available. I convinced myself the “hard to get” dynamic was exciting or romantic, mostly because that’s what I grew up seeing. In my body, love and unavailability were tangled up together.

Eventually, I had to decide whether I wanted to keep reliving the pattern, or finally step out of it.

While we may understand our patterns intellectually, we often repeat them because they’re held in the body. Patterns begin to loosen when we allow ourselves to feel what we never got to feel the first time, when we allow the emotions to move through us, instead of staying stored within us.

From there, healing can happen when we meet the original wound with a new, opposite experience.

For instance, if the wound said, “When I was fully myself, love left,” the repair becomes, “When I am fully myself, love stays.”

If it said, “I’m not enough,” the repair becomes, “I am enough. I have always been enough. I am lovable as I am.”

We need to see, feel, and internalize these new experiences for them to be imprinted on our hearts and minds. Our brains require proof in order to change. (But the beauty is, they can change!)

Our patterns don’t shift overnight. They change as we update our beliefs about love, notice examples of healthy connection around us, and give our nervous system time to learn what safety in love actually feels like.

Bit by bit, we can change not only how we experience love, but the kind of love we’re able to choose.

We’re not doomed to repeat the same patterns forever. The moment we notice them, we’re already on the path to breaking them.

We can choose differently. We can update our story. We can open ourselves to the love we’ve been craving.

What love patterns are you ready to break?

Leave a comment

Thank you so much for reading along. I’m so grateful to have you here.

If this piece resonated with you, I’d love to invite you to join me for my FREE Self Love Workshop next Friday, January 30th at 12pm ET (9am PT / 5pm GMT).

Together, we’ll explore the root causes of self-love blocks, reconnect with ourselves, experience a healing guided meditation, and leave with practical tools you can carry forward. Share your email here and I’ll be in touch with you via email.

If you enjoy my writing, I just started an IG account with short-form relationship content. You can follow along here.

There’s something special about feeling at peace with someone. When we can share without rehearsing. When silence doesn’t feel awkward. When we don’t feel the need to perform or over-explain. When we can be ourselves fully and trust that we won’t have to over-explain ourselves.

We feel this type of understanding when the person in front of us actually listens. When they remember the small things. When they notice patterns. When they ask follow-up questions. When there’s an energy of curiosity instead of judgment. Openness and tenderness instead of defensiveness. A genuine desire to understand our why, not just our words.

In psychology, this is often referred to as emotional attunement — the experience of being emotionally met, of having emotional cues read and appropriately responded to.

Sometimes, we meet people who feel like home almost immediately; we feel a comfort and familiarity that puts us at ease. But long-term understanding doesn’t come from chemistry alone. It comes from willingness. From slowly, deliberately revealing ourselves.

If we only share a part of who we are, keeping the rest hidden, we quietly reinforce the belief that parts of us aren’t worthy of being known. But when we choose to show more, to share the nuances, subtleties, and eccentricities of who we are, something remarkable happens. The person in front of us learns us more deeply. And at the same time, we learn about ourselves more deeply, too. That’s how vulnerability and trust are able to grow and expand. (Side note: I recognize that this openness requires that we feel safe enough with another person, and it’s not something we can do with everyone.)

Carl Rogers, an influential psychologist, once wrote: “When someone really hears you without passing judgment on you, without trying to take responsibility for you, without trying to mold you, it feels damn good.”

People want to feel understood. This is because understanding softens loneliness. It confirms that our experiences matter. That our inner world isn’t strange or isolated. That are feelings are legitimate. That someone else can hold it with us.

From a psychological standpoint, feeling understood feels like love, because it signals to our nervous system that we’re safe. (On the flip side, when we feel unseen or misunderstood, stress and tension are triggered within our body).

True understanding validates our emotions, affirms our identity, and allows us to fully relax within a relationship. It also ties back to early attachment bonds, reflecting the earliest love many of us knew: being emotionally attuned to as a newborn, held, and appreciated as we were. The combination of safety, validation, and ease is what makes understanding in relationships so transformative.

Subscribe now

Being seen by another human being — someone we also see and care about — might be one of the most meaningful experiences we can have. It sounds simple, but it’s rare.

If we want to be seen, if we want deeper connection with romantic partners, family members, or friends, we have to be willing to share our inner world. People can’t guess what we’re feeling. They can’t assume what we need, like, or fear. We have to show them. We have to reveal ourselves.

And on the flip side, allowing someone else to be seen is one of the greatest gifts we can offer. But it requires presence. Slowing down. Paying attention. Picking up on small cues like tone changes, pauses, what’s said and what isn’t. Getting curious and asking bigger questions. This is how relationships become places where people feel safe enough to be real.

One of my ex-boyfriends recently shared that he’s always felt deeply connected to me, even after our romance evolved into friendship. His reason? He felt truly understood by me. He said few people had ever given him that—the ability to hold space for who he was without judgment, and instead with curiosity and care.

I’m a big believer that being curious to understand someone and their inner world is essential in any healthy relationship. To me, it’s the ultimate love language.

Understanding someone means seeing them as they are, not as we wish they would be. That’s real emotional maturity. And feeling understood doesn’t just come from finding the right person. It comes from becoming someone who’s willing to see and be seen.

Can you think back to your most meaningful relationships? Is there a common thread of feeling deeply seen? And if you’re in a relationship now, do you feel the magic of being seen?

Leave a comment

Thank you so much for reading along. I’m so grateful to have you here.

If you want to release old patterns, reconnect with your inner child, strengthen your self-worth, and create space for healthier relationships, I’m curating an intimate 5-week program starting in January.

I’m inviting a handful of people to co-create this first round with me. In exchange for honest feedback, you’ll receive 30% off. You can learn more here. And if you prefer to work with me one-on-one, feel free to DM me for more info.

And yet, the more we master boundaries, the easier it is to take them too far. We can become so strict that we block the very experiences life is asking us to feel. We make rigid rules about what someone can or cannot do, what’s acceptable or unacceptable, what counts as a red flag (and often it’s around what we’ve decided inconveniences us). The moment someone crosses these self-imposed lines, we disconnect, shut down, or say no automatically… before truly considering the person or the situation at hand (and life, after all, is rarely black and white).

Because of our strict boundaries, we often miss out on connection (and on the messy, imperfect parts of being human!). We think we’re protecting our peace, but sometimes we end up isolating ourselves instead. We believe we’re doing everything right to have healthy relationships, yet we still feel disconnected.

(Side note: If someone is behaving in an unsafe or emotionally harmful way, that still requires a strict boundary. I’m not referring to those types of boundaries here. I’m referring to boundaries that are technically “healthy,” but emotionally closed. The ones that protect peace at the cost of connection.)

There’s a better way to honor yourself with boundaries without shutting down connection, and I believe it’s this: respect your needs, and leave room for conversation. Both can happen at the same time.

Subscribe now

I like to think of boundaries like a gate, not a brick wall. A gate can open, a wall cannot. Instead of seeing boundaries as a way of saying no to someone else, we can see them as a way of honoring ourselves — which means saying yes to ourselves and what we really need— while keeping the door open to conversation.

If we’re voicing our boundaries to others, they work best when they come from kindness and expansion, versus negativity and punishment. Sometimes, it can be helpful to share why a boundary is important, versus just drawing a line in the sand. The tone, the openness, or the way we invite dialogue is what determines whether a boundary closes a door or opens a new one.

For instance, imagine a friend wants to vent for an hour, but we’re drained after a long day. Instead of ghosting them or saying yes reluctantly, we can say, “I really want to be here for you, but I’m drained right now. Can we catch up tomorrow when I can really listen and be more present?”

This allows us to honor our boundary and still leave room for connection.

It’s also important to remember that we shouldn’t hold boundaries as a way to punish other people. We should hold them because we love ourselves, because we respect ourselves, and because we’re ready to honor our needs. Upholding boundaries in a kind way will ultimately strengthen our relationships (even if it potentially challenges the relationships in the interim.)

Connection and self-respect are not mutually exclusive. When we allow a little flexibility, life doesn’t take advantage of us, it surprises us. We get to experience moments we could have missed if we were too rigid in our ways of being.

Where in your life are your boundaries protecting you, and where might they be holding you back? Are they helping you say yes to yourself, or just saying no to the world? How can you honor yourself without shutting out connection?

Leave a comment

If you feel called to explore your patterns around love and boundaries, I’m hosting an intimate 5-week group experience in the new year. We’ll unpack old relationship dynamics, release past hurts, and build the capacity for emotionally mature love.

I’m inviting just 11 people to co-create this first round with me. In exchange for honest feedback, participants will receive 30% off. You can learn more here.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like:

And truthfully, most of us aren’t prepared for what real, mature love asks of us.

We often think that an open heart, good intentions, and chemistry are all it takes to create lasting love. But they’re not. Emotionally mature love demands the kinds of skills many of us were never taught. (Side note: even though it doesn’t always come naturally, we can learn emotional maturity.)

Emotionally mature love requires self-awareness. Knowing our patterns and triggers, and taking responsibility for them, instead of outsourcing them to our partner.

It requires accountability. Owning our mistakes without defensiveness, repairing rather than pretending the argument didn’t happen, and being willing to soften, even when our instinct is to build a wall around our heart and protect ourselves. As Peter Salovey, the co-founder of emotional intelligence has said, “Love is not the absence of conflict; it’s the ability to handle conflict.”

Mature love is built on emotional regulation. Allowing ourselves to feel our feelings fully, without letting them run the show in our relationship. It means pausing, self-soothing, and responding thoughtfully, rather than reacting impulsively towards the other person.

Subscribe now

Being ready for love also asks us to put our ego aside. To get curious and empathize with the other. To step back when we feel ourselves becoming reactive. To learn to say “I’m sorry” when it’s hard. To see conflict as us against the problem, not me against you. To truly act like a team.

So much of our readiness for love starts with our own relationship with ourselves. This is why so many therapists and relationship experts recommend doing some form of inner work before entering a relationship. Not because it’s a prerequisite, but because it makes the relationship healthier and more grounded as a result.

Emotionally mature love asks us to witness the person in front of us. Not the fantasy, not the potential, not the version we wish they would become. This type of love allows the other person to be who they really are (and it allows more magic to happen as a result, too!)

(Side note! This isn’t meant to be a checklist, but a mental inventory of what it really takes to be in a healthy adult relationship.)

I’ve dated people where the chemistry was undeniable and the compatibility felt right. But when things got more serious or when differences arose, they completely shut down, unable to move forward. It wasn’t a lack of connection. It was a lack of emotional maturity.

That’s why it’s so important to become ready for love. Real love will test us. It’ll challenge our patterns, surface our fears, and ask us to grow in all the places we’d rather stay comfortable. Love doesn’t just meet us where we are; it reveals who we have the potential to become.

A few years ago, I spoke with a friend and shared what I was looking for in a partner. I told her I wanted him to be emotionally evolved — empathetic, a good listener, able to hold space for me, able to see multiple perspectives… the list of characteristics went on. She then asked me, “Are you ready to provide those same things to someone else?”

We can’t expect to receive from others what we’re not able to give. If we’re seeking an emotionally mature love that’s understanding, deep, kind, and nurturing, we must be ready to offer those same qualities in return. (Similarly, if only one person is behaving in an evolved way, and the other isn’t on board, things will be difficult. It takes two to be in a relationship.)

Instead of saying, “I want love,” what if we started to focus on becoming the kind of person who can hold love maturely and compassionately? I think a lot more relationships would thrive, and a lot fewer would fall apart.

Does emotionally mature love ask a lot of us? Yes. It asks that we’re present, self-aware, and always open to growth. But then again, doesn’t everything good in life ask for continued effort?

If any of the above resonated with you, or if you have ideas on what I missed that’s needed for emotionally mature love, please share. I’d love for us to learn more together.

Leave a comment

Thanks so much for reading Project Love. If you want to learn more about building better relationships, you can check out A Love Plan, a workbook for couples, or check out my partner’s and my website for some free communication resources.

This need to fix often comes from our own discomfort. Their pain feels like too much, and we don’t want them to suffer, so we try to erase it.

(Side note: Some of us respond to other’s challenges by stepping back entirely, but today I’m writing about the other side of that impulse: the urge to fix.)

The instinct isn’t wrong; it’s human. But real support lives somewhere between rescuing and escaping the problem itself. The best thing we can do is often the simplest: we just need to be there.

We can give the other person the gift of our presence. Ram Dass said it best: “All you can be for another person is an environment in which, if they wanted to come up for air, they would.”

Presence doesn’t mean fixing. It doesn’t mean overthinking or solving every problem. It doesn’t mean taking away the pain. It just means showing up as someone they can rely on, while they navigate their own journey.

It’s easy to forget that everyone is on their own path. Sometimes we think we know the best answer for those we love. But our advice is simply based on our own past experiences, our own worldview. Every person needs to go through the challenging experiences on their own, or else agency is lost. Or else the experience isn’t fully absorbed or integrated.

Subscribe now

The urge to swoop in, fix someone, or take on their pain often stems from codependency. In psychology, this is sometimes called rescuing, people-pleasing, or caretaking. It’s rooted in the belief that love has to be earned, either by solving problems or being indispensable to someone.

When we fall into this pattern, our self-worth gets tangled up in how much we can help or control someone else’s experience. It might feel like love, but it’s really a subtle form of control. And it keeps both people stuck. They never fully learn to navigate their own emotions and challenges, and we never fully learn how to show up calm, present, and grounded, without taking responsibility for someone else’s life.

I’ve noticed my own pattern of wanting to fix, overgive and take someone’s pain away. There was a time when someone I loved was struggling deeply, and my first instinct was to try to fix things. I wanted to brainstorm solutions, make things easier, offer advice. I thought I was helping. But what he really needed wasn’t solutions. He needed someone to sit with him in the discomfort, to be present while he processed the situation. He looked at me one day and said, “I don’t need you to fix things. I just need you to be here with me. That’s it.”

He wanted to be seen and have his situation acknowledged. He wanted his experience to be witnessed. And ultimately, our connection became deeper. Not because I was able to miraculously solve all of his problems, but because I was there for him. And with time, he was able to navigate his own path in a way that was perfect for him.

Though we can’t fix other people’s challenges or suffering, what we can do is make the journey less lonely for them. We can be a calm, secure presence that allows them to breathe, to feel seen, to feel supported without being smothered.

In order to be there for those we care about, and vice versa, we must be willing to talk about our pains and troubles. We have to be open to share where we are struggling, even when it’s uncomfortable. That’s the art of vulnerability (something I’ll be writing more about soon!)

Thich Nhat Hanh often said “When you love someone, the most precious thing you would like to offer to her or to him is your presence.” He taught us that presence is everything. When we are fully present with someone, we create a safe space for them to simply be. Our full, compassionate attention can be more healing than any solution we might offer.

Next time someone you love is struggling, notice your impulse and instead, choose presence. Just be there. Over time, you’ll notice that the act of simply being present can transform not only the person you love, but your own capacity for empathy and connection.

Leave a comment

Thanks so much for reading Project Love. If you want to learn more about building better relationships, you can check out A Love Plan, a workbook for couples, or check out my partner’s and my website for some free communication resources.

If you enjoyed this post, you may also like these:

Relationship experts also warn that without self-love, we risk becoming codependent, seeking external validation instead of building a strong foundation within ourselves. These reasons for self-love are valid and important.

But I believe there’s an even deeper reason self-love is essential in relationships, and it’s about us.

Without self-love, we tolerate what we shouldn’t. We let our boundaries be crossed, excuse bad behavior, and settle for less than we deserve. We put ourselves second, brushing off unkindness or unfairness with excuses like, “That’s just how they are,” or “They didn’t mean it that way.” (Side note: this is different from accepting someone’s natural quirks or differences.)

Without self-love, we find ourselves in relationships that fail to honor who we are or who we’re becoming. On top of that, when we don’t show ourselves deep love and care, it’s difficult to fully accept love from others.

So, what is self-love, really?

Self-love is the ability to treat ourselves with kindness and grace, even when we make mistakes or fall short of our expectations. It’s speaking to ourselves with a calm, compassionate inner voice, and caring for our bodies, hearts, and minds as best we can. It’s about appreciating ourselves as we are, even if we’re not exactly where we want to be.

We can see our level of self-love in what we tolerate, what we say yes to, and what we walk away from. When we love ourselves, we stop chasing people who don’t choose us. We stop explaining our worth. Instead, we start aligning with that which honors our peace.

Most of us have blocks around self-love, though. It may have started when we felt unlovable by a parent or close family member. Or perhaps an early breakup shattered our self concept.

Recognizing our blocks around self-love and understanding their origins is key. We can ask ourselves, “What relationship, experience, or belief made us feel unworthy or ‘not enough’? Digging into the root cause can help us move forward, rather than staying stuck in feelings of unworthiness.

In the past, I’ve judged and nitpicked myself and my less-than-perfect behavior. I stayed in toxic relationship patterns, because I felt unworthy of something better. Setting boundaries made me feel guilty, like I was asking for too much.

Looking back, I see that I hadn’t yet learned to love myself. And that was partially because I was blocked from giving myself the compassion I deserved (the type of compassion we all deserve!). I had inner-stories that needed to change and emotions that needed to be released.

Subscribe now

When we find peace in our own presence, when we learn to feel worthy of love, when we care for ourselves the way we would for someone we really love, everything changes. We choose better partners, better friends, better relationships— because we no longer settle for less. There’s a beautiful ripple effect in loving ourselves.

(Side note: Self-love isn’t a linear process. Some days we may feel aligned, and other days it feels daunting, like we’ve taken a step back. That’s okay, it’s all part of the experience of being human. We also don’t have to have perfect self-love when entering into a relationship. The healthy relationships can help us love ourselves even more.)

Research agrees that practicing self-compassion (i.e. treating ourselves with the same care we’d offer a loved one) helps us set better boundaries, regulate emotions, and make healthier relationship choices (Neff, 2003).

When I see people who’ve nurtured their self-love, it’s like they’ve become magnets for better everything: better love, friendships, and life opportunities. (Though I’ll be honest, sometimes, raising our self-love standards means losing people we were once close with.)

Why do people with self-love magnetize amazing things? Because they refuse to settle for what doesn’t honor them. They know the key to more love is self-love. They don’t just attract better love, they create it.

Ultimately, self-love isn’t about feeling good all the time. It’s about knowing, deep down, that you’re on your own team. That no matter what happens, you’re in your own corner, rooting for yourself, choosing yourself, showing up for yourself again and again.

I’m curious, where are you settling for less than you deserve? And what does self-love look like for you today?

Leave a comment

I’m going to be offering a free online workshop in the next few weeks that dives into the universal wound around self-love, and how we can transform it. If you’re interested, please sign up here.

Thank you for being here and for reading along. If you enjoyed this post, you may also like: