Welcome to the Stay or Go podcast, where we're changing the dialogue around divorce so that no woman ever stays in her marriage out of fear. Get ready to dispel myths, learn life-changing tools, and build a solid foundation in yourself from which to make your decision. And now your host, me, Britta Joe. Hi there, love. All right, for today's episode, before we start, just want you to maybe place your hand on your heart with me and take a couple deep breaths. And while you're breathing and kind of dropping into your body, before we really dive into the heart of this episode, which is going to be really near and dear to my heart, I want to take a quick moment to extend a soft, open invitation to those of you listening today who might find yourselves in this exact situation that we're going to be talking about. A situation that I've found feels very torn, exhausted, and often deeply painful of trying to navigate considering divorce from a quote, good guy who you may love deeply, but who also has very deep wounds. And I want you to know if you're listening that this is not just you. I actually see this a lot. This is becoming more and more common considering divorce or leaving a long-term partnership that has this kind of dynamic, even when you know it is the right choice for you. I have seen and experienced myself that it can be very difficult. And it takes really genuine and thoughtful care and support while you're going through it, as it can bring up lots of conflicting feelings and contradictory emotions. And having someone in your corner who understands those nuances can really be the lifeline that changes everything for you as you go through it. So I want to extend the invitation that if you find yourself in that space, whether you are just needing a focused ground level drop-in to get clarity and map out what's going on and where you are on a 90-minute session, that's a good fit. Or if you are looking for more intimate, high-touch support as you navigate the entire journey of the process of deciding, which is really great inside my three-month one-on-one deep dive container. I want to remind you that I am here for you. And this work specifically work around divorcing a good guy, work around figuring out if that is the right choice for you or if there is an ability to stay and create something new. It is my jam. That is the work I did on myself in my own journey, and it is the work that I've led many of my one-on-one clients through, and many 90-minute uh clients who've dropped in with me as well, just helping them figure out the next steps in their journey. So if you listen to this episode and you are like, oh, this is me, and I need someone who understands the nuance of this, all the details and the links to apply and work with me will be right down in the show notes at the bottom. And I just want to convey how honored I would be to get to hold this space for you if it feels like we are the right fit for each other. Now, with that beautiful invitation extended, let's once again take a deep breath. Hopefully, you've been breathing through all of that. I hope you're able to kind of drop a little bit more into your body because we're about to dive into an episode that has come out of um something very personal to me that came back up this past month. So I'm also having all of us take deep breaths because I'm also trying to ground myself as we go through this episode, uh, because I know it's going to be a little emotional for me because it's a very personal episode. So to begin, as you guys can tell from the title, um, I've really been reflecting this past month on why it is that love alone cannot save us in certain relationships. And uh this question has re-emerged as um this last month I I found out that a previous partner of mine um tragically um passed away. And it was very, very shocking. Um I would say for me personally, this passing of this individual uh has probably I probably actually experienced more deep, deep grief around this than I did even with my own mother's passing. So, you know, you guys, is uh I haven't really talked about this much. Um, not even really in the community, or it's been like a very private personal experience that I've been going through over the last month. My partner Joe and my children have known about it and some close friends, but wasn't something that I was really ready to talk about yet. Um, mainly because it was so emotional. And that was surprising for me because this was, as I just said, an ex-partner, someone that um I had been broken up from for years, and um really didn't fully understand how much his passing was going to kind of re-bring up all of these pieces. Um but as you guys so often see for me, like when life brings something up, I have thankfully at this point in my life learned the tools and the ability to lean in to allow it to kind of pull back. Uh, in this instance, it felt like it was kind of pulling off the scabs of these old wounds, of these old experiences, and really bringing me back into the heart of some deep parts of this relationship that I hadn't been able to fully process previously. And as I've sat with all of the emotional waves, all of the processing over this last month, what really came up to the surface was this aspect of leaving someone that you love deeply, who just has deep wounds, that because of those deep wounds, because of the dynamic in the relationship, the relationship cannot continue. And for many of you listening, I was like, yeah, this is this is definitely something I want to bring to the podcast and talk about because this topic is something I hear from so many of you. The ideas of what it feels like, what the experience can be like when you are wanting to leave a good, I'm putting it in air quotes, a good guy. So I want to just dive a little bit into some aspects of the relationship that I had with this person. Um, because in reflecting on all of this, it's really reminded me just how much the the individual that I dated, he was not a monster or a bad guy. And as I had time this last month to really reflect back on thinking about him, I was, and especially, you know, getting to attend his funeral, I was reminded of just like what a good man he was in so many ways. And at the same time, I was having to hold space for hearing, you know, what a great person he was, how much he loved other people and how much he would do anything for everybody else. And at the same time, keep dropping into and understanding my experience of yes, being with someone who was a very good man who also had very deep trauma. And in the experiences of his deep trauma, he was in many ways actively drowning. And I think this word's really helpful for many of us that are with partners who have deep wounds. And um, in that dynamic, we eventually together in the relationship, it was like both of us started to drown. And no matter how much we loved each other, because as I've been reflecting, I've been like, wow, we really did. We loved each other so deeply. He loved me very deeply, I loved him very deeply. And yet, within the dynamic, what was presenting was both of us were drowning. And that was something that just we could not get around. And that's why I included in the title this thought of like, why love alone can't save us? Because oh, when we are in dynamics like this, how badly do we want love to be the thing that conquers all? Can we all just vibe about that for a second? Like, who are my who are my empath girlies out there who are just like love to love, love to believe that love conquers all? And if you just love someone enough, it will eventually find its way. And the very kind of uncomfortable um stepping into of more of like an adult reality of being honest and aware of what is actually happening in reality rather than the fantasies we've created in our minds and how difficult that is when we're in a dynamic where there is so much good. I was reminded this last month of like so much of the good. I've I at the time that we broke up, I really had to completely just like cut off my empathic side in order to stop myself from going back into the dynamic. That's how much love still existed there. And so this last month, um I was able to actually, like I said, kind of pull back the scab, like let the wound breathe and go back into actually allowing myself now with his passing to fully acknowledge how much love was really there by letting myself like look back through photos and videos and um, you know, really recognize like, wow, there were so many parts that were so good, so much love that he had for my boys, so much love that I had for his boys. There was a really genuine, deep soul connection between him and me. Um I could be my weird, crystal loving woo-woo self with him. I really, he was one of the partners that I uh hid myself the least up until that point. And he was one of the partners that I dated the longest. He was the first partner that I really dated and had an ongoing relationship with post my divorce. And there was a huge level of chemistry and deep emotional warmth that we shared that was very, very, very um huge at that time in my life. I hadn't experienced that level of depth and warmth and intimacy and connection um up until that point. And, you know, it's beautiful to in this space to be able to start kind of bringing all that out, letting myself feel and acknowledge that again. And at the same time, be able to see that as we went through the dynamic, there was this creeping cost that began to develop within the relationship. And looking back, um, it really was not, you know, uh a simple black and white, which I want so, you know, so many of you want, right? You want to be able to say, like, he's a bad guy and I'm leaving, and this is why. That was not the case. It was that as we went through the relationship, the amount that was required of me, and I can obviously only speak from my perspective, but trying to balance being an entrepreneur, being a single mom, showing up for all of the kids, right? Because in this particular relationship, there was both my children and his. And then trying to also be there for him with his unhealed trauma, it just started to cost too much. And that's, I think, what makes it really difficult for many of us in these dynamics is sometimes the dynamic starts off really amazing and we have all these hopes and we pour all our hopes and dreams into this marriage or this partnership. And then bit by bit, the cost starts to creep in. And the cost began to be my mental health. It began to be my ability to feel calm and regulated. It began to be my peace. It began to be my life purpose. You know, my life purpose, I at that time I really did know that a lot of my life purpose was my work. And with the amount that I had on my plate from the dynamics in the relationship, spending time with our kids, um, my own dysregulation around all of that, it was enacting the cost of me not being able to show up fully in my work and in what was so important to me in my life purpose in that way. And I found myself, even though I didn't want to, even though I was trying my hardest not to, I was sacrificing things that fulfilled me in order to keep the relationship and the dynamic afloat. And even though at the time my previous partner and I were not on the same page around this, he had a very different take on things, a very different view of the reality. I ultimately, thank goodness, had to and did listen to that inner voice for me that was saying, I am drowning. I cannot continue to do this. This is not going, this is not sustainable. Now, I want to explain for so many of you why and why I'm sharing this story and why I'm letting you guys in even more to this dynamic, is because looking back, that was one of the hardest things I have had to do thus far. Um, I would say my divorce probably, this was probably one of the top five hardest things I've had to do, maybe even top three, was this breakup. And why I want to share and talk about it, and why I'm kind of letting you guys behind the scenes with me into a deeper discussion around this, is because so many of us in this dynamic don't understand that when we are leaving a good guy with deep wounds, it can often be harder than leaving a toxic relationship that you can spot on the surface. That's why so many of you in these dynamics will tell me, I wish he would have an affair, or I wish he would hit me. I know that sounds extreme, but I've actually had women tell me, I wish there was a clear line that would allow me to feel okay about leaving. And why that is, is because in dynamics like this, it is your empathy that becomes the cage that won't let you leave, even though you know you are drowning. Oof. Right. I'm like, oh man. I just I think it's because it's also raw for me recently, having all of this come back up, just all of these deep, deep feelings of love and the conflicting feelings of knowing, like when you you love someone and you know that what you have to do, that the right choice for you is something they're not going to be happy with and something they are going to be upset about. Mm-hmm. That feeling right there is so difficult for so many of us. Now, as I was starting to research this episode, right, of diving into like, okay, what made it so difficult? I, of course, the phrase that came to mind was healing fantasy. And I went and pulled up Lindsay Gibson's book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and kind of dived back into her commentary around what healing fantasies are. And for sure, this I believe is a huge root of what makes it so difficult in these instances. So for those of us that came from dynamics where we have, you know, maybe insecure attachment wounds, we had parents that were emotionally unavailable or immature. To survive in those environments, we create up stories in our minds as children that involve us at some point finally receiving the love that we hope we will get. And we twist it in all sorts of ways. If I am finally good enough, if I am perfect enough, one day my parent will finally see me. And then this healing fantasy can then end up unconsciously being played out in our relationships in adulthood with our partners. And in the instance with this partner that I had, in our particular instance, I noticed now that early on in the relationship, I fell in love with my partner's potential. I, especially the empathic side of me, through some very deep connected experiences, like realized how much pain he was going through, realized how much he wanted to be loved and known just like I did. And in my naivety at that time, I will say, like so clearly looking back at myself, I think I was still in my own big overarching belief healing fantasy that love could conquer all. And that as long as we just like deeply loved each other, the rest of the pieces would sort them out. And I got to grow up through that relationship to realize nope, I am not an endless well that can just give and give and give. So the best way to think of this is that when we are in a healing fantasy in our relationship, and you can check in right now with your with your marriage, are you living in what could be versus when we are grounded in what currently is? Okay. Healing fantasy is I am hoping that someday this person will do this and we will eventually be like this, versus living in what currently is. And I learned the hard way through that relationship that love alone really cannot save another person who, you know, for whatever reason is currently in a space in their life where they are lacking the current capacity or active willingness to love and heal themselves. Let me say that again. Love alone cannot save someone else who lacks the current capacity or active willingness to love and heal themselves. Boy, did I not know that. I did not know that. And I learned that the hard way in that relationship. Because part of I would say one of the most painful things of that dynamic was that we went so hard and so deep into loving each other that when I finally pulled away, going, Whoa, I don't have enough love to fill this, it was really, really difficult for my previous partner. And it was devastating for him. And I learned through that experience, like, whoa, I have to be very, very conscious of my own limitations, what I can and can't take on. And I need to not be out just falling in love and deeply loving other people without taking responsibility for what I need and have to have in my life as well. It was a huge growing up process for me looking back. And I remember after that being very like soon after that relationship, you know, in the year, in the the six months post that was really when I came into understanding much more about my CBTSD. And I really moved into a space of deciding for myself that I was not going to date anybody, that it was not a secure attachment. I just couldn't. I couldn't for myself and I couldn't for them. I I that is the the coming into and being honest and real with what is. And I think also what made, what makes this part so difficult, okay, accepting that love alone is not going to be able to help this person love and heal themselves, which really gets to the core of when I talk about, you know, when I said in the episode, like a good guy who has deep wounds, in the mother hunger episode I gave just a few weeks ago, I talked about how when we have insecure attachment wounds from childhood, when we have deep mother wounds, deep mother hunger, it does not mean we don't love our parents in our family. It means we don't love ourselves. And that is the peace that you may run into, where your partner loves you deeply. This previous partner of mine loved me deeply, would have done anything for me, was in fact, in a lot of ways, abandoning himself to try and stay with me at all costs. And that does not a secure relationship make. I needed somebody who loved themselves so deeply that they would do whatever it took to figure out those parts that would allow them to love themselves. Because when they love when your partner loves themselves and you love yourself enough, that's that secure attachment piece. Then we can come into the relationship balanced with each other. Um, or even, you know, in my dynamic, which I'll talk about a little bit later with my current partner Joe, he is more of a secure attachment than me. But because there's at least one of us in secure attachment, it's allowing me to heal and to come into more secure attachment. When both of us are insecurely attached, we just cannot seem to get heads above water. And that's the dynamic I think many of you find yourselves in, and where you're you're experiencing this, man, I really love this person. Maybe they really love you back. And why can't we seem to still make the relationship work? So this is where I want to take you guys into a concept that I've been playing with recently that's really, I think, been coming. It's been beautiful watching my brain just kind of bring this to the forefront and start analyzing in a different way. Um, God, I love, I love now that I see and understand that I have ADHD, I'm like, oh, this is, you know, yes, there are difficult parts about ADHD for sure. And when you start supporting yourself in those ways, it can really become. Um, I do love calling and thinking of it as like a its own little superpower. I'm not a superhero and I am not a savior, but I do have some superpowers due to the ADHD. And one of the things that it's been doing lately is really coming to relationships when I'm coaching my clients from a space of thinking about the marriage, the relationship, the dynamic much more neutrally as a kind of math equation around compatibility. And ah, how yummy this has been for me. It has just been making my coaching so much more crisp and clear. Because I think what really muddies the waters, especially when we are in a dynamic with potentially divorcing a good guy, um, that we don't, you know, have clear, uh, like so many of you want, like, oh, he's the villain and I'm the good person. No, still a good person. But we want, we we bring in all that emotional drama of someone's got to be the victim, someone's got to be the villain to make getting divorced okay. And coming at it from this equation idea allows me to just kind of calculate. It's like, what about this section? What about this section? What about this section? What are the numbers we have here, here, here, here, here? And then what are the numbers that we get out of this? And if we have numbers that are like above this range, okay, we're gonna be able to kind of work with them. And if we're low in all these ranges, this just may not be a fit. So some of the areas that I've been just naturally, I wish, y'all, I wish I had an actual equation that I could just plug everything into. But the equation is something that's been honed in my brain over thousands and thousands of hours of coaching women, considering divorce at this point. So the equation is just something my brain naturally does. But it comes to the relationship wanting to understand various parts of the dynamic. I like to think of them as like the variables, you know, and some of those variables are okay, what is both of your childhood histories? What is the childhood trauma that we have there? You know, what are the dynamics for you with your parents? What are the dynamics for your partner with his or her parents? What do we have going in the past? So childhood history, then we also have to factor in like relationship history. So not only do we have however many decades you, you know, 20 years perhaps that you had with your family, but then how many years were we in the marriage and what was happening in the marriage? What's the water under the bridge that's getting created then in the relationship that you're currently in? Then we're factoring in other pieces like neurobiology and mental health. Do we have diagnosed or perhaps undiagnosed conditions? Do we have addictions currently within the dynamic? Do we have traumas that happened? You know, did we have a sibling die? Did we have a parent die? Do we have potential active depression or anxiety? Then we factor in current life stages and you know, do we have children in the dynamic? How did adding children into the dynamic change things? Do we have current dynamics with parents or extended family that's filtering into the relationship? Then we add in like the financial pieces, right? Have we had career volatility? Do we have current income stress? How's our housing stability? Do we have attachment wounds from childhood? Do we have any active willingness in the past to seek professional help, or do we have emotional denial of it all throughout? This is just a few of the like areas that my brain goes to when I am working with a client to decipher, okay, is this a dynamic that can evolve and we can stay and we can create something different because we've got two partners based off the equation and the history and the history and the relationship where like we can make it work? Or do we have some serious areas in this equation where just because these dynamics are what they are, because we are staying grounded in what is, it may be incredibly difficult, like if not impossible to do this. Now, I actually had the opportunity yesterday to do this with a client that I jumped on a call with. And we were coming to a specific area in her marriage. In fact, she was specifically asking the question, you know, I just at the at the moment, her body does not want to be intimate or um sexual at all with her husband. And the question for her was like, will that come back? And I just tracked back with her. I was like, okay, let's track back into his history, your history, the history and the relationship. And as we went back through that, it was really illuminating and eye-opening for her to go, oh, wow, wait a second. There are patterns that have been here from the very beginning and that haven't gone away, and that over multiple decades of a marriage have not been addressed, that her partner is unwilling to address, unwilling to look at. Read it, it's life-changing. In it, she talks about how depending on the type of parent that you had, you will either become an internalizer or an externalizer. And I love now having these words to bring here on the podcast because that's typically what I have thought of. And in my episode where I talk about the narcissism and codependency spectrum, I realized narcissists tend to be more externalizers, whereas codependents tend to be more internalizers. And in her dynamic, her husband has tended to be more of an externalizer, thinking she is the problem and she needs to change. Where her, as the internalizer, has internalized all of that and really created these stories around her sexuality and who she is, that in her specific instance, which was perfect, you know, um, she actually has an affair partner. I was able to contrast that with how she shows up with her affair partner. And it was like, wait a second, all these stories that your husband has told you are the problem with your sex life that seemed to imply that you are broken and there's an issue with you. When we check in with your sexual experiences with your affair partner, they don't match. You're not the same person. So what do we have going on here? Right. And it's through that process, it was realizing, like, oh, wow, a lot of the things she thought she knew about herself or the things that had come out of the dynamic with her husband maybe weren't actually true about her. Could be, you know, her partner projecting some of his own unresolved things onto her, which happens with externalizers, um, which I've, you know, historically labeled more, you know, narcissistically, they tend to look outside of themselves to fix the problem. It's not something I need to address, it's something you need to address. But all of that has compounded over years and years and years, decades in her case. And now, you know, she's about halfway through her life looking at the future, going, what is available going forward? And one of the things I think I helped her acknowledge most was realizing the the amount of time it takes for individuals to do the type of deep work that would be necessary and that she's been doing for the last 10 years and that her husband is just barely coming to. And from that space, we start to get into a much more honest appraisal of what is actually possible in the relationship rather than continuing to stay from this hopeful thought of like, well, maybe someday we'll get back to this. Where when we checked in and actually went back and looked at stuff, we realized there was really not much to get back to because who they were and how young they were when they met and the dynamics in the very beginning never even really created a foundation to get back to. So that's just a little glimpse into the the many, many facets that are involved when you are considering divorcing a human that you love immensely, who, you know, in your mind is a quote, good guy. And yet what is presenting for you in your life is that the relationship is not working in various ways. This is the kind of deeper work that has to be acknowledged. Now, I also want to take you, not only did I like I loved that example with her yesterday, I came off of it and I was like, oh my God, this is just why this like, I don't know what I'm gonna call it. Maybe it's gonna be called like combat compatibility math or the compatibility equation. I don't know, but this helps so much to kind of get us to a neutral space of instead of um I'm the person at fault or he's the person at fault, realizing it's just two people and the math may just not be mathing. And that was the case in my relationship with the pre my previous partner. In our dynamic, I can look back now and like do my own like post uh analysis around the math. I look back and I realize there were just so many dynamics of in our case at the time, I had undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD, which I'm like, oh man, that right there, really, really tough. Um, he also had, you know, active addiction management struggles, which is very, very common. I I want another thing that I come to so just like honestly and transparently is that when we have partners that have not been taught how to process their emotions, when humans don't know how to feel, they have to use substances to numb because it is too painful to be a human unfiltered and right up against your feelings if you don't know how to be with them. You have to escape somehow. And so, you know, addiction to work, addiction to working out, addiction to food, addiction to alcohol. Pick your, pick your thing. Everybody's gonna have something that they have to use when we don't have the skills to be able to do that. And in in my previous partner's case, he did. He had his own addictions that he was struggling with. In our instance, we both had young children on both sides that required intense uh management resources pouring into while both of us, you know, in our own ways, were needing our own resourcing. So you take two adults who both have young children and then you put them together. And now we're supposed to be the ones like resourcing each other and resourcing those children. There's not enough resources to go around. In fact, I'm working with I'm working with one of my one-on-one clients right now who I am coaching around this exact piece because she is in a dynamic post-divorce with a partner who has children. She does not, but she's been noticing, like, man, it takes a lot. And I said, Yes, we have got to be extra resourcing you if we're going to be able to provide and sustain. Once again, my brain's just doing the math, all the things that you're wanting to be able to pour into, including this dynamic with your partner and his children and the business that you're building. It just is what it is. Another piece for me and my previous partner that was difficult is we were both in, you know, financial flux. I was in entrepreneurship. We were both trying to um really figure out what we wanted there. And then just big, big insecure attachment dynamics that honestly were there from the beginning. Pretty soon in the in the relationship, I saw it, but I didn't understand insecure attachment like I do now. Um, and then, you know, a lot of codependency on both of us. This was uh an example of two wonderful, empathic, loving, very codependent humans trying to make a relationship work. And two people abandoning themselves to try and make the relationship and the other person happy does not a solid foundation make. And the result for us was, you know, that even with deep, deep love in the dynamic, the sheer stress of the environment and those unmanaged, you know, unresourced internal conditions just gradually and over time led to burnout and emotional collapse. And that's a big one that I want you guys to remember when you are going, okay, is this relationship perhaps um, you know, is this a dynamic like what Britta's talking about? I want you to look at your, you know, the the line, the graph of your mental health, the graph of your emotions over the trajectory of the relationship. Like, have you become more resourced? Have you become more stable emotionally? Have you become less burnt out? If not, if actually those things have gotten worse as the relationship have gone on, that's definitely something that you want to be honest with yourself about. Because, like I said previously, pouring and pouring endless love into another person or into a relationship does not actually fix someone else's internal wounds that can go far, far deeper. In fact, I guarantee they do because we get into relationships with people who come from families, who come from parents, who come from their own dynamics. Perhaps they come from a previous marriage. There is so much history there that doesn't involve us that has to be considered. It cannot just be, and we love each other, and it all works out. Now, let's contrast this, okay, with my current relationship with my partner Joe. And in this dynamic, I also, you know, it's just helpful to look at who I was when I met my partner Joe. I was a very different person when I'd met my previous partner, mainly because I'd already gone through the relationship with this previous partner. And I had grown up a lot from that relationship. I had realized, whoo, I can't just fall in love with anybody and everybody. I understood my CPTSD more. I was more committed to only entering relationships that I felt I could really heal and that had a partner that was more securely attached than me because I was starting to be really honest about the level of insecure attachment that I had. So some of the differences, if we're thinking of the equation, you know, the compatibility equation for me and my partner Joe now is that, you know, big one. I um have now, you know, actively uh was looking into ADHD, have now been diagnosed and I'm medicated for it. That has been a huge shift in our equation, which I love talking about it this way because I'm like for the Those of you that have been wondering, you know, maybe you're staying in your marriage because you're like, I just don't know. Is it me or it's him? And I might have ADHD, but I haven't gone and gotten tested. Go. Go take care of the things that you need to take care of on your side. Or maybe you have ADHD, but your medication isn't working like it used to, and you've been putting it off. No. Go. This is the whole we clean up our side of the street, and then we get honest about whether our partner and their side of the street, whether it's going to be a fit or a match on our end. With Joe, I'm just, I mean, straight off the gate, some some big differences is Joe is significantly older than me. That does not naturally create more stability. But because of that, he's gone through a lot of life experiences and he's had more time to do his work. My previous partner was younger than me. And honestly, he'd he'd just recently gotten out of um, he just recently gotten divorced when we first started dating. So he still had a lot of his own growth to go through in understanding himself. Um completely different dynamic with Joe is that Joe's kids are grown. So we don't have a, you know, a combined family that we're navigating. Um, you know, that that's that's huge. I actually came out of that previous relationship with my previous partner and I realized I am not someone who can have somebody who has young kids. That was just another, like, I know myself better now. I cannot date somebody who I'm going to have to also raise their children. As much as I loved his children, as much as there were parts of me that wanted and were, you know, kind of falling into that fairy tale idea of, oh, you know, we just end up being this big, happy family. We have to step into our like, like we put on our big girl panties and we step into the big girl boots, and we go, what is actually sustainable for my nervous system based off of my previous trauma, my insecure attachment, and what I need. Another big change for me and Joe is my kids are older. Um, you know, Joe is able to reduce a lot of my daily workload. We at the moment for Joe and I, you know, we're still figuring out financial pieces and I'm still, you know, developing and building out my career as an entrepreneur. But because, and this is the equation part, because we have higher, I don't know if you want to say higher, but because we have better balances in certain other areas, that does not hit as hard. Maybe it's because there's just so much more resourcing in these other areas where there was not resourcing in the previous relationship. And so in our dynamic, instead of it leading to, you know, a negative capacity as we go through the relationship, ours actually leads to a positive capacity and even a like surplus at times, because we have enough of these variables inside that are supporting our individual stability and our connection with each other that both of us are thriving and the relationship is thriving. And that is not from us like constantly needing to pour in and support it as much as I think we just come into the relationship with a baseline level in both of us. It's like we take our two different, I like to think of it almost as like, you know, we each have our own individual maps and we overlay those maps on each other. And the way they overlay happens to work really well for both of us. So we're coming out at the starting gate, already having things lined up. One of the biggest things is that there is no self-abandonment required to make the relationship work. And I think a big piece of that, if I had to identify like what made that different in mine and Joe's relationship, was that yes, he loves me so deeply. There is so much love in this relationship. But he does not love me at the expense of himself. And I've talked about this on the episode, on the, I'm sorry, on the podcast before in an episode where I mentioned that when faced with, you know, a dynamic where I was wanting something that Joe was not wanting, and he knew for himself that that was not going to work for his nervous system, for his attachment style, he was unwilling to abandon himself to stay in the relationship. And that, oh, that piece, um I think it's really what has allowed us the amount of love that he has for himself and the amount of just like knowing himself. He knows himself very clearly. And that has allowed me and him knowing himself to come to know myself better. That I would say is a huge piece of what was missing in the previous dynamic. Was I trying to figure myself out, my previous partner was trying to figure himself out, and there just was no foundation footing for either of us to stand on. And when I look back at my relationship with my previous partner, I see now so much more than our feelings, which were intense, but I'm actually able to see like this this vision. It was almost like there were two people swimming upstream, you know, they're trying to hold hands with each other, but we are swimming upstream in this storm of a deluge of variables that just weren't going to work for us. Like I mentioned, I had undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD. We both had young kids, we're carrying financial stress, business building on my end, insecure attachment for both of us, unaddressed, addiction issues, like all of that compounds. So maybe take a second and think about your own relationship and your own marriage and think of what some of the variables coming down the stream towards you and your relationship and your partner might be. So even though me and my previous partner loved each other, the math was in the red. And there was no denying it. I I knew that. And there was not enough structural support to hold us up or resourcing to be poured back into that. Which fast forward to today with Joe, as I already outlined, there's so many things that are different that I can see now allow the environment to be one where secure attachment gets to, it's got like enough space to breathe, enough support, enough of a safe environment that the secure attachment can start flourishing. If your, it's another good analogy, right? If your garden is like constantly being hit by tornadoes and hurricanes and sleet and hail, uh just because of all the dynamics going on, we we're not gonna expect those plants to flourish as as much as we would in an environment where they're being supported, where there's sun and there's rain, and an environment that is conducive to growth. So big takeaway from this is realizing that love cannot override structural deficits. I just I want so generously to let that land for so many of you that have spent years hoping that there will be a magical healing fantasy that comes out of your relationship while without even knowing it, you're you're unconsciously hiding from yourself what is right in front of you. The the dynamics, the parts, the math that is right here is what needs to be looked at. Now that is the heart of what I wanted to talk about on this episode. Just kind of diving in with all of you into how when we are in a dynamic with someone that we still love deeply, who we believe is a good person, that does not change the very real consequences of those deep wounds that they may have or the different variables in the relationship that just may not be something that makes it a viable and supportive relationship for the two people within it. With this said, I do want to, and I'm not going to be able to talk about it on this episode. So I will hopefully in the future be able to do an episode specifically on once we know this, how then do we actually end the relationship? Or how do we, you know, break up? Because I found it to be really agonizingly difficult to walk away when for me with that previous partner, like the love, the chemistry, it was all still very, very present for us. And in my experience, I want, I'm not, like I said, not going to go deep into this right now, but I just want to say so clearly for so many of you that are finding it difficult to take the next step forward. Like maybe you do know, okay, Britta, the variables really aren't a fit, but I'm really struggling to make the next step. Or maybe you have said it and then you've gone back into the marriage for another six months or a year in this relationship with my previous partner. I had multiple instances of breaking up and then getting back together. I just want to say that I really think in these dynamics, and I want to normalize that it is probably not going to be a clean, one and done event for many of us. And that that does not mean anything has gone wrong. In fact, I want to offer, and what I'll hopefully talk about in that future episode, is that I think it can often take multiple iterations in instances like this where we are, you know, realizing, ah, this is not a fit. We are trying to leave, but then maybe we go back, we try again, we start testing out the reality. Maybe if we change this, maybe if we change this, and then, you know, we trange a few variables, but if we continue to realize it's not a fit, it's just this process of letting your nervous system gradually catch up to what your brain may already know, but is very, very afraid of, you know, because a huge piece often when we are leaving the good guy is grief. It's grieving that the fairy tale fantasy ending you hoped would happen in this marriage is not going to be the case. And I said this recently, I think I said it on my Substack question and answer that that's one of the hardest things for us to accept is a story that ends in um, I'll, you know, on substack, I called it a tragedy, you know, a tragedy of two people who deeply love each other and just because the math doesn't math are not a fit. The analogy I've often thought of is, you know, two people out in the ocean drowning, and two people out drowning does not, you know, one person getting saved, both people getting saved make. If there's nobody who has a life raft, if there's nobody being thrown a lifesaver, we just have two people drowning. And often, you know, when two people are drowning, the other in there in that fear, we can end up drowning each other. So it's coming into, and that's why I want to come back again to what I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, that if you find yourself in this space and you need support, the nuanced support of somebody who understands what it's like to love somebody deeply that you also know you need to leave, I have got you. Okay, you do not have to do this alone, nor are you meant to. It can be a very um difficult and scary process, especially when your nervous system at that moment, maybe that's the person that you have, you know, grown the most with, maybe are the most enmeshed with, and your nervous system sees them as safety and familiarity, and there's really no one else. Or maybe you're super afraid, like I was with my previous partner, that if I left this dynamic, I was never gonna find someone that I was gonna love again this deeply. I was never gonna find someone that I was gonna feel this much chemistry with. That was a real legitimate, absolutely terrifying thing for me at the time. Um, and I had no answer three, four years ago when that was happening. I did not know that there was a secure attachment partner named Joe in the future for me. All I knew was that what was was not working. I was drowning. And thankfully at that point, I um through the support, I had an amazing, my best friend Quinn was an incredible coach during that period. Talk about someone who really held me in the nuance, who so beautifully just helped me trust myself each time I would break up and then go back. She just stayed with me. We worked through it until eventually, after multiple iterations, I was ready to fully step away. And as difficult as it was, because there was so much pain and so much love still there, bit by bit, as the months passed, I was able to find my feet, lean in, find my resourcing again, get back into secure, you know, more and more secure attachment with myself. And then eventually, as you guys know, I had the amazing opportunity to meet my partner, my partner Joe, who is someone that I get to be in a relationship with without the sacrificing of my life purpose, without feeling like I am treading water and unable to get my head up. That is in no way shade on my previous partner. It just is what is. And I hope that this episode will help so many of you listening to come to these conversations, to come to thinking about your partner who may be a really good guy without needing the permission of making them a bad person or making them a villain to be able to just say, Hey, the math doesn't math. Now there's one last thing that I want to leave with y'all before I finish this episode, which is that for so many of us that, you know, maybe, maybe you are right now on this episode realizing, like, oh my gosh, okay, I don't think the math actually maths. Wait a second. Um, I may be in a relationship in a marriage with a partner who also has insecure attachment, and neither of us have enough of a foundation to be able to like really heal into something different. And then what I see so many of your brains do is your brain will immediately go to the next space of, oh my God, if this is how it's always been and this is what I've always experienced, will I ever be able to experience true, secure attachment in my future? Is it even worth it? Can I figure this out? And I just want to say, with so much like, big sister, God, I love you and I've got you energy that yes, you can. I do not see myself as some. I remember a client once said to me, she was like, Well, aren't you just like a magic unicorn, like things work out for you? And I was like, no, no, no, no. I don't see myself as someone that has a magic special past that gets to have things that other people don't get to in this lifetime. I absolutely believe, especially for those of you listening, that have deep soul calls and things that are drawing you forward, that your life has the future that you most desire ahead in it. And if part of that is having a securely attached partner that you get to heal into safety with, that you get to feel deeply. And I'd even go so far as to say, like, I don't know if unconditionally loved is the best word. That's kind of the only word I can think of. Obviously, it's conditional with me and Joe in that he would never abandon himself for me, right? But it's as close to unconditional as it can get, in that he just genuinely loves and adores me for me. And if that is something that you are wanting and you currently find yourself not in that dynamic, I want to say clearly that that dynamic is possible for you. I really, at that moment with my previous partner, when I was coming through a dynamic where like I had felt more love, more intimacy, more connection than I'd felt with anybody else, there was a huge fear for me that I was never gonna find that again, that this would be, you know, the best it would ever be. And I just needed to be okay with it. And I'm really grateful that I had at least enough of a foundation in myself up to that point to know I knew when I was in over my head, I knew when I needed to be honest, and I knew how to take the rough road of choosing myself and disappointing someone else over staying and making somebody else okay while really denying and self-abandoning. And here I am now, um, almost three years later, and can say with certainty that when you choose yourself, I truly believe it is the greatest gift you can give to both you and your partner. Contrary to the world that makes it seem like being honest about the math is selfish, that being honest about like, look, this just is not working for me, and the math is not mathing, and I can't do this. I think it's one of the bravest, most adult things we can do to really look, look at the math, to look at what is, to step out of the fantasies, to be real and authentic and see the hard realities in front of us. And from there be honest about what we can do. And honest that we cannot pour enough love, attention into someone else's life or the way they see themselves to fill holes that they may not be ready or even want to mend themselves. Boy, do I see this in so many of my women that I coach with partners who have deep, deep wounds that we want them to look at, we want them to go get help for. And they either cannot or are not ready to. When that is the case, I hope so many of us will step back, back into what we can control, back into honesty about how we can actually show up in this dynamic, what our needs actually are, are they being met? And come from deep hope, from what I'm saying right here, that secure attachment is available. Do not stay because you are afraid that there will not be more ahead. I have seen over and over in my history, in women that I coach, that when we lean into trusting that there is enough, that we can follow our gut, that we can be honest, and that no matter how somebody reacts, we can follow the next step for us. I've seen those next steps lead into the things we desire most, which for me has been a dynamic with a secure attachment partner that I can heal with. It is definitely what I need in order to be able to fulfill my life's purpose. I said that this week on one of our uh community coaching calls, that I really believe each of us deserve to be loved and seen and known and supported in the ways we most want. And at this time and this day and age, a lot of what prevents us is staying because we hope that someone will change. And, you know, there are instances where people can. That's why I do the work I do in the space of considering, you know, figuring out how much is this that we're, you know, is it in our lane? Is it something we need to communicate more clearly? And how much is it just something that is purely not going to change and that we need to be honest about? That's what I've got for you all with today's episode. Thank you for dropping in with me around this topic that I feel is so important for our time for this day and age. This is the theme. Um, I would love for you to share this episode if you happen to know a sister, a girlfriend that is potentially in this exact dynamic and struggling to know what to do. Send this episode on over to her with a little, hey babe, I see you. I know it's complicated. Also, for those of you coming off of this that are like, oof, oof, I want more. The links are down below for my 90-minute session. That's a great fit for those of you that maybe just need a like clarity. Brita, let's drop in, let's talk about this history, let's talk about my history, let's talk about the history of the relationship, and then providing you a roadmap for what are the next steps to take. That's an incredible resource that I have for that kind of approach. But I also have my deep dive coaching container for those of you that want somebody to go through, walk each step with you through the journey of making this decision. Both of the links will be down below. I'll be very excited to hopefully meet some of you and get to dive deeper around this question of how we move through and understand the process of leaving a good guy who just has very deep wounds. So till next week, or till potentially seeing you on one of those, I'm sending you all love. Bye, babes.