Hello and welcome to the Mark Rove's podcast. You know, when I think of us being in relationship

with other people or just being in the world, I often think about how little all of me has been

in the world, you know, that my authentic, fully

expressed who I actually am, what I'm actually feeling, bringing that to the relationship,

sharing all of that, allowing my partner the same space to do the same, because when I'm not doing

it, I'm not going to be comfortable with them doing it

because I won't know how to hold that authenticity, that truth. And so when I look at my own

experience of that, that, you know, probably more of my authentic self was in relationship

until I was like 17, 18 got really hurt and then kind of kept him alive for a bit,

got really hurt at 19, and then really dialed it back and became who I needed to be even more

so to be liked, to be loved, to receive admiration, to get whatever, you know, it was that

made me feel safe in relationship and

protected me from really deeper intimacy, but ultimately I was protecting myself from deeper

hurt because when we love and we're hurt in that experience of love, instead of getting to know

why we got hurt and where and what are the skills we need to develop

in order to not be, to not experience the same relational breakdown, if we want to call it that,

we instead of doing that, we actually associate the depth of love and feeling with the pain.

So if I touch that depth of love and feeling, then I'm going to get hurt.

So I just won't touch that depth of love and feeling. I'll maintain control around it.

And we don't even consciously do this. This is occurring unconsciously. And so two people in

relationship generally have these two unconscious actions going on.

And it shows up as the same fights, the same self-sabotage, the same self-abandonment,

...