I will come back to the personality hacker podcast. My name is Joel Mark Whitt and I'm

Antonio Dodge. There's this weird phenomena happening around relationships. It's almost

like diametrically opposed. I see some people in this whole, I'm not going to be in a relationship.

I just need to work on myself. Relationships are stifling. They restrict me from my growth

through the world, the life I want to live, the world I want to be in, et cetera, et cetera.

And then on the other side, you have people that are like all about relationships. I can't

wait to get into the next relationship. I'm sad this last one ended. I want to be in a relationship.

I'm more of who I am in relationship than not. And I can't wait to be with that person,

that special person. I don't think either one of these are bad and wrong on their extremes.

I think these are very valid viewpoints to come to. And often we talk a lot about relationships

can be challenging. And there's a bunch of growth that we can do as individuals

outside of relationship. And we talk about how relationships can be rewarding.

But we don't often talk about the growth, the personal growth that can happen inside

of relationships. Because I think you and I and Tonya would believe that there is

growth that can happen inside a romantic pair bond relationship that is impossible

or at least not very accessible outside of that dynamic.

So what I hear you saying and saying is that there is these two camps

that on one side, the assumption is that growth happens when you're alone.

Like you've got to be out of a relationship in order to discover yourself and to grow as a person.

And then on the other side is this idea of like I need to be in relationship

and when you get out of one, you immediately go into the next one.

And in that camp, even though there's nothing wrong with that person,

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