These are my personal opinions.

Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well-being.

This should be an interesting episode because it's going to put a spotlight on my level of intelligence.

It's going to highlight just how much I may not know.

And I start off saying that because there's a message that I received, someone who wrote

to me and said, I've been listening to your show for three years, and I can't tell you

how much it's helped me through many difficult situations. And they have been through a relationship that was complicated, a mix of love and

abuse and it took me a long time to realize how intertwined those dynamics can become and how

abuse isn't always clear. Sometimes I still don't know who the abuser was, him or me.

I'm a recovering addict.

I've been in programs like AA and SLA, but relationships have always been one of my biggest challenges.

I often lose myself in helping my partners, neglecting my own needs until I'm deeply resentful,

and then I punish them.

No one wants to feel like they're not enough or doing everything to a substandard level,

and the relationship eventually dissolves.

I grew up in a very demanding toxic and dysfunctional family where only success and performance were valued, And because of that, I've developed this strange

pattern when a relationship isn't working, I switch into, quote, boss mode and I start running it like a

company. In fact, I even built a company with my last partner, which really highlighted this pattern for me.

I've done a lot of spiritual work, but I can't seem to break this cycle of abandoning

myself in hopes of being praised by people who don't actually want my leadership, which just makes

me controlling and hypocritical. And another thing I've noticed is that I don't choose partners

who are on my level educationally. I have a master's and bachelor's degree, and I keep

...