Captain's Log. Star Date, 2024.
We're floating somewhere in the cosmos, but we've lost our map.
Yeah, because you refuse to ask for directions.
It's space gem, there are no roads.
Good point. So where are we headed?
Into the unknown, of course.
Join us on In Our Own World as we uncover hidden truths, navigate the depths of culture, identity and the human spirit.
With a hint of mischief, one episode at a time.
Buckle up and listen to In Our Own World on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
Trust us, it's out of this world.
Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from?
Like what's the history behind bacon -wrapped hotdogs?
Hi, I'm Eva Longoria.
Hi, I'm Maite Gomez -Rejón.
Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back.
And this season, we're taking an even bigger bite.
Out of the most delicious food and its history.
Seeing that the most popular cocktail is Margherita, followed by the Mojito from Cuba.
And the pinoconadas from Puerto Rico.
Listen to Hungry for History on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
I'm NK. And this is Basket Case.
What is wrong with me?
A show about the ways that mental illness is shaped by not just biology.
Swaps of different meds.
But by culture and society.
By looking closely at the conditions that cause mental distress, I find out why so many of us are struggling to feel sane, what we can do about it, and why we should care.
Oh, look at you give me therapy, girl.
Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
There's so much beauty in Mexican culture like mariachis, delicious cuisine and even lucha libre.
Join us for the new podcast, Lucha Libre Behind the Mask.
A 12 episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of lucha libre.
And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, Emperor of Lucha Libre and a WWE superstar.
Listen to Lucha Libre Behind the Mask on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you stream podcasts.
Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s.
The podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show.
Welcome back to the podcast, my old listeners, my new listeners, wherever you are in the world.
It's great to have you here back for another episode as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s.
The right person, but tragically presented to us at the wrong time, who amongst us hasn't had someone in our life or still does who is seemingly perfect for us, who could be the love of our lives, but something is kind of coming between you to distance, life changes, other people, emotional readiness,
timing. It always comes down to timing and these obstacles kind of mean that you can't be together.
It is so painful, I think, to finally find someone who you actually really like, especially knowing how hard it is in the current kind of dating environment.
And, you know, you really like them.
Everything is going so well, or it has this beautiful potential only for it to not work out because of something beyond your control.
We are so used to relationships not working out because of something wrong with us or something wrong with the other person.
The party is in the relationship, but when it's timing, when it's something completely unrelated to who we are in that moment, it can feel particularly cruel.
What's even more, and I would say the even harder part of this experience, is that we are often left in this perpetual state of what if.
What if it could have been different?
And more than that, what if one day things do change?
What if all the obstacles are removed?
What if the timing does work out for us?
Even when we know that that's probably not likely or possible, you are kind of still left with this slither of hope and this expectation.
You're still thinking about them and it can kind of keep us in the way of moving forward and moving on.
The interesting thing to me is that right person wrong time, is that actually the case in most scenarios or is this way of thinking actually a myth, actually something really comforting that we tell ourselves.
I have a rather specific opinion on this.
Right person wrong time, I don't think it exists in the way that we think because I think that if it is the right person, timing can never be wrong.
We make it work. So sometimes these obstacles are a way of allowing you to move forward without them.
And it is true, of course, that certain people do find their way back to each other.
But I think that often these examples are the exception, not the rule.
And when they do get back together, they're not the same person anymore.
Right? It's not that they were the same person as when you initially thought that they were the one.
The only couples who can really successfully do this are those who have really changed from the person they used to be, their circumstances are different, maybe their values are different.
And perhaps that means that they weren't even the right person in the first place.
There's a different version of them.
There's changed version of them that is the right person.
But for most of us, this kind of thinking actually does us more harm than good.
And it keeps us trapped by essentially our own misplaced hope.
We have all this hope that someone will return and things will be different and that we can make it work.
We can make it work no matter what.
And sometimes that's just not always the case.
There are a lot of reasons we think that someone is perfect for us when in fact they aren't.
And I do believe that there is not just one person out there for us.
We have many soulmates, many loves, many connections.
So how do we release ourselves from pining after just that one, just that one person.
On top of that, I think regardless of what comes in the future, we actually are better off finding a way to move forward, even if we think that one day things could change.
In fact, I think in that moment when it's obvious that right now you can't be together, it's not your job to start exploring all the hypotheticals in which it could be the case.
It's your job to concentrate on what else is out there, knowing that if it happens, it happens.
Having that radical acceptance that we'll talk about later.
But eventually, I think on that path of just letting it be and moving forward regardless, you do get to a place of just again, acceptance and knowing that things will always happen in the strangest times.
And maybe that will involve you getting back with this person, but it might also involve you turning around and just meeting someone completely different who you realize actually is the one.
So there is a lot to be discussed in today's episode.
And of course, the main thing I want to talk about is the psychology behind why we have this connection to certain people, why we have this bond, and what it is that creates this kind of poor timing in a relationship.
There are also a lot of cognitive and mental biases that keep us connected to someone, even when we are ready to move on.
And I also want to talk about those, how to move past the urge to stick around and the urge to cling on to this potential.
I also, of course, want to give some psychological therapeutic instructions on how to move past this right person, wrong time situation, and how to have a real open mindset that doesn't restrict your openness to new relationships.
And that's especially crucial during our 20s when there is just so much love out there.
There are so many people out there that were yet to meet.
So lots to talk about, lots contained in this episode.
If you are someone who is currently struggling with having seemingly met the right person at the wrong time and you don't know where to go from here, this episode is definitely for you.
So without further ado, let's break down the psychology, let's break down the research, and let's break down the advice I have for the right person at the wrong time.
Right person, wrong time basically refers to a relationship that is seemingly perfect, but it's held back by circumstances often outside of our individual control.
The alternative is obviously wrong person, right time, where you are super ready and you're prepared to be in love and you're ready to date and be coupled up and everything seems to be going smoothly, but you know, you just don't feel the spark.
So exhausting, right?
There's so much that can go wrong and that can be off kilter when it comes to love.
But when it comes to wrong timing, there are a lot of situations that can create this tension in the relationship, this tension between kind of will we, won't we?
The future is very uncertain because of the environment and the context in which the relationship kind of sits.
The biggest reason people feel like it is the wrong time for their right person is distance.
Long distance or even medium distance, which in my mind I kind of classify as like more than two hours, is incredibly difficult.
My heart truly does go out to anyone who is trying to make a relationship work through distance.
Sometimes that distance is also reflective of different goals, right?
There is the primary frustration of not being able to see that person, not being able to hold them, communicate as well, not being able to create shared in -person memories that kind of creates a real divide.
And then it's the fact that sometimes the distance, again, does indicate that something else is not aligned.
So I have a friend, I'm going to call her Emily for the purposes of the show, and her partner is currently living in Singapore, and she's in rural Australia, training to be a doctor.
And the distance, like, it's not even that, you know, Singapore and Australia are kind of far away, it's like rural Australia it's pretty hard to get to.
And both of them have these huge, huge goals that are super important to them, and neither of them really wanted to compromise as they shouldn't have.
But she was talking to me about the intense strain on their ability to actively be together.
And you do kind of start wondering, is this what's best for my life right now?
Is this actually making me happy?
Is this actually the person that I'm going to grow with where I'm at in this moment?
Actually, according to recent research that was published in the Journal of Marital and Family Psychology, sorry, the biggest factor that people report as contributing to their breakup is that they simply grew apart and realized that their lives were going in different directions.
And sometimes that is reflected in distance, knowing that both of you want different things so intensely.
And you also want to stay together, but eventually something does have to give.
You know, life, fate, fortune, whatever you want to call it, it's also pretty unfair at times.
It doesn't care about your relationship status.
It doesn't care about who you're with, how great it's going before it kind of throws you a curveball.
Sometimes our circumstances also complicate things.
And it doesn't just have to do with distance.
Some situations aside from distance are, you know, when someone is going through a really difficult time and their space for a relationship just naturally becomes a lot smaller.
This could be due to work, poor mental health, poor physical health, chronic health, family problems, other commitments.
These things begin to consume our lives, meaning that it no longer feels like we can give ourselves to another person, not because we love them any less, but because our life is too emotionally full of other stresses to love them right.
This can also be said for significant life changes, right?
And even positive life changes, like when you graduate from university or you get a new or your first full -time job.
There's a really famous study that looked at the biggest life stresses that we tend to encounter across our lives.
This study, it's kind of like an inventory.
It's a scale. It's called the Holmes and Ross Stress Inventory.
And at the top of the scale is really, really significant things.
So the death of a partner, the death of a spouse, divorce, going to prison, those things are naturally going to cause stress and put a strain on every other part of your life.
But then there are also positive experiences like getting a new job, getting back together with someone, getting into a new relationship that can also create stress for us and, you know, actually end up fracturing the relationship.
So even if everything seems perfect, if everything is also changing rapidly, even if it's in a positive direction, that can also bring about that poor timing, even if it is someone who is seemingly incredible.
Finally, and honestly, another hugely common one, sometimes people are just simply not ready for a relationship because of where they're at in their emotional lives.
And this is specifically the case with commitment.
And oh my goodness, do those situations not sting.
When I was 21, I was dating this guy for like six months and everything in my mind, at least was perfect.
We meshed so well. We got along.
I felt like I was really connected to him on this like level.
But the thing that came up time and time again across all these months was that he just simply was very clear that he didn't want a relationship.
It was around this time that, you know, I first learned about a concept called commitment readiness and commitment readiness is this term that came from a research group in Singapore way back when essentially what they say is that we're different.
Every individual is, you know, more or less emotionally prepared to enter into a relationship.
So your preparedness, your willingness to enter into a committed situation will vary based on who you are and where you're at in your life, but also your history and your personality.
And each of us really sits on that scale.
Some of us are very commitment ready.
At times, you know, we crave a relationship.
We are always ready for a relationship or we've been actively maintaining a relationship for a long time.
But some of us experience low commitment readiness, which means that we almost have this innate aversion to committing to someone and to settling down because of a number of factors.
We're scared to be hurt.
We want to play the field.
You know, a relationship seems like too much effort.
That's a big one. Or we've had previous relationship trauma that's left us maybe incredibly hyper independent regardless of it.
When someone is low on commitment readiness, you cannot force them to be more ready for that commitment.
It's something that they kind of have to, you know, not even decide themselves, but rather they need to be in that place.
They need to get themselves to the place of being like, yeah, I really want a relationship.
There's nothing you can do to force them.
That is something that we learn the hard way.
I definitely did. And so, you know, it is almost like timing is a factor there, but you just don't want to be waiting around for when they're going to Monday magically change their mind.
Right. You can kind of almost imagine in those circumstances, like, okay, well, if I'm just, if I just stick around for like two years, one day he's going to, or she's going to like wake up out of this trance and he's like, they're going to want to commit to me fully.
And that is the kind of faulty thinking that we get stuck into.
And it's a big if it's a big if, you know, if they change their mind, then I'll be ready.
But then again, like, is it really your job to just like sit in the waiting area until someone comes out and chooses you?
You know, they get to go off and live their life behind that door.
They get to do whatever they want.
And you just get stuck in the same spot.
I think we invest a lot of time, our precious time waiting for someone to transform and change their mind for us only to realize, you know, that they weren't.
And we could have spent that time really enjoying our other options, but also just our own lives, our own healing journey, our own experiences.
On top of that, one more thing to note, often the things that these emotionally or commitment unready, emotionally unavailable, commitment, unready people, that's the best way I can put it, sometimes and most of the time, the things that they really need to work through in order to become ready for commitment
or emotionally available are things that are best worked on single and alone.
I believe that to my core, that for a relationship to work out the best it possibly can, each person does have to come to the table with an awareness of their baggage.
And not just a commitment to you, but a commitment to unpacking what they can themselves.
And the unfortunate truth for you, if you're pining after this person is that sometimes that takes time and it does take distance.
When it becomes clear that a relationship isn't going to work, there is only so much that you can fight against it, no matter how compatible you think this other person is.
Especially in our 20s, I'm going to say this again, wouldn't the better decision be to let them go?
Let them be and just trust that if it's meant for you, they will come back to you as a different person and in that form, they will be the right person.
But if they don't, you'll be fine anyways.
And we really want to work on prioritizing that I'll be fine anyways, hypothetical.
That is a much more healthy, fruitful, productive outcome, turning the attention back to yourself.
And it involves pouring all that hope and all that expectation that you had for someone else into yourself.
When was the last time that you saw as much potential in yourself as you do in others?
We think so hugely and generously of other people and we see an incredible capacity for them to change and everything about them is golden and wonderful.
But then when we look at ourselves, it's not the same.
I think detaching from the right person who came at the wrong time means suddenly having all that energy in that space just for you.
Listen, I will say there are examples of people reuniting after years apart, like they're in their own fairy tale rom -com, and they get the happy ending that they always deserved.
I actually saw a really beautiful example of this in the news recently of two people in their 60s who were trying to remember it now.
I think they were high school sweethearts.
They broke up at 21.
They then went on to get married to other people and they had children.
And then in their 60s, their spouses died and somehow they reunited and they got married at like 67 or something after more than 40 years separated.
And we do tend to look at those examples and inadvertently be like, hey, well, that could be me.
I see myself in that situation.
This really proves right person wrong time is a thing.
And I'm not trying to deny that.
But the reason this often works out in the future is actually because these people are committed to the idea at the time that they weren't meant to be with each other.
It wouldn't have worked out if one of them spent the next 40 years or the past 40 years pining and wishing and waiting because by the time the other person was ready, like they've done all this growth or this exploration and you're still stuck 40 years before.
The thing that really makes it work is that these people went on to be committed to living a full life.
They had children. They had other partners.
That's what made the reunion possible.
Otherwise, again, one of them would have been stuck in the 1950s and the other one would have been present.
There are unique conditions that really bring people like that back together, including a personal commitment to individual growth that had nothing to do with impressing or trying to win back the other person.
There's also a mutual desire for reconciliation and for forgiveness.
And yes, of course, an element of timing.
However, my problem with right person wrong time thinking, it really occurs when we let this belief disrupt us from moving on because we are under the false pretense or clinging onto this idea that yes, this person must be my soulmate.
No one else will compare.
And so I cannot let go.
Sometimes we use this thinking as justification to keep us in a state of limerance, not out of true love, but because we crave the structure of the relationship and the security of what is known.
As human psychology will tell us that we crave what is familiar and that is a really powerful driver for our emotional attachment to others.
It's a phenomenon actually called the mere exposure effect.
It goes by different names, but the mere exposure effect is probably the primary one.
And basically, in this series of very pioneering studies at the time back in the 80s and the 90s, this researcher and his team essentially showed that we feel most bonded to the people who are around a lot naturally.
Naturally, we like the people that were around a lot more.
But that can also lead us to misinterpret love and liking and soulmate status simply with just plain old familiarity.
That's one reason why we feel unable to disconnect from someone who felt right, who we spend a lot of time with, who's brought us comfort.
I also want to discuss a few more reasons why we get caught up in right person, wrong time thinking, even when it's not helpful, it's incorrect and you would be better off believing something else.
And I also want to dive into how to find that space to grieve and to move on from a situation such as this one, to reach a point of acceptance and reach a point of healing and being ready for the next chapter hold.
So all of that and more after this short break.
I fell to a scene. Dragged.
I'm NK and this is Basket Case.
So I basically had what back in the day they would call a nervous breakdown.
I was crying and I was inconsolable.
It was just very big sudden.
Swaps of different meds.
What is wrong with me?
Oh, let me show you me therapy girl.
Finally, a show for the mentally ill girlies.
On Basket Case, I talked to people about what happens when what we call mental health is shaped by the conditions of the world we live in.
Because if you haven't noticed, we are experiencing some kind of conditions that are pretty hard to live with.
But if you struggle to cope, the society that created the conditions in the first place will tell you there's something wrong with you.
And it will call you a Basket Case.
Listen to Basket Case every Tuesday on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
In a galaxy far, far away.
No babe, that's taken.
We're in our own world, remember?
Right. In our own world.
Where two space cadets.
And totally normal humans.
Sure, totally normal humans.
Embark on a journey across the stars, discovering the wonders of the universe one episode at a time.
We'll talk about life, love, laughter, and why you should never argue with your co -pilot.
Especially when she's always right.
Right. And if we hit turbulence, just blame it on Mercury Retrograde.
Or Emily's questionable space piloting skills.
Hey. Join us on In Our Own World for cosmic conversations, stellar laughs, and super corny dad jokes.
Listen to In Our Own World as a part of the Maikutuda Podcast Network available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
And don't worry, we promise to avoid any black holes.
Most of the time. Do you ever wonder where your favorite foods come from?
Like what's the history behind bacon -wrapped hot dogs?
Hi, I'm Eva Longoria.
Hi, I'm Maite Gomez -Rejón.
Our podcast, Hungry for History, is back.
Season two. Season two.
Are we recording? Are we good?
Oh, we pushed record, right?
Okay. And this season, we're taking in a run bigger bite.
Out of the most delicious food and its history.
Seeing that the most popular cocktail is the margarita, followed by the mojito from Cuba and the pinacola from Puerto Rico.
So all of these, we have, we thank.
Latin culture. There's a mention of blood sausage in Homer's Odyssey that dates back to the 9th century.
B .C. B .C. I didn't realize how old the hot dog was.
Listen to Hungry for History as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
When you think of Mexican culture, you think of avocado, mariachi, delicious cuisine, and of course, lucha libre.
It doesn't get more Mexican than this.
Lucha libre is known globally because it is much more than just a sport and much more than just entertainment.
Lucha libre is a type of storytelling.
It's a dance. Its tradition is culture.
This is Lucha libre Behind the Mask, a 12 episode podcast in both English and Spanish about the history and cultural richness of lucha libre.
And I'm your host, Santos Escobar, the emperor of lucha libre and a WWE superstar.
Join me as we learn more about the history behind this spectacular sport, from its inception in the United States to how it became a global symbol of Mexican culture.
We'll learn more about some of the most iconic heroes in the ring.
This is Lucha libre Behind the Mask.
Listen to Lucha libre Behind the Mask as part of My Cultura podcast network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you stream podcasts.
So why is it that we experienced this right person wrong time feeling besides the fact that this person is our soulmate?
Because we are definitely going to table that explanation for a second.
I think that is the less likely scenario here.
And more often than not, the reason we do feel this way, especially at the end of a relationship, comes down to some more basic psychology.
Firstly, when a relationship does break down because of some external reason, it is easy to attribute everything to this outside reason.
If you still love this person, and I'm sure that you do, you don't want to see them as bad or unkind or cruel.
You don't want to interrogate their decision making.
You want to maintain a sense of integrity for them.
And this is known as the Halo Effect.
Because we love them, we think that they can do no wrong in other areas of your life.
So we might actually have a faulty internal image of their character that is sustaining a right person wrong time mentality.
Maybe it is the case that they really deserve that positive assessment and they are a really, really good person.
But that does not change the truth.
That there is still something neither of you were willing to fix or compromise, which deep down indicates that you do want different things right now, at least right now.
It was eventually going to come to the surface, as these things always do.
It's just that you're confronting it.
Now when you probably would have rather confronted it, well, never.
But second to never, maybe a little bit later down the line.
Wanting different things as we know is a really common reason, if not the most common reason that relationships break down, even if we don't explicitly recognize that in the moment.
And trying to make it work through challenge after challenge after challenge may indicate that something more fundamental isn't well matched, even if on the surface, everything looks great.
And you don't need to villainize them for that.
But just consider the whole context.
I promise you that in a year, you will realize that what felt like the hardest thing you've ever been through was actually your destiny all along.
This really links to our second reason that I think we end up seeing someone as the right person.
And it's because at this stage, you cannot imagine ever feeling as in love with someone else, or as connected with someone else as you feel right now.
Because, because we tend to prioritize our current experiences over potential future experiences, meaning that your favorite outfit right now feels like it's going to be your favorite outfit forever.
And your best friend right now feels like the best friend you'll ever have when you're eating an amazing meal.
You're not immediately thinking about an even better meal that you'll have later on.
That is what's happening in this situation because you are experiencing love right now.
It's hard to picture a future love that could be better.
This is the result of a series of cognitive biases called availability heuristics, which basically say that we rely more heavily on information that is immediately available to us.
Specifically, the kind of bias that we're talking about here is the salience bias.
I know a lot of terms to remember, but salience bias is the most important to understand.
What this bias tells us is that we have a tendency, you and I, to focus on information that is present, prominent, and emotionally striking, and we ignore other information that feels less significant.
In the case of right person wrong time, the most emotionally significant information available to you right now is that you feel deeply about this person.
You probably still love them.
Even though your friends may be saying, no, you're going to find someone better.
There's so many cool great people out there.
They just totally weren't the one.
It's very difficult to believe them because you have to override this very strong cognitive bias that is telling you otherwise.
I think real connection is also so rare that when we have it, it's very hard to let go of it given how hard it was to find it in the first place, especially if you are someone who is not used to falling so fast or so deeply.
You're just simply not going to have that feeling with everyone, but that doesn't mean that you will only have it with one person.
When we have something special as well, we do try and protect it.
And we feel very precious about it, which is what can also contribute to this thought pattern that, yeah, maybe I am meant to end up with this person.
Maybe this is the love of my life.
When actually the case is probably a little bit more nuanced and complicated.
Finally, another reason that we find ourselves adopting a right person, wrong time mentality, other than that it's really just trying to protect us.
We may have also put on those age old rose colored glasses.
And so when it comes to examining the relationship, we often selectively and accidentally forget about really crucial information that was my case in that situation.
I was just telling you about here.
I was thinking that we were destined to be that he was a love of my life because thinking that way let me stay attached to him longer.
When the alternative of detaching from him would be incredibly painful.
This right person mentality was allowing me to sustain the easiest reality for myself and the easiest reality was one in which it didn't contain heartbreak.
That's for sure. But also it was full of possibility and who doesn't love possibility?
Then, you know, a few months later when I had endured the worst of the heartbreak and the breakup, it was almost like this curtain lifted and all these things that I had ignored and forgotten about just came like flashing back.
You know, the inattention, the disrespect, the genuine like lack of compatibility and his lack of ambition, all things that now.
And well, then I knew we're going to would have ruined the relationship in the long run, but I was just ignoring them because I thought I had a good thing.
I really kind of had to ask myself in that moment, thinking back on it, would my soulmate treat me like this?
Is it really to do with timing or is it actually just the fact that he's not a very nice guy?
What I had to accept after that was that I had spent a long time pursuing relationships with people, including him, that I thought were the one.
And I spent a long time sticking around long enough that, you know, eventually the timing would be perfect, thinking that that was going to work.
And it always had just ended up hurting me.
And that was a kind of a big realization where it was like, am I just using this notion of time and the timing needing to be right to just kind of willfully remain ignorant about everything else that's wrong in these relationships.
And I really want to say, I'm not saying this to dishearten you, but more so to really encourage you to search for other evidence.
Are they really the one or could you maybe feel this way about about anyone?
Is there even a slim, maybe even massive possibility that you could feel this way about someone else and maybe even better than what you feel right now?
You just have to follow the ultimate conclusion that what you had at the time may have been precious, may have been beautiful, but there was a reason the relationship has ended.
Even if it feels like something you could one day change right now, you can't.
Right now, it is not your business to change your circumstances for them.
Either you end up together or you don't.
And this is really just a form of radical acceptance.
Radical acceptance, if you don't know what that is, is a therapeutic approach or a therapeutic method, I guess, that involves accepting that some situations are simply out of your control without judging them, trying to change them or letting your pain towards the situation turn into prolonged suffering
and gloom and melancholy about how there are just things that are outside of our control.
You just accept that.
You go, okay, I'm just like someone floating in the surf right now.
I'm floating in the waves.
I'm letting it move me to where I need to be.
That is what we're embracing here.
That sometimes life and your circumstances are really unfair.
And, you know, they could change one day, but right now your best option is to move on as if this person is not the one.
Why? Because in that period of separation, that is when you can delineate between them just being present, available around and them actually being the love of your life.
So now that we have that clear, what are some strategies to move on from what is a very complicated and let me just say heartbreaking, painful situation.
I do have a full episode on this that I cannot recommend enough.
It's one of my favorite episodes, episode 141.
It's titled how to get over someone you can't stop thinking about.
I feel like a lot of people listening to this should also be listening to that episode.
There are a lot of overlaps in a way, but actually it's quite different.
It's more about like the obsessive spiral and that getting to that point where you're like almost desperate to stop thinking about them.
So go and listen to that.
There's actually a whole playlist of my break up heartbreak, lost love episodes, which I will link in the episode description, but in the aftermath of a right person, wrong time situation, what we are really aiming for above all else is separation.
We want emotional, social, physical, mental separation as much as you can, as much as your circumstances permit.
That is the space that is required.
There is a tendency and definitely a strong emotional impulse to continue to reach out to this person to want to maintain a friendship with this person even, because you know, well, if we can't be together, we could be friends.
I am going to really advise you strongly against doing that because they still stay as an option in your mind.
And it means that any new person that comes along, you're still going to be comparing them to this other person because they're still present instead, really try and create distance.
It's a challenge. It's a challenge, not just because obviously circumstances probably mean that your friends or you share friends.
It's a challenge because if this is someone that you deeply care about and you see as almost your soulmate, letting that connection go can be brutal, but it is necessary.
It is a necessary pain.
And in their absence, I want you to really pick two to three things to focus on in your life that have nothing to do with anybody else.
They are just for you.
It's almost like you need to start not necessarily scrubbing your life of this person, but creating a life in which they are not at the center you are.
So pick a hobby, pick a sport, pick even like some friends, pick something in your life that you really, really want to do and make that your focus.
Make that where you put all your energy and your healing.
And I think through that process, we also come to new realizations about ourselves and we begin to realize like, hey, I actually wouldn't have been able to do these things if I was still with this person.
I wouldn't have been able to do these like little weekend retreats with my besties.
I wouldn't have been able to solo travel.
I wouldn't have been able to do all these fun things on my weekend nights, on my weekday nights if I was with this person.
And most of the time you're like, slowly you start to be like, oh, so actually life is better.
Life is better like this.
It can be a hard thing to realize when you think that they were the one and then suddenly you do 180 and it's like, oh, no, you probably weren't.
I also think part of this as well to add onto it is that you start making memories and experiences that they're not a part of.
And that's a really important part of the healing and the closure process is realizing that you can create, enjoy, live a meaningful life in which they don't have anything to do with it, anything at all.
Additionally, I really want you to continually focus on all the reasons that they weren't right for you rather than all the reasons that they are.
The reasons that they are right for you often bubble to the surface because they're nice and they're positive and they're fluffy.
And sometimes they're like kind of painful to play with.
We're going to ignore those and we're going to focus all of our attention on what it was about your current situation, circumstances, individual persons that meant that you couldn't be together.
And really, that is the focus of your thoughts here.
The way that I like to do this is thinking of attention as, and this is a common analogy as a giant spotlight that we have control of.
We're sitting at the back, turning it, directing it, focusing on different parts of the room, different members of the audience, whatever it is, different thoughts.
So when we get into an obsessive spiral, we only selectively focus or turn the spotlight to their positive attributes, why they were so perfect, why they were amazing.
And you aren't seeing the situation clearly first of all, but you also aren't seeing the situation in a way that is helpful for your current circumstances.
So instead, I want you to continually come back to why this couldn't be, why this didn't work, why it was not an entirely perfect situation, why this needed to happen as a way to provide closure rather than letting you ruminate on all the things that maintain a connection and maintain a love interest
in this person. Another really important way to find closure is to collect everything they gave you, everything that you shared together, jewelry, photos, love notes, clothes, anything at all, and put it into a box and put it away.
It's kind of symbolic of like packing up all the connections in your mind as well and putting it into long -term storage.
You know, it's still there.
The items in the box are still there.
The memories are still there.
They're still a part of you, but it's not something that you visit and you look back over every night.
You have done yourself a huge favor by removing, not only reminders, but also memory cues in your environment that keep them in your current thought rotation and that might encourage you to reach back out when we know given our current circumstances that is probably not the best idea.
Again, I wanted to state before we wrap this episode up, with distance comes clarity, but also comes the ability to solely focus on your life, your baggage, your future, and to make it dreamy and beautiful and worthy, regardless of what fate has in store for you when it comes to this other person.
Even if you believe right now that this is a destined connection, even if everything was perfect other than timing, timing is still a factor and it is still actually at times an indicator of why things were never going to work out on a deeper level.
So you kind of have to accept this reality, accept that right now this is the situation that you're in.
But again, there is a lot of love out there, a lot of romance, a lot of beautiful people.
It's exciting that you now have the opportunity to meet them.
It's exciting that you have all these opportunities for new, fresh, beautiful connection.
It's exciting that you get to go on a first date again.
And it's exciting that you get to make even better memories with someone new and someone who timing is never going to be a problem because they love you and they care about you.
So I really hope that if you're going through this right now, you've met an amazing person and nothing is working out, nothing is stacking up the way that you want to do, that you have some hope for the future and that you see not only why this is the case, but why it's very common, how to move through
it and why when we're in that situation, sometimes we can exaggerate the connection that we have with someone.
I'm sending a lot of strength and a lot of love to you as someone who has been through this and who was so devastated by the loss of this connection and has come out the other side and met someone brilliant and met someone who I love and who I never would have had the opportunity to be with if I let
myself continue to be a maybe.
So I want that for you as well.
As always, if you enjoyed this episode, make sure that you are following along on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
Please leave a review, a five star review if you feel called to do so.
It's really special.
It makes my day. I actually do read them all and I know a lot of creators say that, but no, I do even the main ones.
So don't be that guy.
Don't be that girl.
Don't be that person.
Make sure that if you have an episode suggestion, we are always welcoming them.
We always want to hear from you over on that psychology podcast on Instagram.
Just shoot me a DM with your suggestion and hopefully I'll get to read it and get to be inspired by you.
But as always, until next time, stay safe, stay kind, be gentle with yourself, and we will talk very, very soon.
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