Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners old listeners wherever you are in the world, it is great to have you here back for another episode.
Today we're tackling I would say a very important question in our twenties and beyond.
Am I actually in love or am I just attached?
I think we often find ourselves entangled in relationships and sometimes unable to distinguish between the intoxication of infatuation, the closeness of emotional attachment and of course identifying whether this is a love that lasts.
Particularly in our twenties, I think a lot of our relationships take on this very sensational passion, this fire, this really this need to rush into things headfirst without pausing to consider do I actually even like this person?
Do I see them in my future?
Or do I just like the companionship?
Do I just like how they make me feel?
Knowing that distinction is so important so you can actually make good decisions, actually choose the right people rather than whoever is there at the time, especially if you're someone like me who occasionally has to deliberately hold back which I've gotten a lot better at in a lot of my relationships
to prevent falling head over heels after only a handful of dates.
I know it's such a common experience but importantly attachment and love are very very different.
We develop our first attachments very young almost immediately after birth with our parents or our caregivers because we instinctually need to be able to rely on others for protection.
For we have even the cognitive or the emotional capacity to love.
We can form attachments, they're very foundational and the conditions for their creation is quite simple.
Proximity to the person in question, a sense of closeness and dependency.
Love on the other hand is a lot more complex, it involves a deeper level of trust, a vulnerability of compatibility and selflessness.
It's not just about what we need from someone else, what security they can provide for us, but what we need in unison, what we need as a pair, they feel alarmingly similar.
I know that especially if you've come to realize you've perhaps never been in love before and attachment or emotional closeness is all you kind of have to base that feeling on but today I really want to look at what love and attachment do to us at a very biological, rudimentary level, what function they
each uniquely serve and those cool ways to distinguish between the two feelings.
We're also going to break down why some of us, myself included, get attached way too quickly looking at things like anxious attachment styles, emotional validation, and variable reward, even models of addiction as well as why it's important to try and stay single or prevent getting attached to people romantically
during some of those big life changes that we go through in our 20s.
And finally, how do we keep that emotional distance when we know we are people who attach very quickly or bond to others very quickly?
How do we make it so that we let love develop slowly rather than confusing our attachment for something deeper?
How can we de -center our love interests from our lives until they prove they deserve to be there?
Well, I have a few answers for you along with a lot of fascinating research and psychology behind this distinction.
So I'm really excited for this episode.
There is such a common conundrum and I think it's really important that we set the record straight on the difference between these two experiences.
Is it love or am I just attached?
So without further ado, let us dive in.
I know I mentioned it before and I don't know about you, but I have a massive tendency to, I think, attach very quickly to the people that come into my life, not just romantic, but also with friends or even people like work colleagues.
I'm very much like an all -or -nothing kind of person, but often what that leaves me wondering, particularly in relationships, is whether I am truly in love with that person or I've just become accustomed to their companionship or I'm being driven by something more shallow, like obsession or lust or the basic
principles of attachment.
And I think discerning those two feelings is a really important part of our emotional toolkit.
They may feel the same, but they have very different implications for the quality of our relationships.
I also think knowing the difference saves us from a lot of pain.
I always use the example of situationships to explain this.
Situationships, of course, are these relationships that feel legitimate and intimate and romantic or exclusive, but they're not.
And typically, one person is invested and the other person is quite distanced.
Now, because I am a hopeless romantic, I think I've always been that person who was wanted more.
And sometimes in those situations, what I've realized in hindsight is that what I thought was love, what I thought was this deep bond I had to this person was really just a very natural psychological and physical reaction to the emotional environment that that relationship had created.
When you spend time with someone doing things that create a sense of connection and release primarily hormones and neurotransmitters like oxytocin, things like going on dates, and cuddles, and sleeping next to each other and shared memories, all of these things create a neurological premise for bonding,
which in turn causes an attachment to develop.
And from that, perhaps love, but perhaps not because it doesn't always get to that stage.
So I want to explain the key differences between those two experiences.
Let's start with love, particularly of the romantic sort.
In the sequence of how a relationship develops, often it follows the pattern of lust, attraction, and then love.
That's kind of the final stage when you've passed basic physical appeal and those urges.
And you really met someone beyond the surface level.
I think maybe past that is perhaps a sense of comfortability.
Now, the psychology behind love is really fascinating because it's perhaps one of the most intense emotions we can feel as humans, probably only second or even probably first compared to grief and things like anger.
So for a long time, people have really wanted to know how it works.
Why on earth does this feeling drive us to do wild things, to create masterpieces and music, to kill, to start wars?
And they've approached it from a few ways, from a biological perspective, this idea that love is no more than a bunch of neurotransmitters, serotonin, dopamine, oxytocin, that is doing things to our brain.
They've also offered a social perspective that love serves an evolutionary purpose because it's needed to build community and social cohesion.
But my favorite theory is called the triangular theory of love.
And it's this integrated idea and what love is and what it isn't.
This was developed a little while ago.
And the premise is that love, romantic love, true love is made up of three components, intimacy, passion, and commitment.
Each point on this triangle needs to be fulfilled to say that love exists.
If you like one of these things, and we're specifically talking about romantic relationships here, you have something that isn't quite love.
Without the commitment, you have a situationship.
Without the passion, you have something that might be very sexual or lustful without the intimacy.
And without the intimacy, you have a friendship.
Now, intimacy encompasses feelings of attachment.
But beyond that, it's also, you know, including things like trust, like security, vulnerability, you know, sensations that go way beyond a simple closeness or biological bond.
Love also follows what some have proposes a fairly typical pattern.
So a group of researchers have proposed almost a four -stage model to love.
You start off in the euphoric stage, which is around six months to two years, then early attachment one to five years, followed by the crisis stage where perhaps we begin to drift apart or wonder whether this is really what we want.
Is this really working out at around five to seven years?
And finally, the deep attachment, the deep knowing around seven years and beyond.
I actually think from an observational standpoint, this makes a lot of sense in my own experience, seeing a lot of those people I've known who have been together around that five -year point, really observing how their relationships shift to another level, or they fall apart entirely.
You know, there is no consensus on what love is, because there are more spiritual conceptions that might call it fate, or they might say it's something deeply entwined with the universe and our soul.
There is so much, I think, very deep human sentiment attached to this feeling.
But I think really what it is, is a deeply powerful connection that is built on the back of a lot of seemingly minuscule things, things that we overlook.
Communication, memories, shared values, deep intimacy, passion, but also compassion, seeing the world through the eyes of another, knowing that they are just as much a part of your life as you are a part of your life.
Being in love and desiring the love of others can be one of the strongest motivators in our life if we approach it correctly, and if we are able to discern when perhaps it's something maybe less significant.
So let's talk about attachment.
I think intuitively, we know it's probably a rung or two below that all -consuming sensation that we were just describing.
It's really interesting, because if you ask people if they've ever been in love, especially in our 20s, I hear this response all the time.
I think I thought I was at the time, and now I'm not sure.
I thought I was in love.
And what they're probably speaking to was actually attachment.
So attachment is defined as a lasting psychological connectedness between human beings, and most of what we know comes from the work of John Bulby.
He is a very well -known psychiatrist.
If you study psychology, you definitely would have heard about him, and he was particularly interested in working with what he called at the time emotionally disturbed children.
Our first attachment is to our parents or our genetically, evolutionarily, pre -programmed to form attachments, particularly with the people who care for us or give us attention, and those who are around us frequently.
And we can form these attachments well before we have any of the necessary cognitive or emotional functions to feel love.
Attachment is based on who is fulfilling our needs, who is consistent in our lives, and who can create that very much needed sense of security.
This is really necessary for our survival because we needed to be able to identify who was going to protect us back when I think things were a lot more perilous.
And I think that it's also quite a basic foundational relationship.
The one we have with our parents is going to greatly influence how we approach that broader idea of love.
And I think we need to briefly talk about attachment theory here.
Attachment theory has definitely been doing the rounds.
It's one of those psychological theories that has mass appeal in mainstream media because it really claims to predict how you love and proposes an explanation for all of your, perhaps, love conundrums.
So a brief synopsis, this model proposes that there are four attachment styles that humans can have, and these attachment styles are derived primarily from the relationship that we had with our parents and the care and the love they showed us.
And how that relationship and attachment to them has developed will then serve as our first image of how we should connect with people later on in our lives, especially in adulthood.
So the four styles are secure.
These are people who are confident, resilient, nonreactive, reciprocal, especially in their relationships.
And they don't really display anxiety when approaching things like romance or commitment or even harder feelings like rejection.
Next, we have anxious, preoccupied.
This is characterized by a deep fear of abandonment, high levels of insecurity, perhaps really what we would say is clingy behavior and also a level of fantasy bonding.
And this attachment style is really important when we talk about this distinction between love and attachment.
So remember it because we will come back to it later.
But thirdly, we have dismissive, avoidant.
These individuals will often stay quite emotionally distant.
They isolate themselves, maybe reject attempts from others at deep emotional connection.
And I think it's often because they've been taught from very, very early childhood that they can't trust people who promise to care for them.
So they push them away because they've associated deep connection with being hurt.
And then finally, we have fearful, avoidant, dismissive, avoidant and fearful avoidant are somehow or sometimes just kind of rolled into one as just an avoidant, a blanket avoidant attachment.
But the fearful, avoidant can come off as both very ambivalent, but also very unpredictable.
And whilst the dismissive, avoidant may just completely switch off, the fearful, avoidant may create conflict in their relationships to try and push people away and see if they'll leave as others have done.
Because they really can't fully trust them.
They're constantly testing this relationship for weak spots.
Now, these unique attachment styles will influence how we approach love and dating, but they are the basis also for seeking out intimacy.
I think the easiest way to distinguish love versus attachment is that you can be attached to someone and not love them.
But in order to love someone, you have to be attached.
I want to talk about some of the other ways that we can distinguish between these two things because, like I said before, and if you have had past experience, you will know they feel very, very similar.
I also think that when we confuse them, we can use what we think is love as reasoning to do things that might not be in our best interest, like moving in with someone after only a few months or ignoring other possible people or options or red flags.
So I think both of them feel like a sense of security.
Both make us feel close to another person.
But whilst love is selfless, attachment is somewhat selfish.
Whilst love is very mutual, importantly, attachment can be one sided and quite transient.
So when I say attachment is selfish, I don't mean that that makes you a selfish person because we all have some basic level of attachment, just that the function of attachment is self -serving.
For example, when we consider the early stages of dating, when we are forming this bond with someone, what we're really looking at is, what is this person doing for me?
Is this person making me happy?
What feelings are they creating for me?
How do I feel? Rather than what can I do to make them happy?
How can we grow together?
How can I love them better?
Attachment is really driven by how you feel about yourself.
If you feel secure and the safety and attention someone gives you based on all of these different models.
A big part of attachment is that it's highly subjective and it can be really easily influenced by our own visions or interpretations of what this person is offering.
And it can also feel incredibly intense because biologically our brains want us to attach to others.
So it makes us fairly susceptible to ignoring things like red flags for the momentary physical, emotional, mental comfort that someone may offer us.
Also getting incredibly attached to someone isn't always based on what they're actually showing you or their actions, but sometimes the fantasy that we've created of them in our own heads.
It's this concept called fantasy bonding and it occurs when you bond and attach to someone based on who you believe they can be or will be or what you believe they can and will be able to give you in the future not who they actually are.
When you have a fantasy bond with someone you often are in a very dysfunctional, I would say situation or relationship where you have created a false image of them in your head or you've looked to the future to justify why you feel so close to them and to psychologically protect yourself.
You're not always in love with someone, you're in love with the idea of love or the idea of them.
And I think in contrast to that love is very honest.
It's sometimes brutally honest.
I truly believe that you can't love someone until you've seen something about them that you don't like or you've had some disagreement or you've seen them angry, you've seen them vulnerable and you have still chosen to be there.
You don't have unrealistic expectations about who they are or what they could be.
You just kind of take them as they are whereas in attachment you're very willing to overlook those things for what they can give you.
Additionally I think love is mutual.
Attachment can be one -sided wherein one person has really developed a bond and a connection perhaps based on false cues and the other person can realistically remain very distant.
You know everyone has their own timelines for how long it takes to connect with others but also in some instances not all but some people like being chased and they can breadcrumb us with tiny moments that invariably reinforce our connection to them.
It's this notion in psychology of invariable reward.
It's the same way that casinos get people to gamble more.
Sometimes this person will be super affectionate and kind and loving and that's where we feel like we have won the so -called jackpot and other times they'll be really distant or dismissive and in those moments we want to keep pushing, we want to keep betting or gambling more because we are looking for the satisfaction of when they
are once again giving us those warm feelings.
We just don't know when that's going to happen so whilst we may be attached we may also be very much addicted to their inconsistent behavior and interpret that anxiety as excitement or even a feeling of passion.
I never knew what people meant when they say that love should be easy and consistent and feel safe because I always thought that what I wanted was intensity and passion and that sinking feeling in my stomach.
That was for me true emotion, that was true feeling, that was love but I think maturing is realizing that it's not.
It's a very natural alarm system and natural reaction to someone's inconsistency and lack of stability and it creates almost a chronic stress response.
It's very similar to infatuation, the all -consuming feeling that very quickly and intensely flourishes at the beginning of a new relationship.
It's the anxiety and the euphoria and the nervousness and if that carries on for many, many months it might be worth examining whether that is actually love, whether that is actually a good foundation for love, whether there is actually genuine friendship and care there or whether someone is actually
just using you to fulfill their own emotional hunger and emotional cravings.
One final debate or differentiation that I think we should discuss is that I really believe that you can be attached to multiple people at once but I don't think that you can be in love with them all, definitely not in the same way.
Our minds and social brains have adapted to allow for us to have multiple deep attachments with people like friends, like family, that's really the basis for community but I think love is a lot more exclusive.
Obviously you can love multiple people but in a different sense to that deep romantic intimate love we're talking about.
It takes so much from us emotionally I think but it also requires your deep attention to another person that's hard to cultivate with multiple people at the same time and it's a lot harder I think to fall out of love compared to falling out of attachment.
That's a really good thing about attachment depending on how you look at it but especially for those of us who are maybe emotionally attached to someone in their lives right now who is maybe not the best for us but attachment is founded on proximity and frequency of interaction.
When you take away that source, when you take that fuel away, when you apply distance our attachment fades and I think it's a really great way to distinguish that because love will last a lot longer.
Think about it in terms of people who sadly have lost a spouse or a partner that takes years to heal from and in some ways I think we never heal or forget that love so hopefully that has given you a good preliminary idea of the distinction but what I want to talk about next is why some of us get attached
a lot quicker than others, myself included, and also some questions to ask yourself when you're thinking do I actually love this person or do I love the idea of them or do I love their companionship and then finally how do we actually detach ourselves when we realize we're in that situation, when we
realize that this may be a temporary connection, how do we slow things down and let it develop over time so all of that and after this short break.
You know I love having a cheeky drink with friends post work or a beer with dinner but this year I have committed to completing dry January to start the new year off fresh and to really kind of kick start the lifestyle I want to have for the next 12 months.
Heineken 00 is the perfect companion for this journey because it has 0 .0 % alcohol so I can still socialize, enjoy myself, get out there without feeling like I'm missing out plus it genuinely actually tastes very very delicious.
My fridge is now stocked with Heineken 00 and friends of mine will even join me for an evening or for an afternoon going alcohol free.
If you are also taking part in dry January this year or just looking for your new favorite drink Heineken 00 is it.
Heineken 00 is available at your local Heineken retailer or for delivery at Heineken .com you must be 21 plus to purchase.
Enjoy Heineken responsibly and good luck with dry January.
It goes without saying that there are some of us out there who have a tendency to fall hard and fast to believe we are in love when really what might be happening is a very visceral biological and emotional reaction to what you want someone else to be your idea of them in your mind.
If you find yourself utterly obsessed with someone after you know a couple of dates already fantasizing about the wedding telling all your friends moving way too fast or even finding that you can jump from relationship to relationship incredibly easily and be met with that same level of infatuation every
single time or if you know that deep down that you have this destructive pattern and you ignore red flags this might be describing a subconscious and habitual tendency to emotionally attach to others and there are a few psychological reasons why that may occur.
Firstly if you remember that anxious attachment style we discussed earlier well that is a massive contributor the development of an anxious sometimes it's called preoccupied attachment style is often associated with an inconsistent parenting pattern sometimes people have parents who will be supportive
and responsive to a child's emotional needs and then other times they'll really neglect them and ignore them and this inconsistency makes it really difficult for us as children to understand what we can expect from our parents and what their behavior actually means and so we end up confused about the relationship
we have with these caregivers and what happens is this expression called emotional hunger where we crave the love of our parents we are really anxious around them and when we can expect emotional fulfillment because it's never consistent it's like never being fed on schedule we're never given love on a schedule
so in adulthood this manifest in a very intense fear of abandonment and a propensity to attach very quickly to those who show us even the most basic of human empathy and care and connection like a new romantic interest we become very very obsessed with their presence and worried that they'll leave us
and this once again might reinforce that we don't deserve love so instead we go all in we go as hard as possible because we want to seemingly protect ourselves from this outcome by giving this misconception by creating this false narrative that if we if we commit quicker if we attach quicker it will be
harder for them to leave us and I think that can often backfire when we either overwhelm this person or we get to the point in in a relationship which all relationships face where we have to have hard conversations we we will have fights we will have disagreements or sometimes be let down and when that happens
because our attachment to them has been based on this very fantasy -like image this this intensity we will feel threatened because we have created and incredibly emotionally intense and at times fragile bond it's not just childhood abandonment though but also our early romantic experiences things like
the you know a particularly devastating breakup or the end of a relationship this can also teach us that we need to bond very quickly to hold on to people this can also be created by repeated situationships or flings where we feel like things have really never reached that next level so we are constantly
seeking out people who might do this for us who might fulfill this need and then in creating that internal delusion that we are in love because subconsciously that is what we would like to believe and so we make that a reality for ourselves in our imagination this comes down to two other factors that i
think are very interlinked firstly you believe that a relationship or love or someone else will make you happy and that belief has emerged from a deeply rooted insecurity that maybe you're not good enough or you don't deserve the love that you're after other people are a huge source of emotional validation especially
if we are highly self -critical and haven't learned to trust our own opinions of ourselves in those instances we really need others to confirm that we are good that we are attractive that we are intelligent that we are desirable and when people offer that to us even in small doses this can cause us to
attach much quicker because they've now become a really valuable source for our self -confidence which is a very crucial psychological need there's been studies on this and what they found is that people who rate their self -esteem as lower or poorly they respond with greater emotional intensity to compliments
particularly from people they admire so it's important to examine if this is the conditions of your current relationship or the current early stages of a relationship whether this person is actually someone you're compatible with if they are a good person who you trust or if they're just giving you
the validation or perhaps even companionship to counter your loneliness because loneliness is also something that can drive us to attach very quickly partners boyfriends girlfriends love in general is a pretty powerful protective factor against loneliness but if we use relationships as a band -aid solution or to
fill some emotional void it's unlikely that we will be as rational and discerning about the people that we are seeking out all they need to do is satisfy that baseline need of filling up our time and making us feel less alone for us to become bonded to them because we see them as providing something
that we can't provide for ourselves it's why i always say to people that you need to not date when you're feeling lonely or during major life transitions that might exacerbate loneliness like right after a breakup or when you move to a new city it will be difficult to determine whilst you're in that state
whether you are pursuing this person for the right reasons or whether our innate need for attachment is driving you to confuse what that relationship really is is it a bond simply formed on the back of a perceived emotional deprivation there's one more factor i guess tendency i want to mention that can create
a lot of ambiguity between attachment and love and it's one that comes up a fair bit but i definitely think we need more research into it maybe it's a little bit controversial some people have theorized that being physically intimate with someone or having sex really early on can disrupt our ability
to make logical decisions about the longevity or the nature of a relationship sex is a bonding activity it releases a high amount of oxytocin and that produces feelings of connection and intimacy even if it's not really there you know if you've only known each other for a few dates that intimacy may cause
a very biological attachment before a cognitive or a mental one before you've actually gotten to know them and i'm not saying this in like a puritan fashion or advocating for you know no sex before marriage but i think if you've noticed a habit of getting attached very quickly maybe change up your approach
to intimacy and sex before exclusivity one of my friends has a three -day minimum which i think works really well or whatever standard you want to set for yourself so that all those hormones rushing through your body don't disrupt your decision making there's a few other tactics we can enlist to protect
ourselves and our heart in these situations to take our time and you know not just dive straight into a really intense attachment with someone firstly you need to control your obsessive thoughts as hard as that is by de -centering this person from your life until they prove they deserve to be there when we
frequently and obsessively think about a person when we wonder whether they'll text us find reasons to talk speak about them continuously to our friends what we're doing neurologically is strengthening the pathways associated with the image of this person and their presence in our lives it's this idea called
long -term potentiation which is basically the opposite of if you don't use it you lose it if you use it too much if you focus on something excessively you train your brain to use those neural pathways more often and basically wire your brain in the short term but also the long term towards that person in this way
your thought pattern becomes quite procedural procedural meaning automatic and you find that you can no longer control how often you're thinking of this person you're exaggerating your level of attachment and your infatuation to deprogram yourself you need to give your brain new experiences and interest
to focus on you need to enrich your life beyond this person's presence and that means making sure you prioritize your friends taking on new hobbies or even just small activities that give you joy but also are a cause for reflection beyond your attachment to this person outdoor adventures weeknight dinners
with friends a sporting class or a group these are all great alternative to spending every single night with them in those early stages of of dating i always have a two -day rule we can't see each other more than twice a week because i know now that i really need and i want that time away from them to
keep my independence and actually have some thinking time and you know if you end up marrying this person you know seeing each other less at the beginning of your relationship isn't going to matter it's actually just going to mean that you have that slow burn secondly if you're quick to jump right in and perhaps
create an unhealthy bond force yourself to take things slow particularly by managing your expectations try not to talk about the future with them unless they've given you a reason to and crucially set emotional boundaries i think when we crave closeness especially during intense periods of loneliness
maybe you know maybe after a breakup or something traumatic and someone provides you with that opportunity we know that over sharing and giving them very deep a very deep idea of who we are is a great way to make them feel closer to you and that can create what we know as a hyper dependency bond the more
you share the more vulnerable you become the quicker you're going to come to depend on this person and see them as someone you might love not because of what they are but because of what they offer you which is a safe space to be validated so i would say make sure you take your time and be clear about what you
want and be discerning i know that i would have saved myself a lot of pain and heartbreak if i'd been clearer with myself and others about what i actually wanted and i'm thinking about someone in particular who i bonded to very quickly during a period of of very intense stress and because of situations
in my house and just general environment so i began to rely on them really intensely and i got very attached very quickly even when he told me that he wasn't looking for anything serious you know he was saying one thing and then acting another way and i really chose to ignore what he was saying for the comfort
of that closeness huge mistake big mistake in those early stages before love develops whilst we're getting close you really got to check on the reality of your situation every now and again because attachment will form outside of your conscious control and it's a natural precursor to something bigger
but that doesn't necessarily mean that you should be with this person if you found yourself in this position right now wondering do i really love this person are they really my future or have i just you know become attached to them there's also a series of questions that i think are important to ask
yourself i've found these to be so incredibly discerning and truth revealing in my own dating life to ensure that i'm not just rushing into things because of an emotional urge or human nature firstly when you think about how they make you feel do you think about physical elements of the relationship
or the quality of your emotional bond would you be just as happy being in bed with them as you would be having a long deep conversation secondly do you genuinely care about this person's happiness and well -being even if it means making sacrifices or compromises could someone else be in their place right
now and would you feel the same way this is really important because it highlights the distinction between wanting basic companionship and actually feeling a genuine deep connection based on their individual qualities have you imagined a future with this person do you have shared goals dreams do you
have plans for the future are you willing to work through conflicts and communicate openly rather than just avoiding difficult conversations and what do you feel when you're around them also what do you feel when you're not around them is it calm do you know that you'll see them again soon is it peace
or are you anxious are you fretful are you unsure of what you want you know what that sounds a lot like it sounds a lot like they are activating an abandonment wound or an anxious attachment and i think it's important to be honest with yourself about whether beginning this way is going to actually lead
to a good foundation for a future together you know remember love is calm love is peaceful you can still be excited and passionate but you don't have to worry about how they feel you know attachment is a lot more nuanced and i guess fickle it comes quicker it burns brighter it feels nice but these two
things are not the same and confusing them can create a lot of havoc but also regret later on when you realize you are perhaps mistaken and you can't trust yourself anymore so i hope that this has given you a good guide a good ability to discern between these two feelings also i would say if you are listening
to this podcast with a particular person in mind i think that just that fact that you have that you're having those questions about am i in love or am i just attached might be indicating that you are just attached because i think love sometimes comes without questions like you kind of kind of know and that's
something that i haven't really i didn't really realize until recently but when they're making you feel uncomfortable they're inconsistent that's not love that's they don't love you if they're doing that to you they don't love you i know it's a it's a very hard truth i feel kind of guilty for saying
it so harshly but i also think it's important to note so i hope this episode has been enlightening i hope it has helped you it was very very interesting to record and to talk about it kind of just spilled out of me this has been on my mind for so long as always if there is someone in your life who needs
to hear this please feel free to send it to them you never know who it's going to help out and also if you feel called to do so please feel free to leave a five star review on apple podcast spotify wherever you're listening right now and follow us along at that psychology podcast to see behind the scenes
stuff video content to keep up to date with what's going on we would love to see you over there as always thank you for listening to today's episode i hope you are in love and if you're attached i hope that this has helped you figure out why that might be and as always we will see you back next week
for another episode this year i've been really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so i decided to commit to dry january to really kickstart 2025 and just test myself heinikin 00 is the perfect companion for dry january because you feel like you're still participating when you're out for dinner
with friends out for drinks whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals i'm a big beer fan so i also love the taste of heinikin 00 plus being alcohol free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls heinikin 00 is available at your local heinikin retailer or for delivery at heinikin .com you must be
21 plus to purchase enjoy heinikin responsibly and good luck with dry january