Hello everyone, and welcome back to Needy No More, the podcast
dedicated to healing the anxious attachment style.
I'm your host, anxious attachment style coach and
author Chris Ratcliffe. I've helped thousands of people
across 6 continents to end the cycle of anxious attachment
through my books, workshops, digital downloads, and coaching
program. I'm excited to carry on that
mission here on the podcast. Sharing tools and techniques,
principles and practices is for you to explore on your journey
to growing more secure. Welcome back everyone.
I have a confession to make. I have claimed for years that I
have been vulnerable in my content and I stand by that.
But I think a lot of that vulnerability has been behind
the written word, so to speak, in blog posts and in books, in
ways that have been easy for me to perfect.
And in the spirit of being more vulnerable and more transparent
and showing more of my own humanness and messiness, I want
to talk about the three biggest relationships that broke my
heart, that broke me open in various ways, and taught me
lessons in some ways I needed to learn in order to grow more
secure. Before I get into them, I want
to be clear that this isn't about dragging anyone.
So in the spirit of that, I'm going to be changing the names
of these individuals. This is not about me harping on
the past or trying to make anyone look a certain way.
This is solely my perspective on my experience in these
relationships and more importantly, what it taught me
about myself. So buckle up because I'm going
to be spilling a lot of tea today.
I'm going to be getting real about some of my biggest heart
breaks and I'm going to be doing it in real time off the cuff
with you here on the show. The very first relationship I
want to unpack is also my longest one.
Let's say it was with a guy named Brian.
Now, Brian and I met at a very interesting time in my life.
I had just finished a six month cleanse, if you will, of dating
and hooking up. Prior to this, I had gone on a
lot of dates. I was living in New York City at
the time. I was working in the magazine
industry. I was going out a lot.
I was meeting a lot of people and I was going on many dates,
but none of them ever led to a relationship.
So after a few years in the city of doing this, I decided, you
know what? It's time for me to take a
breather. I'm the common denominator in
all of my experiences and I just need a reset.
Like I don't want to be hooking up with anyone.
I don't want to be going on any dates.
I don't want to be on any dating apps.
So I deleted the apps. I didn't go on any dates.
I completely abstained from any kind of physical intimacy with
anyone for six months. And that was the predetermined
timeframe that I came up with. So I completed that challenge
and I was feeling refreshed in a lot of ways.
I fell reinvigorated. I felt more myself than I ever
had before, and I think a lot of that had to do with learning to
set boundaries with myself, learning to take better care of
myself. So that's what the six months
provided to me. And coming off of that, I felt
like I was on top of the world. I didn't need anyone.
I felt very self assured myself. Confidence was really high.
And just a week later, less than a week actually, I was in
Baltimore visiting a friend at the time, and we decided to go
out to one of the gay bars. And we weren't there very long
before I locked eyes with Brian across the bar.
I thought he was very attractive.
I was not intimidated by him, but just kind of doing my own
thing. And I made eyes with him a
couple of times, trying to indicate like, hey, come over
and talk to me. Like, I think you're
interesting. And eventually he did.
So he comes over, we strike up a conversation.
It's very playful. It's very easy.
Things are flowing, the drinks are flowing, the conversation's
flowing. And then his boyfriend walks
over and he is not happy, understandably.
And I don't want to ruffle any feathers.
I don't want to be in any drama. So I just say to his boyfriend,
look, I did not mean to cause any issues here or any trouble.
I did not know that he had a boyfriend.
So I just want to apologize and wish you both well.
That night in the car on the way home, I felt a certain kind of
way, I don't know, I felt excited about meeting someone.
I felt in some ways maybe a sense of loss, I suppose, at not
being able to pursue anything further with this person when I
very clearly felt a spark, a connection.
We had a lot in common, and I was sharing as much with my
friend, and nothing came of it. But it just was kind of like a
moment where I was thinking to myself, you know, this is really
frustrating. Like, I met someone I like and
it's not gonna go anywhere. Flash forward to the next night.
My friend wants to go back to the same bar.
So we go. I run into Brian again.
He comes up to me again. And I say, really?
Are we gonna do this again? Like, we've been down this road?
I know that you're taken. And he's like, no, but we can
still talk platonically, like, as friends.
And I'm like, I don't know, I don't think your boyfriend would
like that very much. This seems maybe a bit
disrespectful to him. And his boyfriend came over
again and I threw my hands up in defense and was just like, hey,
I have been trying to keep to myself.
And I pulled two business cards out of my wallet and I handed
one to each of them. And I just said, I wish you both
nothing but the best. Keep in touch, take care.
And I removed myself from the situation because we had already
had this conversation. So I just felt like this is too
much deja vu, like 2 nights in a row, whatever.
So we leave eventually at the end of the night.
And, you know, I don't really think very much of it anymore.
I'm just kind of like, OK, this guy's probably a player or
whatever. And then a few months go by and
I get a random Facebook message from someone.
And remember, I didn't exchange contact information with Brian
at all. I gave my business card.
It had my cell phone on it. He chose not to message me on my
cell and instead message me on Facebook.
So I'm seeing a name and a profile image that, you know,
I'm not really connecting the dots at first, right?
Like I don't really recognize who this person is.
Then we start chatting and I realize it's that guy Brian from
the bar. Long story short, there's a lot
more to the story, but I'm going to Fast forward a little bit
here. He eventually comes to visit.
After a lot of conversations back and forth, I want to say we
probably spoke for maybe a week and a half, two weeks.
He decides to drive up to New York from Baltimore because
remember, I met him when I was visiting Baltimore and he
happened to live there. So he comes up, we have a
wonderful weekend. At the end of the weekend, we
share a very intimate moment where we're looking in each
other's eyes. And he asks me, are you scared
of the physical distance between US?
And I said, no, are you? And he said, yeah, I think I
might be. And I said, well, you know, it's
not that I'm not scared, but I think there's something here
worth exploring, and we can figure out the logistics.
And he said, OK, why don't you come down to Baltimore next
weekend? So I did, and we had a wonderful
time there. Went out with his friends and
things just felt so easy. Well, we got into a rhythm of
seeing one another. We had a pattern that we agreed
upon where we fell into a rhythm of one weekend of him coming to
me, one weekend of me going to him one weekend off so that we
could kind of live our lives, do whatever we wanted to do, hang
out with friends, like whatever, travel, go on trips, who cares?
Like just a weekend to ourselves that didn't involve, you know,
the long distance relationship component.
So it was a pretty good cycle. I mean, I was seeing him most
weekends and we were talking on the phone every night for hours.
So I felt very connected to this person and our intimacy deepened
pretty quickly. But one of the factors that
really played into the downfall of the relationship, I think,
was the fact that he was not out to his family.
And flash forward a couple of months, I eventually meet his
family. He decides that, you know, we're
in a good place. He, you know, wants me to meet
his mom, his sister, his nieces. Like, we're at the point where
we're ready to deepen the kind of integration in one another's
lives. And I felt very flattered, quite
frankly, that I'm the first person he won, that he wanted to
bring home. So I meet his family and things
are going really, really, really well.
You know, we spend Valentine's Day together at this point.
We've been together for months. And then the next month, I go to
South by Southwest for work. At the time, I was working for a
small marketing agency and I was also exploring a new job
opportunity with a magazine with Entertainment Weekly.
And I got the call from Entertainment Weekly while I was
in Austin for South by Southwest that I got the job.
And it was one of the biggest moments in my career.
And I called him and he was very dismissive, like, yeah, yeah,
yeah, that's great. I got to go.
Like, you know, I'll call you later.
Very much not celebratory, not like, Oh my God, that's amazing.
Like I got a run, but let me call you back in like an hour.
You know, it was very non committal, very, again,
dismissive. And it left a really sour taste
in my mouth. Like I felt like, damn, I mean,
I'm experiencing some incredible career news and you rushed me
off the phone. You're the very first person I
called. And this was on top of already
sensing some distance. And I know the anxious attachers
watching and listening can feel that very deeply.
You know, the distance I'm talking about, the taking longer
to respond, the not sending as many pictures, the lack of
emojis, the lack of questions, the lack of interest in my trip
and what I was doing. And, you know, just lack of an
expression of, of consideration and thoughtfulness or care,
really. And so I knew something was up,
but I had a lot of stuff that I had to figure out.
My company that I was working for was trying to send me back
to New York earlier than anticipated, but there were no
flights out. I was supposed to fly back to
Baltimore and we were flying up to Vermont to go on a ski trip,
which I'll talk about in a moment, but I had to fly back to
New York instead of Baltimore. I ended up having to take the
train down the next day, so quick turn around in order to
make a flight out the following morning, which was already
booked to go to Stowe for a ski trip.
And so I get to Baltimore and we have dinner and things seem
fine, like everything's normal again.
But he passes out on the couch after dinner, which he was prone
to do. And being the thoughtful,
considerate partner that I was and do consider myself to be, I
was preparing for the next morning.
We had to get up early, drive to DC for our flight, whatever.
So I plug in his iPad because I know he's gonna want to use it
on the plane, and it's on low battery.
Well, I see all these notifications pop up from
various location based gay apps if you get my drift.
And my stomach immediately syncs.
And I knew his password. We shared these things with one
another. So I looked, I read every single
message and it was deeply disturbing.
There were explicit photographs that were shared, location
shared. And while I couldn't put a
finger on or trace any kind of in person interactions, if you
understand what I'm saying, I was still very shook by this.
Like literally shaking. My nervous system was on maximum
high alert and I considered what am I going to do with this?
So I just took the iPad, I brought it downstairs and I
dropped it on the couch and woke him up and was like, hey, you've
got 60 seconds to explain what exactly is going on here because
I'm very confused. We're in a monogamous
relationship. We've been dating for months.
And I just found all of these messages of you talking to other
men and sending explicit photographs back and forth and
potentially meeting. And I am met with nothing but
dismissiveness, nothing but deflection, no apology, no
accountability. And things got so heated that I
decided to press pause and go for a walk and come back when I
get back. Nothing.
And at this point, it's getting late.
We have to be up at 5:00 AM. It's like 11:00 at night.
And we were flying to Vermont to meet up with two of my closest
friends who were staying with us there who have already booked
travel and what not. You know, at this point I would
have canceled the trip like no questions asked.
It didn't make sense to go on the trip.
But at the time my people pleasing tendencies kicked in
and I thought to myself, well I have to go on the trip.
I can't do this to my friends. Like while the timing isn't
ideal, we can revisit this conversation later.
That was my first mistake. Then we go on the trip, a bunch
of things happen that really frustrate me.
One of them being Brian had promised to pay for ski lessons
for me. And we get there and he's like,
I don't know what you're talking about.
You know, there were all of these red flags that continually
kept popping up. And we get back after the trip
and still no apology. Nothing has changed.
And the distance between us had started growing, but I couldn't
bring it up because I didn't want to be met with dismissive
energy once more or defensiveness.
So I thought to myself, you know what, Let's just press pause on
this and revisit it later. I get back to New York.
Weeks go by, we're going back and forth seeing one another and
nothing changes. And at some point, I just sweep
it under the rug and decide to say, you know what?
I love this person. I want to be with them.
Let's just chalk it up to it being a one off thing.
Things continue getting worse in the connection overtime.
The communication is dropping off.
We're still seeing one another, but his behavior is starting to
become more and more erratic. I'm starting to hear from him
when we're out drinking in either New York or Baltimore and
with either of our friend groups.
Like, I don't know, I should just be single, you know, Maybe
I should just go through a phase where I hook up with a lot of
people. I just came out, blah, blah,
blah. A lot of rationalizing of him
pulling away now. I know now based on the work
that I've done on myself and the healing work that I've done and
now do with clients all over that these were deactivating
strategies. He was clearly exhibiting
avoidant tendencies and in the true fashion of an anxious
attacher, I latched on harder, he pulled away more, and we just
spiraled downward over the course of many, many months.
Flash forward to celebrating our one year anniversary in New
York. We have a wonderful dinner, we
go to a party that one of my friends is throwing, and then we
go bar hopping and we end up running into some of my very
closest friends who I haven't seen in a couple of weeks
because I've been travelling and he wants to go home.
I want to stay. So I give him the keys to my
place and I say just go, it's fine.
I'll I'll be right behind you. I'm probably like 1/2 hour
behind you. I get back to my apartment, he's
packed up his things. He's leaving in the middle of
the night at like 3:00 AM. No explanation.
It's over Chris, I can't do this.
And that was that. Weeks go by, we don't see one
another. We're not talking.
I was left in shambles. Eventually, I receive a card in
the mail from him that essentially says never change
who you are. I loved you very deeply.
I still love you. I always knew that when you
entered my life, you'd make me a better man.
And you've done that. And never forget the role that
you've had in my life. It was a beautiful card to
receive, but it was also very, very confusing because at the
time, I wanted nothing more than to get him back.
As sad as that is to admit, that's what I wanted.
I wanted him back. I missed him deeply.
I couldn't focus at work. I was having trouble sleeping.
Like I was a shell of myself at the time, which many of us as
anxious attachers who have been through devastating breakups
before have felt. That low, it is a low.
It's terrible. I mean, in a lot of ways it's a
form of withdrawal, and I've talked about that on the show
previously. A few more months go by, I find
myself back in Baltimore visiting the same friend that I
was with when I met Brian. And Long story short, there's a
Blizzard that rolls through and I get stuck in Baltimore and I
need a place to stay. Keep in mind, I was in my 20s.
I didn't have a large income. I didn't have a large budget to
pay for a hotel. So I hit up Brian.
He comes and picks me up. He lets me stay with him.
We kind of fall right back into it, right?
Which is predictable and I should have known.
And on some level I think I probably played things this way
in order to make this reunion happen.
Well, I keep getting stuck. My trains keep getting
cancelled. I'm there for days and while I'm
working remotely. And again, kind of falling right
back into it, Staying in his town home.
One night we all go out. By we all I mean me and his
friends. I see him flirting with someone.
I decide to leave. If he brings them back, there's
an altercation verbally between all of us.
Then he throws something at me and that was it.
That was it. Any kind of physical abuse is
intolerable to me. So I had him drive me to the
train station the next morning and I just said I wish we had
never met. And that was the closure I
suppose I needed. Now I know, of course, again,
after years of working on myself in therapy and now being a coach
myself, that I needed to give myself that closure.
That final interaction months later didn't need to happen, and
it was incredibly dramatic and it only soured the relationship
even more. But that's how it played out.
I suppose. Maya Angelou's quote applies
here when it comes to what I learned in this relationship.
She famously wrote or said when someone shows you who they are,
believe them. The first time I didn't.
I didn't believe who he was showing me he was the first
time, which is before we even entered a relationship.
At that gay bar two nights in a row, disrespecting his boyfriend
on some level, demonstrating infidelity or unfaithfulness to
this person and with this person.
And then of course, the actual infidelity that occurred with
him interacting explicitly with many other men and me looking
the other way, which was a huge mistake, but a learning lesson
for me. So when someone shows you who
they are, believe them the first time.
This was my biggest take away from this relationship.
And by the way, this doesn't mean that Brian is a bad person.
This means that we were not aligned in the ways that I
needed that if he wanted an open relationship, he could have
discussed that with me and we could have approached that
together. I could have had a choice in the
matter and I didn't, and he robbed me of that opportunity.
And this is a lot of what happens when you have one
insecure person approaching another insecure person and
their approaches make it worse. You end up spiraling down into
insecurity, and that's what happened here.
The second relationship that I want to talk about was a few
years after the one with Brian, and this one was incredibly
consequential for me. This was someone that I knew
from college at the University of Miami, let's call him Aaron.
And Aaron and I were already pretty well acquainted.
And while we were never close during my years in undergrad, we
knew of each other. We ran in the same circles, we
hung out a few times. Nothing ever came of it.
I always thought he was intriguing.
I always found him interesting. I was always attracted to him.
But for whatever reason, he was preoccupied.
I was preoccupied as folks in their late teens and early 20s
tend to be when they're in college, being pulled in a
variety of different directions. But flash forward 10 years, when
we reconnect, Aaron happens to be in New York, and I wake up on
a Saturday in July to a Facebook message.
Common theme. Didn't even realize that from
this person saying, hey, I'm in New York.
He lived in Chicago, I'm here for a few days.
Would love to connect if you're in town and you have the time.
And I said, hey, actually, yeah, I am here.
Why don't we all go out this evening?
Because I knew he was staying with another mutual friend of
ours who also went to Miami. So we kind of assemble a group.
We all go out, I'm at the bar with my friends before he shows
up. And the second he walks in, we
lock eyes. And I will never forget that
kinetic energy between us, the smile that he gave to me from
across the room. It was completely unexpected,
especially because, like, we weren't close.
Like we never really interacted at a deep level.
We had very surface level conversations, you know, I
suppose on social media over the years we understand some big
life milestone moments, whatever that might have made us feel
closer. I don't know.
I don't know what this person's motive is.
When he walks into the bar, he comes up, gives me a huge hug,
we start chatting, and we spend the rest of the night filling in
the gap of 10 years since we had seen one another.
He's sharing very vulnerably and intimately, and I'm sharing very
vulnerably and intimately. And eventually we're making out.
And the chemistry is very, very clear and kinetic.
You know, you can feel that spark, that pull, that magnetism
that so many of us know very well.
And we end up texting each other separately while we're both on
the way home saying let's spend the day together tomorrow, blah,
blah, blah. We wake up, we do exactly that,
and it's blissful. And eventually, at the end of
the day, after all of the friends fall off throughout this
Sunday fun day, we end up just the two of us back at my place.
And you can guess what happened from there.
Things got very intimate. The next morning was heavenly.
He sent breakfast to my office, used the address from my
business card to do this, sends me a text, hey, there's someone
downstairs for you. And I'm like, what?
What do you mean? And he's like at your office.
So I go downstairs. He had sent me breakfast via
Uber Eats. And I felt so special and so
seen and so chosen. He flew back to Chicago that
day, and it was tough, but we picked up over FaceTime and
things were fine. Great.
We spent hours talking to one another for weeks.
And then my sister died, which threw a wrench into everything.
Now, I'm not going to go down the path of explaining too much
about what happened to my sister.
I've written extensively about it, but she passed from an
overdose. It was sudden, but she and I had
been estranged for years, so it's not like I was devastated
by this. But it did bring up a lot of
unresolved trauma that I experienced with her.
And it complicated things. And it eventually raised the
question, do I tell Aaron about this?
I mean, we're sharing everything with one another.
And even though my friends, all of my close friends, advised me
not to share this with him because it might be too much too
soon, I do. I feel very close to him again.
We've grown so intimate, we're having hours long conversations
a day with one another. It felt inauthentic to not share
it. So I do.
And he received it beautifully, was so supportive, invited me to
come stay with him in Chicago. And a couple weeks later, I do.
Now, I don't want to get into all the particulars of what
happened in Chicago, but here's what I will say.
He put me through the ringer. He was testing me left and
right. And what I mean by that is he
was living with his parents at the time.
We're going out to dinner. Everything's great.
He says, you know what, let's go to my parents lake house.
And I thought, wow, yeah, cool. A road trip sounds great, like
let's do it. So he's like, yeah, my parents
aren't going to be there. It's going to be great.
We get there and who's there? His parents.
So I end up meeting his parents the second time.
Only that I had ever done this, aside from Brian.
Aaron was the second time, and this was not planned and at
least not on my part. And so it became very awkward
very quickly. We ended up going to the
fairgrounds and having a great night and then coming back and
getting into an argument about something very, very small that
I had said that apparently triggered him and he completely
shut down, started reaching back out to his ex.
By the way, he had just ended an engagement with someone and
broken up with them like maybe six weeks before he had come to
New York. So this was very recent and
obvious red flag that I had ignored.
And in an act of incredible disrespect, he's messaging this
person while I'm there and I knew about it the next day.
We try to repair things, things seem a little bit better, and
then I have to fly back to New York and to this day that is the
last time I ever saw him. After weeks of trying to regain
the closeness that we once had and watching it fade away, I
eventually pieced together that he had moved back in with his ex
fiance. And at that point, I couldn't
take it anymore. And I was again devastated.
You know, my colleagues noticed my energy, my excitement after
connecting with him when he came to New York.
And they also noticed the come down when I got back from
Chicago and in the collapse of the connection in the weeks that
followed. And it was actually my boss at
the time who pulled me aside and said, Chris, what's going on at
home? Because you're not yourself.
Your energy is pulling everyone down in the office.
Normally you're bubbly, you're excitable, you're fun, you're
creative. You have such a spark and the
absence of that is something we all feel.
And I'm just concerned for you. And I'm so glad to this day that
she brought that to my attention and brought it up because it
needed to be said and it was impacting my mental health, my
ability to work, my ability to eat, to sleep, to function.
This was a lower point than even I had been after my breakup with
Brian, after spending a year, a full year with him.
And as a result of that conversation, I reached out to a
therapist. I'm still seeing that therapist
to this day. Catherine, if you ever see this,
you're a godsend. But it was in my work with
Catherine, in my very earliest sessions with her, that she
identified my anxious attachment and recommended that I read
attached. I did.
I digested it immediately. And that conversation, this
series of events, led me to where I am today, sitting in
front of you, having coached thousands of people in various
formats around the world on how to heal and having had many
former clients get engaged, leave harmful relationships, get
married. And I have no regrets that this
is how things played out. But this relationship taught me
something very important and as I mentioned, was incredibly
consequential. And that's because it helped me
identify my attachment style. I had a degree in psychology.
I had studied through textbooks and various courses attachment,
but I didn't piece together that the trauma that I had been
through growing up and the abandonment in various ways from
multiple family members had led to this adaptation relationally
for me. And it was this connection, this
spark and the subsequent falling out with Aaron that led to that.
And what a blessing that has become for me.
So really, this is what I took away from that experience.
One of the other things that I took away is to not ignore red
flags. The fact that Aaron had just
ended an engagement weeks before we reconnected should have given
me pause, and it didn't. I looked the other way because
how I felt with him felt more important than logically saying
I don't really think this person is ready for the kind of
connection that I desire. He was showing me that he was.
So I thought, you know what, maybe it is over.
Maybe I should give the benefit of the doubt.
And I know a lot of people can relate to that who are watching
and listening. So I just want to say, don't
ignore the red flags. My friends were telling me.
They were in my ears, they were in my head, they were texting
me. They were telling me in person
like, hey, pump the brakes. We're really glad that you
connect with this person. But this is all happening very,
very quickly. And I did not listen.
And those codependent tendencies would actually come to haunt me
again in the 3rd and final relationship that I want to talk
about today. You know they say that celebrity
deaths come in threes, right? For me, my breakups, the death
of my anxious attachment, and the birth of secure attachment
in my life happened in three. And this third connection was
with someone that I met almost immediately after moving to
Charleston, SC from New York. I had only been there for a
couple of weeks. I only knew one person in
Charleston, and that was my real estate agent who helped me buy
my house. It just so happened that this
person, my real estate agent, invited me out with some of his
friends. And this person, whom we'll call
Xander today, happened to be one of his friends, a mutual friend,
someone that he knew. We all went out to karaoke.
And honestly, I wasn't sure this person was even gay when I was
talking to him. And my, my test question for
this is always, who's your diva? And I'm talking about how much I
love Mariah Carey. And his answer was Britney
Spears. And I'm like, OK, I'm in safe
territory here. We're both on the same team.
We're good. So we shared numbers.
It just so happened that the next day I was having a little
get together. I had invited my real estate
agent who had invited a bunch of other people, and I was inviting
people left and right. I was looking to make friends,
right? So I'm looking to network.
I'm looking to branch out so I have a bunch of people over to
the house and Xander and I hit it off tremendously to the point
where other people there are kind of like, how long have you
guys been dating? You know, that kind of vibe that
other people are picking up on. We end up having a magical
weekend. We start spending a lot of time
together, not usually during the week, but almost every minute of
every weekend. 4 weeks now, about a month into seeing one
another, Xander invites me to go down with him from Charleston to
a southern part of South Carolina where his parents have
a home and I meet his family. So this is a common theme among
all three. I met all of their families and
these are the only three men whose families I did meet.
I hit it off with them. They're so sweet.
Like this person Xander and I are sharing a bedroom at his
parents house. Like this is pretty clearly a
signal that things are serious, right?
That's how I interpreted it. And it just so happened that my
dad had recently relocated to Charleston.
I had moved him there and so I introduce Xander to my father
and this was the first person I ever did introduce to my father
and because of what would happen a few months later, the only
one. But Xander and I very quickly
become an item. And then things start to shift
after. After about a month and a half,
maybe closer to two months, we're out celebrating his
birthday. His friends are starting to call
me his boyfriend. We haven't defined anything yet,
and honestly, we haven't even really gone on a whole lot of
dates. We're just spending every moment
of every weekend together. We're hooking up a lot, We're
going out to eat a lot. But our conversations aren't
really happening in the way that intentional dating does.
There's not a slow, steady build.
There's not a sustainable pace to this.
And that would come to slap me across the face when a few weeks
later he said, look, I don't think we're looking for the same
thing here. I'm not looking for anything
serious. We're not in a relationship.
Like, if you're cool with that, we can keep doing what we're
doing. And I'm like, what?
I met your family, you met my dad.
Like, to me, that's pretty serious.
I mean, we're spending days non-stop a week together.
Your friends have started calling me your boyfriend, so
I'm not sure why you would think that this is not serious in any
way or that we're not dating. So he breaks up with me now,
what complicated things is in the meantime, while we were
dating, he had rented a part of his duplex that he owned to my
father and my dad. Bless his heart, He started
sharing details with me in the wake of the breakup about this
person's comings and goings and it wasn't good and I had to
establish a boundary there. But I very quickly discovered
that Xander had moved on very easily and with little to no
regard for my feelings. A few months later, when my
father passed, I also went through some sticky situations
with this person as I'm packing up my dad's things.
And it was just very messy and a lot of it was very disrespectful
and very, very hurtful. And this was the 3rd and final
straw really in the string of these relationships that broke
me in some form. By this time, I was already
coaching people around the world and I wasn't taking my own
advice. And as you can imagine, I beat
myself up terribly for that. You know, I felt this cognitive
dissonance of who am I? You know, I'm helping all of
these people to have healthier relationships and improve their
lives and get engaged and married and all these things.
And I'm hearing constantly, like, Chris, you're a godsend.
I don't know what my life would look like without you, like
getting such positive feedback. And then I can't integrate that
in my own life. And of course, the fallout from
this relationship with Xander affected my ability to hold
space for my clients. I lost a few clients as a
result. You know, it was a pretty dark
time in my life. But in the spirit of being
transparent and honest with everyone, I want you to know I
am human too. I make mistakes, and it's always
how we treat ourselves, how we approach ourselves in the wake
of our mistakes, when we're at our lowest, when we've repeated
a pattern that defines us and determines our level of
security. At the time, of course, I was
beating myself up tremendously. I felt guilt, I felt shame, I
felt embarrassment, and all of this I was dealing with
privately. I mean, it bled over into my
work and my clients knew I wasn't my full true self at the
time. But all of this is to say, this
helped me to better integrate and deepen my healing, because
the gentleness that emerged in the months that followed, and
the way I nursed myself back to security and healed from that
relationship has come to define this era of my life.
I no longer date in that way. I also see at the time how not
being socially connected, how not being emotionally
diversified, as I've talked about on the show previously,
led to me becoming codependent with and anxiously attached to
Xander. And the clarity that emerged
from this experience is something I still hold deeply.
And take very seriously for myself, not to beat myself up,
but to remember I need to practice what I preach.
And I'm proud to say I do. Now, I'm not perfect, of course,
I still make mistakes, but I don't slip up to the extent that
I did with Xander. And part of why I don't is
because I went through that experience.
So I'm not upset about it. It didn't define me.
It none of these men define me. They each provided a piece of
the puzzle that I now see. And that is a beautiful gift
that I have received from these three men.
So I'm not upset with Xander. I'm not upset with Aaron.
I'm not upset with Brian. I wish them absolutely nothing
but the best. Truly, from the bottom of my
heart, I want them to be happy. I want them to be fulfilled
because I want that for myself. And I recognize the misalignment
that was very clearly showing itself and how I wasn't showing
up as my full self or authentically.
And that's the biggest take away out of all of this.
Those are the three relationships that broke me.
They broke me open. They cracked open my heart so it
could repair and become even stronger, even more beautiful.
And I hope that something I've shared today has touched you.
And if it did, I would really appreciate it if you could rate
and review the podcast on whatever platform you're
listening to it on, be it Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever
else. Leave a comment on Spotify.
My inbox is always open and you can e-mail me at me at Crackliff
dot com CRACKL iffe.com See you next time.