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These are my personal opinions. Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well being. Welcome to the show. My name is Paul Koliani. If you haven't been listening for a while, probably don't know that, but it is an Italian name from southern Italy. The what is it? The combination of two surnames. Cola, just in case you're wondering. And enough about me, let's go into today's topic, which is an email that I received that goes something like this. I met someone a couple months ago and I asked him out casually since I was planning to move soon anyway. And so you know, this person wasn't taking it too seriously. But our first date felt like a 10 out of 10. No butterflies or anxiety, just calm. We've been seeing each other weekly since and it's different from anything I've ever experienced. Usually I feel that spark and then detach when it fades. But with him there is no spark in the usual sense. He felt like a best friend from the start and I fell in love without even noticing. But recently, since I realized I loved him, I've started feeling my familiar fear of rejection. It breaks my heart because what I loved about this, this was how calm I felt. I'm an anxious person who grew up craving affection from emotionally unavailable parents. On our first date, I said things like not caring about commitment and I didn't think it would matter anyway because I'm not staying. I'm unconventional, but I love love and it's what I crave most and I've exhausted myself searching for it. I fear settling, but I also fear ending up alone. I fear letting people in because vulnerability has been used against me these past couple weeks. I can't stop wondering if he feels the same way. I'm afraid to tell him I love him because I asked him out first and I'm scared I'll always feel like I loved him more, I think, than he loved me. He said he loved me on the third date, but I laughed it off and said he can't love me yet. Now I'm questioning everything, the way I do when someone just isn't that into me. I told him I wasn't ready to hear what he has to say because I'm afraid of rejection. He said he can wait for me if I need to move for a year. We've never openly discussed what we're doing. I wish we could just tell each other how we feel in a real conversation. If my love is unrequited, I'll deal with it But I'd rather know sooner than later. The fact that I'm questioning things is affecting how I show up. What do I do? Okay, thank you for sharing that. I mean, it sounds like it might be a nice thing, but you're also answering your question in the questions. You're answering your own questions in the question or the questions that you're asking me. For example, you said that I would rather find out sooner than later because I can deal with that. But you're delaying saying anything so you're not going to find out sooner. And so you're delaying finding out sooner. But I'm sure you're saying, but I'm an anxious person and if I find out sooner, it'll come create a problem inside of me. But then you go on to say, but I would rather know sooner than later, and so on and so on. And you also said something a little bit contradicting, which is, he said he loved me. So it's already been said. It's already been put out there. And then you didn't take it seriously. And so there's that, too. And I'm not putting you down for that. That's just. This is what happened. This is what you wrote. And so you're telling me or you're asking me, what do I do? It's affecting how I show up. And the very first thing that comes to mind is something that I've learned, and that is transparency. And honesty is usually better to find things out sooner than later and also find out where the relationship is and where it is going to be. And what I mean by that is, for example, with my wife, I will say things that are honest to her, even though. And this is. It's been a long time since I've done this, but even though that I fear that she may not like that information and it could lead to a breakup. This was actually before we were married, but I was very honest with her with several things. And sometimes that honesty was something along the lines of, hey, stop that. It's very disrespectful. I don't want you to do that anymore. That's something I never would have said in my previous relationships because I never wanted to make waves. I never wanted my partner to look at me and think, wow, this guy's a jerk. So I chose to show up as accommodating. Accommodating meaning I wanted to be nice. I wanted to show up as kind and always have them see me in the best light. And that was a lot of my people pleasing behaviors as well. And if they saw me in the best light, there was less chance that they'd leave me or get angry with me or yell at me or whatever. Because I didn't want to create conflict. Every time I chose not to create conflict, it led down a worse road. It led down a road of hiding things and trying to pretend things didn't exist. Like something I'd be angry about. If I pretend it doesn't exist, I can just move forward. But it always, every time you hide something, it always shows up. It always shows up. Even the good stuff. I don't want to be too excited about it. It's going to show up. And you know, that's a good thing if it shows up in other ways. Because if you're excited about somebody and you don't necessarily say it, it's going to show up in your actions. Just like if you're angry at somebody and you don't say anything, it's going to show up in your actions. It will show up. So repressing anything always reveals itself later in some way, shape or form. And if you have something bad to hide, it will show up. It will come out. And it may not be exactly what comes out. You know, the bad thing that you're hiding, it may not be exactly what comes out. Something else may come out. If you're hiding anger, it may come out in passive aggressive comments like you're angry at somebody for not washing the dishes. That's my example I always use. And you find a dirty plate and you say, I found a dirty plate. I'm just letting you know it's not really direct, it's passive. I'm just letting you know, I found a dirty plate. Instead of saying, hey, I thought you were going to clean the dishes. You said you were going to clean the dishes, which could create conflict and it could create an argument. I realize that. But the arguments usually come because there's a buildup of this kind of passive behavior. And so I'm a proponent of exactly what this person said, which is, I'd rather find out sooner than later. So I'm just going to speak the truth. I have had to tell. Like when my wife and I were first, we actually started living together. When we first started living together, people show up in ways that you don't expect, you don't think about. Because when you're living together, it's a different scenario. Everyone has their own private space. And we act a little differently when we're living together, as opposed to just dating. And we're living in separate places. So one of the things that she used to do was not tell me when she was angry with me. And that caused a lot of problems because I would feel ignored, I would feel neglected. And so the day I said, what's wrong? Tell me what's wrong, even if you have to make me angry, even if you know I'll fly off the handle, let's just get this out in the open, that changed everything. Because she decided on that day that it was better to speak her mind than to withhold, because it slowly wore down the relationship and it slowly wore down the connection. So day after day after day, after feeling neglected, I felt less connected and I felt less love and affection from her, which she didn't want to give because she was angry with me. But because she was angry with me and didn't want to cause trouble or make me feel bad or whatever her reasons were back then, she chose not to say anything, which kept the cycle of neglect and. Or at least the feelings of neglect not intentional. But she couldn't connect with me. She couldn't look me in the eye and say she loved me because she was angry, but she never told me. So we finally got that out of the way, and then we're connected again. And it's the same thing with this person's case. There's a point where you can either hold it in and hope everything works out, or just speak your mind and see what happens. Now, that doesn't mean, like, every time you fall in love with somebody, you should immediately say, I love you and I want to marry you, and I want to have kids with you, and I want to move to France with you. It doesn't mean you just let it all out because you're just having these joyous feelings. I mean, you could. But I believe in falling in love slowly. Because when you fall in love slowly, you get to feel things out as you go. And it could take months, it could take a year, could take more. But you fall in love slowly. I'm not saying you won't fall in love within a year, but maybe you just take it slowly, meaning the full trust of everything that exists. Every component of the relationship takes time to build. And so when you're with somebody, if you fully trust 100% right at the beginning, nothing builds. You're just blindly trusting. Everything's going to work out perfect. And I've gone through enough breakups and heartbreak in my life to know that trusting 100% fully at the beginning does two things. It makes you blind to what you need to not be blind about. Meaning you might miss something at the beginning and also forgive something at the beginning without addressing it. And if you don't address it because everything seems to be working out, everything seems to be great, and it seems to be a great relationship, but you don't address it, then it sticks around and it comes out later. But if you do address it, you get to find out if the relationship will persist. And what that means is, will your relationship survive the challenges of a relationship? Will the relationship persevere through honesty? Will it persevere through the obstacles that come up in many relationships, and especially this one? Will it persevere when you bring up xyz? Because if and when it does persevere, it strengthens the bond. And so if you are able to say, hey, when you say that to me, I feel disrespected and it really hurts my feelings. And the other person says, wow, I'm so sorry. I don't mean to do that. When does this happen? Let's talk about it. And you actually have a real conversation about it, then that strengthens the bond. Because two people who care about each other, two people who love each other, want the other person to be happy, want the other person to feel safe, to feel loved, to feel like they are important to them. And so if you say, hey, this is important to me and this is what's happening, and it doesn't feel like you care about me or this and that, and if they love you, if they care about you, they're going to be upset that they did that to you. They're not going to be upset at you. They shouldn't be. They should be upset that they did it to you. They should be upset that they made you feel that way. So if you bring some challenge up that you know might cause some conflict in the relationship and your relationship survives it, it will survive more later. Not that it has to, but what it ends up doing is strengthening the bond and strengthening the trust and the feelings of security in the relationship so that you are that much closer and feel that much more comfortable around each other. And that builds not by hiding how you feel. It builds by sharing how you feel and what you feel and what's going on inside of you. This doesn't mean you share it with a dangerous or violent person. It just means in most relationships, when you are able to share your true thoughts and feelings, the relationship gets tested, it gets challenged. And when it survives that challenge, it gets stronger. And if you feel like you have to hide stuff from the relationship from the other person. Then you should probably. I'm going to skate on some thin ice here. You should probably question if the other person truly cares about you feeling happy and safe and secure the relationship. Because if you share something like, hey, when you said that, it hurt, and they say something along the lines of, well, I'm sorry, if you're so sensitive, then you have to question if they really care if you're hurt. And I hope that this doesn't apply to anyone listening, but I know that a lot of people listening right now that it does apply to. But my definition of love in a romantic relationship especially. But in general, my definition of love is supporting the other person's happiness. And what that means is whatever decisions they make for themselves that make them happy, you support. And if you see them unhappy, it makes you unhappy, and that bothers you because they are unhappy. And because you want to see them happy, you want to do everything you can to make sure they find happiness. And it works on the other end, too. They have to do the same for you. That's how a relationship strengthens. If somebody can look at you and say, wow, you look unhappy, what can I do to help? And as long as they're not the cause, but if they are the cause of your unhappiness, that needs to be a conversation. Because. Because the conversation should evolve eventually into maybe a deeper conversation of, oh, I'm the one that's making you unhappy. Wow, I need to fix that. Because that's normal relationships love. That's normal love. It becomes abnormal or even emotionally abusive or toxic in some way when the other person doesn't care enough to see you happy or you don't care enough to see them happy. If that's the case with one or both of you, then I question the feelings you have for each other or one has for the other. It doesn't mean I'm invalidating a relationship that might exist that goes through the challenges or hard times. It just means I question it. And if it's under question, it should be a conversation. So let me come back to this person's question, which is, what do I do? Do I tell this guy that I love him because everything is going great? Or if I do that, what if he doesn't love me? Well, he already said he loves you. And if you don't take someone at face value, that's on you, not on them. I am all for taking someone at face value. If, you know, if I was dating my girlfriend at the Very beginning. And she said she loved me. I wouldn't think, no, you don't. I would say, wow, she loves me. Well, that feels pretty good. If it was, like, on the first date, that might be a little different. That might make me pause and say, you can't love me on the first. It's sort of like this person saying, what? This is the third date. How can you say you love me? I will say that it is important to consider that some people will say they love you when they don't. I don't mean to put a downer in this. I just want to make sure that because of this person's history, and this is why she's asking, I'm sure that she hears somebody say that they love her, and she doesn't want to automatically believe it because she doesn't want to get lured into a toxic relationship that she feels like she can't get out of because she fell in love. And when you feel like you can't get out of something, it's usually because you've made some commitments, usually in your own mind. Like, I really have strong feelings for this person, and I'm going to do more to save what we have than look for the reasons why it won't work. That's usually what happens when we fall in love with somebody, is that we find ways to make it more real and more about love. And don't look for all the ways it's not working or all the warning signs, all the yellow or red flags which gets us in trouble. The goal of any romantic relationship, in my opinion, the goal of any romantic relationship is as you're developing feelings, you are also scrutinizing. You are also checking things off in your mind or unchecking things. You are aware that you're developing feelings, and you are also careful as you develop feelings, that what's happening needs to be scrutinized. And I know that just sounds like. Well, that means you're not really falling deeply in love with somebody. You're constantly on guard. It feels like that when I talk about it that way. But here's the thing. If you don't have enough experience to understand what a true connection feels like without coercion, where you don't trust yourself enough to experience love to its fullest with somebody else, where if you did see a warning sign, that you wouldn't back up a moment and talk about it, if you don't trust yourself enough to help have feelings and take a step back and have a conversation that might be hard that might lead to a breakup because it's honest, it's raw, it's real. But you need to say it, because if you don't say it, then it gets buried and it comes out later. Whatever gets buried comes out later. And there's no way to. There's no way around it. Whatever gets buried comes out later. And it could come out in one of many ways. You never know. That's the problem with buried thoughts and feelings and emotions is that when they come out later, they're usually unpredictable. You usually introduce an element into the relationship where the other person goes, where the hell is this coming from? I don't know what you're talking about. What. What do you mean? You know, they're going to have all these thoughts if they. If they don't understand what's happening. And so, again, I prefer honesty and transparency. Just like, here's the thing with this person who wrote, you are being honest with me. You are sharing these things candidly. You are saying things like, I told him, I'm not ready to hear what he has to say because I'm afraid of rejection. That's honest. And if he cares about you, he's going to say, great, I will keep that to myself in a different way because it's already exposed, it's already expressed, it's not being buried. But he's saying that, okay, if this is how you feel, you're afraid of rejection, then I will reserve my thoughts and feelings. You said that. This person who wrote said. He said he can wait for me if I need to move for a year. That's quite the commitment for somebody he just met. I. I have to admit, if there's something real there and he is willing to wait, then it is something worth pursuing for sure, as long as the scrutiny stays active. I believe in scrutiny. I believe also in honesty. Because an honest conversation like that might be, I can't make you wait a year for me. That might be what you say to him, I won't make you wait a year for me. If you meet someone else, I don't want to hold you back from going with that person or being with that person. That's not what this person wants to hear. The person who wrote to me, that's not what she wants to hear. That's probably something she doesn't want to say. Who would want to say, hey, I really love you and I'd like to have a relationship with you, and when I come back in a year, I would love to be with you, but if you find Somebody in the meantime, you should be with them if that's what you want. It's very hard to let someone be themselves. It's very hard to let them live their life the way they choose. But that is love to me. Love involves the trust and the faith that they're going to make decisions that honor themselves because you want them to honor themselves. And his decision to wait a year, which he may do, would be his way of honoring himself. That might be what he wants. If this connection that you have with him is true and he feels just as strongly as you do for him, then he may just end up waiting a year and enjoy the long distance relationship he has with you, knowing that you're going to come back. But that has to be a serious conversation and you have to bring up the possibility of meeting someone else. Like if you do meet someone else, I don't want to hold you back. But if the conversation goes like this, if you meet someone else, don't talk to them, don't consider dating them. That this is my own opinion. You may disagree with it, but I had a very, very similar, very similar beginning with Asha, my wife. We met online and it had been months and when we met we were best friends as well. Like you said, we acted like we were best friends, but my intention and her intention that we weren't going to date. We met on a dating site, but I told her I'm getting off the dating site because I'm not ready to date. I just got divorced and I need to heal some things inside of me. I was hurtful to my wife and I also am grieving all this loss. And I just told her the truth. I was very forthcoming with the truth and I even told her, you know, I'm living with my mom and I'm living in a basement. I don't really have much money. I sounded the most unappealing of any dating prospect could sound. I did not sound appealing at all, at least the way I word of it. At least I felt that I wasn't sounding very appealing at all. And her message back to me was lol, that's refreshing. It's nice to meet someone honest. Which I thought was hilarious because I'm kind of the opposite of what you're looking for right now. So I said, look, I'm not ready to date. And of course you should continue trying to find someone who might be a potential candidate for you, a potential relationship partner. I and that's exactly how our relationship started, is that we were in a long distance friendship. We Met on an online app, a dating app, and she continued to meet other people, meet other guys, and I was just. I chose to stay single. And as she would meet other guys, I would ask her, how did it go? How are things? And after a while, after she did that, she mentioned that maybe if I was closer because we're 1,000 miles apart, that it would be interesting to see if we could get together and see if there was something there, which totally surprised me. But that's how it kind of started, as feeling that connection toward each other. And so I started developing feelings. And after she said that, I thought, okay, great, she's not going to date again. Because now she's thinking about having a relationship with me. Because now we're thinking maybe we should meet. Because it was a few months and I was starting to heal and feel better and really work things out in my mind and get past my old stuff. So one day she tells me that she's going on a date. And this is where it's related to this person, at least the. What I told this person who wrote. And I said, you're going on a date. What do you mean? She said, what do you mean? What do I mean? I'm still on the dating app and we're not going to meet. And maybe we do meet and we're not compatible. And I said, well, oh, that's okay. That's weird. I didn't think you were going to date. I thought we were just kind of now getting to know each other. It bothered me inside. I got a little triggered, and I thought, why is she dating other people still when we had this conversation? And so I said I was bothered by that. And then we finished the conversation, and I don't know if it was the same day or the next hour or the following day, but I called her back and I said, I just realized that of course you should be dating. Of course you could date. I mean, we haven't even met yet. And. And even if we do, it doesn't mean that we're going to be a couple or be attracted to each other. I mean, there are all kinds of possibilities here, and it could go in any direction. So it was silly of me to say that I'm bothered by you dating because I have no right to say that you should follow the direction that you want to follow. If that's what you want to do, then that's what you want to do, and I'm okay with that. I don't know how I said it or what I said, but I basically told her that I really shouldn't be telling her what to do or how to do it or who to do it with. I should just honor her path and have faith and trust that if we were meant to be together, we'll be together. And so I said that. And she tells me to this day that when I called her and said, hey, who am I to tell you who to date or when to date or what? As soon as I said that, she felt free to choose herself. I mean, choose whoever she wanted to be with, choose what to do with her time. She felt free to be herself. And that's what really changed her mind about me. That's what really pushed her over the edge of whether to consider me or not as an exclusive potential partner. And she said the very next moment or the very next day, she. She got herself off the dating site. She just shut her account down. And when she told me that, I said, you didn't have to do that. I don't mean for you to stop doing that. You should be able to do anything you want. She says, I know, and that's why I did it. That's why I shut the account down, because you didn't tell me to do that. You allowed me to do whatever I wanted to do. And that felt supportive, that felt accepting, that felt loving and trusting. And I'm putting words in her mouth right now, but that's pretty much how I see it, is that someone will feel accepted and loved and trusted when you let them be who they are and let them do what they want with their life. And after that, that's when the bond grew, because I was worried that now that I'm developing feelings that by saying, hey, you should do whatever you want and date whatever you want. I was initially worried that doing that would cause her to find someone else and we wouldn't be together. But if she found someone else that was more appealing than me and she had more connection with, who am I to stop her from doing that? Again? We hadn't met, and even if we had, it's way too soon in the relationship to expect her to have any sort of loyalty to me. It's just too soon. And so that really helped both of us understand that I am not here to tell her what to do. I'm not here to expect her to do things my way. That was the old me, because that's the kind of stuff I was healing. And she has the right to live her life whatever way she wants. And because she felt free to do that with Me. She wanted to live her life with me. And that is the magic formula. That's the magic formula for relationships is you letting someone be themselves. Which leads me back to this email. Who are you and who do you want to be with a person that might be a potential partner for, I don't know, the rest of your life? Who do you want to be? Do you want to be able to be yourself? Because that's who I want you to be, is to be yourself so that you will find out if the relationship will survive the challenges. The challenge is you being yourself. The challenge is them being themselves and you accepting who they are as well or not. Because part of the challenge is realizing, oh, this isn't going to work. Because the challenge, the test of the relationship, is determining if the relationship will grow or fall apart. It will grow if you make it through a challenge, because it will grow stronger, it will grow more resilient. You will be able to share more things, harder things, and it will fall apart if you hold back. And you're trying to make peace and you're trying to make things not so controversial or adversarial, you're trying to avoid arguments, all of that stuff gets hidden and buried and repressed and comes out in other ways. And that's how I see relationships fail. For the person who wrote, I'm not saying that you should go and say, I love you. I love you so much. I love you till the end of time. I'm not saying that at all. But there's nothing wrong with saying I'm developing feelings for you, like, really strong feelings. And also, I'm afraid because I've been hurt, and I don't want to be hurt again. So I have these feelings and I'm afraid. And I've had this traumatic past with my parents. And so I find myself having or developing feelings fast. And because I develop them so fast, I have to be careful. I have to throttle myself. I have to pull back a little bit because I know that I can fall in love fast. That's sort of my story. I used to be that way, too. I would fall in love really fast and then forget all the warning signs. Love is love. I love love. I want to be in love. And that's where I was, too. And I would never be honest, but the honesty is I have a tendency to fall in love fast. And I know that I'll miss a lot of warning signs because I don't want to fall in love with you, you know, talking to the other person and find out that you're a controlling narcissist, and I don't want to deal with that. And somebody who cares about you and maybe is in love with you is going to laugh and say, I totally get it. I care about you. I don't want you in that kind of relationship either. In fact, if you ever see that behavior out of me, let me know. Because I don't want you to feel that way. And that allows you to be honest. It allows you to be honest when you share things that you can talk about and bring up. Because when this stuff comes up, bringing it up immediately, it opens the conversation so that you either get hurt or get past it now rather than later, which is this person's fear I might fall in love and get hurt. And I don't want that to happen. So I don't want to mention this. But like you said, you answered your own question. I would rather find out now than later. If you do that with any Every single challenge in a new or existing relationship, you get to find out where the relationship is and how you feel about each other. Because when I bring up the hard stuff with Asha, it is amazing what happens because she wants this relationship as much as I do, and for me to bring up something difficult because she doesn't want this relationship to end and she cares about me. And because I don't want this relationship to end and I care about her. We figure it out. Because that's how it's supposed to work. You're supposed to be able to work together to figure it out. This person who wrote her relationship is very, very new, very young. And because of that, there are a ton of unknowns, which is why it's even more important to bring up those unknowns, in my opinion. Some people may not agree with this, but I think you can bring up the unknowns. I'm worried that I don't want to fall in love too quickly. Everything I just said, because I fell in love quickly before and it turned into a toxic relationship, and I don't want to deal with that. Forgive me if I go slow. Forgive me if I question things sometimes, because that's who I am, and that's what I do. Now for the people listening who say, yeah, when you do that to a narcissist or an emotionally abusive person, they're going to note everything you say and make sure not to show up in the ways that they mention. For example, the person says, my last partner always asked me about my sexual history, and they were always so jealous. And the person who might be manipulative or abusive. They might mark that in their little book of toxic behaviors. And they might say, okay, don't appear jealous. Don't ask about sexual history. So yes, there are people like that. There are people that will hide their true intentions and then come out later. I talk about that over@loveandabuse.com shows all about emotionally abusive relationships, in case you're listening and need something like that. So there are people like that. It would. It would be a disservice if I didn't mention that there are people who know how to trick you. That doesn't mean everyone does. It just means you have to be aware of it. Which is why I want you to be scrutinizing. That's why I want you to be discerning. That's why I want you to question things as they come up. Because if one day, let's just say you're together for a couple months and it usually comes out, this kind of behavior that I'm talking about usually comes out within two to four months, sometimes longer, but usually after the honeymoon period where you're feeling wonderful and blissful, There might be a behavior if they're emotionally abusive, if they're toxic, there might be a behavior or something that happens that doesn't feel right, that maybe they blame you for something, maybe they get upset about something, maybe they make you feel guilty for something and it doesn't feel right. It seems to be going in a great direction except for this one thing. And when it doesn't feel right, typically the victim of toxic behavior or emotionally abusive behavior will think that they themselves are the problem. And here's the thing. When you think things are going well and then you suddenly feel like you are being labeled as the problem, that is something that you need to take a step back with and ask yourself, wait a minute, what's really going on here? Because everything was going smoothly and now they're blaming me for this, and now they're trying to control me here. And now they say that what I did was wrong, even though I was doing it with the best of intentions and I didn't think it was wrong. When you start questioning yourself because they're making you question yourself, that's when you take a step back and ask yourself what's really going on here, because everything was going smoothly up until this point. You just have to be aware. That's why I keep saying, scrutinize, scrutinize, scrutinize these little interactions, they're either going to make you Feel good, neutral, or bad. They make you feel good when there's love behind the intentions. They make you feel neutral when you're having normal conversation. Or maybe you do feel positive and loving and all that. When you start feeling bad, then reflect on it right away. Ask yourself what's really going on here. Don't get absorbed into the conversation that somebody drags you into that is blaming you and pointing at you as the problem. Because when that starts to happen, it can continue. And then we find out that somebody might have been hiding who they really were the whole time. That's my only caveat to this whole thing. I'm not saying that all new love turns into this. I'm not saying that this person's possible great relationship that could blossom won't turn into this. It's just that we have to keep our guard and our tower looking down and protecting us. The tower in your mind. So you can still have feelings, you can still fall in love. It's just that you can't let love override the symptoms that you're experiencing. That might point to a toxic or emotionally abusive person or someone who hasn't reached a level of maturity with relationships that doesn't know how to show up in a relationship so that you not only have feelings, but also have a protector inside of you. Like you protect yourself from going too far with somebody, even though you might love them, you might be in love with them. They may be everything that you want. But don't get into a phase of questioning what you're experiencing. If you're experiencing wonderful things and there's really nothing to question, then questioning yourself and asking, well, is this a problem? Might not be necessarily appropriate or necessary because nothing bad is happening. You're just kind of making stuff up unless it is really happening. But that's when you have to step back and ask yourself what's really going on here. People who love you don't want you to feel bad. People who love you don't want you to feel disrespected and they don't want to be the reason you feel disrespected or feel bad. They want you to feel good and they want you to feel good about yourself, and they want you to feel loved and they want you to know that they care about you. People who love you want you to be happy. And if you don't feel that way, then something's going on. And don't be afraid to say, I love that person. And I'm going to question some things because it seems like we do that sometimes. We fall in love with somebody and then we stop questioning things or we take the blame for things. That's what I love about Asha. She won't just take the blame. She will say, no, these are the facts. This is what happened. This is what you said, and this is what you meant. And I'll say, how do you know what I meant? That's not what I meant. And then we'll have a conversation or an argument or something. But it always leads to some sort of resolve because we want to see each other happy. We don't want the other person to feel like they are unloved because she loves me and I love her. And in the end, it is about supporting each other's happiness and moving in the right direction. And it isn't about one person being right. And I don't care how you feel about it, I'm right, you're wrong. Tough crap. That's not how it works, and that's not how it should work. Sometimes it feels that way when you're having an argument. But in the end, where do you end up? To this person who wrote, you said, I've started feeling my familiar fear of rejection. It breaks my heart because what I loved about this is how calm I felt. And so everything about this sounds wonderful. The only hesitation I have is that the word love came out so soon. But who's to stop that? I mean, sometimes it happens. Sometimes you do fall in love fast, and that's okay, too. You just have to be aware and allow yourself to ask questions and have the hard conversations. You do have things to work through because of your parents. You do have some old traumas to deal with, and I highly recommend you continue working on that. I actually have episodes that you can listen to, on the fear of abandonment, the fear of rejection, and similar, similar topics. And of course, you know, seek a professional if you need help with that. But I'm going to direct you exactly where you were directing yourself. I would rather find out sooner than later. And if you keep that attitude throughout the entire relationship, you will find out things sooner than later. And when you're in a good relationship, it gets better. When you're in a not so good relationship, it will get worse. But which one do you want to keep? You want to keep the one that gets better. And it might be scary to bring up the hard conversations, but I would rather bring up the hard conversations and find out what's going on and where it's going, then not find out at all and just keep guessing. Which will of course increase anxiety, increase stress and fear and insecurity and all the things that you don't want to feel. So I don't know if this helps you answer the questions that you have, but this is my perspective and I wish you the best with this. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Overwhelmed Brain. I want to thank angel and Crystal and anyone that gives to the patron program and donates. I appreciate all of you. Thank you for helping me fund the show, funding the show. Very, very grateful for you. And if you value the show like these patrons do, head over to moretlb.com and there are ways to give back over there. Thank you again, patrons, and for our show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and abuse over@loveandabuse.com it's all about control and manipulation and emotional abuse. And I really get into the weeds over there. If you need it, that is the place to go. Loveandabuse.com and there's also a safe listening option just in case you you don't want somebody else peering over your shoulder, wondering what you're doing. And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship who might peer over someone's shoulder because you might be a little controlling or manipulative or emotionally abusive and you want to change that about yourself. I have a full program on how to do that over@HealedBeing.com sign up for the free lessons. Get yourself started and maybe you can start changing right away because the relationship only gets worse, worse the longer you stay that way. And if you've been that way all your life, then what you're doing is creating a huge rift in emotional connection and love between you and the other person. And that will ultimately lead to what I've been through in my past breakups and divorce. I had to learn how to get through all of that. I had to learn how to heal from that and stop being the difficult one. And so I help you heal from all of that over at Healed Being. And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions and be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want. Always take steps to grow and evolve. You are powerful beyond measure. And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you, you are amazing.