WEBVTT
00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:20.640
I'd like to describe a scene.
00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:26.800
You've made the decision, not a dramatic announcement, just a quiet internal settling.
00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:30.879
Something in you finally stopped fighting.
00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:32.320
You've done the research.
00:00:32.479 --> 00:00:33.759
You've talked to the friend.
00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:35.520
Maybe you've talked to a lawyer.
00:00:35.679 --> 00:00:42.000
Maybe you've just been honest with yourself in the middle of the night in a way that you haven't allowed before.
00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:45.359
But you know, you know what you need to do.
00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:56.799
And for the first time in a very long time, there is a stillness underneath the fear, a kind of clarity that feels fragile but real.
00:00:57.359 --> 00:01:00.640
And then he does the thing.
00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:03.119
Maybe it's the dishes.
00:01:03.280 --> 00:01:08.879
Maybe that sounds small, but you have asked him to help with the dishes for seven years.
00:01:09.040 --> 00:01:16.640
And today, the day after something shifted in you, he does them without being asked.
00:01:16.879 --> 00:01:19.840
And he doesn't even make a production of it.
00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.439
He just does them the way that you always said that you needed him to.
00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:32.400
Or maybe he sits down next to you and says, I know things haven't been right.
00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:34.000
I've been thinking about it.
00:01:34.159 --> 00:01:35.840
I want to do better.
00:01:36.159 --> 00:01:38.000
And he doesn't get defensive.
00:01:38.239 --> 00:01:42.719
He doesn't make it about his stress or his childhood or your tone.
00:01:42.959 --> 00:01:49.760
He just sits there and says he wants to do better, the way that you've always needed him to.
00:01:50.159 --> 00:01:55.920
Or maybe he's suddenly present with the kids in a way that makes them light up.
00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:59.599
Or he schedules a therapy appointment without you asking.
00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:05.439
Or he says, I love you and looks at you like he means it in a way he hasn't in years.
00:02:05.840 --> 00:02:11.919
Or he acknowledges, actually acknowledges something specific that he's done.
00:02:12.159 --> 00:02:16.240
And your whole body does something with that.
00:02:16.479 --> 00:02:18.719
Something you didn't ask permission for.
00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:22.639
Something that doesn't care what you decided last night.
00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:27.759
Something that says, uh, wait, what if this is the moment?
00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:29.680
What if this is really it?
00:02:30.319 --> 00:02:39.120
And this, right here, is the most emotionally dangerous moment in the entire process of leaving an unhealthy relationship.
00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:44.879
Not the screaming fights, not the worst nights, not even the moment you decided to go.
00:02:45.199 --> 00:02:53.360
This moment, when he is finally, briefly, unheartbreakingly exactly who you always needed him to be.
00:02:53.680 --> 00:03:00.800
Today's episode is about what happens in that window and what to do when you're living inside of it.
00:03:01.039 --> 00:03:03.360
Welcome back to Pattern Breakers Collective.
00:03:03.520 --> 00:03:04.479
I'm Lisa.
00:03:04.719 --> 00:03:16.319
Before we go anywhere, the usual note: when I use he throughout today's episode, I am speaking from my own experience and from the experience of the women I mostly work with.
00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:21.439
I recognize that these dynamics are not exclusive to one gender.
00:03:21.680 --> 00:03:24.000
Women can behave this way too.
00:03:24.240 --> 00:03:26.960
Men can be on the receiving end.
00:03:27.199 --> 00:03:33.280
These patterns exist in same-sex relationships and in dynamics I haven't described.
00:03:33.520 --> 00:03:39.280
If your story looks different, the mechanics I'm describing still apply to you.
00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:44.479
Now, I want to be clear about what today's episode is and what it isn't.
00:03:44.719 --> 00:04:00.000
We've talked in previous episodes about evaluating whether change is real, about how to watch for genuine accountability versus performed accountability, about what sustained, consistent behavioral change actually looks like versus crisis mode effort.
00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:02.400
I'm not going to repeat all of that today.
00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:07.520
If you want that conversation, the episode called You're Watching the Wrong Thing covers it in depth.
00:04:07.759 --> 00:04:10.479
Today, I want to go somewhere more specific.
00:04:10.719 --> 00:04:26.560
I want to talk about the particular internal experience of the woman who's already decided, who has already done enough reckoning to know what she needs to do, and who is now standing in front of a version of him that is making that decision feel almost impossible to hold on to.
00:04:26.879 --> 00:04:32.319
Because I think that specific experience is one of the least talked-about parts of this whole process.
00:04:32.639 --> 00:04:35.439
We talk a lot about how to recognize abuse.
00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:37.360
We talk about why women stay.
00:04:37.519 --> 00:04:51.680
We talk about what healthy change looks like, but we don't talk enough about what happens internally in the hours and days after she's made the decision, when everything that she's been asking for suddenly appears right in front of her.
00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:58.560
And what that does to a person who has spent years loving someone and wanting things to be different.
00:04:58.879 --> 00:05:01.040
This episode is for her.
00:05:01.199 --> 00:05:14.800
And I want to say before we go any further, if this is where you are right now, if you're living in this exact window, I want you to know that what you're feeling makes complete sense, every bit of it.
00:05:14.959 --> 00:05:18.240
And you haven't made a mistake by feeling it.
00:05:38.399 --> 00:05:48.160
Because I think understanding the mechanism matters, not so you can feel worse about it, but so you can stop interpreting it as evidence that you are wrong about leaving.
00:05:48.399 --> 00:05:59.759
When someone who has been controlling, emotionally abusive, or chronically unavailable suddenly shifts their behavior, the question worth asking is what changed?
00:06:00.079 --> 00:06:05.600
Because something did change, just probably not what you're hoping it changed.
00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:09.839
In most cases, what changed is the level of perceived threat?
00:06:10.079 --> 00:06:19.360
He's not suddenly more loving, he's not suddenly more insightful, he's not suddenly more aware of your pain in some deep, meaningful way that arrived on its own.
00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:24.959
Something happened that made him sense the real possibility of losing access.
00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:36.319
And that threat, not love, not growth, not the cumulative weight of years of conversation finally landing somewhere new, the threat activated a different set of behaviors.
00:06:36.639 --> 00:06:41.040
This is important to understand because it reframes what you're looking at.
00:06:41.199 --> 00:06:46.399
You're not looking at the man you always hoped he would become finally deciding to show up.
00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:52.079
You're looking at a threat response, and threat responses are sophisticated.
00:06:52.319 --> 00:07:03.920
They can look remarkably like love, they can feel like love, they can produce behaviors that are genuinely indistinguishable from what love would produce in the short term.
00:07:04.319 --> 00:07:07.199
The difference shows up over time.
00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:11.120
Love motivates change regardless of consequences.
00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:16.079
A threat response motivates change in order to remove the consequence.
00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:23.680
And that distinction matters enormously because one of those sustains when the threat reduces and one doesn't.
00:07:23.920 --> 00:07:38.079
In coercively controlling relationships specifically, this shift can be highly sophisticated because people who have been using control to manage their partners have usually developed real skill at reading what she needs to see.
00:07:38.240 --> 00:07:40.720
They've had years of data.
00:07:40.879 --> 00:07:47.040
They know what moves her, they know what she's asked for, they know what specific things would make her reconsider.
00:07:47.360 --> 00:07:55.439
And in the moment when she's finally pulling away, all of that information becomes available as a toolkit.
00:07:55.680 --> 00:08:01.120
I don't say that to make him sound like some cartoon villain calculating his every move.
00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:03.519
Sometimes it's not that conscious.
00:08:03.759 --> 00:08:06.720
Sometimes it's genuinely more instinctual than deliberate.
00:08:06.879 --> 00:08:12.720
The nervous system recognizing a threat and activating whatever behaviors have historically reduced it.
00:08:12.959 --> 00:08:16.560
But conscious or not, the effect is the same.
00:08:16.879 --> 00:08:26.560
She gets, in concentrated form, exactly what she's been asking for at the exact moment she's decided to stop asking.
00:08:26.879 --> 00:08:29.680
He didn't change because he finally understood your pain.
00:08:29.759 --> 00:08:33.360
He changed because he finally understood that he might actually lose you.
00:08:33.519 --> 00:08:39.519
Those are two completely different things, and only one of them would still be true six months from now if you stayed.
00:08:39.759 --> 00:08:43.120
So let's talk about what happens inside of her when he does this.
00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:47.600
Because I think a lot of women feel a tremendous amount of shame about their reaction.
00:08:47.840 --> 00:09:00.080
They've done the work, they know what they know, and then he does the thing, and their whole body softens or panics or reaches for him or cries in a way that they didn't expect.
00:09:00.320 --> 00:09:04.399
And they look at that reaction and think, what is wrong with me?
00:09:04.799 --> 00:09:06.799
Nothing is wrong with you.
00:09:06.960 --> 00:09:10.559
Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was trained to do.
00:09:10.799 --> 00:09:12.000
Here's what I mean.
00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:38.399
When you have loved someone for years, when you have hoped and waited and asked and tried and been disappointed and come back and hoped again, your brain has spent an enormous amount of time and energy organized around that person, around predicting them, managing them, reading them, watching for signs, trying to produce the right conditions for them to be the person that you needed them to be.
00:09:38.799 --> 00:09:43.360
And then suddenly, without effort on your part, he is that person.
00:09:43.759 --> 00:09:48.559
The thing that you've been trying to produce finally appears on its own.
00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:52.320
And your brain doesn't first ask, is this sustainable?
00:09:52.559 --> 00:09:53.360
Is this real?
00:09:53.519 --> 00:09:54.480
What changed?
00:09:54.639 --> 00:09:57.759
Is this a threat response or a genuine growth?
00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:01.519
Your brain just responds to the reward.
00:10:01.919 --> 00:10:09.919
Because you've been in a pattern where that reward came irregularly, unpredictably, after long periods of disappointment.
00:10:10.159 --> 00:10:16.799
And so when it arrived, it felt more powerful than it would have in a healthier relationship.
00:10:17.039 --> 00:10:19.120
That is not a coincidence.
00:10:19.279 --> 00:10:22.000
That is the mechanics of intermittent reinforcement.
00:10:22.159 --> 00:10:26.960
The unpredictability of the reward is part of what makes it so compelling.
00:10:27.200 --> 00:10:30.639
I've used this analogy before, but think about a slot machine.
00:10:30.799 --> 00:10:37.840
You don't get rewarded every time, you get rewarded sometimes, unpredictably, after periods of getting nothing.
00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:45.120
And that irregular reward schedule actually creates stronger behavioral conditioning than a consistent one does.
00:10:45.440 --> 00:10:47.919
It keeps you pulling the lever.
00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:53.039
Not because you're irrational, because your brain has been shaped by the pattern.
00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:57.600
Long-term, unhealthy relationships create the same kind of pattern.
00:10:57.919 --> 00:11:04.320
Periods of distance or cruelty or disappointment, followed by moments of connection, warmth, recognition.
00:11:04.639 --> 00:11:13.759
And over time, those warm moments become disproportionately powerful, both because of their contrast and because of their unpredictability.
00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:23.600
Your nervous system has been trained to respond strongly to them, and no decision you made last night overrides that training immediately.
00:11:23.919 --> 00:11:28.960
This is also why trauma bonds are so seriously difficult to break.
00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:34.559
A trauma bond isn't love that's gone wrong or weakness or poor judgment.
00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:42.320
It's what happens when your nervous system forms an attachment inside of a relationship that alternates between threat and relief.
00:11:42.720 --> 00:11:47.600
The person who causes you pain is often the same person who relieves it.
00:11:47.840 --> 00:11:52.559
That creates a specific kind of attachment that doesn't respond well to logic.
00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:59.120
It responds to felt safety, repeated over time with someone else or with yourself.
00:11:59.519 --> 00:12:12.879
So when she finally makes the decision to leave, and then he appears with the very thing her nervous system has been seeking, her body doesn't immediately receive that as confirmation that she was right to leave.
00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:16.240
It receives it as the long-awaited relief.
00:12:16.399 --> 00:12:24.399
The slot machine finally paid out, and everything in her wants to stay at that machine.
00:12:24.639 --> 00:12:26.960
That's not a character flaw.
00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:34.960
That is a conditioned nervous system responding to what it has been trained by years of experience to respond to.
00:13:24.559 --> 00:13:28.799
So let me walk through five of the most common ways this shows up.
00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:31.360
First is the tears.
00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:33.360
He cries.
00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:39.600
Maybe he's never cried in front of you before, or maybe he has, but not like this.
00:13:39.919 --> 00:13:42.639
Not with this much visible pain.
00:13:42.799 --> 00:13:46.159
And he says something like, I know I've failed you.
00:13:46.240 --> 00:13:47.360
I know what I've done.
00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:52.639
I'm terrified of losing you, and I don't know who I am without you.
00:13:52.879 --> 00:13:55.120
And the tears are real.
00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:57.039
I want to say that clearly.
00:13:57.200 --> 00:13:59.200
They are often genuinely real.
00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:02.159
The fear is real, the pain is real.
00:14:02.799 --> 00:14:14.000
But here's what I want you to notice the conversation is still about him, his fear, his pain, his terror of loss.
00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:22.960
You came into this moment as the person who had finally decided to protect yourself, and now you're watching him suffer.
00:14:23.200 --> 00:14:28.080
And every instinct you have wants to comfort him.
00:14:28.639 --> 00:14:36.399
You are in this moment being asked to manage the emotional experience of the person that you just decided to leave.
00:14:36.639 --> 00:14:41.440
And that is a very specific and very familiar trap.
00:14:41.679 --> 00:14:46.080
His pain about losing you is not evidence that he knows how to love you.
00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:50.240
It's evidence that he doesn't want to lose access.
00:14:50.639 --> 00:14:52.480
Those are very different things.
00:14:52.639 --> 00:14:59.840
And your job in this moment is not to absorb his fear, it's to stay connected to your own.
00:15:00.159 --> 00:15:03.360
Second shift is the therapy call.
00:15:03.679 --> 00:15:12.720
So he calls a therapist, or he sends you the confirmation of the appointment, or he says he's been talking to someone and they've helped him see things differently.
00:15:12.879 --> 00:15:16.000
And maybe he has, and maybe they have.
00:15:16.240 --> 00:15:21.279
But I want to invite you to hold one question alongside that information.
00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:27.039
How long ago did he know therapy was available to him?
00:15:27.279 --> 00:15:32.000
Because in most cases, the answer is four years.
00:15:32.399 --> 00:15:33.919
The option existed.
00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:35.759
You probably mentioned it.
00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:39.039
Maybe you found the name and left it somewhere accessible.
00:15:39.120 --> 00:15:45.440
And the call happened in the 48 hours after you said you were done.
00:15:45.759 --> 00:15:52.399
That timing is data, not proof that nothing is real, but data.
00:15:52.799 --> 00:16:02.320
Real therapeutic change is slow and unglamorous and takes months before it produces behavioral differences that hold under stress.
00:16:02.559 --> 00:16:03.840
How do I know this?
00:16:04.080 --> 00:16:05.759
Because I'm a therapist.
00:16:06.159 --> 00:16:10.639
What happened in the last two days is a crisis response.
00:16:10.799 --> 00:16:15.519
And crisis responses can look identical to gross in the short term.
00:16:15.759 --> 00:16:20.799
Only time and consistency reveal which one you're actually looking at.
00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:24.480
The third shift: the present father.
00:16:25.120 --> 00:16:30.240
He becomes suddenly and visibly the parent that your children have needed.
00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:39.440
He's at their games, he's helping with homework, he's asking them questions, being patient, being warm, and your children are responding to it, of course they are.
00:16:39.679 --> 00:16:47.039
And watching your children light up in response to him is doing something very specific and very devastating to your resolve.
00:16:47.200 --> 00:16:51.600
And I'm gonna be very careful here because this one is truly complicated.
00:16:51.919 --> 00:16:56.480
Children absolutely deserve a present father that is real.
00:16:56.879 --> 00:17:01.759
And watching your children have access to something that they've needed matters.
00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:04.400
But I'm gonna ask you one question.
00:17:04.720 --> 00:17:07.920
Is this the first time they've had this?
00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:19.519
Or is this a version of him they've seen before during previous windows when something shifted in the relationship and he became briefly more present and then gradually receded again?
00:17:19.839 --> 00:17:33.279
Because if your children have seen this version of their father before and then watched it disappear, the most loving thing that you can do for them is to not put them back in the path of that disappearance.
00:17:33.519 --> 00:17:39.119
Children don't need a perfect father, but they do need a consistent one.
00:17:39.359 --> 00:17:45.920
And consistency is exactly what this window cannot tell you anything about.
00:17:46.240 --> 00:17:49.839
The next shift is the love bombing.
00:17:50.240 --> 00:17:52.400
Everything is romantic.
00:17:52.640 --> 00:17:56.079
He's attentive in ways that he hasn't been in years.
00:17:56.240 --> 00:18:12.480
There are gestures, planned, thoughtful, specific to things that you've said, trips suggested, experiences offered, affection that shows up as often as it did in the beginning, and it feels like being seen.
00:18:13.039 --> 00:18:18.000
After years of feeling invisible, suddenly you are invisible again.
00:18:18.319 --> 00:18:21.759
But I want to gently point this out.
00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:28.240
This visibility arrived the moment you became unavailable.
00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:37.920
Not during the years that you were asking to be seen, not during the conversations where you told him clearly what you needed.
00:18:38.160 --> 00:18:43.680
The intensity arrived precisely when losing you became real.
00:18:44.079 --> 00:18:47.039
And intensity is not intimacy.
00:18:47.599 --> 00:18:53.119
Intensity can mimic intimacy in a way that is very hard to distinguish in real time.
00:18:53.599 --> 00:19:01.599
But intimacy is built through safety and consistency and repair and honesty over time.
00:19:02.559 --> 00:19:04.799
Intensity is a spike.
00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:07.039
It goes up and it comes down.
00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:13.839
And usually when the threat reduces, it comes down to exactly where it was before.
00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:18.799
And the last shift is the vulnerability disguised as a threat.
00:19:19.119 --> 00:19:23.839
This is probably the most difficult one to name because it's wrapped in pain.
00:19:24.160 --> 00:19:33.839
He says, I don't know what I'll do if you leave, or I can't survive this, or if you go, I'll have nothing.
00:19:34.160 --> 00:19:53.599
And those statements are designed, consciously or not, to activate every protective instinct you have because you love him, because you don't want him to be destroyed, because the idea of being the cause of someone's collapse is almost unbearable.
00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:56.559
So I'm going to say something very directly about this.
00:19:56.799 --> 00:20:00.880
These statements are not your responsibility to manage.
00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:05.200
His survival is not your responsibility to guarantee.
00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:14.880
And a person who loves you does not hold their own well-being over you as a reason for you to stay in something that is harming you.
00:20:15.279 --> 00:20:26.240
That is not vulnerability, that is leverage, and it needs to be named for what it is, even when, especially when it is coming from a place of genuine pain.
00:20:26.480 --> 00:20:32.640
If you truly believe someone is in danger to themselves, please contact a crisis line or emergency services.
00:20:32.799 --> 00:20:36.319
That is a real consideration, and I do not dismiss it.
00:20:36.559 --> 00:20:45.359
But the statement, I can't survive without you, made at the moment that you're leaving, is not the same as a genuine mental health crisis.
00:20:45.599 --> 00:20:50.880
It is, in most cases, an attempt to transfer the weight of his choices onto you.
00:20:51.119 --> 00:20:57.440
It is a form of manipulation, and you do not have to accept that weight.
00:21:27.519 --> 00:21:30.000
So let me tell you what she's thinking.
00:21:30.240 --> 00:21:35.200
She's thinking, what if this time is actually different?
00:21:35.440 --> 00:21:51.039
Not the way she used to think it when she was fully invested in the relationship, not the hopeful version, the terrified version, the version that sounds like, what if I leave right now and this is the moment it was finally going to change, and I spend the rest of my life wondering?
00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:55.119
She's thinking, maybe I pushed him to this.
00:21:55.359 --> 00:21:58.960
Maybe it took me actually being done for him to understand.
00:21:59.119 --> 00:21:59.759
Maybe this.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:00.960
What it took.
00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:03.440
And if that's true, doesn't that mean something?
00:22:03.599 --> 00:22:05.359
Doesn't it mean that he's capable of it?
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:08.880
Doesn't that mean that I'm leaving right when he could have got there?
00:22:09.359 --> 00:22:11.920
She's thinking, the kids.
00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:16.640
Whatever version of this involves the kids, she's thinking about them.
00:22:16.799 --> 00:22:21.920
And whatever he's doing in this window with the kids is going directly into that calculation.
00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:25.839
She's thinking, what if I'm wrong?
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:28.160
What if I'm misreading this?
00:22:28.400 --> 00:22:34.799
What if I've been inside of my own pain for so long that I can't see clearly anymore?
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:43.119
What if the woman in that podcast and that book and that community are applying a framework that doesn't fully fit my specific situation?
00:22:43.279 --> 00:22:45.920
What if he is the exception?
00:22:46.400 --> 00:22:49.519
She's thinking, I still love him.
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.000
Not in a way that she expected to feel right now, but she does.
00:22:54.240 --> 00:23:02.160
And loving someone while also knowing that you need to leave them is one of the most deeply agonizing experiences a human being can have.
00:23:02.319 --> 00:23:08.480
And in this window, when he is being lovable, that love is not sitting quietly in the background.
00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:11.440
It is front and center and it is loud.
00:23:11.839 --> 00:23:16.640
And she is thinking, maybe this is what I have been asking for.
00:23:16.799 --> 00:23:21.599
And if it's what I've been asking for, how do I walk away from that?
00:23:21.920 --> 00:23:25.599
I want to say something to all of that.
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:30.000
Every single one of those thoughts makes sense.
00:23:30.319 --> 00:23:40.319
Every one of them reflects something real about who you are, your capacity for love, your complexity, your genuine desire for things to be different.
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:46.160
None of those thoughts make you weak or naive or foolish.
00:23:46.799 --> 00:23:51.440
But I also want to offer you something to hold alongside of them.
00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:59.440
The version of him that is in front of you right now was always available.
00:23:59.759 --> 00:24:01.440
That's the hardest thing.
00:24:01.759 --> 00:24:04.160
He was always capable of this.
00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:14.960
And he chose for months or years across thousands of ordinary days when you were asking and explaining and trying and hoping not to do it.
00:24:15.359 --> 00:24:21.599
Not because he couldn't, because the cost of not doing it wasn't high enough yet.
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:23.839
That cost is high enough now.
00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:25.440
You are the cost.
00:24:25.599 --> 00:24:28.000
And that is not the same thing as growth.
00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:32.559
You are not leaving because he was never capable of being this person.
00:24:32.799 --> 00:24:40.400
You are leaving because he chose consistently not to be until losing you became real.
00:24:40.640 --> 00:24:47.359
And the love that only arrives when you're leaving is not a love that you can build a life inside of.
00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:49.599
So let's get practical now.
00:24:49.839 --> 00:24:54.799
Because understanding all of this doesn't automatically make it easier to hold your ground.
00:24:54.960 --> 00:24:58.799
Your nervous system doesn't update based on intellectual awareness.
00:24:59.039 --> 00:25:06.000
So let me give you some specific things to lean on when you're in this window and everything in you wants to go back.
00:25:06.319 --> 00:25:09.680
First, write down why you decided.
00:25:09.920 --> 00:25:12.640
Right now, before the window closes.
00:25:13.039 --> 00:25:16.079
This is the single most important thing I can tell you.
00:25:16.319 --> 00:25:28.799
Before this window fully opens, or as soon as you recognize you're inside it, write down in your own words, in as much detail as you can, why you made the decision that you made.
00:25:29.039 --> 00:25:39.440
Not bullet points, the actual experience, what you were feeling, what finally broke through, what you finally stopped being able to explain away.
00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:43.279
Write it as if you're writing it to yourself from the future.
00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:49.839
The self who may be standing in front of him crying in three days and starting to wonder if she was wrong.
00:25:50.240 --> 00:25:57.440
Because that future self is going to need to hear from the person who made the decision when the clarity was real.
00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:05.519
And the clarity you have right now, in this moment, before the window fully opens, is the clearest that you are ever going to be.
00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:06.880
Don't waste it.
00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:08.000
Write it down.
00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:10.160
Put it somewhere you can access it.
00:26:10.319 --> 00:26:16.319
And make a promise to yourself that before you make any new decision, that you will read it.
00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.759
Next, give yourself a window of your own.
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:32.480
If he is showing genuine behavioral shifts, those deserve to be evaluated, but they deserve to be evaluated over time, not in the heat of the moment.
00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:46.400
If something in you needs to see whether this is real, give yourself a specific bounded time frame to observe, not, oh, I'll wait and see indefinitely, because indefinitely is where years go.
00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:50.240
But I will make no final decision for 30 days.
00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:59.359
And in those 30 days, I will watch what happens when the immediate crisis passes, when he's no longer afraid of losing me tomorrow, when life returns to something ordinary.
00:26:59.519 --> 00:27:01.519
What does the behavior look like then?
00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:05.279
Because here's what 30 days will usually show you.
00:27:05.440 --> 00:27:10.880
The intensity will reduce, the consistency will reveal itself, or fail to.
00:27:11.119 --> 00:27:22.480
The version of him that showed up in the crisis will either deepen into something real or gradually, almost imperceptibly, begin to recede back toward the version that you decided to leave.
00:27:22.799 --> 00:27:31.359
You will have data, real data, not promises, not intentions, not his tears or your hope.
00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:38.160
What he actually did on an ordinary Tuesday, three weeks after the crisis passed.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:42.559
Next, stay connected to someone outside the relationship.
00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:46.720
This is one of the most important logistical things I can tell you.
00:27:46.960 --> 00:27:50.000
In this window, isolation is dangerous.
00:27:50.160 --> 00:27:58.240
Not because he will necessarily isolate you, but because your own pull toward hope can isolate you from the people who know your story.
00:27:58.640 --> 00:28:12.640
You will be tempted not to tell your friend what's happening because you're embarrassed, or because you don't want her to judge him when maybe things are changing, or because you don't fully know what you're gonna do yet and you don't want to have that conversation.
00:28:13.200 --> 00:28:17.680
Tell her anyway, or tell your therapist, or call an advocate.
00:28:17.839 --> 00:28:24.079
Tell someone who knows the actual history, not just the current moment, what's happening right now.
00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:32.400
Because you need at least one person who can hold on to the whole story when your brain is only holding on to this week.
00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:38.720
Someone who can say, I hear you, and also, do you remember what you told me six months ago?
00:28:39.039 --> 00:28:40.400
That's not cruelty.
00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:45.680
That's the kind of witness that you need when everything in you wants to rewrite the narrative.
00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:49.440
Next, separate the feeling from the decision.
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:54.400
You're allowed to feel all of this: the love, the hope, the pull, the grief.
00:28:54.559 --> 00:28:57.599
You don't have to talk yourself out of any of it.
00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:00.079
Feelings are not decisions.
00:29:00.240 --> 00:29:04.319
And you don't have to resolve the feelings before you can hold the decision.
00:29:04.559 --> 00:29:11.119
In fact, I'd encourage you to stop trying to make the feelings go away as a prerequisite for moving forward.
00:29:11.279 --> 00:29:12.640
They don't have to go away.
00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:15.200
They just don't have to be in charge.
00:29:15.599 --> 00:29:22.400
You can feel enormous love for someone and still know that going back isn't safe.
00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:27.440
You can feel pulled toward him and still choose yourself.
00:29:27.680 --> 00:29:32.559
You can grieve him while he's standing right in front of you.
00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:35.200
All of that is allowed.
00:29:35.440 --> 00:29:37.440
None of it makes you confused.
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:45.279
It makes you someone who loved deeply inside of a relationship that wasn't able to hold that love safely.
00:29:45.440 --> 00:29:50.240
And that is truly one of the saddest and most human things there is.
00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:57.440
And last, remember, this version of him was always available.
00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:06.400
When you feel the pull most strongly, when he does the thing and your heart does the thing, come back to this.
00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:09.599
He was always capable of this.
00:30:09.839 --> 00:30:13.200
The person in front of you is not a new person.
00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:18.000
He is the same person making different choices because the stakes changed.
00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:25.759
And if the stakes have to stay at she's leaving in order for those choices to continue, that is not a relationship.
00:30:25.920 --> 00:30:28.000
That's a hostage negotiation.
00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:34.079
And you deserve better than spending the rest of your life as the permanent threat that keeps him behaving.
00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:58.160
And I want to spend some time here because I think it's one of the most unacknowledged forms of grief in this entire process.
00:30:58.559 --> 00:31:13.519
Because when she watches him be this person, when he does the things, all the things, the things that she's asked for and explained and cried about and begged for and eventually gave up hoping for, she's not only watching him.
00:31:13.839 --> 00:31:17.440
She's watching what the relationship could have been.
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:28.400
She's watching the years, she's watching every conversation that went nowhere, every night that she lay awake wishing things were different.
00:31:28.720 --> 00:31:35.680
Every time she convinced herself to stay because she believed it could be this.
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:40.880
And it's here, it's right in front of her, and she's leaving.
00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:45.519
That is a very specific kind of heartbreak.
00:31:45.680 --> 00:31:55.039
And I don't think it gets named enough because from the outside, what people see is well, he changed and she left anyway.
00:31:55.359 --> 00:32:11.680
And that can look like stubbornness or bitterness or an inability to forgive, but from the inside, it is grief, pure, complicated, exhausting grief for the relationship that she always wanted and never had.
00:32:11.920 --> 00:32:19.359
The one that is appearing right now, briefly, like a ghost of something that was always possible and never quite real.
00:32:19.839 --> 00:32:28.319
You are allowed to grieve that, you are allowed to cry for it, you are allowed to mourn the years and the version of this that never came to be.
00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:38.960
That grief is not a reason to stay, but it is real and it deserves acknowledgement from you first before anyone else.
00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:44.160
And I want to say something else that I think women rarely give themselves permission to feel.
00:32:44.480 --> 00:32:47.920
You are also allowed to be angry.
00:32:48.720 --> 00:32:55.759
Not the anxious manage anger that has been the only version allowed in the relationship, the real kind.
00:32:56.400 --> 00:32:59.680
The kind that says all of this was available.
00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:01.680
It was always available.
00:33:01.839 --> 00:33:09.039
And I spent years asking for it, explaining it, grieving its absence, shrinking myself around its absence.
00:33:09.279 --> 00:33:14.079
And it arrived the day I finally decided I was done.
00:33:14.240 --> 00:33:18.160
And I'm allowed to be fucking furious about that.
00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:23.039
The grief and the anger can coexist.
00:33:23.519 --> 00:33:25.839
The love can coexist with both of them.
00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:32.079
You can feel all three simultaneously and still know what you need to do.
00:33:32.400 --> 00:33:35.599
Clarity does not require the absence of feeling.
00:33:35.759 --> 00:33:40.240
Sometimes it arrives alongside the most intense feeling that you've ever had.
00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:46.319
And learning to trust your decision, even when your emotions are the loudest, that is the work.
00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:49.119
She's not grieving only the relationship she had.
00:33:49.200 --> 00:33:56.480
She's grieving the relationship that she always wanted, the one that finally showed up when it was too late to matter.
00:33:56.799 --> 00:33:58.720
That grief is real.
00:33:58.960 --> 00:34:04.000
It deserves space, and it is not a reason to go back.
00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:37.840
You are a person who loves someone for a very long time, and that person is currently giving you everything you asked for.
00:34:38.159 --> 00:34:44.159
Your response to that is completely, entirely, neurologically human.
00:34:44.480 --> 00:34:48.400
Second, the feeling is not the answer.
00:34:48.639 --> 00:34:51.679
Your feelings are real and they deserve acknowledgement.
00:34:51.840 --> 00:34:54.159
They are not instructions.
00:34:54.320 --> 00:34:58.559
Feeling pulled back to him does not mean that you should go back to him.
00:34:58.960 --> 00:35:02.159
Feeling love doesn't mean leaving was wrong.
00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:07.039
Feeling hope doesn't mean the hope is grounded in something real and sustainable.
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:11.920
You are allowed to feel all of it and still choose yourself.
00:35:12.159 --> 00:35:20.000
Third, what he's doing right now is the most important information you've had in years, but probably not in the way you think.
00:35:20.400 --> 00:35:24.719
He is showing you what he was always capable of.
00:35:25.039 --> 00:35:29.760
He is showing you that the version of him that you always wanted was real.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:40.800
And he is also showing you that this version was only going to appear consistently under one condition, that you were always on the verge of leaving.
00:35:41.039 --> 00:35:44.800
And I need you to hear what that means for your future if you stay.
00:35:44.960 --> 00:35:49.519
It means living inside on that verge indefinitely.
00:35:49.840 --> 00:35:54.880
It means your well-being is only a priority when access to you is threatened.
00:35:55.039 --> 00:36:00.880
That is not partnership, that is leverage, and it is unhealthy for both of you.
00:36:01.199 --> 00:36:06.000
And fourth, and I want to say this as gently as I know how.
00:36:06.480 --> 00:36:12.639
You do not have to be certain that he'll never change in order to leave.
00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:17.039
You don't have to prove that he's incapable of growth.
00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:21.039
You don't have to know for certain that this window isn't real.
00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:25.119
What you have to know is what you've already decided.
00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:45.519
That you have been harmed, that you can no longer keep living inside of this dynamic, that you deserve to find out what your life looks and feels like when you're not organized entirely around managing someone else's behavior.
00:36:45.840 --> 00:36:47.039
That is enough.
00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:49.920
That is more than enough.
00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:53.199
I know leaving is terrifying.
00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:59.199
I know the version of him standing in front of you right now makes it feel like the hardest thing you've ever done.
00:36:59.519 --> 00:37:02.320
I know your body is pulling toward him.
00:37:02.480 --> 00:37:04.320
I know your love for him is real.
00:37:04.559 --> 00:37:08.000
I know the grief is enormous.
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:10.400
And I know this too.
00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:21.440
The woman who made the decision, the one in the quiet clarity of last night or last week, or the moment she finally stopped arguing with herself, she knew something.
00:37:21.679 --> 00:37:24.000
She was telling you something true.
00:37:24.159 --> 00:37:30.400
She had finally heard herself clearly, probably for the first time in a very long time.
00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:34.719
And she deserves to be trusted.
00:37:34.960 --> 00:37:36.800
Don't abandon her now.
00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:38.960
Not because he finally showed up.
00:37:39.119 --> 00:37:42.719
She's been waiting for you to show up for a very long time.
00:37:43.360 --> 00:37:55.920
If you are in a situation where your safety is at risk, please contact either one of your local organizations or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:58.000
They are available 24 hours a day.
00:37:58.159 --> 00:38:00.320
Your safety comes first.
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:02.400
Everything else comes after.
00:38:20.639 --> 00:38:22.000
You don't have to.
00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:38.400
And if you're ready to do the deeper work, understanding the patterns that keep you returning to these windows, building the internal clarity and self-trust that makes it possible to hold your decisions, even when everything in you wants to soften, that is exactly what my 12-week program is built for.
00:38:38.559 --> 00:38:42.000
All of the details are on my socials or at patternbreakerscollective.com.
00:38:42.159 --> 00:38:43.599
Reach out anytime.
00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:47.360
If this episode resonated with you, please share it.
00:38:47.519 --> 00:38:56.320
Not just with the people already in this community, with the woman who made the decision last night and woke up this morning to him being different and had no idea what to do with that.
00:38:56.559 --> 00:39:02.480
She needs to know what she's experiencing has a name and that she's not alone in it.
00:39:02.719 --> 00:39:07.519
Until next time, trust the woman who made the decision in the quiet.
00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:10.559
She knew what she knew.
00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:20.640
I'd like to describe a scene.
00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:26.800
You've made the decision, not a dramatic announcement, just a quiet internal settling.
00:00:27.280 --> 00:00:30.879
Something in you finally stopped fighting.
00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:32.320
You've done the research.
00:00:32.479 --> 00:00:33.759
You've talked to the friend.
00:00:33.920 --> 00:00:35.520
Maybe you've talked to a lawyer.
00:00:35.679 --> 00:00:42.000
Maybe you've just been honest with yourself in the middle of the night in a way that you haven't allowed before.
00:00:42.320 --> 00:00:45.359
But you know, you know what you need to do.
00:00:45.520 --> 00:00:56.799
And for the first time in a very long time, there is a stillness underneath the fear, a kind of clarity that feels fragile but real.
00:00:57.359 --> 00:01:00.640
And then he does the thing.
00:01:00.880 --> 00:01:03.119
Maybe it's the dishes.
00:01:03.280 --> 00:01:08.879
Maybe that sounds small, but you have asked him to help with the dishes for seven years.
00:01:09.040 --> 00:01:16.640
And today, the day after something shifted in you, he does them without being asked.
00:01:16.879 --> 00:01:19.840
And he doesn't even make a production of it.
00:01:20.000 --> 00:01:25.439
He just does them the way that you always said that you needed him to.
00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:32.400
Or maybe he sits down next to you and says, I know things haven't been right.
00:01:32.560 --> 00:01:34.000
I've been thinking about it.
00:01:34.159 --> 00:01:35.840
I want to do better.
00:01:36.159 --> 00:01:38.000
And he doesn't get defensive.
00:01:38.239 --> 00:01:42.719
He doesn't make it about his stress or his childhood or your tone.
00:01:42.959 --> 00:01:49.760
He just sits there and says he wants to do better, the way that you've always needed him to.
00:01:50.159 --> 00:01:55.920
Or maybe he's suddenly present with the kids in a way that makes them light up.
00:01:56.159 --> 00:01:59.599
Or he schedules a therapy appointment without you asking.
00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:05.439
Or he says, I love you and looks at you like he means it in a way he hasn't in years.
00:02:05.840 --> 00:02:11.919
Or he acknowledges, actually acknowledges something specific that he's done.
00:02:12.159 --> 00:02:16.240
And your whole body does something with that.
00:02:16.479 --> 00:02:18.719
Something you didn't ask permission for.
00:02:18.960 --> 00:02:22.639
Something that doesn't care what you decided last night.
00:02:22.800 --> 00:02:27.759
Something that says, uh, wait, what if this is the moment?
00:02:27.919 --> 00:02:29.680
What if this is really it?
00:02:30.319 --> 00:02:39.120
And this, right here, is the most emotionally dangerous moment in the entire process of leaving an unhealthy relationship.
00:02:39.360 --> 00:02:44.879
Not the screaming fights, not the worst nights, not even the moment you decided to go.
00:02:45.199 --> 00:02:53.360
This moment, when he is finally, briefly, unheartbreakingly exactly who you always needed him to be.
00:02:53.680 --> 00:03:00.800
Today's episode is about what happens in that window and what to do when you're living inside of it.
00:03:01.039 --> 00:03:03.360
Welcome back to Pattern Breakers Collective.
00:03:03.520 --> 00:03:04.479
I'm Lisa.
00:03:04.719 --> 00:03:16.319
Before we go anywhere, the usual note: when I use he throughout today's episode, I am speaking from my own experience and from the experience of the women I mostly work with.
00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:21.439
I recognize that these dynamics are not exclusive to one gender.
00:03:21.680 --> 00:03:24.000
Women can behave this way too.
00:03:24.240 --> 00:03:26.960
Men can be on the receiving end.
00:03:27.199 --> 00:03:33.280
These patterns exist in same-sex relationships and in dynamics I haven't described.
00:03:33.520 --> 00:03:39.280
If your story looks different, the mechanics I'm describing still apply to you.
00:03:39.520 --> 00:03:44.479
Now, I want to be clear about what today's episode is and what it isn't.
00:03:44.719 --> 00:04:00.000
We've talked in previous episodes about evaluating whether change is real, about how to watch for genuine accountability versus performed accountability, about what sustained, consistent behavioral change actually looks like versus crisis mode effort.
00:04:00.240 --> 00:04:02.400
I'm not going to repeat all of that today.
00:04:02.560 --> 00:04:07.520
If you want that conversation, the episode called You're Watching the Wrong Thing covers it in depth.
00:04:07.759 --> 00:04:10.479
Today, I want to go somewhere more specific.
00:04:10.719 --> 00:04:26.560
I want to talk about the particular internal experience of the woman who's already decided, who has already done enough reckoning to know what she needs to do, and who is now standing in front of a version of him that is making that decision feel almost impossible to hold on to.
00:04:26.879 --> 00:04:32.319
Because I think that specific experience is one of the least talked-about parts of this whole process.
00:04:32.639 --> 00:04:35.439
We talk a lot about how to recognize abuse.
00:04:35.600 --> 00:04:37.360
We talk about why women stay.
00:04:37.519 --> 00:04:51.680
We talk about what healthy change looks like, but we don't talk enough about what happens internally in the hours and days after she's made the decision, when everything that she's been asking for suddenly appears right in front of her.
00:04:51.920 --> 00:04:58.560
And what that does to a person who has spent years loving someone and wanting things to be different.
00:04:58.879 --> 00:05:01.040
This episode is for her.
00:05:01.199 --> 00:05:14.800
And I want to say before we go any further, if this is where you are right now, if you're living in this exact window, I want you to know that what you're feeling makes complete sense, every bit of it.
00:05:14.959 --> 00:05:18.240
And you haven't made a mistake by feeling it.
00:05:38.399 --> 00:05:48.160
Because I think understanding the mechanism matters, not so you can feel worse about it, but so you can stop interpreting it as evidence that you are wrong about leaving.
00:05:48.399 --> 00:05:59.759
When someone who has been controlling, emotionally abusive, or chronically unavailable suddenly shifts their behavior, the question worth asking is what changed?
00:06:00.079 --> 00:06:05.600
Because something did change, just probably not what you're hoping it changed.
00:06:05.920 --> 00:06:09.839
In most cases, what changed is the level of perceived threat?
00:06:10.079 --> 00:06:19.360
He's not suddenly more loving, he's not suddenly more insightful, he's not suddenly more aware of your pain in some deep, meaningful way that arrived on its own.
00:06:19.600 --> 00:06:24.959
Something happened that made him sense the real possibility of losing access.
00:06:25.120 --> 00:06:36.319
And that threat, not love, not growth, not the cumulative weight of years of conversation finally landing somewhere new, the threat activated a different set of behaviors.
00:06:36.639 --> 00:06:41.040
This is important to understand because it reframes what you're looking at.
00:06:41.199 --> 00:06:46.399
You're not looking at the man you always hoped he would become finally deciding to show up.
00:06:46.560 --> 00:06:52.079
You're looking at a threat response, and threat responses are sophisticated.
00:06:52.319 --> 00:07:03.920
They can look remarkably like love, they can feel like love, they can produce behaviors that are genuinely indistinguishable from what love would produce in the short term.
00:07:04.319 --> 00:07:07.199
The difference shows up over time.
00:07:07.600 --> 00:07:11.120
Love motivates change regardless of consequences.
00:07:11.360 --> 00:07:16.079
A threat response motivates change in order to remove the consequence.
00:07:16.240 --> 00:07:23.680
And that distinction matters enormously because one of those sustains when the threat reduces and one doesn't.
00:07:23.920 --> 00:07:38.079
In coercively controlling relationships specifically, this shift can be highly sophisticated because people who have been using control to manage their partners have usually developed real skill at reading what she needs to see.
00:07:38.240 --> 00:07:40.720
They've had years of data.
00:07:40.879 --> 00:07:47.040
They know what moves her, they know what she's asked for, they know what specific things would make her reconsider.
00:07:47.360 --> 00:07:55.439
And in the moment when she's finally pulling away, all of that information becomes available as a toolkit.
00:07:55.680 --> 00:08:01.120
I don't say that to make him sound like some cartoon villain calculating his every move.
00:08:01.360 --> 00:08:03.519
Sometimes it's not that conscious.
00:08:03.759 --> 00:08:06.720
Sometimes it's genuinely more instinctual than deliberate.
00:08:06.879 --> 00:08:12.720
The nervous system recognizing a threat and activating whatever behaviors have historically reduced it.
00:08:12.959 --> 00:08:16.560
But conscious or not, the effect is the same.
00:08:16.879 --> 00:08:26.560
She gets, in concentrated form, exactly what she's been asking for at the exact moment she's decided to stop asking.
00:08:26.879 --> 00:08:29.680
He didn't change because he finally understood your pain.
00:08:29.759 --> 00:08:33.360
He changed because he finally understood that he might actually lose you.
00:08:33.519 --> 00:08:39.519
Those are two completely different things, and only one of them would still be true six months from now if you stayed.
00:08:39.759 --> 00:08:43.120
So let's talk about what happens inside of her when he does this.
00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:47.600
Because I think a lot of women feel a tremendous amount of shame about their reaction.
00:08:47.840 --> 00:09:00.080
They've done the work, they know what they know, and then he does the thing, and their whole body softens or panics or reaches for him or cries in a way that they didn't expect.
00:09:00.320 --> 00:09:04.399
And they look at that reaction and think, what is wrong with me?
00:09:04.799 --> 00:09:06.799
Nothing is wrong with you.
00:09:06.960 --> 00:09:10.559
Your nervous system is doing exactly what it was trained to do.
00:09:10.799 --> 00:09:12.000
Here's what I mean.
00:09:12.240 --> 00:09:38.399
When you have loved someone for years, when you have hoped and waited and asked and tried and been disappointed and come back and hoped again, your brain has spent an enormous amount of time and energy organized around that person, around predicting them, managing them, reading them, watching for signs, trying to produce the right conditions for them to be the person that you needed them to be.
00:09:38.799 --> 00:09:43.360
And then suddenly, without effort on your part, he is that person.
00:09:43.759 --> 00:09:48.559
The thing that you've been trying to produce finally appears on its own.
00:09:48.879 --> 00:09:52.320
And your brain doesn't first ask, is this sustainable?
00:09:52.559 --> 00:09:53.360
Is this real?
00:09:53.519 --> 00:09:54.480
What changed?
00:09:54.639 --> 00:09:57.759
Is this a threat response or a genuine growth?
00:09:58.080 --> 00:10:01.519
Your brain just responds to the reward.
00:10:01.919 --> 00:10:09.919
Because you've been in a pattern where that reward came irregularly, unpredictably, after long periods of disappointment.
00:10:10.159 --> 00:10:16.799
And so when it arrived, it felt more powerful than it would have in a healthier relationship.
00:10:17.039 --> 00:10:19.120
That is not a coincidence.
00:10:19.279 --> 00:10:22.000
That is the mechanics of intermittent reinforcement.
00:10:22.159 --> 00:10:26.960
The unpredictability of the reward is part of what makes it so compelling.
00:10:27.200 --> 00:10:30.639
I've used this analogy before, but think about a slot machine.
00:10:30.799 --> 00:10:37.840
You don't get rewarded every time, you get rewarded sometimes, unpredictably, after periods of getting nothing.
00:10:38.000 --> 00:10:45.120
And that irregular reward schedule actually creates stronger behavioral conditioning than a consistent one does.
00:10:45.440 --> 00:10:47.919
It keeps you pulling the lever.
00:10:48.080 --> 00:10:53.039
Not because you're irrational, because your brain has been shaped by the pattern.
00:10:53.360 --> 00:10:57.600
Long-term, unhealthy relationships create the same kind of pattern.
00:10:57.919 --> 00:11:04.320
Periods of distance or cruelty or disappointment, followed by moments of connection, warmth, recognition.
00:11:04.639 --> 00:11:13.759
And over time, those warm moments become disproportionately powerful, both because of their contrast and because of their unpredictability.
00:11:14.000 --> 00:11:23.600
Your nervous system has been trained to respond strongly to them, and no decision you made last night overrides that training immediately.
00:11:23.919 --> 00:11:28.960
This is also why trauma bonds are so seriously difficult to break.
00:11:29.200 --> 00:11:34.559
A trauma bond isn't love that's gone wrong or weakness or poor judgment.
00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:42.320
It's what happens when your nervous system forms an attachment inside of a relationship that alternates between threat and relief.
00:11:42.720 --> 00:11:47.600
The person who causes you pain is often the same person who relieves it.
00:11:47.840 --> 00:11:52.559
That creates a specific kind of attachment that doesn't respond well to logic.
00:11:52.720 --> 00:11:59.120
It responds to felt safety, repeated over time with someone else or with yourself.
00:11:59.519 --> 00:12:12.879
So when she finally makes the decision to leave, and then he appears with the very thing her nervous system has been seeking, her body doesn't immediately receive that as confirmation that she was right to leave.
00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:16.240
It receives it as the long-awaited relief.
00:12:16.399 --> 00:12:24.399
The slot machine finally paid out, and everything in her wants to stay at that machine.
00:12:24.639 --> 00:12:26.960
That's not a character flaw.
00:12:27.120 --> 00:12:34.960
That is a conditioned nervous system responding to what it has been trained by years of experience to respond to.
00:13:24.559 --> 00:13:28.799
So let me walk through five of the most common ways this shows up.
00:13:29.120 --> 00:13:31.360
First is the tears.
00:13:32.080 --> 00:13:33.360
He cries.
00:13:33.840 --> 00:13:39.600
Maybe he's never cried in front of you before, or maybe he has, but not like this.
00:13:39.919 --> 00:13:42.639
Not with this much visible pain.
00:13:42.799 --> 00:13:46.159
And he says something like, I know I've failed you.
00:13:46.240 --> 00:13:47.360
I know what I've done.
00:13:47.440 --> 00:13:52.639
I'm terrified of losing you, and I don't know who I am without you.
00:13:52.879 --> 00:13:55.120
And the tears are real.
00:13:55.600 --> 00:13:57.039
I want to say that clearly.
00:13:57.200 --> 00:13:59.200
They are often genuinely real.
00:13:59.360 --> 00:14:02.159
The fear is real, the pain is real.
00:14:02.799 --> 00:14:14.000
But here's what I want you to notice the conversation is still about him, his fear, his pain, his terror of loss.
00:14:14.320 --> 00:14:22.960
You came into this moment as the person who had finally decided to protect yourself, and now you're watching him suffer.
00:14:23.200 --> 00:14:28.080
And every instinct you have wants to comfort him.
00:14:28.639 --> 00:14:36.399
You are in this moment being asked to manage the emotional experience of the person that you just decided to leave.
00:14:36.639 --> 00:14:41.440
And that is a very specific and very familiar trap.
00:14:41.679 --> 00:14:46.080
His pain about losing you is not evidence that he knows how to love you.
00:14:46.240 --> 00:14:50.240
It's evidence that he doesn't want to lose access.
00:14:50.639 --> 00:14:52.480
Those are very different things.
00:14:52.639 --> 00:14:59.840
And your job in this moment is not to absorb his fear, it's to stay connected to your own.
00:15:00.159 --> 00:15:03.360
Second shift is the therapy call.
00:15:03.679 --> 00:15:12.720
So he calls a therapist, or he sends you the confirmation of the appointment, or he says he's been talking to someone and they've helped him see things differently.
00:15:12.879 --> 00:15:16.000
And maybe he has, and maybe they have.
00:15:16.240 --> 00:15:21.279
But I want to invite you to hold one question alongside that information.
00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:27.039
How long ago did he know therapy was available to him?
00:15:27.279 --> 00:15:32.000
Because in most cases, the answer is four years.
00:15:32.399 --> 00:15:33.919
The option existed.
00:15:34.240 --> 00:15:35.759
You probably mentioned it.
00:15:36.000 --> 00:15:39.039
Maybe you found the name and left it somewhere accessible.
00:15:39.120 --> 00:15:45.440
And the call happened in the 48 hours after you said you were done.
00:15:45.759 --> 00:15:52.399
That timing is data, not proof that nothing is real, but data.
00:15:52.799 --> 00:16:02.320
Real therapeutic change is slow and unglamorous and takes months before it produces behavioral differences that hold under stress.
00:16:02.559 --> 00:16:03.840
How do I know this?
00:16:04.080 --> 00:16:05.759
Because I'm a therapist.
00:16:06.159 --> 00:16:10.639
What happened in the last two days is a crisis response.
00:16:10.799 --> 00:16:15.519
And crisis responses can look identical to gross in the short term.
00:16:15.759 --> 00:16:20.799
Only time and consistency reveal which one you're actually looking at.
00:16:21.120 --> 00:16:24.480
The third shift: the present father.
00:16:25.120 --> 00:16:30.240
He becomes suddenly and visibly the parent that your children have needed.
00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:39.440
He's at their games, he's helping with homework, he's asking them questions, being patient, being warm, and your children are responding to it, of course they are.
00:16:39.679 --> 00:16:47.039
And watching your children light up in response to him is doing something very specific and very devastating to your resolve.
00:16:47.200 --> 00:16:51.600
And I'm gonna be very careful here because this one is truly complicated.
00:16:51.919 --> 00:16:56.480
Children absolutely deserve a present father that is real.
00:16:56.879 --> 00:17:01.759
And watching your children have access to something that they've needed matters.
00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:04.400
But I'm gonna ask you one question.
00:17:04.720 --> 00:17:07.920
Is this the first time they've had this?
00:17:08.160 --> 00:17:19.519
Or is this a version of him they've seen before during previous windows when something shifted in the relationship and he became briefly more present and then gradually receded again?
00:17:19.839 --> 00:17:33.279
Because if your children have seen this version of their father before and then watched it disappear, the most loving thing that you can do for them is to not put them back in the path of that disappearance.
00:17:33.519 --> 00:17:39.119
Children don't need a perfect father, but they do need a consistent one.
00:17:39.359 --> 00:17:45.920
And consistency is exactly what this window cannot tell you anything about.
00:17:46.240 --> 00:17:49.839
The next shift is the love bombing.
00:17:50.240 --> 00:17:52.400
Everything is romantic.
00:17:52.640 --> 00:17:56.079
He's attentive in ways that he hasn't been in years.
00:17:56.240 --> 00:18:12.480
There are gestures, planned, thoughtful, specific to things that you've said, trips suggested, experiences offered, affection that shows up as often as it did in the beginning, and it feels like being seen.
00:18:13.039 --> 00:18:18.000
After years of feeling invisible, suddenly you are invisible again.
00:18:18.319 --> 00:18:21.759
But I want to gently point this out.
00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:28.240
This visibility arrived the moment you became unavailable.
00:18:28.720 --> 00:18:37.920
Not during the years that you were asking to be seen, not during the conversations where you told him clearly what you needed.
00:18:38.160 --> 00:18:43.680
The intensity arrived precisely when losing you became real.
00:18:44.079 --> 00:18:47.039
And intensity is not intimacy.
00:18:47.599 --> 00:18:53.119
Intensity can mimic intimacy in a way that is very hard to distinguish in real time.
00:18:53.599 --> 00:19:01.599
But intimacy is built through safety and consistency and repair and honesty over time.
00:19:02.559 --> 00:19:04.799
Intensity is a spike.
00:19:04.960 --> 00:19:07.039
It goes up and it comes down.
00:19:07.200 --> 00:19:13.839
And usually when the threat reduces, it comes down to exactly where it was before.
00:19:14.160 --> 00:19:18.799
And the last shift is the vulnerability disguised as a threat.
00:19:19.119 --> 00:19:23.839
This is probably the most difficult one to name because it's wrapped in pain.
00:19:24.160 --> 00:19:33.839
He says, I don't know what I'll do if you leave, or I can't survive this, or if you go, I'll have nothing.
00:19:34.160 --> 00:19:53.599
And those statements are designed, consciously or not, to activate every protective instinct you have because you love him, because you don't want him to be destroyed, because the idea of being the cause of someone's collapse is almost unbearable.
00:19:53.839 --> 00:19:56.559
So I'm going to say something very directly about this.
00:19:56.799 --> 00:20:00.880
These statements are not your responsibility to manage.
00:20:01.200 --> 00:20:05.200
His survival is not your responsibility to guarantee.
00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:14.880
And a person who loves you does not hold their own well-being over you as a reason for you to stay in something that is harming you.
00:20:15.279 --> 00:20:26.240
That is not vulnerability, that is leverage, and it needs to be named for what it is, even when, especially when it is coming from a place of genuine pain.
00:20:26.480 --> 00:20:32.640
If you truly believe someone is in danger to themselves, please contact a crisis line or emergency services.
00:20:32.799 --> 00:20:36.319
That is a real consideration, and I do not dismiss it.
00:20:36.559 --> 00:20:45.359
But the statement, I can't survive without you, made at the moment that you're leaving, is not the same as a genuine mental health crisis.
00:20:45.599 --> 00:20:50.880
It is, in most cases, an attempt to transfer the weight of his choices onto you.
00:20:51.119 --> 00:20:57.440
It is a form of manipulation, and you do not have to accept that weight.
00:21:27.519 --> 00:21:30.000
So let me tell you what she's thinking.
00:21:30.240 --> 00:21:35.200
She's thinking, what if this time is actually different?
00:21:35.440 --> 00:21:51.039
Not the way she used to think it when she was fully invested in the relationship, not the hopeful version, the terrified version, the version that sounds like, what if I leave right now and this is the moment it was finally going to change, and I spend the rest of my life wondering?
00:21:51.440 --> 00:21:55.119
She's thinking, maybe I pushed him to this.
00:21:55.359 --> 00:21:58.960
Maybe it took me actually being done for him to understand.
00:21:59.119 --> 00:21:59.759
Maybe this.
00:22:00.319 --> 00:22:00.960
What it took.
00:22:01.039 --> 00:22:03.440
And if that's true, doesn't that mean something?
00:22:03.599 --> 00:22:05.359
Doesn't it mean that he's capable of it?
00:22:05.519 --> 00:22:08.880
Doesn't that mean that I'm leaving right when he could have got there?
00:22:09.359 --> 00:22:11.920
She's thinking, the kids.
00:22:12.480 --> 00:22:16.640
Whatever version of this involves the kids, she's thinking about them.
00:22:16.799 --> 00:22:21.920
And whatever he's doing in this window with the kids is going directly into that calculation.
00:22:22.400 --> 00:22:25.839
She's thinking, what if I'm wrong?
00:22:26.160 --> 00:22:28.160
What if I'm misreading this?
00:22:28.400 --> 00:22:34.799
What if I've been inside of my own pain for so long that I can't see clearly anymore?
00:22:35.039 --> 00:22:43.119
What if the woman in that podcast and that book and that community are applying a framework that doesn't fully fit my specific situation?
00:22:43.279 --> 00:22:45.920
What if he is the exception?
00:22:46.400 --> 00:22:49.519
She's thinking, I still love him.
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:54.000
Not in a way that she expected to feel right now, but she does.
00:22:54.240 --> 00:23:02.160
And loving someone while also knowing that you need to leave them is one of the most deeply agonizing experiences a human being can have.
00:23:02.319 --> 00:23:08.480
And in this window, when he is being lovable, that love is not sitting quietly in the background.
00:23:08.559 --> 00:23:11.440
It is front and center and it is loud.
00:23:11.839 --> 00:23:16.640
And she is thinking, maybe this is what I have been asking for.
00:23:16.799 --> 00:23:21.599
And if it's what I've been asking for, how do I walk away from that?
00:23:21.920 --> 00:23:25.599
I want to say something to all of that.
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:30.000
Every single one of those thoughts makes sense.
00:23:30.319 --> 00:23:40.319
Every one of them reflects something real about who you are, your capacity for love, your complexity, your genuine desire for things to be different.
00:23:40.640 --> 00:23:46.160
None of those thoughts make you weak or naive or foolish.
00:23:46.799 --> 00:23:51.440
But I also want to offer you something to hold alongside of them.
00:23:51.920 --> 00:23:59.440
The version of him that is in front of you right now was always available.
00:23:59.759 --> 00:24:01.440
That's the hardest thing.
00:24:01.759 --> 00:24:04.160
He was always capable of this.
00:24:04.400 --> 00:24:14.960
And he chose for months or years across thousands of ordinary days when you were asking and explaining and trying and hoping not to do it.
00:24:15.359 --> 00:24:21.599
Not because he couldn't, because the cost of not doing it wasn't high enough yet.
00:24:21.920 --> 00:24:23.839
That cost is high enough now.
00:24:24.160 --> 00:24:25.440
You are the cost.
00:24:25.599 --> 00:24:28.000
And that is not the same thing as growth.
00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:32.559
You are not leaving because he was never capable of being this person.
00:24:32.799 --> 00:24:40.400
You are leaving because he chose consistently not to be until losing you became real.
00:24:40.640 --> 00:24:47.359
And the love that only arrives when you're leaving is not a love that you can build a life inside of.
00:24:47.599 --> 00:24:49.599
So let's get practical now.
00:24:49.839 --> 00:24:54.799
Because understanding all of this doesn't automatically make it easier to hold your ground.
00:24:54.960 --> 00:24:58.799
Your nervous system doesn't update based on intellectual awareness.
00:24:59.039 --> 00:25:06.000
So let me give you some specific things to lean on when you're in this window and everything in you wants to go back.
00:25:06.319 --> 00:25:09.680
First, write down why you decided.
00:25:09.920 --> 00:25:12.640
Right now, before the window closes.
00:25:13.039 --> 00:25:16.079
This is the single most important thing I can tell you.
00:25:16.319 --> 00:25:28.799
Before this window fully opens, or as soon as you recognize you're inside it, write down in your own words, in as much detail as you can, why you made the decision that you made.
00:25:29.039 --> 00:25:39.440
Not bullet points, the actual experience, what you were feeling, what finally broke through, what you finally stopped being able to explain away.
00:25:39.680 --> 00:25:43.279
Write it as if you're writing it to yourself from the future.
00:25:43.440 --> 00:25:49.839
The self who may be standing in front of him crying in three days and starting to wonder if she was wrong.
00:25:50.240 --> 00:25:57.440
Because that future self is going to need to hear from the person who made the decision when the clarity was real.
00:25:58.000 --> 00:26:05.519
And the clarity you have right now, in this moment, before the window fully opens, is the clearest that you are ever going to be.
00:26:05.680 --> 00:26:06.880
Don't waste it.
00:26:07.039 --> 00:26:08.000
Write it down.
00:26:08.160 --> 00:26:10.160
Put it somewhere you can access it.
00:26:10.319 --> 00:26:16.319
And make a promise to yourself that before you make any new decision, that you will read it.
00:26:16.640 --> 00:26:19.759
Next, give yourself a window of your own.
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:32.480
If he is showing genuine behavioral shifts, those deserve to be evaluated, but they deserve to be evaluated over time, not in the heat of the moment.
00:26:32.720 --> 00:26:46.400
If something in you needs to see whether this is real, give yourself a specific bounded time frame to observe, not, oh, I'll wait and see indefinitely, because indefinitely is where years go.
00:26:46.960 --> 00:26:50.240
But I will make no final decision for 30 days.
00:26:50.400 --> 00:26:59.359
And in those 30 days, I will watch what happens when the immediate crisis passes, when he's no longer afraid of losing me tomorrow, when life returns to something ordinary.
00:26:59.519 --> 00:27:01.519
What does the behavior look like then?
00:27:02.160 --> 00:27:05.279
Because here's what 30 days will usually show you.
00:27:05.440 --> 00:27:10.880
The intensity will reduce, the consistency will reveal itself, or fail to.
00:27:11.119 --> 00:27:22.480
The version of him that showed up in the crisis will either deepen into something real or gradually, almost imperceptibly, begin to recede back toward the version that you decided to leave.
00:27:22.799 --> 00:27:31.359
You will have data, real data, not promises, not intentions, not his tears or your hope.
00:27:31.680 --> 00:27:38.160
What he actually did on an ordinary Tuesday, three weeks after the crisis passed.
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:42.559
Next, stay connected to someone outside the relationship.
00:27:42.880 --> 00:27:46.720
This is one of the most important logistical things I can tell you.
00:27:46.960 --> 00:27:50.000
In this window, isolation is dangerous.
00:27:50.160 --> 00:27:58.240
Not because he will necessarily isolate you, but because your own pull toward hope can isolate you from the people who know your story.
00:27:58.640 --> 00:28:12.640
You will be tempted not to tell your friend what's happening because you're embarrassed, or because you don't want her to judge him when maybe things are changing, or because you don't fully know what you're gonna do yet and you don't want to have that conversation.
00:28:13.200 --> 00:28:17.680
Tell her anyway, or tell your therapist, or call an advocate.
00:28:17.839 --> 00:28:24.079
Tell someone who knows the actual history, not just the current moment, what's happening right now.
00:28:24.640 --> 00:28:32.400
Because you need at least one person who can hold on to the whole story when your brain is only holding on to this week.
00:28:32.640 --> 00:28:38.720
Someone who can say, I hear you, and also, do you remember what you told me six months ago?
00:28:39.039 --> 00:28:40.400
That's not cruelty.
00:28:40.559 --> 00:28:45.680
That's the kind of witness that you need when everything in you wants to rewrite the narrative.
00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:49.440
Next, separate the feeling from the decision.
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:54.400
You're allowed to feel all of this: the love, the hope, the pull, the grief.
00:28:54.559 --> 00:28:57.599
You don't have to talk yourself out of any of it.
00:28:57.920 --> 00:29:00.079
Feelings are not decisions.
00:29:00.240 --> 00:29:04.319
And you don't have to resolve the feelings before you can hold the decision.
00:29:04.559 --> 00:29:11.119
In fact, I'd encourage you to stop trying to make the feelings go away as a prerequisite for moving forward.
00:29:11.279 --> 00:29:12.640
They don't have to go away.
00:29:12.799 --> 00:29:15.200
They just don't have to be in charge.
00:29:15.599 --> 00:29:22.400
You can feel enormous love for someone and still know that going back isn't safe.
00:29:22.640 --> 00:29:27.440
You can feel pulled toward him and still choose yourself.
00:29:27.680 --> 00:29:32.559
You can grieve him while he's standing right in front of you.
00:29:32.880 --> 00:29:35.200
All of that is allowed.
00:29:35.440 --> 00:29:37.440
None of it makes you confused.
00:29:37.680 --> 00:29:45.279
It makes you someone who loved deeply inside of a relationship that wasn't able to hold that love safely.
00:29:45.440 --> 00:29:50.240
And that is truly one of the saddest and most human things there is.
00:29:50.720 --> 00:29:57.440
And last, remember, this version of him was always available.
00:29:57.920 --> 00:30:06.400
When you feel the pull most strongly, when he does the thing and your heart does the thing, come back to this.
00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:09.599
He was always capable of this.
00:30:09.839 --> 00:30:13.200
The person in front of you is not a new person.
00:30:13.440 --> 00:30:18.000
He is the same person making different choices because the stakes changed.
00:30:18.160 --> 00:30:25.759
And if the stakes have to stay at she's leaving in order for those choices to continue, that is not a relationship.
00:30:25.920 --> 00:30:28.000
That's a hostage negotiation.
00:30:28.160 --> 00:30:34.079
And you deserve better than spending the rest of your life as the permanent threat that keeps him behaving.
00:30:51.200 --> 00:30:58.160
And I want to spend some time here because I think it's one of the most unacknowledged forms of grief in this entire process.
00:30:58.559 --> 00:31:13.519
Because when she watches him be this person, when he does the things, all the things, the things that she's asked for and explained and cried about and begged for and eventually gave up hoping for, she's not only watching him.
00:31:13.839 --> 00:31:17.440
She's watching what the relationship could have been.
00:31:17.839 --> 00:31:28.400
She's watching the years, she's watching every conversation that went nowhere, every night that she lay awake wishing things were different.
00:31:28.720 --> 00:31:35.680
Every time she convinced herself to stay because she believed it could be this.
00:31:36.319 --> 00:31:40.880
And it's here, it's right in front of her, and she's leaving.
00:31:41.359 --> 00:31:45.519
That is a very specific kind of heartbreak.
00:31:45.680 --> 00:31:55.039
And I don't think it gets named enough because from the outside, what people see is well, he changed and she left anyway.
00:31:55.359 --> 00:32:11.680
And that can look like stubbornness or bitterness or an inability to forgive, but from the inside, it is grief, pure, complicated, exhausting grief for the relationship that she always wanted and never had.
00:32:11.920 --> 00:32:19.359
The one that is appearing right now, briefly, like a ghost of something that was always possible and never quite real.
00:32:19.839 --> 00:32:28.319
You are allowed to grieve that, you are allowed to cry for it, you are allowed to mourn the years and the version of this that never came to be.
00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:38.960
That grief is not a reason to stay, but it is real and it deserves acknowledgement from you first before anyone else.
00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:44.160
And I want to say something else that I think women rarely give themselves permission to feel.
00:32:44.480 --> 00:32:47.920
You are also allowed to be angry.
00:32:48.720 --> 00:32:55.759
Not the anxious manage anger that has been the only version allowed in the relationship, the real kind.
00:32:56.400 --> 00:32:59.680
The kind that says all of this was available.
00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:01.680
It was always available.
00:33:01.839 --> 00:33:09.039
And I spent years asking for it, explaining it, grieving its absence, shrinking myself around its absence.
00:33:09.279 --> 00:33:14.079
And it arrived the day I finally decided I was done.
00:33:14.240 --> 00:33:18.160
And I'm allowed to be fucking furious about that.
00:33:18.400 --> 00:33:23.039
The grief and the anger can coexist.
00:33:23.519 --> 00:33:25.839
The love can coexist with both of them.
00:33:26.000 --> 00:33:32.079
You can feel all three simultaneously and still know what you need to do.
00:33:32.400 --> 00:33:35.599
Clarity does not require the absence of feeling.
00:33:35.759 --> 00:33:40.240
Sometimes it arrives alongside the most intense feeling that you've ever had.
00:33:40.400 --> 00:33:46.319
And learning to trust your decision, even when your emotions are the loudest, that is the work.
00:33:46.480 --> 00:33:49.119
She's not grieving only the relationship she had.
00:33:49.200 --> 00:33:56.480
She's grieving the relationship that she always wanted, the one that finally showed up when it was too late to matter.
00:33:56.799 --> 00:33:58.720
That grief is real.
00:33:58.960 --> 00:34:04.000
It deserves space, and it is not a reason to go back.
00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:37.840
You are a person who loves someone for a very long time, and that person is currently giving you everything you asked for.
00:34:38.159 --> 00:34:44.159
Your response to that is completely, entirely, neurologically human.
00:34:44.480 --> 00:34:48.400
Second, the feeling is not the answer.
00:34:48.639 --> 00:34:51.679
Your feelings are real and they deserve acknowledgement.
00:34:51.840 --> 00:34:54.159
They are not instructions.
00:34:54.320 --> 00:34:58.559
Feeling pulled back to him does not mean that you should go back to him.
00:34:58.960 --> 00:35:02.159
Feeling love doesn't mean leaving was wrong.
00:35:02.400 --> 00:35:07.039
Feeling hope doesn't mean the hope is grounded in something real and sustainable.
00:35:07.280 --> 00:35:11.920
You are allowed to feel all of it and still choose yourself.
00:35:12.159 --> 00:35:20.000
Third, what he's doing right now is the most important information you've had in years, but probably not in the way you think.
00:35:20.400 --> 00:35:24.719
He is showing you what he was always capable of.
00:35:25.039 --> 00:35:29.760
He is showing you that the version of him that you always wanted was real.
00:35:30.000 --> 00:35:40.800
And he is also showing you that this version was only going to appear consistently under one condition, that you were always on the verge of leaving.
00:35:41.039 --> 00:35:44.800
And I need you to hear what that means for your future if you stay.
00:35:44.960 --> 00:35:49.519
It means living inside on that verge indefinitely.
00:35:49.840 --> 00:35:54.880
It means your well-being is only a priority when access to you is threatened.
00:35:55.039 --> 00:36:00.880
That is not partnership, that is leverage, and it is unhealthy for both of you.
00:36:01.199 --> 00:36:06.000
And fourth, and I want to say this as gently as I know how.
00:36:06.480 --> 00:36:12.639
You do not have to be certain that he'll never change in order to leave.
00:36:12.960 --> 00:36:17.039
You don't have to prove that he's incapable of growth.
00:36:17.280 --> 00:36:21.039
You don't have to know for certain that this window isn't real.
00:36:21.440 --> 00:36:25.119
What you have to know is what you've already decided.
00:36:25.360 --> 00:36:45.519
That you have been harmed, that you can no longer keep living inside of this dynamic, that you deserve to find out what your life looks and feels like when you're not organized entirely around managing someone else's behavior.
00:36:45.840 --> 00:36:47.039
That is enough.
00:36:47.360 --> 00:36:49.920
That is more than enough.
00:36:50.400 --> 00:36:53.199
I know leaving is terrifying.
00:36:53.360 --> 00:36:59.199
I know the version of him standing in front of you right now makes it feel like the hardest thing you've ever done.
00:36:59.519 --> 00:37:02.320
I know your body is pulling toward him.
00:37:02.480 --> 00:37:04.320
I know your love for him is real.
00:37:04.559 --> 00:37:08.000
I know the grief is enormous.
00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:10.400
And I know this too.
00:37:10.719 --> 00:37:21.440
The woman who made the decision, the one in the quiet clarity of last night or last week, or the moment she finally stopped arguing with herself, she knew something.
00:37:21.679 --> 00:37:24.000
She was telling you something true.
00:37:24.159 --> 00:37:30.400
She had finally heard herself clearly, probably for the first time in a very long time.
00:37:30.800 --> 00:37:34.719
And she deserves to be trusted.
00:37:34.960 --> 00:37:36.800
Don't abandon her now.
00:37:36.960 --> 00:37:38.960
Not because he finally showed up.
00:37:39.119 --> 00:37:42.719
She's been waiting for you to show up for a very long time.
00:37:43.360 --> 00:37:55.920
If you are in a situation where your safety is at risk, please contact either one of your local organizations or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233.
00:37:56.000 --> 00:37:58.000
They are available 24 hours a day.
00:37:58.159 --> 00:38:00.320
Your safety comes first.
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:02.400
Everything else comes after.
00:38:20.639 --> 00:38:22.000
You don't have to.
00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:38.400
And if you're ready to do the deeper work, understanding the patterns that keep you returning to these windows, building the internal clarity and self-trust that makes it possible to hold your decisions, even when everything in you wants to soften, that is exactly what my 12-week program is built for.
00:38:38.559 --> 00:38:42.000
All of the details are on my socials or at patternbreakerscollective.com.
00:38:42.159 --> 00:38:43.599
Reach out anytime.
00:38:43.920 --> 00:38:47.360
If this episode resonated with you, please share it.
00:38:47.519 --> 00:38:56.320
Not just with the people already in this community, with the woman who made the decision last night and woke up this morning to him being different and had no idea what to do with that.
00:38:56.559 --> 00:39:02.480
She needs to know what she's experiencing has a name and that she's not alone in it.
00:39:02.719 --> 00:39:07.519
Until next time, trust the woman who made the decision in the quiet.
00:39:07.920 --> 00:39:10.559
She knew what she knew.
