Summary
Joe and Brett explore why people struggle to find romantic partners despite actively looking. Joe’s central insight is that finding love is not a numbers game — it’s about readiness. When clients do the inner work of becoming ready for intimacy, a committed relationship consistently appears within three to four months. The real barrier is the fear of losing oneself, which manifests through various push-pull patterns: jealousy, neediness, hyper-independence, transactional relating, and attraction to unavailable partners.
Joe explains that underneath all these patterns is the same dynamic: consciously beckoning love while subconsciously pushing it away. Jealousy says “I want you” while gaslighting the partner into leaving. Self-reliance says “I want someone to show up for me” while making it impossible for anyone to help. Transactional relating says “I want intimacy” while reducing the relationship to negotiation to keep real closeness at bay. Each pattern reflects a fear of losing oneself that was wired in childhood — often mirroring a parent’s relationship style.
The path forward involves three things: learning to receive love, learning to love yourself, and learning to be loving — but most importantly, untangling what was wired together with love in childhood (guilt, shame, abandonment, etc.). Joe emphasizes that love inherently means signing up to be hurt, and the work of opening your heart doesn’t stop once you find someone — it’s the ongoing commitment of the relationship itself.
Key Concepts
- Finding love is about readiness, not finding the right person
- Fear of losing yourself is what blocks intimacy
- We beckon love and push it away at the same time
- Self-reliance can be a form of intimacy avoidance
- Love requires willingness to be hurt
- Healing requires untangling what was wired together with love
Key Quotes
“It’s not at all about meeting the right person… it’s more about when are you ready for the right person to show up in your life.”
“They are scared of losing themselves… consciously and so I’m just staying away from any kind of commitment or any kind of intimacy that could allow that to happen.”
“There is no paragon of love, there is no person who is a walking embodiment of love that doesn’t have strong boundaries.”
“If you’re falling in love you are saying I sign up to be hurt and there is no way around it.”
“My intention is to no longer look for love but to be love.”
“Are you both willing to do the work? If you’re both willing to look at yourselves — not work on each other, work on yourselves — and find out how you can love yourself better and each other better, it’s going to work.”
Transcript
okay so last week Brett and I were uh doing a groundbreakers together and one of the things that I noticed that kept on coming up as a theme was Finding Love whether it was I want to find the right person or it was I found the right person but they they weren’t you know into me or some version of that so that’s what I want to talk about today how to find love the misconceptions and that and what’s really going on when you’re in that state I love this topic uh because it’s it’s shown up not just in the ground Breakers that we did last week but also others uh coaching clients other people in life right now uh I notic that there’s sort of this pattern right now where a lot of people have gone through the pandemic and have had a lot of relationship changes during or post pandemic and so I think that’s just a question that’s in the air uh in this in this time so yeah I’m excited to get into it so you mentioned a couple patterns just there and uh can you tell me a little bit more about those sure the so here’s what I see happen I see happen is that somebody let’s do the direct one someone’s looking for love and they somehow think it’s a numbers game that like the the common idea is like if I meet the right person then it’s all going to work out and that’s just not how it works at all it’s not at all about meeting the right person which seems so strange because obviously on some level it’s about meeting the right person but it’s more about like when are you ready for the right person to show up in your life and so we all know that person who’s like gone on a thousand dates met a hundred people and that nothing is quite right and it doesn’t ever work out that spark never happens or that spark happens and then that person that they’re interested in isn’t interested in them and and so that is not at all about finding the right person that is about are you ready prepared wanting to have an intimate relationship and so what I’ve noticed with all my clients who are in this situation is that they when they when we really work on are you ready for intimacy are you ready to be in love are you ready to accept love into your life then the person always just shows up within three or four months once I can just see it’s like I see that transition happen in a person and then it’s just like I can start counting down and easily within three or four months boom they’re in a committed relationship yeah what I what I noticed there is that the patterns that you just described are could also be seen as ways of making sure it doesn’t happen for some prescribed reason it’s like I’m looking for the right one I want to have the right one of course so there’s just something wrong with everybody that I meet that’s why I don’t have a partner so I’m curious what’s a what’s like a deeper way to look at it from like what’s underneath those patterns yeah I mean that thing that’s yeah the thing that’s underneath the pattern is is that usually they are scared of losing themselves one way or another they’re scared of losing themselves and that can be a lot of things they could be scared of losing themselves as far as not drawing boundaries and getting lost in a person or empathetically lost in the person or lose themselves in jealousy or lose themselves in behavior that they don’t want or they are scared to lose themselves the way that their parents lost themselves in a relationship they’re like oh this is what love is what Mom and Dad did I don’t want anything to do with that so consciously and so I’m just staying away from any kind of commitment or any kind of um any kind of intimacy that could allow that to happen so underneath the layer of of learning to love and and being prepared for love is this deeper thing about this fear of losing oneself and we can call it the fear of intimacy or the fear of commitment but it’s really the fear of losing oneself yeah and and that’s what it’s and that’s what’s really going on there when people work on that everything changes for them yeah so that’s I want to double click a little bit more on what you mean by Lose Yourself you mentioned a couple of different modalities there modes uh yeah not holding being afraid of not holding boundaries losing control repeating your parents relationship getting hurt again in some repeated way that has happened in your past yeah uh what what else what how would you define losing yourself here yeah so I would say losing losing yourself is when you’re not being who you want to be and you don’t feel like you can control that but the interesting thing is love in itself is another way of losing yourself more in a in a good way like losing identity and losing like there’s a way in which what love does is it like erodes your boundaries and it erodes your identity which is can be incredibly healthy it’s you know creates like a a feeling of Oneness and and uh like there’s reasons why there’s so much poetry that talks about like Unity with God being love and that love feeling like it’s like like spiritually um moves you into greater things or greater greater Realms or a deeper sense of connection with yourself and that is the good way but then there’s this way that happens in like Society where we lose ourselves and it’s we’re acting like Monsters or we’re you know in huge fights where we weren’t in huge fights before or we are codependent and we don’t are jealous or anything like that and and so that kind of losing oneself is is I think what people are really scared of I mean we’re also very scared of love as far as like seeing our full selves and and losing our identity but that’s a that’s a whole different segment I’m not talking about that for this one this is all about you know just the Practical losing of love that losing self to this kind of relationship yeah and it’s so fascinating how confusing and nuanced this can be that the language even overlaps because you were just talking about not holding boundaries and then how boundaries get eroded and the different kinds of boundaries that you’re referring to like that’s right the sense of self the sense of us being separate from other separate from our world is a different kind of boundary but we use the same word as drawing a boundary to take care of one self which is yeah seemingly paradoxically the increase in our capacity to draw clean loving boundaries allows us to feel safe to dissolve in a sense of self sense such that we feel that Oneness and that love with another and yeah that’s exactly that’s exactly it yeah that there is no I’m sure I’ve said this on the podcast there is no Paragon of Love there is no person that you can think of who is like a who’s a walking embodiment of love that isn’t doesn’t have strong boundaries and yet all of those people also feel like a Oneness with Humanity or Oneness with all life um so it is an interesting Paradox yeah um but the the second part is a nice is a nice thing to talk about the the main meat here however is just people people are scared of losing themselves and so avoid relationships all the while thinking or telling themselves the story that they’re looking for it and and on some level they’re looking for it but they’re also pushing it away yeah so so that one piece there the the fear of losing yourself yeah if we if we recognize and we work on that according to what you’ve been saying the person just appears how’s that go sounds kind of like magical Joe that sounds like some magical thinking and yet that’s exactly how it happens I I think about a David Burn song where he says like he says a junkie’s arms a dancers’s knees the laws of chance strange as they seem lead us exactly where we’re most likely meant to be and so I I feel like it’s very much like that and if you think about it it’s like like go to your Walmart and go and check out the couples that are there like people have found each other like they have found like people find each other all the time um and there and you you all have a friend who’s like you know nothing I mean it’s like not not some sort of hot catch or anything like that right like and they go just from one boyfriend to another boyfriend or from one girlfriend to another they’re always in a relationship which is different than somebody who’s just like amazing and they’re like you know a total catch you know whatever Society speaking is a total total catch and and then they’re just like 50 years old and they can’t find they can’t find the one right so be and the idea is the reason that it works this way is because there is no the one there is no the one until you’re in the relationship there are lots of people there there’s an there’s a lot of people who are your match I mean if the folks at Isis can find thousands of people to be their match in their kind of weird sociopathic like culture surely there’s more than one person who is the match for you and it’s really about your preparedness to see it it’s just it’s just about your preparedness to see it and your willingness to go into that to go into that um that’s that intimacy and that Journey with somebody as scary as it is yeah yeah I guess another way of seeing it is that rather than rather than seeing it as who is a the perfect match for myself as I am right now or as I imagine myself to be which door do I want to step into which doorway of transformation do I want to walk into with somebody and grow together and become potentially the person who is free in such a way that this relationship brings me freedom and like my I don’t even it I don’t even know if there’s a choice like that what seems to happen is there’s some sort of I mean there’s they’ve done these This research on phermones where like women smell men’s like sweatshirts and they like are attracted to the same sweatshirt as the as the person who wore it like there is all these weird things like that so I don’t know how much Choice there is I I was just thinking about a definition of marriage that I really liked which was something to the effect of um two people thinking that they’re not good enough coming together in an attempt to try to find out that they’re good enough wow that’s what I think is happening it’s like and it’s based on their traumas and so we we seem to attract people who as we’ve talked about before who who basically will help us heal the traumas that we’re there to work on and so that we’re here to work on and so there’re going to be people who remind us of have some some similarities to the people who who were creators of that trauma and that that have that interesting like um have that tendency to bring us into that place that needs to be healed and so that seems to be what happens when you find the right person that person seems to be the one to you seem to be attracted to the one who’s ready to like play that role so that you can heal that part of yourself okay so what if what if I’m wanting the one if I found the person or people who have exactly the set of triggers for me yeah and they don’t want me then what but then apparently that’s the trigger I I I I would say that there’s right so there’s all of the ways in which people say they want love and they don’t get love right so that whether that’s I’m trying to find the person and I can’t find them or I found the person but they don’t want me or I have once again I found myself attracted to an emotionally or physically unavailable person you know like that kind of thing in all of these cases what people are doing is they’re beckoning for love and pushing love away at the same time so like jealousy is like I want you I want you I want you but I’m gonna abuse you and Gaslight you and so you’re going to not want to be around me but I want you I want you I want you right and so that’s the pattern and all of these things all of the different ways of of of of finding a way is finding a way to push the love away from you while saying that you want it and the mind just is like oh I just want it I just want it I just want it and the subconscious is like nope pushing you away pushing you away pushing you away like I’ve never never heard a jealous person on their own come to me and say like yeah I’m actively pushing away that person that I really want but when I look at them in the eye and I’m like hey why are you pushing away this person with your jealousy they kind of get this like subconscious grin on their face and they’re like oh busted and so it’s like all of that is this all of the ways in which we do it are uh consciously saying come here come here come here to love and then subconsciously pushing it in a way so so yeah we’ve talked about jealousy and the pushpull dynamic and I I agree anytime I’ve ever seen somebody with a jealous partner one of their major reframes is I feel like I’m being pushed away or you’re pushing me away and not seeing it uh but what are what are some other ways that this push and pull Dynamic shows up in different kinds of patterns yeah um neediness Independence you know I I was working with somebody the other day and they were they were basically talking about this idea that they want they want someone there to really be able to take care of them and but they’re incredibly self-reliant and I was describing to them you know that self-reliance makes it really hard for people to show up for you right like we all know the people that’s hard that are hard to help they’re hard to help because they never show any weakness they’re hard to help because they say I’ve got it I’ve got it I’ve got it they’re hard to help because when you help them they get angry at you they is like and they’re super self-reliant folks and I I I suffer this right and and so I know it well and so the the thing that happens there is that they’re pushing people away with their self-reliance and so I was talking to this person about it and she was saying self-reliance and at the same time she was talking about her father who abandoned her and and a mom that was a little unstable and we were going through the thing and I said oh your dad didn’t abandon you he was just being self-reliant and you just saw a click slow motion click and the next day she’s like oh he never abandoned me because I’m because he was being self-reliant I see it now I see how he was taking care of himself in this strange world that he had found himself in and he was he was doing what he had to do to take care of himself and I said yeah and do you also see how you felt it as an abandonment for years that’s how people feel when you’re self-reliant o yeah right and so so that’s the that’s like that’s how the self-reliance thing works as an example or the neediness thing is the same thing it’s like nobody wants a sexual relationship with their like someone they have to take care of right so on one level it’s like oh I want you why aren’t you here from me on another level I’m being needy and I’m pushing away because we want to have relationships with peers not yeah people we have to we don’t want to car take people by by Nature so that’s another example but there’s there’s plenty of examples of the ways that people push and pull and usually there’s multiple if someone’s either only attracted to the emotionally unavailable person or the physically unavailable person or whether they’re um continually searching for the the right person it’s all it’s all another version of it and again there’s more Nuance there in the languaging too like you said nobody wants a sexual relationship with somebody they need to take care of and that doesn’t mean necessarily that if somebody’s injured and they need somebody to take care of them or something that that’s it’s like take care of on a on like the level of the relationship as like a parent to child take care of relationship rather than like a that’s right peers adult to adult relationship yeah and and you can what’s interesting to me is you can see this in marriages too what you see is like oh it’s been 10 years and the sex is dead and I’m like yeah okay so where’s the parent child relationship like who’s walking on eggshells who’s trying to make sure the other person’s happy because that shit’s happening if the sex is dead you know so so that’s another example of it yeah what are what are other examples anymore you got jealousy neediness Independence as some patterns that people play out here what’s any other yeah there’s there’s another one transactional this one I was I I I recently discovered it was really an interesting thing I I worked with a client for a long time and and I noticed like all of his relationships were there was there was negotiation in them and and it was not just like regular negotiation it was like it was like constant negotiation like it was just like you and and it was always prolonged and I was trying to figure out what it was you know like what is it that makes you want to constantly negotiate with your business partners and then he finds you know we do this work to find a person he finds a person he’s um and they they are like getting married and there’s like an eight-month prenup negotiation I’m just like what is happening and and this is one where it just took me a hard time a long time to understand it what I noticed is that people I think think people particularly people who were bullied but also people who have really understood like and been been hurt by power struggle generally trust relationships that are transactional I know what you want and what you’re getting you know what I want what I’m getting like let like if it’s not there if it’s like oh we just love each other and we want to be together there’s this uh there’s like oh I can’t trust that because everybody has a want everybody has a desire and and and so I don’t trust unless we’re upfront about that transaction and so what I notice is that people who are transactional they will use the transactional part of it to push away the intimacy because it’s that that deeper level of intimacy and love is very scary and so the transactional part of it is a way to create distance from the intimacy is another example of it that seems related to a fear of being in the unknown and in the Wonder as well well like I need to reduce this relationship to what I can understand and encapsulate in a in a formal model and feel safe in it yeah yeah yes definitely I think love is not is not a secure feeling it’s a kind of a weird thing to say meaning that on one level it’s very secure you feel love and you feel this deep sense of security on another level it goes away and so and the loss of Love is is one of the most painful things that humans go through and and so there’s this like inherent thing of willing to be hurt if you’re falling in love if you are falling in love you are saying I sign up to be hurt and there is no way around it there is no way you are going to get married and live happily after or be in a you know loving six-way relationship and live happily ever after however you do it and you’re not going to get hurt is you’re going to get hurt you’re going to get hurt potentially daily right and potentially really really really badly like that’s what you’re signing up for hey I’m willing to be hurt and and that part of it is also like a fear that’s also a fear of losing oneself right if I get hurt like that I’m gonna be gone for months maybe you know I’m gonna be totally lost in it yeah and so these are like this is the the real fear and if we can get to the place of oh every time I allow my heart to break every time it it increases my capacity to love every time that I I draw a boundary it increases my capacity to love every time that I I I’m vulnerable and I I it increases my capacity to love myself like all of these things that are being avoided are the tools to learn how to love more deeply and so to some degree it’s like a pattern that I see people get into for year like maybe decades they’re like because they’re avoiding this pain they’re avoiding the tools of of learning to love more deeply yeah and and and it doesn’t last like the other thing about it is like there is no relationship where that hot like oo I’m like so crushy on you like stays that shit’s gone in like four five months and you see people trying to find that over and over again that’s another way in which they push away love because that that is like a that is like sugar high and you know you want that that real good stuff you want the really good love that happens with a mature relationship where you have worked through stuff and you have you you have been with each other through thick and thin that’s when that love shows up my my experience of that is a little bit different there’s there’s like that initial four to five months but I also notice that every time we break through a new level of intimacy like break through into a new level intimacy suddenly that comes back for that for a period of time there’s like and it’s almost like we’re stepping more and more into the relationship and every time we do that there’s a new kind of phase of wow I’ve never experienced this before so it gets to feel like that crushy phase even in year three year four I’ve never been to year 20 but I imagine it can happen that yeah it’s like that that phase is associated that Elation is associated with like reaching a new layer of depth and I don’t see there being an end to the potential death I have I haven’t experienced the end but what I noticed is that the high is different yeah that the high becomes less like and more like like it’s just a different High you know yeah that’s a really good way to describe that yeah and so the crushy stuff yeah that so my my experience is just like yours just just different words to describe it yeah okay so we we talked about a number of these patterns here and the ways that people have that kind of push and pull relationship through jealousy neediness Independence transactional and what about other patterns like what about people who just think that they’re not pretty enough or don’t or aren’t powerful enough don’t have enough to get a relationship yeah so again go to the Walmart check out the married couples who are walking around like everything that you think you have to be there will be an example of somebody there who’s not with a with somebody so what that is more of a reflection of is mostly what you think you have to be to be lovable which means mostly what you think you have to be to love yourself which is by the way never works out when you get the perfect body it it’s not like oh I love myself now that doesn’t happen or if you get the billion dollars and the status and you know whatever it is so it’s mostly what was imprinted upon you when you were young and you internalized and then decided you needed to be that to get love yeah it’s it’s that and it’s often what you think the other person has to have it’s often what you think what what you think someone who’s love because you think that’s what’s lovable you think they need to have it yeah oh they need to have the money or the whatever to whatever the maybe it’s not money exactly but it like the the that that that uh other side of the pattern so it could be like I need the I need the money so that I can get somebody who has the cache or whatever I need the look so that I can get someone to have the money but there’s there’s like um there’s like a the two sides of that coin maybe there’s a male female side of that coin that that Society plays out but generally that you can pretty much tell what you think the other person has to have too which which never works out like that’s the other thing is that nobody was like here’s the list of things that I need in a man so that I can be happy and then when they find the love of their life because I deal with this all the time with a client right client’s like I’m looking for love and they’re like here’s the six things that I need and I’m not really going to be able to to to date anybody doesn’t have these six things and then and then they do the work on really allowing it in really allowing love in really um get over that like the fear of losing themselves deal with the trauma in their childhood whatever they do and then boom they’re in the relationship they’re happy it’s amazing and I guarantee you they do not have all six of those things guaranteed that’s not how it works yeah so along those lines what do you do how do you stop being that pushing and pulling Dynamic yeah yeah so there’s three things like yeah I this reminds me of something that I wish I could give this person credit um but it’s confidential who was at the at the retreat um but one of the people in The Retreat said something beautiful he said I am uh I resolve to or my intention I think it was my intention he said my intention is to no longer look for love but to be love and that a beautiful moment that was a beautiful moment and so that’s a that like that sums it up better than I possibly could um it’s learning to receive love it’s learning to love yourself it’s learning to be loving I think but most importantly it is untying what was wired with love so oftentimes I had let’s say I this is not true for well it’s kind of true for me but um having somebody who guilt trips you as your as your imprint of love and then you constantly did stuff that you didn’t want to do because you felt guilty as that example means that you’re going to be scared of being in a relationship where you’re going to be guilted and lose yourself trying to please somebody who’s not pleas and they constantly guilt you right so then you’re going to see any motion as a strategy to guilt you rather than what’s going on for the person that’s right that’s right and so the idea is the thing to do is to separate what’s been wired together with love separate those things and start experiencing love without it and start realizing that it’s like you nobody has the right to guilt you nobody has the right to shame you nobody has you have every right to draw your boundary so when you do that work when you do do the work of separating the love and and and learning the tools that you can rely on to not fall into those patterns and you have that confidence then the love shows up and and a lot of that can be done through learning to love yourself and being loving and and and any way that you can take this risk I I I’ll give you an example I’m working with a client right now who’s in a who’s in a marriage and and they weren’t working on the marriage for a while now they’re working on the marriage and we were just talking about some of the things that are really important we were talking about how critical it is to speak your truth whether whether it’s comfortable or not and how critical it is to listen and partially be in view and let the person really share their experience and and one of the things we were talking about is like how important it is to be in an to be openhearted with the person and he’s like intellectually I know this intellectually I know that this is the case however my body feels like I am being conned if I’m open to somebody who’s been mean to me I am getting taken advantage of I am weak and that that’s what like that’s what he was taught at a young age that being loving and open towards somebody is being taken advantage of it’s like you’re you’re going to get taken advantage of that’s a weakness you can’t you can’t show that and so learning that and you know and this this person happens to like have gone to the Gandhi ashram and everything so I was like so Gandhi Gandhi’s weak and he’s like I know that Joe he’s like I know it’s not true but my body believes it you know and yeah and so that’s another example of like being really loving it’s like even in a marriage you’re learning how to drop the defense be undefended and lean into love and be open and to know that that openness doesn’t mean that you’re doesn’t mean that you don’t draw the boundary doesn’t mean you don’t care for yourself but it is an acknowledgement that you’re willing to be hurt if you’re not willing to be hurt you’re not in a relationship one of the things that strikes me about what you were just saying is that like I he’s like I okay I intellectually know this but my body knows but it still sounds like it was actually just not the feeling but the meaning made of the feeling that was happening oh that’s fascinating this feeling means that I’m being betrayed this feeling means that but if you go straight to the feeling that’s is that really what’s happening or is that just like the body’s got a response that you’ve interpreted as that I think I think it’s both is my experience is that usually when you have a very particular feeling that happens oftentimes it’s tied to the next feeling so it’s like oh you step on the pattern cycle yeah yeah exactly so you feel the emotional ABC you know steps and you’re right then there’s this interpretation what is it that’s actually going on here and and I think about that moment in the retreat that we had which um one of the people who was really interested in learning to receive love and learning to um be open and and stop tying love together with the rejection of Dad was in a cuddle puddle and if you remember her description of it like so she’s being cuddled by all these people after this big thing and she’s like so she has this big emotional experience and she was being loved up and and everybody was like cuddling her and she was like it was so painful it was so painful I I felt like it was like burning and and then I could feel a little bit of joy and then it was burning and then I could feel like literally it that’s her reprogramming that experience of of love I I think that the the important piece that we haven’t mentioned is that this doesn’t stop when you find the person like I I defined marriage earlier this way is that we’re like we found somebody who has like matching traumas so that we can learn that we’re we’re good enough like once you get into the relationship it’s the same commitment it’s the same commitment of learning how to drop the arm in learning how to be open and loving in the in the face of it and learning how to deepen into that love the work never ends and and when somebody asks me hey do you think this is the right person my answer is always the same are you both willing to do the work if you’re both willing to do the work if you’re both willing to look at yourselves not work on each other work on yourselves and find out how you can love yourself better and each other better yeah it’s it’s going to work it might be bumpy as how much how much can you be with that burning sensation you take tear in my relationship it got really bumpy in the first couple years like crazy so yeah I mean it could get bumpy but you’ll make it if that’s the commitment if that if that’s really the commitment lovely I think that’s a great place to end this yeah yeah I feel really good about this one thanks Brett for a wonderful conversation and for everybody out there listening you can feel free to follow us in any way that you want to you can come to a course or you can follow us on Twitter anything that inspires you and um feel free to share this with anybody that you want all right talk to you soon thanks everybody thanks Joe thank you