5 Different Types of People We Fall in Love With & Why Seeking External Validation is Negatively Impacting You (Special Episode)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You attract what you use to impress. If we are
attracted to someone for their ambition, that's what we get
a person whose priority is ambition. There's nothing wrong with
ambition until you realize that you want someone who has
lots of time to share with you. Sometimes we feel
like none of the options before us are people we

(00:21):
want to date, and then we have to ask ourselves,
why are these my options? Why are we attracting these people,
and how can we attract the ones we want? Hey, everyone,
welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast
in the world. Thanks to each and every one of

(00:43):
you that come back every week to become happier, healthier,
and more healed. Now, today's episodes a special special episode
because I'm giving you Chapter two, Rule two of my
new book, Eight Rules of Love absolutely free. You're going
to hear the audio right now for free, and I
want you to go and grab a copy of the

(01:04):
audiobook if you don't already have it from eight Rules
of Love dot com. If you enjoy today, you're going
to love the rest of the book. It's dedicated to
helping you find love, keep love, and let it go.
And today's chapter and rule is called don't ignore your karma.
This episode is going to help you understand why you

(01:24):
always date the wrong people, why we make mistakes and
repeat patterns in relationships, and how we seem to end
up with the same person with a different face, a
different name, and a different body. But why is it
that we keep going back? Why are we attracted to
the same types of people? Have you ever felt that yourself?
I'll talk to you about the five types of people

(01:45):
that we all fall for as well. Maybe you heard
me speak to Alex Cooper about this briefly on Call
Her Daddy. This is the rule and the chapter that
breaks it down for you. This is going to help
a lot of friends who've gone through a breakup, who've
been ruggling recently with love, or keep finding themselves in
the same types of relationships. So makes you pass it

(02:06):
on again. It's a special episode. You're getting Rule to
chapter two of my new book, Absolutely Free, and if
you enjoy it, go and grab a copy of the
full audiobook in my voice at eight Rules of Love
dot com. And I'd love to invite you to come
and see me for my global tour Love Rules. Go
to j shettytour dot com. To learn more information about tickets,

(02:29):
VIP experiences, and more. I can't wait to see you
this year. Rule two, don't ignore your karma, do not
be led by others. Awaken your own mind, amass your
own experience, and decide for yourself your own path Atharva Vader.

(02:54):
When Johnny and Emmett met at an industry retreat, Emmett
sensed an instant connection. It felt like the most natural
thing in the world, he said. After a few dates,
we were spending every weekend together. He told me he
loved me. But after three months together, Johnny broke up

(03:14):
with him. This is the third time someone has told
me he can't give me what I want. But all
I want is a serious relationship. I just have bad
relationship karma. Emma told me he was right in a sense.
But karma doesn't mean what Emma or most people think.
Karma is the law of cause and effect. A reaction

(03:38):
produces a reaction. In other words, your current decisions, good
and bad, determine your future experience. People think karma means
that if you do something bad, bad things will happen
to you, like someone breaks up with you because you
broke up with someone else. But that's not how it works.

(04:00):
Karma is more about the mindset in which we make
a decision. If we make a choice or take action
with or without proper understanding, we receive a reaction based
on that choice. If you hide that you're going to
a party from your partner and then you run into
their best friend at the party and that person tells

(04:21):
your partner they saw you, and your partner is upset,
that's karma in action. You made a choice and you
have to live with the consequences of that choice. Punishment
and reward are not karma's purpose. Rather, karme is trying
to teach you, in this case, transparency and honesty. I

(04:44):
don't want you to attribute every good or bad thing
in your life or the world to karma. That's not productive.
Karma is more useful as a tool than as an explanation.
It enables you to use your past experiences to make
the best choices now the karma cycle. Karma begins with

(05:08):
an impression. From the time we are born. Choices are
made for us. We're surrounded by information and experiences that
shape us our environment, our parents, our friends, our schooling
and religious instruction. We don't pick these influences, but we
observe and absorb their messages. Some Scara is the Sanskrit

(05:33):
word for impression, and when we are young we collect
some scaras. The impressions that we carry from these experiences
influence our thinking, behaviors, and responses. As an impression grows stronger,
it starts to shape our decisions. If you grew up

(05:53):
putting milk in your cereal bowl, then adding the cereal
that becomes your norm, then move out and get a
roommate who tells you you're doing it wrong, that it
makes much more sense to put the cereal in before
you add the milk. Now you have a choice. Will
you stick with the impression that you absorbed as a child,

(06:14):
or will you try a new way. As we get older,
we gain the intelligence to curate our impressions by choosing
what we watch and who we listen to. We also
have the opportunity to revisit, edit, and unlearn past impressions.
In youth, choices are made for you. These become impressions.

(06:37):
As an adult, you use these impressions to make your
own choices. Those choices generate and effect a consequence or
a reaction. If you're happy with the consequence. You probably
won't change your impression, but if you don't like the consequence,
you can revisit the impression and decide whether it's steered wrong.

(07:01):
If it did, you can break the cycle by forming
a new impression, which then steers you to a new
choice from which you get a new reaction. This is
the cycle of karma. We are meant to learn from
our karma, to use it to inform our decision making,

(07:21):
but that isn't easy. Life is busy and we think
that what we learned is just the way things are.
But when it comes to love and cereal awesome scars
can lead us astray karma and relationships. I had a
client whose ex boyfriend left an impression on her. He

(07:44):
was extremely ambitious, trying to get a foothold in a
new career. She liked his drive, but was unhappy that
he was never available. Then she met a man who
was extremely attentive. At the end of their first date,
he asked her out again, and from then on he
couldn't have been more available, texting her, making plans, and

(08:06):
checking in to see how her days were going. This
was exactly what she'd been looking for. Within a few weeks,
they started spending almost all their time together. But after
a few months she realized what was really going on.
He wasn't just attentive, he was obsessive. The attention he

(08:28):
was giving her was based on insecurity, not love. He
was possessive and scared that she would leave him. My
client had made a choice based on an impression, but
her focus was too narrow. Her karma taught her that
her impression was too reactive. She didn't need or want

(08:50):
to be someone's entire focus. She just wanted him to
be present when he was with her. In the course
of these two relationships, client used her karma to refine
what she was looking for in a mate. The impressions
we form in our youth tell us what love should
look like and feel like. They suggest what's attractive and

(09:14):
what's dorky, how we should treat others and be treated,
what profession they should have, and who should pay for dinner.
But if we don't understand how our impressions were formed
and how we make choices, then we keep repeating the
same karma. The same impressions lead to the same choices.

(09:35):
We love others in response to the way we've been
loved by others. But if we can put our impressions
in context so we see and understand their origins, then
we have the perspective and opportunity to form a new impression.
For instance, if I understand that I guilt trip my

(09:57):
partner because my mother guilt ripped me, then that recognition
inspires me to break the cycle. Understanding our impressions is
the first step to freeing ourselves from the some scaras
planted by a childhood over which we had no control.
The choices that we make based on our new impression

(10:20):
are conscious. We can see if we like the results better.
If our parents had a volatile, passionate relationship, we might
form an impression that this is what love is supposed
to look like. But if and sometimes we realize this
when we're young, we are quite clear that we don't
like the outcome of that volatility, then we create a

(10:44):
new impression and decide that the love we seek is
exactly not what our parents modeled. Then we might make
it a priority to avoid drama. This new impression may
create its own challenges. We may play to day, or
we may be so focused on what we don't want
that we forget to think about what we do want.

(11:07):
But we have opened our minds and freed ourselves from
our first samscara, and now we have the opportunity to
create new impressions through trial and error. Karma is a
mirror showing us where our choices have led us. We
picked the wrong people and repeat mistakes in relationships because

(11:27):
of the samskaras we bring with us from the past.
Instead of unconsciously allowing the past to guide us, I
want us to learn from our past to make decisions.
We need to identify these smscaras in order to manage
their influence. We do this for two reasons. First, when

(11:49):
we learn from the past, we heal it, and second,
this process helps us stop making the same mistakes. Unearthing
are some scars. Our expectations and desires around relationships are
shaped by our earliest experiences of love. Think about where

(12:13):
you first absorbed ideas of what love should look and
feel like. The strongest influences are most likely the love
you witnessed between your parents or guardians, the love you
did and didn't receive from them, the first romance movies
you watched, and the first serious relationships you had. In

(12:33):
our search for love, we subconsciously try to repeat or
repair our past experiences. We imitate or reject, but we
often give these early influences under you weight. They affect
our choices for better and worse. They interfere with our
judgment more than we realize. Let's begin with the visualization.

(13:00):
We're trying to let go of who we are and
to reconnect with a subconscious part of ourselves, and visualization
is the best way I know to travel to another
time and place. Try this younger self meditation. Try to
unearth the impressions left by your past and understand how

(13:24):
they're influencing your idea of love. This isn't about finding
fault in others or putting them on a pedestal. It's
simply about isolating the emotional patterns that influenced you in
your early years. You can think of this meditation as
an archeological dig. There are artifacts to be found, some

(13:48):
buried treasures, some half exposed, some worthless. They showed the
richness and damage of years past and have much to
teach us about life. Tap into unresolved, unfulfilled desires by
visiting yourself at age thirteen or fourteen, give your younger

(14:15):
self all the words wisdom and hugs they need. Embrace
your younger self. What did your younger self need to
hear that? You were never told you're beautiful, you're courageous,

(14:46):
believe in yourself, You'll be okay, you're not stupid. What
would your younger self say in response? Thank you for

(15:07):
coming back to tell me this. Don't be so stressed.
You should take up singing again. After you have had
this conversation with your younger self, give that version of
you and embrace and thank them for this insight. When

(15:32):
I guide people through this meditation, most of them find
that they had some sort of insecurity in their youth,
and that child is still within them, still struggling with
that self doubt. However, one man told me after the
meditation that his younger self looked at him and said,

(15:53):
come on, man, get over it. Just pick yourself up
and move on. It felt to me like his younger
self was saying, tough it out. We're strong, we can
handle anything. His ego was protecting his vulnerability, even if
we feel there's nothing to heal. Sometimes the wounds are

(16:17):
so deep we can't see them anymore. We take a
stoic approach. We tell ourselves. We're fine, but we don't
recognize that we must take stock cut two a year later,
when this man messaged me out of the blue to say,
I realize I need to become more compassionate with the

(16:38):
people I love and myself. It's just not how I'm wired.
I don't feel like I have time to dwell on
other people's thoughts and emotions. I answered, you don't take
the time to dwell on your own emotions. It had
taken him a year that he was finally ready the

(17:01):
younger self. Meditation helps us identify the gifts and the
gaps that have clung to us since childhood. But this
is only the first step toward letting go of bad
impressions and taking control of the choices we make in relationships.
To go deeper, we'll examine three influences on our some scars,

(17:25):
our parents, the media, and our first experiences of love
parental gifts and gaps. In the New York Times, Modern
Love column writer Coco Meller's describes falling for a neighbor
who makes it clear to her that he doesn't want

(17:47):
to be in a relationship. She knows she is lying
to him when she says she doesn't want anything serious either,
and admits that though I didn't know it at the time,
I was repeating a familiar pattern. I grew up chasing
my father's love, a man who, like my neighbor, could
be affectionate or absent, depending on the day. Martha Pita

(18:13):
Guru devon is a sanscrit phrase much repeated in Hinduism.
It means mother, father, teacher, God. Your mother is your
first guru. She teaches you about love, She teaches you
about care not through instruction, but through her interactions with you,

(18:38):
and father is right there next to her. Of course,
it's a basic Freudian principle that the early relationships we
have with our parents and caregivers established relationship dynamics that,
like Mellers, were compelled to replicate as adults. When we're young,

(18:58):
we completely lie on our parents, and we figure out
ways to attract their attention, to inspire their affection, and
to feel their love. The love they give us shapes
how we engage in love. Martha Peita Guru devm is
a simple concept with far reaching implications. In their book

(19:22):
A General Theory of Love, Thomas Lewis, Fariamini and Richard
Lannon who were all professors of psychiatry at the University
of California, San Francisco. Right, we play out our unconscious
knowledge in every unthinking move we make in the dance

(19:42):
of loving. If a child has the right parents, he
learns the right principles that love means protection, caretaking, loyalty, sacrifice.
He comes to know it not because he's told, but
because his brain ought tuomatically narrows crowded confusion into a

(20:03):
few regular prototypes. If he has emotionally unhealthy parents, a
child unwittingly memorizes the lesson of their troubled relationship. That
love is suffocation, that anger is terrifying, that dependence is humiliating,
or one of a million other crippling variations. But I

(20:25):
believe that even the child with the right parents faces
their own challenges when it comes to finding love. If
a child grows up seeing love is protection, caretaking, loyalty,
and sacrifice, that's what they identify as love. Unless our
childhood experiences were traumatic, and often even if they were,

(20:48):
we tend to view them as normal. Then, when we
are loved by someone who shows it differently, for example,
through joy, time and abundance, it may take us longer
to notice and appreciate those qualities as genuine expressions of love.
If your parents loved you, you might become a good

(21:11):
and kind person, or you might hold those you meet
to an impossible standard of love. Unless we do this
work of examining our some scars, we're often unaware of
these impressions. We just assume the way we think and
feel is the reasonable response. In this way, the gifts

(21:32):
our parents give us can create as many pitfalls as
the gaps. If there is a gap in how our
parents raised us, we look to others to fill it,
And if there is a gift in how our parents
raised us, we look to others to give us the same.

(21:53):
My mother's love for me was a gift. It enabled
me to give love to others, but my parents never
went to my rug matches. Because of that gap, I
first looked for validation from my peers. I wanted my
friends at school to think I was strong and tough,
because I was eager for some kind of support that

(22:13):
I didn't get at home. By the time I became
a monk, I still hadn't found a way to satisfy
my longing for validation. But during my studies at the ushroom,
I looked in the karma mirror and realized that even
when I did get the validation I yearned for, I

(22:33):
was never satisfied. Even when I received authentic, positive feedback
from others, I was never satisfied. And I think this
is often true that it's hard for others to truly
understand what we go through to get a good result.

(22:53):
We first seek validation from those closest to us. Then unsatis,
we look for it from everyone, and finally we find
it in ourselves. It was the gap that my parents
created that eventually taught me this lesson. I had to

(23:14):
be happy with myself. Parental gifts and gaps play out
in various ways in our relationships. My parents always gave
me gifts that made me feel special on my birthday,
whereas Radi's Famili's gift to her was quality time. These
are cherished aspects of each of our childhoods, But on

(23:36):
my birthday, Radi might give me quality time when I'm
expecting a gift. The more or where we are of
our expectations and where they came from, the more we
can communicate our needs and adapt to our partners. We
all respond differently to the gifts and gaps we faced.

(23:57):
If you saw your parents argue, you might grow up
to be argumentative or defensive, or you might heal yourself
from it and make a conscious effort not to treat
others that way. Or you might help others work through
their conflicts. If your parents create a volatile household, you
might try to keep the peace at all times and

(24:19):
hide your true feelings. Karma lets us choose how to respond,
and the options can be subtle and varied. This isn't
about being right or wrong. We're looking for where we
have used our karma in ways that have benefited our relationships,
and where we are still making unconscious choices. If your

(24:41):
father was a jerk, you might date a bunch of
jerks until you finally wise up and settle down with
a nice guy. This is learning the lesson of karma.
Many of us feel like we didn't get the right upbringing.
This could be anything from not having our basic needs
taken care of to not having opportunities that would have

(25:02):
helped us get a better footing in life. Even if
our parents believe in us, encourage our strengths, assure us
that our disappointments aren't the end of the world and
consistently scaffold our confidence in other ways. They can't hand
us a perfectly developed psyche in a neatly wrapped package.

(25:22):
And many parents themselves struggle with self confidence, self esteem,
self improvement, self love, self care. It's hard for them
to pass these qualities onto their kids when they have
their own challenges. It might sound like we're doomed, but
I promise you we're not. We're just focusing too much

(25:43):
on what our parents should have done or wishing they'd
behave differently, rather than figuring out what we ourselves can do.
No matter how imperfect a situation we were born into,
we can learn from our karma and use it to
guide us into and through the relationship we want. Try this.

(26:08):
Identify parental gifts and gaps memories. Write down three of
your best memories from your childhood. Write down three of
your worst memories from your childhood. Identify a challenging time
in your childhood. Did your parents help you through it? How?

(26:34):
How did it affect you? Your answers may not be
black or white. A loving response might have soothed you,
or it might have fostered a dependent relationship. A harsh
response might have damaged your self esteem or built your resilience.
What matters isn't whether your parents were the best parents

(26:56):
in the world. It's a question of how their treatment
of you played out in your development. Expectations. What expectations
did your parents have of you? Did these expectations motivate you,
put pressure on you? How do they affect your relationships?

(27:17):
If your parents expected you to achieve a certain level
of success or to be in a relationship with a
certain kind of person, you might either be unnecessarily attached
to that outcome or you may have reacted against it.
How had those forces still at play in your life.

(27:37):
I had a friend whose parents drilled it into her
that she should marry someone ambitious. But her last boyfriend
broke up with her because, as he put it, I
don't want to be your business partner. I want to
be your boyfriend. She had to let go of what
her parents wanted for her and rethink her ideas of

(27:59):
what a partners should be modeling. What elements of a
relationship did your parents model that you liked disliked. So
often in relationships we reject or repeat what our parents did.
If they argued you may avoid conflict if they had

(28:21):
a certain power dynamic. You may expect the same in
your relationship or avoid it at all costs. Emotional support.
What kind of love and emotional support do you wish
your parents had given you? What did you miss out on?
Once you become aware of a gift or gap that

(28:43):
you're bringing to relationships, you can start to address it. One. Recognize.
The first step is to recognize where and when that
impression steers you wrong. Does it come up on social
media with the particular group of people when you try
to celebrate with your partner when you travel. Two remind yourself.

(29:10):
The reminder is a note to yourself about how you
want to be or don't want to be. Set a
reminder that will catch you in the moment when you're
at risk for acting in a way you'd rather not.
Do you have a challenger head where you will expect
a kind of support that your partner doesn't usually give.

(29:32):
Are you jealous when you see your partner interacting in groups?
Does a certain kind of behavior always trigger your anger
before the moment happens. Find a way to remind yourself
that you want to change in that moment, time and
space it might be as simple as putting a post

(29:53):
a note on your bathroom mirror, or writing a note
to yourself in your journal, or asking your partner to
remind you of what you're working on. Three repeat. Make
your reminder into a mantra, a phrase that you repeat
to yourself over and over. When you do this, it's

(30:15):
more likely to come to your mind in the moment
when you need it. It might be love is free
of guilt, or anger is not the answer. Or ask
before you assume. For reduce, before a reaction or expectation

(30:37):
goes away, you'll find yourself indulging it less. Make your
partner aware so they know that you're working on reducing it.
Five Remove. Finally, over time, with attention and repetition, you'll
break the habit of the expectation. Whether our parents neglected

(31:02):
or fulfilled us in ways large and small. When we
first leave the nest, we are hardwired to look outward
to others for validation and satisfaction instead of inward toward ourselves.
We gravitate towards partners who may fill our voids, but
we may also fail to open our minds and hearts

(31:24):
to people who might suit us better. Looking in The
karma mirror helps us stop chasing others who might fulfill
emotional needs from our childhoods and start fulfilling them ourselves.
At the same time. The more you become aware of
these influences in your own life, the more you'll be

(31:44):
able to see how a partner's parents impact them. This
gives you greater understanding and patience with yourself and your partner.
Movie Magic, our parents aren't the only some scaras in
our approach to love. From the time with children, movies, TV, music,

(32:07):
and other media sell us a romanticized ideal of love.
Snow White sings Someday my prince will come, and we
are promised that the person of our dreams will show up,
will quickly recognize them as our destiny, and they will
sweep us off our feet and carry us into the sunset.

(32:28):
In Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks as the titular character, walks
onto a bus for his first day of school, and
when Jenny invites him to sit next to her, he narrates,
I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.
She was like an angel. The love story takes off

(32:49):
from there. Romances wants us to believe in love at
first sight that In his book Face Value, professor Alexander
Todorov shows that first impressions are likely to be wrong.
We think that people who look happy are more trustworthy,
and we think that people who look tired are less intelligent,

(33:12):
though these impressions have no link to reality. We assign
positive qualities to faces that we consider typical, and although
there is no average human face, we like faces that
are closer to our own definition of a typical face.

(33:33):
In spite of the unreliability of first impressions, a group
of psychologists at the University of Pennsylvania come through data
from more than ten thousand people who had tried speed
dating and found that most of them decided whether they
were attracted to someone within just three seconds. Studies show

(33:56):
that first impressions like this are easily influenced by factors
we may not even register. In one study, psychologist from
Yale University had participants briefly hold either a cup of
warm or iced coffee. They were then given a packet
containing information about a person they didn't know, and were

(34:20):
asked to assess that person. The people who had held
the warm coffee described the individuals they read about as
substantially warmer in personality than those who had held the
iced coffee, So the next time you arrange a first
day you might want to take them for a nice
hot coco instead of an ice cream Sunday. When it

(34:44):
comes to meeting people, the context effect refers to how
the atmosphere in which we encountered them can impact our
impression of them. Think of running into someone in the
lobby of a theater after you've just watched a romantic
comedy you're cue to think of their potential as a
love match more than if you ran into them after

(35:06):
watching the documentary Slugs Nature's Little Scamps. Or imagine meeting
someone at a wedding, which is like having just watched
a hundred romantic comedies, You might be more likely to
see that person as having marriage potential than if you
met them at a bar. Cinematic images of love set

(35:28):
the standard for how love should occur, and often they
make us feel like we're not achieving the level of
romance that we should. In five Hundred Days of Summer, Tom,
who writes greeting cards, shows his boss a Valentine's Day
card and says, if somebody gave me this card, mister

(35:48):
Vance I would eat it. It's these cards and the
movies and the pop songs there to blame for all
the lies and the heartache everything. Hollywood is hardly the
only culprit. The Bollywood movies that I watched as a
child did a number on me. I dreamed of that
romantic happily ever after that Bollywood always touted. You would

(36:14):
think that I outgrew these notions when I served as
a monk, But as I described in the introduction, when
I wanted to ask Radi to marry me, my images
of engagements came from this samskara, hence the river bank
a cappella horse drawn extravaganza rather than I worked out,
thank God. But her allergic reaction to the horse reminded

(36:37):
me that I should think about the person in front
of me instead of succumbing to the media influences surrounding me. Similarly,
when I wanted to buy her an engagement ring, I
asked a friend how to pick one. He told me
to get the nicest ring I could, spending about two
to three months salary on it, so I did. I

(37:01):
didn't ask how he came up with that figure. If
I had, he probably would have said Oh, it's what
someone told me when I was getting engaged. Only years
later did I find out that before World War Two,
only ten percent of engagement rings were set with diamonds.
Then the diamond industry contrived to make them the official

(37:25):
jewel of marriage and love. Almost fifty years later. Having
achieved that, they set out to define how much a
man should spend on a ring. In nineteen seventy seven,
an ad for Debier's Jewelers showed the silhouettes of a
couple on a beach. The shadow of a man slips

(37:48):
a diamond ring on the shadow of the woman's finger,
and the gold banded ring is the only color. In
the ad, they kiss and the voice over the diamond
engagement ring. How else could two months salary last forever?

(38:09):
It was jewelers who told the world exactly how much
a man should spend on an engagement ring. How's that
for a conflict of interest? That ad was released before
my friend was even born, and yet it influenced him,
me and millions of others, spreading the belief that if

(38:29):
you love someone, you should spend a big chunk of
change on a diamond. There are fewer rom coms being
produced these days. But when we examine our ideas of love,
we have to look back to the ideas that were
planted when we were young, before we were watching critically,
before we had any experience against which to judge them.

(38:53):
When Lily James played Cinderella in the twenty fifteen movie
the Surovsky crystal studied glass slip didn't actually fit on
her foot. No maiden in the land fits the shoe,
she told The Washington Post. So the prince is going
to die alone. The promise of a happily ever after

(39:15):
turns out to be an obstacle to happily ever after.
Try this media love. Think of the first time you
heard a love song or saw a movie that shaped
or changed how you feel about love. What characteristics of
love did it present? Do you believe in them? Have

(39:39):
you achieved them in your past relationships? You had me
at Hello, Jerry Maguire, I wish I knew how to quit.
You brokemack Mountain to me. You are perfect love. Actually
as you wish the princess bride. You want the moon,

(40:01):
just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around
it and pull it down. It's a wonderful life. I'm
also just a girl standing in front of a boy
asking him to love her notting Hill. When we understand
the some scars that media have planted about love stories,

(40:23):
then we don't require Hollywood perfection in our own relationships.
We're willing to try a love that starts slowly or
plays out differently first loves. Our ideas of love are
also shaped by our early romances. In twenty fifteen, the

(40:44):
artist Rora Blue invited people to anonymously post messages to
their first loves. Over a million people responded with notes
like you ruined me, but I still write you love
notes on paper plates and napkins, and You'll always be

(41:05):
etched into my bones. And I loved losing myself in you,
but it's been forever and I still can't find myself.
And if I keep my eyes closed, he looks just
like you. There's a biological reason first loves creates some scars.

(41:27):
A key area of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, doesn't
develop fully until we're about twenty five years old. As
brain expert daniel Lehman describes it, the prefrontal cortex helps
us to think before we speak and act, and to
learn from our mistakes. Young people think with their feelings

(41:50):
without a fully developed prefrontal cortex filter. Much of our
mental life runs through our amygdala, a brain center associated
with emotional processes like fear and anxiety. As we age,
our passion is tempered by reason and self control, and

(42:11):
we don't feel with the same wild abandon Those of
us who felt the passion of young love may remember
it as more intense than anything in adult life, even
if it wasn't ideal or even healthy. The first time
you enter a relationship out of pure infatuation, the person

(42:33):
might break your heart. If you don't accept the lesson
and enter your next relationship again out of infatuation, then
the second time you might find yourself bored and acting
out of character. The third time, the person might steal
your money. Karmel will bring you the same lesson through
a different person again and again until you change, and

(42:58):
sometimes it will bring you the same lessons with your
partner over and over again. THEYDICT teaching say that there
are three levels of intelligence. In the first level, when
someone tells you the fire will burn you, you listen
and learn and never touch fire. In the second level,

(43:20):
you experience it for yourself you touch fire, it burns you,
and you learn not to touch fire again. In the
third level, you keep burning yourself, but you never learn.
If we don't heed our karma, we're stuck in the
third level of intelligence and we bear the scars. We

(43:43):
forget that what we experienced in the past holds information
about how will feel if we do it again. Often
when we believe that we have bad luck in relationships,
the real problem is that we keep ignoring the data
and refusing the karmic lesson. In other words, if you

(44:04):
don't learn anything, you repeat the same mistake. Karma encourages
you to reflect on the choice, the reason you made it,
and what you should do differently next time. Let's look
deeply at some of the types we date and what
karmic lessons they have to offer. The rebel in the

(44:27):
movie I Know what you did last summer, Julie says
to Ray, I hate this, I really hate this. You're
gonna go and you're gonna fall for some head shaven,
black wearing, tattoo covered, body piercing philosophy student. Ray answers
that sounds attractive. This character is found over and over

(44:49):
again in literature and movies from Rochester and Jane Eyre
and Heathcliff in Withering Heights to Edward in Twilight be
Being attracted to someone who bucks the system isn't necessarily
a mistake, But if you keep hoping adventure and mystery
will give way to loyalty and responsibility, it's time to

(45:13):
learn from your choices. Why are you attracted to this person?
Are they offering you the relationship you want? If you're
ready to move into a deeper commitment, then you'll need
to choose someone based on the qualities they have to offer,
instead of just their rebellious lure the chase. Sometimes we're

(45:34):
drawn to someone who is emotionally even physically unavailable. They
keep moving, but sometimes pause just long enough to keep
us hoping. We are enchanted by them, so we convince
ourselves that they will stop in their tracks and suddenly
give us their time and attention. We're sure that once

(45:55):
they finally focus on us, they'll fall in love with us,
so we commit ourselves to tracking them down. Where are they,
How are they spending their time when they could be
with us? When will they call? How can we make
ourselves visible and available without seeming desperate when we are

(46:16):
caught up in the chase. We are not getting to
know a person, discovering compatibilities, learning about each other, and
growing together. All of our romantic energy is invested, but
there is no return. In her book, Why Him, Why Her,
anthropologist Helen Fisher, the chief scientific advisor frommatch dot com,

(46:40):
explains that playing hard to get creates a phenomenon she
calls frustration attraction. She writes, barriers intensified feelings of romantic love,
probably because the brain pathways associated with pleasure, energy, focus,
and motivation keep working when a reward is delayed. However,

(47:05):
she adds that researchers have looked at the eventual result
of playing hard to get and found no evidence that
it helps establish a long term relationship. No matter which
side of heart to get you're on, if you're not
spending time together, you're not building a relationship. If you're
drawn to the thrill of the chase, be aware of

(47:27):
what you're choosing. If you start a relationship with a
musician who is constantly on the road, then you can't
expect them to give up their career and spend all
their time with you. When someone is unavailable, they will
generally stay that way. Are you drawn to them because
you're looking for someone who is as busy as you are,

(47:48):
or did you grow up with an unavailable parent so
that is the only level of love you think you deserve.
To use your karma, well, you must be conscious of
who you're choosing, why, and whether they fit what you
want in your life. As you began to explore in
Rule one the project, sometimes a partner needs saving, you

(48:12):
are compelled to take care of them, giving them attention, help,
and stability. This may play to your nurturing side. In
the short term, it makes you feel competent and in control.
They need you, and you feel like you can help
them live a better life. But in the long term,
if they aren't transforming, you feel drained and resentful because

(48:36):
you've become that person's caregiver. You're not equals and you're
investing far more in the relationship than they are. Dominating
a relationship bolsters our ego and makes us feel important.
It doesn't require us to question ourselves or to follow
our partner's suggestions, but ultimately it interferes with the long

(48:59):
term connection we're trying to form. We're attracted to the
dynamic rather than the person. If you love the role
of guiding, leading, and giving advice. You can find that
elsewhere in your life. Try this relationship roles. Here are

(49:20):
some questions to help you examine what role you played
in your most recent relationship or expect to have in
a new relationship. Is it what you want? You'll play
all the roles I describe, but you want to move
toward being supporters of each other while consciously allowing for

(49:41):
moments of being fixes and dependent. Type one fixer? Did
you find yourself constantly trying to solve, nurture, help, or
make the other person better? Were you trying to carry them,
trying to make their goals happen for them? Type two dependent?

(50:03):
Did you feel like you relied on your partner too much?
Did you go to them with all your issues and
expect them to find solutions? Type three supporter Did you
like their personality, respect their values, and want to help
them toward their goals? Did you respect how they spent

(50:24):
their time and kept their space or did you always
want them to change it? The fixer has a parental mentality.
You feel that it's your responsibility to take care of
the other person, nurture them. Their happiness is your priority.
This mentality can be useful, but it can also go overboard.

(50:48):
When you parent your partner, it makes them behave like
a child. The dependent has a childlike mentality. You rely
on your partner, You want them to figure it all out,
and you get upset when they can't solve everything for you.
Sometimes we settle into this mentality when we have a

(51:09):
domineering partner. It can feel comforting to have someone else
take the lead, but we lose out when we don't
follow our own path and shape our own lives. The
supporter is their partner's champion. You are not a parent,
you're not a child. You're side by side with your partner.

(51:30):
You're trying to take responsibility. You're trying to develop patients.
You're trying to help the other person grow, but you're
not trying to micromanage. This is the Goldilock's just Right mentality.
For a quiz to help figure out the relationship role
that you play, please visit www dot relationship roles dot com.

(51:54):
It's natural to move in and out of all three
of these roles throughout our relationships. Sometimes we take the lead.
Sometimes we're more comfortable following what we're trying to avoid
is dating a type with whom we're stuck in the
same dynamic all the time. Being a full time fixer

(52:15):
means your partner isn't taking their own journey. We don't
have the right to take it for them. It's not
our role to fix something that may not even be broken.
Being fragile full time means you lack confidence and seek
validation from others. You feel broken and want someone to
fix you. Being with someone who supports this side of

(52:38):
you interferes with you taking responsibility for your own growth, joy,
and success. The supporter is an ideal to strive for.
Both partners communicate as equals. Your partner is always teaching you,
but you're always teaching them. And when you both understand

(52:59):
that you're both teaching and learning at the same time,
that's when you create a partnership. More on this in
rule three the F boy or F girl. When we
date someone who sleeps around, they are clearly communicating that
they aren't interested in an exclusive commitment. If that's what

(53:21):
you're looking for, consider whether it's worth staying in it
for great sex. Sex can distract us from making good
choices about who to be with and whether to stay
with them, and one of the biggest causes of that
distraction is the hormone oxytocin. According to neuroscientist and psychiatrist

(53:42):
Daniel Aman, oxytocin is related to feelings of being in love,
and the release of oxytocin can support and even accelerate
bonding and trust. Generally, men have lower levels of oxytocin
than women, but sex causes men's oxytocin levels to spike

(54:03):
more than five hundred percent. New York University neuroscientist Robert
Fromkey says that oxytocin acts like a volume dial, turning
up and amplifying brain activity related to whatever someone is
already experiencing. During and after sex, we feel more in love,

(54:26):
but it's not actually love. We feel closer chemically even
though we're not closer emotionally. Additionally, the hormone actually has
a temporary blocking effect on negative memories, so all of
those little things that were bothering you, or that argument
you had beforehand, which might have been a major warning sign,

(54:50):
could fade after sex. When I interviewed a husband and
wife relationship experts John and Julie Gottman on my podcast,
John said that oxytocin can be the hormone of bad judgment.
He says, you keep thinking it's going to be okay
because that hormone makes you feel safe and secure, and

(55:13):
you don't see the red flags the person is sending,
saying I'm not trustworthy. If someone makes it clear that
they aren't interested in committing, they can still be a
fun connection, but know that you aren't likely to learn
much from them. The opulent one. The bugrat Geeta talks

(55:35):
about six opulences knowledge, fame, money, beauty, strength, and renunciation.
Sometimes we're attracted to someone who has a single opulence,
and this is enough to prematurely convince us we're in love.
In Beyonce's song Halo, the light surrounding someone convinces her

(56:01):
they're everything she needs and more. Yet, someone's halo isn't
necessarily an accurate indicator of who they are. In psychology,
the halo effect is a type of cognitive bias where
we form an inaccurate impression of someone or something based
on a single trait or characteristic. For instance, if someone

(56:24):
is attractive, we're more likely to assign other positive attributes
to them, like intelligence, wit, or kindness. This particular halo
effect is called the attractiveness stereotype. One study showed that
teachers graded attractive students more favorably when the class was

(56:45):
in person, but not when the class was online and
the teachers couldn't see their students. Other studies showed that
servers deemed to be more attractive made higher tips. When
we see a good looking person, we might make unconscious
assumptions that they're wealthier, or more ambitious, or more likable,

(57:07):
and so on, and this can influence our attraction to them.
The bugard Ghitas says that the six opulences show us
the fallibility of desire. We want attention, but a million
likes won't make us feel loved. We want beauty, but
we try to make youth, which is not the only

(57:30):
kind of beauty last forever. We want money, but it
won't buy happiness. Try googling lottery winners if you want
proof of that. If we look for the opulences in
a partner, we are being sold a temporary bill of goods.
The bugard Ghetas says that divine love of God is

(57:52):
to know their greatness, but gravitate toward their sweetness. You
may know all of your partners accolades and achievements, but
that doesn't define them as an individual. Being attracted to
our partners for what they have or what they've achieved
is not a bad place to start, but it's not

(58:13):
a good place to end. Abilities and achievements don't matter
so much as qualities and actions. We make the mistake
of assigning qualities to people based on their abilities. We
assume that a good communicator will be trustworthy. We think
a writer must be thoughtful, a manager must be organized.

(58:38):
The only way we can know what qualities a person
truly has is by spending time with them and observing them.
Only when we know someone intimately and deeply do we
find the sweetness in them. Try this, reflect and learn
from a past relationship. We tend to base successes in

(59:03):
relationships on how long they last, but their actual value
lies in how much we learn and grow from them.
If we understand that, we can examine the choices we've made,
assess why we picked a person, figure out what went wrong,
and develop a better sense of whom to pick and

(59:23):
whether we need to change anything for next time. One,
What energy were you in when you chose to be
with your X energy of ignorance. In this energy, you
might have picked someone because you were bored, because there
was nobody else around, or because you were lonely. Choices

(59:45):
made in ignorance lead to depression, pain, and stress. Energy
of passion. In this energy, you pick someone because you
wanted one of the opulences. Decisions made in passion start well,
but have to deepen into understanding and respect, or else

(01:00:05):
they end terribly. Energy of goodness. In this energy, you
chose someone with whom you felt connected and compatible. There
was mutual respect, and often these relationships end with some
feelings of respect still intact. Two why did it end?

(01:00:28):
Be as honest with yourself as you can when you
assess what went wrong in this relationship. Three learn from it?
What can you think of that you will try to
do differently next time? Can you enter your next relationship
from an energy of goodness? Can you set aside opulences

(01:00:50):
and look for qualities that make good partners? You attract
what you use to impress. The lences highlight a very
practical way of understanding karma. If we are attracted to
someone for their ambition, that's what we get. A person

(01:01:10):
whose priority is ambition. There's nothing wrong with ambition until
you realize that you want someone who has lots of
time to share with you. Sometimes we feel like none
of the options before us are people we want to date,
and then we have to ask ourselves, why are these
my options? Why are we attracting these people, and how

(01:01:33):
can we attract the ones we want again? Karma has
the answer. If you put something into the world, you
get it back. This is karma in its most basic form.
If I use money to present myself as valuable, I'll
attract someone who believes that money is what makes me valuable.

(01:01:56):
When we present ourselves, we are signaling the dynamic we want,
how we expect to be treated, what we think we deserve.
I had one client who is a successful entrepreneur. He
was upset because every woman he met only wanted him
for his money. But every picture he posted in his

(01:02:16):
online profile showed him in a supercar or him in
front of another home he'd bought. He said, I'm not
like that in person, but he shouldn't have been surprised
that he was attracting a certain type of person. If
you use wealth to impress someone, you are committing to

(01:02:38):
whatever it takes to sustain your wealth. But one day
you may want to change how you spend your time.
You may want to feel that your partner values you
for more than your net worth. If you use your
body to impress someone, you're putting yourself in a position
where aging is hard to accept. One day, your body

(01:03:00):
will change and you may want a partner whose love
will last for years. If you use your social status
to impress someone, you may find that someone with a
higher social status is more attractive to your partner, or
something may change your status and you'll want a partner

(01:03:20):
who can support you through a hard time. If you
use your intellect to impress someone, you may find that
you don't feel an emotional connection. If you use sex
to impress someone, you are setting a standard for physical
connection that may be hard for one or both of
you to sustain if attraction fades. When we put ourselves

(01:03:44):
out in the world, whether it's on a first date,
social media, or a dating profile, we are saying this
is the version of me that I want you to like.
It's important to put out the version of yourself that
you want someone to be attracted to, as opposed to
the version of yourself that you think someone would be

(01:04:06):
attracted to These are two different things. If you attract
someone through a persona, then you're either going to have
to fake being that promotable person forever or they're eventually
going to discover the real you. One study showed that
fifty three percent of online datas lied in their profiles,

(01:04:30):
women more than men, and more often about looks, doing
things like posting an old photo so they looked younger,
and men more often about financial status. Considering that men
tend to rank physical attractiveness as a highly valued characteristic
in a potential partner and women tend to rank financial

(01:04:52):
success similarly, you can see how that might play out,
at least in heterosexual relationships. Even if your self positioning
is more subtle and you're willing to play out the
role you've invented indefinitely, you will always know in your
heart that you aren't loved for who you really are.

(01:05:12):
You've made them fall in love with the character that
you created, not you. By pretending to be someone else,
you will attract strife into your life. Save yourself that
time and energy. It's natural to want to present the
best version of yourself. You may be doing this through

(01:05:34):
the opulences, whether by trying to slip where you went
to college into conversation, or taking your date to an
expensive restaurant to demonstrate wealth, or uploading your most seductive
photos to a dating website. We can easily get caught
up in judging ourselves by our net worth or the

(01:05:54):
way we show it in material possessions, our friends or followers,
our physical appear. But we all know people who have
high value using these metrics and still have low self worth.
There is a saying that the poor man begs outside
the temple while the rich man begs inside it, or,

(01:06:19):
as Russell Brand puts it, the more that I've detached
myself from the things that I thought would make me happy,
like money and fame and other people's opinions, the more
truth is being revealed. We market ourselves to others using
our opulences, but doing that won't benefit us in the

(01:06:40):
long run. We want to show our real personality, values
and goals so we are loved for what matters most
to us. The converse is also true. Be aware if
opulences are what attract you to your partner, and beware
if they're all that attracts you. You don't want to

(01:07:02):
end up with someone whom you're only attracted to physically,
or whose social life captivates you, or whom you only
connect with about work, or whose external success compels you.
These qualities are tied to temporary situations and characteristics. They
won't last, and when they are gone, so is the relationship.

(01:07:26):
When I met Raddy, I had nothing. No, that's not true.
What's true is that we've been together ever since. All
I had to offer her was myself, and that seemed
to be enough. Try this what you showcase. When there's

(01:07:47):
a disparity between what attracts your partner and what you
love about yourself, you may struggle to live up to
their vision. First, make a list of what you love
about yourself. Think about the qualities you're most proud of,
and try to steer clear of the opulences. Are you kind, caring,

(01:08:07):
hard working, honest, creative, grateful, flexible, reliable. Now, for each
of your long term or defining relationships, make a list
of the qualities you think that person saw and appreciated
in you. We want to build relationships where we are
loved for what we love in ourselves. What you want

(01:08:34):
from someone else, first give to yourself. Once we have
a better sense of the some scars we've gathered over
the years, we can look at how they've influenced our
choices and see if we like the results. We don't
want to make the same mistakes over and over again.
We want to carry the gifts from our pasts into

(01:08:57):
the present, but we can't assume our partner will receive
them exactly as we expect. We don't want to bring
gaps to our relationships expecting our partner to fill them.
We want to fill our own gaps. As you observe
your partner or potential partner, consider what draws you to them.

(01:09:20):
Is your judgment influenced by outdated criteria from your past?
If your parents gave you all their attention, are you
expecting that from a partner to the movies you saw
in your youth? Have you expecting to be swept off
your feet? Was your first love remote and unavailable? So

(01:09:41):
you're stuck in a pattern of repeating that dynamic. One
of my clients was getting really angry at his wife
when she didn't come home from work on time. I
asked him why he was having such a strong reaction,
and in the course of our work, he realized that
his own mother never came home on time, and it

(01:10:03):
had bothered his father. He had inherited his father's anxiety.
I asked him what his wife's lateness signified for him.
After some thought, he said, it's like she doesn't care
about me and doesn't want to spend time with me.
I suggested that he asked his wife about it, and

(01:10:26):
we talked about how Instead of saying, so, how come
you're always late in an accusatory tone, he could ask
what have you been working on? Is it exciting or stressful?
It turned out that his wife was stressed about a
project and that she thought in three months time she'd

(01:10:46):
be able to start coming home earlier. She didn't realize
that it would have eased his mind to know about
this project and when it might end. But even more
important was his realization that the reason for her lateness
differed from his interpretation. It wasn't a perfect happily ever after,

(01:11:07):
but he was able to come to terms with the situation.
Instead of enduring his inherited anxiety, he asked for time
with her over the weekend, and they figured out how
to address both of their needs. Our relationships aren't supposed
to be responses to what our parents did and didn't

(01:11:27):
give us or bombs for the insecurities of our youth.
If we look to our partners to fill an emotional gap,
this puts undue pressure on our partner. We're asking them
to take responsibility for our happiness. That's like saying I
won't drive my car until my partner puts gas in it.

(01:11:50):
Why wait for someone else to make you feel good?
And that's why it's so deeply important that we heal ourselves,
taking charge of that process instead of shifting blame and
responsibility to a partner. If we're trying to fill an
old void, will choose the wrong partner. A partner can't

(01:12:12):
fill every gap. They can't unpack our emotional baggage for us.
Once we fulfill our own needs, we're in a better
place to see what a relationship can give us. Meanwhile,
and always, you can give yourself what you want to receive.
If you want to treat yourself, you could make plans

(01:12:35):
to go someplace you've never been before, or arrange a
birthday celebration for yourself, or dress beautifully for an upcoming event.
If you want to feel respected at work, you could
decide that you're going to make a list for your
own benefit of everything you contributed to a project. We

(01:12:55):
think of feeling appreciated, respected, and loved as more needs
in a relationship. But when we attend to these needs
for ourselves in small ways every day, then we don't
have to wait for our partner to deliver them through
a grand gesture. Try this, give yourself what you want

(01:13:19):
to receive. Fill your own gaps by looking for ways
to treat yourself the way you're looking for others to
treat you. I never felt appreciated by my parents. If
you want to be appreciated, what do you want to
be appreciated for? What can you do every day that

(01:13:43):
makes you feel appreciated. I never felt like my parents
thought I was special. If you want to feel special,
what do you want to feel special for? What can
you do every day to make yourself feel special? My
parents didn't respect my feelings or opinions. If you want

(01:14:07):
to feel respected, what do you want to be respected for?
What can you do every day to respect yourself? These
are hard questions, so take your time with them. Answers
may not come quickly. Ponder them for a day a week,

(01:14:28):
you may gradually start to identify recurring negative thoughts that
you've carried from your past. If you keep telling yourself
I'm nobody until someone tells me I'm someone, it will
make you more prone to insecurity, stress, and pressure. If

(01:14:49):
you often tell yourself that you're not good enough, you
become not good enough. We need to disrupt those negative
patterns by developing new thought patterns. It may feel forced
or fake, but when you practice these new positive thought patterns,

(01:15:09):
you start living up to them. Check in with yourself.
Set aside three minutes before you start your day and
three minutes at the end of your day to make
sure you're filling your own gaps. Attaching new habits to
the beginning or end of things is natural to us

(01:15:29):
and the best way to bring the behaviors and beliefs
we need into our lives. In the three minutes you've
set aside in the morning, sit by yourself and pick
one thing you can do for yourself today to improve
your day. It might be deciding to make a lunch
date with your friend you haven't seen in a while.

(01:15:52):
It might be showing up at a yoga class or
taking no phone calls for the first hour of the
morning to wake up and hope the day will be
great is outsourcing the day Instead, Pick just one act
you can perform yourself that might change your day for
the better. In the last three minutes of the day,

(01:16:16):
assess how you felt about the one thing you picked.
Did it help your day? Should you try it again
tomorrow or choose something else. Expanding our love, our preparation
for love began with two rules, guiding us to solitude
and self examination. We began practices to transform loneliness to

(01:16:42):
productive time. In solitude, we unpacked our pasts and began
to unlock oursome scars so that we can learn from
our karma, whether you're in a relationship, looking for one
or leaving one. These rules help you build and maintain
the skills you need for love. By now, you're already

(01:17:05):
better prepared for love than most people, and that opens
the door for you to share your love with another person.
One of the translators of the bugwad Geeta Knawan said,
love grows by practice. There's no other way. Now. As

(01:17:25):
we move into the practice of love, we will build
our ability to recognize love, define it, develop it, trust it,
and if and when we are ready to embrace love.
Thank you so much for listening. I really hope you
gained a ton of insight from this. I hope it

(01:17:45):
provides some closure. I hope it provides some support and solace.
And I really hope that you'll grab a copy of
the full audiobook and listen to the rest of it
at arilslove dot com. Thank you so much. I'll see
you again next time. Dick

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Jay Shetty

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