Dr. Guy Winch
Appearances
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
We don't decide. Because if you decided, you could actually decide to fall in love. And there's so many people who would love to fall in love, maybe even with the person that they're actually with already, but struggle to do that. Or people who have fallen out of love would like to fall back in love. Or the person that's trying to woo them is perfect for them in every way.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Why can't I just love them? That would be great. I just don't. So, you know, we can't quite make ourselves fall in love. But you know what happens is that people fall in love. It's very psychological because it's with an incredible absence of information. It happens quite quickly. You don't know the person. You don't.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
You have a few data points and you're connecting them to create a Mona Lisa with five data points. Out of a flawed human being. Potentially flawed. You have no even idea where. And, you know, you have the rose-colored glasses. Everything's cute. Those things that are going to become incredibly annoying later on are still cute to you.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And you just fill in the gaps with optimism, with hope, with, oh, they're probably like this. And so you really don't know the person you've fallen in love with most of the time. Because I say if you need to know the person, you have to wait until you have your first fight. If you don't know how they fight, you don't know how ugly it gets. You don't know how ugly they get.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And that can make a big difference. But that doesn't usually happen before you fall in love. It happens after. You don't know how they fight. You don't know how they travel. You know, maybe you love to travel and they are such an anxious mess in an airport that you really want to just, I am not with this person at all. You know, like you don't know that.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
You don't know how they are with their parents, your parents, with the holidays, whether they are a mess, they're fun. There's so much you don't know.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But I'm going to start with this. I think the thing we get wrong most about relationships is that we are absolutely clueless about how critical the first steps are. Those first dates, those first months, what you are doing is you are creating an unspoken contract with that person about what our couplehood is.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
is going to look like, who's going to be responsible for what, what the dynamic is going to be, what the vibe is going to be, who's going to be pursuing, who's going to be the pursued. Everything you do is a precedent. Wow. but you don't realize that you're setting a precedent. So you're just like, oh, this part's okay, this part I didn't love as much, but fine. No, it's not fine.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I mean, maybe it's not a big deal, but if that's what's going on, that's what the other person is expecting would be cool to go on. Forever. Yeah, yeah. In that relationship, you are setting, like if somebody tends to be 10, 15 minutes late to all the dates and you're like, it's only 10 minutes, I'm not going to be, you know, I'm not going to.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Then you are signing up for the fact that you get to be late. And if suddenly 10 dates in, you're like, you know, it's really not cool that you're late. They'll be like, where have you been for 10 days? So it's not a new thing. You know what I mean? There's literally that expectation the other person has that this is what goes on. This is what goes on.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But if you're not aware that you're writing this unspoken contract and signing it and agreeing to all these precedents, then you're setting yourself up for a relationship that a lot of people are like, oh, I'll fix this later. I'll fix it in post. Yeah, right. This isn't a movie. Here's why. I'll say this last part about this piece. Relationship dynamics are like cement.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
You can mold it when it's wet, when it's fresh. But you can't, it's much more difficult to do when it's dry and it dries very quickly. So you have to be aware of that.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
For each thing you want to fix or change or tweak.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
So I am so excited to hear that that's how you went about it. I'll tell you why. First of all, that's why you're at peace, because you've done the due diligence. There's not these corners of her that you've never seen, exposed, or don't know about, and like, well, I like what I see, but who knows what I don't. you actually have seen a lot because you've asked a lot of questions.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
The due diligence you did over there, that investment of, if I'm choosing a life partner, I'm gonna vet this as much as possible. I'm actually gonna put in the work
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
to build a foundation people always say like oh we have a good foundation did you build it or did you just are just evaluating what actually turned out or did you intentionally deliberately build a foundation you did that kind of due diligence is extraordinarily rare and why it's so such a shame that it is rare, is because we give that due diligence to purchases like homes and cars.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I know people that spend two hours a day studying car models before they make the commitment on their next car, but they're not going to spend an hour thinking about their next relationship or what they should do or about whether they should have kids or how they want to raise them or what their values are or all of those things. To me, like, if they're ever going to put in the work
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
to do the research, do the due diligence, and put in the effort to build something intentionally, deliberately, mindfully, relationships is where it should be. And by the way, not just romantic ones, because all these rules of relationships are true for all kinds of relationships.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
First of all, I think you can get into a relationship in any situation. It just might mean that you will have more work to do and that the relationship will have more work to do if you're coming at it from a wounded place or something like that. When you said, I told her what the plan was. In other words, you told each other, and this was your individual thing.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
You're like, this is the ride I want to be on. So that's what you'll be joining me for. You need to know if you want that ride. And she's saying the same thing to you. This is the ride I want to be on. And you need to know if that's the one that you want to join me on. Now, they're not in conflict necessarily at all.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
You know, each person's goals and dreams or how they want to develop or what kind of life they want. But it's very thoughtful and it's very important to say this is the vision. Are we sharing it? And to ask all these questions, to have these conversations, they're not easy to have. They're not. Because I'm sure it wasn't the case that everything you said, she was like, yeah, me too. Yeah, me too.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Yeah, me too. Stuff needed to be worked out. And then you're like, is this critical? Is this deal-breaking? Is this something that we can manage to accept? You use that word a lot, it's totally about acceptance. That's correct. That's the question. So you're actually walking into a bit of a... of a marsh when you do that. It's not like all skipping along.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But as long as you're willing to do that work, you get off and you get off into dry land.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
What you guys did is for a year or however many months, you actually practiced communication, conflict resolution, negotiation. You practice all these very important couples, relationship and communication skills that wouldn't come up a little bit here, a little bit there, but not in that substantial a way. So you guys developed
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
these muscles and these habits with one another of like, if we have a problem, we know how to talk about it. We know how to be honest about it. We know how to resolve it. So that's the other part of the peace and the confidence. You've worked all that out. You develop those skills together in the formation. That's why they're going to therapy every six weeks or whatever it was. Great idea.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Let's get a little bit of guidance on that because it doesn't hurt. It actually helps quite a bit.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But look how much research you did along the way. This is the third interview we've had. We speak outside of this sometimes, but you are prepared. You do the reading. You do the research. You've learned so much. from so many different experts. You are not a layperson coming at it. You practically have an honorary PhD in psychology and relationships already for all the stuff that you've done.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I'm serious. Most people don't have this. Most people do not. That's my point. In other words, you do have to put in the work. You had put in the work. And the books I write and the things I do is to get people to be more thoughtful about and more mindful about how they feel and what they want and what they do.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Because we can't be on autopilot all the time, and most of us are on autopilot all the time. One quick thing I wanted to touch on, because I think this is something that young people say to me a lot, and it's problematic. They say, one person will say to another, I don't like when you did so-and-so, and that person will say, well, that's who I am.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I'm not going to change, and you shouldn't try and change who I am. And I think it's really important that people distinguish who you are from what you do. From behaviors, right? From behavior. Yeah. They're not asking you to change who you are a lot of the time. If it's like, oh, you hate skiing, you must come with me on skiing vacations three times a year, it's not going to happen. Mm-hmm.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But if it's about, I don't like when you say those things to me, well, that's just who I am. No, no, no. That's what you said. It's not who you are. And so people get stubborn and they don't want to change things that you actually should change and be open to.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Or stubborn or difficult or whatever it is. Yeah.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
What I really find surprising is sometimes somebody will say to me, yeah, the other person, the person they're dating, they just keep telling me what they want and what they like and what they want and what they like. And it's like, it's so annoying.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And I'm like, I'm sorry, they're giving you the user manual for how to be in a relationship with them and you don't think it's important for you to read it?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
It's amazing they're communicating that. That should be the best thing ever. Now, you like it or you don't like it, but it's not annoying that they're doing it. You should be doing the same. They're giving you the instruction manual on how to be with them. Pay attention.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
She's lying on the couch, watching you, going, I heard you the first three times.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I would use a similar guideline that you do for a physical wound. You might wake up with a little bit of a scratchy throat or a sniffle, but you don't know if it's going to go somewhere. If two days later you're still sniffling and scratchy, you might consider that you have a cold or something worse and you might want to do something about it, but it might go away. It's the same thing.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
We get wounded all the time. Every time you check social media and that person didn't like your thing or, you know, share your thing or respond to your thing, we feel rejected and every little swipe that doesn't get swiped back, you know, we feel rejected. There's a lot of rejection in the world today because we're tethered to so many people electronically, just the opportunities are tremendous.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
But if it nags you, really nags you, if it's really bothering you, if you're having trouble shaking it, that's when you might want to consider doing a quick exercise or doing something to actually treat the wound rather than just waiting for it to go away.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
A rumination of something? It can be a rumination or just you keep thinking back, like, well, why hasn't she ever responded? I thought the date was good. Why is it like she's not responding, I guess. It's like now she's ghosting me. Like, I don't understand. And it's four or five days, and it was one date. Right. And you just don't get over it.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Now, you don't have to run therapy for that, but there are certain exercises you can do to just revitalize your self-esteem, your mood.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
There are two things. Actually, there are many more than two, but I'm going to mention two. One is the don't do. The don't do is the first thing we all do is become very self-critical. In our efforts to understand why it happened, we review everything that might not be great with us to see if that's the reason. Is it because I'm not this or I am that or I'm too much here or I'm too little here?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Maybe it's because, oh, I knew I shouldn't have done. And this is not – you just got rejected. not the best time to go through the greatest hits of your insecurities. You know, you want to be doing the opposite, reviving your self-esteem, not actually reviewing all the wounds that you've sustained in the past. Because when you look at past wounds, you reactivate them emotionally, right?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
If, you know, you had physical injuries, if you think about them, they're not going to hurt. But if you think about some of the emotional times about the rejections or about the depressions or about something that got you really upset, you're going to get upset again, even if it's 20 years later. Isn't that interesting?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Yeah, but it's not one that you have yet to heal. It can be one you've healed. If you think about something small and incredibly irritating that happened 15 years ago, and you start literally thinking through the details, you're going to start to feel really irritated. It has zero consequence or meaning in the present. None. None. But that's how we are.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I mean, our emotional reflection reactivates these things. And it's important because that's when, if you're spinning about, oh, I'm not this enough or that enough, and that person rejected me, was it for the same reason? Is it this? Like, what's going on? Like, you start to question yourself, and that's just doing damage to your self-esteem.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Because if it's after one date, and really, truly, if it's after five, whatever the reason is, It's about chemistry. It's about fit. It's about timing. It's not personal. It's personal in that you might not have been good fit for them, but it doesn't mean you're a bad person or not a great fit for anyone else.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
It's not only that. They take it personally and then they generalize it to mean something even bigger than what it does. I never find love. Really? She just didn't sway back. That seems like a leap in inference to make from that, but it's a very natural thing we do. We assume it's us.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Now, literally, people do that when they texted with somebody back and forth for a bit and then that person disappears. You have no idea if you're even talking to a real person. You have no idea. That person might be in the hospital. They might have been chatting with you to piss off the person they're actually living with at the time. They might be going through whatever we could work.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
There's a thousand things that can be going on for you to assume that you did something wrong in five texts that was so bad that it's completely unnecessary. But that's where the mind goes.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
goes so let's stop that damage that's the first thing to not do but the thing you can do is the opposite you want to remind yourself in those moments of what you bring to the table what you do have to offer now you can't fool yourself you can't say to yourself i'm the most gorgeous person in the world if you're not and if the feedback that you get is that you're not
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Because your mind won't believe that. You know, we have this automatic way of thinking that will reject things that fall outside the sphere of what it considers believable. And so you can't just like convince yourself of something that's not true. You have to focus on the things that are. So think about your best attributes. I have amazing eyes.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I know I'm going to find someone who will want to gaze inwardly. I am such a great listener. I'm emotionally available, and I'm always up for doing things. Those are wonderful qualities and characters that somebody will appreciate, etc. You actually review what is worthwhile about you and not do the opposite.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And the way you do that is doing what you did in your relationship on an individual level, i.e. you get to know yourself and you get to accept yourself. All the parts of you. All the parts of you. Because there's no one who's perfect, right? Every good quality you have comes with a downside, right? It's gonna be true of everyone, right?
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I can think of several, but okay. I have a sense of humor. I enjoy my sense of humor. I sometimes deploy it in ways that are maybe not... Bad timing or something? Yes. Because if the joke is going to be funny, I'm going to say it no matter what, just because I can't pass it up. And I am going to be upsetting someone by doing so. Potentially. I try not to. It leaks out in sessions sometimes.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
I'll give you a quote, you know, and I'll give you, this is terrible. I shouldn't do it just because it makes me sound so bad. Now you have to do it. You have to do it. Okay, I'm not going to say anything about the person, but it was a session in which somebody was having an issue in a relationship.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
And I was challenging them on why they're not setting more limits with their partner who needed limits set with them. Setting boundaries. Right. And they said, yeah, that's how it is. And this person was very successful. And they said, that's how it is. I'm a lion in the boardroom and a pussycat in the bedroom. And I said, I agree with every word except cat. It was funny to me.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Not funny to the other person. I apologized for it. I apologize again if they happen to be listening. That wasn't... The point was actually sound. Of course. I didn't need to. But the joke was dangling and I couldn't. And so here's a thing that has a downside. Sure, sure, sure. Somebody who's very, very, let's say, conscientious about things.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
That's a wonderful thing that they're conscientious about. But it's also a standard that they're probably going to likely have that they'll likely want to hold you to as well. So lovely to receive it, but then they're going to be expecting it. And so that can be a pain, you know, sometimes. I mean, there's always a downside to things. So you just have to learn to accept and to go, this is great.
The School of Greatness
How To Let Go Of Toxic Love & Attract A Healthy Relationship
Yes, it comes with that. I'll accept it because I like that.