Episode 122 - Does Single = Unlovable?

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[Music] our world is built with stories [Music] sometimes these stories cause suffering by pulling us apart from ourselves and each other the liturgist podcast helps people love more and suffer less by pulling apart the stories that pull us apart today's story single equals unlovable oh boy i can't believe i'm doing this i feel kind of nervous i don't know why anyway here goes being single in the 80s and 90s in a southern fundamentalist conservative church nearly undid me i felt like such a loser all my friends were getting married and even though i may have been considered successful by a lot of societal measures i was still basically a loser because i was failing at the most important thing of course that was to find a husband and be a wife every single one of my very close friends is engaged or married this has resulted in a lot of questioning my own worth i am perpetually single and it really has affected how i feel love especially within my friendships i know that wanting to feel wanted is normal across the human experience but having always been single i've naively set unrealistic expectations in my own mind of how a relationship will completely satisfy that need as a single person in the world today i do feel a sense of being unlovable being single causes me to struggle with feeling unworthy unattractive broken alone why not me or what's wrong with me why has no one ever loved me as a single 33 year old virgin who has never been in a long-term relationship it's so hard for me to accept love i've wanted it but at times i know i've rejected it mainly because i battle to think i'm worth it i've pushed people away before they even have a chance and rejected love from friends and even god i've never really been somebody who feels like they need to be in a long-term committed partnership marriage and i feel okay with that but i feel like sometimes i feel a lot of judgment from people in the sense that they look at that as being like a sad way to live or that i'm just lonely or i don't know less than in some sense i guess like broken in some way i know logically that i am so valuable and that i have a lot of love to share and that i'm worthy of being loved but just because i know that logically it doesn't mean that i always feel that way yeah my singleness has created a narrative in my head that is that i must not be lovable which i know isn't true i think for most of my life i've felt that there's something fundamentally wrong with who i am maybe there's something wrong with me wondering if there's something wrong with me people talk to me as if there is a missing piece in my life the feeling of loneliness is crippling i sometimes go to my parents or my sister my best friend and just ask them to tell me that they love me that there's nothing wrong with me that i'm okay [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] all right everybody welcome to the liturgist podcast we're here with a couple of favorites we got jamie lee finch key williams who you've heard on other podcasts of ours before and today we're talking about the single meaning you're unlovable [Laughter] just the thought of that is just feelings hilarious to me because no one would actually say that out loud but i feel like it's implied in a lot of ways and how people talk to you and question you and they have all these expectations of what your life is supposed to look like and a lot of them involve a partner specifically a man um and i don't always get jiggy with that i started responding when people say things like you're so incredible how are you still single my answer is like honestly it's because i'm incredible yeah yeah yeah that's that's why um it's hard out here um but i think yeah dear laughter in response to him just even saying that yeah phrase like just being single make you unlovable it is laughable but that's what my head understands is true unfortunately there are times when a lot of times when for whatever reason my heart or my emotions connect with that story and it becomes a convenient story in moments where i'm feeling other pain to think that that's the only reason why i'm feeling pain in some way which creates a second story which is a problem which is the idea that then having a partner would solve all of my problems or i would never be lonely again and again i don't think people are directly saying these things but it's definitely implied everywhere you look have you been impacted by these stories through the years i grew up good you're from the south too so mid midwest yeah but yeah it's similar yeah so i'm from the south and all of my friends like most of a lot of my friends left high school and immediately got married my sister turns 21 on sunday and she will be getting married soon all my other cousins are married or have a kid and i am the only one without um so for a long time everyone's like what's wrong with you like why why why don't you date anybody like why don't you why aren't your relationship when are you gonna get married and i was like that's just never been a priority for me and i feel like most of my life i've had to explain that to people when i was younger i had a lot of insecurity about it but the older i got i was like oh this is great you mean to tell me like i get to stay in my own space and it's peaceful i don't have to put up with your bullshit i have my own money like i don't need you for anything and it's changed the dynamics in dating for me like when i became like financially independent and like created this life of my own i'm like oh i don't need a man i don't need a man or a partner like if i'm with somebody it solely has to be because i want to be with them and not out of necessity and i feel like i grew up seeing a lot of people with partners solely because of necessity and even like in the industry working in hollywood i meet a lot of girls who are like dating guys solely because if they want financial independence and all that when you take that out of the equation dayton becomes super different yeah so i've done a lot to to make myself financially independent and like living alone there's definitely a feeling of even if i was with a long-term partner i might want us to live separately because i really love living alone yeah so i think a lot of what you're saying resonates with me as well of this like i'm gonna make sure that i can take care of myself and when you date from that place again it's a complicated feeling being a woman i was telling i was telling michael yesterday how often i'm told that i'm intimidating and like i'm not intimidating you're intimidated that's different yeah i am content and happy being single and i like the life that i built for myself but i also it's like the longest thing i've done i'm an expert at being single at this point i have so many years of experience and i would like a new role like that that would be that would be nice but just for various reasons like it just hasn't worked out that way yeah i don't know i'd just like to point out that the concept of being single is a concept it's and it's a concept that's built in this like dualistic patriarchal system of you check a box single or married on a form and we so we think oh you're you're a single person we actually like believe a construct we're just human beings sitting here right like i'm married you're not married but these are it's funny i just i just want to point out the fact that the fact that it's a construct and then it's a construct built on a whole system of like ownership and and patriarchy and how do how do you fit into society in the power structures that that be and in our society you are you get tax breaks if you fit into the the one column you get you get all sorts of benefits and you know you get to have somebody come into your hospital room if you're sick you get to have there's all sorts of ways of if you fit in to the mold of what society wants you to be which is married with 2.5 kids whatever like and and the heterosexual cisgender white man you know like there's a but you know what i mean like there's these there's these paths that are charted on like single is a concept and it doesn't serve a lot of people and so of course i think the side of it saying if you're single in this construct and you want to get married you know you're single your singleness is beautiful embrace it enjoy it live it up the freedoms of it sure this is that whole side of things but there's also the side of it that's just like it's also just imaginary there's a lot of married people that are far more lonely and isolated than a lot of single people somebody that lives in community and has a great sex life and connections and is super connected with with a world of people can still technically be single according to the ch the forms but single has nothing to do with how connected you are how in love you are how how anything you are it's just a concept and being married or being not single in a relationship however you define it doesn't solve the issues that a lot of single people face [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourselves or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's better help h-e-l-p dot com slash liturgists [Music] so single obviously doesn't equal unlovable is there any ways that you guys can think of that just recognizing how that insidious little story kind of creeps in and and what you can what what we can do to see it to recognize it and when then and then how to respond to it how to see through it how to uh overcome it yeah i think specifically around this time like holidays it really pops up and like valentine's day and all that and like you see all the funny memes was like i'm gonna walk down the isle of walmart and knock all the valentine's day shit over and it's just like it's like yes understood but also like i'm actually i'm seeing someone i'm not in a relationship but i'm seeing someone so i'm like this is like the first time like six years i'm going out with someone for valentine's day but like christmas like i didn't have a partner thanksgiving what everyone was like bringing their partners home i was like um solo but i've become accustomed to that um and i have a lot of girlfriends who are kind of in the same boat as me um and so i would say for us it's just like building like our own community in our own little thing so one of my friends this weekend is having like cocktails and cuddles and we're having like a sleepover and like drinks and like a girls night and it's gonna be like our own little shindig and honestly i feel like valentine's day isn't exclusively for couples like i always will tell like any time i wanted to go out like i would just hit up my friends or anybody that i was interested in remotely like hey do you want to go out tonight i like that energy that is bold oh i don't care like february 14th what are you doing you got any plans on that like that part from the office where um kelly finally gets ryan oh yeah and he's like i hooked up with her on february 13th [Laughter] yeah i mean yeah i mean i keep this oh i'm um advocate for shooting a shot and just going after um the things that you want so yeah i feel like the answer varies for everyone i feel like for me i make sure i one thing i've learned the last couple years to just spend time with myself i take myself out on dates yes i hang out with people that i enjoy being around i do things that like that make me happy i used to feel like something is wrong with you because you don't feel this you don't have this gaping hole for a partner and you would rather work instead and you would rather focus on your career instead and i'm like is there something wrong with me like do i have like like something i need to talk through with you i wonder if you would be asking yourself the same question if there was something wrong with you if you were a man just a thought i mean just curious but yeah i used to ask myself those questions a lot and then i've realized like oh this is just what i love to do i love being a full-time creative i love going home and working on things and allowing myself to space to um do those things versus feeling like okay you spent 16 hours at work today and now you should spend four hours trying to date on hinges i'm like i'm not about to sit on here and swipe for four fucking hours yeah i was like i just want to do the things i love and go to sleep so that's how i plan on living my life good slogan there's one of the things i love keith williams i'm sure you'll have a much better answer but that's just how about my life right answer and it and it kind of fired some synapses in my brain as well of like when you said that your friend's doing a little a gathering for y'all called was it cocktails and cuddles yeah okay physical touch oh yeah for sure holy shit like again in this weird story we're telling ourselves that like monogamy's compulsory find find a partner there's this also implied story that that person's the only person that can touch you like can actually give you like affection and touch starvation is real and i think for most of my life the the ache that i've felt about being single has not been that i want companionship because i've got lots of companionship i personally don't want children so luckily for me i haven't had to deal with that kind of ache but i know a lot of people who do desire children do have to deal with that ache but what i know now is the the main longing that i felt has just been for touch same i'm the exact same yeah yeah yeah what i've done instead is i've developed friendships with very safe people that i feel so comfortable just like embracing for a very long time like yeah and and i remember before i started working for myself full-time and i worked in the service industry in like multiple restaurants there was one job that i had that i loved it so much and it was really important that i was working there when i started trauma therapy for the first time because the people i worked with i felt really connected to and i knew that whenever i was scheduled to work at that restaurant i was gonna get like nine hugs that day yeah and otherwise i might not be touched for days yeah because so i think it's it's pr it's problematic on both sides you have lots of touch starved you know again air quote single people um and then also you have this problem on the other end which is people in relationships assume that the only are led to be almost forced to assume that the only people you can touch and be touched by um affectionately doesn't have to be romantic or sexual but just like affectionately is that one person and so i just i think if we were able to just like you were saying you kind of source your companionship and relational energy from multiple spaces i think it would be really helpful if we had more permission in our culture to source affection oh multiple sources as well and i really i have i've started to like when i went on the sacred feminine retreat there was lots of i realized when i left like there was just so much safe loving touch and i felt so free to ask for it and so free to just like there was at one point i think it was hillary that said you know if you notice in your body you need anything like feel free to ask for it and at one point i just really wanted to be held by lisa and so i just went over and i was like hey can you just like hold me like a child essentially and i just like sat in between her legs and she just held me and i every time i had this thought in my brain that okay this is probably too much you're being inconvenient like this is weird now i just would shut it down and i would just stay like i just need to stay like this is okay so i think making those needs known is is really really important i think about jessie jesse mclaughlin she knows that my love language is physical touch and so soon she sees me she like gives me the biggest hug she sits with me she holds my hand she rubs my back and she's always like i'm gonna get all your touches in before we leave and it's like just like a thing of just like my friend knowing me and was like we have this time together and i'm gonna try to give you what i know you need and like what you long for and like having that relationship with different people in my life what can those of us who are married or not single do to avoid perpetuating this harmful story to other people what do we do that makes single people feel less than how can we how can we keep an eye on that for how we speak how we plan events how what what do we do that's uh that makes this worse i think one thing that i always think of when it comes to like my married friends and i don't have this problem as much as i used to but like a lot of times they would like they will have events and things and like oh we didn't invite you because there were going to be kids there or it's going to be like all families there and like you know and i was like okay like i'm a person but i'm also like i'm single like and just like i don't know i just feel like a lot of times single people get excluded and i feel like there is a um this idea of people when people get married or people have children they think that single people no longer want to be a part of their life and i feel like single people feel like married people no longer want to be part of their life and i feel like they're gone and like it's even like talk that like oh when you get married you have to find you some married friends to hang out with like you can't hang out with like single people and like those relationships just start to break and that's sad to me i'm like i feel like that's the thing that i dread the most like when my friends do get married i'm like are you just gonna like leave us and like go get a bunch of merry friends and not hang out with us solely because i'm single and i don't have a partner you know um and that happens and it's a lot more common and i know in like christian spaces like evangelical christians so it's taught that that's how you're supposed to transition uh into marriage and into having a family and as a single person it's like makes me feel shitty i'm like oh so wait if i once i get a husband and a kid then i'm allowed to come and i can have access to you yeah and to yeah i was like that makes no sense whatsoever like i'm a single person and i'm a whole person with or without those things and i i don't know i just wish more relationships uh acknowledge that truth yeah that again everything you're saying resonates so much some of my favorite relationships are with couples and yes i have i thought about this before about how so many people that i love who are coupled or partnered i love my relationship with one partner like that individual energy created in our relationship with one another and i love my relationship with the other partner and there's an individual energy there but then there's also this third energy of like i love like having coffee with you and lisa yesterday together is a different dynamic than when i'm just with you and just with lisa and it's like i love that entity that the two of you together create and i can't imagine it's i don't even know how to describe it it's so unfathomable the idea that like there would be we wouldn't be able to be in relationship with one another because this like social construct is like married people and single people aren't friends but being given the opportunity to become friends with that entity created by people in partnership is so beautiful too so i think just being mindful of we do still want to be in relationship with people who are in relationships with one another and kind of with what you're saying like give us the give us the option to say no if we do feel uncomfortable but we want to be invited we want to be included we want to be thought of [Music] hillary mcbride has just joined us so so now we could use some some good hillary thoughts on like what can we do to undo this story what can we do to witness where it rears its head and how can we be healthier and telling better stories and and unlearning this story yeah uh classic therapist move i'm going to pull consider i i want to talk about the thing under the thing which is that pain is hard and confusing and what we often try and do when we feel pain is make sense of it by putting a label on it or blaming ourselves or somebody else and i think that instead of saying singleness equals i'm lovable maybe we could say [Music] a lot of us are more lonely than we wish that we were and we've decided that singleness is the problem and somehow tells the truth about us but it doesn't and so the thing under the thing maybe is what what is it like for us to be with the pain of our aloneness without saying that it means anything bad about us what is it like to be with the pain of our disconnection or isolation whether perceived or real without trying to extrapolate something about our value as a human because of that i've kind of said this indirectly but i think that the story singleness means i'm unlovable or if i'm single i'm unlovable really just comes from us trying to make sense of why it hurts so much to be alive sometimes and so we blame ourselves we blame someone else we say i'm unlovable or they're unlovable but life is just painful and i wonder if we got better at pain and feeling pain if we wouldn't have to tell stories that weren't true to try to make sense of pain and i also here's a maybe another clinical skill to think about this is something i talk about a lot with my patients but something called receptive affect it's a very specific skill to be able to take in love and we can decide that we're not worthy of love because even if it's not true but in such a way that it actually stops us from taking in the compassion the kindness and the connection from the people around us who really do love us and so regardless of what your relationship status is or who or how many people you are intimate with or not all of us need to get better at doing two things one looking for the love that is there and two taking it in because there is proof all over the place that we are lovable regardless of our relationship status but it's our job to practice believing that that's true about ourselves and taking that in and it can be really easy to say like nobody nobody's choosing me for a relationship so i'm unlovable but it doesn't necessarily take us off the hook for having to learn the skill to take in the love that is there and to be with our longings to be with our longings in such a way that we could be tender with them and acknowledge them and not tell a story about ourselves but it's really really hard to take in love for ourselves to prove to ourselves that we are lovable if um if we've got a really convincing story on the inside that we aren't deserving of love or that we are unlovable so how is that for an indirect that's an incredible monologue i feel like shonda rhimes would have wrote that in for carrie washington on scandal [Laughter] when she's talking to her dad about why she isn't marrying the president i love that so much why she isn't marrying the president because he is married oh my god just on a because we're talking about it like how is it different for you to receive love and to to to give love does it feel easier to do one or the other does it feel like receiving it confronts or bumps up against some story uh whereas giving it feels like effortless i mean i'm kind of describing myself and when i say that but i'd love to hear since we're talking about receptive act affect what what it brings up for sure i feel like for me and my childhood trauma growing up i felt like i had to be perfect and give love and give everything i had in order to be accepted and wanted and so that's something i did out of habit and not necessarily because i loved people i feel like i learned how to love people deeply through doing that but it wasn't intentional it was like just like a skill i learned and the older i've gotten the more intentional i've gotten about it and the more i realized like oh you're fine on your own you don't have to like strive to get anyone to love you you know what i'm saying and so receiving that love has always been hard i just say probably over the last year or so it's become like something that i have started to open myself up to receiving but it's so hard sometimes i'm like no stop it like people say something like you don't mean that like and you know just like shutting down like love from the jump like if somebody who i think is like amazing say they love me i'm like no you don't like you don't you don't really know me like you know what i'm saying versus like opening myself open up to it like oh maybe this person does just think i'm super dope and incredible and they really do love me you know huh wow so it sounds like he you've realized that barrier for yourself and you've actually it sounds like started to do the work of really taking in the stuff that is there for you that these people who've been saying all of these things for a long time sharing affection with you mirroring back to you how loved you are that it sounds like you're doing the work on the inside to actually let it go in yeah yeah attempting to attempt to do yes that's what counts yeah yeah i feel like i'm in a similar position of doing that similar internal work and recognizing that the way that i've dated or attempted to partner in romantic relationships is i mean the way i've tried to do that is the way i function in all other relationships so my there's a direct correlation between my ability to feel and receive love from my friends and from the people i'm in other types of relationships with there's a direct correlation between that and well let's say my inability to do that and my inability to number one maybe find find a partner that is capable and willing to give and number two be able to receive that because i notice it definitely affects who i'm even drawn to and interested in i said something it's not a joke but jokingly michael yesterday about how i mean a good summary for my dating history is that i'm still trying to get my my parents to pay attention to me i'm like i'm drawn to indifference like like a tractor beam and i'm drawn to uh historically like more avoidant people because there's still that internal story of like please choose me please pick me please see me so all this to say like i've realized in the last you know couple of weeks months uh yeah only in the last couple weeks or months doing some really specific internal work about how capable i am of receiving love from my starting with my friends and recognizing do i trust them when they tell me that they love me am i open to hearing that that this there has historically been this massive imbalance in most of my relationships uh between giving and receiving and i've also noticed how uncomfortable i am to just receive like realizing that i've had an internal story that my my worth and value and relationships is only based upon like the efforts that i can put out to take care of someone else yeah i think also for me it i started receiving love later in life you know like i feel like first 18 like growing up my mom never told me she loved me like ever my dad was in my life so i never and even in the rest of my family that wasn't language that we use my sister and i say i love you and me and my siblings that's something we've built within each other but nobody else really says i love you you know and it's not something yeah it's just not something that's been ingrained with us and it's not something i heard a lot growing up and so when people started telling me that they loved me when i got older or even when i was here when i was younger and i was like my own family doesn't love me of course you don't love me you know and we're also always also taught that like your family's the most unconditional love you'll ever have and if those people don't uh don't love you and don't go hard for you then you definitely can't trust anyone else and i took that story along with me as i went about my life and i was like okay my mom never said she loved me my dad isn't here my family doesn't say i love you so clearly i am unlovable uh and took that into a lot of my dating history too so when i was young i was attracted to guys who would say that kind of stuff it was just like 15 16. it was like oh he said he loves me so you know that was like the end-all be-all and then like growing up realizing how toxic that was to like meet a guy and like two weeks in he's like i love you and i'm like that's scary um but like as we talked about earlier sourcing relationships with other people and sourcing the things and the love that we need from different people in our lives yeah i definitely with being so drawn to avoidance it's definitely not lost on me that the in my last relationship the qualities that i thought were um like a like a free like he had a passion and a freedom to express his desire of me and he was telling me he was being very straightforward and forthcoming i now realized was just possession and control yeah uh i didn't know it at the time like someone should not be that enthusiastic that quickly and that decisive they should probably be a little bit more deliberating but because i had i felt like i was starved on some level for so long that as soon as someone portrayed something that was adjacent to the qualities i was looking for i didn't even stop to check if it was healthy or not i just went with it i was like oh month then you're telling me you love me great i guess i do i guess that's how this feels so it didn't reveal itself until later that there was definitely again my my tiny younger inner self was trying to get some needs met um and i appreciate her resourcefulness um but we're gonna have some conversations so now he needs to be looking for that in some other places for a little while so oh man such good work jamie i'm so glad you can be tender with those parts that feels like an a constant ongoing inner dialogue for me too like old parts that we're trying to get their needs met then showing up now and me being like you you're it's totally okay for you to be there you can't drive the car but i got a minivan of parts and y'all can sit in the back seat you're strapped in whatever you want yeah that's your yes you're so good you're so lovable you need to not be driving a car right now you are not equipped to drive this vehicle that's right all of you are five years old no one should let you operate a motor vehicle yeah exactly yeah i think about the the society that we're in and the paradox we feel of needing to be mirrored in a way to have our self-structure develop like you know there there are so many research accounts of people who didn't get adequate mirroring and so they died right their brain didn't develop we see this in in communities where there is war and genocide and nobody is taking care of the orphans right these these brains and these nervous systems don't develop so we actually need to be mirrored and connected and attuned to and yet somehow we equate uh if someone chooses or affirms us as a romantic interest with validating our worth as a human and that's that's not the same thing but i feel the paradox in those which is like we're longing to be seen and known on intimate levels but if we don't get that in the way we want it doesn't mean that we're not lovable and a lot of times you're also just asking the wrong person asking the wrong things of the wrong thing about that that's something that i've learned very very very very recently it was like oh it's not that i'm undeserving of these things or it's just that you're incapable and given to me and that is fine and you find other people that can be that resource for you yeah or you learn to be it for yourself either way such a good point asking asking the wrong people to answer the questions about what is most true about us yeah and that the generosity and that compassionate perspective of it doesn't mean they're bad people they just might not have the ability to give me what it is that i need they they just might not have the resources it just might not be a match like they might not have the ability to provide the specific thing that i know that i need and that just means there's a incompatibility but no one i don't need to make them my enemy right right yeah there's an analogy that i use often in my clinical work um that i keep coming back to about this and and the analogy is that i um as someone who doesn't eat meat we don't keep meat in our house so if someone comes over and they're asking me for a steak for dinner i i will not and cannot provide that for them but does that mean i don't love them does it mean that i'm bad does it mean that they're bad no but you don't go to hillary's house for a steak so like there are some people you don't go you don't go to them for the thing that you feel like you're really craving to sustain you right those are people who are going to give you like a tofu burrito and maybe that's not what you need maybe you need steak a little bit and it's again the story is like oh i shouldn't have asked or this need is wrong or it's bad that that i'm wanting this and wow i'm such a failure that i didn't get i didn't get this thing from this person that i asked it must mean that there's something wrong with me in my ask instead of being able to pull back and just see the ask exactly like you're saying keys just to the wrong place and when we can control the stories that we tell about our pain gosh we can solve or really stop a lot of suffering before it gets started it's really the stories that oh man do a number on us i think part of the problem with being single in our culture is that we over value romantic love and undervalue all other kinds of love being single doesn't have to define us like society tells us we can be a whole person i don't think my story is about romantic love anymore i don't think it's about having a family of my own either i think it's about loving those around me and those who haven't felt platonic love and those who don't feel seen or understood and that excites me that gives me purpose that makes me love myself again there is nothing missing i love being single i truly adore it i'm not against being partnered or paired in the future but i have an incredibly vibrant life that's full of intimate relationships regardless of the fact that i'm not partnered repaired i feel that being single has really allowed me to show and receive love to so many more people and experiences than i think i would have if i had been in a relationship i feel like singleness has really invited me into an openness and a limitless capacity to love and to also receive love that in past relationships i never truly lived into i really worked to cure a life that i love so much that even if i never meet someone i will be fulfilled and happy a bit like joe march and little women i want to celebrate who i am what i have right now because i don't have control over the rest of it i had an important insight not too long ago that was profoundly sort of world altering for me it was after a breakup that was really difficult i remember saying out loud i already have all the love that i need i have all the love that i need and it was such a tremendous aha to me that there was more than enough in the people around me people who have my back people who come when i call people who i get to pour into children that i get to watch and help grow with their parents and whether i got married or not was beside the point because i already have all the love that i need [Music] well thanks for listening to today's podcast we hope you've enjoyed it if you'd like to discuss any of the topics here we meet every sunday online as a liturgist community it's called the sunday thing and if you're interested in joining that just go to the liturgists.com and click join us we'd love to have you this week's episode was edited by taja slayer haydn and myself special thank you to all of you who sent in your voicemails your stories we really appreciate you doing that and of course to kee williams jamily finch hillary mcbride and our patrons thank you for making what we do possible all the love thanks for listening everybody