 Welcome to the show, Lily. It's so great to have you with us. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm super excited. And before we kick things off, John and I have talked about dating numerous times on the show, lots of toolbox episodes. I'd love to just hear a little bit about your journey. So if you could share with your audience sort of the relationship you came out of that really inspired your work. Unlike most people, I ended up in a relationship with a psychopathic narcissist. I was highly naive to what that was because it's not the kind of thing that you get taught at school, like how to do all those kind of personality types. And it inspired this journey of really understanding what healthy relationships actually are, how to heal from those types of relationships, how to go on and actually meet someone who is actually right for you. And along this journey, I ended up doing things like NLP and all the, you know, practitioner, master practitioner, hypnosis. And I actually realized that it wasn't quite enough when it comes to meeting someone who's right for you. And that's when I started falling in love with body language, profiling and really understanding people at that deeper level. And as a result, I've had clients who have come out of narcissistic relationships and meet the one in under 21 days. Dealing with narcissism and toxic relationships, you often find that you lose your sense of identity and you're mistreated and traumatized over it. And coming out of a breakup like that, coming out of a toxic relationship, it can be pretty hard then to not only find yourself, but then put that self-awareness to work in your love life. So for those who are coming out of a toxic relationship, what in the work that you do allows them to refine their identity that may have been lost through this toxic abusive partner? And then how do they turn that into a meaningful search for love, whether it's online or in person? One of the main things that's really important to understand about narcissists is that the empathy part of the brain is actually underdeveloped. Not many people actually really understand that. So their capacity for empathy is just not there. So asking them to really care is like asking a fish to walk, it's not going to happen. And when you can start to understand that this person's not going to be what you need them to be, you can start to actually realize what you're not going to get the relationship that you actually desire because the biggest element around narcissistic relationship is falling in love with the potential rather than falling in love with the truth of what you're actually in. And the beauty of how narcissistic relationships work is they do all the love-bombing, all the stuff that makes us feel really awesome. The serotonin and dopamine levels that she shoot up and then they literally take it away. So you have this big fractionation pattern going on. The big, you know, big high of serotonin and dopamine and then the big drop of the withdrawal or the horrible like negging things that can go on and all these different things. When you start actually coming out of that relationship and you don't have that space to be able to have that structure, have those rules that were in place before, it's about coming back and going, okay, what's making you happy? What is it that you actually need? And also more importantly, what are you feeling? Because narcissistic relationships push you into a very dissociative state. So it's coming back to those emotions. I think we should dig in a little bit here because for a lot of people, their first thought when they hear all this and sociopathic behavior, dating narcissists, most people will say, that's not going to be me. I can vet people better than that. I can spot them a mile away. And as you had discovered, you can have all the tools in the world, but they are plenty. They are everywhere. And I think most people, if they're going to play the field, so to speak in dating terms of going out there, they are going to run into these behaviors and end up in these relationships at one point or another. So we should discuss some red flags and some signs, but also, and then the aftercare as we were getting to, because that is incredibly important, as AJ mentioned, a lot of people tend to lose their identity in those relationships, and they have to find themselves on the way out. So we should hit those as well. And there's three behaviors that stick out to me that form, that it gets sucked people in. And you mentioned one, which is love bombing that two others that I want to tap into as well is flood lighting and gas lighting. Everyone knows what gas lighting is. The other one that I think people aren't so familiar with or asked me about all the time is flood lighting. And this is where the bad actor in the relationship just dumps on the person that they're now seeing after getting them all feeling gushy with all the love bombing of woes me, here's all this terrible stuff that has happened to me. Usually it's all lies, but it can be true or exaggerated in a bit, in order now for the love bombed victim to now have the empathy and the sympathy for the person who's flood lighting them to dump all of their secrets into the bad actor that way, because they're like, well, he's or she is telling me all these things about themselves. I don't want them to feel completely vulnerable and naked in this moment. So now I'm going to offer up all of my secrets. And now that the chemistry is there, the oxytocin and all the good love drugs that you had mentioned. Now there's this, what the other person's feeling this strong bond as they're matching these vulnerabilities of all this terrible stuff that has happened to them. And the love bomb is sort of the hook, the flood lining is the reeling in of the victim and the gaslighting now that they are hooked and reeled in begins to alter the reality in which they are seeing this relationship and themselves. Yeah, I love the fact that you brought up the flood lighting because it's so true. They literally pull you in with all the love bombing, all the things to make you feel absolutely fantastic. And then it's almost like the flood lighting is creating a story. It's like, wow, look how vulnerable this person is. I need to care for them. I need to protect them. I need to, you know, make sure that they're okay. And when you've got that level of empathy, it's so hard to resist because the other thing about narcissistic relationships, and this is like the horrible cringy part, is that they have a very strong codependent dynamic. Often the empath needs to feel needed. They need to go, oh, it's okay, I'm going to love you and heal you with all this love. And unfortunately, as much as you can love, you're not going to be able to fix that person. And it can become very, very addictive in terms of saving people. So yeah, and then obviously you have the gaslighting. And what tends to happen is because in narcissistic relationships, your identity is the element that's getting attacked. You know, whether it's like, well, you wouldn't think that if you knew that, you know, if you thought that I loved you, how stupid are you to think that way? Why are you being so needy or whatever terms come up that actually start attacking your identity at that deeper level? And I love the fact that you've brought up about, you know, lots of people tend to go and say the words, well, I'm never going to end up in a narcissistic relationship. The truth is the more successful you are, the more you're going to be around narcissists because they have very natural leadership qualities, which means that they tend to go up the ranks very, very quickly. So if you're quite successful, chances are, you're going to be a ton of narcissists and it can be very alluring to begin with. Another part of that narcissism is they tend to be very charismatic. So they have a devoted following of other people either chasing their attention or approval, or as you said, they've moved into leadership high status roles as men. So they become very attractive through their charm. What ends up happening in that last stage of gaslighting is when you now start to see the cracks in the relationship, they start shifting reality around you. Oftentimes, if you're an empath and you're giving all of this empathy through the floodlighting stage, and then you start to expect some level of empathy back and you don't get it, that's typically what triggers the gaslighting because they don't have that empathy to give. They're not going to ever give you that empathy. They're now going to shift it to you're the problem, you're the one to blame. They've given you all of this love. They're this wounded animal. How can you not see how wounded they are? And as that reality starts to shift, they've also started to take more and more of your time. And I think that's the real problem. So when you're in a relationship with a narcissist, it can be hard to see at the beginning because who doesn't love to be love bombed and feel really good. And then you're sharing your empathy, which you find is one of the strongest ways to show love of someone else through the floodlighting stage. You've now given away a lot of your relationship, your autonomy, your passions, your pursuits, which makes the gaslighting even more effective. Because you don't have the friends to run to, you've started to sever ties or spend less time with them and they don't have a full picture of what's going on to give you that advice to say, hey, this isn't right for you because the narcissist has pulled you in. And it's a really tangled web. And when we have guests on who share this experience, oftentimes listeners will write in as exactly Johnny said, well, I could see that in other people, but I'm too smart for those strategies. And Johnny and I have both been in relationships with narcissists, we've been in business partnerships with narcissists, and we've studied psychology, but they prey on these trauma bonds. And as you said, these childhood experiences that we maybe haven't worked through, we don't have self-awareness around. And it can become very difficult for them when we come out of that, the aftercare, to really position yourself to find a healthy relationship. So we'll love to talk about after recognizing this, you're in that painful state of losing a relationship, how you could start to build yourself back up. And then we can talk about what are those signs of a healthy relationship versus an unhealthy or toxic relationship. If you find yourself being love bombs, that's when you should be questioning who this person is. And I've seen it happen. I have been around people who were the perpetrators, who were love bombing. First of all, it's disturbing to see because if you're a normal person, you wouldn't say some of the love bombing things that you would say to somebody that you just met. And so that's the flag that goes off immediately. The effect that it has for the other person, they're like, I've never been in something so intense. And this feels so good. And that's why you need to be pulling back because all of the bad things that come with being in a narcissistic sociopathic relationship are not going to start happening until you've already bought into the whole thing hook, line and sinker. There is a long trail of breadcrumbs to lead you into this trap. And if you don't see the warning signs at the beginning, it's going to be incredibly difficult. You will spend days, weeks and months, sometimes even years uncovering how deep and how far the gaslighting actually goes. You will also understand and see that not only have you bought into it, you have brought your friends into it by introducing this person to your friend circle, which now they have free reign to start speaking to everybody. And it's the same stuff of getting people to feel good and building them up so that when things do sour and you're talking to your friends about what's going on, they're like, well, I don't see how this person could do that. He's that this person seems so amazing. So the reality, it's distorted, but the reality that the sociopathic bad actor is putting on is being confirmed by also other people who are close to you. The spell is not just between you and that person. The spell is between that person, you and anyone else that they can ring in to that reality. They are so good at creating that mirage. But there's this awesome way that I was taught by a world leader in behavioral profiling on how you can actually see if someone's a narcissist really, really quickly. And I'd love to get your insight of like your input on this as well. So yeah, this is going juicy. So the way we get to empathy as babies is we actually mimic our parents' facial expressions. So you know, we're doing like the tongue sticking out and all this kind of crazy stuff. We're mimicking and we're building up that empathy muscle. When we're having conversations like every day as a healthy person, you know, there's that level of empathy, we mimic. So if I'm telling like a really sound story like, oh my gosh, I lost my job and this out on the other and it's so terrible, we're going to see that person empathizing straight away, you know, start seeing that. But with narcissists, you will not see that empathy straight away or if they're highly intelligent, which often, you know, have people in very high powered positions like lawyers and all those, you know, CEOs and all these big power play positions, they're often a little bit more intelligent. So they will mimic, but there's a way of finding out if there is a genuine facial expression or not. And it's the way that the expression leaves the face. So if the expression leaves very gradually, so if you're smiling, you're not suddenly going, oh no, I'm not smiling anymore. You know, we don't do that. And it's the same if we're really sad, we don't suddenly go, oh gosh, it's terrible. Oh, do you want a cup of tea? You know, we don't suddenly switch and change. And that can be a very good way to actually see if someone has that level of empathy. And if someone's narcissistic, that's going to happen consistently. And that's really important to know, you know, sometimes you might be a little bit checked out of a conversation, but in a narcissistic relationship, you're going to see that consistently. There's never going to be that level of empathy there. I love that. And it tracks with what we know about nonverbal signaling. Because again, all of this is chemical reactions happening in your body and those chemical reactions are slow burn. They don't just shut off immediately. So of course, these expressions are going to leave your face. Another point that I recognize in past experiences, and I look for now, is the rationalization that happens when the person they meet, it could be a server, a staff member, someone that they consider has slighted them in any way, has not seen them in the light that they want you to see them in. They will come up with very over the top stories, explanations and victimhood at the slightest inclination that they might be not seen in the way that they want you to see them. So I've seen overreactions to waiters and waitresses around their behavior. And again, it's coming from the fact that they live their entire life having to save this face, to keep this mask on, that they are this perfect amazing person. And it can be very hard for you to see through that mask. But if you pay close attention to how they treat others and overreactions to any slights that are felt, someone cutting them off, someone not being respectful of them, these are things that most of us just shrug off. Like maybe every once in a while it'll get stuck in your craw because you've had a really bad day. But if they're reacting over the top repeatedly to the slights that just go about living your life on a day-to-day basis, that's what I've tuned into more than ever is how you treat anyone is how you treat everyone. And as Johnny said, what they will do is if they can't wow your friends, if they can't get your friends to believe that they are as charismatic as they are, they immediately start to rationalize your friends as being the bad actors and start telling you stories of why you shouldn't be spending time with that person. They're a bad person because they know that that person is seen behind their mask. Yeah. So they only want the people who can see the mirage around them because the people who see through it, the spell's broken and they've got more control. And the worst thing you can do for a narcissist is to see through all the rubbish and all the craziness that they're actually creating. And that's why they love this element of us and them because it creates that divide. And as people love to be able to follow whether people and follow the majority, that's why a majority of people love to stay within the mirage. If you have somebody in your peer group who always seems to be embedded in whatever weekly drama, there's a reason for that. That drama may be fun to be part of, to laugh at, for the lulls that it may be, because you're thinking, well, this person always seems to be in some drama and it's amazing, it's entertaining, and it's never pointed my way. So for me, it's just another show. Well, I got news for you. It will eventually come your way. And when I was younger, I think everyone enjoys the entertainment and the drama and the excitement, especially if you're younger, you're just drawn to it. Now that I'm 48 now, and I moved to Vegas from Los Angeles. And of course, you can imagine the people that living in Hollywood, it certainly attracts a certain type. But even in Vegas and being new to a community, being able to now see those things well before getting involved and staying far away. There's just no interest in it. And I'm not getting anywhere personally involved. I bet there are people here who follow people just for the show that is provided, but will not deal with them personally. And this is where we get a lot of like covert narcissists. Now, tend to find that women in particular who are covert narcissists tend to really go under the radar, especially when it comes to men, because they create this victim mentality of like, you know, trying to find ways to get approval or get, you know, that level of significance, like, oh, nobody thinks I'm any good. And, you know, they constantly look for that validation, but more in a backwards way than the normal ego typical narcissist. And what tends to happen with guys is they go, OK, I need to protect you. How can I help you? And it creates this perfect hero complex for guys to be able to step into. So yeah, watch out for the sneaky covert narcissists. Well, part of that aftercare, so after surviving this relationship and looking towards that self identity that may be lost is taking a realization of and some time to yourself to think about who you were before this relationship. Because as we're talking about here, these are a lot of neurotransmitters that are involved in this relationship that are now being frantically up and down regulated based on behaviors, actions, tendencies, reactions in the relationship. Immediately, you may feel this need to like find that next relationship. I need to find someone else because you do get addicted, as Johnny said, not only to the drama, but all these great chemicals that are part of this process of dealing with a narcissist. And for a lot of our clients, actually taking some time and space to pick the guitar back up, to go back to the golf lessons you were doing before this relationship, to reach back out to some of the friends that you cast aside because this narcissist told you that they weren't good for you. They weren't the right person. And the hardest part for me had been reaching back out to those friends and hearing from them that, hey, we knew this person wasn't right for you and we tried. We couldn't overtly say it because they had this spell on you, but we really tried to show you in different ways that they weren't really the right person for you. And you actually became different in their presence. And hearing that was such a challenge at first, but it made me recognize, hey, it would be helpful to reinvigorate those past relationships that you may have set aside coming out of that toxic relationship. So what are some of the other self-care aftercare moments that you recommend for your clients after they've recognized this relationship isn't for them? Yeah, I think that's always the sucky part about narcissistic relationships. You always have people who realize, oh, after the relationship that they're a narcissist, it's always the case. And I think one of the biggest things that you can possibly do for yourself is actually, number one, forgive yourself. Because, you know, a lot of people go, well, I'm too strong. I'm too intelligent. How did I end up in this situation? And it's kind of coming back to that realization that you're human. Number one, you know, we're not going to get things right all the time. And it's also realizing that you actually showed up in that relationship in a loving and healthy way. And that you just happened to show up in that relationship with someone who couldn't do the same. And it's being able to understand that you are only accountable for yourself. You're only accountable for your emotions, your actions, all the different things that you do. And they're accountable for that as you do not take responsibility for who they are. Because that's so alluring and that's so tempting to be able to do. The second point, and I kind of touched on this slightly, is this you end up in this dissociated state. So one of the most important ways and the easiest ways that you can do to get back into that reassociated state, and this is what they actually do with cults as well, is you start feeling back into your body. So whether that's like, if you're unable to understand what you're actually feeling emotionally, because a lot of people tend to come out of their relationships and they tend to be in this mental fog, because they're always feeding off the emotions of the narcissist to go, Oh, do I need to tread on eggshells today? You know, you really check in on that. You need to be able to actually start noticing the pressure in your body. So do you have a pressure in your chest? Do you have a pressure in your stomach and then start translating to what that is emotionally. And that will start to support you to bridge the gap between the life that you want to create in the future as you start to understand what makes you happy and what's feeding yourself. Yeah, that dissociative state that you find yourself in is not only mentally exhausting, but it's also physically exhausting because these chemicals have been depleted in your body and getting a sense of what that feeling is and what sparks joy and what you should move away from is such a valuable exercise coming out of a relationship like that. And I love that point that you did everything right. This is not something that you did wrong. You are not broken. This is not something that you only attract this type of person as we talked about again and again, especially if you find that you're successful, you're going to encounter this behavior and this personality more than you'd like to admit, more than you realize. And it doesn't mean that you have to stop doing what you're doing, wholesale change your approach to dating and who you are. We just need to get more adept at recognizing these behaviors before they sink their claws into us, so to speak. Well, it's also understanding how to deal with those personality types because I don't know about you guys, but when I came out of my narcissistic relationship, I was going back over situations and going, oh, this happened. Or how do I deal with this? How do I assorted that out in the future? And yeah, it's basically called the psychonic effect when we can't figure out how to change that or close that loop. We're stuck in it, we play on it and we start questioning our judgment and it affects our condense. So one of the things that I did actually co-developed a course like understanding narcissists, because if you're dealing with someone who you have to co-parent with, if you're going through a divorce with someone and you've suddenly got to put those boundaries in place and you've got to co-parent and you've got to do all these different things, how do you do that in the best possible way? Because the worst thing that you can say to a narcissist is no. I mean, we had one lady that we worked with, she was actually from New York, and she'd gone through this divorce. This guy was like even owned her apartment that she was living in after the divorce and stuff. It was like terrible. You had to really pick those fingers off of basically. And he was starting also to emotionally attack her daughter because there was that reminder of his XY through his daughter. So it started to impact in that relationship. And we went through a few different tools which impacted her in such a huge way where her kids suddenly had the better relationship and they had one of the best school holidays that they could with their dad because they kind of harnessed ways to talk to a narcissist to get what they wanted and what they needed. So they were like had a whale of a time. And the other thing is she was getting her child maintenance payments on time each month rather than this battle with lawyers and solicitors and all the rest of it to try and get things moving again. So it's knowing how to communicate and deal with those personality types because the truth is if you're going to be really successful, you're going to have to deal with them in a day in, day out basis. So it's understanding how to utilize and harness their psychology in order to benefit not just yourself, but everyone else around as well. Yeah. Let's talk about and unpack how to mitigate and disarm these narcissists in our lives because some of us might not be in a romantic relationship, but we certainly have that boss who's a narcissist. We certainly have that family member that we're not going to just cut out of our lives. And unfortunately, we can ostracize in a family setting or sometimes we're in that friend group and we've talked about this in the past where in order to remove that friend, well, you would basically have to remove yourself from the friend group. And many of us don't want to sacrifice all of our friends because there's one or two narcissists in the group. So what are some ways that we can disarm this narcissist and use their psychology for the benefit of us and others? Yeah. So one of the most important things to understand about behavior is we always act on a basis of needs and fears. So whether it's like you're brushing your teeth, you want to brush your teeth so you feel confident, you've got great breath, you also want to avoid that horrible dentist spill, you know, or people being socially excommunicated out of other social circles. So we need to understand and this is going to be individual to every narcissist as well, what is the thing that they're actually prioritizing? How do they want to be seen and how can you talk to that identity? And what's the things that they're actually fearing? Are they fearing being seen? Are they fearing everyone seeing through the narcissistic mask? Are they looking to have more status and have more power? And you can kind of, if you're talking to someone who's highly controlling and is looking for that power, well, you can kind of talk to that covertly by saying, well, everyone knows the most powerful people or the most successful people will actually act in this manner. So you start actually diverting and covertly diverting that behavior for them to act in a certain way. And also, you know, depending on how confrontational it can get, you can start playing on those fears as well and sort of saying, look, everyone's starting to see through actually who you actually are. And that can be terrifying for a narcissist. It's difficult to go to a peer group who that person might be in and say anything bad about that person, because usually the trap has been laid that you were the toxic one. And if you say anything, it's an example of, see, I told you that this person is the bad apple here. So what I had found is to just make that peer group aware of behaviors. So you don't say anything bad about them. You just go, Oh, that's interesting. Did you notice blah, blah, blah. And that's it. You don't dive into it. You don't say anything about it. You just make it aware. And then the peer group was like, Oh, I did notice some drama on blah, blah, blah. Okay. But this is a long game. And then again, because these patterns will continue to show themselves. So again, you go, Oh, did you notice so and so blah, blah, blah. Oh, you know, I did notice that. That's funny. It's almost like a pattern with this person. Let the peer group then become aware of conscious that these patterns are developing. And then you'll start to see people starting to back away. That has been the most effective. I found because anything about going on the offensive or attack only works against you usually because the trap has already been laid. If they know that they're gaslighting you, they know eventually you're going to lash out. So they've already prepared people for you to lash out. Let's talk about some common behaviors here. So one behavior is a avoidance of all failure at all costs. So a narcissist does not want to be seen failing because the veil drops, they might lose status in your eyes. They will do everything they can to avoid failure. They will make excuses. They will come up with stories. So one example in our business, and this is exactly how Johnny went about it, was we had important meetings. And this one person would always, because they knew they were going to be put on the spot, come up with some excuse of something more important they had to do. That was more important. I had a sales call at this exact moment where I could fail. So I had to do this thing. And Johnny would say, well, that's really interesting that he's having a sales call at 8am. We don't typically have sales calls. Okay. Another thing that will happen is they never apologize. So when they overreact and when they have this emotional outburst, they don't take any ownership of that behavior and it certainly don't feel empathy. So why would they feel the need to apologize? They don't think that their behavior harmed you in any way because they have no empathy for you. So, huh, that's really interesting that he ticked off this client of ours and didn't even apologize. We had to apologize on his behalf. And then another one is when you start to recognize their, exactly that their want, right, what they really need. And this, this partner craved fame. And there was a moment in a meeting where Johnny pointed out that, wow, you know, our numbers aren't good. We're not hitting our sales goals. But you seem really way more bent out of shape about your level of fame and status and you're almost pursuing it. And the emotional outburst around Johnny calling out this identity and this want, you know, Johnny said after the meeting, wow, that's, that's really interesting guys. So we have a pattern here of not apologizing, not accepting responsibility, absolute avoidance of failure, throwing other team members under the bus to avoid failure. And this just overarching pursuit of fame at all costs. The business could be failing. But as long as this person is famous, that's all that matters. You start to put those pieces together. But if Johnny was to come in a meeting and say, hey, this person is this, that, the other, they're doing all of this. Well, all of a sudden we're like, Johnny, what, what is your problem with this guy? Like, why are you so better? You know, it's easy then to get it turned around on Johnny. So when you recognize these behaviors and you could call attention to the behavior without labeling the person without judging the person and kind of have this check in like, are we all feeling this? Does this reality seem real to you in a more collegial way? You can start to disarm in that group that you want to stay a part of. Because the worst that we've all been in that situation is feeling ostracized from a group. We know that the herd keeps us safe. We as humans want to stay in the herd. And the narcissist knows that as well. So if the narcissist can stay in the herd and kick you out of the herd, well, they're going to be a okay. So once they recognize you're a threat, they're going to start acting out in ways to throw you out of the herd. So you have to be willing and able to disarm and point out these behaviors when they're kicking you outside of the herd. I want to also mention that when you call out these behaviors, what you will see if anyone else in that peer group has been slighted, has been who's felt the gas lighting, who's thinking something is going on. All of a sudden they don't feel alone because everyone's gushing over this person. So they don't want to be the only one who says anything. But if the pattern comes up, all of a sudden they're like, yes, I saw that. I saw that pattern too in the hopes that somebody else is seeing what they are seeing. And that's how you're going to gain some allies in this situation. It gives that beautiful space for people to be able to figure it out for themselves. It's like dropping those golden nuggets where it's like, okay, cool, this little fact, this little fact, this little fact. Okay, how do these pieces pulled together? It's very much like coaching, isn't it? You never tell someone, right, all you have to do is go and do this. You have to allow people to find out for themselves. So they are actually able to accept it because at heart we're all these rebellious kind of teenagers, aren't we? We don't want to be told what to do or what to think. Absolutely. And you can coach your peer group through this experience of dealing with a narcissist. You can also coach your family members. So I think that's an important part of this, that the goal here is not to ostracize and cut out this narcissist because you just can't. They are all around us. They are in powerful positions and you are running into them whether you realize it now or not. What you can do is you can start to recognize the patterns early and keep open lines of communication in a supportive way that allow others to see and recognize the patterns as well. Instead of casting judgment, putting blame and pointing out all of their failures, which in turn gets them so revved up to gaslight everything around them that you're actually putting yourself in the weakest position, in the position to get kicked out of that herd. Lastly, I'd love to just talk about how much dating has changed. So Johnny and I started this 15 years ago and most of the dating done online was, hey, you go to match.com and you set up a profile. But let's be honest, a lot of online dating now is happening in Instagram DMs, on TikTok, on these social media platforms. We're not even going to online dating. So what are some of the trends you're seeing in dating and especially for your clients who are most successful, like that 21-day turnaround that we heard about earlier? Yeah. The awesome thing about her is she didn't actually use a dating app. And I'm finding that a lot of people are actually starting to get tired of online dating. I think that's more to do with lockdown and things like that. And also the fact that you've got to filter out so much, it's not about this vanity metrics of how many messages and how many dates you go on. People are more craving more that deep connection and being able to meet people who actually they feel aligned with and they can enjoy being around. So when I have a look at relationships, there's four elements that I think are really, really important. This is like based on my research would be awesome to hear what you guys think as well. But it's compatibility. So understanding there's that alignment to, you know, interests, goals, lifestyle, all those beautiful things. There's also consideration that that person actually has self-awareness. That person has emotional intelligence. Otherwise, it's like doing a dance to someone who's stamping all over your feet. You know, you're not going to be able to dance well together in that relationship. There's also that level of communication, because you need to have those deep talks sometimes need to be able to have deep discussions about the things that mean most to you. I mean, like I said, my partner and I, we love psychology and we've had a two hour discussion before. Now this is really geeky, by the way, on the meaning of sorry, you know, in how to apologize and what the best way to apologize is and where all that comes from and everything. And then the last one is that collaboration. And this is the difference between a healthy relationship and narcissistic one, because in order to collaborate well, you need to be accountable for yourself. You need to be accountable for your emotions, your goals, your happiness. It's not, oh, I can only be happy if I'm in a relationship and meet the right person. It's actually, no, it's allowing yourself to be this whole independent person meeting someone else who's got that whole independent streak as well and building something strong together. And this is why I love finding the truth of someone, finding the truth of who they are, understanding the truth of who you are, and the truth of what that relationship is going to be in the future. I love all four of those C's and I feel the collaboration piece especially is need to feel equal. So many of these relationships start out with this imbalance. And again, when we talk about toxic relationships, they'll use that imbalance against you. But in order to collaborate, you really have to see each other as equal. And there are going to be times where you don't necessarily get what you want, but you know that collaboratively, this is going to fill your partner's tank. This is going to be something that potentially lights your partner up and vice versa, that ability for that give and take, I think is where a lot of I found in our clients in their dating right now, the second there's any tension there, they're excited to go find that next person to go onto this next adventure of a new first date. And I find with the apps and the accessibility now that everyone is craving this connection that you can almost become addicted to that first date experience of like, oh, the discovery, but it's very surface level. Like what you're talking about with these four C's that deeper connection, that's not sparked on a first date. That's really taking some time and some thoughtfulness and communicating to get to know the other person and get a fuller picture than any profile and any 45 minute, three hour coffee date, dinner date, walk in the park date is really going to give you. I was gonna say, I love the fact that you talked about the equality part because like, if you are equals in a relationship, it creates that deeper passion that chemistry. And that's when you're having people having better sex lives basically, because if you don't have that level of equal partnership, you end up in this parent-child dynamic. And I see so many relationships fall into this. It's like, oh, cool, you've got the parent and the child and you just lose all that passion. The person who plays and the child is constantly being nagged and told to sort things out and the person who's the parent in the relationship is often the one that feels bossy and there's that big disconnect. So having that equal footing in the very beginning is super important, but it's also important to maintain that as well. And there's a few different power plays that can obviously influence that. I feel like there are certainly listeners in our audience who might find themselves in that parent-child relationship and feel the passion and the chemistry draining. And let's be honest, the longer relationships go on, these patterns present themselves and relationships do take a level of work and self-awareness if you're both growing, as we talked about, identity shifts. And as humans, we're naturally evolving. So for our audience members who might find themselves in this parent-child relationship where one is feeling nagged, the other one is feeling like they always have to take responsibility. And of course, now you're in a roommate situation and the passion is not really there in their relationship. What advice do you have to break that pattern to spice things back up to maybe reinvigorate that spark? Great question. How deep do you want to go? Because this goes pretty freaking deep. We have some time, so let's do it. Good. Okay. So this really dives into childhood. And it's basically we create our emotional homes. And one I tend to see a lot when it comes to parent-child relationships, when men in particular are the child, you tend to find something called mother-emission. And this is where a child grows up being responsible for their mother's emotions. This then tends to transfer over into romantic relationships. And it tends to be more men because it has a bigger effect on masculinity and suppressing that than it does for women. But it's not to say that this doesn't have an effect on women as well. So what we tend to do is we tend to create that emotional home. So how did we feel as a child? What was the emotional baseline or the identity that we created? I'll dive a little bit deeper because I freaking love this subject. But there's a way of actually understanding if someone's actually going to be successful or not, just based on the way that they were raised. And this comes back to a Nobel Prize-winning psychology research of what actually creates someone to be successful. They're down to something called motivational intelligence. If there's a child that's going to be really successful, often the parenting tends to go something like this. Let's say that they're sitting at a table. They knock over a glass of milk. And the parents go, oh, never mind, doesn't matter. We'll just, you know, move, fill the glass, mop that up. There we go. Just put that a little bit further away so you don't knock it over again. And that tends to be that level of parenting. For people who aren't going to be, you know, less likely to be successful, because you can work through all this stuff, obviously, the parenting tends to go something like this. Oh my gosh, what have you done? You've knocked over that glass. Oh, now I've got to go and refeed glass. Okay, you need to clean that up. There tends to be this very brating kind of element. And if you think about how that translates into relationships, whether that's, you know, whether that's taught you how to berate someone and say, okay, look, you've done say it wrong. I need to tell you off. Or whether it's actually bringing in a partner who's going to do the berating for you. So we end up recreating those patterns in those relationships. So it's just worth keeping going, keeping track of and noticing if you're actually recreating situations that you may have witnessed or experienced as a child. I think that milk example is perfect. And I'm sure some in our audience have been on both sides of receiving parenting like that. The oops, that's okay versus the berating. So I know that for a lot of our male audience members that we work with, they'll find themselves in the situation and they will immediately start to withdraw. And of course, when they withdraw, then the other partner gets hurt as well, because we want to feel emotionally connected. So if you feel like you're getting nagged and bossed around and berated, well, the last thing you want to do is fail more. So you're like, well, then I'm just not going to pitch in. I'm not going to do the chores. I'm not going to make the bed. I don't I don't even want to make a mistake around you because every little thing gets judged harshly. And of course, this creates a vicious cycle. But we know that that's not the solution. So when we find ourselves in that environment, how can we communicate our way out of it so that we can get back to that equality and equilibrium? Yeah, it's having that conversation of, okay, how can we bring these things up? How can we talk about this? And how do we both want to show up in that relationship? Because it's like, when we start, you know, start stepping on emotional triggers like that, it's really important to be able to open them up and say, okay, how can I communicate to you this element that's really important in our relationship? Because I want us to get better. And I want us to actually, you know, start looking at that overall outcome of that healthy loving relationship and realizing the pair of you are actually on the same page, you both want the same things. Now it's about creating it in a way that actually works for both of you. So whether it's bringing up like, I don't know, maybe have an argument over doing the washing, right, cool. Is there a way that you can almost develop a system to do the washing or bring up a way to bring it up? So whether it's not talking about it saying like, oh, can you do the washing? It might be you have to text it instead. So it takes that emotion out of it. So it's learning about how your two personality types communicate and collaborate together. And also understanding what you need to take responsibility for as well. So if you've been triggered by a toxic relationship in the past or something childhood related, and you'll be intrigued in that relationship, be prepared to actually do the inner work and heal, because it's going to pay back dividends when it comes to connecting in that relationship. So it comes back to that accountability piece and the way that you collaborate. I love that taking responsibility because so many of these conversations focus on blame. And the other person being at fault. And we never actually accept responsibility for our actions in those triggers and reactions. And that creates more of a we dynamic to work our way through those problems. Lily, it was so great having you. We love asking everyone of our guests what their x factor is. What makes you unique and extraordinary? Yeah, deep question. So I would say I might my little USP if you like is being able to see the core of people's issues very, very quickly. I had a client recently said, oh, my gosh, you clairvoyant. And then I just sort of had a six minute conversation with her for the first time. And yeah, I love being able to dive into those elements and finding out what's happened for people and how to work with that to make a better life for them. Well, thank you for joining us today. Work in our audience find out more about the great work that you do. Thank you. So you can find me on our website. It's lovewithintelligence.com. We're also on things like YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn. So if you want to drop us a message, you're more than welcome to. Love it. Thank you, Lily.