 She's a mess. Happy Valentine's Day to you. You bring out the best in me and every part of me prays that you can say the same sentence with confidence because I only want the best for you. Three years ago, I made a video called the scariest thing about love and in that video I said, I'm always so conscious of doing these kinds of videos that the fact that you can break up with somebody, that nothing is forever and we are not married and we live together and we have a wonderful relationship, an open relationship as you guys know and things can change but I feel very confident to know that even if two years from now I watched this video back and I'm no longer with that person, I would still be like those feelings were fair. So I wanted to test that out and re-watch that video today and see how I feel about it now that time has passed. When I made this Valentine's Day video two years ago and it was, it was really hard loving each other and I think it was, you know, it was for all the reasons that I knew before we even got into the relationship about certain incompatibilities or certain things that advice is that he had. Look I have not seen this video either so I'm trying to see what you gotta say but first let's show some love to the sponsor of this video, Audible. Audible is the only service that gives members access to the world's largest selection of audio books. Look if you love audio, you'll love Audible. So why not give them a free try? Audible has a 30 day free trial where you will get your first audio book plus two Audible originals at no cost. Audible originals are exclusive titles that range from literature, journalism, fitness, podcast and more. The thing I love about Audible is they are always adjusting and putting members experience first so they had just rolled out a new membership plan called Audible Plus. With Audible Plus members get full access to Audible's Plus catalog which is filled with thousands and thousands of select originals, audio books and podcasts including ad-free versions of popular shows as well as exclusive series. With Audible Plus you can listen to all you want with the Plus catalog. Because it's Valentine's Day we want to spotlight our favorite audio books about love. The Audio Book All About Love by Belle Hooks. The podcast Where Should We Begin by Esther Perrell and of course I have to shout out my wife's audio book The Game of Desire. Get one of these or any audio book of your choosing right now by visiting Audible.com slash Shambudi or if you're in the U.S. just text Shambudi to 500-500 again. That's Audible.com slash Shambudi or if you're in the U.S. just text Shambudi to 500-500. Um that I knew my husband wasn't wasn't supposed to be like that. And in that video I said but of course I would prefer to be sitting here crying on camera right now I prefer to be sitting here beside somebody you know who I decided was a great fit for me but life goes on. And the craziest thing of all I actually spent that same Valentine's Day with Jared. Like he was a part of my life at that time we had actually been seeing each other since October but my heart wasn't healed yet and just truly speak to the power of really knowing yourself. I just knew I wasn't in a place to connect with someone on that in that kind of special deep way. Can we just take a moment to compare and contrast these two individuals. I know it's the same person it's me cats of the bag but when I watch that video back to back it feels like I'm looking at two separate human beings. The composure the confidence the tone of voice is totally different and I want to highlight that because we live in a world that often downplays the role that relationships have in self development. You've probably heard things before in your life like you're too young to worry about relationships just have fun right now as if being in a healthy romantic relationship is not the world's most amount of fun or you heard things like focus on yourself focus on school right now and then worry about relationships as if a healthy relationship doesn't actually help you to focus more number one and two become the best version of yourself which is going to align you with your potential. I just wanted to just thought I wanted to share with you I'll get back to the video. We work really well together he's very clean is very kind he's very different from me and different from me in ways that I didn't think would would match up and that's part of the beautiful surprise I think that love can bring you is that sometimes it can reveal things that you didn't know that you need that you actually did and there's obvious things in life that we all know that we need you know food water shelter money success family but patience sweetness. Side note why am I wearing a white tank top with a black bra maybe the rest of the shirt would reveal something different but I would not make that mistake today I promise you. There's so many lies that I used to tell myself about myself so many you know bad lies about me being mean or me not being able to accept nice people in my life or having no patience I told myself actually before living with you I don't do well living with others. I didn't know that I needed those things and I didn't know what a profound impact having those things in my life on a daily basis could have for me. If I was to say the most stark thing that I've learned about love in this relationship in particular is that a good love makes you love yourself more and I don't know if it's supposed to work that way and sometimes I feel guilty for it working that way because I want to have that kind of love for myself regardless of what's happening in the world but to be honest being loved by somebody who shows you sides of yourself that you didn't exercise before oh my god these youtube ads come at the worst time how am I looking don't be a nutter um I forgot an idea of what I wanted to say before I watched that but now just watching that back it's really a testament to why youtube is such a beautiful place and why creating videos is such a privilege to be able to look back at different iterations of yourself and connect and love versions of you and appreciate the different stages that you've been at in your life I so deeply appreciate the raw emotion that she was experiencing after so many failed attempts at connecting with people and when I think about what makes my love with Jared so uniquely special why it was such an incredibly healing surprising connection that I continue to be healed and surprised by comes at this point that is so vivid in my mind we were driving once at night I remember making a right on the street I remember exactly to a T and I said to him my favorite thing about this relationship is that I genuinely know that you see the good in me I never doubt for a second that even if we're in conflict or if I do or say something wrong if we have a moment I know that underneath it all you believe me to be a genuinely good person with great intentions and I don't know if I've ever experienced that before in my life and I come from an incredible family in an incredible base of people around me but the difference I think with family is that with your parents especially there's like a correcting element to it so they're always looking for parts of you that could be improved upon with Jared it was really the first time that I genuinely had somebody who was that close to me who was like you're great you're good like you are a good person and that is the feeling that I want every person on the planet to have that would be the core emotion to me that is the difference between a love worth living for and a love that you can live with a love worth living for embraces the good in you embraces the God in you whatever whatever God means to you in particular and I feel like the good in the God in me is embraced through my connection with Jared and because he has seen that in me it allowed me to accept and channel that in myself and as you can see from the previous videos that wasn't something I probably could have said a couple of years ago even. I'm me I'm just like I'm kind of a toddler I'm just living you know what I mean like I'm not always very aware of like rules and other people or I just don't care if I am aware of them and obviously right now I'm single because you know you can't do this when you're ready to love and meet somebody else you got to be way past this point and I'm like six months you know it's still kind of fresh and give myself a couple more months more you know I'm really ready to meet that next person but I still have healing to do for what what that did. My big takeaway from watching those two videos today is I see two women who are definitely trying different stages of trying but definitely trying and yet through it all fundamentally they're not sure if they're good people they don't know based on what they've experienced what they've done who's hurt them and who they have hurt if all of that equals out to them being good people deserving of love positivity and light in their life because they're not sure if they're made of love positivity and light and I can sit here today years later and I genuinely believe mind you I might do a video in three years and be like you didn't know back then now you do but I can sit here today and tell you that I genuinely believe that I am a good person I am good I want good for others the actions that I have are always well intended and don't get me wrong I say bad things I make tons of mistakes some of my values are outdated and can be harmful to other people but because of the fact that I hold truth to the fact that I am light and love it is so much easier for me to look at the dark parts of myself I feel like before when you're afraid that you might not be good you shy and run away from the bad parts of yourself in fear that if you look at that you're going to see that's who you really are underneath it but now because I don't consider myself potentially a negative person when something negative about me is addressed or brought to the forefront I'm like oh you know what I should clean that shit up because I'm a tidy as person you know what I should address that and I'm comfortable with the dark parts of me because I know I'm made of light and I could always work through those and I don't know how that works but I feel more confident being imperfect because I have been shown that there is perfection underneath it all that there is a good light loving human being who is worthy of the kind of devotion that Jared has given me that has made a difference for me in my feelings about myself as an educator and more than that my feelings about myself as a mother and when I really think about it what is this channel about fisting a spots open relationships ten things I love about you ghosting and love bombing all this shit like what is it genuinely about and it is about the pursuit of happiness purpose and goodness through intimacy I want to encourage you and this is anecdotal because for me it made all the difference in my life and I've seen many people it make all the difference in their life and so I genuinely believe that for many of you it can do the same that if you spend your time and your intellectual energy your emotional energy trying to be as great as you can in this area and thus attracting the best people for you I feel like that's what makes life worth living I feel like it's what makes you embrace that you are worthy of a life worth living so happy Valentine's Day that's all I wanted to say I hope you know through everything I genuinely want nothing less for you than a love worth living for and I want nothing less for you than to be able to embrace the fact that you are literally made of love every fiber every hair every ring that you add on to your body is love you are love you are worthy of love you deserve the absolute best love and we are working our asses off to make sure that those statements are true for us I am working my ass off to ensure that I make sure those statements continue to be true for myself and that's why we are here I think Valentine's Day is so special not necessarily because of the partner aspect of it and you guys know I've gotten in trouble in the past for doing this but I always take this day just to reflect on what is true for me about love within the past year good bad ugly what I want more of what I want less of the role that love has played in my life and how I have uplifted or damaged that relationship so let's have a naked conversation about it what do you think the raw purpose of love is when you reflect on it in your life or maybe in the world grand scheme of things what is the purpose of love I'm gonna say the purpose of love is to highlight the good and the God in all of us that answer is wrong want to know why because there is no right answer to this question so I'm curious to hear what yours is let's chat below and I'll see you soon I don't know how to end videos I've never had and I never will babe I feel you this is where my set design and Shans bright light come and marry together for shared entertainment come and marry so what do you think of this set up huh huh thanks for watching this video sponsored by audible audible is the leading provider of spoken word entertainment plus it's the only place to listen to shans audio book the game of desire read by Shan so go check them out they have a 30-day free trial visit audible.com slash shan booty or if you're in the US just text shan booty to 500 500 again that's audible.com slash shan booty or if you're in the US text shan booty to 500 500 I hope that yes you find somebody who's awesome and looks great and has a great job but or great passion in life and it's funny and can get high scores at the arcade or whatever the hell you're looking for in someone I hope that all those external things happen for you but I hope the byproduct of someone else's greatness fundamentally reminds you of yours and challenges you to embrace and maintain yours