Transcription
[Music] Hey Teresa, what's up?
Hello. Thank you for taking my call.
Of course. What's going on?
Yeah, so I have been married for 12 years and, um, last year I found my husband was looking at much younger women on Instagram, and it kind of became a habit. And just started seeing woman after woman after woman. Looked nothing like me. Um, fake everything, fake eyelashes, you name it. And so obviously, it was like a hit to my self-esteem.
Hold on, Teresa. I just got to stop you. There's nothing fake on Instagram. It's all real.
Exactly. None of it's real. Okay. So, so yeah, you took this pretty personal, huh?
I did. Especially just because early in our relationship, I had explained that, you know, I had seen my father do similar things where he would look at women that were not my mom. And I didn't want to be with someone who would ever make me feel like I wasn't enough. And so to open up and to be that vulnerable and then to find out that, you know, he said he would never do that and now he's doing it, I don't know. Just, it just crushed me. Obviously. And I'm trying to work on rebuilding my trust, not only with him but also loving myself for who I am in a society where women are constantly told as we age, we're not enough anymore.
I have tons of thoughts, but they may not be helpful. How can I help you?
Um, I want to be able to not go back to those moments of feeling worthless. Anytime we have an argument or things come up, I just, I, I go back to that. I lose, I lose trust. If he says one thing, I, I bring that into it like, well, if he lied about that, he's obviously lying about this. And I want to be able to overcome that. Number one, and number two, I really just want to be able to like appreciate where I am in my life. I've had kids. Um, I just don't know. I just, I just feel like I, I try to overcome it and I just, I keep going back to that space.
So he's not on the phone. If he was on the phone, I'd have a different conversation with him. So the questions I ask you are, are inquiries, they're not blame. Okay? And my hope is, when people are hurting, sometimes it's easy to conflate those two things. But man, I'm on your side. I'm sitting with you at this table. Okay? Here's my question to you. If you're seeing somebody who is dolled up on Instagram, wearing next to nothing, and they're beautiful, I get, I get the idea that I want my partner to only have eyes for me. I get the neuroscience behind the dangers of pornography and the dangers of, of, you know, like that. I get that. The question I have for you is, you take, take something that your husband is doing, looking at scantily clad pretty young women on Instagram, and you instantly go to a place that I'm guessing has haunted you forever, which is, I'm not enough. Yes. Tell me about that leap.
Ah, because, because I can see you saying, "Hey, ding-dong, look at me, right?" I get that. Or, "Okay, we're going to get real awkward. We're going to sit down and scroll through this together. What's so beautiful about her? What?" Like, we'll go on this rabbit hole if you want to. But it's different for you. Where's this core hurt?
Well, um, I think it's just from as long as I can remember, honestly. Like, I, I used to be in the modeling industry when I was younger. Okay. And that, you know, to be someone you had to, you know, obviously be very, very skinny. You know, the '90s and 2000s were a very different time. But I just, you age out at like 20 something.
Fear. Yeah. What was it? Yeah. I've just always had this fear of aging. And I was really starting to appreciate myself and my love of myself after having kids. And it was almost like right as I was like at the cusp of feeling like I, I love who I am, this happens. And I'm like, "See, see, this is why my, my little fear is telling me, this is why you can't trust people." And this is, you know, I, I don't know.
But you, you're conflating two things. You've completely outsourced your belief in yourself and your identity to a secret action your husband takes. You're worth more than that. Yeah. And then on top of that, you've conflated your identity, your less-than-ness, with his trustworthiness. Those are two separate things. You can be beautiful and enough and not a 20-year-old, wayf-ish, late '90s model. Right? You, you, you cannot be that and you can be whole. And your husband can be trying to hide stuff from you on Instagram. Do you get what I'm saying?
Yeah, I do. But it's, it's, it's like Brene Brown says, like, "What you go looking for in the world, you will find it." And it seems like your antenna for, "I'm not beautiful, I'm not enough, I'm not enough, I'm not enough, my body is not my own," like, I, like, you're just scanning and scanning and scanning till you finally find it. And then your body goes, "Told you." Yep. Told you, right?
Absolutely. That's got to be exhausting.
Very exhausting. I'm tired.
Yeah, yeah. I just don't know how to stop doing that. I know often it starts in a pretty weird place. And it starts with a... Do you have kids?
Yes.
How old are they?
10 and eight.
Next time, lead with that. Because I was, man, I was about to say, I was about to say 12. But somewhere real early on, you got a very clear message that your beauty equaled your worth. Absolutely. And your body put a GPS pin in that and it's been scanning your environment forever. And now you got a 10-year-old in your own house. It, that whole machine of worth and not worth and beauty and not enough and if I'm not this, then who am I? Is, is your body's replaying this whole story. And your kids are right there with your kids. You get what I'm saying?
Oh, yeah. I absolutely do.
Here's the truth. You're going to get old. Yep. You can make peace with it or you can fight it. All the step, you're going to die either way, right? Um, I think I would start with you writing my 10-year-old, 12-year-old self a letter. I said, "I'm so sorry." Because that's the girl that's still trying to play defense for you. She's gonna make me cry. She, she's 10. Yeah. Yeah. And she skipped enough meals and she sucked her gut in enough and she was mad about how flat-chested she was or not flat-chested. I mean, enough. Let that girl go play, right? Yep. She's so freaking tired. And you're going to have to practice because you don't want your kids to go through what you went through. No. And yet, that's what we know. And I'm using "we" plural. My parents were in the newspaper growing up for being the couple that lost the most weight on Weight Watchers. Like, I get it. And then here come my kids and I hear it coming out of my mouth. Like, "Hey, you guys." Oh God, you know what I mean? I hear it. I got to practice. I got to practice. And God bless my parents for trying to get healthy back in the late '80s, early '90s, right? I mean, it's all, it just is what it is. But here we are. Yes. And then you got to forgive yourself for the dumb things you said to your kids. And we're going to practice moving forward. But we're going to let 10-year-old go and play. And then we're going to let 18-year-old go. We're going to let 24-year-old who hated the way she looked because she didn't look 20 anymore. And sometimes this exercise can be done by writing letters. And you probably have several to write because 24-year-old you may have made some decisions that weren't great. Yeah. And first time pregnant, you may have hated her body. I don't, I don't know. I miss repeating stories I've heard over the years, sitting with hurting, terrified people. But it's, it's the opposite of what your intention is. And your intention is just to grip everything tighter. "What is he looking at? I want to see his phone." And that's a proxy war for what's going on inside your chest. Okay? And he's not off the hook. What an idiot. You like gave him the one playbook to your soul. And probably, if I'm being crashed, to your bedroom. Don't look at other women. And he's like, "Got it." And he went and did that one thing, right? Yeah. That's not cool. That's not cool.
I mean, I'm not, I'm not naive to think he's not going to ever think another woman's attractive. It was just a pattern of behavior and looking at things that were like, he always said, "I love natural-looking women." And yet you're looking at women that are not natural.
Yeah. But also, since I won't tell the story because it happened to my son, what I will tell you is I'm watching my 14-year-old follow yet another pattern of clueless behavior, which is complete and utter cluelessness. Mhm. And so he may not know that those are fake. Whatever. You know what I mean? Where you, as somebody from the industry, who like, you can go, "That's not real. That's not real. That's not real." Some dudes can't just, I mean, it never occurs to them, right? You see what I'm saying? Just is. Yes. And that does that let him off the hook? No. In no shape, form, or fashion. What I want you to do is unhook his idiocracy from your self-worth and your identity. Yeah. You're just worth more than that. And you have been for a long, long time.
Mhm. Do you believe that?
I'm getting there. Thank you.
Here's a second option. If writing letters gets pretty cumbersome, I want you to go into a room by yourself, or you can close the door. Okay? Sometimes it needs to be a closet. Sometimes it can just be your kitchen table. If everybody's gone from your house, just be on the couch. But I want you to settle yourself in in a way where you're sitting down. And I want you to hold with your hands, your arms, first trimester. You okay? Okay. Sometimes we're talking with abusive men, we ask them to get down on their knees and look up so their body remembers the position of powerlessness when their mom or dad was standing over them. I want you to hold and cradle your younger self is what I'm asking you to do. And I know it sounds woo-woo and cheesy, but I want you to put your body in that position because that person deserved to be loved and held, regardless of what her hips were doing. Yeah. And then the daily practice is a journal saying, "I love the following about me." And I want you to do that for like a month. 30 days. Start every day and end every day with three to five things. "I love this about me." It doesn't have to be aesthetic at all, okay? Can we be honest for just, just two seconds? Yes. You don't look like a 20-year-old, late '90s model, do you? No. No. So we're not talking about denying reality. We're not talking about lying to ourselves and yada yada yada. Yeah. It's making peace. And from making peace, if we need to go exercise, if we need to go sit with a doctor, if we need to lose, like, we'll, we'll go down that rabbit hole. But you can't get there from a place if I hate myself or I've got to punish myself. So I've got to beat myself up to get to this thing that never has any lasting. It never has any lasting effect. You white-knuckle it and then you hate everybody, then it all stops, and then you just cycle up again. Yeah. This is letting 10-year-old you go play. 18-year-old you go play. This is forgiving 22-year-old you. This is making sure those kids know there's not a thing you can eat that your mama won't love you to the end of the moon and back. Absolutely. And then we go hit husband upside the head and say, "What's the matter with you?" Right? Yeah. But listen, from this place, uh, I'll end with this. It's going to sound like blame again. It's not, in any shape, form, or fashion. Okay? Um, a romantic partner knows when the other person doesn't like themselves. And outside of an abusive relationship where somebody is predatory, prey on that, on hurting people, it can be hard to plug in. Yeah. Right? And so this is probably a pretty amazing moment when you sit down and say, "I love myself, and I'm worth being loved, and I'm going to do the work to let myself off the hook, let my nervous system rest and be at peace when it sees itself in the mirror." And then you and husband sit at the table together and say, "We get to rebuild our marriage, whatever that looks like." And this isn't about you scrolling on women on Instagram. But by the way, don't do that. Don't do that for our daughter. Don't do that for me. Don't do that for you. And that's almost always somebody who's starting to feel not alive in their own home, in their own skin. What, what do you and I both need to create aliveness in this home? Do you? He, what I'm saying?
Yes, I do.
I think that's a worthy adventure for both of y'all to go on. Because I want y'all to have like the most amazing, greatest marriage ever. And I want him to not be an idiot. And not take his... Yeah, let's hold our conversation. Tell him to call me one day. That'd be a, that'd be a fun phone call. But I want you to have peace from the inside out. I want you to build a life that you want to live in for the first time. And not a life that you're running from, and running from, and running from, and running from, and running from. Cuz we're all gonna get older. And I want that trip to be as fun as possible. I mean, I got to be in the driver's seat of my own life. I'm super grateful for you, Teresa. Thanks for the call. You're awesome.