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Jillian Turecki, my guest for this On Health episode, is a beacon of light and a font of love and wisdom. A certified relationship coach, teacher, and writer with over 20 years of experience, she's fueled by an insatiable curiosity about what makes a relationship thrive, and she's helped thousands through her teaching and writing revolutionize their relationship with themselves so they can transform their relationships with others.
Jillian has a compassionate, direct and incredibly authentic style of coaching and teaching, which comes through so clearly in her social media posts and in her podcast, Jillian on Love. And I'm saying all of this from the vantage point of a 57-year-old woman who's been married for 40 years. But I can also say that I have I've turned my daughter onto Jillian's podcast and she's in her mid thirties in a total different stage of relationship, and she loves her work, too.
In this episode Jillian and I get real about what it takes to have a thriving relationship, how this starts with loving ourselves, and also how important is that we normalize being single.- because that's a path many women are on, at least at some point in their live and love journey.
We dive deep into so many areas of our love lives including:
- Trusting yourself and listen to your inner voice in relationships.
- Normalizing being single and focus on other areas of your life.
- Self-acceptance and self-worth as foundations of healthy relationships.
- How to be discerning and recognize relationship red flags.
- Mindfulness, tolerance, and appreciation in relationships.
- Avoiding overanalyzing our partners.
- How to get intentional in relationships – including having regular relationship meetings to improve the partnership.
- Creating breathing room to allow for individual growth
- How breakups and divorces can be transformative experiences that lead to personal growth and new opportunities.
- Following your own dreams and prioritizing your own growth as essential in relationships.
Wherever you are on your self-love and love relationship journey, I know you'll find gems of wisdom and practical information to connect more profoundly with yourself and your partner. And you'll find more tools for practicing self-worth.
Enjoy and please share the love by sending this to someone in your life who could benefit from the kinds of things we talk about in this space. Make sure to follow me on Instagram @dr.avivaromm to join the conversation.
You can follow Jillian on Instagram and visit her at jillianturecki.com
The Interview: Dr. Aviva & Jillian Turecki
Aviva: So Jillian, it's so great to have you on the show today. Thank you.
Jillian: Oh, well, thank you so much for having me and for the kind words, really appreciate it.
Aviva: Of course. It's a pleasure. Okay, so we are going to just jump right in, and I am airing this on Valentine's Day, so this is going to be relevant to everyone all year long, but I want to ask you a question. How can women trust themselves in relationships when they've been through hard ones or they keep finding the wrong one? And as part of that, how can women normalize being single so they have that inner strength and patience to wait, if that's what we might call it, or kind of be content and let that right thing happen without it feeling so desperate and forced?
Jillian: Well, there's a lot of questions in that question because the first one is I think what you're speaking to is how to trust oneself and trust, and that if they've had a lot of relationship hardship, how can they actually trust themselves? And then at the same time, how can they find peace single so that they don't jump into just the first bed that they think looks cozy? Yeah,
Aviva: Because it's like there's so much pressure for us to be coupled up. And I know that's easy for me to say as someone who is in a relationship, but there's pressure to stay in relationships when you're in a relationship no matter how short or long it is. So there's that, and then there's the human desire to want to sleep with someone that most of us have and be connected. But then there's also this, I think there's so much emphasis on trusting ourselves, and that's easy to say, if your body messages are coming from a place where you haven't been wounded or injured or gotten hurt before, and so then it's like, wait, is that my body message or is that something else talking? Yeah. So what do you think?
Jillian: So I think that nine times out of 10, if not a hundred percent of the time when we're talking about women, when women find themselves in relationships or choose relationships, I should say, where let's just say on one end of the spectrum they're not being treated well at all, they're actually being mistreated on the far end of that spectrum, it would be abuse. But then it would just be sort of like, I don't know if this is abuse per se, but it's kind of teetering on that, or just women who keep finding themselves or keep choosing relationships that are not at all abusive or where there's no mistreatment, but that just is fundamentally the wrong relationship for them. The reason why is because they're not listening to their inner voice. They're not listening to that feeling in the body where we retract, where there's sort of a retraction like, Ugh, that didn't feel good, or the hairs on the back of your neck go up, or you're just like, I don't know if I don't like that. Because women, we've been so conditioned to second guess ourselves.
Aviva: And we do it everywhere. We do it in the doctor's office, we do it at work.
Jillian: Oh yeah, a hundred percent to be agreeable to not pay attention to. And for a lot of women, not all, certainly not. And I think this is changing with younger generations. For a lot of women who are in heterosexual relationships, they're in relationships with men, they have a very unconscious belief that somehow a man's opinion is an authority. So I think that a lot of women will think, oh, he must know more than I do that subconscious conditioning. And then we're also conditioned to be agreeable, and that if we're not agreeable, then we second guess ourselves. I think that this is a very much a self-esteem thing that plagues women. I think that the more sensitive a woman is, the more she can live in her head, and the more that she's living in her head, the more she's doubting the cues that her body is giving her.
And so learning to then trust yourself when, like you said, there might be a lot of hypervigilance as a direct result of being very emotionally wounded. It's important to have someone in your life who you can talk to. And what I would say is to that woman in particular who's like, I don't know if I can trust my body's intuition. I have so much anxiety around this and I have so much hypervigilance that I can't decipher what is my fear and my neurosis around this versus what's real in my body? And to that woman, because worked with a lot of women in that very specific predicament. I said, do not sleep with him. Do not commit to him. Do not make him important in your life until key members of your family or friends meet him or her.
Aviva: This is so interesting. I was thinking about this recently about arranged marriages, and there's so much wrong with arranged marriages. I won't even go there. Why? But then also think, I know I was thinking about this recently, how I would never listen to my mother about my partner. There's no way. And there's this built in biological thing where we don't typically listen to our moms about our partner choice, but I think our moms and our best girlfriends, they kind of do know
Jillian: Sometimes they do Well if everyone's saying the same thing,
Aviva: That's a big piece.
Jillian: And when you do have a lot of hypervigilance and you are someone who you don't know, if you can trust your body, then you need someone. You need a few people who are objective, who can help you, and that really is the way to go. And
Aviva: So within that piece, and it is Valentine's Day, at least when we're airing, how do we normalize being single? A lot of my online community are coupled up and they're moms with kids, but not everybody is and many aren't. So how do we normal this? There's so much pressure every rom-com, I mean, they all end up with the guy guess girl, girl, this guy for the most part, and especially on this day. So how do we be at peace?
Jillian: Well, you can think of it this way. A lot of people who are in relationships will have moments of extreme envy of the people who are not.
Aviva: Yep.
Jillian: Right? The grass is always greener on the other side. Look, I'm all for relationship, and the scientific data suggests that when you're in a stable relationship, that is very good for a person's immune system and overall health and wellbeing. But if you're not, it actually can deteriorate your immune system. So the important thing is that it is really truly better to be alone than to be in the wrong relationship, and it really is so important. So that's one thing. Another thing is, as much as I believe in relationship and I really do, you do have to give up a lot of your preferences when you're in a relationship. So it's better to just make the most of the fact that you're single and you have freedom and to really leverage the freedom that you do have because to make a relationship thrive, which I'm sure having been one in 40 years, is that you really, we have to practice selflessness.
And when you're single and you don't have kids, you can be very self-centered and very selfish. Take advantage of it, do things with your life. Don't wait until you're in a couple. This idea of pressure to be in a relationship, I think that's starting to change. First of all, it's very American. Well, you see it in other cultures for sure, but you don't see it in a lot of European cultures. You don't see it as much. Same thing with women in aging. I mean women in their fifties and sixties are considered sex symbols in Italy and Spain and France, and they're not injecting themselves with a bunch of fillers and this and that.
Aviva: I know I love traveling to Europe. I really enjoy watching British movies and shows, French movies and shows, Spanish movies. I'm like, oh my gosh, these women just look gorgeous and normal. Yes, normal, healthy people who have lived experience like, oh, this is refreshing.
Jillian: It's very refreshing. And they're very much considered in these cultures, a lot of them as sex symbols. They're not looked down upon for being single. They're not looked down upon for having been through menopause. They're not looked down upon because of their wrinkles. It's a very different thing. So I think that for Valentine's Day, you have to learn how to be your own Valentine and remind yourself that being single is much of a privilege as being in a relationship. And there is nothing worse than being in a bad relationship. I really don't think there's anything worse than that.
Aviva: I honestly think the loneliness of being lonely with someone next to you is really its own unique kind of health. And you can imagine in a 40 year relationship, we've been through a lot of different things. And I know those moments when they've been hard, and it's like, oh, not to say being single doesn't have lonely moments that are hard too. It's
Jillian: Just of course. But ultimately a relationship is meant to bring some level of peace into our lives. Even when you go through a hard time, it is meant to bring some sort of healing into our lives. It's meant to feel safe. That's ultimately it. And anytime a couple goes through a rough patch, it's because they're feeling disconnected, unsafe. But when they're committed, then the whole point is to you find it again. Yeah. So it's actually appropriate that this is coming out in Valentine's Day. And for people who are single, it's very important to focus on other areas of your life when you're single and your only focus is, when am I going to meet that person? It's a recipe for disaster. And look, I think as women, we are very much wired for connection and love in a way that men are not. And I think it's really what's important to us, but I think that you have to really try to find that in other areas. I think your partner has to be, in many ways, the most important thing in your life, but also
Aviva: Not your everything.
Jillian: Yeah, not your everything. And also they have to earn that spot in your heart. And I see so many women and men, I see so many people giving that space to someone who they barely know. There's like, somehow you are everything. You are my priority, and we're only in month two. And that's where I see a lot of people making mistakes.
Aviva: One of the things that I love that your work is infused with is self-esteem. And you talk about, and I know it can sound so cliche, we have to love ourselves and have self-worth before we can love someone else or be in a healthy relationship. But I'm not sure there's anything actually truer than that. And I wonder if you can talk about how you think of self-worth and how you feel self-worth shows up in a relationship or can make a relationship better or not.
Jillian: So I think that the way that I think about self-worth and the way that I teach to it is really about self-acceptance. So what I see people who have a lower self-worth is that they believe that their flaws are so unique to them and make them unlovable. And the thing is, it's like we all have things that we're working on, and there's some things that are just kind of never going to get better, but there are things, and they're just ours, but we got to like ourselves anyway. We have to accept ourselves anyway. And the problem with not accepting oneself is that then you are at risk of accepting and tolerating pretty crappy behavior from a romantic partner. Funny enough, it doesn't really show up as much in friendships, but when it comes to a romantic relationship, our romantic relationships really very much reflect how we think about ourselves.
That being said, there are definitely people who struggle to like themselves, and somehow they meet someone who just loves them and sees their light. And those people, they chose the person that really loves them. So it's like, wow, you don't really like yourself, but you made a really good choice. Bravo. So it's not so binary. But I would just say if someone is continuously choosing people that don't support them, aren't there for them, aren't a good partner to them, then you have to really examine whether or not you believe you deserve what it is that you truly desire.
Aviva: I went to a movie the other day. I saw American fiction, which was funny and poignant and clever, and there was one point where a woman said to a man she was seeing romantically, ‘I think we only see the potential in other people, and we look at them as, oh, this person has potential when I'm not fully actually liking the person in front of me. And I think they need to change.’ You say on your Instagram feed, which I love. You need a partner, not a project. And I really thought of that when I was watching this movie. I'd been preparing for this interview. I was like, wait a minute. This sounds really familiar. And it is that sense. I think so many women go into relationships, they feel a romantic attraction, which that falling in love and those hormones and all the things can be so confusing. They just kind of knock our cognitive executive function offline at times. But we also, so many women I work with in my practice have met or are in long-term relationships with someone who had started out as kind of a project like, oh, he really liked this guy, and I know he's really nice. He's really wonderful. Okay, yeah, so he doesn't have a job, but he will eventually because really smart or all the things, you know what I mean? Talk to me more about this. You need a partner, not a project.
Jillian: You need to see the person who's in front of you. That's the most important thing. You can't see your projection of the ideal. You can't put them on a pedestal. You can't just fall in love with their potential. So that's like, it's the metaphor of you need to take off the rose colored glasses. You have to take off the glasses of delusion, and you have to be able to see clearly the person who's in front of you, how they're treating you, what their capacity is, not what you hope that they would be, not what you would imagine them to be. And I think that this is something that also we have to deal with even in a long-term relationship, is that we will always have to choose between our actual partner and who we fantasized or imagined they would be or should be. And so it also ties into managing our expectations because we really can get out of control with our expectations.
They are not above you. They are not below you. They're not on a pedestal. They're not better than you. They're not worse than you. But you have to see who the person is and choose that person. And I think that when women in particular of a certain age, which is very understandable because of all the pressure, because of hormones, because of maybe wanting a family, they will overlook some very important red flags. And this is something that I wanted to bring back to the person we started this conversation with. What do we say to the woman who keeps choosing the wrong partners and listening to her body?
Aviva: This is back to ask your mother, your sister, and your best friend.
Jillian: Yes. Because also the reason why someone would consistently and not once, whatever, but consistently get into relationships that are not good for them is because they were overlooking the red flags. And so being able to distinguish between the actual person versus their potential, the actual person versus your projected ideal and the pedestal being able to differentiate between what's tolerable and what's intolerable, what's a red flag, what's a green flag? These are the things, these are the skills necessary very specifically when you're choosing someone.
Aviva: So let's say you have a woman, she comes to you, she's met a person, the sexual attraction is overwhelming, all the hormonal things are happening, and she's got this story unfolding of this relationship, and it's like she's steeped in the romantic love. And that is such an overwhelming, consuming, physical, emotional feeling. How do you encourage women to say, all right, let's get to logical brain a little bit. Let's get to hit pause on some of the overwhelming men and glove, which is kind of usually what gets women overlooked the red flags,
Jillian: Right? And then men do the same thing, actually. I mean, love is not rational and it can make us very dumb. So what I encourage is, let's get grounded. Let's take some deep breaths. Let's keep remembering that this person is still a stranger and let's now put our focus onto our lives into overdrive. And it's not easy. It's not easy for some women because being so consumed with romantic love and the prospect of beings with someone can actually be very dysregulating for our nervous system. So it's about getting grounded. It's about also having a little sense of humor like, oh God, I've really lost myself here. And for some women, this is not universal. For some people, I would suggest that maybe if you're really head over heels for someone, there is a chance. It's not a guarantee, not so binary, but there's a chance that this person actually might not be good for you.
But the chemistry, and it's a very seductive feeling for a woman and just for all of us to feel that, especially when we have felt so deprived of it for a long time. It's like you're starving and you haven't eaten in days and seeing a pizza, it's like you want to eat that pizza, even if you're allergic to it, it's like you're going to eat it. So I think that it's about getting grounded. It's about understanding maybe the deprivation that you've been feeling. And I think it's about first is to just be aware that that's happening. So building that level of self-awareness like, oh, I'm ungrounded right now. I'm swept up right now. And part of it is really fun and part of me wants to kind of go with it, but also I know that I have a tendency to, when I am feeling this way, to put this person on a pedestal and to make them a central character in my life and I don't even know them. And so I got to watch this, I got to bring this down a notch, and I've got to start now balancing feeling like excited, but really using discernment. That's a lot of what I try to teach is how to be discerning.
Aviva: You said something earlier too that you used the term that we just lose ourselves. And it seems to me that part of this is, and part of a lot of aspects of a relationship are coming back to ourself. For me, that's something very physical. I feel that in my body, I feel an alignment within myself when I'm feeling that sort of integration where I'm not pulled out of myself. And it's interesting you were saying about women not trusting ourselves. I've been married for a really long time. I'm a Yale-trained MD. I was a midwife. I've got a New York Times bestseller, four kids, two grandkids. I'm a competent, grounded, capable woman. I could be in the car driving somewhere that I have driven a thousand times and my husband's the passenger, and he'll say, oh, I think we need to go that way. And even though I know, I know which way to go, and I've gone there a zillion times, somehow something in me gets suspended. I go into this weird suspended animation like some cartoon character, and the little circles are going, my eyes zing, zing, zing, zing. Okay, let me go that way. It does feel like almost like a very culturally ingrained, stereotypical thing because the other thing is he comes at me with that information as if he's so sure he's right. And I automatically default to assuming I'm not right or just don't want to argue. It's such a weird, complicated thing. All the ways that we might get pulled out of our knowing
Jillian: Sometimes they want to sort of take the lead a little bit and bring them in their partner to safety into the right place and whatnot.
Aviva: I love that. It's a chivalrous way of looking at it.
Jillian: Yeah, I do think that sometimes that is it. And I do think sometimes it's also just sort of ego. Yeah. And I think with that kind of situation, you could either just be like, okay, whatever. Let's go that way. Or you could be like, no, I know we're going this right way. It's pick and choose your battles. Yes,
Aviva: Totally.
Jillian: Pick and choose your battles. But I do think it's very gendered in a way. I do see a lot of men with directions. Yeah.
Aviva: Well, this is interesting what you're saying. I've interviewed Alexandra Solomon recently, and we haven't aired that yet, but she talked about how for men in our culture, the experience of being expected to show up with a certain kind of knowing and information and rightness and also their deep desire to not be a disappointment to their partner is so ingrained. And I think for me in my relationship, I forget, I'm like this feminist, so I'll be like, what you're doing is so la la forgetting that he actually has his own ingrained gendered, stereotypical behaviors that I just take as him. But it's a good reminder, so thank you for that.
Jillian: And also, men want to feel appreciated and they want to feel needed and they want to feel important as much as we do. And I think that as feminists, we also have to sometimes say to ourselves, well, maybe he's right. Just like he has to be able to say maybe she's right. I think that that's actually just a really important relationship skill is allowing our partner to once in a while have influence over us.
Aviva: That's beautiful. I want to touch on something that you were talking about in terms of how we can put a perspective or new partner or any partner on a pedestal. I also see a lot of almost the opposite going on, particularly I see this in women in longer term relationships. Sometimes we can feel that we are actually tolerating less than we deserve in a relationship. And I know you talk about this as well. You say a lot of people confuse loving someone for who they are with tolerating less than what they deserve in a relationship. So can we talk about when those feelings come up and where they come from? And I know sometimes we are tolerating less than we deserve, so let's talk about this whole constellation.
Jillian: And a constellation is a beautiful way to put it because it really is a constellation. So it's difficult because I do, a lot of women who gravitate to my work are women who capitulate and agree to be doormats in their relationships. But as someone who has an extensive experience just poaching couples, what I will say is that it's a lack of tolerance that plagues relationships more tolerating less than they deserve. So I've got my single gals who tolerate less than they deserve. And then when I speak to a lot of people, it's the lack of tolerance. And I think that we have to, these are not my words. I heard Tony Robbins once say, we have to trade our expectations for appreciation. And I think that more times than not, what I have found is that people become, they want their partner to be more like them.
They want them to be, we have this whole, these imaginings of who our partner would be in 20 years versus who they really are. And that's an US problem. That's not a them problem. That's us not appreciating who this person and that's us not. We have to bring mindfulness into our romantic relationships where we are willing to consistently question whether or not we are projecting unfair expectations onto our partner and not practicing tolerance of just diversity, diversity in thought, diversity in energy, diversity in just who they are versus what is intolerable. And I think that that's something that people need to define for themselves. What actually is intolerable for you? Am I lacking tolerance in my relationship right now? Did I expect my partner, my spouse of 20 years to give me a life that actually I was responsible for building within myself?
Aviva: This is so interesting, and I think about this a lot. It is difficult. We live in a culture filled with so many conflicting messages, right? On the one hand, we are that competent, independent, entrepreneurial or high achieving woman who can put the down payment on our own house and can buy our own car or whatever it is. Then we're still in a culture where we're fed messages that our partner is going to be some that men, and I don't know how much this shows up in non heterosexual relationships, but at least in heterosexual relationships. And look, I work with women men all the time, and I just keep seeing this theme coming up and coming up and coming up. It's like, yes, I know I can do this for myself, but I really wanted my partner to do that for me, or these tropes and expectations that men are still the ones who are sort of these foundational providers of these things. So a lot creates a lot of internal conflict,
Jillian: But what women don't understand is that part of, she plays a role in pumping him up enough to actually be that for her. So if she's just going to, because women don't realize how easily they emasculate their male partners. And so like, I have this expectation of you to be a man in my life, and you're not reaching that. You're not meeting that expectation. So I'm going to get cold, or I'm going to pull away, or I'm going to give you some snide remarks. I'm going to make it really hard for you to fucking win with me. And that just makes things worse. So we do also have a responsibility to empower our mate to give us what it is that we really desire.
Aviva: It makes, it a hundred percent makes sense. So on the internet right now, and I think this really exploded during COVID, I'm sure you probably saw it in your own socials and your socials numbers, online therapy from actual therapists and from all kinds of other people has just exploded. And on the one hand, I think it's really interesting and great, there's this growing literacy, especially amongst younger women around attachment theory and concepts like gaslighting and narcissism. But it sometimes seems like these kinds of psychological labels are being tossed around without a real understanding of what they mean, which is something I know you learn as a therapist, I learn as a physician, sometimes they mean very big things. So I've just been curious, what do you think of some of the biggest myths and misconceptions around relationship dynamics that you're seeing online and that when you see them, you're like, oh, I just want to dispel that.
Jillian: I think, well, just because someone disagrees with you disagree doesn't mean that they're gaslighting you. There are a lot of selfish people out there. They're not necessarily clinically narcissistic. I think that boundaries are very important, but so are letting people into your life and into your heart. And I think that there's a little bit too much of, it's difficult because where do you strike the balance? You want to empower these people who maybe gambled away their principles in order to be in a relationship. They gambled away their values in order to be in a relationship. So you kind of have to help that person almost individuate and find their strength. But relationships truly are about we and not me. And I think that where there's been a bit of a problem is that truly it's selfishness. That is the biggest problem in relationships. It just is. That is my opinion.
Aviva: Tell me more.
Jillian: Yeah, so I think even people who are truly givers and very loving can be very selfish in a relationship because we get this fear, am I going to be hurt? Am I going to be abandoned? Whatever, they then pay attention to me. So we do this stuff and we start to just think about our needs. And the relationships that thrive the most are ones in which another person, your partner's needs are as important as your own. They're not more important, but they're as important. And you're both kind of your team and you both make each other's needs very important. And I think that people are dragging around their baggage and old wounding and trauma from relationship to relationship, and they need to start taking more responsibility for that. And I think that people are also very understandably on guard and not letting people in. I mean, there's a lot of stuff going on, but the thing is slapping a diagnosis on someone isn't really helpful.
And I think that people are starting to use all this therapy speak. So this idea of you better be in therapy, you better know your attachment style. They really are. And doing the spiritual bypass, I think that where people are getting tripped up is that there's still just so much fear and not enough people really authentically connecting with each other and just stop analyzing the other person. Just if you get into an argument, they're not gas, not everyone is, we can all manipulate, pay attention to how you are showing up in a relationship that is the most important thing. And when you make that the most important thing, then your standard will automatically be that is what I want in another person. But a lot of people are wanting that in another person, but they are not applying that standard to themselves.
Aviva: I also think too, when you just call someone a narcissist or think that about them, a gaslight or whatever it is, it's not really saying anything. It's not saying what the behavior is. What is the person actually doing? And I do think that a lot of these labels are becoming so common that they're starting to lose meaning, but they become really accusatory too, not helpful. You mentioned a term that I think not all my listeners will understand or be familiar with in that spiritual bypass. Can you say what that is?
Jillian: There are people who think that they're more evolved emotionally and consciously than they actually are. So that's the spiritual bypass. I do all these things. I meditate, I go on all the retreats. So therefore I am further along in my human evolution than everyone else. But really what they're doing is that they're a completely, they're not a master of their relationships at all. It's a rare and extraordinary thing to see someone who's a master of relationships and someone who has strong character. There's lots of people who might be doing all the things that they should be doing, but it's actually feeding their own narcissism. If all day is spent at therapy, meditating, doing all these things, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. I mean, I'm a yogi, so it's like I get it, but that's not necessarily going to get you closer to where you want to be in your relationships, like learning how to strengthen your character. And we strengthen our character by doing hard things, by being there for others, by having integrity. So there's an alignment, a congruency between our words and our actions. And so I think that what I'm trying to encourage people to do is strengthen character within themselves and make sure that someone that you choose to be in a relationship with has strong character.
Aviva: Yeah, there's such a generosity to the way you talk about love. I really, really appreciate that the way you're talking about, really, it's about hearing the other person's needs, giving them sort of a charitable assumption of their intentions, looking at even how cultural programming may inform some of our partner's needs and being aware of and even attentive to that I'm all in. And I'm thinking of all the ways that I don't fully do that for my partner. I hear that a lot. I'm doing the work. I'm going to yoga class and I'm going to meditation, I'm going to therapy. And they're not doing the work, but that work is on themselves. And it may help. It may help because they feel more calm, they feel more inner peace. They may feel more self-reflection, but it doesn't make them better.
Jillian: No, it's do that with a goal in mind. And the goal is how can I be more present for my partner? How can I listen better? How can I repair better? How can I see their perspective more? How can I be more communicative myself so that I don't become resentful? Right? So you do all those things, but we do all those things because all searching for a greater sense of peace within ourselves. That's what we're searching for. But then we're supposed to take that peace, that light, and integrate it into our relational lives. And so it comes to a point of like, so how do we actually connect more profoundly with the people in our lives? All people. We do that with curiosity. We do that with patients.
Whereas if I were speaking to a room filled with women who have a history of being treated like doormats, I might be giving them a very different monologue than what I'm presenting right now. But that's a subsection of people overall when it comes to relationship. Even that woman is going to have to learn how to not be in survival mode and not go into her BS behavior where she's pulling back and whatnot. I mean, this is the game of relationship. It's like two things determine the quality of a relationship, who we choose, and how we choose to show up. And that's it. And it's ongoing.
Aviva: You talk a lot about intentionality in relationship. What are some of the ways for couples who they have a relationship, they feel like they generally chose the right person, but either they feel like they want to improve aspects of their relationship or they're in a hard patch. What are some of the ways that people can get on the same page and get intentional with each other? I even heard somewhere you talk about thinking of the relationship almost as a business relationship where you really have these conversations and make decisions and enact things together. And so within that, how do you approach that with couples?
Jillian: Well, first, it's addressing any sort of resentment or anything that has not been said that needs to be said, because telling the truth in your relationship is very important, and a lot of people withhold the truth. So that would be the first step. Go through the layers and get to any sort of bitterness or resentment that's happening because resentment causes resistance. And the more resistant we are to our partner, the more attraction fades. So if there's a lot of resistance between two people, the sexual attraction between them actually decreases. And so when sexual attraction and passion decreases, the motivation to meet each other's needs decreases as well. And so we have to look at how we're going to build a bridge. And the way that we do that, it's like, well, where is the disconnection? Is the disconnection in an old story between the two of you?
Is the disconnection in something that you're doing on a daily basis? Is the disconnection happening because one or both of you are feeling disconnected from self in the relationship? You're overwhelmed, you're wearing 5 million different hats, and you can't even differentiate between one role versus the other. And so there's a little bit of overwhelm and burnout. It starts with a commitment and a desire to fight for the love. And fighting for the love means like, okay, the intentionality, we are going to roll up our sleeves and we are going to figure this out because we have this thing between us, which is our relationship, and we are the relationship. We have a contract that says that we are going to fight for this thing between us. So that's really where it starts.
Aviva: Do you recommend couples sit down and say, okay, once a week we're going to do this, or we're going to get a therapist and we're going to do this. What are some of the pragmatic steps? It's not always easy to just say, or timing is going to bed at night and saying, I'm going to bring up this resentment that I have that's not going to be helpful for the relationship. So what are some of the actual steps people can take?
Jillian: I do recommend a meeting, sort of like a business meeting that couples, especially couples who live together have once a week where they talk about the partnership of the relationship, which is the very unsexy part, but it's like running the ship. What are our responsibilities to make sure that we run our ship as efficiently as possible? And so it's almost like a business meeting and you can't talk about these things throughout the week. It is for the business meeting and for the business meeting only. And it has to end on a high note.
Aviva: Tell me how it ends on a high note. What does that look
Jillian: Like? You can't end in an argument. There has to end with love. Okay, great. High five, whatever it is, it has to be a positive note. Do it someplace, have your designated area, have your notes there, and where you are just running the ship. And then you can have more space for the rest of your relationship to flourish. But it's super, super effective. I have never worked with a couple who has done this, who hasn't said like, wow, that was very helpful.
Aviva: Having boundaries and containers around things in general, I find to be a helpful thing. And I noticed that when we don't do it, it could be either one of us, we wake up in the morning and some little bit of tension, and it can be about anything. It could be about work, it could be about a kid, whatever. And then we bring that tension into the space without, first of all, I don't find it helpful to bring those tensions into our bed and our bedroom. And that is sort of, at least for me, that's almost like a time when they seep out and learning to not suppress, but actually talk to myself in a way that says, okay, this is weighing on you. You definitely want to talk about it, but how is bringing this up now going to affect the evenings important for me? Those containers can be really, really valuable.
Jillian: Yeah, I could not agree more with you.
Aviva: I went to a wedding about 15 years ago. A dear friend of mine got married and her parents were there. Her dad has since passed, but the parents were in their early eighties at the time and had been married for almost 60 years. And yeah, it was pretty remarkable in that the wife, my friend's mom, said in this beautiful Scottish accent. So yes, the secret to a happy long-term marriage is that we spend three months apart every year. He was a diplomat and lived in another country, literally three months of the art. She chose to stay at home. And we're couples friends with who have two homes. They actually have a place of work with a little apartment above it, and then they have their house and one or two nights a week, he will stay at the apartment above work and she stays at the house.
And you never know what's going on in someone's relationship or in their home, but they seem to have a really thriving relationship that has air breathed into it. And my husband and I, we work together. We live in the country, and we're finding that it's really important to remember that I am me and he's him, and the relationship is the space between us, but that we each need breathing room and space. I wonder if you could talk to that in a relationship, and especially couples, they have young kids, they're just all in it or more people work together now. What is the importance in how to create some of this breathing room?
Jillian: Well, first I think that the dance between I need me and I need you is a dance that all couples have to play. They dance between togetherness and autonomy, but the dance looks different for every couple. So there are some couples who do great spending a tremendous amount of time together. There are other couples. My mom and my stepfather never lived together. And I happen to think that I love that setup of being in partnerships but not actually living with the person. And so I think that every couple really needs to find what works for them. I know friends and couples every few weeks, like husband does a boy trip, wife does a girls trip. And so breathing room is so incredibly important, but not every couple requires. But that's one of the negotiations of marriage or something like marriage is how much autonomy, how much togetherness. And
Aviva: That can shift in different phases of your relationship as well.
Jillian: Absolutely. That can definitely shift over the many, many years. The important thing is that there is an acceptance and an agreement between both people. Where it gets tricky is when one person is wanting more that the other person is not, and that's when people start to get really tripped up. But yeah, I think that time apart can be great. Too much time apart, not so great. And it really just depends on the couple.
Aviva: Yeah, we do really well with a lot of time together, but what can happen easily is we'll start to get nitpick year or “bickery,” – as my daughter will say, we bicker.
Jillian: Oh, and that's when you need timeout.
Aviva: Yes, yes. It's almost like we didn't catch the signs before that happened. Usually there, and then we get in it and it's like, oh, actually, ding, ding, ding. We just really need to go to our own corners right now. And we're all over each other. Yeah, I need…
Jillian: …a little space.
Aviva: Yeah.
Jillian: A little space. So you need to miss each other a little bit. Yeah, I need a little space.
Aviva: Yeah. Yeah. There's some beauty in missing each other. Oh, absolutely. I actually know couples too. So many ways people do marriage or relationships. I know several couples where they don't actually sleep together. We sleep together pretty much every night. We love it. But I know some couples say, just sleep better, sleeping apart. And I'm like, there's no one way. It's really interesting.
Jillian: There is no one way and the amount of sex that each couple has, it really just depends on the couple, but it really just depends. Again, what's important is that it's not one person wanting it to be different when the stickiness happens.
Aviva: Yeah, that's really important. So many of the holidays we have, and I'm doing air quotes here, the Hallmark-y holidays, mother's Day and Father's Day and Valentine's Day, and even some of the big holidays, they really presuppose, I've gotten so careful, not just saying Happy Mother's Day to people. Some people have really sad relationships with their mothers or their fathers. And I want to, if you don't mind, you've written this, so this is not a secret publicly that, and this is an odd note to bring to the top of the hour, but I really want to talk about this because not everyone who's is looking for a relationship right now. Some people are in a fine relationship that they want to work with. Some people may be listening who are on the other side of a breakup or a divorce. And I want to honor that because again, some of these Hallmark holidays are very inconsiderate to real life.
And you've written that your divorce was the biggest wake-up call of your life. And now in my practice, I've been working with women as a midwife, as a physician, collectively for 40 years. And I often now just happened just the other day, a woman said, I just, I'm divorced. And I said, congratulations, because that's a big, big thing. And I honestly can say in all my years, when women get to be about two years out from the divorce, often that first two years is really hard, especially if they're kids, but not only if they're kids, but two years out, I've never met anyone. I do know a couple of couples who ultimately got back together years and years later, but I don't know anyone who said it wasn't actually healthier and better. So you've written that it was the biggest wake-up call of your life and that you have had a huge transformation on the other side. But for those who are in a breakup now, how did you get through that heartbreak? Because as much as being in love is an all-consuming feeling, heartbreak can just feel like your life is over and so hard.
Jillian: Yeah. Well, I mean, that was big because my mom, he left when my mom was dying and I had a miscarriage. So there was just a lot. It was a lot going on. Yeah, he ended it. But I think that a lot of times when we feel heartbroken and rejected and abandoned, that there was a part of us that was unconsciously yearning for the freedom of the relationship ending, but way too afraid, too afraid to confront that fear. I think that also people think, especially with divorce, the stigma that's attached to that, somehow you failed. And look, I can't sugarcoat it. We do sometimes take relationships and we kind of screw it up, but everyone does that at some point, even if they end up staying in the marriage or the relationship. We screw up sometimes and it's so much better to a divorce does really need a congratulations because I don't know anyone who's gotten a divorce where the months and or years leading up to the divorce were not absolutely stressful and harrowing.
Aviva: Yes.
Jillian: So I had to really tap into the relief of knowing that I didn't have to deal with that anymore. But for me personally, the wake-up call was, well then if you are not focusing on that, guess you got to focus on you, which is not something that I was really doing. And so I had to build, I went into a very big building stage. That's where I built this new career was because of the divorce. And it is sort of, I think when we go through a breakup and the kind of breakup that really brings us to our knees, what life is wanting and is trying to impose onto us is change in transformation. What I like to do when I help people through the heartbreak recovery journey, if you will, a journey is before you, but there's a fork in the road and you can either go down the road where you are not going to wake up or you're going to go down the road where you're like, I'm going to take on this new journey because rejection really is redirection.
But a lot of people don't take the path of redirection. They just stay on the same path tethered to that story. I mean, of course you have to go through the initial shock, a grieving stage, but it really is like, okay, so now what? Are you going to wake up or are you going to stay asleep and keep repeating the same pattern? And so first you have to go through the initial stage of just hurt and an attachment is being ripped from us, and it feels like you're coming off an addictive drug. And it's very intense. But then I really think it's like, okay, this can be the most important chapter of your life. What are you going to do with it?
And so that was me. I think that I was motivated by pain, so I would've done anything to not be in pain. So I was very lucky enough to be focused on things that really were inspiring me, and that's what saved me. And then it was like, okay, I'm going to learn these lessons. I'm going to process. I'm going to figure out why this happened. I'm going to adopt the belief that life is something that is happening for you not to you, and that I'm going to make this mean something. So that's what I did, and that's what I like to encourage people to do.
Aviva: Thank you for sharing so openly about that. And having had a miscarriage, and your mom sounds like so much at one time, so much so. Thank you. I have a question that I love to ask all my guests before we end that is if you could tell your younger self one thing, what age would she be and what would you tell her?
Jillian: Well, I'm going to steal this from something that I saw recently by another Gillian that's spelled differently, the actress, Gillian Anderson. I don't know if you're familiar with her.
Aviva: I am.
Jillian: And I saw this in a clip probably on social media, and I was like, wow. Now this is something that I would've just said to me, and I think I probably would've been around 18 or 19, and these are her words, “follow your dreams, not your boyfriends.”
Aviva: Brilliant, brilliant. I think we could take a lesson from that truly in some ways at every stage of our lives. Sometimes I think in my marriage, how would I be different in my marriage if I were embracing myself as a single independent woman right now? And when I take that lens, then I show up more presently as a whole person, not as a whole person waiting and expecting and wanting. Even after 40 years, it's like these things still happen. I love that. Follow your dreams, not your boyfriends. That's amazing. That could be like May West or Dolly Parton, and I love that. It's Jillian Anderson. So fun.
Jillian: And that was a message that I needed.
Aviva: Yes, that sounds like there are some more stories there, which I trust you'll be telling some of these in your book. Do we have a publicly announce-able title yet?
Jillian: Not yet, but soon.
Aviva: Ooh, people don't know how long we have to keep these things close to our chest when a book is in the works, but I know we'll be hearing about that. For folks who hop off and don't go back to the show notes where we'll have everything listed. What's the very best place they can find you?
Jillian: You just need to know my first and last name, so I'm most active on Instagram. And then I also have my website, jillianturecki.com, with courses and stuff, and then my podcast, Jillian on Love.
Aviva: Which is really fun. You know what I love to listen to it is when I have some stretches on an airplane by myself, and I'll download some episodes. It's very comforting, and I love your philosophy.
Jillian: Oh, thank you for listening.
Aviva: Yes, of course. So Jillian, thank you so much for joining me and for sharing your love wisdom, and really, that sounds so silly, but I mean truly 20 years of working with couples and the wisdom you share.
Jillian: Oh my God, thank you. That was so much fun.
Aviva: Thank you everyone for listening, and I hope that you take this time to look inside and give yourself some really good love and be that love you're looking forward to.
I hope that it helped you to feel seen and heard, and perhaps it even brought you some aha moments. Please share the love by sharing this with a friend or someone in your life who could benefit from the kinds of things we talk about in this space. Can't wait to see you next time.
