Love bombing is a strategic approach a narcissistic person takes at the beginning of a relationship to win a person over and secure them as a source of supply. In the most classical grandiose form of love bombing, it's a relationship that feels like a fairy tale. It's dinners out. It's love text. Good morning, my angel. Good night, my princess. How's my queen this morning? That stuff is narcissism central. It's this is the greatest love story ever told. Where have you been my whole life? On Instagram, found my soulmate. Soulmate? Narcissism. I see or hear soulmate. I'm like, someone's in a narcissistic relationship. You know how it's like every time a bell rings and angel gets their wings. Every time I hear soulmate, someone fell in love with a narcissist. Same thing. That is that talk. Magic connection once in a lifetime, picnics on the beach, let's fly to Paris, let's spend every day for two weeks. Good night, queen, good morning, king, all that stuff. That's love bombing. However, that's not the only way it shows up, because some people say, That did not happen to me. Love bombing also might play on, for example, let's say someone's a rescuer, and especially with a vulnerable narcissistic person.

Vulnerable narcissists are really good at pulling for pity early in a relationship. I'm so lucky I met you. You're such a good listener. Nothing's ever gone right in my And you come along, you're listening like, I guess my luck's changed, but oh, my gosh, thank you. And so you're like, my project, I am going to save them. And if that's your thing, then they are the ultimate... They're like a fixer-upper of a human being. So you're like, no, no, no, I know a guy. I'm going to introduce you to this guy. Oh, your car's not working. Oh, please take mine. No problem. Or I got you. We're going to make your dreams come true. That is crack for a vulnerable, narcissistic person. So it can be this rather vulnerable opening up. And that's how their love bombing shows up. But the mistake people make is we only think of love bombing in a romantic way. Love bombing can happen in families. When a family member needs something for you, now, listen, your family, your parents didn't love bombing because it was built into the model. You had to love them. You had no choice. But as time goes on, narcissistic parents will do the equivalent of love bombing.

They They need the kid to be what they want. Hey, honey, you're the best. Oh, my gosh, you're doing so great. You're going to go out. You're going to win that game. It is pizza. It is ice cream. You want to go to Disneyland? I'll take you to Disneyland. So it's the parent throws the little goodies in there to get the kid in line, sometimes even to be a source of supply for them. And as you get into adulthood with a narcissistic parent or a narcissistic family member, they will do that same, You're the best. Here's all this stuff. We'll do anything you want to be able to keep you, maybe sometimes just on the narcissistic supply chain of the family.

I do have one question about the love bombing, because I saw this happen with somebody that I care deeply about. They're like, You're my queen. I love you, angel. And the problem is when that happens to you as a human, you literally do think you found Prince Charming, or you found the one. And all of your chemicals in your body are going bananas because you are attracted to this person person. And they're like, what do you do?

You ask such an important question, because the other thing that happens in love bombing is that the person, the narcissistic person, tries to push the accelerator on the relationship. They wanted to go fast. If they want to lock down your supply, right? And remember, the narcissistic person uses a relationship not only to get supply, and a key form is supply status.

What do you mean by supply?

You use that word a lot. Supply is the admiration you bring a person, the validation you bring person. It could be your attractiveness, it could be money, it could be social status, it could be sex, it could be time, it could be novelty. Remember, the reason love bombing works is that it's new not only for you, but for them. Narcissistic people are reward seekers, but they don't care as much about punishment. So they don't think about consequences. They think about reward. There are biological theories of narcissism that suggests the nucleus accumbens, those areas of the brain that are very dopamine happy parts of the brain. That reward sensitivity, that has been shown in the research to be very much the case, that they don't think about the punishment, the thing down the road. They think about the thing that feels good in front of them. But they are trying to lock down the supply. So if you're a good source of supply, you praise them a lot. You're so hot. You're so cool. You're so great. Let's go Instagram official. Anything that's bringing them what they want. This is just like attention, right?

I know. But as a 55-year-old woman, I see it happening with so many 20 something. I'm like, You did not meet the love of your life. You are not marrying this person right now. Calm your freaking jets.

Mel, I'm going to call you out on that.

Keep your IUD in. Here's the thing. Let's not lock this up or down. You are an irrational, insecure. Obviously, I can't say this to somebody.

But I'm going to call you out on that. Let's not just be mean to the 20-year-olds. I am watching 55-year-old.

Oh, I'm sure, because Because if you're newly out of a marriage or you've been single forever and somebody suddenly comes out of the blue, I understand. We all want attention and to feel good. But how do you discern learn, I guess because a normal person doesn't go, You're my queen, 10 seconds after they meet you.

That thing is the narcissist is too clever to say, You're my queen, 10 seconds after meeting you.

Well, it's like the date that goes for 48 hours.

That's exactly right. It's The date that goes on for 48 hours, it's they say good night. And think of it, let's say somebody has been dating a bunch of people who aren't responsive, who wait three days to text and all that, which narcissists can do as well. But a really full court press love bomber. They'll send that, Are you home, baby? Can't stop thinking about you. Ding. And then in the morning, Good morning, queen. I just dreamt about you. Ding. Middle of the day. But the really good love bombers. They don't go crazy. It's not every hour. Maybe around lunchtime like, Hey, I hope your day is going well. And then they might even, Wait a minute. They're still not the second day. They're very, very tactical.

So what would happen? Let's just say that somebody hears you, and they're taking everything that you're saying to heart. And a couple of months from now, you get in a new relationship. You go on this absolutely fabulous date, right? The next morning, angel, I hope you slept well. I dreamt about you all. I'm like, literally,. And then middle of the day, Can't get any work done. Can't stop thinking about, you can't wait to see you. That night, another date goes all night. It's just like, When are we getting married? And you start to go, Oh, somewhere in the back of my mind between the dopamine rush and the sex hormones that are flying through my body, I remember Dr. Romani saying something about the fact that this could be love bombing. Is there a stance you could take just to test the waters a little bit where you don't respond for 24 hours? And then is there something to do to interrupt yourself? Because you're not going to stop the love bombing.

Have you ever been on vacation to a place like Hawaii or some other tropical island?

Not Hawaii, but somewhere else. Some other tropical island.

You've been on a vacation like that, right? Did you move there?

No.

You came home?

Yeah.

Would have been nice to stay there. Umbrella drinks, days in the reading the book. Telling people to interrupt the love bombing is telling people, You just got to Maui, come home. Stay in Maui for a week. Have some fun. But as soon as, I miss my cat, my dog, I miss my bed, come back. Ride the love bomb out. Have some fun. You want to test it. The things you'll see early on are things like the narcissistic person doesn't tolerate disappointment. Well, if anything pings their entitlement, for For example, they don't get the table they want. There is a wait at the restaurant. They did lose the reservation. The bags get lost, and they get really, really crunchy and entitled. You just got your first sign and catch yourself And the excuse like, well, we did just have an overnight flight. It's not okay to yell at somebody for not finding the back, right? You've now gotten your first piece of data. One of the most interesting things I remember learning in graduate school was a supervisor told me, I was learning to be a therapist. He said to me, The first time something happens, it happens.

The second time something happens, it's a coincidence. The third time it happens, it's a pattern. So take the first time as what it is. Call the second time a coincidence. By the time the third time comes, it's time to leave Maui, pack those bags, and come home. Because I, as a psychologist, can tell you it's impossible for me to tell someone to leave something that feels that good. The key is that when you're getting Good morning, queen, soulmate nonsense, to recognize this for the tropical vacation that it is and to remind yourself that this is going to run out. I am going to need to go back to real life Again, and that rule of three hits and say, Yeah, no, this isn't cool. This isn't okay. But that is a really, really tough nut to crack, because what the love bombing does, and this is why it's such a useful tactic, it creates buy-in. Because what has happened is you've now created the idealized foundation of a relationship. And maybe that's the thing is that idealization really has no place in a relationship, is that we're trying to fall in love with the whole person.

And the whole person isn't always a day at the beach. The whole person is the regular stuff. But unfortunately, in the app dating world we're in, narcissistic people have the best dating profiles. They have the most curated images. They've got their cool places, and they always look good in the And the abs, and the whole thing. It's a whole thing. So you're really trying to catch people as they get lost in this world of love bombing and all of that is telling them to go against human biology. That's a tough sell. And I think that teaching people more than when these little red flags start popping up, pay attention. If it feels too much, it is too much. And you're a grown Adult. It's not supposed to be a fairy tale. I still think we live in a rom-com world, and where we think this is a normal way to have a relationship. And I also think that the West is very romance-oriented. It's true. In any world where there's lots of romance is where the narcissists are going to win. So I guess I'm telling... I think we're around Valentine's Day now. I'm saying, Say goodbye to the romance.

Buy the chocolates the day after Valentine's or 50 % off, and stop playing into this game ahead of time. But you're in a relationship with someone. Some of the devaluing has started. They're being a little shady with someone. Shady DM, shady text, shady behavior.

Lying about where they are.

Lying about where they are. Disappearing for a while. Disappearing for a while. You call them out, and some gaslighting, some denial. You've got some evidence. They don't want to lose you. Love bomb, too. So the second love bombs are usually for them to restabilize the ship and to get the validation and to get, again, your supply back the way they want it. But the thing is, you'll also have these cycles where they will behave badly, and then they'll behave well. They'll have a good day at work. They'll be really nice. They'll say, Let's go out to dinner. And then two days later, they are gaslighting you, and chiding you, and humiliating you.

See, now I'm back to going, I think I'm a narcissist. You know what I mean? Because I listen to you and I'm like, Okay, I have a good day at work. Then I have a bad day at work. Right.

But how do you treat other people? Are you mean to the people in your life? Never. But that's my point. Listen, on our Good days were always a little nicer. I just had this conversation with someone this morning because I had a terrible night last night. Five hours of work hell last night. And I was in the worst mood. Talked to one of my best friends that night, and I said, I'm about to be a terrible person to you. I love you so much. And she's like, I got you. Go. So it wasn't like I went in there and I wasn't trying to hurt her, but I knew the things I was going to say were going to be abrupt and icky. I had self-reflection. She's a good friend. She's like, all good. You never need to give me a disclaimer. I love you. And then we had the conversation this morning. I had such a terrible day. It lingered into the morning, and I was talking to someone, and I said to him, blah, blah, blah, la, la, la. And I said, I'm so sorry. You're on a trip. I don't want to harm your trip.

He's like, no, no, no, I get it. And I said, and now I have to jump abrupt because I've got to go. I've got to get to mess.

And now I feel bad that you're here after having such a bad day. You know what I mean? You're lifted.

Oh, I'm sorry. But you see these dances? We're in like, I'm so sorry you did that. I'm like, oh, sorry to my friend and to this other person I was talking to. So that awareness That we say, I am so sorry. Ahead of time. I don't want to say anything that hurts, but I'm not in my best right now. I'm showing an awareness that other person is prepared. I might even say, I'm so sorry. All I did was talk about myself, this conversation. I just had to let this go. There is an awareness. Now, next time I talk to these people, I'm going to call them both this evening and say, how are you doing? I hammered on about myself. That a narcissistic person is not going to do that. Do you see the difference? I see the difference. So I had the good day, I have the bad day. You have the good day, you have the bad day. You have the self-reflection on the bad day. Do not scream at people who might say, I'm not going to be my best tonight, or, Tonight's a pizza night, or, Could I have an hour to myself?

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I love this concept in your book, It's Not You, of the C-suite as being the gateway to love bombing? Can you explain what that is?

Yes. So here we're talking about narcissistic relationships and how terrible they are, right? And how it can be, especially in an intimate relationship, but in any relationship. You're thinking, well, why are we running away as soon as we see them yelling at the server? Because everybody's vulnerable to these relationships. And this idea that are there some people more vulnerable than others? No. And that's the C-suite. Why are we all vulnerable to them? Because they are charming, they are charismatic, they are confident, they are curious about us, they have great credentials. And in a weird way, especially if you had narcissistic parents and we meet a narcissistic person in adulthood, they're even a weird source of comfort because it's our chance number two to win over the person who is not fully loving us. I know this game. I'm going to be fabulous, and I'm going to make them love me because that's how love works, right? I'm going to earn it from them. Because if someone just rolls up and loves you, you're like, that's boring, right? That's the thing you push back you get. But that especially the charisma, the confidence, the charm. I mean, it's an odd thing to tell people when someone's charismatic.

Why isn't it there all the time, though? You know what I mean? You know what I mean? This is the thing that's so damn confusing.

It's a transaction. It's a transaction. They're trying to get your supply. Again, it's that conscious knowing how to turn it on and turn it off. Any of us... I mean, you must know, Mel. You said you know narcissistic people. Tell me they were not some of the most charming, charismatic, shiny, sparkly people you've ever known.

It's true. So what is love bombing?

So love bombing is the It's where the charm and charisma turn into behavior. It's the early phase of any narcissistic relationship. We tend to only use this term for romantic relationships. It can happen in friendships, workplace, you name it, anywhere. It is this intense and overwhelming, let me call it a courtship, where a person is... It's almost an obsessive fascination with you. It's a person trying to win you over. The classical tropey love bombing is on your first day, you go to the best restaurant in town, then they get the concert tickets no one can get. And on your third day, you fly to Paris, and you dance till 6:00 AM on the beach. And it's so exciting. And they make a scavenger hunt for you, and they get you gifts. And every Friday, there's a dozen roses waiting for you. That's love bombing. It's fairytale. It's larger than life. But I think if we only use that trope, it's tricky.

Yeah, I was just going to say, who can afford toHow do you do that? I'm like, that's it. How do you do that on a blue-collar budget?

I'll tell you how. Tell me how. You take people to whatever is considered the best restaurant to your budget. The person is still going to think that's great. They'll pack, they'll say, Let's go on a drive to wherever the cool place to go on the drive is. I'm going to show you the coolest view you've ever seen in your life. They'll buy things.

It might not be-It's like the whiskey off your feet. I'm proving to you.

It's the, Good night, princess. Good morning. I can't start my day without thinking about you. And then there'll be subtle things like, take a picture where you're at. I just want to see where you're at. To me, that's this person stalking you. Why do they need to know where you're at? Of course, I am the anti-romance. Do not find me on Valentine's Day.

A couple of those is fine, but not on the second date.

But it's a lot of that. It's intense contact. But love bombing just doesn't look like that. Love bombing may become really intense, almost oversharing really early in the game. They're laying out this really deep, profound, true or untrue story about their past, about their childhood, about what they're feeling. And for some people, that's the play because they'll say, oh, my gosh, this person sharing so much. They're so vulnerable. And now you're in because they've shared so much. Love bombing can be too much time together. Our first date lasted two weeks. Do you even have a job? What first date last two weeks? So when people say that stuff, they're like, I knew right away. I was like, Trauma bond. The minute people say that, I know that sounds so cold, but it's actually not. It is this... People might say, When I first saw them, I was really attracted to them, but not like I knew right away. But the two-week first date. There's this intense intention. They spend so much time together. I canceled all my plans to be with them. Their lease came up, and yeah, we'd only been together a month, but we decided to move in together.

Fast, fast, fast, fast, fast. The fastness is also a part of love bombing. It's an intensity. It's what I call an intense indoctrination into another person. They are winning you over. When you're being love bombed, you're so distracted by the sharing, by the obsession, by the texting, by the emails, by the gifts, by the quickness that you're not noticing the red flags.

So what do you do if you're a friend? Because I think oftentimes, if you see this happening to a friend or you as the your friend on the outside, start to have the red flags go up, and you say something to your friend, Maybe you guys should take it a little easier. Or, I hear he wasn't that great with his last girlfriend. Or, you just tried. How do you approach it if you're the A friend.

Don't drop a dime on the other person because the minute you try to-What do you mean drop a dime? Like, I heard they weren't great with their other person. He's moving real fast. It's something we learned from doing treatment with substance users is do not make them defend behavior. And don't make him defend the narcissist. The minute you say he wasn't great with his former partner, yeah, have you ever met his former partner? And now they're defending them. Never do that. You got to find the back door.

So how do you find the back door with a loved one?

You say, how are you? Talk to me about your new relationship. How are you feeling? How are you doing? And they'll tell you the story. Wow, that's a lot happening. How do you feel about that? You might be more likely for them to say, Yeah, it is a lot. I'm trying to go with it because Because I've always thought like, I don't deserve a fairytale. Now I'm getting the fairytale and say, What feels fairytale-ish about that to you? You're trying to get them to talk without getting them to defend the narcissistic person. Listen, I'm basically trying right now to train people We're not able to use therapy tricks here. But that's really what it is, because I think we're so quick to say, I don't like them. The first thing they're going to do is defend them. You've got to get them to talk about the relationship so they start spilling on like, I don't know about this. What What do you mean you don't know about this? And let them talk and say, Well, if you're feeling like that, do you feel okay? I don't know. Take a step back. You can do that because it sounds like this person cares about you so much.

I mean, that's a little manipulative, but if you're trying to save someone, you try all the tricks. But what you're trying to do is give them permission, maybe to slow down, to pull back, or saying, he wants to move in right away and say, you love having your own They're on place. So how do you feel about that? Get them to talk about the thing that they value, which is to having their own place versus what fool wants to move into your apartment in a month?

Right. I got it. That's very, very clear. So if you're spotting this, just get them to talk. Open-ended questions. Do not say anything that makes them defend.

So interesting.

I can look backwards now and see as a parent, several mistakes that I made.

Because as parents, too, Mel, we're so quick in there to want to protect our kids. I think nowhere else do we see that reactive like, bad, bad, bad. It's almost like you can feel the clenching in yourself of saying, well, talk to me about this friendship. And inside you're like, leave them. I hope you never talk to them again. But you can't because everybody, when they're ambivalent about something, and we raise the thing that they're ambivalent about as being bad, their reactive response is to defend that because they're ambivalent.

It makes a lot of sense. Hey, Mel. It's Jennifer. Can you do a podcast not on marriage advice, but something about how marriage is so wacky, hard, and unusual, and worth staying the course? I went back and listened to your opening podcast and was so blown away by the exposure of what you'd gone through, but also of the impact upon your marriage. And so I'm blown away that your marriage existed through all of that. I feel a lot of cultural pressure and voices about leaving marriage, but not so much about staying. Like, maybe the pendulum has shifted generationally from Stay for the Kids to Leave To Make Yourself Happy. But isn't there another way, another perspective on the why of staying? Do you think you could talk about that? I love the show, your vibe, your honesty. It really helps. Thank you so much, Mel. Thank you for this question. I love your vibe, and I love the question itself. And I also want to thank you for distinguishing between the request of asking advice about marriage and relationships versus just talking about my experience of how hard and wacky having a long-term relationship can be.

And the truth is, I don't talk about this topic. Of relationships and marriage and giving advice about it all that much. Because the fact is, I don't think I do know the secret to marriage. I've been married for 26 years, but I feel like my husband Chris and I, we are still figuring out the secret to marriage. I also worry, if I'm being perfectly honest, and I promise this would be a brutally honest episode, that if Chris and I started giving relationship and marriage advice and we somehow held ourselves out there as the model for a marriage that works, it would blow up our own marriage. I don't know if you've ever noticed this, but it seems like every other day there is some author influencer that has been giving relationship advice who then announces that they're getting divorced, and I personally do not want to get divorced. But I can't stop thinking about your question. You're not the only one who has been asking me to talk about the secret or the strategies or just some of the things that Chris and I have learned along the way after being together for 28 years and being married for 26 years.

So, Jennifer, after much trepidation, I decided, Fuck it. I'm going to answer this. The first thing I want to talk about is your observation about whether or not that pendulum has shifted generationally when it comes to advice about marriage, and in particular, when marriage gets hard. I agree with you. I think for somebody our age, and for those of you that may be new to listening to this podcast, I am 54 years old. My husband is We have 53 years old. We have three children who are going to be 24, 22, and our son is about to be 18 years old. Chris and I have been through a lot of ups and downs. Growing up, the relationship was always, you got to stay together for the kids. I personally think that is the world's worst advice. A lot of the research bears out the fact that your kids know when you're miserable. If you're staying only to tough it out for the kids, your kids are now seeing a model of a relationship that is profoundly dysfunctional. The way that they learn about relationships is by observing you. I don't think you should stay for your kids.

I think that is lousy advice, and a lot of us have heard that advice for a long time. What I believe is that if you do decide that you're going to stay in a relationship, you have to do that for yourself. When you consider the reasons why you want to stay in a relationship, if you put yourself first, it may be that it matters to you based on your values to keep your family intact. And one of the things that I think a lot of people don't think about when times get really tough is that your marriage is actually more than just you and your partner. Your marriage is your family. It's your network of friends that you've built together. It's the history that you've created together. And so if you you see value in what you've created to date, that's a really valid and important reason to work on your marriage and relationship and try to work through the challenges that have come up. But that right there is very different than staying for the kids out of guilt and shame. So stay because you want to stay. Work on it because you want to work on it based on your values and based on what you feel in your heart.

And I also agree with you, Jennifer, that there has been a big swing. I mean, you see it all over social media. Leave to make yourself happy. If you're unhappy in that marriage, you just walk right out that door. I would extend this conversation that you and I are going to have today beyond marriage, because I think that the same things that make a marriage healthy and happy and go the distance are the exact same thing that makes a friendship happy and healthy and go the distance. We live in this world, and I worry a lot about this, where people are really quick to just X people out, to ghost somebody. I'll tell you something about being in the content space. Anytime you put up something When you talk about social media and you talk about narcissism or toxic behavior in other people, the post goes crazy. People love to just talk about other people being toxic. I worry about the fact that we have gotten to a point where the pendulum has swung and people are starting to feel like, When things get tough, I just leave. When somebody's a jerk, I just walk out with it.

They're the problem. The fact is, the exit door is usually not where you find the best answers. That's typically the easy out. I have found over and over and over again that the answers to a better relationship are usually in the mirror. And so what I want to say about that is this. If you're in a relationship with somebody who's abusive, leave. If you're in a relationship with somebody who's narcissistic, leave. If you're in a relationship that makes you absolutely miserable and you have tried to work through everything, you should leave, and that will make you happy. But if you're leaving because you don't want to do the work, that's a problem. And that habit of bailing when things get tough, you're just going to take that right into the next relationship. And That's why I am saying it's not necessarily the answer that's going to make you happy. The reason why I think that it is important in a friendship or in a marriage or a relationship to stop yourself from walking out the door and just pause long enough to do the work to stay is number one, I don't know a single person who has truly put in the work to repair a marriage or a friendship who regret it.

But I do know a ton of people who just got frustrated and got divorced, and they now regret that they didn't try harder, or that they now miss friends that they ghosted or stopped talking to years ago over something stupid because they were too afraid to have the hard conversation. And so I do, based on the 28 years that I have been in a relationship with my husband, I have seen this over and over and over again. If you are willing to put yourself in pause and attempt to repair the marriage or the friendship, you're not going to regret that effort. Second, and I've already alluded to this, a marriage isn't just a relationship that you have with your partner. It's the community. It's the friendships and the networks that you've built. It's the history that you have together. When you end a marriage or a friendship, the The truth is, you basically blow apart all of those things. That's another reason why it's worth trying to work on it. If you still see something for yourself inside this relationship, friendship or friendship. I think a lot about the fact that when people get divorced, I would love to think that everybody can have a modern divorce, and you can blend families, and ex-spouses can be partners, and everybody can be with their new partners and blended families and have holidays together.

And that's how it should be if you're going to end a marriage. But that's not the norm. And so I just want to be honest because I don't think we think through these things that you won't have the same relationship with the sister-in-law that you love. You will not be going to your old in-laws if you adore them for the holidays anymore. Friends are going to feel funky because they're going to feel like they got to go with the one or the other in terms of your relationship. And that just is how it is right now. I wish it were different. But I promised you I'd tell you the truth. And now I want to just deliver even tougher love about whether or not you decide to end this marriage. Because the fact is, let's just say that you end this thing, right? What are you What are you going to do? Oh, I know exactly what you're going to do because you've also seen this a million times. Once you get out of this marriage, you're going to be highly motivated to get in the best shape of your life, to get back out there, to get healthier, to be more private, to be more vibrant.

Why? Well, so that you can attract somebody better. What if you were to just do that now? Why not do that now for yourself? And again, I want to say, don't stay with somebody who's abusive. But if you're sitting there bitching to your girlfriends or your guy friends or just your friends in general and your family, that you've become room mates and that your spouse is no more fun, and you don't know who you're married to anymore. But underneath all that, you just wish it were better. You You still love this person? Don't just throw in the towel because you're frustrated. Do the work. That's what I've learned. You talked about the fact that in some of the beginning episodes, I shared a little bit about our story. A lot of you already know it, so I'm not going to go into great detail. But for those of you who are new who are listening to the podcast, back in 2008, I had lost my job. We were 800 grand in debt because my husband's restaurant was going under. His restaurant business was really struggling. He hadn't been paid in months. We were just, oh, leans on the house, drinking ourselves into the ground.

I got to a point where it was easier to be angry at Chris and to just be resentful of him and to be like, I don't like you. I don't want to be with you. You fucked this up. As if it wasn't partially my fault, too. I want to say I'll do something to you if you're sitting there thinking that the grass is greener. And look, maybe the grass is, but I want you to stop and consider something. If I ever get pissed off at my husband, and I'm like, You know what? Chris is annoying. I just can't stand this about him or that about him, or he's always thinking about something. He doesn't talk, and he's not that fun, and he doesn't make me laugh, or whatever you may bitch about. I stop and say to myself, What's the average 50-year-old guy I mean, anybody my age, sorry, dudes, but any one of you that gets to the age of 50, you got shit in the closet. You got stuff that you have lied about. You've got things that you're ashamed of. You've got things that you haven't worked through. And so here I've got two options.

I can either turn toward the person that I was once in love with and do the work to make it better, to grow together. Or I could roll the dice. And I could end something because I'm frustrated or pissed off or things got challenging or whatever the situation may be. And I could literally go try to create a relationship with somebody else who, by the way, I have not seen what this person has been doing for the last 28 years. So I don't know what the hell they're telling me, whether it's the truth or not. I don't know what trauma they have buried beneath their skin. I don't know what bullshit they did in their prior marriage. But if you're willing to turn toward the person that you're with now, you know at least part of the story. And for me, it has always seemed worth it. No matter how hard things got with Chris, no matter how scary things got, no matter how much we resented and hated one another, no matter how much we were drinking, I never got to the point where I thought, It's way better to roll the dice and try to meet someone new than to try to work it through with this person right here.

The truth is, and I'm sure this is true about you, I've talked about Juicy Peaches and embracing your juicy peachiness on this podcast, but there are days I am not a peach at all. And so when a marriage goes off the rails, when you get to the point where your roommate, it's not just your partner's fault. And that gets to this concern that I have, that we are so quick to just cut people out of our lives, to call people toxic, to end something because we're sick of it. And we haven't even done the work to try to fix it. We haven't had the harder conversation. And so that's it. I feel like it is always worth working on it. And so if you're struggling in your relationship or you're struggling in a friendship, absolutely hit the pause button. Do not spend another second bitching to your girlfriends or your guy friends about the situation and put Get your time and energy into working to make it better. Because I guarantee you, you have not communicated what you're feeling clearly. You have not made requests about what you want. You have not started unpacking where things went off the rails.

And the truth is, if you're willing to work on it, you can make it better. I don't care how long or how little you've been married. If you're willing to work on it, you can make it better. And I think that is the secret to a long-lasting marriage, relationship, friendship. It lasts because you're willing to work on it. And that brings me to the most important caveat of all of this. And I think this is the biggest single truth about relationships. Relationships only work if both of you are willing to work on it together. This is not a one-way street. There is no halfway on this. There is no, I'm going to fix myself, and that fixes my marriage. You will never Never change your marriage on your end on your own. Period. Full stop. And so if you're listening to this and you have somebody that won't work on it with you, I need you to listen to the takeaway The ways that I'm about to give you, the lessons that I've learned, actually very recently, after being married to the same person for over 26 years. These are lessons that I have learned very recently after Chris and I have been in marriage therapy for two years.

Even saying marriage therapy is weird because I think about going to therapy like going to the gym, that it's a way to make something better. In fact, at this point, I have benefited so much and learned so much about my husband that I didn't even know, having been married to him for the first 24 years. It's so incredible to have a third person who is not sleeping with you guys or living with you guys to weigh in on what they observe. It has been one of the greatest things that we have ever done for our relationship. I'm kicking myself for not having done it sooner. And so what I want to do is I want to share with you Because I'm just getting so many questions. How did you guys go the distance? How did you make it through the challenging times? How did you do it? The way we did it is that we were both willing to do the work. And no matter how far apart Chris and I felt or were, or how much we were struggling struggling in our lives or our careers, or financially, or with addiction, or whatever it may have been, the one thing that I can say is that we were always willing to work on it.

And no matter how pissed off we got with one another or frustrated or isolated from one another, I knew deep down that he did love me and that I loved him. Having face bankruptcy, and having been unemployed, and having struggled to pay for groceries with three kids under the age of 10, I know that when life gets hard, it is so much easier to be frustrated and angry because you're triggered than it is to be afraid. Back when the restaurant business was really struggling, I was so pissed at Chris. I was just resentful. I was resentful that he wasn't successful. He knew He could feel it. That only contributed to the shame that he felt. The fact is, there are going to be years in your relationships when it goes the distance that are amazing and years that completely blow. Years where you feel very connected and years where you feel like you're in your own corners. The past couple of years and going through the craziness that happened during the pandemic, it's been really painful. It did some real damage to our relationship. So This is why, Jennifer, I'm so happy that you did not ask for marriage advice.

Because, again, I'm going to say everything I'm about to share with you, these are not the secrets to the perfect marriage. I am not the expert in what your marriage should look like. I like to keep my marriage between Chris and I. In fact, there are things that Chris and I talk about with our therapists that our kids don't know. You want to know why? Because it's not their fucking business, and they shouldn't know. And your kids are not your therapist, and they're not involved in your marriage, and you shouldn't be talking to them about the stuff that you're mad about related to your partner. It's terrible to do that. Work on it with your partner, because the more time you spend complaining and griping about your partner to your friends or your family or, dear God, do not do it with your kids, you need to be spending twice that amount of time talking to your spouse. See, that's why you're not connected. That's why you have problems, because you're not actually talking to your spouse. House. So when we first started seeing a therapist, it was in 2020, and we decided to go to therapy because we had some major things going on because obviously the pandemic turned our life upside down, and we were both at our wits end, and we were fighting a lot.

And here's one of the first things that our therapist said to us, and it really has stuck with me. And I think that this framework will really work for This framework will be really helpful for you, too. He observed that Chris and I are excellent at the transactional aspects of life. We can cook dinner together, we can sync up our calendars, we can run errands, we can do projects around the house. We're really great at parenting together. We get the day-to-day stuff done. We love spending time as a family. We have meaningful work that we feel connected to. But here's what happened. Somewhere during the past, At least probably five to eight years, we got so swept up in the doing that we stopped being connected. And the fact is, I was very resentful that he wasn't successful in his career. At least in the beginning, I was really resentful. I can see that my resentment made me turn on him, and it made me turn on him when he needed me most. I stopped believing that he would be able to save that business. I can see, and I will admit, and this is one of those episodes where I'm the asshole, and I'm just going to admit all the things that I did wrong in the hopes that you don't repeat the mistakes that I made.

I can see that I was engaged in what I've seen people call the quiet quitting. And for me, it was the quiet quitting of a marriage. You might not even be conscious to this. You might be doing this in your job. You might be doing this in your family. When people use the term, We've become roommates, I think that what you're talking about is that you're in a relationship where one of you is quietly quitting. You're doing the bare minimum. Your resentment and griping is building. Maybe you saw your My parents doing it, enduring something. And for Chris and I, in all of the doing, we lost that deep emotional connection to one another that we had worked so hard to build over the years. And resentment for me had started to really come in, and he could feel it. And the emotional connection that you have, that's the glue for your relationship. When it becomes really transactional, there will be resentment, and there was resentment on Chris's side, too. And that emotional connection is what was missing for Chris and I. The love was there underneath it all. But there was this mid-layer that had built up that made us really lose a connection to one another.

I remember this particular moment. It was right around, right before we went to therapy, a really close friend of ours saw us at a dinner that friends of ours had just invited a bunch of us over for a barbecue. And she called me the next day and she said, Is Chris okay? I said, Yeah, I think Chris is fine. Why? And she said, Something's wrong with him, Mel. I said, What do you mean? And she said, There's just something missing. The light behind his eyes is gone. There's normally this magnetic connection between the two of you. I haven't seen the two of you in a couple of years, but it's just something's wrong. She was right. What was wrong was Because number one, we were missing the connection. We were disconnected. And there were a lot of other things wrong, too. One of which I would come to learn is that Chris was really struggling with depression. And so that brings me to, well, what do you do? How do you get the connection back? Mel, if I'm going to hit the pause button and before I just shove the middle finger in the air and say, You're the problem.

I'm out of here. I'm I'm going to be happy. I'm leaving. I'm done. What do I want you to stop and think about before you do that? Well, there are six things that you got to do, in my personal opinion, that you can do and that do work. If Both of you are willing to work on it. Can we talk about that? Confusing being triggered with being in love. Dr. Franco, let's unpack this. Yeah.

If you're anxiously attached and you're triggered, someone's triggering your wounds of abandonment, and you're feeling high arousal because of that. You're feeling very strong emotions because you're feeling triggered and wounded. It's like hurt. Hurt is like a high arousal emotion, and so is excitement, and so is thrill. And so it can be easy to feel like, I like this person because they're making me feel high arousal, which is high arousal is present in pain, high arousal is present in excitement. And so you're being pulled in. It's funny. When I was more anxially attached to people, I'd be like, I would want to be with this person until they'd want to be with me. And then I'd feel like, oh, and now I'm less excited for some reason, right? And that's the sign that, oh, I was being pulled in by this wound of abandonment that they were triggering that made me want to find my sense of self again through getting them to like me. It was like I was trying to get my sense of self through being in the relationship with this avoided person. But in finding more security, it's more like I don't like feeling triggered.

I don't like feeling like someone's going to abandon me and they're not going to show up for me. I no longer feel like that's sexy or enthralling because I have a more positive sense of myself. I look for relationships that reflect my own positive sense of myself. And secure person is on their own side, and they're wanting to take care of themselves and make themselves feel safe, right? And so they're attracted to places that make them feel grounded and make them feel safe in that way.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot and talk about that same trigger versus love from an avoidant attachment person. What would they be feeling in terms of how they collapse a situation that's triggering with love?

So here's the confusing thing about attachment. When you're falling in love, it can sometimes replace your attachment style a bit. So it may take you a year to figure out what someone's attachment is. Like, everything can be going great, and you're connecting, and there's a lot of intimacy building. And then a year in, once you start living together, you're just like, who is this person? All of a sudden, they're so close off. All of a sudden, they're so demanding of me. Like, what the heck happened? It's because all of the chemicals that are released, this cocktail of chemicals, when you're falling in love can be so powerful that they might replace some of your underlying wounds and triggers and make you feel pulled into this relationship, even when you're afraid of intimacy. So you can carry both of those things at the same time. So sometimes you'll see people feeling secure with each other for a year when there's all of this cocktail of emotions, avoidantly attached people feeling comfortable with connection and intimacy. And then after a year, after some time, all of a sudden, those avoidant feelings come up, and all of a sudden, they're like, I want to get out of this.

All of a sudden, they're like, I need to pull away. All of a sudden, they're like, I feel really suffocated. All of a sudden, they're like, My partner expects too much out of me. And so that is the really confusing thing. That's why it's so hard. I don't know. Pat on the back to all of us who are just able to sustain healthy relationships because it's so, so, so hard. But I think that's what what we can tend to see. And I think the avoidant person, their template for intimacy is that people aren't going to respect their boundaries, is that they can't necessarily trust people. So when the anxiously attached person is pushing too much or not respecting their boundaries and demanding a lot from them, again, that's part of their template for intimacy. It's not that someone's going to be loving and hear them out and take their perspective into consideration. So in that way, the insecure The insecure attachment, it fine-tunes our expectations in relationships so that insecurely attached people, because their expectations of others are that other people will relate to them in an insecurely attached way, they're more willing to accept when someone does so in their life.

Whereas the securely attached person because their expectations of others is that you're going to treat me nicely, you're going to be loving towards me, you're going You're going to be accepting of me. You're going to be kind toward me. When people aren't that way, they're like, This isn't good for me, and this isn't a good fit for me.

You and I are going to have a conversation about the most important relationship that you have in life, and that's the relationship you have with yourself. I am going to introduce you to a habit that I want you to practice immediately. It is a habit that is based on profound research, and it is a habit that will help you improve improve the relationship you have with yourself. It will impact your happiness, your sense of control, your confidence. This is the Mac Daddy of all habits. You master this habit, you improve the relationship you have with yourself, and this is like the first domino. You know how in dominoes, when you line them up, there's that one domino that boom, you knock that sucker over and, I can't even... All the other dominoes fall. So we are talking about the gateway to creating a positive ripple effect in your life and improving improving the relationship with yourself. And also it is the secret, this habit, to self-acceptance and self-love. We know we should love ourselves. We should be kind to ourselves. We should accept ourselves. But nobody knows how to do it. And that's what this entire episode is about.

I am going to boil the how down to one extraordinarily simple habit, backed by a crazy amount of research that we will link to. And my own research study involving 175,000 people from 91 countries who tried this habit for five days in a row. So that means we've got data points that stack up to 175,000 times five. I don't even know what that number is, but it's pretty big. This works. It's high-fiving yourself every morning in the mirror as part of your morning routine. That's it. And I've got the research to prove it. I've got studies to prove it. And what we have found, based on our research, is that it takes less than five days for you to have an absolutely profound breakthrough in your relationship to yourself by simply adding a high five in the mirror once a morning to your morning routine after you brush your teeth. And at the end of this episode, I want you to stick around because you are going to hear one of the profound testimonials ever about the impact that one high five made on a woman's life named Chris. You're going to need to bring the Kleenex because this is so goosebumps, empowering, and encouraging, and exciting.

I'm not kidding. This is profound, profound, profound. And I know that you struggle with self-love because none of us know how to do it. I get questions on this every single freaking day. How do I love myself? I know I need to love myself, Mel, like this one from Maria. Hi, Mel. This is Maria from Spain. Can you explain how to learn to love yourself? I know I need to love myself as a part of my self truth, but no one tells you how to do that. I'm curious. Is there something I can do about that? I love this question because she's right. We all know we need to love ourselves, but how the hell do you do that when nobody has taught you how? I think the main reason why this concept of self-love is so hard to implement in our lives is because of the definition of love. If you look in the dictionary, love is defined as a feeling, but that's not what it is. Love is an action. And let's just take an example from your life. When you feel loved by somebody else, it's because of how they treat you.

It's because of what they say to you. For example, when Chris brings me a cup of coffee in the morning, I feel loved because of that When he says, I love you, Mel, I feel loved because of the action of speaking those words. But when it comes to loving ourselves, we're sitting around waiting for the feeling, and yet we're not recognizing the truth about love. You feel loved by other people when they demonstrate it through actions. The secret to self-love is demonstrating to yourself through your own actions toward yourself that you love yourself. And that's why the simple solution to having a breakthrough in loving yourself, the first domino that needs to fall, is something that I call the high five habit. This is a simple habit that I created That boiled down, is simply adding a high five in the mirror to yourself, to your morning routine. That's what the high five habit is. Now, one of the reasons why I love this habit is because it has so much research. And the habit's very simple. When you wake up tomorrow morning, get yourself out of bed, go into the bathroom, brush your teeth, and then after you brush your teeth, you're going to put your toothbrush down.

And the reason why I want you to do it after you brush your teeth is because I want to use some science called habit stacking. I want this to be part of your morning routine, what you're about to do. And so I want you to do it right after something that you do every morning, brushing your teeth. That way, your brain will encode this high five habit even faster. And here comes the most important part. As you put the toothbrush down, you are going to look in the mirror. This is the hardest part of the high five habit. You're going to look in the mirror, and I don't want you to look through the person in the mirror. I want you to realize there's a human being that's standing in the mirror there with you every morning in the bathroom, and you have either ignored them or you You have looked at all of the things you don't like about that person, whether it's the weight that you've put on, or it's the bags under your eyes, or for me, it's one boob hanging lower than the other boob. You sit there and judge that person, or based on our research and studies, 50% of men and women cannot or will not look at themselves in the mirror.

And the reason is so freaking sad. It's because they don't like the person they've become, or they They have so many regrets in life about things that they did or the place that they thought that they would be that they can't and won't look at themselves in the mirror. And if you can't look at yourself in the mirror, Let's just stop at that right there, because what do you do with somebody you love? What's the action when you see somebody you love? You look them in the eyes. That gaze, eye to eye, gives you not not only dopamine, but the oxytocin that is in your brain. It is powerful. It's an act of love to really make eye contact and hold a gaze with love and compassion behind it. So if you can't do that and you're not doing that, you're every morning demonstrating, not love, you're demonstrating rejection and criticism. And so first step of the high five habit, you are going to put your toothbrush down and you're going to look at yourself in the eye. And it's going to feel weird if you don't normally do this. And the next part of this is very simple.

Whenever you feel ready, you're going to raise your hand, and you're going to high five the person you see in the mirror. Now, one of two things will happen when you do this. And again, I have so much data on this. I know, because we've studied what happens. What's going to happen when you go to high five the mirror is you will either laugh laugh out loud, and you'll laugh out loud because it's dorky and funny. That's what I did the first time I high five myself in the mirror. But you're also laughing because your brain recognizes a high five. One of the coolest things about high fiving yourself in the mirror is the science involved. It's called neurobics. You're using research in a field called neurobics, which is when you marry a physical action with a new positive thought you want to Great. They've studied this at MIT. They've studied it all over the world. It is the fastest way to create new neuropathways and new thought patterns, to marry physical action like a high five with a new thought. Here's where the high five in the mirror gets really cool. So you're leveraging neurobics, all of this physical activity plus neuroscience.

You're also getting the benefit of the release of dopamine. You're also getting the benefit of the fact that your Your brain and your body knows what a high five is because you've been high-fiving people your whole life, right? You've seen high fives in sports, on television. You know exactly what a high five is. A high five is something that you give somebody a physical action when you're cheering for them, when you're encouraging them. A high five is something that you give to somebody when you're proud of them. Great shot. Good job on that test. And a high five is also something that you give to another human being whenever Or they need encouragement. So think about standing on the side of a road race. You don't cross your arms and scowl at people. You high five people and cheer for them because you're trying to say, I see you. I see that this race is hard. Keep going. You got this. If you're on a sports team and you blow a play, when you come to the huddle, a high five from a coach or a teammate says, Shake it off. I believe in you.

Now get back in the game. And so what's so cool about this high five habit to yourself in the mirror is that a lifetime of positive programming neurologically, already in your brain, gets aimed right back at your reflection. And so you are physically demonstrating with this simple habit in less than five seconds every single morning that you, yes, you, you take actions that show that you believe in, you love, and you encourage the person in the mirror. Now, another reason why I love this habit is you don't have to think anything. All of the wiring that is already in your brain and in your nervous system, it does the work for you silently. As I mentioned, there is so much research, and we're going to just put just dozens and dozens and dozens of studies. But I want to also point out that there are two studies that are really important. One of them was done with the MBA, and I'm just going to cut to the chase on this study. They wanted to know if there were any habits that winning teams had that the losing teams in the NBA didn't have in the preseason.

It turned out, after crunching all the data, and this has been verified by the Wall Street Journal, too, beyond the study that these scientists did, that the top four teams in the NBA, in fact, do have a habit in the preseason that the losing teams do not. You want to know what that habit is? You guessed it. They have more high fives, fist bumps, pats on the back in the preseason among team members than any of the other teams. Why? Well, because a high five isn't just an action and a physical gesture that means nothing. A high five actually says, I am with you. It builds trust, it builds partnership, it builds belief. And you can build that back in yourself by adding the high five in the mirror every single morning as part of your morning routine. There was another study done with kids, where they made a bunch of kids take these math tests, and these researchers wanted to know what's the best way to encourage someone through a challenging moment. And they found that it wasn't words of encouragement, like, Hey, you're a great student. It wasn't the growth mindset words like, Hey, really admire how hard you're working.

You want to know the single best way to motivate kids to do something challenging, it's to say nothing and to give them a high five. This was so profound that the researchers, and we'll link to this study, changed the name of the study. To include the surprising power of a high five, the surprising motivational power of a high five. That's how exciting this is. I think you can hear this because I stumbled onto this by a mistake. I started high-fiving myself right after I had gotten fired, basically, from hosting my own talk show, and I needed to give myself a pick me up. And I just instinctually, one morning, raised my hand and high-fived the mirror. And the immediate effect that I felt of the dopamine in my mind and the boost in my mood and this sense of, okay, I got it. I can do this. I can face this. Having my own back, demonstrating it to myself during a really low moment It was the beginning, that first domino that fell, of an entirely new relationship with myself. It's what led me to get into intensive therapy and to start getting serious about my happiness.

I think you know Everything comes back to you and the relationship that you have with yourself. And so we're going to go deep on this, because the relationship that you have with yourself is the single most important thing in the world. And in addition to sharing this research and this simple habit with you, I want to unpack some of the things that people experience when they do it, because I've had so many questions about this, like this one from Theresa. How do I stop beating myself up and forgive myself for my past mistakes? I can't believe how many years you waste beating yourself up for past mistakes. And the reason why we do that is we don't know how to forgive ourselves because we don't know how to accept ourselves. We don't know how to accept the failures, the regrets, the disappointments. We don't know how to accept. We don't know how to love ourselves through it. And that's where, honest God, this simple habit of demonstrating it every morning in the mirror as part of your morning routine changes everything. And we got to take a short break for our sponsors, but don't you dare go anywhere, because Because I have so much to share with you, and I'm going to invite my husband, Chris, to come and join us.

Because when I first shared this high five habit thing that I had discovered a couple of years ago with him, when I first stumbled into doing it for myself, he thought it was the stupidest thing he had ever heard. And of course, because I'm relentless and annoying, I was like, But you got to do it for five days. You got to try it. You got to And what happened when he tried it for five days was both life-changing, profound, and it was heartbreaking for me to hear as a spouse just how much my husband was struggling. And how the simple assignment of looking yourself in the eyes was impossible for him to do at that time. I love this topic, and I love what we're about to talk about, which is what research says about bringing more love into your life. And these are simple things that you can start doing right now, like as soon as you're done listening to this. So let's talk about the first one. And the first way that you can do this is every single day, just do something on purpose to make someone else feel like they matter to you.

That's it. That's all that this takes. I kid you not. You don't need to grab the microphone at your school system and tell everybody in the school system that you love them and believe them. I mean, that would be a wonderful thing to do. But if you were to just do something on purpose to make someone feel like they matter to you, that is enough. I love this quote from Mother Teresa, Spread love wherever you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier. So here's how you can do this. If someone pops into your mind, I'm going to wait. Just take a minute. Let's let someone that you love. You haven't talked to him in a while. You're expanding this definition. Maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a classmate, maybe it's an old neighbor, maybe it's a sister-in-law that got divorced from your brother. I don't know who it is. Maybe it's a former teacher. Maybe you love the person that taught your puppy classes because your dog is now housebroken and well-trained. Don't you love that person? Of course you love that person. So here's what you're going to do. Now that you have a person in mind, I want you to go through your photos on your phone and find a photo of them or the past or your dog or whatever, and text them the photo and just say, I loved spending this day with you, or I love this photo because it reminds me of you, or I love this because it makes me think of your laugh, and I miss you.

That is it. That is it. It is literally that little that will bring the experience of love into your life. And there are two pieces of research I want to pull into our conversation because most of you will listen to me and you won't do it. And I'm going to remind you, this is not just a listening podcast, it's a doing podcast. You can listen to me all day, talk all the time about love, but you got to do something. And the research here is really, really cool. So there is this incredible study called the Harvard Study of Adult Development. And the lead investigator is a guy by the name of Dr. Robert Wauwinger. And he says that the number one reason why people struggle in relationships and struggle to feel this deep connection that you matter is for the same reason you struggle in other areas of your life. You ready? You worry about whether or not you're doing it right. You literally think of somebody, your college roommate, you start to pull out photos, and you're like, Is that the right photo? Should I send that photo? I don't know. Is right now the right thing?

Or you think you have to do it a certain way. It's simply not true. There is no wrong way to do this. If you're simply reaching out to somebody to say, I'm thinking about you. I love this about you. Boom. You cannot get that wrong. And there's this other amazing study from the University of Chicago that basically says, even turning to a stranger and chatting up and having a conversation with a stranger creates this feeling like you matter. I'm going to do a brag right now. I'm freaking awesome at this. I am so awesome at this. In fact, just this morning, I was eating breakfast alone at a hotel, and I was sitting at the bar area, and I had ordered my breakfast, and a guy came over to refill the coffee, and we just started chatting. I can tell you, he does not like living in Los Angeles. He grew up in Southern Illinois. He tried the Hollywood entertainment thing and discovered that he really likes intellectual property. He misses the Four Seasons. He wants to go to law school. He's been thinking about applying to law schools in New York, Boston, and Washington, DC.

He has just spent $1,800 for a prep class to take the LSAT. How do I know all these details? Because we started talking, and I started asking him questions, and we got into this deep conversation because I was just interested. Now, how do you think he felt when he walked away from pouring that coffee? He felt like he mattered. And you want to know how I felt? I felt the love coming right on back, the big smile, the questions back. And this study from the University of Chicago, it basically confirms what I'm telling you, that you never predict how happy a random social interaction with a stranger will make you. Like turning to the person next to you on the bus, or chatting with the person behind you in the line at the grocery store. That just that can open up something that makes you feel like you matter a little bit. Make somebody else shake out of this sense of social isolation or let their just walking through their life invisible. Somebody that somebody sees them, and that somebody is you. And that study from the University of Chicago also says you completely overestimate, quote, the mess of talking to somebody else.

And you don't even think about how beneficial it is. And here's simple ways that you can do it. So Our FedEx driver. I guess I have something with the folks that drive delivery trucks. But you want to know what? Our FedEx driver? I've never even met the person who drives a FedEx truck because I'm always upstairs in the office when the FedEx comes. But do you know You know what the FedEx driver does? He puts these two little dog bones on top of the packages. And that's even when our dogs aren't there. That's an act of love. Making our family feel like we matter, noticing that we have dogs. That is love right there. And do not underestimate what a big deal that is. Or maybe the bus driver, when the bus driver picks up the kids every morning, they got a funny hat on or a bow tie. Have you ever told them how much you love that about them? That level of intentionality personality. That is a sign of love. You matter to me. That's why I'm dressing up. I want to make this fun. I'm putting the effort in. Why wouldn't you tell somebody that you love that about them?

Like not telling them? That is some stingy-ass stuff you're doing right there. Do not hold that in. Or how about this? How many times have you been in the grocery store and you're standing there because you're like, Okay, where is the Cilentro? It looks like everything else. Is that personally? Is it Cilentro? And next to you is somebody working at the grocery store, and they are meticulously stacking the zucchini to look like art. How hard is it to turn to that person and say, I just love your attention to detail? Thank you for doing that. You make this look so nice. How do you think it makes that person feel? Absolutely unbelievable. Absolutely unbelievable to feel the power of appreciation. I talk about this a lot when I'm giving presentations to, corporations and doing trainings. There's something called the law of reciprocity. Have you ever heard of this thing? The law of reciprocity. This is so good. This is so intertwined with love. This is why you need to express it more. You need to be more generous with it because you are missing out on one of the most incredible All forces out there, the law of reciprocity.

You do nice by me, I do nice by you. And I'm going to give you an example. Have you ever walked into a mall or a building that has a double set of doors. You got to open that first door, and then you walk into the vestibule, and then there's a second door. If you've ever had that experience, and somebody gets to the door before you and they hold open that first door, and you walk past them and through the vestibule, right? Into the second door. What do you do? You hold the door for them. You basically trip over yourself to get that door open for them. Why? Because by holding the door, they did something nice to you. They made you feel like you matter. And it is part of human nature, the law of reciprocity, to reciprocate. You can be the first domino. The more effusive and generous you are, I love you. I love that you did that. Thank you for showing up. I love this about you. I love that day we spent together. The law of reciprocity kicks in, and you start to experience it back. The second way that you can bring more love into your life.

Let's look at some of the research from the number one love researcher, Dr. John Gottman. Dr. John Gottman was asked, What's the best thing to do to improve any relationship? And you want to know what he said? Be a good listener. Be a good listener. I already mentioned the Harvard study of Adult Development, right? Which is one of the most important studies of all time about relationships. It's basically cited in probably every personal development book that you read. Do you want to know the most basic and important form of love based on this 70-year study at Harvard? Attention. Because when you give somebody your attention, you put the phone down, or better yet, you put it away, and you look somebody in the eyes, and you listen. You're giving them attention, which makes them feel and know that they matter, which unlocks this experience of being loved by you. A lot of us have had the experience of not feeling loved by your parents. Why? Because you didn't get their attention. You didn't feel visible. You didn't feel like you mattered, which is why you didn't feel loved, and why you feel like this is some transactional thing that you have to earn.

No, it's not. Not at all. When you give people your time and attention, you are making them feel like they matter. And in fact, that brings me back to this podcast and to my newsletter, and to YouTube. Every time you tune in, you are giving me your attention. And I do not take that lightly. You make me feel like I matter, which is why I say, I love you. Thank you. I love that you give me your attention. I do not take that lightly, which is why I pour my heart and soul into trying to put something out that lifts you up and feels worthy of your time, because I want you to know that you matter to me. And now let's talk about the third way that you can bring more love into your life. And I've been hinting at this sucker hard, and I've been doing it. Tell them. Tell them. In fact, if there's somebody that you love and you don't want to say it, send them this episode. I'll tell them. If somebody sent you this episode, they want you to know they love you, and that you matter to them, and that they're sorry they don't say it more, and that they're going to start saying it more, and that they really just love you.

They want you to know that. And this is so important, especially especially in the moment of time that we're living in. I worry so much about how isolated so many of you are. I worry about those of you that write in and say, I'm the only person that says this to you. I don't want that for you. I am happy that I am providing so much empowerment and inspiration, and I want you to know that I do love you, but I want you to experience this more. And it is my request that one of the things that you do is you take this episode and you really apply what I'm saying. And the next time you go to the grocery store, or the next time you're sitting on the bus, or the next time you're talking to your sister, you be the one to say it. Don't sit around waiting for somebody else to say it. You be the one to text that friend you haven't talked to and send him that photo and say, You know, I just really loved that day, and I I just wanted to reach out and say, I'm mad that we don't live near each other, but I love you anyway.

Ha, ha, ha. I promise you, you start giving it out, it'll start coming back to you. I think this is especially important in families, that there are some families that are like, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, and we're a little bit like that in our family. And then there are those families where you never say it. I have a very, very good friend who is in his late in his 50s, and his dad's health is declining. And just a couple of weeks ago was the very first time, as his father was laying there in a hospital, that his dad said to him, I love you, and I'm so proud of you. And I'm going to tell you something. My friend had been waiting his entire life to hear those words. And I think we make the mistake of assuming people know how we feel about them. And maybe you grew up in a family that doesn't hug, isn't that affectionate, doesn't say those three words. I'm here to tell you something. You're listening to this podcast for a reason, because you're the one that's supposed to break that cycle.

You're the one that's supposed to break the dam. My friend has been telling his dad that he loves him for as long as he can remember. And two weeks ago was the first time he heard it back, and it was so worth the wait. And something interesting happened. I was talking to him the other day, and he just had to laugh. He's like, I don't know what the hell happened. Maybe he said, Every time I talk to him now, he's like, I love you. I love you. I tell him, My wife, I love you. Because now he understands how good it feels. Now that his time is limited, he doesn't want to miss out on experiencing what that's like and what it brings into your life. And so it's not just about waiting around to receive it. It's about giving it and giving it and giving it. And it is never too late to tell somebody that, ever. Okay. Just letting that sit in for a minute. I'm thinking about all the people I love. I'm about to go see my husband Chris, and we're going to go see our daughter, and then we're going to go back home.

And I'm just thinking about all the people that I love in my life. And even though I've never met you, I am thinking about you. Whether you're in your car, or you're walking your dog, or you're fold in your laundry, or you're taking a walk, or you're at the gym, or you're watching me on YouTube, I wanted to be sure, in case nobody else tells you, to tell you that I love you, and I believe in you, and I believe in your ability to change your life and to feel and give and receive and experience more love in your life. I really love the fact that every time you tune in, you absolutely make me feel like I matter, and I love you. Hey, it's Mel. Thank you so much for being here. If you enjoyed that video, by God, please subscribe because I don't want you to miss a thing. Thank you so much for being here. We've got so much amazing stuff coming. Thank you so much for sending this stuff to your friends and your family. I love you. We create these videos for you, so make sure you subscribe.