Ask Jay: How Do I Let Go?

And I hope you're being a little patient with yourself, but you deserve it.

And yeah, I'll talk to you soon. We have all had those moments where our minds are racing from a difficult conversation. Reeling from the aftermath of a toxic situation, all just feeling overwhelmed by the weight of the day. In these moments, human connection is what we need, and texting someone or emailing them just doesn't make sense. I get so many of my friends who will say to me, "J, it's just too much to type. I need to voice no you."

Real viewers and listeners are recording voice notes about everyday situations, and I'm listening to each one so we can unpack them together. Thank you so much for calling in, it's good to hear your voice. Today we're diving into your stories about letting go.

Whether it's the person you cannot stop thinking about, despite how they treated you, a betrayal you cannot seem to forget, or the closure you never received.

We are tackling it all. I've listened to every voice note you said, and I'm here to help us unpack these situations together. Are you ready? Hi, Dream. I have an ex-boyfriend. He broke up with me on Valentine's Day this year, and our end of the relationship was pretty bad for me, seems like not for him. And I was trying to fix this relationship with communication and asking for a couple therapy and try to communicate. But the end was pretty bad. We were arguing and fighting a lot.

And yeah, he broke up with me, and it wasn't a clear cut because sometimes we are still talking, but just when he wants it. Today he's visiting me because it was a long-distance relationship, and he's still making me hope like bread crumbling.

“And my question is, how can I overcome this need to be a good girl and to finally choose myself without feeling bad for it?”

Even though my biggest wish, because of trauma bonding, is to end up with this person, also my head knows it is not the right decision to beg for love.

First of all, I'm so sorry that you're going through this breakup.

And second of all, being broken up with on any day is terrible, being broken up with on Valentine's Day, or your birthday, or an anniversary, or Christmas, or on the holidays, is the worst. It sounds like you invested a lot in this relationship. Sounds like you may time for it, sounds like you put in a lot of effort. The fact that you encouraging couples therapy, these are all signs that you really believed in this relationship that it mattered to you, that it was important to you. And the reason I raised that is because when you're offering things like couple therapy, you're really saying, "Hey, can we find time to work on us?

Can we create a space where this matters? I really believe in what we're building? Can we take some time to actually invest in it together?" And of course, from what it sounds like, those bits for affection, those bits for commitment, those bits for investment were not reciprocated. It sounds like he wasn't someone who wanted to go to couples therapy. It sounds like he wasn't someone who was meeting you where you were trying to meet the relationship. And I think what's fascinating is that this word reciprocation has just become one of my favorite words in relationships, especially in our primary relationships.

So we have secondary and tertiary relationships, whether it be friends, whether it be family members, we don't see often. But what's interesting is that the person you spend your life with is the only primary relationship you actually choose. The other primary relationship are your parents, if you have any siblings or the people you grow up around. Those were primary relationships you didn't choose.

“But the primary relationship you choose in your life is your partner.”

And if your primary relationship doesn't have reciprocation, doesn't have investment, doesn't have effort in the way that you're bringing into a relationship. That's a sign that you're almost having the relationship for the both of you. You're almost carrying a relationship that requires two people to be in it, but you're carrying all the weight yourself. Think about going to a grocery store and you're shopping with your partner. You pay for it, you buy the eggs, the milk, the bread, whatever else it may be.

And then you're on your way back, but you're carrying all the weight. You're the one unpacking it when you get home. You're the one putting it in the refrigerator. You're the one cooking that night. And the other person's there, but they're not helping you carry the weight.

“The question you really have to ask yourself in this scenario is, is that the type of relationship I want?”

Is that the kind of experience that I want to have? And a lot of us will tolerate things like that.

Or maybe they're going through some stress. Or maybe they're going through a really difficult moment right now. And that's really fair. There are phases like that in relationships where you all carry more of the load and they'll carry more at different times. What I'm hearing from you is different.

It's one sided. That can really mess with our heads. And I just want to acknowledge and express some empathy to you as to how much of a mind-bender that is. When you're like, "Wait a minute, I was the one doing everything right. I was the one trying to maintain this relationship.

But you're the one taking it away from me." And that can make us start to question ourselves. Well, if it can make us start to question where we belong, it can make us start to question whether we made a mistake. This episode of On Purpose is presented by Ultra Running.

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Go to ultrarunning.com/On Purpose and use Code Purpose 10 for 10% off. That's ALTRA Running.com/On Purpose. Stay out there. Now, I want to move on to the second part of what you're reflecting on and what you're thinking about.

This idea that he talks to you when he wants to. You call it breadcrumming. This idea that someone keeps giving you a little breadcrum along the way to keep you following. Right, to keep you engaged. It's almost like you're waiting for the next breadcrum just to prove to yourself.

That this person still likes you. But the great thing is you've acknowledged that you've become aware of it. Do you want to be in a relationship where someone breadcrumbs you? But then disappear when they don't want to engage.

“Do you want to be in a relationship where someone comes to see you when they're in town?”

But then you're not sure where you stand with them.

These are really powerful questions for you to reflect on because I think the answer will be extremely obvious to you

when you take some stillness. You're in solitude, take some time by yourself and actually really check in with your body. Really feel in your body. What does it feel like to be breadcrummed? What does it feel like to be ignored?

What does it feel like to be devalued? What does it feel like to be de-prioritised? When you actually take a moment to not just think about it intellectually but to feel it physically, your answer becomes much, much clearer. You know you mentioned that you feel like you have this trauma bond which makes you feel like you kind of want to be with this person.

You still have this desire pulling you towards this person. Now that can be for a multitude of reasons. It can be because of how we were loved by our parents or unloved by our parents and now we're seeking that pattern. We're repeating that pattern or repeating the opposite. It could be that some part of you doesn't want to be alone.

It could be that some part of you really likes this person. Really loves this person. Has built up some affection for them. It could be that a part of you loves the role you play in their lives and you don't want to lose that role. And at the very base level it could just be habit.

You've had a habit of this person being in your life. Maybe you text them in the morning, maybe they text you, maybe you call them in the evening they call you. But what we miss when we start getting nostalgic about all those moments is what you said a bit earlier. You talked about how it's been really bad, there's been lots of arguing, lots of fighting. It's really easy to get something I call relationship amnesia.

Relationship amnesia is where you forget all the bad things and only remember the good things. Or you forget all the good things and you only remember the bad things. Think about an average 24 hours in your relationship. Think about an average 72 hours in your relationship. Not a birthday, not an anniversary, not a special moment, just an average 72 hours.

Did you feel safe? Did you feel fulfilled? And did you feel heard? Was this person present with you?

“Did they give you the opportunity to express your feelings?”

Did they meet your emotions and feelings with presence and support? Or were they dismissive neglectful or distant? I want to address this point that you made about overcoming your need to be a good girl and finally choosing yourself and not feeling bad for it.

It's incredible how many of our stay-in relationships because we don't want to look like the bad person.

We know we're compromising our needs. We know we're putting ourselves second or seventh. We know we're deprotising ourselves. Self-abandonment is not love. Self-sacrifice is not love.

Losing yourself is not love. So even if you lost yourself and got someone to love you, that isn't love. And so when you say you want to overcome this need of wanting to be the good girl and not feel bad for it,

You believe that if you have your needs, that in some way that makes you a bad person, it makes you selfish. It makes you needy, whatever else it may be that you say to yourself. What I want you to do is look at all the other evidence in your life that you're a good person.

“Talk to your closest friends, talk to your family, remember that loves you, talk to your colleagues.”

You have so much other proof that you're still a good person and you can still have needs in your relationship. You don't become a bad person because you let someone down in your relationship. It doesn't change your entire identity and often what we're really struggling with is this transformation of how we see ourselves. Recognizing I can say no, recognizing I can have needs, recognizing I can tell you what I need from this relationship and that doesn't make me a bad person. This tendency to people please, this tendency to overcome and say, actually takes us further away from ourselves.

Hi, I'm a 40-year-old woman and for six years I've been in a relationship with a father of my younger child. Throughout the relationship there was addiction, repeated lying, manipulation, gas lining, emotional abuse and at times physical violence. Looking back I realized I slowly stopped trusting my own perception of reality.

Since January we call ourselves living apart, but emotionally we never really separated.

Relationship followed the pattern where he would sometimes suddenly decide we were over. Call himself single, pursue sex or at the women and come back wanting us to be together again. I stayed because I always believed love and version of him was the real one and that the rest would eventually stop. We now have a young daughter together so we still have contact. I'm in therapy and I'm trying to rebuild my life.

But emotionally I know why I left, but emotionally I still question myself. Some days I miss him terribly out of days I feel release. I don't know if what I'm feeling is love, grief, hope or the effects of years of manipulation. I don't even know if I can trust my own intuition anymore.

“I think my question is, how do you know when you're being true to yourself?”

How can you tell the difference between genuine love and a trauma bond after years and emotional abuse? And if you're lost trust in your own instincts because of gas lining, how do you find your way back?

First of all, I'm so sorry you had to live through someone's addiction, repeated lying manipulation, gas lying emotional abuse.

And as you say even at times physical violence, I want to make sure that we direct anyone who's suffering from emotional or physical violence and abuse to the right places. So please take a look at the details we have here. You know what I believe it's extremely natural to be as confused last and experiencing all these different emotions at the same time. You talk about how you stayed because you was believed the loving version of him was the real one and the rest would eventually stop.

“And I think that's such a human thing to do.”

We give people grace, we even forgive them, we brush things under the rug or the carpet, we just move forward hoping that the good parts stand the bad parts leave.

And I think when you say that I don't know if what I'm feeling is love, grief, hope or the effects of years of manipulation, the answer is you're actually feeling all of them.

Because like you loved this person, but you're also grieving the version of them you thought they could become. It sounds like you hoped for a future that would be better, but you're experiencing the reality of how they actually treat you, whether it's pursuing other people for sex or whether it's mistreating you. But at the same time it sounds like even though you have days you missed them, there is a part of you that genuinely feels relieved and hopefully a little bit more safe and self preserving.

So I just want to acknowledge how difficult and challenging and complicated the situation is for you because you've been on an emotional roller coaster. I'm so glad that you've got distance from the emotional roller coaster so that you can actually look back on it. It's literally like looking back at a physical roller coaster going, "Oh, that's the part that we went up and down."

And so this distance that you have right now is so important and so valuable.

And it's natural, as you're looking back on the relationship, you're noticing the highs, you're noticing the lows, and you're trying to make sense of it. Your first question is, "How do you know when you're being true to yourself?" I'd actually argue that you were being honest and true to yourself. You could tell that someone was trying to manipulate you. You could tell that someone was gas-lying you. You could tell that you were experiencing someone who is lying to you. And of course, physical and emotional abuse was happening to you as well.

“I think the challenge is like all good humans, you've all said belief, you've all said hope, and these are wonderful things to have, but they're really dangerous things to have when you're with someone who doesn't ought to receive them.”

When you're with someone who's acting in the way that this individual is with you, your second question is, "How can you tell the difference between genuine love and a trauma bond after years of emotional abuse?"

For those of you that do or do not know, a trauma bond is strong emotional attachment that develops between a person and someone who's abusive, manipulative, or harmful.

It often forms to a repeated cycle of mistreatment followed by periods of kindness, affection, or remorse, making it difficult for the person experiencing the abuse to leave the relationship. I think you'd agree that that sounds like your experience too. The contrast between fear, hurt and relief can make the positive moments feel especially meaningful, even when the overall relationship is unhealthy. That's not love. That's a trauma bond. It's a hard truth to accept that what you thought was love was a trauma bond, that what you thought was a relationship of someone's kindness and love was actually this unpredictable behavior that you were going through.

“I think your last question is the most important thing we need to focus on. You say, "If you lost trust in your own instincts because of gas lying, how do you find your way back?" I'm so, so happy to hear you asked that question.”

Because you have known in your body mind and heart all along that this relationship has been unhealthy for you, you're aware of that, and somehow we start mistrusting the very feelings that are being more honest with us.

We may be trust the other person's kindness, but we don't trust our own intuition. We trust the other person's hope giving and we don't trust our own pain.

I want you in this moment to allow yourself to trust the pain to trust the experience that you know you've had, no matter how heavy and hard it feels. With the help of your therapist, I want you to allow yourself to go there and go to the hardest darkest, most difficult parts of this experience to acknowledge what you've actually gone through, because I'm guessing that there's parts of you that are even trying to avoid that.

“And so the way you go back to trusting yourself is allowing yourself to feel everything in this moment that you naturally want to feel.”

If you want to cry, you need to let yourself cry. If you're feeling heavy, let yourself feel heavy. If you're looking back at a moment that happened and you felt that you were misled, mistreated, or whatever it is that you went through, allow yourself to feel that, because that's you giving yourself permission to feel it. The same space that you gave that person to acknowledge that kindness, I want you to give yourself that space that same part of you that was giving them the understanding, I want you to give yourself that understanding.

And you will start to trust yourself when you start keeping small promises to yourself. If you promise yourself that you want to be out of contact with that person, you'll rebuild trust. If you promise yourself that you deserve this time for yourself to just do therapy and work through it, you'll start to trust yourself. There's something I want to share with you called the Love As Action Test. This is a great tool to discern between your feelings and how you were treated. Often we love someone who treats us badly.

Often we have affection for someone who doesn't know how to reciprocate or receive our love. Often we feel these intense emotions towards someone and we miss them even when they were the ones causing us pain. And so the Love As Action Test is I want you to measure the relationship by how you were treated rather than by how intensely you feel about them. That answer usually clarifies so much for you so you can literally get a piece of paper, put a line down the middle. And on one side I want you to write down how you felt treated and on the other side write down how you feel about them and notice how they don't corroborate.

Notice how there isn't a parallel line between the two that the way you were treated doesn't make sense for how you treat the person and how you feel about them.

Send my avoidant withdrawal man after a ten month relationship and things because the cycle was just too exhausting for both but there was love there but he ended it firmly very firmly and I'm not accepting it.

“I continue to reach out with hope and love and wishing that we could have worked things out but he doesn't respond.”

My question is what's what's he thinking even though I know he cares how come it's so easy for him to walk away.

Thank you so much for your question. As I was listening to you, I was realizing that as an anxious attachment female, it's natural that you're continuing to reach out. It's natural that you hope and have this desire wishing that things could have worked out. And it's natural for you to want to repair those are very common traits and so that makes sense. The challenges that as you pointed out to me, you're with a semi-avoidant withdrawal man and the way that person's responding is what creates the confusion.

So without knowing you both better, it's hard for me to really deduce how your attachment styles affect you and affect your particular situation, but there are some patterns in attachment theory that can be helpful for us. If someone with a more avoidant attachment style ends a relationship with someone who has a more anxious attachment style, they might be experiencing a few of these thoughts. They may think this relationship just feels overwhelming, right? You're looking for that constant assurance, you're looking for constant connection, they're thinking, oh, this is too overwhelming for me.

You're probably listening to me, say then, you're thinking, no, I wasn't too much, I wasn't asking for that much connection. And I wanted you to hold onto that thought, I'll come back to you in a second. That person may be thinking, I just need space to think. The distance makes them feel like they can get emotional balance back. They could be thinking, when there's just not compatible, right? It's not really about conflict, I just don't think we're right for each other. And I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, but we are right for each other, we can make it work, we can repair it, we can solve it, right? And hold onto that thought.

And then they could be thinking, I don't want to disappoint them, often people are avoiding. May have a lack of self-worth, they may, like, believe in themselves and meeting their partners emotional needs can make them feel quite discouraged. This episode is brought to you by Walden University.

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Certified to operate by chef, tempo learning, available in select programs. Now here's what I wanted to get to. How much did it help you when I tried to predict any of their potential thoughts?

I'm guessing you had a response to each and every one of the potential thoughts that I said they might have. Your question of what are they thinking? Only works if you have the opportunity to ask them, which you don't, it seems that way. But trying to guess is going to drive you around in circles. So instead of trying to figure out what they're thinking, I would work on acceptance, accepting that they were firm and very firm, accepting that they are being consistent by not replying to your messages, by not communicating.

And getting to a place of trying to accept the reality is far better than trying to understand what they're thinking. They could be thinking, this was too difficult. They could be thinking, I'm not good enough. They could be thinking, I can't make this work anymore. They could be thinking, I'm not compatible. But what they're doing is even more important than what they're thinking. Often people are inconsistent, this person is being consistent and as painful and as harsh and as stressful and difficult that is for you.

And with you right there, I, it's the worst feeling in the world, but the reality is you get the opportunity to rise above it and work on accepting it.

“Because why would you want to be with someone who doesn't want to be with you? Why would you want to keep chasing someone who isn't even responding to you?”

Why would you want to keep checking up on someone who doesn't have the capacity to do that for you? And yes, your mind will say there was love and there was care and there was affection and yeah, I'm sure there was that.

And I know that's painful, I know that's harsh, but it's the inconvenient truth of this moment.

His silence is the answer that you keep refusing to hear. And the search for what he's thinking is the addiction promising relief that never comes or never arrive.

There's a collection of essays by Cheryl Strade called Tiny Beautiful Things and she has a passage that ends with acceptance is a small choir room. It's all about holding on with everything you have and realizing there's finally no choice but to let go. You could spend a month, 12 months, a few years trying to figure out what he thinks, why he thinks that, why he feels that way. Or you could take all of that energy and all of the lessons from this relationship and direct it towards yourself and a new one.

See, we were so many months and years trying to figure out why people did what they did, why they said what they did, who they were, who they're becoming, rather than focusing on who we're becoming and who we want to be and how these lessons can set us up for success in our next relationship. I encourage you to ask yourself this, is it worth your time to try and figure out an answer that you never know is true or not? Or ever be satisfied with, or is it better to accept and allow yourself to move on?

To allow yourself to say this was ten months where I learned a lot of lessons, maybe something inside you was awakened, maybe you learned something about yourself. And how can you take all of that energy, all of that goodness that you have and direct it towards yourself and someone else? Someone who wants to receive it, someone who wants to accept all of you, someone who's willing to work hard and repair to the level you do. It's beautiful and amazing that you want to repair, it's incredible that you want to fix, it's incredible that you still have hope and you wish for a better future.

Why not direct that towards someone who wants the same with you? And now it's time for the journey, a new segment brought to you by Mazda. Too often we're so focused on what's next that we forget to appreciate the moments along the way. Whether you're driving walking or simply moving through your day, the journey is where we notice the little things, connect with people around us and find unexpected clarity.

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Me and my girlfriend, we did it for about two years or March 2024 to May of 26. As of March 26, she asked for a break. She just wanted to focus on herself. This resulted in her focusing on herself, but also seeing other people. And well, if you're one person where she may be shared, experiences that I've actually shared with me. But broke up with her as of May of 2026 and she really, really wants a second chance as she will grow.

And I said, "You just need to grow on your own, work on your relationship with the Lord."

“Whatever it is, you need to do to be healed because what you did to me was not fair and you'd like to be about it.”

My question is Jay, "What do I do? Do I give it time?" And see if we can reconcile in a few months for her to grow in for myself to heal.

Or is it time to move on to be with someone who would never do this to me?

It is difficult because I do see her as my best friend.

I know you were asking whether you should give her another chance or move on. And I actually think there's a question even before that. And it's, "Have you addressed or have you reconciled whether what the break was meant to do was achieved?" She asked for a break because she wanted more independence. She wanted to focus on herself And then we're being moved into this other direction where she had relationships during that break

that have led to things that have affected your trust. So there's almost two separate things there. And I would almost pull it back and really look at whether she was able to achieve what you wanted on that break. Have you shared how you felt about that break? Have you had an opportunity to speak about what you went through?

What you went through in the pain and the challenges that came with that?

“I think that's really, really important because otherwise, we're skipping a step.”

The other thing I'd like to say to you is that you don't have to make a decision today.

And the reality is that instead of feeling the pressure, we need to focus on what to measure.

And what you really measuring this moment is, is this person willing to change? Have they taken accountability? Can they actually show the behaviors and the understanding that you would require for a new relationship? Maybe you both didn't define what a break effectively was. Maybe you did, and that's why you feel lied to.

It's not about getting back with someone that you had this wonderful relationship with or good feelings towards. It's being able to create the boundaries to move forward effectively and healthily. When trust has been broken, it has to be rebuilt. When there's been distance and separation, connection has to be rebuilt. You're not going backwards to where you were because you're not the same people today, you have to go forward to who you might become.

Right, I think sometimes we just think, "Oh, I can just go back to being who we were and know you can't." She's changed, you've changed, you've both been through experiences, even your relationship has changed.

“So how can you allow yourself the time and space which I'm glad you're giving yourself?”

To actually ask the questions that you're asking me, do you want to be with her? Do you want to move on? And you don't need to ask that question to the question is, "What do I need right now?" And the future question will be, "What do I need to address with her?" If we are going to move forward, what will I need to be clarified? What boundaries will I need to set in place to protect myself so that this doesn't happen again?

And if I am going to give her a chance, what are some of the conditions that need to be really clear? People can change, people can grow. That's not the issue. The point is, does that person understand what they did wrong? Are you both clear about what the path forward looks like?

You said, "Should you find someone who would never do this to you?"

I think that's a really beautiful ideal, but I don't think it's a guarantee. The point is to find someone that you can build trust with, someone that you believe is matching your energy, someone that you believe is communicating effectively with you, and so it's not about finding someone else who would never do this to you. It's about finding someone else who wants to build with you and you want to build with them.

“I think what you've found here is someone who wanted space, they want a distance.”

Do you like that? Do you want that? When they had the space in distance, you now feel they lied to you and they did things that weren't aligned with you. Is that what you want to reconnect with? You don't have to decide today. Healing and deciding are two different things.

Right now you're healing and once you've healed or get closer to that feeling of healing, then you can decide. Right now I feel like you're still hurt.

And if in a few weeks or a few months you want to open up to the idea of giving her a second chance,

here are the questions I'd be asking. Has trust been rebuilt or are we just missing each other? Have the patterns that cause the breakup actually changed? Can we talk openly about what happened without defensiveness or resentment? And are we choosing each other because we're compatible now?

Or because of what we had before? I know that you called her your best friend. And losing a best friend is so painful and it's normal to grieve that. But don't let the fear of losing the relationship Become the reason you return to the one that doesn't yet feel safe.

I love something from Estipera's book, The State of Affairs. And her signature idea that taking someone back isn't resuming the old relationship. It's beginning a second one with the same person but it's built new. In the book she says, I look at affairs from a dual perspective. Hurt and betrayal on one side.

Growth and self-discovery on the other. What it did to you and what it meant for me. She says, when a couple comes to her in the aftermath of an affair that has been revealed, she left and told them this. Today in the West most of us are going to have two or three relationships or marriages.

And some of us are going to do it with the same person.

Would you like to create a second one together?

“And I think that's the question you have to ask.”

What has happened has happened?

It's important. It's valuable insight and information and room for discussion and setting

a boundaries and new standards.

“But it's about whether you want to build a new thing with this person and whether they're”

willing to build something new as well. If her expectations are for you to be the person you were when you were dating, you're not going to be that person. And that's going to set you up for failure.