Hi there. Welcome, everybody. A big, open-hearted welcome to you. I am your host, Jennifer Elizabeth Masters. I am a transformational teacher, narcissistic trauma recovery guide, and three-time best-selling author of Odyssey: Victim to Victory, Orgasm for Life, and Sacred Relationships. I also have an upcoming book on becoming.

Each week, we talk honestly and frankly, maybe with a little bit of levity in there too, about emotional healing, destructive relationship patterns, rebuilding self-trust, and learning how to stop disappearing inside everybody else’s needs. This is something women have a tendency to do when they overgive. If you are one of those women, I am still in recovery from that overgiving myself.

There was a book written for women called Women Who Love Too Much. It was so good, and if you have heard of that one, it is still a great book to read.

Tonight, we are talking about the biggest mistakes we make in relationships. This is specifically focused on women, but it is also about humanity. The question is: what is the biggest mistake women make in relationships? Having been in multiple relationships and marriages myself, I can speak to this one honestly, and I will be sharing some of my own insights.

Here we go: falling in love with someone’s potential. Have you ever done that? I have.

What does that mean? It means you see somebody as they are, but you think, “Well, my love can change them. I know he is, or she is, able to become what my fantasy says they can be. My love will heal them. My love will heal their wounds. I can fix them, rescue them, or love them into becoming somebody different.”

That is truly one of the biggest mistakes we can make. Although this show focuses primarily on women and relationships, these patterns are not exclusive to women. Men experience some of these things as well, and people in same-sex relationships experience them too. After all, we are all human. Any human can fall into the trap of loving potential instead of reality, overgiving, trying to save someone, or trying to fix someone.

Have you ever tried to fix someone? Oh yes, I tried to fix my mother for years.

Instead of abandoning ourselves, what do we often do? We try to earn love. You may try to be the best girlfriend, the best fiancée, the best wife, the best mother, the best cook, and yet still feel like you fall short. Women are often especially conditioned toward caretaking, emotional labor, fixing, and over-functioning in relationships. That is why I wanted to focus on this tonight.

Humans are meant to be connected. We are often happiest when we are in communion with another. Even in friendships, we can overgive and over-function. These days, there are many people whose friendships become their spiritual family, and those patterns can sometimes happen there as well. So we will be talking about all of these types of relationships.

This is going to hit home for a lot of you. So many of us fall in love with potential. We see the potential in someone instead of paying attention to who they consistently show themselves to be. Then we spend years trying to fix, heal, encourage, support, carry, understand, wait for, or love them into the person we hoped they would become. Meanwhile, we slowly disappear in the relationship.

I was just talking to one of my clients this evening, and she was talking about her teenage daughter. If you can recall being a teenager, where was your focus at 15 or 16? It was on chemistry, right? Often, we think chemistry is alignment, or chemistry is connection. Chemistry can feel powerful even when someone is wrong for us.

Chemistry is important, don’t get me wrong. I wrote Orgasm for Life, after all, so I know a little something about chemistry. I highly recommend that book, and it is available in audio format on Audible. But here is the thing: we might think a marriage is going to fix our problems, or maybe even that a baby is going to fix the dysfunction. We might think, “He will be a better husband when we have a baby together.”

We are going to be talking about the way men communicate and the way women communicate. What I will say is that we are not so different. Yes, we may look different and smell different, but we are humans after all. We all love appreciation. We all love to be adored. We love for people to tell us how wonderful we look, how great we smell, how wonderful that dress looks on us, or how fabulous that pair of jeans looks. All of those things matter, but they will not keep a relationship together. So we are going to talk about longevity.

When I was writing earlier today, I was thinking that relationships are not like buying a fixer-upper house and flipping it. Relationships are not fixer-uppers. Love is not rehabilitation, and relationships are not renovation projects.

Little girls are often sold fantasy through Disney movies like Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, looking for the handsome prince to come, sweep them away, and rescue them. But that only happens in Disney movies. It is not reality.

As women, we often think our partner, husband, spouse, or whoever they are to us should be everything: our mechanic, best friend, protector, therapist, best conversation, family, future, and home. But a partner is not meant to be everything to us. We still need friendships. We still need family members we communicate with and spend time with.

Many women carry enormous expectations into relationships. Women may want someone emotionally available, financially stable, romantic, attractive, faithful, fun, responsive, responsible, driven, present, deep, a good listener, understanding, emotionally mature, and able to be their rock. Many of us unconsciously believe, “If I finally find the right person, then I will feel complete.”

That is the furthest thing from the truth. Remember the movie Jerry Maguire with Tom Cruise, where the line is, “You complete me”? No. We have to be whole and complete, emotionally mature on our own, and happy with ourselves. If we are expecting someone else to do the heavy lifting and love us when we are not able to love ourselves, that is where relationships become dangerous.

When we are desperate for emotional completion, we often stop seeing reality clearly. We begin to fantasize about our partner. We begin seeing potential instead of patterns. We may actually close our eyes to reality.

Here is the thing I will tell you: your superpower is acceptance. Accepting your partner as they are is the greatest gift you can give your partner, rather than trying to fix or change them. I am thinking of the Billy Joel song, “Don’t go trying to change me.” Love me just the way I am. That is a real thing. The more accepting we can be of ourselves and our partner, the happier we are going to be.

Basically, what we are relating to here is hope, fantasy, longing, projection, and the dream of who someone might become someday, as opposed to reality. That is a fantasy, especially when chemistry is involved. The people I had the greatest chemistry with were like a house on fire, and the house burned down.

Falling in love with someone’s potential is one of the greatest mistakes we can make in relationships. We cannot heal someone with our love. Our patience is not going to change them. Truly, we only change in the ways we really want to change. So when you choose someone and they choose you, and you mutually choose each other, the greatest gift you can give one another is acceptance.

Why do women stay with emotionally unavailable men? Why do some stay with angry men, addicted men, selfish men, immature men, or dishonest men? Because we keep focusing on the glimpse of who they could be.

Men, I think, may be less likely to live in fantasy land. They were not brought up with the Disney princesses like many women were. They may not be as oriented toward that kind of fantasy. Although they may be attracted to us because of how wonderful, expressive, and sexual we are before marriage, I have heard from multiple men that the door closed as soon as they were married or had children.

We will be talking about what men want and what women want. I have polled a number of people, both men and women, about what they want.

A person always shows you who they are through their patterns, not through promises, words, or potential. Patterns matter. How do they treat strangers? How do they treat a waitress? How do they handle stress? How do they communicate? Do they lie? Do they avoid accountability? Do they make excuses? Do they accept responsibility? Do they respect boundaries? This applies to men and women. It is not one-sided.

Things like these matter far more than chemistry. Although chemistry is important, we often override what we see because we become emotionally attached to the fantasy. I want you to breathe that in for a moment. We often override or ignore what we see because we become emotionally attached to the fantasy.

For example, someone may say while dating you, “Oh yes, I am very close with my mother. She and I have a great relationship.” But then, when it comes down to it, they do not talk at all. How a man treats his mother can be an indication of how he is going to treat you.

I have spoken with hundreds, if not thousands, of women and men, and often we focus on the words people say instead of the actions they take. You can listen to the words, but watch their actions. Actions speak much louder than words. It is easy for somebody to pay lip service, but it is different if they do not follow through. Notice where words and actions are out of alignment.

If he says he is close to his mother but does not talk to her, does not call her on Mother’s Day, and does not send her flowers, what kind of relationship is that?

The more emotionally invested we are, the more we may think, “I can’t let go because I have committed all these years.” I did it myself. I was in a relationship with someone for three years. He told me very clearly, “I won’t marry you. You’ve got two boys.” When someone shows you who they are, believe them. I did not trust what he said, but he meant it. He did not want to marry me because I had two boys. It was a ready-made family, and anyone in a blended family knows it is challenging to raise someone else’s children.

When you think you have invested too much and loved so hard that you cannot give up now, you may think, “Maybe he’ll change later. What if I leave too soon? What if nobody else comes along?” That is the beginning of emotional abandonment. You abandon yourself and stay in something that does not serve you.

Why do we do this? It does not begin in adulthood. It begins much earlier. Many of us learned that love meant caretaking, sacrifice, understanding difficult people, waiting, earning approval, or conditional love. Conditional love says, “If I do what you want, you will love me. If I do not do things the way you want me to, you withdraw love.”

Love does not need to be earned. Love is a gift. It is given freely. Conditional love is love that has to be earned, and that is not a comfortable place to be.

When we grow up with that type of childhood, it can make us hyper-aware, hyper-vigilant, hyper-responsible, emotionally intuitive, good at reading moods, good at calming chaos, and good at fixing emotional situations. Those of us who grew up this way may become deeply attracted to people who need rescuing.

Gabor Maté has said something profound: we attract someone who is healed to the place that we are, or not. We attract someone who has been traumatized to the level we are at, basically. We attract someone who is on our frequency, maybe a little higher or lower, but not much different.

That is where chaos may feel familiar. Emotional inconsistency may feel familiar. Longing may feel familiar. You may even feel lonely in a relationship. When I was in a relationship with a grandiose narcissist, I was lonely because I was the only one doing the work, the efforting, and the loving. It was only going in one direction. If you feel lonely in your relationship, look at whether the love flows in both directions. When it flows in only one direction, it can feel empty, like a vacuum.

My parents yelled a lot. They screamed and yelled a lot. They went for weeks without talking to each other. Silence. The silent treatment. When you grow up with that, you may confuse emotional intensity with love.

Some women, and some men too, learned, “If I love hard enough, if I stay long enough, if I become understanding enough, if I sacrifice enough, I will be fully chosen.” That is a painful wound, and it turns relationships into battlegrounds and emotional proving grounds. Some women spend decades trying to earn love that should come freely.

Chemistry is important, but chemistry is not compatibility. Chemistry can be like a magnet: emotionally intense, mysterious, and all-consuming. You may spend days or weeks in the bedroom and only come up for air occasionally in the first couple of weeks. But that type of relationship typically burns itself out quickly because you have to be able to communicate verbally without yelling at one another. You have to be able to listen with an open heart.

Just because someone creates powerful feelings inside of you does not mean they are emotionally healthy for you. A healthy relationship is not supposed to feel like emotional survival. It is supposed to feel safe, stable, mutual, consistent, honest, and grounded. That safe aspect is true for both men and women.

When I polled a group of people, both men and women, safety came up as number one for about a third of them. Men and women both want a stable relationship. They want things to be mutual, consistent, honest, and grounded.

Sometimes we become addicted to emotional highs and lows because that is what love felt like growing up. When healthy love comes along and is consistent, safe, grounded, and honest, it may feel foreign at first. It may even feel boring. An emotionally unavailable person may feel exciting or mysterious, and that is one reason we stay trapped in painful cycles.

Another painful truth is that men are usually honest from the beginning. I told you about the man I spent three years in love with and pursuing. He told me, “I’m not interested in marrying you.” I thought, “Oh no, that can’t be true.” A woman may hear, “He just hasn’t really met me yet.” Or a man says, “I don’t want children,” and a woman thinks, “He will change when he falls deeply in love with me.”

I can cite one relationship in particular where a woman ignored that fact. Her husband told her, “I don’t want children.” She went ahead and got pregnant. Values are important. How can a man trust you if he has said, “I don’t want children,” and you go ahead and get pregnant? He already told you. He was honest. That relationship ended disastrously, and horribly for the child, because he grew up without his father’s acceptance. His father never wanted him.

We hear what we want to hear instead of what is being said. Do not be in denial, and I am not talking about the river in Egypt. Listen when someone tells you what they want and what they do not want. Do not block it out because it does not agree with your fantasy. Later, you may be devastated when they behave exactly the way they told you they would.

That is where fantasy becomes dangerous. Love cannot turn someone into a different person. It is not going to change their character.

A lot of people, especially women, think marriage will deepen commitment. Not if the commitment is not there. They may think it will create emotional closeness, or that time will naturally create maturity. But external events do not transform character or desire. If someone tells you clearly who they are, what they want, and what they do not want, believe them. Save yourself a lot of heartache.

Let’s talk about why we ignore red flags. They are not a parade, ladies. Those waving red flags are not a parade. We feel it, sense it, and know something is off, but we override our gut instinct. We say, “This doesn’t feel right, but never mind. I’m going to work with this. I want what I want.” We need to learn to trust our gut.

We may be afraid of starting over. We may think, “I spent all this time getting to know them.” But it is much easier to recognize these things before marriage. You can often tell on date one or date two. You can talk and things are wonderful, and then on the second date he invites you over to his house so he can cook dinner. You may think, “I know what that means.” If you do not feel comfortable but go anyway, you are agreeing to something you do not want. By going along with it, even though it is not what you want, you are agreeing.

You may be afraid of being alone, starting over, losing chemistry, losing the fantasy, or admitting that you invested days, weeks, months, or years into something unhealthy. But have faith that someone better suited for you can come along. I am not saying the perfect person, because we are all human, but someone better suited for you. We create with our thoughts. If you believe there is nobody else out there, that is what will show up for you. It is not true. There are a lot of good men and women out there.

Sometimes women, and some men too, stay because they fear financial instability or being alone. Some people believe, “No relationship is perfect.” True. However, there is such a thing as harmony.

I was on Quora the other night, and a woman said, “I don’t love him anymore, so I am going to leave him. He is a good guy. There is nothing wrong with him. He is a nice person and treated me well, but I don’t love him anymore.” Here is the thing: the honeymoon phase has been chemically shown to last only about two years. After two years, what do you do? It is not that love goes away. You choose to love them.

The worst thing that can happen in a relationship, whether it is a marriage or committed relationship, is indifference. Somebody no longer cares or even sees you anymore. You become nothing more than an object, a piece of furniture in the home that is walked around and ignored. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is indifference.

After the honeymoon phase is over, you choose to love the other person. You choose them because they are a wonderful person, compassionate, caring, creative, artistic, connected to nature, spiritual, faithful, a great meditator, a great teacher, or whatever the reasons were that you fell in love with them. Are those reasons no longer present, or did you stop seeing them?

Your personal life is part of the relationship. There are two people in the relationship. You are still a person, a human with your own life experiences. It does not mean you stop living. You have your own friends. You may go to your own classes, and when you come back together, you are more interesting. Continue to learn and grow. Stay interesting. Take care of yourself. Exercise, eat well, and stay engaged with life. The relationship can deepen and become loving and intimate.

There is nothing better than the deep intimacy that comes from loving another human being. You can have this intimacy with an opposite-sex person, a same-sex person, or a friend. Emotional intimacy means you allow somebody in. You let them know when you are hurting. You let them know when you are upset with them without yelling and screaming. It is possible.

I grew up in a loud family. My father yelled and screamed, and my mother yelled and screamed. Then they would stop speaking to each other for two weeks, and we children became the go-betweens. Talk about dysfunction.

Healthy love includes emotional stability and learning how to process emotions. Women may be more able to cry and emote. I am not saying men do not cry. Society has unfortunately taught men that the only safe emotion for them to express is anger. Hopefully this is changing, because men can cry too. Men can experience sadness, grief, betrayal, hurt, and emotional pain. I have seen men experience deep heartbreak after breakups. To say that men are unemotional is not true.

Let’s talk about the marriage-and-baby fantasy. A marriage is not going to change a relationship that is not destined for longevity. A marriage is not going to fix a relationship where you cannot communicate, where you constantly butt heads, where you scream and do not listen to one another. A marriage can deepen a relationship with commitment, and you can also have commitment without the certificate. But marriage will not fix a relationship. A baby will not bring you closer together. A wedding does not create emotional maturity. A baby does not create integrity. Love does not create accountability.

Many women become devastated because they keep waiting for the next milestone to transform the relationship. Meanwhile, the same patterns continue because people only change when they choose to change. It has been said that a narcissist can change only a little bit and then snap back to who they were. It is not because someone does not love them enough.

Let’s talk about overgiving and over-functioning. Women have a tendency to do this more than men because women are often the caregivers, nurturers, and cooks, though not in all relationships. In my sons’ relationships, both of them are excellent cooks and do most of the cooking. Both parties can be the chef or the person doing laundry. But in caring relationships, women often become the planner, organizer, emotional processor, caretaker, peacekeeper, forgiver, and over-functioner. We do not even realize we are doing it because it comes from childhood.

We think we are being loving, patient, supportive, and understanding, but we are over-functioning. There is a healthy balance, and that is where we need to be. When you are an over-functioner, you may become exhausted, resentful, depleted, and lonely inside the relationship.

Some women build intimacy through self-sacrifice, but self-sacrifice is not required for healthy love. Mutuality creates healthy love. Reciprocity creates healthy love. Maybe you are the giver one day and they are the giver the next day. It is a flow. We are not meant to keep score. Two emotionally responsible adults create healthy love. There is no dragging the relationship uphill emotionally.

There is an important difference between healthy support and over-functioning. Healthy support says, “I love you, and I support your growth.” Over-functioning says, “I will carry your emotional life for you.” Healthy support encourages responsibility. Over-functioning rescues someone from consequences. Healthy support says, “I believe in you.” Over-functioning says, “I will fix this for you.” Healthy support maintains boundaries.

When we expect one person to be everything, many women expect a husband or partner to become the best friend, provider, travel planner, best lover, therapist, protector, co-parent, social planner, and mind reader. I heard someone recently say, “Why should I give him compliments? He should just know.” No. We need to be loving to our partners. We need to let them know when they look good. If you want to be praised and appreciated, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is reciprocity.

Everyone loves to feel significant. Everyone loves to be appreciated. To maintain a healthy relationship, we need connection outside the relationship. We need friendships and community. Maybe you take art classes on your own. You need a life beyond romantic attachment, because no relationship can survive when one person is asked to become someone’s entire emotional universe. That kind of pressure crushes intimacy.

Healthy love is not fixing, saving, rescuing, managing, rehabilitating, or parenting another adult. Healthy love is seeing the other person clearly with compassion: seeing their patterns, behavior, consistency, character, and integrity. Healthy love requires mutual effort, mutual responsibility, and mutual care. It is not fantasy.

One thing that has come up multiple times with men is that highly successful men are often away. I have a client who is a pulmonologist. For years, he slept maybe four hours a night and was gone three weekends a month, but he brought home the bacon. I have heard from several men that women reject them for bringing home the bacon and working so hard. Yes, there needs to be balance, but making one hundred or two hundred thousand dollars or more a year can require a lot of effort. You have to take the good with the bad. If someone is bringing home that money, they may not be around as much.

Healthy love is not built just on attraction or chemistry. It is built on aligned values. The values people mentioned to me included safety, honesty, attentive listening, good communication, thoughtfulness, positivity, emotional stability, connection, quality time, being seen, being loved, being appreciated, being respected, recognition, compliments, time alone, shop time, cuddling, affirmation, and honesty. Men want compliments too.

Other values included being aligned spiritually, sexually, and morally. Values are how we live, how we treat people, what matters most to us, and what we believe about honesty, loyalty, monogamy, respect, money, family, communication, integrity, trust, and emotional responsibility.

Two people can deeply love each other and still be incompatible in the long term. Love is not enough. We have to be aligned on other levels. One person may want children and the other does not. One person may value honesty and transparency while the other hides things and lies. One person may value emotional connection and communication while the other shuts down and avoids intimacy. One person may want monogamy and loyalty while the other wants outside sexual experiences, online flirting, or attention outside the relationship. Those differences matter.

A conversation about values needs to happen early on. Why waste time, dating energy, and emotional investment? Get to know what is important to the other person. Sexual compatibility matters too. I know of a couple who loved each other deeply and had two beautiful children, but one wanted a particular type of sex and the other did not. He kept asking, she kept saying no, and finally they divorced over it. Get those values on the table up front so that does not happen. Shared values matter. Emotional compatibility matters. Those conversations need to happen before marriage and before deep emotional investment.

Love matters deeply, but love alone is not enough to sustain a healthy relationship. Respect, appreciation, recognition, honesty, words of affirmation, physical affection, cuddling, sexual and emotional compatibility, aligned morals, spiritual values, and emotional safety matter. Men and women both want these things. We are not as different as we may think.

Know what you want. A lot of women do not know what they want. Quality time, attentive listening, good communication, thoughtfulness, emotional stability, shared values, and aligned morals are important. The more mature I become, the more I realize healthy relationships are not built only on attraction or chemistry. Yes, chemistry is important, but it is not number one for me anymore. What matters more is what is in your heart.

What we want is someone emotionally mature, emotionally available, and reciprocal. You do not have to constantly earn love. You do not have to beg for basic respect. You do not have to carry the entire relationship emotionally.

How do you stop repeating these patterns? I invite you to check out my YouTube channel. I have many Kundalini yoga exercises. Breathe deeply, be present, meditate, and I would like to hear from you. What do you want? What is the next best show for you? What would you like to hear about?

Building self-trust is imperative. Self-trust is how we learn to trust our instinct, intuition, and gut, and how we stop abandoning what we know and feel. I had several relationships where, from the beginning, there was a warning inside: “This is not going to work. There is something wrong here. Something is off here.” In two of those relationships, there was too much alcohol, and I ignored it.

Do not ignore your gut. Stop explaining away problems. Stop romanticizing dysfunction. Stop betraying yourself to try to keep a relationship alive. If you need help with any of these issues — loving yourself so that you can then be loved and receive love — this is the work I do.

Love matters. Compassion matters. Patience matters. But if you are emotionally volatile and cannot express yourself, something needs to shift. Love cannot substitute for character, accountability, emotional maturity, honesty, or willingness to change. The truth is, some people do not want to change. We need to believe reality instead of fantasy. That is not becoming cold. It is becoming honest.

Tonight, I would like you to think about these questions: Where in your life have you been loving potential instead of reality? Where have you been waiting for someone to become different? Where have you been carrying relationships that were never being carried equally? Have you been trying to change someone?

Healing begins when we stop abandoning ourselves in the hope of finally being chosen, loved, or needed. I thank you for being here with me tonight on SOS for the Soul. If something resonated with you, I am glad. I work privately with people who are ready to stop abandoning themselves, clear the emotional patterns that have kept them disconnected, and return to inner peace, self-trust, clarity, and emotional freedom.

You can visit my website at Jennifer Elizabeth Masters’ website. Remember, healing is not becoming someone new. It is unbecoming everything you were never meant to carry. Thank you for being here with me tonight. Much love, and God bless.