I've been speaking with a lot of clients lately about what I feel is
one of the most important misunderstandings that we have,
especially in our culture of finding love and finding long-term fulfilling romance.
It's the difference between infatuation and love,
and a client's story recently demonstrated it so clearly that I wanted to share it with you.
So this client texted me and wanted a discovery call.
She was from the sub-continent, she was actually from India.
And I don't get as many calls from India. I'm doing a lot more these days.
Now, this particular client was 28 years old and she had divorced four years ago.
Now, that might not seem like such a big deal, but in Indian culture that is a huge deal.
And the reason she divorced was because her relationship,
her previous relationship had been too controlling.
So she'd literally just been controlled during that relationship
and she said, "No, enough is enough. I'm getting out."
And like I say in, especially in the subcontinent,
that takes a huge amount of courage because of the culture there.
So she's out of this relationship and she comes to me four years later with a problem.
She says, "Mark, I cannot get this guy out of my head,"
and I say, "Whoa, whoah okay, give me, give me the backstory here."
and she says right.
Basically I had this controlling relationship four years ago.
Throughout the time in between,
got divorce,
throughout the time in between,
I dated a few people, but again, I found they're a bit too controlling
and it didn't go too far.
Until recently, 4 -5 months ago, I met this new guy.
She met him through family friends, which is very common
because arranged marriage is such a big thing in India
and she said he actually didn't live in that country,
so I started communicating, and things were going fantastically over text
and then over the phone, and then he came to meet her for five days,
so just five days they spent together.
During that time, she said, "I was absolutely on top of the world, Mark.
I was feeling amazing. We were talking about future and marriage."
That might seem extreme, but that's not unusual in Indian culture
where arranged marriage is much more common.
So they were talking about their whole future together, planning things out,
and you know, getting very excited for this life.
She said he seemed to have the values finally that I was looking for.
The values of freedom, the values of a balanced marriage.
And I was just just so excited for this to go ahead.
So he leaves and goes back to his own country. This was two, three months ago now,
and the couple continued to communicate.
Unfortunately, two weeks later, he calls her
and out of nowhere, breaks it off.
As you can imagine. She was devastated. However, this woman was so infatuated,
she was so showing such addictive tendencies that I really wanted to dive deeper
and figure out why, why had her brain hooked onto this man so much
despite spending literally just five days with him.
So what I wanted to do was to dive in and see what effect he had had on her mind.
So I asked her, "Okay, tell me, when you're around this guy, how do you feel?"
And she said, Mark, I was a 12 out of 10 happy around him.
She said I was a 10 out of 10 excited, and I felt 9 out of 10 life is complete.
I say, yeah, right. That's some pretty intense feelings.
And she said, yup, yup. So I said, "Okay, tell me this,
When was the last time in your life you felt 12 out of 10 happy?
She said, thought about it and she said,
"Mark, it was nine years ago when my first husband proposed."
I said, "What about 10 out of 10 excited,
when was the last time you felt 10 out of 10 excited?"
And she said, "thought about it honestly, again, nine years ago
when my husband proposed, first husband.
I said, okay, and what about 9 out of 10 life is complete,
When was the last time you had that feeling in your mind?
And she thought about it and she said, I'd say that was probably eight years ago
when I graduated my university degree.
So in short, it had been eight, nine, even 10 years since she had accessed these feelings.
You see, we're raised that we should only feel certain ways under certain circumstances.
For example, crazy excited.
When you see people running around, cheering, screaming with excitement,
it's usually because their sports team has won.
That's the only circumstance where everyone does that
and it's considered culturally normal.
Another example is the way that a lot of women are raised to only feel their happiest
and most life is complete and most excited when they've got the guy
or they've got the marriage and I can say at least anecdotally, from working
with Indian clients from the subcontinent. This is particularly common in that culture.
Think of it, think of it, the best way to think of it is like a room in your mind, like
an access area within your brain. Society tells us to put a firewall over that.
i.e don't access that feeling unless under certain circumstances.
Now, if you'll file wall is pretty relaxed. Hey, I just got a muffin in the morning.
I'm 10 out of 10 excited. Hey, I just got home from work on a Friday,
or I just achieved a little goal at work. I'm 10 out of 10 excited.
You're unlikely to become obsessed with a man
who makes you feel 10 out of 10 excited because you know your own access keys
to that room in your mind.
However, if there's a certain feeling that has a very high firewall that you don't access,
then the next external trigger that comes along and triggers it and gives you a password,
you're more likely to become infatuated with.
Whether it's a powder, a pill, a person, if there's certain feelings that your brain doesn't
know how to access or has shamed from accessing,
then it's going to become obsessed with any external trigger that comes along
and opens that room, opens that feeling, brings down that wall.
And this is why in this case, this was such a clear example of infatuation
and such an extreme one because under these particular cultural conditions,
this woman had been trained that you don't feel this way
unless this very specific set of circumstances happens.
i.e married, plan, life is complete, blah, blah, blah.
So what happens? Of course it doesn't matter whether it's an external drug
or an internal drug, her mind goes, "the man is the only way to access that room."
And that's why she had such a devastating fallout when she left
because he was a walking, talking password to access that room
that unfortunately, she didn't know how to access.
As a coach, my one, of my jobs was to help her access that for herself
and feel more complete like she could get those feelings
without that particular external trigger.
So this is something I've also had to work on in myself
and it's something I helped many clients work through.
This is just the cleanest example to show that if there's a feeling
that your brain doesn't know how to unlock for itself,
the rarer that feeling is and the rarer the external trigger trigger is,
the more you'll become infatuated with that thing that you perceive gives you that feeling.
So if I find myself infatuated, which I have in the past,
I always go, what feeling have I forgotten how to feel or shamed in myself or just not
had access to, that she has lit up in me
because that's an area for self-growth. If I can find that feeling and access that for myself,
then I can appreciate her for that, be attracted to her for that,
even love her for that, but not be infatuated with her for that
and not be addicted to her because of that.
The bottom line is that infatuation is not healthy. It makes us think that this person
is doing something for us that we cannot do for ourselves. and that's not true.
infatuation is an unhealthy, addictive tendency to an external trigger
and if you're serious about finding love and a fulfilling relationship,
then look at what infatuation is highlighting in you
that you can own in yourself and you'll be able to work towards a real fulfilling
relationship with that person.
Well that is the video. Thank you for watching.
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