WHO DESERVES YOUR LOVE

        Whether it’s your best friend, online influencers, or the bookstore, the world is full of advice on relationships. Not only is it overwhelming to know whose advice to follow, but it can be frustrating when so many messages about relationships have a moralizing understone. Don’t put up with that if you have any self-respect! Do this if you want to be a good person! Enter my new book, Who Deserves Your Love, a practical and compassionate book that’s designed to help you decide what’s right for you.

        I’m so proud to bring you this book, as it’s a compilation of all the best insights I’ve learned in my decade of being a therapist. The first section of the book will help you identify what is at the root of your relationship struggles and how to work on the issues that you contribute to them. The second section is a decision tree to help you make a decision whether to stay or leave a relationship based on the nuances of your life. The third is a new, fresh take on boundaries that will assist you in applying the insights you learned in section one and the decisions you made in section two. All of this with the same messages of self-compassion and moral neutrality you have come to love and appreciate from my content.

        As a therapist who has been working in the mental health field for almost two decades, the majority of my career has been focused on working with individuals who struggle with substance-use disorders and their families. I didn’t expect that working in addiction would result in becoming an expert in relationships, but that’s what happened. Many people who struggle with addiction turn to substances to cope with painful feelings activated by interpersonal relationships. It follows, then, that developing relationship skills is a key part of recovery, and not just for the substance user. When families and loved ones build better relationship skills, the person with an addiction has a better chance at recovery. So I also developed weekend workshops to help the relatives of people who are addicted identify and address family dynamics that weren’t working. Therefore, an essential component of my practice has always been understanding relationship dynamics. What I’ve learned about relationships isn’t unique to addiction—these dynamics affect everyone. Relationship struggles are universal. 

        There are lots of books out there about relationship dynamics. My hope is that this book offers a different perspective on how to think about them. “Codependency” is a pop-psychology term that often finds itself in these types of books. But it won’t be in this one. That’s because codependency often implies that there’s a problem in being emotionally dependent on others. Some people then mistakenly believe that true emotional health only occurs when you achieve the Zen-like state of unattachment, as though you need to be able to meet all your own emotional needs yourself. 

        This is crap. You are a social creature and you need relationships to survive, and you thrive in a state of interdependence. While you are not responsible for meeting every emotional need of another person, you do have some responsibilities to others, as they do to you. This book will help you identify which responsibilities are reasonable to meet and which are reasonable to expect. This understanding will be rooted in your own values—not in the demands of others. 

        Another myth that popular self-help books love to push is that you must love yourself before you accept love from others. This is ridiculous. As you’ll see in the stories that follow, so much of my healing emerged from being loved by others! High self-esteem and self-acceptance are not prerequisites for finding deep connection. 

        You deserve to find a good relationship even if you don’t like yourself. Healing our struggles with trauma or insecurity can happen in all kinds of intimate relationships—family relationships, friendships, and romantic partners. Contrary to what society often says, non-romantic relationships are just as valuable as romantic ones. 

        I would even argue that some issues cannot fully heal outside of relationships. I’m not suggesting that love can magically fix you. Instead, relationships bring issues to the forefront, often painfully, and if you consciously use that opportunity, you can work toward healing and growing. This is called conscious co-healing, and the tools in this book can help you achieve it.