Episode: 451
The Best Relationship Advice I’d Give My 27-Year-Old Daughter
with Sawyer Robbins
How do you know if someone is the right person for you? When is it time to walk away? And how do you make a relationship work without losing yourself?
In this personal, funny, and honest conversation, Mel sits down with her daughter, Sawyer Robbins, to answer the hardest questions about love, dating, and relationships.
After 30 years of marriage, Mel shares what she wishes she'd known sooner, the mistakes she's made, the relationships she regrets, and what she's learned about making love last.
You'll learn:
- The 3 signs someone is an incredible person but not the right person for you
- How to know when to stay or leave
- Why you keep repeating the same relationship patterns
- How to navigate disagreements and compromises
- What to do when you're struggling to find love or get over a breakup
Whether you're single, dating, married, or starting over, this conversation will help you understand how to have more healthy, loving relationships in your life.
Listen on:
You cannot outrun your past, you cannot outdate your bad habits in relationships, and you cannot marry yourself into healing.
Mel Robbins
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Key takeaways
If you have to give up dreams or go against values to stay with someone, you will eventually resent the person because you chose them over the vision for your life.
If you keep jumping from one relationship to the next, you may be using relationships to regulate yourself instead of facing the patterns, healing, and growth you need.
If you cannot accept a partner’s underlying personality, values, or motivation, stop trying to change them; skills and habits can be learned, but core traits are harder to teach.
If you want a relationship that lasts through hard seasons, choose someone who feels like home base: an exhale, a smile, and a hug when life is stressful and everything else is going wrong.
If you keep repeating painful relationship patterns, being with someone new will not fix them; you cannot outrun your past, outdate bad habits, or marry yourself into healing.
Guests Appearing in this Episode
Sawyer Robbins
Sawyer is Mel's oldest daughter and the co-author of The Let Them Theory.
Resources
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- Listen to Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s Episode
- Listen to the Breakups Episode
- Listen to Terry Real’s Episode
- The Gottman Institute: Support Each Other’s Dreams
- The Gottman Institute: Marriage and Couples
- University of Alberta: Changing partners doesn't change relationship dynamics, study shows
- UCLA: Should I marry him?
- American Psychological Association: Happy couples: How to keep your relationship healthy
- Family Process: What predicts change in marital interaction over time? A study of alternative models
- Journal of Family Psychology: (Eventual) stability and change across partnership
- PNAS Nexus: Blocking mobile internet on smartphones improves sustained attention, mental health, and subjective well-being
- Mass.gov: AG Campbell Reaches Landmark Settlement With Meta That Requires Design Changes To Protect Massachusetts Young People From Social Media Harms
- UT Austin: To Be Happier, Take a Vacation … From Your Smartphone
- US Department of Health and Human Services: Social Media and Youth Mental Health
- Emerging Adulthood: Trajectory of depressive symptoms in the context of romantic relationship breakup: Characterizing the “natural course” of response and recovery in young adults
- Behavioral Sciences: Self-Expansion Activities with a Partner as One Path to Well-Being
