May 21, 2026
How To Bounce Back From A Breakup Like A Bad B*tch!
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RSS Feed We’ve ALL been through a bad breakup, but how do you bounce back and not let it ruin your life?
Author of Don't Do What I Did, Kelsey Darragh, has been through it all and has the perfect book to guide you through the mess!
Email us at: IDOPOD@iheartradio.com or call us at 844-4-I Do Pod (844-443-6763)
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00:00:14
Speaker 1: Hi, I do Part two and it's one of your celebrity mentors.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Also is my chapter two. I'm Kathy Schwartz.
00:00:24
Speaker 1: Breakups are tough to navigate at any age. Today I'm talking with the author of Don't Do What I Did, break Up and Bounce Back. It's Kelsey Dara. Hi, hy Kelsey, how are you going? I'm excited to talk to you for many reasons. First of all, I'm old enough to be your mother, and what you've been through at your age. You don't know this, but I got married. In fact, today would be my fifty third wedding anniversary. My husband died by suicide six and a half years ago, and so now I'm in this horrible dating pool that you write about. But I feel like so much is different from when I was young and getting married and dating now I.
00:01:11
Speaker 3: Can't even imagine. And thank you for sharing that with me. I mean that you've been through amazing.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: I want your next book to be about dating. In my chapter two.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: Would I would?
00:01:23
Speaker 3: I would write that, read it, and I'd watch it too if anyone wants to turn it into it.
00:01:27
Speaker 2: I mean, okay.
00:01:29
Speaker 1: The other thing I want to say before we get started is I am a very honest person. And I've read as many parts of your book as I could, and I love your honesty.
00:01:40
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, Well, you are honest.
00:01:43
Speaker 1: Everything you say is heartfelt and mostly true.
00:01:47
Speaker 2: I have to say it's no filter.
00:01:50
Speaker 3: No, you know, my parents don't love it because they can't share everything I do. But I think it's really important and I appreciate you saying so. So yeah, nothing's off limits. I'll answer anything.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: Well. I love that. And we're going to get into a couple of things that have happened to you. You know, you're not a dating expert. You say that, but you've been dumped lots of times. You would the pain.
00:02:13
Speaker 1: My dating experiences have been quite different than what you explained, than what you discuss in your book, but mostly because you know, I'm looking for a guy who's upright and can walk from here to the corner store, and even that is hard to find.
00:02:29
Speaker 2: Calfren, same girl, We in the same boat, you know.
00:02:33
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, okay, is this true? I mean, I believe it's true. You mentioned your book that you got broken up with right after giving a guy a blowjob.
00:02:43
Speaker 3: I mean really, So it's so embarrassing because there's even more to that story that it was the night before my birthday and I was fostering kittens at that time, because I foster a lot of animals, and one of the kittens had just died, So, like, you couldn't make this stuff up. I try, and in my head, I'm thinking, was the blow job that bad? Oh my god?
00:03:11
Speaker 2: So wait a minute, I just like, how man, he's just tell me what he said, like that is one hell of a way to get dumped. I want to know.
00:03:20
Speaker 3: I don't know if this helps his case or hurts it, but he was a male model, so I think he was used to just kind of doing whatever he wanted and saying the things he wanted. And I was just so enamored by his looks that I don't think I saw the reality of the situation was that he was just very much mister right now, not mister right just right. You were blinded by the light, blinded by the light, blinded by those abs, blinded by the baby blue eyes. And it was literally right after you know, the blowjob, that you're cuddling and thinking you're being so cute that he gives me the I don't think I can do this anymore, Like I'm not trying to be serious conversation.
00:03:58
Speaker 1: Which which is just shorthand for thanks for the blood job, but you're not gonna out.
00:04:04
Speaker 3: And to make it worse, he lived on the West Side, which in Los Angeles to be, so, you know, back in Hollywood versus Wes, that's like a forty five minute drive to an hour drive. And the worst part of that was then I had to drive all the way back and I just sat in silence, really having to think my life choices.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, he didn't even put you in an uber.
00:04:24
Speaker 3: Oh we were in our twenties. We didn't have enough money for that.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: Okay, you and I are going to co author the next book. I've got some suggestions for you. Okay, but I want to know.
00:04:35
Speaker 2: Seriously, you've been dumped in a variety of ways.
00:04:39
Speaker 1: I love your book because it's very clear. It's very you know, I'm a writer by training, and so I love it so clear.
00:04:47
Speaker 2: The Mess.
00:04:51
Speaker 1: You have three sections, the Mess, Healing, the Change. So the Mess tell me how being dumb in so many incredible ways? How has that shaped your approach to relationships?
00:05:07
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:05:07
Speaker 3: I mean, here's what I realized and the whole reason why I wanted to write the book is. I have been an Internet creator for fifteen plus years, and I was always known as the strong independent woman feminist, took no sex positive behind the screen, behind closed doors. Anytime a relationship would end, I would fall apart. I would either you know, completely cut off contact, go cold turkey, run away from the situation. Or I would think I was going crazy with the way I was acting, like the repeating texting, the crying, the why, and it was happening so often that it got to a point where even I recognized, like, this is not normal or healthy, that this keeps happening, that my life keeps falling apart only after relationships end. So the way that I have lived my life online and in my work is I like to be sort of the conduit of information. I was like, if I can go something horrible and talk about it honestly to my followers and like help one person, then I can sleep well at night. And I did that with my first book about mental health and anxiety and panic attacks. And I thought I was juggling with this idea of what my second book would be. And I decided, right after the worst breakup I had gone through that this was going to be the next book, and I was going to learn as much about the science of breakups. What's happened chemically in your body?
00:06:35
Speaker 2: How does what.
00:06:36
Speaker 3: You learn through you know, a childhood experience or through your parents, how does that affect the way you carry yourself in life? And so I just immersed myself completely. I went to a breakup boot camp. I was in therapy three days a week. I wanted to learn everything I could.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: I don't know how you found time to write the book.
00:06:56
Speaker 3: A lot of adderall probably, yeah, a lot of adderall and ADHD and hyperfixation. But I really wanted to solve this problem honestly, genuinely, like I it was a problem like I had overcome panic attacks, I had quit drinking and overcome you know, alcoholism and drug addiction. Like I had overcome these pretty huge things in my life. I could not figure out this breakup heartbreak thing, like I was genuinely interested in figuring it out.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: Okay, so here here's my thing. I mean, you are lovely, your beautiful lives, you're my children's age. So I love you already. You know what, You and I could be great friends.
00:07:34
Speaker 1: But here's the thing that I mean, I got married when I was twenty years old. Okay, so you know I got broken up with my first love in high school and that was you know, but I was whatever I was, who cares?
00:07:47
Speaker 2: Right? It was high school.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: But I have found since dating, since my husband passed away, and now dating, I mean, I gotta break the news to you. I don't think men really change. And here's you know, please, I would actually love to hear your thoughts on this. I think you know, you talk about breakup healing and I want to get into that. But before you start healing from the breakup, you fall for this guy or this woman or vice versa, whatever, whatever the situation is. And in my case, I am a very strong, independent woman. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard men say to me, you're beautiful, you're athletic, you're smart, you're independent. You're just the woman I'm looking for.
00:08:39
Speaker 2: But guess what not.
00:08:42
Speaker 1: Because they don't really want that. So given that men don't always say what they mean or mean what they say, nor do women.
00:08:51
Speaker 2: On like I say, on.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: Both sides, I don't care what the relationships female to female, I don't care whatever the situation is, what is the hardest part, because my hardest part is different. What do you think is the hardest part of the healing journey after the breakap what is the hardest part? Like some people lot together, they have to give up homes.
00:09:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you're into it. Like the point of love in a relationship is intertwining your lives together. Like that's when you know it's succeeding. Right, it's you've shared the home, you've got the kids, you've got the assets. Untangling that talk about a mess, Like, that's the reason we actually stay too long. That's the reason why we believe in the sunken cost fallacy. That's often why we don't leave is because we have X Y Z and I hate to break into people. There's never a good time to break up. Like there's never the perfect Tuesday afternoon where nobody's busy and we can finally have the big conversation. It usually amounts in some big explosion and blow up. Right, that's just someone bends until they break. So for me, the mess is really the hardest, But it's also what my body is so good at. I'm so good at flailing and crying and in that crud of feeling like the world has ended. So for me, the hardest part is actually getting out of that is getting out of the need and desire to contact them. So going no contact was really hard for me. Figuring out a way to find my own identity back was really hard for me, Like getting out of the mess and the untangling. I was bending myself in all different kinds of ways to make something work.
00:10:27
Speaker 1: So wait a minute, are you saying after the breakup the hardest part for you was staying away?
00:10:32
Speaker 3: Yes, oh my god, it for me. I felt like a drug addict. And the X was the dealer. Like my imagine if your dealer just cut you off one day and was like, I'm never going to answer your phone call again, and you're like, no, I need a hit of my lover.
00:10:45
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna kelsey, I got.
00:10:47
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you that has not been a call that I've ever had to make. I'm just saying again, I will have to be your mother. So we're going to use another analogy. We're gonna go down a different road here. But that is very interesting because when I again, you know, I had three kids. My first child was born when I was twenty eight my last child at thirty four. And for the you know, I had a great marriage, not perfect, because anyone who tells you marriage their marriage is perfect, they are.
00:11:13
Speaker 2: Lying, dying, lying. But I can.
00:11:17
Speaker 1: I mean, my daughter has been through breakups, my son. There's nothing like a kid who doesn't listen to their mother. Let me, we could do a book.
00:11:25
Speaker 3: Would that would make things far too each for us?
00:11:27
Speaker 1: That would make their life way too easy? But I think that I've seen my daughter. She's married now with a with a baby, a three year old. But I have seen my daughter's friends. They go through these breakups. They can't they're either drunk texting or they're you know, they're looking at the photos, and they create these incredible situations that only exist in their mind.
00:11:52
Speaker 3: In the mind right in the well. It is science comes down to it, like our brains want to succeed. We don't want to live in the failure, so our brains will naturally reconsolidate to try and only remember the good, to equate the feelings of happiness to that person, rather than what the situation provided, which is usually stability and companionship and whatever else is good about the relationship. It's scientific that our brains don't want to suffer, so we will do. We will trick, we will we will spend and break to make it seem like it.
00:12:26
Speaker 2: Wasn't actually that bad.
00:12:27
Speaker 3: I could actually put up with it.
00:12:29
Speaker 1: But do you think breakups because let me just say, in the last six plus years, I'm really good. I've only been broken up with by one guy. I'm always the I'm a dump or not the dumpy.
00:12:40
Speaker 3: Which is not easy all the time either. You know, I still feel for those people that have to do the hard part.
00:12:45
Speaker 2: I don't struggle with it.
00:12:47
Speaker 3: You're like, kind of get it about My.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: Book is one paragraph law right, send them to the curb?
00:13:05
Speaker 1: How would you know? What would your advice be? How should someone be broken up with? What is the ideal breakup?
00:13:12
Speaker 3: My mantra has always because I've done it a couple times, even though I am really going to get broken up with, I've had to do it a couple of times. And to me, it's first of all, treating the person as human, because I think once we've gotten to the place where we're ready to break up with someone, our brain doesn't really see them as our partner anymore. Where like we someone just needs to tell them that I'm kind of over it, so I have to place myself back in that situation, being like, yes, they're human. And I always say, break up with someone the way you would want to be broken up with?
00:13:40
Speaker 2: Would you text someone? Would you break up through text?
00:13:43
Speaker 3: Okay, breaking up to me establishes you've been in a committed relationship if you're just like dating someone casually and it's not really working out, Like, would I want to be broken up with in a text? No, I would at least like a voice note or a FaceTime thank you very much.
00:13:58
Speaker 2: Text seems lazy, it's eaves lazy.
00:14:01
Speaker 3: But if the relationship has been lazy, if we've only been seeing each other a couple of times, I think that's a little bit more acceptable.
00:14:07
Speaker 2: So that's that's sort of my next question.
00:14:09
Speaker 1: How often do you think women at any age, you know, they have the first date with the guy, go out for dinner, have a drink, and the next date is at the altar or moving in or whatever. You know that there's a name for that, you know, I don't know.
00:14:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well, there's a difference between like limerens and love, right, Like, is that chemical high you feel you're in the honeymoon stage of a relationship.
00:14:33
Speaker 1: But I'm saying I think sometimes I'm curious what you think. Again, when I say women, it could be men whatever, whoever they're in this, they're they're thinking. I mean, let me put let me be personal. When I have broken up with a man that I've dated, you know, six months months, he thought what he thought, and I'm like, you miss something there, and and so I think that being you know that communications skill, the clarity, the clarity of what you think and what you want. Sometimes we miss the boat on that.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: I think you have to establish that so early on.
00:15:13
Speaker 3: Like when I sit down with someone on a first date, I am brutally honest. I'm like, here's what I'm looking for, Here's what I think I want right now.
00:15:21
Speaker 2: Do you scare them with that?
00:15:23
Speaker 3: I don't care if I scare them, They're not gonna be able to handle me. Like enough, I pick flavor for people. I think for my daughter, yeah, I think we might be related, like the hair, like I'm it's giving we know each other in a past life, but yeah, I think we're That's a really hard thing to do for a lot of people. Women too, is to stay upfront what they want because that we're willing to kind of accept the lowest bare bar of the.
00:15:47
Speaker 2: Back, or we're willing to morph into what we think they.
00:15:49
Speaker 3: Want, or if you're coming that me, I'm so good at that. It started in high school, from like pretending I liked the football team that the guy I had a crush on liked all the way to like the last relationship I was in where I pretended to like his poetry, like I've really bended to be like, no, I get it. We belong together. And again another scientific thing. We start to mirror the person because we believe that if we match in hobbies, we will match romantically. It just is something that we naturally try to do to get along with people. But I will say that, like, there is a slippery slope of that, because we can become codependent so quickly when we mesh and merge our lives too fast and in a sort of like false way.
00:16:33
Speaker 2: Do you think women do it more than men?
00:16:34
Speaker 3: And if so, why I would like to say no, because I'm a feminist. But if I'm looking at the reality, I think we are still living in a patriarchal society that tells little girls that the night will come and save us. And the ultimate dream is marriage and children and the white picket fence. And that's a sign of success, even though sixty percent of marriages and a divorce, and we call that the most successful version of a relationship. If any other product failed sty percent of the time, it would never see the light of day, it would never be on the market. But we're like, no, marry is the ultimate ending.
00:17:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I mean on my research sense, it's about fifty percent. But why quibble over decimal.
00:17:11
Speaker 3: Points if we're being honest too about the ones that stay without saying anything, you know, trib you. But again, I'm I'm also coming from a family where my parents got married after three months of knowing each other, went to White Little Chapel in Vegas and have been married forty years this year. So like, I've seen it, I've seen it happen. My parents are soulmates made for each other. But I also have to be real, you know, I also have to be real about what I see around me.
00:17:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's the exception, not the rule.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: Okay, So I have I want to know what your thought is, because you know, there's been a couple of times when I've thought about doing it and have done it, does anything good from come from going back with.
00:17:52
Speaker 3: The next we take out the trash for a reason. How did it end for you? I mean, did you stay with them a little bit long than the before?
00:18:01
Speaker 2: Yeah? But the thing is, I'm you know, I'm a smart girl like you are. And that voice Jimney Cricket on my shoulder, I know what.
00:18:09
Speaker 3: I know what you know, what you're doing.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: I know, but again at my age, So breakups at my age, I mean I'm not looking not all women, but women in their twenties and thirties, if they're looking to have children, that damn biological clock is ticking. And so that makes women, I think, do things that they might not do in their you know, in.
00:18:32
Speaker 2: Those days that chapter in my life, I'm in chapter two, but not that chapter. Yeah. No, I am not birthing another child. So for me, I don't.
00:18:42
Speaker 1: It's very different for me when I break up with someone or when he broke up with me. It's more about they don't think that we're compatible. That's what I get, and that's what I say to them a lot, and I try to be very kind about it. But I think I think think social media again. You know, when I got married in the dark ages, social media was not a thing. How much of this breakup scenario that we're talking about is due to, Oh, that girl's gorgeous, I'm dat hed. Oh wait a minute, you know, I'm gonna go down an Ais'll find in the grocery store because they've got some pretty cookies down there.
00:19:23
Speaker 3: There's a whole chapter in the book about social media and breakups because ten years ago, no, that chapter didn't exist. We didn't have the access to a so many choices to our compare and despair to look at everyone else's relationship and compare it to our own. And we also didn't have the unique pain that is having access to seeing our exes living their best lives via social media after us. I want to see them crying in a corner.
00:19:51
Speaker 1: Listen, Kelsey, You know that the Instagram, the social media TikTok, that's all the lives we want to see we're living. Most of them are crying in the corner at least two hours a day.
00:20:03
Speaker 3: But like, that's not what I'm seeing. And you better believe that the best pictures I've ever posted about myself were after a breakup like fully asked out in a bikini, like in Mexico. I'm like, then never heard of them, like, but I was devastated, Like I want to know that that person is also suffering.
00:20:19
Speaker 1: Okay, so speaking of that, what are the post breakup things that people should avoid doing?
00:20:26
Speaker 3: Tell me, Okay, no one likes to hear this. I'm gonna tell you nobody likes to hear this. I am a very big proponent of all contact, block, delete, hide photos, everything for at least thirty days. I think those post breakup thirty days are so you're disregulated, your routine is different. Like, you aren't yourself. You are not yourself chemically, you're not yourself physically. And I think the more you can get the desired object out of the picture and actually see life for what it is, the better. So I'm talking about go through your iPhone and get rid of every photo of them. That is not easy when you were together with someone.
00:21:12
Speaker 2: For eight years.
00:21:14
Speaker 3: Luckily we have little filter that the iPhone can identify their face and you can just throw it on a hard drive, give it to your best friend. My best friend still has a hard drive with all of my excess photos on it. And I'll get it back one day, but I don't need it right now.
00:21:26
Speaker 1: But well, okay, whoa, whoa, why would you want this?
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Why would you want it?
00:21:33
Speaker 3: I'm a very nostalgic, horder protect person, where when I need to like feel something like write about it, I need to like put the song on, I need to see the videos, I need to put myself back in the moment.
00:21:49
Speaker 2: Does it make you want to go back down that road?
00:21:52
Speaker 3: Never? Never? Never, never, because I've learned. Maybe me five ten years ago that would have been too dangerous, But I think now how hindsight is everything, right, Like, once you've gotten over somebody and you can just see it for what it was, which is like a point of growth someone that was meant to be a chapter, not the entire book, you can kind of go like, oh that was sun. I can go to live in that for a little while, but I don't need to stay there.
00:22:15
Speaker 1: So you know, I've had friends that throughout every gift. I actually have a friend who was with a guy I don't know, three or four years. She actually cheated on her husband with this guy. She and her husband subsequently got divorced dating this guy. When they broke up I mean, I hate using the term a narcissist because it's so overused, but I assure you I know what a narcissist is, and he is was whatever. But she went through and took He bought her such expensive gifts, because that's what it's about. He wasn't a good boy, you know, he was messing around. She got rid of every gift called her phone. But what she did do was jump into another litship very quickly.
00:23:02
Speaker 3: Guilty, guilty. That was the oness of writing this book because I did that and then it all crush and burned a year later. And I'm going to tell you why. This is what I discovered. When you are coming out of a relationship, there is a clear unmet need. There's a clear lack of something for them. It might have been, you know, like just intimacy or honesty, right, ye. So the first person that comes by and fills that lacking hole with something nice and fulfilling and stable, you are in trouble because you will fall for that person. I fell immediately for somebody after my longest, most intense relationship because they were obsessed with me and I was coming out of like a six to eight month period towards the end where my ex was like we were ending and it was a really long drawn out.
00:23:54
Speaker 1: Breakup, which I don't even understand that by the way, you got to explain that to me, like maybe, I mean, maybe you're.
00:23:59
Speaker 2: Not my daughter.
00:24:00
Speaker 1: Because when I literally meet a guy, yeah, and we'll go out, you know, for a couple of days. That's again, it's at my age this time, my chapter two is very different than people in their twenties, thirties, even in the forties, because.
00:24:16
Speaker 2: You know, I plan on living to one hundred and twenty. But I don't have time to mess with fools. And I think men, I think they I don't know, what do I know. I'm not one, but I.
00:24:28
Speaker 1: Think they process breakups differently. I think they rapidly move on, and they literally rapidly move on.
00:24:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, hit them later.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: Women, I think I'm asking your opinion, actually take longer. I think sometimes men will out of the clear blue because you know, it's Tuesday and and it's raining, I think I'm going to break up. But women, and you agree, we think about it.
00:24:54
Speaker 3: Women tend to grieve the ending of the relationship while we're still in the relationship, so we are done for a long time before we actually get out. Men are quite the opposite. They'll break it off because it's inconvenient in the moment. It's like you said a Tuesday and it's raining and it seems like a good time to pack my stuff up. And then about three to four months later they start going, huh, that was the best thing I ever had. I really mess that up, didn't I. It's just what we've seen.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: So I asked you before about going back with an X, But what if the X that you really loved calls you back?
00:25:38
Speaker 2: And you know still know?
00:25:40
Speaker 3: It's called the dangle, And I swear men my good friend Amy Chan, who runs breakup boot Camp and wrote a book about breakups, call it the dangle. And I've seen it firsthand. It's like they can smell when you're healing. It's like your wound is closing, and they're like, how about one more cut? Like what if we just like you're on it, did one more thing and they can smell it. And I swear to you I've seen it time and time again. A friend will have a first date planned, like their first date back out there, and their ex will show up and all it is that you have to remind yourself it's the universe giving you a test. It's asking you like, are you really healed or do you still have another lesson to learn? Because I've gone back to exes and had the same cycle happen, and it's your brain trying to solve the problem it couldn't solve the first time, saying maybe if I try it with this kind of guy, or you know, if I repeat the same sort of type over and over again, I can figure out why that ended so poorly. But it's just the test, like you're going to go back. If you're going to go back, you better go back full force and learn your lesson.
00:26:38
Speaker 2: Bid boy, Sometimes you just have to be beat around the head with you know you really do you got a rock bottom, really rock bottom? And then dig a hole deeper.
00:26:47
Speaker 3: Yep, bury yourself with it.
00:26:50
Speaker 2: Well feeling what should women avoid? Then?
00:26:53
Speaker 1: I mean again, I've had friends who dye their hair blonde.
00:26:58
Speaker 3: Their things make it huge financial purchase.
00:27:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, they go out and buy themselves jewelry, they take an expensive trip they can't afford.
00:27:06
Speaker 3: I mean, now, I'm not opposed to that. This might not be popular opinion. I'm not opposed to the treat thyself within budgetary. You know you're not blowing your four to one k. Here's where I think women need to pay attention is that the healing needs to be about you not getting back out there. I think we rush to say I got to get under somebody, to get over somebody, or like, I'm just going to distract myself with the swiping, and I say that to that. The apps will always be there. They are designed to always be there. They are designed for you to download and make this the simplest thing for you to do, as easy as buying a cup of coffee every morning.
00:27:44
Speaker 2: I hate the apps.
00:27:45
Speaker 3: Hate the apps I have. They're fun when you want to have fun.
00:27:48
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm sorry.
00:27:50
Speaker 1: What is your idea of fun? Poking your eyes with a needle? What are you talking about?
00:27:54
Speaker 2: Fun? Absolutely not.
00:27:56
Speaker 3: You know, if you find someone that's looking for the same kind of whimsy is you, it can be a nice distraction and it's good practice. I think it's a good practice for dating. Like not every date needs to be because you're trying to find the one. For a lot of people that they are not trying to settle down right now, I think they're looking for the one right now. And I think dating can also be good social practice because okay's the worst thing that happens is you become you know, like a dating in arexic, which is you go completely the other way and you don't go out at all and you're too afraid to get back out there. You're not having sex anymore, you're not dating, and you become socially introverted.
00:28:32
Speaker 2: Okay, so what do you think a woman?
00:28:35
Speaker 1: And then you know you can tell what you think women in mind because women my age tend to go out with I guess you guys do two young people young? I play all young and go out with your girlfriends, your guy friends in groups.
00:28:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, women tend to do that as well. But what so we know what to avoid the don't call fall back into the same traps, which another question I have?
00:29:01
Speaker 1: Why do women go after the same guy time after time after Hold that thought and just tell me, like, what what do How can women or men go out and find a good relationship if they haven't been doing it?
00:29:16
Speaker 3: I think if there was like one easy answer, I would be a billionaire if I was like, there's a bar on, will sure and hanga that you won't believe this will we find the perfect relationship. But I have noticed that there needs to be some form of self actualization before feeling healthy enough to get back out there and find the one. Right, So, if we haven't gone back and analyzed our patterns of why that last one was so tumultuous and messed up, you're going to keep doing the same thing over and over again again. Like our brain wants to solve a problem, our brain wants to find the ending that we didn't find before. So that's why to answer your question of why we go for the same guy over and over again, our brain's going, maybe this one will be the one and that's different. Maybe okay, that one wasn't. Maybe this one will be the one that's dirt.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: Here's the thing that I'm asking.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: Yes, I know I agree with you, but I feel like women and young people that I you know, from being in bachelor Land, I know a lot of young people, and they seem to say to me the same thing, you know, Kathy, that he just reminds me of the guy broke up with her who broke a both to me, and I'll say, well, tell me about that, and.
00:30:26
Speaker 2: It's it's almost like I hate. I hate saying this, but it's almost like the devil they know.
00:30:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's way more comfortable than the one they don't, right.
00:30:36
Speaker 1: And yet do they I feel like they already know it's not going to work out, but it's it's we're going to spend another two or three months so we can affirm that fact to the or fourth time.
00:30:47
Speaker 3: That's where I go back to remembering that the relationships we actually have in our early days, like even friendships as a child, even as like our first crushes, even the way we let male influences in our life treat us or our first boyfriends, those patterns are so crucial because that's the time in our lives where we're making those neuropathways in our brain right. And to be able to shake up those pathways and recover them and pave new ones takes a lot of therapy or like a really good mushroom trip, like it could be therapy and psychedelics or repatterning your entire existence. So knowing where those patterns come from, and you hit the nail on the head, our nervous system will gravitate. If we grew up in chaos, if we found safety in chaos. If we found love in chaos as a child, like our brain one hundred percent is going to go find chaos because that's what we believe makes this level.
00:31:41
Speaker 1: Or if you didn't have stability, you're looking you're looking for them, looking for it stable relationship. You're looking for stability, but you seem to end up in unstable relationship because that's.
00:31:51
Speaker 2: What you knew as a child, exactly. So so what would you say to First of all, I want to say when we're thinking about your book, I loved the workbook pages. I love and I love what you said.
00:32:05
Speaker 1: Is you know, and some of it I'm making up now, Like those those pages don't fill themselves in.
00:32:12
Speaker 2: You have to commit the time and the effort.
00:32:15
Speaker 1: To doing those exercises. And I read that, I went, oh, she's so right.
00:32:20
Speaker 3: I'm so adhd that like a book we're sitting down and reading. Sometimes I'll find myself doodling. I'll fill my phone on my phone. So really that came out of a decision of how do I like to learn, how do I like to process my emotions? And you know, sometimes it's a game, sometimes it's a journal entry, sometimes it's a workbook circle and connect the dots, like I just wanted to have it so that you can open any page and find something for how you were feeling right now.
00:32:46
Speaker 1: I just do you think that women can I want it as a mom and now as a grandmother.
00:32:53
Speaker 2: I am also a feminist.
00:32:55
Speaker 1: I'm also I mean, I was a woman haead of my time, but I except that I got married at twenty years of age. But that's just the deep you overlooked up. But I feel like I want to empower women. I wish that women again, all these silly little adages, if women could understand that they want a partner who doesn't complete them.
00:33:18
Speaker 2: You have to be complete yourself. And so if you are looking for someone to complete you, you are never going to fund You're never going to.
00:33:27
Speaker 3: Be happy now because they are you. They literally can't be a piece of you.
00:33:32
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's one thing to say, like, really, at my age, I'm looking for the man to walk with me hand in hand, not ahead of me, not behind me. But of course at my age, you have financial considerations. You know, where's your money going, where's your house in the Hampton's going?
00:33:50
Speaker 2: I want it?
00:33:50
Speaker 1: You know that kind of stuff. But I think that women when they're younger. I think there's so many issues propelled them that when this sudden breakup, when you think when one thinks that this is the guy, and you are hit like a sledgehammer. Because that's a lot of women I know that's what happens. Yeah, it's like out of the blue, and they're devastated, and so I want them to under you know, I don't have I'm not an I also I'm not a dating coach, but I just know in my heart what you're saying.
00:34:30
Speaker 3: You will be okay. It is survivable, Like it is one hundred percent survivable, and even though it doesn't look like it in this moment. I always say, like I used to believe that time heals all wounds, but I truly don't think your your wounds will be healed if you don't change the way you think or the way you feel. Like the thoughts inside your head control the emotions, and there's so much inner work that can make this turmoil less painful.
00:35:00
Speaker 1: In your book, I want to quote you. You mentioned your thoughts create your feelings, and feelings aren't facts. Can you break that down for people who've never heard that concept before, including wah.
00:35:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:16
Speaker 3: I mean, I struggle with not doing enough. I always think I'm not doing enough, I'm not trying hard enough. So I tell myself, You're not worthy of success, You're not doing enough. And these are just automatic thoughts that I'm having, right, So my brain is listening to me. My brain is hearing those thoughts, and that's going to create a really deep feeling of self consciousness, of self deprecation with jokes as distancing people rather than inviting in for collaboration, Like, your brain will listen to those thoughts that are cycling, and that creates a feeling. Right, So naturally I'm going to start acting like I'm not successful, that I don't do enough, that I'm lazy, that I'm worthless, that I'm unlovable if I just decide to change those thoughts, even if they're fake, even if I'm sitting going this stupid mantra writing is the dumbest exercise I've ever heard. But I'm going to write that I love and believe in myself one hundred times and stay in the mirror, do whatever. That's actually neuroscience that your brain is going to hear you and go, wait, we love ourselves. I have permission to love myself. I have all the need of the love and desires that I have is already within me. Like I can complete myself. I am worthy, I am desirable of love. I am successful ampony. Oh my god. We start to act that way.
00:36:33
Speaker 2: We stay and we start to believe it.
00:36:34
Speaker 1: And so what people the term I hear all the time, But I love the way you put it is, don't put that shut out in the universe, you know, don't put that negativity out leads And I think, what yours?
00:36:47
Speaker 2: But you put legs on it, You give meaning to it.
00:36:51
Speaker 1: And I hope that people who are going through these breakups instead, you know, after you're done crying in the corner and drink in the bottle of vodka and it and thinking about drunk texting your bof do not do that.
00:37:03
Speaker 2: Then. Don't do that. Not a good look. But once you have gotten through that, I think that gives.
00:37:12
Speaker 1: People hope because they begin to believe in themselves again.
00:37:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again it's putting the focus on you. So much about a breakup is focusing on the other person. And that's honestly what I was sick of. I was like, golly, I cannot give any more brain space in time to mourning be men like, I'm so sick of it, and that anything that reverses that narrative and puts it back on yourself, I think is ultimately like where I'm trying to help people go.
00:37:39
Speaker 1: Well, I think that your book is exceptional. I think that the workbook is great. I think you give very sound. Some of it is like, if you don't know this, you're in trouble, but some of it is, you know what it's This is helpful to people going through breakups, So you know, I think that people need to read that book and do the workbook part of it.
00:38:02
Speaker 2: Just get it.
00:38:02
Speaker 3: It's under twenty bucks. We fought to make sure that we kept it accessible and affordable, and like, if you don't like it, and give it to a friend, because one thing that's never going to stop is relationships ending and people getting broken up with Unfortunately.
00:38:13
Speaker 1: That's right, and you know what, reading I think everyone I just want to be sure that they do pick up Kelsey's book. It's titled Don't Do What I Did, break Up and Bounce Back. It's out now. I'm going to pick one up and see what I'm doing wrong. But you are a delight. Thank you so much for your sage advice. You're great commentary, and I hope that everyone going through a breakup now pays attention to what you're saying.
00:38:45
Speaker 2: Kathy, you're the tits. I love you. Oh thanks you great too. So long bye bye.
00:38:52
Speaker 1: Are you coming out of a breakup and ready to bounce back? But you need some guidance. We're here to help. Send this email or leave us a voicemail. All the info is in the show notes. Follow us on Socials, I Do Part two and iHeart Podcast, where falling in love is the main objective.
Speaker 1: Hi, I do Part two and it's one of your celebrity mentors.
00:00:19
Speaker 2: Also is my chapter two. I'm Kathy Schwartz.
00:00:24
Speaker 1: Breakups are tough to navigate at any age. Today I'm talking with the author of Don't Do What I Did, break Up and Bounce Back. It's Kelsey Dara. Hi, hy Kelsey, how are you going? I'm excited to talk to you for many reasons. First of all, I'm old enough to be your mother, and what you've been through at your age. You don't know this, but I got married. In fact, today would be my fifty third wedding anniversary. My husband died by suicide six and a half years ago, and so now I'm in this horrible dating pool that you write about. But I feel like so much is different from when I was young and getting married and dating now I.
00:01:11
Speaker 3: Can't even imagine. And thank you for sharing that with me. I mean that you've been through amazing.
00:01:16
Speaker 1: I want your next book to be about dating. In my chapter two.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: Would I would?
00:01:23
Speaker 3: I would write that, read it, and I'd watch it too if anyone wants to turn it into it.
00:01:27
Speaker 2: I mean, okay.
00:01:29
Speaker 1: The other thing I want to say before we get started is I am a very honest person. And I've read as many parts of your book as I could, and I love your honesty.
00:01:40
Speaker 2: Oh thanks, Well, you are honest.
00:01:43
Speaker 1: Everything you say is heartfelt and mostly true.
00:01:47
Speaker 2: I have to say it's no filter.
00:01:50
Speaker 3: No, you know, my parents don't love it because they can't share everything I do. But I think it's really important and I appreciate you saying so. So yeah, nothing's off limits. I'll answer anything.
00:02:00
Speaker 2: Well. I love that. And we're going to get into a couple of things that have happened to you. You know, you're not a dating expert. You say that, but you've been dumped lots of times. You would the pain.
00:02:13
Speaker 1: My dating experiences have been quite different than what you explained, than what you discuss in your book, but mostly because you know, I'm looking for a guy who's upright and can walk from here to the corner store, and even that is hard to find.
00:02:29
Speaker 2: Calfren, same girl, We in the same boat, you know.
00:02:33
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, okay, is this true? I mean, I believe it's true. You mentioned your book that you got broken up with right after giving a guy a blowjob.
00:02:43
Speaker 3: I mean really, So it's so embarrassing because there's even more to that story that it was the night before my birthday and I was fostering kittens at that time, because I foster a lot of animals, and one of the kittens had just died, So, like, you couldn't make this stuff up. I try, and in my head, I'm thinking, was the blow job that bad? Oh my god?
00:03:11
Speaker 2: So wait a minute, I just like, how man, he's just tell me what he said, like that is one hell of a way to get dumped. I want to know.
00:03:20
Speaker 3: I don't know if this helps his case or hurts it, but he was a male model, so I think he was used to just kind of doing whatever he wanted and saying the things he wanted. And I was just so enamored by his looks that I don't think I saw the reality of the situation was that he was just very much mister right now, not mister right just right. You were blinded by the light, blinded by the light, blinded by those abs, blinded by the baby blue eyes. And it was literally right after you know, the blowjob, that you're cuddling and thinking you're being so cute that he gives me the I don't think I can do this anymore, Like I'm not trying to be serious conversation.
00:03:58
Speaker 1: Which which is just shorthand for thanks for the blood job, but you're not gonna out.
00:04:04
Speaker 3: And to make it worse, he lived on the West Side, which in Los Angeles to be, so, you know, back in Hollywood versus Wes, that's like a forty five minute drive to an hour drive. And the worst part of that was then I had to drive all the way back and I just sat in silence, really having to think my life choices.
00:04:21
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, he didn't even put you in an uber.
00:04:24
Speaker 3: Oh we were in our twenties. We didn't have enough money for that.
00:04:28
Speaker 1: Okay, you and I are going to co author the next book. I've got some suggestions for you. Okay, but I want to know.
00:04:35
Speaker 2: Seriously, you've been dumped in a variety of ways.
00:04:39
Speaker 1: I love your book because it's very clear. It's very you know, I'm a writer by training, and so I love it so clear.
00:04:47
Speaker 2: The Mess.
00:04:51
Speaker 1: You have three sections, the Mess, Healing, the Change. So the Mess tell me how being dumb in so many incredible ways? How has that shaped your approach to relationships?
00:05:07
Speaker 2: Yeah?
00:05:07
Speaker 3: I mean, here's what I realized and the whole reason why I wanted to write the book is. I have been an Internet creator for fifteen plus years, and I was always known as the strong independent woman feminist, took no sex positive behind the screen, behind closed doors. Anytime a relationship would end, I would fall apart. I would either you know, completely cut off contact, go cold turkey, run away from the situation. Or I would think I was going crazy with the way I was acting, like the repeating texting, the crying, the why, and it was happening so often that it got to a point where even I recognized, like, this is not normal or healthy, that this keeps happening, that my life keeps falling apart only after relationships end. So the way that I have lived my life online and in my work is I like to be sort of the conduit of information. I was like, if I can go something horrible and talk about it honestly to my followers and like help one person, then I can sleep well at night. And I did that with my first book about mental health and anxiety and panic attacks. And I thought I was juggling with this idea of what my second book would be. And I decided, right after the worst breakup I had gone through that this was going to be the next book, and I was going to learn as much about the science of breakups. What's happened chemically in your body?
00:06:35
Speaker 2: How does what.
00:06:36
Speaker 3: You learn through you know, a childhood experience or through your parents, how does that affect the way you carry yourself in life? And so I just immersed myself completely. I went to a breakup boot camp. I was in therapy three days a week. I wanted to learn everything I could.
00:06:51
Speaker 2: I don't know how you found time to write the book.
00:06:56
Speaker 3: A lot of adderall probably, yeah, a lot of adderall and ADHD and hyperfixation. But I really wanted to solve this problem honestly, genuinely, like I it was a problem like I had overcome panic attacks, I had quit drinking and overcome you know, alcoholism and drug addiction. Like I had overcome these pretty huge things in my life. I could not figure out this breakup heartbreak thing, like I was genuinely interested in figuring it out.
00:07:24
Speaker 2: Okay, so here here's my thing. I mean, you are lovely, your beautiful lives, you're my children's age. So I love you already. You know what, You and I could be great friends.
00:07:34
Speaker 1: But here's the thing that I mean, I got married when I was twenty years old. Okay, so you know I got broken up with my first love in high school and that was you know, but I was whatever I was, who cares?
00:07:47
Speaker 2: Right? It was high school.
00:07:48
Speaker 1: But I have found since dating, since my husband passed away, and now dating, I mean, I gotta break the news to you. I don't think men really change. And here's you know, please, I would actually love to hear your thoughts on this. I think you know, you talk about breakup healing and I want to get into that. But before you start healing from the breakup, you fall for this guy or this woman or vice versa, whatever, whatever the situation is. And in my case, I am a very strong, independent woman. And I can't tell you how many times I've heard men say to me, you're beautiful, you're athletic, you're smart, you're independent. You're just the woman I'm looking for.
00:08:39
Speaker 2: But guess what not.
00:08:42
Speaker 1: Because they don't really want that. So given that men don't always say what they mean or mean what they say, nor do women.
00:08:51
Speaker 2: On like I say, on.
00:08:52
Speaker 1: Both sides, I don't care what the relationships female to female, I don't care whatever the situation is, what is the hardest part, because my hardest part is different. What do you think is the hardest part of the healing journey after the breakap what is the hardest part? Like some people lot together, they have to give up homes.
00:09:12
Speaker 3: Yeah, because you're into it. Like the point of love in a relationship is intertwining your lives together. Like that's when you know it's succeeding. Right, it's you've shared the home, you've got the kids, you've got the assets. Untangling that talk about a mess, Like, that's the reason we actually stay too long. That's the reason why we believe in the sunken cost fallacy. That's often why we don't leave is because we have X Y Z and I hate to break into people. There's never a good time to break up. Like there's never the perfect Tuesday afternoon where nobody's busy and we can finally have the big conversation. It usually amounts in some big explosion and blow up. Right, that's just someone bends until they break. So for me, the mess is really the hardest, But it's also what my body is so good at. I'm so good at flailing and crying and in that crud of feeling like the world has ended. So for me, the hardest part is actually getting out of that is getting out of the need and desire to contact them. So going no contact was really hard for me. Figuring out a way to find my own identity back was really hard for me, Like getting out of the mess and the untangling. I was bending myself in all different kinds of ways to make something work.
00:10:27
Speaker 1: So wait a minute, are you saying after the breakup the hardest part for you was staying away?
00:10:32
Speaker 3: Yes, oh my god, it for me. I felt like a drug addict. And the X was the dealer. Like my imagine if your dealer just cut you off one day and was like, I'm never going to answer your phone call again, and you're like, no, I need a hit of my lover.
00:10:45
Speaker 2: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna kelsey, I got.
00:10:47
Speaker 1: I gotta tell you that has not been a call that I've ever had to make. I'm just saying again, I will have to be your mother. So we're going to use another analogy. We're gonna go down a different road here. But that is very interesting because when I again, you know, I had three kids. My first child was born when I was twenty eight my last child at thirty four. And for the you know, I had a great marriage, not perfect, because anyone who tells you marriage their marriage is perfect, they are.
00:11:13
Speaker 2: Lying, dying, lying. But I can.
00:11:17
Speaker 1: I mean, my daughter has been through breakups, my son. There's nothing like a kid who doesn't listen to their mother. Let me, we could do a book.
00:11:25
Speaker 3: Would that would make things far too each for us?
00:11:27
Speaker 1: That would make their life way too easy? But I think that I've seen my daughter. She's married now with a with a baby, a three year old. But I have seen my daughter's friends. They go through these breakups. They can't they're either drunk texting or they're you know, they're looking at the photos, and they create these incredible situations that only exist in their mind.
00:11:52
Speaker 3: In the mind right in the well. It is science comes down to it, like our brains want to succeed. We don't want to live in the failure, so our brains will naturally reconsolidate to try and only remember the good, to equate the feelings of happiness to that person, rather than what the situation provided, which is usually stability and companionship and whatever else is good about the relationship. It's scientific that our brains don't want to suffer, so we will do. We will trick, we will we will spend and break to make it seem like it.
00:12:26
Speaker 2: Wasn't actually that bad.
00:12:27
Speaker 3: I could actually put up with it.
00:12:29
Speaker 1: But do you think breakups because let me just say, in the last six plus years, I'm really good. I've only been broken up with by one guy. I'm always the I'm a dump or not the dumpy.
00:12:40
Speaker 3: Which is not easy all the time either. You know, I still feel for those people that have to do the hard part.
00:12:45
Speaker 2: I don't struggle with it.
00:12:47
Speaker 3: You're like, kind of get it about My.
00:12:50
Speaker 2: Book is one paragraph law right, send them to the curb?
00:13:05
Speaker 1: How would you know? What would your advice be? How should someone be broken up with? What is the ideal breakup?
00:13:12
Speaker 3: My mantra has always because I've done it a couple times, even though I am really going to get broken up with, I've had to do it a couple of times. And to me, it's first of all, treating the person as human, because I think once we've gotten to the place where we're ready to break up with someone, our brain doesn't really see them as our partner anymore. Where like we someone just needs to tell them that I'm kind of over it, so I have to place myself back in that situation, being like, yes, they're human. And I always say, break up with someone the way you would want to be broken up with?
00:13:40
Speaker 2: Would you text someone? Would you break up through text?
00:13:43
Speaker 3: Okay, breaking up to me establishes you've been in a committed relationship if you're just like dating someone casually and it's not really working out, Like, would I want to be broken up with in a text? No, I would at least like a voice note or a FaceTime thank you very much.
00:13:58
Speaker 2: Text seems lazy, it's eaves lazy.
00:14:01
Speaker 3: But if the relationship has been lazy, if we've only been seeing each other a couple of times, I think that's a little bit more acceptable.
00:14:07
Speaker 2: So that's that's sort of my next question.
00:14:09
Speaker 1: How often do you think women at any age, you know, they have the first date with the guy, go out for dinner, have a drink, and the next date is at the altar or moving in or whatever. You know that there's a name for that, you know, I don't know.
00:14:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Well, there's a difference between like limerens and love, right, Like, is that chemical high you feel you're in the honeymoon stage of a relationship.
00:14:33
Speaker 1: But I'm saying I think sometimes I'm curious what you think. Again, when I say women, it could be men whatever, whoever they're in this, they're they're thinking. I mean, let me put let me be personal. When I have broken up with a man that I've dated, you know, six months months, he thought what he thought, and I'm like, you miss something there, and and so I think that being you know that communications skill, the clarity, the clarity of what you think and what you want. Sometimes we miss the boat on that.
00:15:11
Speaker 2: I think you have to establish that so early on.
00:15:13
Speaker 3: Like when I sit down with someone on a first date, I am brutally honest. I'm like, here's what I'm looking for, Here's what I think I want right now.
00:15:21
Speaker 2: Do you scare them with that?
00:15:23
Speaker 3: I don't care if I scare them, They're not gonna be able to handle me. Like enough, I pick flavor for people. I think for my daughter, yeah, I think we might be related, like the hair, like I'm it's giving we know each other in a past life, but yeah, I think we're That's a really hard thing to do for a lot of people. Women too, is to stay upfront what they want because that we're willing to kind of accept the lowest bare bar of the.
00:15:47
Speaker 2: Back, or we're willing to morph into what we think they.
00:15:49
Speaker 3: Want, or if you're coming that me, I'm so good at that. It started in high school, from like pretending I liked the football team that the guy I had a crush on liked all the way to like the last relationship I was in where I pretended to like his poetry, like I've really bended to be like, no, I get it. We belong together. And again another scientific thing. We start to mirror the person because we believe that if we match in hobbies, we will match romantically. It just is something that we naturally try to do to get along with people. But I will say that, like, there is a slippery slope of that, because we can become codependent so quickly when we mesh and merge our lives too fast and in a sort of like false way.
00:16:33
Speaker 2: Do you think women do it more than men?
00:16:34
Speaker 3: And if so, why I would like to say no, because I'm a feminist. But if I'm looking at the reality, I think we are still living in a patriarchal society that tells little girls that the night will come and save us. And the ultimate dream is marriage and children and the white picket fence. And that's a sign of success, even though sixty percent of marriages and a divorce, and we call that the most successful version of a relationship. If any other product failed sty percent of the time, it would never see the light of day, it would never be on the market. But we're like, no, marry is the ultimate ending.
00:17:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I mean on my research sense, it's about fifty percent. But why quibble over decimal.
00:17:11
Speaker 3: Points if we're being honest too about the ones that stay without saying anything, you know, trib you. But again, I'm I'm also coming from a family where my parents got married after three months of knowing each other, went to White Little Chapel in Vegas and have been married forty years this year. So like, I've seen it, I've seen it happen. My parents are soulmates made for each other. But I also have to be real, you know, I also have to be real about what I see around me.
00:17:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think that's the exception, not the rule.
00:17:40
Speaker 1: Okay, So I have I want to know what your thought is, because you know, there's been a couple of times when I've thought about doing it and have done it, does anything good from come from going back with.
00:17:52
Speaker 3: The next we take out the trash for a reason. How did it end for you? I mean, did you stay with them a little bit long than the before?
00:18:01
Speaker 2: Yeah? But the thing is, I'm you know, I'm a smart girl like you are. And that voice Jimney Cricket on my shoulder, I know what.
00:18:09
Speaker 3: I know what you know, what you're doing.
00:18:11
Speaker 1: I know, but again at my age, So breakups at my age, I mean I'm not looking not all women, but women in their twenties and thirties, if they're looking to have children, that damn biological clock is ticking. And so that makes women, I think, do things that they might not do in their you know, in.
00:18:32
Speaker 2: Those days that chapter in my life, I'm in chapter two, but not that chapter. Yeah. No, I am not birthing another child. So for me, I don't.
00:18:42
Speaker 1: It's very different for me when I break up with someone or when he broke up with me. It's more about they don't think that we're compatible. That's what I get, and that's what I say to them a lot, and I try to be very kind about it. But I think I think think social media again. You know, when I got married in the dark ages, social media was not a thing. How much of this breakup scenario that we're talking about is due to, Oh, that girl's gorgeous, I'm dat hed. Oh wait a minute, you know, I'm gonna go down an Ais'll find in the grocery store because they've got some pretty cookies down there.
00:19:23
Speaker 3: There's a whole chapter in the book about social media and breakups because ten years ago, no, that chapter didn't exist. We didn't have the access to a so many choices to our compare and despair to look at everyone else's relationship and compare it to our own. And we also didn't have the unique pain that is having access to seeing our exes living their best lives via social media after us. I want to see them crying in a corner.
00:19:51
Speaker 1: Listen, Kelsey, You know that the Instagram, the social media TikTok, that's all the lives we want to see we're living. Most of them are crying in the corner at least two hours a day.
00:20:03
Speaker 3: But like, that's not what I'm seeing. And you better believe that the best pictures I've ever posted about myself were after a breakup like fully asked out in a bikini, like in Mexico. I'm like, then never heard of them, like, but I was devastated, Like I want to know that that person is also suffering.
00:20:19
Speaker 1: Okay, so speaking of that, what are the post breakup things that people should avoid doing?
00:20:26
Speaker 3: Tell me, Okay, no one likes to hear this. I'm gonna tell you nobody likes to hear this. I am a very big proponent of all contact, block, delete, hide photos, everything for at least thirty days. I think those post breakup thirty days are so you're disregulated, your routine is different. Like, you aren't yourself. You are not yourself chemically, you're not yourself physically. And I think the more you can get the desired object out of the picture and actually see life for what it is, the better. So I'm talking about go through your iPhone and get rid of every photo of them. That is not easy when you were together with someone.
00:21:12
Speaker 2: For eight years.
00:21:14
Speaker 3: Luckily we have little filter that the iPhone can identify their face and you can just throw it on a hard drive, give it to your best friend. My best friend still has a hard drive with all of my excess photos on it. And I'll get it back one day, but I don't need it right now.
00:21:26
Speaker 1: But well, okay, whoa, whoa, why would you want this?
00:21:32
Speaker 2: Why would you want it?
00:21:33
Speaker 3: I'm a very nostalgic, horder protect person, where when I need to like feel something like write about it, I need to like put the song on, I need to see the videos, I need to put myself back in the moment.
00:21:49
Speaker 2: Does it make you want to go back down that road?
00:21:52
Speaker 3: Never? Never? Never, never, because I've learned. Maybe me five ten years ago that would have been too dangerous, But I think now how hindsight is everything, right, Like, once you've gotten over somebody and you can just see it for what it was, which is like a point of growth someone that was meant to be a chapter, not the entire book, you can kind of go like, oh that was sun. I can go to live in that for a little while, but I don't need to stay there.
00:22:15
Speaker 1: So you know, I've had friends that throughout every gift. I actually have a friend who was with a guy I don't know, three or four years. She actually cheated on her husband with this guy. She and her husband subsequently got divorced dating this guy. When they broke up I mean, I hate using the term a narcissist because it's so overused, but I assure you I know what a narcissist is, and he is was whatever. But she went through and took He bought her such expensive gifts, because that's what it's about. He wasn't a good boy, you know, he was messing around. She got rid of every gift called her phone. But what she did do was jump into another litship very quickly.
00:23:02
Speaker 3: Guilty, guilty. That was the oness of writing this book because I did that and then it all crush and burned a year later. And I'm going to tell you why. This is what I discovered. When you are coming out of a relationship, there is a clear unmet need. There's a clear lack of something for them. It might have been, you know, like just intimacy or honesty, right, ye. So the first person that comes by and fills that lacking hole with something nice and fulfilling and stable, you are in trouble because you will fall for that person. I fell immediately for somebody after my longest, most intense relationship because they were obsessed with me and I was coming out of like a six to eight month period towards the end where my ex was like we were ending and it was a really long drawn out.
00:23:54
Speaker 1: Breakup, which I don't even understand that by the way, you got to explain that to me, like maybe, I mean, maybe you're.
00:23:59
Speaker 2: Not my daughter.
00:24:00
Speaker 1: Because when I literally meet a guy, yeah, and we'll go out, you know, for a couple of days. That's again, it's at my age this time, my chapter two is very different than people in their twenties, thirties, even in the forties, because.
00:24:16
Speaker 2: You know, I plan on living to one hundred and twenty. But I don't have time to mess with fools. And I think men, I think they I don't know, what do I know. I'm not one, but I.
00:24:28
Speaker 1: Think they process breakups differently. I think they rapidly move on, and they literally rapidly move on.
00:24:36
Speaker 3: Yeah, hit them later.
00:24:38
Speaker 1: Women, I think I'm asking your opinion, actually take longer. I think sometimes men will out of the clear blue because you know, it's Tuesday and and it's raining, I think I'm going to break up. But women, and you agree, we think about it.
00:24:54
Speaker 3: Women tend to grieve the ending of the relationship while we're still in the relationship, so we are done for a long time before we actually get out. Men are quite the opposite. They'll break it off because it's inconvenient in the moment. It's like you said a Tuesday and it's raining and it seems like a good time to pack my stuff up. And then about three to four months later they start going, huh, that was the best thing I ever had. I really mess that up, didn't I. It's just what we've seen.
00:25:31
Speaker 1: So I asked you before about going back with an X, But what if the X that you really loved calls you back?
00:25:38
Speaker 2: And you know still know?
00:25:40
Speaker 3: It's called the dangle, And I swear men my good friend Amy Chan, who runs breakup boot Camp and wrote a book about breakups, call it the dangle. And I've seen it firsthand. It's like they can smell when you're healing. It's like your wound is closing, and they're like, how about one more cut? Like what if we just like you're on it, did one more thing and they can smell it. And I swear to you I've seen it time and time again. A friend will have a first date planned, like their first date back out there, and their ex will show up and all it is that you have to remind yourself it's the universe giving you a test. It's asking you like, are you really healed or do you still have another lesson to learn? Because I've gone back to exes and had the same cycle happen, and it's your brain trying to solve the problem it couldn't solve the first time, saying maybe if I try it with this kind of guy, or you know, if I repeat the same sort of type over and over again, I can figure out why that ended so poorly. But it's just the test, like you're going to go back. If you're going to go back, you better go back full force and learn your lesson.
00:26:38
Speaker 2: Bid boy, Sometimes you just have to be beat around the head with you know you really do you got a rock bottom, really rock bottom? And then dig a hole deeper.
00:26:47
Speaker 3: Yep, bury yourself with it.
00:26:50
Speaker 2: Well feeling what should women avoid? Then?
00:26:53
Speaker 1: I mean again, I've had friends who dye their hair blonde.
00:26:58
Speaker 3: Their things make it huge financial purchase.
00:27:02
Speaker 2: Yeah, they go out and buy themselves jewelry, they take an expensive trip they can't afford.
00:27:06
Speaker 3: I mean, now, I'm not opposed to that. This might not be popular opinion. I'm not opposed to the treat thyself within budgetary. You know you're not blowing your four to one k. Here's where I think women need to pay attention is that the healing needs to be about you not getting back out there. I think we rush to say I got to get under somebody, to get over somebody, or like, I'm just going to distract myself with the swiping, and I say that to that. The apps will always be there. They are designed to always be there. They are designed for you to download and make this the simplest thing for you to do, as easy as buying a cup of coffee every morning.
00:27:44
Speaker 2: I hate the apps.
00:27:45
Speaker 3: Hate the apps I have. They're fun when you want to have fun.
00:27:48
Speaker 2: Oh no, I'm sorry.
00:27:50
Speaker 1: What is your idea of fun? Poking your eyes with a needle? What are you talking about?
00:27:54
Speaker 2: Fun? Absolutely not.
00:27:56
Speaker 3: You know, if you find someone that's looking for the same kind of whimsy is you, it can be a nice distraction and it's good practice. I think it's a good practice for dating. Like not every date needs to be because you're trying to find the one. For a lot of people that they are not trying to settle down right now, I think they're looking for the one right now. And I think dating can also be good social practice because okay's the worst thing that happens is you become you know, like a dating in arexic, which is you go completely the other way and you don't go out at all and you're too afraid to get back out there. You're not having sex anymore, you're not dating, and you become socially introverted.
00:28:32
Speaker 2: Okay, so what do you think a woman?
00:28:35
Speaker 1: And then you know you can tell what you think women in mind because women my age tend to go out with I guess you guys do two young people young? I play all young and go out with your girlfriends, your guy friends in groups.
00:28:49
Speaker 2: Yeah, women tend to do that as well. But what so we know what to avoid the don't call fall back into the same traps, which another question I have?
00:29:01
Speaker 1: Why do women go after the same guy time after time after Hold that thought and just tell me, like, what what do How can women or men go out and find a good relationship if they haven't been doing it?
00:29:16
Speaker 3: I think if there was like one easy answer, I would be a billionaire if I was like, there's a bar on, will sure and hanga that you won't believe this will we find the perfect relationship. But I have noticed that there needs to be some form of self actualization before feeling healthy enough to get back out there and find the one. Right, So, if we haven't gone back and analyzed our patterns of why that last one was so tumultuous and messed up, you're going to keep doing the same thing over and over again again. Like our brain wants to solve a problem, our brain wants to find the ending that we didn't find before. So that's why to answer your question of why we go for the same guy over and over again, our brain's going, maybe this one will be the one and that's different. Maybe okay, that one wasn't. Maybe this one will be the one that's dirt.
00:30:04
Speaker 2: Here's the thing that I'm asking.
00:30:05
Speaker 1: Yes, I know I agree with you, but I feel like women and young people that I you know, from being in bachelor Land, I know a lot of young people, and they seem to say to me the same thing, you know, Kathy, that he just reminds me of the guy broke up with her who broke a both to me, and I'll say, well, tell me about that, and.
00:30:26
Speaker 2: It's it's almost like I hate. I hate saying this, but it's almost like the devil they know.
00:30:32
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's way more comfortable than the one they don't, right.
00:30:36
Speaker 1: And yet do they I feel like they already know it's not going to work out, but it's it's we're going to spend another two or three months so we can affirm that fact to the or fourth time.
00:30:47
Speaker 3: That's where I go back to remembering that the relationships we actually have in our early days, like even friendships as a child, even as like our first crushes, even the way we let male influences in our life treat us or our first boyfriends, those patterns are so crucial because that's the time in our lives where we're making those neuropathways in our brain right. And to be able to shake up those pathways and recover them and pave new ones takes a lot of therapy or like a really good mushroom trip, like it could be therapy and psychedelics or repatterning your entire existence. So knowing where those patterns come from, and you hit the nail on the head, our nervous system will gravitate. If we grew up in chaos, if we found safety in chaos. If we found love in chaos as a child, like our brain one hundred percent is going to go find chaos because that's what we believe makes this level.
00:31:41
Speaker 1: Or if you didn't have stability, you're looking you're looking for them, looking for it stable relationship. You're looking for stability, but you seem to end up in unstable relationship because that's.
00:31:51
Speaker 2: What you knew as a child, exactly. So so what would you say to First of all, I want to say when we're thinking about your book, I loved the workbook pages. I love and I love what you said.
00:32:05
Speaker 1: Is you know, and some of it I'm making up now, Like those those pages don't fill themselves in.
00:32:12
Speaker 2: You have to commit the time and the effort.
00:32:15
Speaker 1: To doing those exercises. And I read that, I went, oh, she's so right.
00:32:20
Speaker 3: I'm so adhd that like a book we're sitting down and reading. Sometimes I'll find myself doodling. I'll fill my phone on my phone. So really that came out of a decision of how do I like to learn, how do I like to process my emotions? And you know, sometimes it's a game, sometimes it's a journal entry, sometimes it's a workbook circle and connect the dots, like I just wanted to have it so that you can open any page and find something for how you were feeling right now.
00:32:46
Speaker 1: I just do you think that women can I want it as a mom and now as a grandmother.
00:32:53
Speaker 2: I am also a feminist.
00:32:55
Speaker 1: I'm also I mean, I was a woman haead of my time, but I except that I got married at twenty years of age. But that's just the deep you overlooked up. But I feel like I want to empower women. I wish that women again, all these silly little adages, if women could understand that they want a partner who doesn't complete them.
00:33:18
Speaker 2: You have to be complete yourself. And so if you are looking for someone to complete you, you are never going to fund You're never going to.
00:33:27
Speaker 3: Be happy now because they are you. They literally can't be a piece of you.
00:33:32
Speaker 1: Well, I mean it's one thing to say, like, really, at my age, I'm looking for the man to walk with me hand in hand, not ahead of me, not behind me. But of course at my age, you have financial considerations. You know, where's your money going, where's your house in the Hampton's going?
00:33:50
Speaker 2: I want it?
00:33:50
Speaker 1: You know that kind of stuff. But I think that women when they're younger. I think there's so many issues propelled them that when this sudden breakup, when you think when one thinks that this is the guy, and you are hit like a sledgehammer. Because that's a lot of women I know that's what happens. Yeah, it's like out of the blue, and they're devastated, and so I want them to under you know, I don't have I'm not an I also I'm not a dating coach, but I just know in my heart what you're saying.
00:34:30
Speaker 3: You will be okay. It is survivable, Like it is one hundred percent survivable, and even though it doesn't look like it in this moment. I always say, like I used to believe that time heals all wounds, but I truly don't think your your wounds will be healed if you don't change the way you think or the way you feel. Like the thoughts inside your head control the emotions, and there's so much inner work that can make this turmoil less painful.
00:35:00
Speaker 1: In your book, I want to quote you. You mentioned your thoughts create your feelings, and feelings aren't facts. Can you break that down for people who've never heard that concept before, including wah.
00:35:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely.
00:35:16
Speaker 3: I mean, I struggle with not doing enough. I always think I'm not doing enough, I'm not trying hard enough. So I tell myself, You're not worthy of success, You're not doing enough. And these are just automatic thoughts that I'm having, right, So my brain is listening to me. My brain is hearing those thoughts, and that's going to create a really deep feeling of self consciousness, of self deprecation with jokes as distancing people rather than inviting in for collaboration, Like, your brain will listen to those thoughts that are cycling, and that creates a feeling. Right, So naturally I'm going to start acting like I'm not successful, that I don't do enough, that I'm lazy, that I'm worthless, that I'm unlovable if I just decide to change those thoughts, even if they're fake, even if I'm sitting going this stupid mantra writing is the dumbest exercise I've ever heard. But I'm going to write that I love and believe in myself one hundred times and stay in the mirror, do whatever. That's actually neuroscience that your brain is going to hear you and go, wait, we love ourselves. I have permission to love myself. I have all the need of the love and desires that I have is already within me. Like I can complete myself. I am worthy, I am desirable of love. I am successful ampony. Oh my god. We start to act that way.
00:36:33
Speaker 2: We stay and we start to believe it.
00:36:34
Speaker 1: And so what people the term I hear all the time, But I love the way you put it is, don't put that shut out in the universe, you know, don't put that negativity out leads And I think, what yours?
00:36:47
Speaker 2: But you put legs on it, You give meaning to it.
00:36:51
Speaker 1: And I hope that people who are going through these breakups instead, you know, after you're done crying in the corner and drink in the bottle of vodka and it and thinking about drunk texting your bof do not do that.
00:37:03
Speaker 2: Then. Don't do that. Not a good look. But once you have gotten through that, I think that gives.
00:37:12
Speaker 1: People hope because they begin to believe in themselves again.
00:37:16
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again it's putting the focus on you. So much about a breakup is focusing on the other person. And that's honestly what I was sick of. I was like, golly, I cannot give any more brain space in time to mourning be men like, I'm so sick of it, and that anything that reverses that narrative and puts it back on yourself, I think is ultimately like where I'm trying to help people go.
00:37:39
Speaker 1: Well, I think that your book is exceptional. I think that the workbook is great. I think you give very sound. Some of it is like, if you don't know this, you're in trouble, but some of it is, you know what it's This is helpful to people going through breakups, So you know, I think that people need to read that book and do the workbook part of it.
00:38:02
Speaker 2: Just get it.
00:38:02
Speaker 3: It's under twenty bucks. We fought to make sure that we kept it accessible and affordable, and like, if you don't like it, and give it to a friend, because one thing that's never going to stop is relationships ending and people getting broken up with Unfortunately.
00:38:13
Speaker 1: That's right, and you know what, reading I think everyone I just want to be sure that they do pick up Kelsey's book. It's titled Don't Do What I Did, break Up and Bounce Back. It's out now. I'm going to pick one up and see what I'm doing wrong. But you are a delight. Thank you so much for your sage advice. You're great commentary, and I hope that everyone going through a breakup now pays attention to what you're saying.
00:38:45
Speaker 2: Kathy, you're the tits. I love you. Oh thanks you great too. So long bye bye.
00:38:52
Speaker 1: Are you coming out of a breakup and ready to bounce back? But you need some guidance. We're here to help. Send this email or leave us a voicemail. All the info is in the show notes. Follow us on Socials, I Do Part two and iHeart Podcast, where falling in love is the main objective.