Coping With Ghosting

Ghosting, Attachment Styles & The Path to Secure Love With Julie Menanno

• Gretta • Season 1 • Episode 79

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Should you get back together with the person who ghosted you? How can you build a secure relationship after being ghosted? Whether you're dating or single, Julie Menanno, MA, LMFT, LCPC, has answers. Julie is a therapist, author, and creator of The Secure Relationship, a community dedicated to helping people build secure, loving relationships. In this show, she offers powerful insights on building secure relationships after experiencing the pain of ghosting. 

Discover:
• The four attachment styles: anxious, avoidant, disorganized, and secure
• Essential inner work for preparing for healthy relationships after being ghosted
• Managing triggers after being ghosted, conflict resolution skills and de-escalating arguments
• How to rebuild a relationship with the person who ghosted you...and so much more!

Ready to break free from painful relationship patterns? Secure, loving relationships are possible even after being ghosted. 

Connect With Gretta

Coping With Ghosting 101 | Free & Private Facebook Support Group | Instagram | YouTube | copingwithghosting.com

Host Gretta Perlmutter, MA, and Certified Post Betrayal Transformation® Coach delivers evidence-based strategies to transform personal betrayal into a powerful catalyst for growth and healing.

Connect With Julie

Julie's Website | Instagram

Special offer: Join Julies's Individual and Couples Group and use code: COLLAB10 on any order for 10% off! 

Music: "Ghosted" by Gustavo Ramos

Disclaimer: This information is designed to mentor and guide you to cope with Ghosting by cultivating a positive mindset and implementing self-care practices. It is for educational purposes only; it solely provides self-help tools. Coping With Ghosting does not provide health care or psychological therapy services and does not diagnose or treat any physical or mental ailment of the mind or body. The content is not a substitute for therapy or any advice given by a licensed psychologist or other licensed or registered professionals.


Want to feel better after being ghosted? Coping With Ghosting 101 downloadable  workshop will help you take your power back today. 

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Note to All Listeners: Ghosting is defined as: The practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation withdrawing from all communication (Oxford Languages). When you leave an abusive situation without saying "goodbye," it's not ghosting, it's "self-protection." When you quietly exit a relationship after a boundary has been violated, it's not ghosting, it's "self-respect."

Gretta Perlmutter:

Hi, it's Gretta. You may notice that my audio is a little bit off in this episode and I apologize for that. This conversation is so incredibly valuable that I had to share it, so let's dive right in. Welcome to Coping with Ghosting, the podcast that provides hope, healing and understanding for anyone who's been ghosted. I'm your host, Gretta, and today's episode is about secure love in romantic relationships and ghosting.

Gretta Perlmutter:

For all the new listeners, just to ensure that we're on the same page, the definition of ghosting that I use for this show comes from Oxford Languages and is the practice of ending a personal relationship with someone by suddenly and without explanation, withdrawing from all communication, so this differs from leaving an abusive situation without a goodbye or disappearing after a boundary has been violated has been violated. My guest today, Julie Menanno, MA, LMFT, LCPC, is a therapist, author and creator of the Secure Relationship, a community dedicated to helping people build secure, loving relationships. With over 1.3 million Instagram followers, Julie's relatable advice and real-time couple therapy sessions have made her a trusted voice in relational health. Her book Secure Love dives deep into attachment theory and is available worldwide. Welcome to the show.

Julie Menanno:

Thank you for having me. Thanks for the lovely introduction. I love your definition of ghosting and I like how you include what it isn't. That's great.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Thank you, I'm so honored to have you here today and I have a range of questions about secure love, addressing both single individuals and those currently in relationships. So if you could please just briefly share what attachment styles are and how they influence relationships and ghosting behaviors.

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, so we have anxious attachment, which is someone who kind of has this undercurrent fear of abandonment, you know, being either physically abandoned or emotionally abandoned, which is just as much of a fear, which is emotional. Abandonment is emotional invalidation having your feelings minimized, being told you're irrational or you're too much, or your appropriate emotional needs are too much or your appropriate emotional needs are, you know there's something wrong with them. And so this person is going to react to those underlying fears that they may not even be fully aware of with a lot of distance, closing behaviors, people with anxious attachment. They lean into the problem. They try to reestablish closeness or guarantee that they won't be abandoned by, you know, kind of desperately seeking reassurance beyond the point of what is healthy. You're going to find some shame in there. You're going to find some core beliefs that am I really even lovable? Do I even really deserve love, or is there just something sort of fundamentally broken about me that I need to hide? And then we have in a lot of these behaviors what happens is it does end up being too much for the other person. Their emotions aren't too much for anybody Nobody's emotions are too much, but the way that they're acting out, those emotions can be too much and end up pushing others away and creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. And then we have someone with an avoidant attachment and their fears are more around failing, being seen as a failure, seeing themselves as a failure. Again, we have a lot of shame component. There's also a fear of being engulfed by relationships, like losing your sense of self. So they're not afraid of relationships, they're afraid of the loss of self that they have experienced relationships as being in their history childhood. All of this is rooted most often in childhood.

Julie Menanno:

Someone with an avoidant attachment. The way they're going to respond to these fears that they carry again, whether they have conscious awareness of them or not, is they're going to pull away. They're going to try to create distance. That's their safe place is when they get all of this stuff triggered, which sometimes isn't until further into the relationship that it actually starts to be triggered. But their way is to pull away, create distance, overly self-regulate, deal with it on their own, no point in talking about their feelings, and so of course, the way they respond to their own feelings ends up being the way they respond to the feelings of others, which is not really responding at all, and so then, obviously that creates a lot of problems with intimacy, problems with closeness. Ghosting behaviors could come out of that as a way of, you know, managing the wanting to leave the relationship with the fear of conflict and failure. So it's a kind of a way to balance that out. That leaves their partners feeling disconnected and then their partners typically have an anxious attachment, because these two typically are in relationships together. And then the partner with the anxious attachment of course senses the distance, and then they go into their anxious behaviors, which then triggers the avoidance fears and because now they're getting messages that they're being asked to do these emotional things they don't know how to do, leaving them feeling like a failure or they're losing their sense of self, and so then they react by more distance. So it creates these cycles.

Julie Menanno:

And then we have the third category is disorganized attachment, and this is going to be someone who has kind of traits of both but also some trauma. This is going to be someone who has kind of traits of both but also some trauma. So you're just not going to get as much predictable behavior. Lots of escalation, lots of you know, just higher emotions, bigger reactions, more fear, more mistrust of others. So these are the people that have, you know, more of a tendency towards, you know, sometimes violence. But not all people with disorganized attachment are violent, but just a lot of emotional dysregulation, kind of dramatic types of things that you know.

Julie Menanno:

You see in people who their responses to their fears are very big and everything feels very permanent.

Julie Menanno:

And then we have secure attachment and someone with a secure attachment. They feel connected with themselves. They can access their emotions, but they're not overwhelmed by their emotions. They can help themselves emotionally as well as seek healthy connection from others. They know how to show up for others emotionally. They know how to seek partners who can show up for them and who can take in their support. They just tend to have fewer relationship fears and because of that they don't have to act out so much on the fears that aren't so much there, which doesn't create more relationship problems and more reason to have fear. So that becomes sort of like their relationships tend to take on positive cycles but again, they know how to seek partners that are also securely attached at the same time. So yeah, that's the kind of bird's eye view of it all. Of course there's a lot of layers to what I just said and more nuance to it, but that's the big picture have been ghosted in dating and they're currently single.

Gretta Perlmutter:

So what steps would you recommend that they take to prepare themselves for a secure romantic relationship in the future?

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, I think the first step I mean first of all I think two people can be in a relationship and be insecurely attached and not be fully healed and work through it together. Right, that is very, in fact, that's why I do what I do. It's very possible, you know it does require that both are interested in growing, but you know so I don't want to eliminate that as an option. But if you're really just, you know, single and you want to set yourself up for success, you really need to do the self-work first, right, and that is really figuring out. You know what's going to get in your way, what has gotten in your way in the past.

Julie Menanno:

Do you recognize? You know that sometimes you have a sense of fear of abandonment that causes you to cling too hard, right? And what is that about? What fears are you carrying around? What unresolved griefs are you carrying around? What parts of yourself need to be healed that you don't know how to show up for and help?

Julie Menanno:

And so, by virtue of not knowing how to help these feelings or even access and put words to these feelings, you get in relationships and you start acting them out, and it's never anyone's fault that they get ghosted.

Julie Menanno:

Ghosting is 100% the responsibility of the other person. With that said, two things you can do to avoid ghosting is one, recognize what kind of partners aren't going to be likely to ghost to begin with, before even getting involved. And two, working on your side of the street so you don't contribute to the relationship problems that could possibly, you know, end up as a ghosting as an outcome. But with that said, you really don't want to be with someone who's going to deal with relationship problems with ghosting to begin with. So the first step is like when you can start showing up for yourself emotionally, you start to know what you're needing from someone else. So it's about two things One, can I show up for my own emotions, regulate my own emotions, help my own emotions, listen to them, give them what they need without going into these panicky places, and can I seek a partner who is also able to help me with my emotions, because we all need connection and support and take in my support for their emotions. So it's really that self-work piece can't be ignored.

Gretta Perlmutter:

So we know that certain people are more likely to ghost when people are dating. No-transcript.

Julie Menanno:

Um, you know a few different things. First of all, I think sometimes you just don't know, because it does take a while to get to know someone and by the time you get to know them and they've ghosted that's. You know. What am I trying to say? Like it can happen before you have even a chance to fully know them to begin with, to recognize the signs. But you want to.

Julie Menanno:

You know, if someone is not very emotionally engaged, like they're not really ever talking about feelings, or act as if they even have feelings, or they're not kind of curious about your inner world or feelings, like everything just feels very surface level, which isn't necessarily abnormal at the beginning of dating, but if gradually things aren't getting some sort of emotional energy that we're talking about going, that's a good sign that they don't know how to do emotions.

Julie Menanno:

And someone who doesn't know how to do emotions is going to act out on emotions, and ghosting might be one of the ways that they act out. Anyone who seems conflict avoidant, you know, by virtue of being conflict avoidant, ghosting is a way to avoid conflict, or at least the conflict of a conversation about breaking up or whatever. So yeah, I would just say you know, you're looking for signs that this person isn't emotionally healthy to begin with. And you know, also do they kind of come and go before they fully ghost right, will they like text for a bit and then they're gone for two days and then they come back. I mean, that's a sign that you know they're reacting to something by distancing. And again, sometimes that can be normal in the beginning of a relationship for people to give it some space and then any you know history that they talk about of you know lots of short-term relationships that might be a sign that that's taken place. You probably know more about what to look for than I do.

Gretta Perlmutter:

honestly, I appreciate it Right and I and I do have some shows about it and I really like hearing your perspective on it, because it's always it's a different take and I well, it's a similar take, but it's always helpful for listeners to have a refresh on that.

Julie Menanno:

Sure Like yeah, well, thank you, glad to help.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Yeah, so okay, some of the listeners have been ghosted and they'll do anything to reunite with the ghost. Do you think it's possible to build a secure relationship with someone who's ghosted you? And if so, what would that even look like?

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, it's always possible, you know, for people to change and grow and everybody is redeemable, everybody has that opportunity but they do have to one, be able to own it right. If we're not owning the ghosting, then how do we know what to work on? Two, they have to be willing to really do some self-exploration. Why was I needing to ghost? What feelings was I trying to manage by ghosting? What was I trying to avoid? What was the pain under there? Was I trying to avoid conflict? Was I trying to avoid anxiety? You know, why did I need to manage my feelings in that way, instead of being clear, talking about it, you know, really diving in and understanding what my feelings are to begin with. And then, three, what was going on in the relationship that was uncomfortable for them, that they needed to go to distance from it to begin with. And you know, typically you know there's something going on that probably both partners on some level are contributing to. Again, not that the ghoster is not responsible for the ghosting, but why are they managing all of this with just bailing, you know, and escaping? And so we need to be able to commit to like looking at what's the root cause of all of this and let's work through and heal the root cause. So we don't have to go to that place where we're contributing to these negative cycles that don't feel good, whatever that looks like, and that we're dealing with them by ghosting and maybe on the other person's side, clinging, and then, you know, contributing in their own way. So we just need to be committed to trying to heal it, and then you have to have access to the right information to heal it. You know it's not always just as easy as saying, yeah, I want to work on this. We got to look around and search around for the right type of work to actually get there.

Julie Menanno:

And so you know, if you are, you know, wanting desperately to get back into the relationship with the ghoster, that might you might really need to do some self-work around that to get to a place of discernment, like, does it does? Is there evidence that this person is willing to work on it? Or is it maybe going to be a situation where it seems like everything is okay and they say they're not going to do it again, but they're really not working on it, and will we end up down the same path? What is it about me that's wanting to get back into a relationship with someone who has shown signs of not being super healthy, you know so there's a lot of layers to it. It's not always a black or white answer, but if it is going to work out, there needs to be a really open, honest, clear conversation around. This is a problem. We can't do this anymore. It's kind of like if someone has an affair, right Like, there absolutely is room for healing.

Julie Menanno:

But we gotta be committed to the work and we have to understand that some people aren't going to change and at some point we can't keep giving chances right, and in the past I did take a ghost back.

Gretta Perlmutter:

But what I did? They apologized. On the surface, they said, oh, I'm so sorry, that's not going to happen again. But what I didn't receive at that time was how can I make this better for you? What can I do? What do you need from me? Right, right, I. That must've been so hard for you, hard for you to go through like a deep sense of empathy, like I. I saw a teeny bit of remorse, a little bit of an apology, but I wasn't getting the full on. I'm willing to change and I'm in it because I care about you.

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, that's a good sign that it's probably not going to work out.

Gretta Perlmutter:

It did not yeah.

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, it really do. And you just to your point, you also. They also need to show that they're willing to validate how painful it was for you. You know that's a big piece of it. If that's not happening, then that's kind of a lack of shows, a lack of the ability to empathize or the ability to show empathy, and also, you know, a part of not really taking ownership. We want to take ownership for the behavior, but we also have to take ownership for the impact of the behavior.

Gretta Perlmutter:

We want to take ownership for the behavior, but we also have to take ownership for the impact of the behavior If a couple gets together after one person has ghosted. What type of couples therapy would you recommend?

Julie Menanno:

Well, I always recommend one type of therapy, which is the type I do, which is emotionally focused therapy, because it's designed to get to the root of the issue. So I think you know that's not to say that there's not useful aspects of other types of work, but you know, I just feel so strongly about the how successful I feel with what I do and how successful I've seen other people be, and you know I'm doing couples work, but that's 50% of what I do. The other 50% of what I do is individual work with each partner. I'm just having them do it in the presence of each other instead of separately from each other. So you know it would. It would that the type of work I do is going to facilitate the exploration what was going on with me.

Julie Menanno:

I need to get some words to those emotions that cause this behavior. I need to get empathy. I need to get some words to those emotions that cause this behavior. I need to get empathy. I need to get validation.

Julie Menanno:

You know, what happens is when the wounded partner because ghosting is a wound, it's an attachment wound right. And when the wounded partner is kind of sharing and they need to share in a healthy way right, they need to be like. This is how I was affected. It was devastating, it was scary and I still carry some fear. Instead of you're bad, you're just a ghoster.

Julie Menanno:

You know that's not healthy, right, but then I need for the ghoster what a lot of times what happens is they'll shame spiral because they do feel bad about it. But it's when you shame spiral you're leaving the wounded partner's experience and going into your own. I have so much shame Now. My shame is taking center stage, and if that happens a lot of times their response is going to be well, just try to get them to feel better, right, just apologize and move on, or just tell them it wasn't that big of a deal, or however that looks.

Julie Menanno:

It can look a number of different ways, so I would my work. There would be hey, you, hey, let's talk about the shame instead of just losing yourself in it. And now I'm going to need for you to really just lean into your partner, even though it's hard, and really try to hear how they were impacted and really be able to say I get it, I get how painful that was for you, and so that's a piece of the healing they need to be able to talk about the wound in a healthy way, outside of these cycles, which is kind of what I just said, and then again we really have to be able to figure out what happened that led to this, what was going on in the relationship that the symptom was ghosting and what was going on with this person as an individual. That the symptom was ghosting is a symptom. It's a symptomatic behavior of something very very deep.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Yeah, there is hope, and one day at a time, people can rebuild from the bottom up yeah, I see people rebuild from a lot of stuff.

Julie Menanno:

You know a lot of painful stuff and and ghosting is on top of it's, you know, near the top of the list. It's a serious abandonment, it's a betrayal, especially if you know the relationship has been going on for a length of time. I mean it's hard enough anytime you're ghosted, but gosh, if you're, you know, a year or more months or whatever into a relationship, I mean that, and you've been, you've become attached. That's devastating, that's horrible.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Yeah, I think it's one of the hardest things that we can go through in terms of relationships.

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, absolutely.

Gretta Perlmutter:

So if someone's new to a relationship after being ghosted, what can they do? If they get triggered by something their new partner does or says, like let's say they get the silent treatment or the partner stops texting for a few days, what can somebody do?

Julie Menanno:

Well, you know, first of all, they need to be able to you know, comfort themselves, right, and go into and like, feel some of the grief. You know any experience of ghosting is a loss, a loss of trust, a loss of the person. You know it's layers of loss, maybe even a loss of some of your view of self, because a lot of people are going to make sense of the ghosting as what's wrong with me, that I'm ghostable, right, and so you got to grieve a lot of that and make sure you're doing that grieving process, because if you're not doing the grieving process, that's going to make you even more sensitive to it. You're going to have more material under there to get tapped into. But then we have the reality that this person had this trauma and now, no matter how much grieving we do in processing, they're still going to be sensitive to it. So we need to honor that, and part of two people knowing each other and knowing about each other's triggers and being sensitive to each other is for the other partner to, you know, for both partners to be able to have an open conversation and say you know, look, I just want to share with you.

Julie Menanno:

I had this experience, I am very sensitive to this. How can we work together here? You know I understand that it's not fair for you to have to, you know, accommodate my fear at every any given moment and give up, you know, some of your sense of self just to because of this. You don't deserve to, you know, be traumatized by my trauma also right. But at the same time, part of love is reasonably accommodating each other. So it's kind of a working together trying to find that balance kind of thing. And then there's this other piece of it that there's no way to know someone is not going to ghost you without repeated experiences of not being ghosted. So sometimes you just have to step back and go. Yeah, this hurts. I had this terrible experience. I'm doing everything I can to kind of make sure that this doesn't happen again. But part of trusting that it's not going to happen is having it not happen and just getting through that and recognizing too, like not everybody out there is a ghoster.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Yeah, that's totally true. Sudden, they didn't text me after, even a few days after we had gone on a few dates and I felt like they had made plans with me, whatever, I had to learn how to say okay, Gretta, okay, Little Gretta, you're going to be okay, no matter what happens, it's going to be fine. Breathe and feel your feelings.

Julie Menanno:

Yes, absolutely. And then there's also and I don't know how appropriate this was for your situation, but there's also the expectation that, look, we've been on a few dates. I need to hear from you If this is going to go forward. For me to feel safe and close in a relationship like I do need to hear from you before a few days go by.

Gretta Perlmutter:

To me, that's an appropriate ask right, absolutely, yeah, I think it's completely reasonable to state your needs. So I want to move over to conflict, because you write a lot about that in this amazing book. So sometimes people are ghosted after a challenging conversation, a misunderstanding, an argument. So when there's conflict in another relationship, it can be incredibly scary, like they think oh well, okay, now I'm going to get ghosted again because something hard just came up. So what are some of the best practices for handling conflict and repair?

Julie Menanno:

Yeah. So number one is, you know, avoiding negative cycles, right? So conflict can go one of two ways. Either we can have painful feelings come up, which is going to happen in conflict, and we can act out on that in ways that are not emotionally safe for anybody, where, instead of communicating in a healthy way, we're, you know, blaming each other, criticizing each other, stonewalling each other, shutting down, getting defensive, you know all these things that are invalidating each other, that are only going to cause even more triggers. And then everybody go, both partners go, into these protective places where, no, no, nervous systems are not open in this place.

Julie Menanno:

So the only thing that's really being talked about when couples go into a negative cycle is how come you're not meeting my attachment needs for emotional safety right now? Right, meet my needs, meet my needs. They're both in an attachment need place and at the same time, they're fighting for that, and so, not only on top of that, they're fighting for it in a way that keeps on meeting the needs, okay, and so it just goes back and forth in a pattern for a few rounds and then they end up mad at each other or whatever, and that's when the ghosting might take place. Is in this after place, and so, on top of the fact that they just harmed each other's attachment bond, they don't get through the topic anyway. They don't whatever they were talking about originally money, where to eat, you know, go on vacation, should we go on vacation, or whatever like that doesn't even get resolved because they get into this relationship friction. And so the idea is is that instead of doing that, we just use these basic principles of emotionally safe conversation that serves the purpose of meeting attachment needs, meaning that we're speaking to each other in a way that we both feel heard, we both feel understood, we both know our needs matter, we both can emotionally validate and understand where each other are coming from. We're being curious. It doesn't mean we have to agree with each other, but we're being just, you know, basically sending messages that you matter to me, right, your feelings matter to me, to not only get through the conversation and actually maybe either resolve something or make some headway on resolving something, and they're going to feel probably emotionally closer, because it does help you feel emotionally closer when you have the opportunity to really hear and understand each other, right. So that's a positive cycle. So if we you know.

Julie Menanno:

So what happens in a relationship is two people come together and it's great, right, they have all these compatibilities, they're physically attracted to each other and everything's just wonderful. And then bam, the first conflict comes along. And if they don't have a secure attachment with self, then the odds are high that they're going to act out in the conflict in ways that go into these negative cycles. Okay, so remember, the anxious partner has a core fear of abandonment and the avoidant partner has a core fear of failure. So now everything's been going on because the anxious partner hasn't feared, hasn't experienced abandonment and the avoidant partner hasn't experienced failure. The conflict comes along and now the avoidant partner is getting these messages You're getting it wrong. And so they go into a fear of failure and they don't feel good. They act out in ways that then tell the anxious partner now you're being emotionally abandoned, and then the anxious partner goes into their place.

Julie Menanno:

So we need to not do that, right, we need to not go to that place. We need for everybody to feel safe and successful. And then, obviously, the fewer negative cycles you have, the healthier the relationship is going to be and the less likely it is that someone's going to ghost. But with that said, you know if the person is likely to ghost because of conflict it's all kind of working together Like the very thing that heals you from having these negative cycles means that you're not going to manage conflict by ghosting to begin with.

Julie Menanno:

Does that make sense? The skills that you need to learn and the work that you need to do to manage conflict in a healthy way is the same work that you need to do to not be a ghoster, right? So if you can just learn to do conflict well, the ghosting takes care of itself, right? It's one and the same. And so then you know, the reality is also that every couple is going to have a negative cycle from time to time. It's just a normal part of being human.

Julie Menanno:

Sometimes our capacity you know the conflict exceeds our capacity to stay healthy, and for whatever reason, you know, we're still growing, or it's a new topic, or you're hungry and tired, or whatever. And so in that case, now we need to go to step two, which is make full repairs. And again, healthy couples know how to do this because they can talk about what happened with emotional safety, they can take ownership, they can validate each other's pain and talk about solutions going forward. And so then when you can do that, you have a healthy relationship. And so it's almost like how you do conflict is going to make or break the relationship, as long as you have basic compatibility and basic value systems and all the other kind of foundational stuff on board. Beyond that, it's how do you do conflict, and if you know how to do conflict well, ghosting won't happen.

Gretta Perlmutter:

I love that. On your Instagram, you wrote a really big, awesome power move statement for an argument and I'm just going to read it okay, so it says power move statement for an argument. And I'm just going to read it. Okay, so it says say this you aren't my enemy, You're on my team, we're a team. How can we communicate that to each other?

Julie Menanno:

Even as we disagree about this topic. Yeah, that's it. That's the positive cycle. Yeah, I love that so much yeah. When couples can come together and recognize like we're really not enemies of each other, the negative cycle we get stuck in is the actual enemy it really can reframe.

Gretta Perlmutter:

What are some other things people could say to de-escalate a conflict?

Julie Menanno:

escalate a conflict. Okay, so you know one thing is, let's say, you know some partner example where you didn't get the text for days or whatever. You know, yeah, Okay. So, instead of coming in and either suppressing it, not saying anything at all and then waiting to kind of act out or blow up later, or carrying all this anxiety around, or coming in hot and being like I can't believe, you haven't called me in two days, how could you do that? You know about my wounds and there's truth to that, right, but that delivery is probably not going to go well or be passive, aggressive I don't need you.

Julie Menanno:

I'm going to now ghost you back or give them the silent treatment, like the healthier option is hey, you know, let's talk about this, right? I know you've got some good reasons, whatever they are, for having some space, or you know you've got stuff going on in your life. At the same time, you know, for me to feel safe and close, we're at this point in the relationship where I, you know, I do need to know that we're going to have some more regular communication, and that's important to me and you're not just putting that out there, but you're to be able to put that out there. You have to believe you deserve to put it out there, right. You have to really be like I deserve this, I'm not being too much. This is an appropriate request and you're going to see how that person reacts to that. If that person is like whoa, that's too much for me. Or is like, wait, what are you talking about? I was just busy, you know, or gets defensive or whatever, or acts like you're, you know, out of line or whatever, that's good information that this person isn't really going to be able to show up for you emotionally. So the response from them that would be feel good and healthy is all right, tell me more. Tell me more, okay, you know I can work with you on that. It doesn't mean that you're going to come up with some plan, that some rigid plan where you have to text every 18 hours or you know, it's just like flexibly meeting each other. So that's one healthy way.

Julie Menanno:

And the elements of those delivery to deliveries are, you know, starting out. I know you've got got stuff going on. That's validating, right. You're validating them before you go into your concern, like you're not just launching in with here's what you're getting wrong, and then you're not criticizing, you're not blaming. You're just sharing about your own needs, right? I think I would add to that you know what's going on with you.

Julie Menanno:

Sometimes I get kind of worried. You know I really like you, I like where this relationship is going, and if I don't hear from you then I kind of go to a little bit of a worried place. And I also have this history. So you're really sharing about your own vulnerable feelings and sharing for himself and then just being assertive about what you're needing and why it's not anything more than this is what helps me feel safe and close in a relationship Like. My goal here isn't to control you and make you something. You're not. My goal is to have a healthy relationship with another human and I deserve that.

Julie Menanno:

And then the response from the other person same elements they're validating, they're being curious and willing to kind of like work together and willing to kind of like work together. And what happens is is just having that conversation in that way builds safety and makes the other person want to pull in. You're sending messages of safety. I'm not gonna attack you, I'm not gonna try to control you, I'm not gonna put you on a guilt trip, I'm not gonna be passive, aggressive. And so, and then their response leaves you feeling safe, which helps you tolerate moments when they might not be as responsive as someone's anxious attachment might like them to be, and I can give you more examples if you'd like.

Gretta Perlmutter:

I would love more examples. That's great advice. Keep on going.

Julie Menanno:

So the whole. You know, chapter 13 of the book is just example after example. I would love more examples. That's great advice. Keep on going.

Julie Menanno:

I don't just put the scripts in, I also put why these scripts are useful, right? What it's not? It's not criticism, it's not blame, it's not defensiveness. And what is it? Well, it's first validating, it's sharing vulnerably, it's healthy assertion instead of reactive anger. It's leading with curiosity, trying to understand the other person, not just kind of bulldozing.

Julie Menanno:

So let's say, you know your partner, you've been in a relationship for a while and there's starting to be some friction and your partner's like no, I don't want to go to therapy, right? So a lot of people are going to respond to that with I can't believe it, you don't want to work on the relationship, I'm the only one who wants to put the work in, and you know that's not fair. And again, there's truth to all that that's a frustrating place to be when someone doesn't want to put the work in and you're over here going but I love you and I like you, but we have these things and I want to work on it so we can feel closer, you know. And so a way to kind of respond to that is first get to know what the resistance is about. To begin with, like I promise you, they have a good reason for not wanting to go to therapy. It might not, the outcome of that good reason might not be so healthy and we might not agree with that, but what's going on with them? Well, maybe they've seen multiple people in their life go to therapy and end up in divorce or splitting up, and so for them it's like therapy is like the last straw and then it actually might make things worse. Maybe they're afraid that you know they're going to get ganged up on, right, nobody wants to get ganged up on. Maybe they're afraid trying to think of another common fear. I can't think of it. There's like three or four common fears, but let's just work with those two. So you really want to help this person put words to what their fear is. What is so scary for you about therapy? I hear you.

Julie Menanno:

I know this is like a hard topic and then when they share that, you say you know what I get it. If I thought therapy was going to ruin our relationship, I wouldn't want to go either. Right, and I appreciate that you're. You know this is your way of trying to protect the relationship. That means something to me and kind of lead with that, and that's curiosity, that's validation, that's trying to understand where they're coming from, even though you don't agree.

Julie Menanno:

That's not going as the solution, and then it would be the time to you know, share. Here's what's going on with me, right? What's going on with me is that you know, I want to protect the relationship too. I want us to feel safe and close, and I think there might be some value in learning to go and speak to each other in healthier, new ways. And you know, would you be open to giving it a shot? Let's say, we go to three sessions and if you know we're not seeing a tiny bit of improvement, then maybe we, you know, reevaluate. And if you have really taken the space to listen to them and understood where they're coming from, instead of just attacking their perspective, there's a much better chance that they're going to be open to what you're saying too.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Right Listening is such a critical part of a healthy relationship.

Julie Menanno:

Huge yeah.

Gretta Perlmutter:

Yeah, and recently on Instagram you spoke about loving listening and how it can really help couples and I'd love for you to share about loving listening with my loving listeners and I'd love for you to share about loving listening with my loving listeners.

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, so loving listening isn't just listening Like we hear. We all kind of you know, conceptually know, listening is a good thing, right, everybody wants to be heard. Everybody's kind of going through the world wanting to be heard and validated, right and so, and understood. That's a big one too, and so we all kind of have know it. But sometimes it can feel mechanical, right, it's like I'm listening because I have to listen, because that's a good thing to do. It's just a good thing to do to listen. So we're just kind of biding the time and waiting for our turn.

Julie Menanno:

You know, maybe sometimes, but I like to think of it as like heart listening Like this is a gift I'm giving to my partner. Like we all like to give gifts, right, it feels good to give gifts. I just gave my husband some new luggage for his birthday and, like you know, he grew up, you know not, they were kind of financially struggling, so he's never had good luggage in his whole life and it's like the greatest thing in the world for me and he liked it too, and so listening is an even better gift than that. It really is. I mean, who doesn't like feeling heard and understood. And so sometimes, if we just reframe it into I'm doing this as an act of love, I'm doing this as a gift, it can be much easier to really engage, you know, fully be engaged in the listening process.

Gretta Perlmutter:

That's beautiful. Thank you, You're welcome. Yeah, so I have a question. Actually it's for my friend. I told her you're coming on and she's really jaded in love Like she's been dating and dating. I told her you're coming on and she's really dated in love, Like she's been dating and dating. It hasn't gotten her anywhere. She's kind of bitter now. No, she says oh, and she's been ghosted a ton. So she asks how have the chances of having a happy, healthy, secure relationship changed post COVID-19 with the societal changes in the way people communicate, more online interactions and perceived unlimited options due to swipe culture?

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, I think it's really it's gotten exponentially harder. You know, first of all, you take people who, pre-covid, were already growing up in homes where, you know, kind of the average home there's always exceptions, but isn't the most emotionally supportive environment. You know, our parents don't really know how to do that language. We've kind of lost the art of it. I think technology has played a part in that and lots of different reasons. But so we're not getting a whole lot of emotional health in the homes that we're growing up in. And then, on top of that, what we are getting rewarded for is more surface level stuff. Like most people you know can say look, yeah, I grew up in a home where, you know, my worth was largely defined by what I did. You know how I performed, how I'm performing now, everything you know, and my parents kind of raised me to do well in the surface areas of life. But we kind of maybe missed some of that emotional validation piece. So if you don't know how to do that, then you don't really know how to actively emotionally connect. So how on earth can you go out and emotionally connect with other people? And so then what we fall back on is paying closer attention to the surface things, which is all you see on the screen, right, and so it takes away the opportunity to, you know, just even meet someone at a bar and have a 20-minute conversation with them, and maybe they're not someone you would give two seconds to on the screen, but in real life they end up being great, right? And so you're just kind of eliminating a lot of options right there, because you cannot possibly know a lot about a person by looking at them on the screen. So that's really difficult. So I think it's you know, what I'm kind of trying to say in my roundabout way is we have a culture and a society of people who are just less emotionally healthy to begin with, and now we've thrown in more technology than we know what to do with. That is now blocking emotional connection even more. And yeah, it's hard. I mean I just am so happy I'm not out in that world right now. I mean it's hard.

Julie Menanno:

I would like to think that some of the information that you can access on social media now for free, that's high quality about relationships. Maybe that offsets some of it, you know. It gives you a better idea of know what to look for, I think. At the very least, maybe it offsets it, you know, but it's still hard. So I would like to see maybe some dating sites where the you know the theme is true connection, like emotional connection or I don't know, like just attachment, security related, something where we're all going into this with a common ground here we're not just going in to look at people's pictures, we're like actually going into this to find deeper connections. And I don't know, maybe screen for people, like give them personality tests or emotional health tests. That would be a good idea. Right Quizzes how emotionally healthy are you? You have to score a certain number to be able to be on this dating site.

Gretta Perlmutter:

That would be incredible. I would love that yeah.

Julie Menanno:

Yeah, I don't know how ethically that would play out but A fun attachment theory app, seriously, yeah, yeah.

Gretta Perlmutter:

A fun attachment theory app, seriously, yeah, yeah. Well, this has been incredible. I am so grateful that you came on the show and shared your wisdom with the listeners. I know they are wanting your book. I know they want to connect with you. How can they do that?

Julie Menanno:

Well, I, okay. So the secure relationshipcom is my, is my website, and there's a link to the book. Again, it's multiple languages all over the world. You can get it pretty much anywhere books are sold. And then also I have courses. I'm putting together right now a course for healing anxious attachment with self.

Julie Menanno:

So the self-work it's pretty good. I'm really excited about it. I think it's going to be like two hours long. So you'd need, you know, people kind of need to do it in bites a lot of deep emotional work with that, a lot of the deep work that I do in my practice. You know that with the couples I work with, and I've got a Wednesday night group of people that we get together every other Wednesday. That's really great and just I'm trying to just like have such a variety of resources at different price points. You know everything on Instagram I provide for free, and then I've got groups that are, and then I've got, you know, my work and then my therapists who work for me.

Julie Menanno:

So I'm really trying to, you know, do everything I can to help as many people as possible get emotional health, emotionally healthy, and find secure attachment. So that would be thesecurerelationshipcom, and then my Instagram is at thesecurerelationship which for me, to me, this feels like the greatest thing of all because it's actually bringing the work to life with a real couple. And you know, underneath the surface, you know, maybe Drew in season one it's Drew and Melissa, right? Maybe you know, drew didn't ghost her as far as abandoning her physically, but every day was little emotional ghosts, right, and that's just as painful for people. I mean, maybe not just as painful but very painful. And then you know, on her side of the coin, you know she has an anxious attachment, so she's contributing to these thousand paper cuts too. So you can kind of look at the dynamics underneath the surface, whether it's ghosting or just negative cycles, and you're going to see a lot of just a lot of the same vulnerable emotions and shame that are fueling all of this stuff.

Gretta Perlmutter:

It's really good, thank you, thank you. Yeah, well, this has been amazing. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Julie Menanno:

You're so welcome. It was great. Great questions.

Gretta Perlmutter:

And listeners. Please follow Coping With Ghosting on social media. Join my free and private Coping With Ghosting Facebook support group and leave a rating for this podcast so other people can find it. You could also subscribe to this on YouTube and remember when you're ghosted, you have more time to connect with yourself and people who have stellar communication skills. You deserve the best.