The most important relationship you will ever have is the one you have with yourself, because it determines every choice you make, every boundary you set, and every relationship you stay in or walk away from.

Most relationship pain doesn’t begin with someone else. It begins in the way you see yourself. It shows up in what you believe you deserve, what you tolerate, and how easily you override your own needs to keep a connection. When self-worth is low, we don’t just feel it internally, we live it out in our patterns.

Self-worth is not something you either have or don’t have. It is something you build through awareness, dedication, and new choices. And for many people, this is a lifelong process of unlearning what was normalized and replacing it with something healthier and more aligned.

This is the work that changes everything.

Today I’m sharing the 27 most life-changing lessons I’ve learned about self-worth and what will make yours unshakeable.

If you’re ready to relate to yourself differently, to stop repeating the same dynamics, and to build a sense of worth that is not dependent on anyone else, this is for you. May these lessons remind you of who you are, what you deserve, and remind you that the love you’re seeking starts with how you show up for yourself.

Let’s get into the 27 most important lessons:

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This week, I did something a little different.

I wanted to send you my answers to your questions - like your own mini podcast.

These were juicy ones. The kind of questions that get to the heart of your patterns, your relationships, and the choices you’re making. And, I answer them directly.

Take your time with this one. You’re going to get a lot out of it.

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Before we get into today’s post, a quick note:

Next week, I’m doing something new - an exclusive audio session where I’ll be answering your questions. If you’re a paid subscriber, drop your question in the comments below. I’ll personally select a handful to respond to!

And if you’re not a paid subscriber yet, this is your invitation to join us for something a little more personal.

We have become extraordinarily fluent in the language of red flags.

We have made an art form of the early exit, the protective withdrawal, the preemptive strike against potential disappointment. And while that vigilance has its place, I think we’ve overcorrected.

We’ve forgotten how to recognize what is actually good.

I want to talk about green flags. And they boil down to two things: how you feel in your own skin when you’re with them - and their character.

Here’s a list of “green” flags that are non-negotiable.

You feel like yourself.

Fully, comfortably yourself. Your humor. Your contradictions. Your weirdness. Your opinions that not everyone will agree with. You enjoy time with them. You feel energized from spending time together instead of feeling drained. You feel like you aren’t fitting yourself into someone else’s projection of a partner. When you are with someone who is genuinely right for you, the energy you usually spend managing your presentation becomes available for something far more interesting. Actual connection.

You feel like you matter to them.

They want to know how your mind works. They’re curious about what shaped you, what you actually believe and why, and what you’re still trying to figure out. And here is why that matters more than almost anything else on this list. Being attractive to someone is not that hard. People will find you attractive. People will enjoy your company at dinner, text you enthusiastically for two weeks, and make you feel wanted.

Being truly curious about you is different. It requires attention. It requires the willingness to actually show up and pay attention to who a person is, rather than who you would like them to be. And that quality of attention, when you are on the receiving end of it, feels completely different from being desired. It feels like being valued.

You have ease together.

I am not talking about the absence of difficulty. Every relationship worth having will have its moments of friction, its necessary conversations, and its periods of discomfort. What I mean by ease is something more specific: Neither of you is forcing it. Neither of you is working to manufacture a connection that is not organically there. There is a natural reciprocity — they are as drawn to you as you are to them — and that reciprocity is very different from the anxious, effortful energy of a one-sided investment.

You can approach difficulty together.

This is perhaps the most underrated green flag of all. Do they shut down? Do you? Or can both of you stay present in a hard conversation, uncomfortable as it is, long enough to actually reach each other on the other side of it? The willingness to stay in difficulty together rather than flee from it is part of the foundation of what every long relationship requires.

You feel safe enough to be vulnerable (and you create that safety for them).

Safety in this context is not comfort. It is not the absence of challenge. It is the felt sense that you can say something true and uncertain and not be punished for it. That you can change your mind without losing their respect. That you can show the parts of yourself that are still unfinished and be met with curiosity rather than judgment. And equally, do you offer them that? Do you hold space for their vulnerability as carefully as you hope they will hold yours?

They have depth in their other relationships.

How someone loves people in their life is a preview of how they will love you. Not a perfect preview (family relationships are complicated and carry their own history), but a meaningful one, nonetheless. Do they show up consistently for the people they care about? Have they demonstrated the capacity to repair, to stay, to grow alongside someone over time? These are not incidental questions. They are the most revealing ones available to you in the early stages of knowing someone.

They know how to take care of themselves.

Emotionally. Financially. Physically. I am not talking about perfection or about having everything figured out. I am talking about a fundamental orientation toward self-responsibility. Can they sit with difficult feelings without requiring you to manage those feelings for them? Do they have some working relationship with their own inner life, through some form of personal development, through genuine self-reflection, through the willingness to be accountable for their own behavior? And practically, do they have a functional relationship with their financial reality, whatever stage of life they’re in? These capacities matter.

You share a vision for what a life well lived actually looks like.

This is the conversation most people avoid. What do you want? Children or not? How do you want to spend your time? What do you believe about money and about work and about what gives a life meaning? What is your relationship to faith, community, and family? These are not peripheral questions. They are the architecture of a shared life. And two people who love each other but want fundamentally different things from their lives are not poorly matched because they lack love. They are poorly matched because love, however real, cannot substitute for alignment.

They have integrity.

By which I mean something very specific. Their words and their actions correspond. They do what they say they will do. They take responsibility when they fall short rather than constructing elaborate explanations for why it was not their fault. They are committed not just to being good but to becoming better. This consistency between the private self and the public self, between the promise and the follow-through… is the engine of long-term trust. Without it, everything else doesn’t matter. This is about character.

There is genuine physical desire.

Attraction can develop. Chemistry deepens over time. I am not suggesting that the presence or absence of immediate physical electricity is determinative. But I am suggesting that desire matters and that pretending otherwise does a disservice to the full reality of what a romantic partnership is. The erotic dimension of a relationship is not separate from the emotional one. It is woven through it. And the willingness and ability to speak honestly about your physical needs, to bring that conversation into the relationship rather than hoping it works itself out, is itself a green flag worth noting.

I want to end with something that gets lost in the green flag conversation. These qualities are not a standard to hold your potential partner against while exempting yourself from the same scrutiny. They are a mirror. They ask you to look honestly at what you are bringing to the table, too.

What’s your most important green flag?

I want to hear from you.

Love,
Jillian

It’s time to talk about women and their lack of pleasure in the bedroom.

Most women have had a lot of sex that was fine. Technically adequate. But not amazing.

And I want to talk about why. Not to be provocative. Not to make anyone uncomfortable for the sake of it. But because I genuinely believe that this particular silence is costing women something real. Something that goes far beyond any single encounter and reaches into the center of how we understand our own desire, our own bodies, and our own right to ask for what we actually need.

Let’s get into it.

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I’ve been thinking a lot lately about why so many people — genuinely good people — are not finding good people to love. They’re stuck swiping, stuck in situationships, stuck going on first dates that lead nowhere, and stuck wondering what the hell is wrong with everyone out there.

The uncomfortable truth? The problem is often with our unconscious beliefs and habits.

Here are three things that might be preventing you from meeting the “right person.”

You resent the people you’re trying to date.

I know. But hear me out.

Whether you date men or women, there’s a really good chance that somewhere underneath the surface, you carry some version of fear and resentment toward them. Because you’ve been hurt. Because your friends have been hurt. Because we are marinating in a cultural moment that is essentially a gender war, and it is bleeding into various interactions people are having on dates right now.

When we experience relational pain, our bodies learn to protect us. We begin to generalize. We tell ourselves stories: all men do this, all women are like that. These stories feel like protection. But what they’re actually doing is keeping us in a state of low-grade threat response every time we try to connect with someone new. And here’s what’s so important to understand: people feel this. Not always cognitively. But somatically — in their bodies. When someone is sitting across from you carrying the weight of “I don’t trust you because of what people like you have done,” your nervous system registers that.

What I think is actually missing from the conversation is empathy.

For example, women deal with an insane amount of pressure around their bodies, their age, and their emotions. They’re told they’re too much and somehow not enough, often at the same time. Past 30 and want a family? You’re desperate. Don’t want kids? Something must be wrong with you. Show your feelings? You’re too emotional. Your body doesn’t look a certain way? The world has opinions about that, too. The pressure around age, specifically, and the fact that so many women start feeling “old” in their thirties, is genuinely heartbreaking.

That’s a story we’ve been sold, and it does real damage.

Men have intense pressure too: the pressure to provide, to achieve, to have a certain physical presence. The impossible standard of being emotionally available while simultaneously being told that emotional expression makes them weak. So many men have never been given permission to simply feel, and that unprocessed pain shows up in relationship in ways that can look like unavailability or shutdown — but underneath, it’s often just a person who never learned that their inner world was safe to share.

Every single one of us is walking around with some version of the fear that we are not enough. The specific ways that fear shows up are different depending on who you are, how you were raised, and what the world has told you about yourself. But the fear itself? That’s universal. And if you can actually feel that in the person sitting across from you — instead of seeing them as the enemy — everything starts to shift. When we can hold compassion for those distinct wounds rather than weaponizing them against each other, we then begin to create the conditions for real intimacy.

You don’t actually believe you can make a relationship work.

This one is hard to admit because most people don’t even know they believe it. But if somewhere in your subconscious you’re convinced that you’re going to blow it, that you’ll get into something real and then somehow ruin it, you will find a way to make that true. Or you’ll never get close enough to find out.

Being in a relationship is genuinely confronting. It asks you to be less selfish. It asks you to say things that are uncomfortable, to stick around when your instinct is to leave, to let someone see the parts of you that you’ve spent a lot of energy hiding. And, most of us don’t have great models for what that actually looks like.

But here’s the thing: not believing you can sustain a healthy relationship doesn’t mean you can’t. It means you have to get honest about what your patterns are. What you’ve done in the past that didn’t work. What you’re afraid of. To communicate needs rather than suppress them. These are learnable skills. But they require us to first acknowledge that we need them.

Awareness is where all real change begins. Because as long as this belief lives only in your unconscious, it will run the show.

You’re wasting time in connections that aren’t meant for you.

I’ll say it plainly: Our nervous system finds familiarity comforting even when that familiarity is painful. This is why so many of us stay in relationships long past the point where we know, somewhere inside, that this person is not our person.

Every day we spend in a connection that keeps our system in chronic stress, and that erodes our self-worth, or asks us to be someone who we are not, is a day we are not available for something that could genuinely nourish us.

I want to be careful here, because I’m not talking about leaving at the first sign of difficulty. Real relationships require repair. They require us to stay in discomfort and work through it. But there is a difference between productive relational friction and an ongoing pattern of suffering that we keep hoping will resolve itself.

Sometimes the most loving thing we can do — for ourselves and for the other person — is to release the connection with honesty and care.

That’s not a fun sentence. But I really believe it’s true.

Look - if you’ve had a lot of pain in dating, I’m not dismissing that. I know it can be super hard out there. The goal here isn’t to minimize what you’ve been through. It’s about doing the careful exploration of how we might be getting in our own way.

The good ones are out there. I’ve seen it. I’ve lived it. But you have to do the work to be ready for them. And that starts with getting real about what’s actually going on beneath the surface.

That’s the work. It’s not always comfortable. But it’s worth it.

Love,
Jillian

P.S. Have you listened to this week’s episode of Jillian on Love? I sit down with Dr. Nicole LePera to talk about the powerful ways our past shapes how we think, feel, and relate to others, why we get stuck in patterns we don’t understand, and what it actually means to heal.

🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcasts

There is a question I hear in many forms, across many different people, in many different stages of life:

Why can’t I stop thinking about this person?

Why, after all this time, after everything I know about why it didn’t work, am I still here, still obsessing, still reaching, still unable to fully close the door?

I want to offer you a different way of thinking about this. Because in my experience, the obsessing is almost never really about the person.

The Person Is a Metaphor

When we cannot let go of someone — whether it is a relationship that ended badly or a person we barely knew who somehow hijacked our entire interior life — we tend to treat it as a problem of attachment. We analyze the connection. We replay the moments. We try to understand what it was about them, specifically, that made them so impossible to release.

But the person, in most cases, is not the real subject of the obsession. They are a symbol. A metaphor. A screen onto which we are projecting something that belongs entirely to us: a longing, a fear, an emptiness, a question about our own lives that we have not yet been willing to face directly.

Let me explain.

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I want to say something that I think most people already know, but nobody is actually acting on.

Dating right now is shallow and filled with insecurity. There is a massive, almost comical gap between how badly people want real connection and how little they are actually willing to do to create it. Everyone is starving for something genuine and simultaneously doing everything possible to avoid being the one who admits it first. Everyone is waiting for the other person to show vulnerability first, to express interest first, to take the risk first…and because both people are waiting simultaneously, nothing real ever begins.

I see it constantly. The carefully crafted text that took forty-five minutes to write because it needed to seem effortless. The deliberate delay before responding, because responding immediately apparently means you care too much.

We have built an entire dating culture around a performance of indifference. The person who cares less has power. The person who shows their hand first is exposed. And so everyone keeps their hand hidden, and the game continues, and nobody wins anything worth having.

And we wonder why nothing feels real.

Let’s get into it.

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I was twenty-two years old, working a job I was completely wrong for, in a city that had no interest in waiting for me to figure myself out.

It was the late nineties. New York City. And I was lost and had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

I was working at a major television media company. The kind of place that sounds impressive at dinner parties and feels, from the inside, like you are slowly disappearing into fluorescent lighting and someone else’s ambition. I spent most of my days in a low-grade existential crisis. Nobody told me it was okay not to know what I wanted. Nobody had said, "Hey, twenty-two is supposed to feel like this, give yourself some time.” What I heard instead, from everything around me, was figure it out. Get on track. Find the thing.

And then one afternoon, John F. Kennedy Jr. walked across the newsroom floor.

He was the most magnetically, unreasonably handsome man I had ever seen in my life. Not handsome in the way that photographs prepare you for. Handsome in the way that stops actual physical movement, that makes the room rearrange itself around a person without the person doing anything to cause it. He moved through that newsroom like someone who had never once in his life questioned whether he belonged in a room. I stood completely still and watched him and had exactly one thought, which was: well. There it is. Proof that certain humans are simply operating at a different resolution than the rest of us.

And then he was gone. And I went back to my desk. And my existential crisis resumed.

But here’s the thing about New York in the nineties, the thing I want you to actually understand if you weren’t there. The city had this energy — a physical, almost electrical hum — that made even the hard parts feel worth it. There were no cell phones, not really, not until the very end of the decade. If you wanted to see your people, you made plans. Real plans, written in the calendar in your head, and you kept them because there was no other way to find each other.

No social media. No curated, filtered, algorithmically optimized presentation of a life. Just actual lives, being actually lived, by actual people with actual faces who had not yet discovered what could be done to those faces with needles and fillers. We wore t-shirts and jeans. We barely wore makeup. We looked like ourselves, which sounds unremarkable, and was, I now understand, a genuine gift.

The clubs were something else. We’d go out and dance until five in the morning. Not to be seen, not to post about it, just because the music was incredible and the night was alive, and that’s what you did. Then walked home through streets that were just beginning to turn pink with morning, talking about everything and nothing, completely alive in the way that you are alive when you are young and in New York and the night has just given you everything it had. The restaurants didn’t require reservations. The parties were everywhere.

I hopped from job to job through most of those years, trying to find something that fit. Nothing did, for a long time. I could not have told you what I was moving toward. If you had told me back then — standing in that newsroom, watching JFK Jr. cross the floor, completely clueless about my future — that I would eventually teach yoga and then build a career helping people understand themselves and their relationships, I genuinely would not have believed you. That wasn’t even in the category of things I could imagine.

And that’s kind of the whole point.

I know what it feels like to be scared you missed your window. To look around at other people and assume they have it figured out in ways you don’t. To feel like maybe the best parts of your story are already behind you.

They’re not.

The feeling of being stuck - the specific, suffocating certainty that everyone else is moving forward while you are standing still, that the window is closing, that you have somehow already missed the thing you were supposed to be: that feeling is a liar. A convincing one. And completely wrong.

Life moves fast, yes. But it’s also longer than it feels. Long enough for the whole thing to change direction. Long enough to become someone you couldn’t have predicted - the one doing work you’ve never considered, loving people you haven’t met, living in a way that would be unrecognizable to your twenty-two-year-old self.

You haven’t missed your chance. The story isn’t done.

Keep going.

Love,
Jillian

P.S. This week on Jillian on Love, I break down the seven principles that actually keep love alive—from how you talk about your partner to the small daily habits that build connection, intimacy, and trust.

🎙️ Listen on Apple Podcasts

Let me say something that I think a lot of people need to hear, even though it’s not the most romantic thing you’ll read today.

Love is not enough.

I know. I know how that sounds. But stay with me, because I genuinely believe that understanding this — really understanding it, not just nodding at it — is one of the most important things you can do for your future relationship. Or your current one.

Here’s what I’ve learned from my own experience, from watching relationships around me, and from the thousands of conversations I’ve had with people about their relationships. The feeling of being in love — that extraordinary, consuming, can’t-stop-thinking-about-them feeling — is real. It matters. It’s the thing that draws you toward someone and makes you want to build something with them. But love is not, by itself, the thing that sustains a relationship through real life.

And real life is coming. For everyone.

Real life is your parents getting older. Watching them decline. Eventually losing them. Real life is the conversation about money that nobody wants to have — how you spend it, how you save it, what it means to each of you, and why. It’s the conversation about sex, about what you need and what you’re not getting and what that means. It’s mental health struggles — yours, theirs, both of yours at the same time, which happens more often than people admit.

It’s career stress and identity shifts, and watching the person you fell in love with at twenty-eight become someone different at thirty-eight. It’s watching each other age. It’s the seasons that are just genuinely hard, where nobody is at their best, and the romance is nowhere to be found, and what’s left is just two people deciding whether to keep showing up.

That’s what a long-term relationship actually is. Not the highlight reel. The whole thing.

And the question worth asking — before you move in together, before you get engaged, before you have children with someone — is not just do I love this person. It’s can I trust this person to show up when it gets hard? Do they have my back when it actually costs them something to have it? Can they sit with me in the difficult seasons, or do they disappear the moment the relationship stops being easy and fun?

Because if the answer to those questions is uncertain, love alone is not going to bridge that gap.

I’ve seen it too many times. Two people who genuinely love each other, who are not bad people, who want it to work…but it doesn’t work, because when life got real, one of them couldn’t show up in the way the other person needed. Love was present. Partnership wasn’t. And partnership is what actually carries a relationship through decades.

Now, I want to be clear about something, because I don’t want this to sound like I think relationships are all hardship and you’d better brace yourself. That’s not what I’m saying. Not every couple faces the same struggles. Not everyone’s real life looks the same. Some people have it harder than others, and some seasons are genuinely wonderful and easy and full of the things that made you fall in love in the first place. I believe in that. I’ve experienced that.

But every couple that stays together over decades will face versions of all of the above. That is not pessimism. That is just the honest truth of what a long-term commitment actually contains. And going into it with clear eyes is not unromantic. It is, I would argue, the most loving thing you can do. For your partner and for yourself.

Have you checked out this week’s episode of Jillian on Love?

I’m joined by actress and author Sarah Shahi for a candid conversation about childhood wounds, heartbreak, and the relationship patterns that can lead us to chase emotionally unavailable partners. We talk about people-pleasing, difficult conversations, and the moment you realize you deserve emotional safety—not uncertainty.

🎙️Listen on Apple Podcasts

Which brings me to the thing I really want to talk about. The conversations.

The uncomfortable ones. The ones people avoid because they are awkward and potentially scary, and because everything is going so well right now, and why would you introduce something difficult into something that feels so good? I understand that impulse completely. I’ve acted on it myself and paid the price for it.

But those conversations about money, about kids, about sex, about what you need from a partner in your hardest moments, about what you’re not willing to tolerate, about what your non-negotiables actually are — those conversations can save you. Not just save the relationship. Save you from giving your heart fully and completely to someone who does not have the capacity to be a real partner to you.

That capacity is not something you can determine from chemistry alone. You cannot feel it in the butterflies. You cannot see it in the best moments. You can only see it over time, under pressure, in the moments when showing up costs something, and in the conversations where you find out who this person actually is beneath the version of themselves they present when everything is easy.

None of this comes with a guarantee. I want to say that clearly because I think false certainty is one of the most dangerous things in relationships. You can do everything right — have all the hard conversations, take your time, pay attention to who someone is under pressure, and still find yourself five years in realizing that the person you committed to is not showing up the way you believed they would. Love requires risk. If you want complete certainty, you cannot be in a relationship. Nothing worthwhile in life is one hundred percent safe.

But that truth does not excuse rushing. It does not excuse skipping the hard conversations because you’re caught up in how in love you feel. The feeling of being in love is a beginning, not a conclusion. It tells you that something is worth pursuing. It does not tell you that the pursuit is complete.

The real goal, the one worth orienting your relationship around, is not to find someone who completes you. That idea is romantic and naïve and ultimately not useful. No person can complete you. That is your work. The goal is to find someone who supports you while you do that work. Someone who is doing their own work alongside you. Someone who, when life gets real — and it will get real — is still standing next to you because they chose, consciously and repeatedly, to show up.

That’s the relationship worth waiting for. Worth being honest for. Worth having the uncomfortable conversations for.

Love,
Jillian

A relationship is not coming to find you because you are a good person.

I know that is not what anyone wants to hear. But I think it is one of the most important things I can say, because I have watched so many people — genuinely good, genuinely loving people —organize their entire romantic lives around the belief that goodness is its own kind of guarantee. That if they are patient enough, consistent enough, loving enough, the right person will eventually show up, and it will all make sense.

And I have been that person. I have stayed in situations longer than I should have because I was convinced that my effort meant something. That my consistency would eventually tip the scales. That if I just kept showing up, the person on the other side would finally show up too — fully, completely, in the way I actually needed them to.

It doesn’t work that way. And I think a lot of us learn that the hard way.

Here is what I know now: a relationship is not something that happens to you when you have finally become worthy of it.

It is the result of choices — specific, honest, sometimes uncomfortable choices about who you give your time to, how long you stay when you know you shouldn’t, and whether you are willing to hold a standard even when holding it is lonely.

And the hardest choice is always the letting go.

Because walking away from someone you care about never feels clean. It doesn’t feel empowering in the moment, regardless of what anyone tells you. It feels like loss. It feels like maybe you gave up too soon, maybe you didn’t try hard enough, maybe if you had just handled things differently, it would have turned into what you wanted. That story is very convincing. It is also rarely true.

Here is what I have learned about the person who doesn’t fully choose you back, so you can decide what to do next.

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One of my most shared posts says: People spend too much time analyzing the unavailable person and not enough time walking away from them.

The response to that post told me everything. So many of you are exhausted. You’re confused. You’re stuck in loops with people who can’t meet you emotionally. And you’re trying to decode them instead of choosing yourself.

Let’s slow this down and get clear.

Emotional availability is what creates emotional intimacy. It’s the willingness to be seen and to see someone else. It’s openness. It’s reciprocity. It’s empathy. It’s the ability to build safety and trust over time. It’s not trauma dumping on the first date. It’s not constant emotional processing. It’s a willingness to go deeper as the connection deepens.

When someone is emotionally available, they respond to your vulnerability with curiosity. They share themselves gradually. They don’t create distance every time closeness increases.

When someone is emotionally unavailable, you feel it.

The connection stays on the surface. Conversations don’t deepen. When you try to go there, there’s a block. You feel confused. You start wondering if they’re really into you. You feel them pull away when things begin to get more serious.

Here’s what’s important: emotional unavailability is not always about trauma or avoidant attachment. Sometimes it’s much simpler.

And this is the part people don’t want to hear…

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I ignored three major red flags before I married my ex-husband.

And when I say “ignored,” I need to be clear about what that actually means.

I didn’t miss them. I saw them. I felt them in my body — that uncomfortable, uneasy sensation in my gut that something was off.

But I didn’t listen to that feeling. I didn’t raise my concerns. I didn’t initiate conversations about what I was noticing. And most importantly, I fundamentally did not believe I had a right to say anything.

I thought speaking up would rock the boat, and I was terrified that if I brought up my concerns, I would lose him. So I didn’t say anything. I performed the role of the understanding, easy-going partner who didn’t have needs or boundaries.

I was a strong-willed, opinionated woman with a strong sense of self in certain areas of my life, but my self-esteem wasn’t high enough in this relationship. I was abandoning myself over and over, choosing his comfort over my own nervous system’s signals.

And here’s what I know now that I wish I’d known then: relationships don’t stand a chance if people aren’t honest with each other. They can’t survive if we’re not willing to inconvenience the other person with our feelings and our point of view.

Real relationships need the truth. They need two people who can communicate openly, who can tolerate difficult conversations, who understand that friction isn’t the enemy — it’s how we grow and repair.

Have you checked out this week’s episode of Jillian on Love?

I’m joined by Harvard psychologist Dr. Ellen Langer for a powerful conversation about mindfulness, mindset, and how the way we perceive things shapes our relationships and our lives.

🎙️Listen on Apple Podcasts

So here are the three biggest red flags I ignored, and what I’ve learned about why I ignored them.

Red Flag #1: He Had a Pattern of Friendship Estrangement

I watched my ex consistently not respond to texts or calls from friends. People would reach out, and he would just ignore them. Friendships would slowly fade because he wouldn’t maintain them.

And instead of seeing this as concerning information about his relational capacity, I felt special that I was the only person he was responding to! Looking back, that was incredibly immature. It was also a sign of my own insecurity — I was getting validation from being “chosen” over others, rather than asking the more important question: What does this pattern tell me about how he maintains relationships?

I didn’t bring this up. I didn’t say, “I’ve noticed you don’t respond to your friends. Can we talk about that?” I was afraid that bringing it up would make me seem controlling or judgmental.

But here’s what I know now: how someone treats their friendships is information about their relational capacity.

If someone has a pattern of letting relationships fade, of not responding, or of estrangement, that tells you something big about what they value. And if they don’t value the people in their life, what would that mean about being in a relationship with them? What does it say about their ability to maintain connection, repair ruptures, and stay present when things get difficult?

Red Flag #2: He Hid His Medication, Then Stopped Taking It Without Discussion

About a month before our wedding, my ex told me he’d been on a mild mood stabilizer for years. And in the same conversation, he mentioned he’d just stopped taking it. Cold turkey. No discussion with me or, apparently, with his doctor.

This was a double issue. First, I had a right to know he was on medication that stabilized his moods. That’s information that directly impacts a partnership. Second, making the unilateral decision to stop taking it without any conversation with me was not ok. I know it can be hard to tell someone you’re on medication. There’s shame, fear of judgment, worry about how they’ll react. I have deep compassion for how scary that vulnerability can be. But in a partnership, we need transparency. We need to be able to share information that affects both people. And we need to make decisions together about things that will impact the relationship.

When he told me, he didn’t really apologize. He showed no vulnerability about why he’d kept it from me or what his fears were around it. There was no real conversation about what going off the medication might mean for him or for us.

And I didn’t push for a conversation. I didn’t say, “We need to talk about this more.” I minimized it because I didn’t want to create conflict right before the wedding. I didn’t want to be the difficult one. I didn’t believe my need for transparency and shared decision-making was valid.

I was abandoning myself.

Red Flag #3: He Would Emotionally Withdraw During Any Conflict

Every time there was tension, or I brought up something that bothered me, my ex would pull away. He would shut down emotionally and stop communicating. I had to guess how he was feeling.

I want to be clear: I’m not talking about someone who needs time to process before they can talk. Some people aren’t immediately emotive and need space to understand what they’re feeling before they can articulate it. That’s a valid communication style.

This was different. This was emotional withholding. This was using silence and withdrawal as a way to punish me for having feelings or needs. This was refusing to engage or repair.

And here’s what I understand now about secure attachment: you cannot withhold love and connection every time there’s conflict and expect to build trust.

(This obviously doesn’t apply to situations where there’s abuse and safety is the concern.)

Healthy relationships require both people to stay present during difficulty. To be able to say, “I’m overwhelmed and need a break, but I want to come back to this conversation in an hour.” To practice repair after rupture. But I didn’t know how to ask for that. I didn’t have the language or the self-worth to say, “The way you withdraw when I bring something up doesn’t feel safe to me. We need to find a different way to handle conflict.”

Instead, I learned to walk on eggshells. I learned not to bring things up. I learned to manage my own dysregulation alone because I couldn’t count on him to stay connected when things were not perfect and easy.

What I’ve Learned

Looking back, these red flags were showing me that we didn’t have the foundation for a secure, healthy relationship. But I couldn’t see it at the time because I was operating from my own unhealed wounds and insecurity.

But real love—secure love—requires honesty. It requires two people who can communicate openly, who can tolerate uncomfortable conversations, and who understand that speaking your truth isn’t rocking the boat. It’s honoring yourself and giving the relationship a chance to be real.

Your gut feelings are information from your nervous system. When something feels off, that’s your body trying to tell you something important. And you have every right to speak up, to ask questions, to expect transparency and partnership in decision-making.

So, be brave and have the conversation.

Love,
Jillian

You meet someone who is different. They’re present. They ask you questions and are actually interested in your answers. They share parts of themselves without hiding behind a mask. There’s connection. A sense of safety. And a feeling of being seen.

We know that this doesn’t happen often.

Most people are either completely disconnected or performing a version of themselves they think others want to see. We’re living in a culture where people are starved for meaningful connection while simultaneously terrified of vulnerability. So, when you meet someone who appears emotionally available, it activates something deep in your body.

Of course, you feel excited about them. Of course, you start to bond. This is a normal human response to felt safety and connection.

Then you see them again. You sleep together. And in that space, they’re fully present - attentive, connected, and generous. They seem to want closeness. You feel chosen in a way that registers as significant and rare.

And then… everything shifts.

They withdraw. They become distant. Communication becomes inconsistent, and the energy changes completely. It’s confusing. It’s painful. And it’s one of the most disorienting experiences in modern dating.

So what should you do?

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What I’ve learned through years of personal work and through working with thousands of people is that regulation starts in the body. Our nervous system and our emotional life are not separate. They are constantly communicating with each other, shaping each other, influencing how we interpret and respond to the world.

When my body feels good, my mind feels good. When my body is depleted, overstimulated, or dysregulated, my thoughts become faster and more reactive. The same is true in reverse. When my mind is overwhelmed, my body tightens, my breathing becomes shallow, my digestion shifts, and my sleep is affected.

So when I talk about regulating my nervous system, I’m not talking about forcing myself into a calm state. I’m talking about increasing its capacity, so it becomes more resilient. A toned nervous system recovers more quickly. It doesn’t spiral as easily. It doesn’t stay stuck in fight, flight, or freeze for as long. Over time, this creates mental and emotional resilience, which is what makes me less reactive and more grounded in my daily life.

Here’s how I regulate, and how I’ve taught thousands to regulate too:

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When people talk about improving their relationships with themselves, they often imagine something abstract like “love yourself more".

But I see it as something more layered. You are not a fixed identity. You are a continually evolving human being who can make new choices in any moment. When you’re in a healthy relationship with yourself, you approach your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors with curiosity rather than judgment. You notice patterns without turning them into life sentences. You allow room for change. You stop living inside rigid stories about who you are and start participating in who you’re becoming. At its core, your relationship to yourself is determined by your willingness to remain conscious, flexible, and engaged with your own growth.

Here are seven ways to improve your relationship with yourself.

1. Learn to regulate

Emotional regulation is often misunderstood as simply “calming down” or pausing before reacting. Those skills matter (a lot), but true regulation goes deeper. It is the ongoing practice of becoming a steward of your inner world. Emotional regulation is often described as controlling or containing feelings, but that is not true. We are emotional beings, designed to feel a full range of emotions daily. Instead, to become the stewards of our inner world, we must recognize that stress and distress are not caused by events alone. They are caused by the meanings we assign to events. Something happens. A text goes unanswered. A tone feels different. A plan changes. Within seconds, a narrative forms: they do not care, I am not important, this always happens. I am unsafe.

At that point, you are no longer responding to what occurred. You are responding to what you think it all means for you.

So yes, take a deep breath. Go for the walk. Take that pause. This is how you tone your nervous system to be more resilient in the face of discomfort. But also, learn how to be less “triggerable”. And the only way to do that is to pay attention to the meanings you assign to the things people say, and the events that you wish didn’t happen.

Again, emotional regulation does not mean suppressing emotion. The goal is not to let things outside your control dictate your inner state. And over time, you’ll begin to notice your habitual meaning-making patterns. You recognize the particular stories that arise when you feel uncertain, rejected, or scared. And you’ll notice your reactivity.

You’ll also begin to notice when other people are operating inside their own stories. And that’s when something cool happens: you stop assuming that their every reaction is about you. Instead, you start seeing behavior as information about their own internal state rather than as a verdict about your worth.

Ps – I am not sharing this from a pedestal. I work hard at this, and often fail. But this is truly “the work”.

2. Accept, at a deep level, that you cannot change other people

Most people spend enormous amounts of mental and emotional energy focused on how someone else should be different. If only they were more communicative. If only they were more consistent. If only they were more self-aware.

That is why one of the most liberating lessons is: people can only meet you where they are – mentally and emotionally. Not where you want them to be. You can’t heal someone into becoming the partner you need. You can’t love someone into emotional maturity. No matter how much you care, people can only meet you at their level of readiness, capacity, and commitment.

People only change when they’re ready - when the pain of staying the same outweighs the fear of changing. That’s just how it is. Someone else’s growth is not your responsibility. It’s their path, their timing, their work.

Instead of asking, “How do I get them to change?”
You begin asking, “What do I want to do in response to what I’m seeing?”

That question restores agency. Agency is one of the foundations of a healthy relationship with yourself.

3. Let yourself be happy

For many people, personal growth becomes another form of self-monitoring and another area where they feel behind.

But much of the work of evolving is not about fixing. It is about allowing yourself to be happy. Many of us carry unconscious rules about happiness. That it must be earned, that it will be taken away, or that something bad will follow.

So we postpone it. We think, “after I heal more.” “After I accomplish more.”

After I become better.

But joy is the path. You don’t have to be miserable to achieve, and you don’t have to tolerate misery in a relationship. So ask yourself:

What feels genuinely enjoyable to me right now?
What activities make me lose track of time?
Where do I feel most like myself?

Then give those things more of your energy.

4. Choose yourself before seeking to be chosen

When you are not clear about what you value, it becomes easy to shape yourself around whoever is in front of you. When you are not clear about your needs, it can be tempting to minimize them to maintain a connection. This creates suffering.

Choosing yourself means developing enough clarity about what matters to you so that you can assess whether a situation fits your life, rather than organizing your energy around whether you are wanted. You begin to define the kind of relationship you are seeking, the level of emotional availability you require, and the things you can realistically live with. You become an advocate for your heart. As this clarity strengthens, your thinking changes.

Instead of asking how to get someone to choose you, you start asking whether this is a dynamic you would choose. That shift builds self-trust and moves you into a more trusting, grounded relationship with yourself.

5. Actively train yourself for gratitude

We always have a choice to focus on what is wrong or to focus on what is right.

The truth is this: when your attention repeatedly scans for problems, life tends to feel like a series of problems. When your attention regularly includes what is good, supportive, or sufficient, life begins to feel better. This is not forced, fake positivity. It is deliberate attention. You might ask what went reasonably well today, what felt slightly easier than it used to, or where you experienced small moments of support. These questions expand perception, and as perception widens, we create the conditions to be more thankful. This applies to relationships, too.

6. Choose environments and relationships that support who you are becoming

You become a reflection of what you surround yourself with.

The people you keep close shape your energy, your beliefs, and the way you see yourself. When you place yourself in environments that honor growth, honesty, and personal responsibility, you naturally begin to rise to that level. And pay attention to who makes you feel seen, supported, and loved – those are your people.

7. Raise the standard for who receives access to you

Standards are not about control or punishment. They are about discernment. They determine where your emotional energy is invested. When you repeatedly give access to people who are inconsistent, unavailable, or dismissive, you pay the price with your mental and physical health.

We all have to evaluate whether someone treats our feelings with care, whether their behavior is consistent over time, and whether their actions demonstrate genuine regard for our presence in their life. When you are discerning about the people who get access to your inner world, you send yourself a clear message: you have value. This not only raises your self-worth but also makes your life much, much better.

Do you have anything else you would add to this list? Would love to hear from you!

Love,
Jillian

Tell me if this feels familiar:

You meet someone, and the chemistry is immediate. Conversation flows easily, but it isn’t superficial. You talk about real things. Personal things. It feels natural to open up in ways you usually don’t. You feel understood. Seen. The connection feels rare, almost relieving, like you’ve finally found something you’ve been missing.

Sometimes that intensity feels like home. Sometimes it echoes a connection from your past. Either way, you feel bonded quickly, even though not much time has passed. And it makes sense to assume that something that strong must mean something.

But then things change.

Texts become inconsistent. Engagement turns on and off. Plans get postponed. You notice you’re initiating more than they are. When you bring it up, they reassure you. They say they care. They say they’re busy. They say they’re figuring things out.

And even though anxiety and confusion start creeping in, you stay—because the connection felt too meaningful to walk away from.

I’m going to help you.

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Once a cheater, always a cheater? Should I forgive someone who cheated? Should I date someone who’s cheated before?

And the truth is, there is no universal answer.

I’m not dogmatic when it comes to relationships. I’ve worked with enough people, in enough different circumstances, to know that context matters, often more than we want it to. People are complicated. Relationships are complex. And infidelity can be deeply nuanced.

That said, let me be clear about one thing up front: cheating is inexcusable. There is no justification for betraying someone’s trust. But whether it is forgivable is a different question. And that answer depends on the situation, the relationship, and the people involved.

Let’s get into it.

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You’ll get to ask questions about the membership, you’ll learn how it works, and you’ll get clarity on whether it aligns with where you are in your life right now. Ps: the first group coaching session inside The Conscious Woman begins January 16th at 12pm ET, so tonight’s Q&A will help you make an informed, grounded decision before we begin.

If nothing else - it will be a lovely way to connect face-to-face.

RSVP HERE

One of the biggest reasons so many people struggle in love is because they confuse lust with love. And I get why. A lot of us grew up on movie scripts about love: big chemistry, big feelings, dramatic tension, sweeping moments of passion. We were taught that the person who makes our heart race, our stomach drop, and our mind obsess is “the one.” We don’t question it, because it feels powerful. In fact, it feels like destiny.

But here’s the truth most of us learn the hard way: lust and love are not the same thing.

Hollywood and romantic storytelling trained us to believe that the more intensity we feel, the more it must be right. If it’s overwhelming, if it shakes us, if it knocks us off our center, we assume it must be love. We call it “soulmate energy”. We call it fate. But what we’re actually feeling, a lot of the time, is lust combined with fantasy. Projection. The thrill of being chosen by someone who feels slightly out of reach.

Romantic storytelling taught us that love is a feeling. Not a practice. Not a choice we make over and over again in how we treat each other.

But the truth is this: great relationships are not fueled by adrenaline. They are built on trust.

True emotional intimacy doesn’t create chaos in your nervous system. It doesn’t keep you guessing or chasing. When two people care for each other’s wellbeing as deeply as their own – that is love. This creates safety and knowing that you’re on the same team. That’s when two people become each other’s “the one.”

That said, I want to be real - lust is fun. Chemistry is exciting. We are not here to live in emotionally sterile relationships with no spark. All safety and no passion is not the goal. That’s just a roommate dynamic.

One of the upsides of the mental health conversation online is that we’re becoming more aware of our patterns. We’re learning about attachment styles, nervous system responses, trauma bonds, red flags. That awareness matters. It’s helping people. But there’s also a downside: somewhere along the way, we started pathologizing every strong feeling.

Butterflies? Must be trauma.
Chemistry? Must be reenacting childhood wounds.
Intensity? Must mean it’s toxic

And that’s just simply not the full story.

We are wired to feel. To desire. To experience passion and aliveness and attraction. Chemistry is part of being human. Sometimes those butterflies are anxiety and a warning, yes. And sometimes they’re simply evidence that we are alive.

The real issue isn’t that we feel deeply. The problem is that many of us were never taught discernment. We don’t understand that just because we’re wildly attracted to someone, it doesn’t mean they’re good for us, and it definitely doesn’t mean we’re in love.

If you want a healthy relationship that lasts - one with more good seasons than painful ones - you have to prioritize who someone is over how they make you feel in the first few months. Character matters more than spark. Consistency matters more than charm. How they treat you when they’re stressed, tired, insecure, or uncomfortable tells you infinitely more than butterflies ever could.

And yet none of this works if we only apply these standards to other people.

You can’t ask for emotional maturity without doing your own work. You can’t demand honesty and accountability while avoiding hard conversations. You can’t say you want a teammate and then play games or bail when things gets real.

Be the kind of partner you wish to have in another.

Because love is not just about finding the right person. It’s about becoming someone capable of creating and participating in a safe, loving and passionate relationship.

So, will I see you tonight? Even if you can’t join live, you’ll receive the replay right after.

RSVP HERE.

Love,
Jillian

Most people enter a new year believing that resolutions will fix everything that feels out of alignment in their lives. They set rigid goals, apply more pressure, and try to override their patterns through willpower. When the goals become unsustainable, the familiar cycle returns.

This isn’t a motivation problem. It’s a physiological and emotional state problem.

The truth is simple: You cannot create a better life from a dysregulated nervous system, a chronically exhausted body, or a belief system shaped by fear and self-doubt.

When the body is exhausted, the mind becomes reactive. When the mind is reactive, the body remains exhausted. The system keeps itself trapped.

If you want to change parts of your life, the work is not about striving harder.

It’s about addressing the conditions that have been driving your behavior — your energy, your internal narrative, and the emotional burdens you’re still carrying.

Change becomes possible when the system becomes stable. There are three core areas that determine whether growth can actually happen, and they might be keeping you stuck. Today’s message is an action plan and an exercise for getting unstuck and making some serious changes.

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I hope you’re taking care of yourself as you navigate this holiday week. Know that I’m thinking about you, and you’re not alone.

I’m looking ahead to 2026, including launching my biggest, most healing project yet, and I have big plans for the Love Weekly community. I’m so grateful for you.

I’m sharing my favorite Love Weekly posts of all time, and no matter what you’re going through, I hope these will provide guidance and support.

Break free of old cycles in 2026

We’re not meant to heal in isolation. Growth requires more than self-awareness — it requires co-regulation. Being witnessed. Being reminded of who you are when you forget.

That’s why I created The Conscious Woman — a space for women who are ready to stop repeating the same patterns and finally move forward. With guidance. With community. With tools that actually work. The membership includes live group coaching with me, on-demand trainings and masterclasses, my entire archive of workbooks and journals, a private community of women who get it, and tons of other exclusive content.

I’m opening the doors in January for 72 hours only — and spots will sell out. You can guarantee access by joining the waitlist here.

I’ll see you in 2026!

Love,
Jillian