In this episode of The Wrong Ones, I'm unpacking something that started as a harmless social-media trend—looking back at 2016 photos—and turned into a much deeper conversation about identity, body image, and the psychology of our first real heartbreak.

What happens when old photos don't feel nostalgic, but activating? When past versions of yourself bring up discomfort instead of pride? This episode explores why that reaction isn't about vanity or embarrassment, but about unresolved grief, body memory, and identity shifts that haven't fully integrated yet.

From there, we move into the anatomy of a first adult breakup—the kind that doesn't end with betrayal or blame, just the quiet devastation of "something feels missing." I talk through a relationship from my early Boston years, the suddenness of that ending, and why ambiguous breakups are often the hardest to heal from. We explore why the urge to understand why becomes so consuming, why answers rarely bring the relief we think they will, and how attachment systems respond when certainty disappears.

This episode is a psychology-forward deep dive into meaning-seeking after heartbreak, the illusion of closure, and the realization that someone's explanation doesn't actually change the outcome of their decision. We talk about family introductions, cultural narratives around seriousness, the impulse to "teach someone a lesson" after they leave, and why emotional clarity can quietly become a way of staying attached.

Ultimately, this conversation is about integration—how grief softens over time, how writing and reflection help the nervous system complete what the mind can't, and how healing doesn't come from understanding everything, but from no longer needing to.

This episode is for anyone who:

• Struggles to look at old versions of themselves without judgment

• Has replayed a breakup trying to make it make sense

• Confuses explanation with closure

• Is learning how to let meaning exist without answers

Because healing doesn't always look like clarity. Sometimes it looks like peace without the story.

Resources & Concepts Mentioned:

Ambiguous Loss & Unfinished Grief

Attachment Theory (Anxious vs. Avoidant Dynamics)

Nervous System Regulation & State-Dependent Memory

Identity Formation & Ego Dissolution

Meaning-Seeking as a Control Strategy

Closure vs. Completion

Emotional Labor & Moral Accounting in Relationships

Integration vs. Resolution

Body Memory & Self-Compassion Across Life Stages

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A real-time catch-up about nervous-system safety, a Phoenix meet-cute that cracked something open, and what changes when you stop living from lack.

In this episode of The Wrong Ones, I'm doing something a little different. Instead of a fully scripted conversation, I'm letting this one unfold the way life has been unfolding lately—messy, surprising, and honestly kind of beautiful. It's part storytime, part reflection, and part psychological deep-dive into the quiet internal shift that happens when you stop orienting your life around what's missing and start inhabiting what's already here.

We start with the holidays back on the East Coast—family, old rhythms, that subtle kind of emotional grounding—and then move into New Year's Eve in Sedona with lifelong friends. A night that wasn't flashy or performative, but deeply regulating. No pressure to reinvent. No "new year, new me" energy. Just safety. The kind that settles your body, not just your mind.

And then there's Phoenix. A chaotic travel day, a Starbucks that turns into a meet-cute, and a conversation that becomes unexpectedly intimate—fast. Not because it was meant to be "the one," but because it showed me something: how different connection feels when your nervous system isn't in a state of lack. When chemistry doesn't hijack you. When you can enjoy something without trying to turn it into a future.

From there, we get into what's shifted beneath the surface—how fulfillment changes attraction patterns, why urgency gets mistaken for alignment, and how "trust the timing" can sometimes become a spiritual-sounding way to bypass real grief. Because timing isn't something that happens to you—it's something that emerges when your internal state and your external choices finally match.

This episode is for anyone who feels like they're "waiting" for love to start their life, anyone who's tired of confusing intensity with depth, and anyone learning how to hold desire without letting it dominate them. Because your life isn't a waiting room. It's happening right now.

Reflection Prompt of the Episode:

Where are you treating your life like it starts later—and what would change if you started living as if it's already yours?

What are you still measuring against an imaginary timeline?

What would it look like to hold desire without urgency—without turning every connection into a test or a sign?

Resources & Concepts Mentioned:

Nervous System Regulation & Felt Safety

Attachment Patterns (Anxious vs. Secure Dynamics)

Chemistry vs. Activation (Anxiety mistaken for attraction)

Emotional Outsourcing & Co-Regulation

Identity Foreclosure (Premature commitment to an identity/path)

Intensity vs. Depth (why urgency feels like meaning)

Spiritual Bypassing ("trust the timing" without context)

Agency vs. Passive Waiting (alignment as a choice)

Discernment & Self-Trust (walking away from what costs peace)

Fulfillment as a foundation for healthier attraction

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A New Year conversation about self-investment, self-trust, and why alignment—not being chosen—changes everything.

In this first episode of the new year, The Wrong Ones opens with a recalibration rather than a reinvention. This is not a "new year, new me" episode. It's a grounded, psychology-forward exploration of what it actually means to choose yourself—consistently, holistically, and without turning self-care into performance.

This episode unpacks one of the most misunderstood dynamics in modern dating: why emotionally healthy men tend to deeply value women who take care of themselves—not because of aesthetics or "high value" branding, but because self-investment signals self-regard, stability, competence, and agency at a nervous-system level. We move beyond surface-level advice to examine how physical, mental, emotional, and financial self-care fundamentally shift relational power dynamics, attachment patterns, and partner selection.

Through psychology-backed insight and long-form reflection, this conversation reframes self-care as self-leadership. We explore how choosing yourself changes what you tolerate, who you attract, and how you move through relationships without abandoning your identity. The episode closes with a prompt to enter the year focused not on becoming more desirable—but more devoted to yourself.

This episode is for anyone who's done chasing potential, confusing anxiety with chemistry, or shrinking to be chosen—and is ready to build a life where alignment, not performance, sets the tone.

Reflection Prompt of the Episode:

Where are you outsourcing your worth—and what would change if you became the primary investment in your own life this year?

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What I created, moved through, and survived—and why none of it was for nothing.

In this episode of The Wrong Ones, we reflect on the year not through milestones or achievements, but through what was metabolized—emotionally, psychologically, and neurologically. Recorded during that tender in-between stretch as Hanukkah comes to a close and the holidays begin, this conversation explores what it actually means to say "nothing in life is ever wasted"—not as a platitude, but as neuroscience.

Inspired by a recent conversation with peers, this episode looks at how even the years that feel messy, unresolved, or painful don't disappear. They integrate. Through personal storytelling and psychology-backed insight, we unpack how the nervous system records experience, how meaning forms after survival, and how reflection changes not just how we remember the past—but how we carry it forward.

This episode is for anyone ending the year feeling changed, but not finished. For anyone who survived something quietly. And for anyone who wants to honor what they created, moved through, and survived—without forcing closure.

• Why experiences don't vanish psychologically—they either integrate or repeat

• Hebb's Law ("neurons that fire together wire together") and how emotional patterns form

• The role of the amygdala and hippocampus in emotional memory and heartbreak

• Polyvagal Theory and why the body often senses loss before the mind does

• Anticipatory grief and the nervous system's early warning system

• Attachment theory and why honesty in relationships can feel neurologically threatening

• Self-determination theory and autonomy as a core psychological need

• Why survival mode still counts—and why meaning doesn't always arrive in real time

• Viktor Frankl and the difference between performing meaning and integrating it

• Post-traumatic growth and how reflection reshapes experience

• Expressive writing research and why turning pain into language is regulating

• Memory reconsolidation and how reflection changes emotional memory

• Narrative identity and the stories we tell ourselves about our lives

• Distress tolerance, restraint, and emotional maturity

• Emotional complexity: holding grief and gratitude at the same time

• Integration vs. closure—and why the goal isn't "moving on," but moving forward intact

• Hebb's Law & Neural Wiring (experience shaping the brain)

• Emotional Memory: Amygdala & Hippocampus

• Polyvagal Theory (Porges; nervous system safety & threat detection)

• Anticipatory Grief (pre-loss nervous system processing)

• Attachment Theory (Bowlby & Ainsworth; relational threat & needs)

• Self-Determination Theory (autonomy, alignment, psychological health)

• Viktor Frankl & Meaning-Making After Suffering

• Post-Traumatic Growth (Tedeschi & Calhoun)

• Expressive Writing Research (Pennebaker)

• Memory Reconsolidation (Nader; remembering as rewriting)

• Narrative Identity (McAdams; identity as story)

• Distress Tolerance (DBT; emotional regulation without self-abandonment)

• Emotional Complexity & Psychological Resilience

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In this episode of The Wrong Ones, we talk about the quiet, internal moment when your relationship worldview widens—not because you've suddenly changed who you are, but because you've finally grown into someone who can hold more nuance. From matching with a trans man on a dating app to noticing how your thirties shift your sense of "never" and "always," we explore what happens when the lens you've used to understand love moves from portrait mode to landscape.

Through personal storytelling and psychology-backed insight, we unpack how evolving relationship structures, therapy culture, technology, and simple lived experience stretch the edges of what feels possible. We talk about why curiosity doesn't threaten your identity, how exposure softens rigidity, and what it means to move from inherited scripts to consciously chosen beliefs. Plus, a little life update on launching Substack and returning to writing as another space to process all of this in real time.

In this episode, we cover:

• The "soft clicks": tiny, ordinary moments that reveal big internal shifts

• How your thirties change your brain, your identity, and your tolerance for nuance

• Matching with a trans man on a dating app and what that pause of curiosity actually meant

• The difference between expanding your worldview and changing your orientation or desires

• Moving from black-and-white thinking to "Does this feel aligned for me?"

• Differentiation: becoming your own person outside of family, culture, and inherited rules

• How therapy language (attachment, boundaries, nervous system) reshapes relationship expectations

• The role of dating apps in norm-shifting and repeated exposure to diverse identities and structures

• Why monogamy isn't disappearing—just becoming a conscious choice instead of a default

• Psychological flexibility: holding more options in mind without feeling destabilized

• The emotional exhaustion of performing timelines that were never really yours

• Designing relationships that fit your nervous system, not just your résumé

• Curiosity vs. participation: understanding something without needing to live it

• How growing older is less about certainty and more about internal spaciousness

Reflection Question of the Week:

Where in your life are you being invited to loosen an old belief—not to change who you are, but to see who you've become?

Resources Mentioned:

• Differentiation and Family Systems Theory (Bowen; self vs. system)

• Post-Formal Thought & Integrative Complexity (adult cognitive development and nuance)

• Schema Theory & Accommodation (Piaget; updating internal narratives)

• Psychological Flexibility (Hayes; Acceptance & Commitment Therapy)

• Mere Exposure Effect & Norm-Shifting Through Contact (Zajonc; familiarity reducing threat)

• Attachment Theory (Bowlby & Ainsworth; internal working models in relationships)

• Polyvagal-Informed Ideas of Safety & Regulation (Porges; nervous system and connection)

• Therapy Culture & Relational Self-Awareness (contemporary psychology and modern love)

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