Everyone talks about self-love like it’s a destination you reach after enough bubble baths and affirmations. But what if the real work of loving yourself is learning to stop abandoning who you are every time you enter a relationship? What if being “the loving one” has actually cost you more than you’ve been willing to admit?
In this raw, solo episode, Lisa dismantles everything you thought you knew about unconditional love, self-love, and what it takes to be in a healthy relationship without losing yourself in the process. She challenges the narrative that many of us, especially women, were raised with: that being loving means holding it all together, forgiving everything, and sacrificing yourself to make it work.
Drawing from her own journey of overgiving, abandoning herself, and ultimately setting boundaries in her current relationship after a major wake-up call, Lisa reveals why unconditional love has a place (with your children) but becomes toxic when applied to adult romantic relationships. She breaks down the difference between compassion for someone’s humanity and tolerating harmful behavior, between loving someone deeply and staying when it costs you who you are.
This isn’t about becoming cold or withholding love. It’s about understanding that healthy love, both with yourself and others, requires discernment, reciprocity, and boundaries. It’s about learning to meet yourself with the same compassion you’ve been giving everyone else, and recognizing that the relationship you have with yourself is the blueprint for every relationship you’ll ever have.
In this episode, Lisa reveals:
- Why unconditional love in romantic relationships often means you’re abandoning yourself (and calling it devotion)
- The specific cost of overgiving in relationships and how it erodes your self-trust
- How forgiveness without repair is just using spirituality to avoid reality
- The difference between loving someone’s humanity and having conditions for access, partnership, and intimacy
- Why boundaries don’t block love, they protect it (and make love sustainable)
- What healthy, mature love actually looks like: reciprocal, boundaried, grounded, accountable, spacious, and intentional
- How to recognize when you’re mistaking tolerance for love and endurance for devotion
- The only real antidote to shame (and why most high-achievers struggle to give it to themselves)
- Why self-integrity, keeping promises to yourself, is the foundation of self-love and self-trust
- How to love someone deeply and still walk away if staying costs you who you are
- The reflection questions that will show you exactly where you’re out of alignment in your relationships
This episode is for you if you’ve ever:
- Found yourself overgiving in relationships, always being the one who repairs, carries, and sacrifices
- Believed that being loving meant forgiving everything without requiring accountability or repair
- Lost yourself in a relationship because you were so focused on not losing the other person
- Said yes to things you didn’t want to do, shrinking yourself to be liked or chosen
- Felt resentful in your relationship but kept telling yourself you just need to be more loving
- Struggled to set boundaries because you equated boundaries with being cold or withholding
- Extended endless compassion to others but met yourself with criticism when you fell short
- Wondered why you can show up with such compassion for everyone else but can’t seem to give it to yourself
- Built a relationship that looks good on the outside but inside you’ve abandoned who you are
- Knew you needed to leave a relationship but kept staying because you loved them (even though it was costing you everything)
About Lisa Carpenter
Lisa Carpenter is a Master Life Coach and host of the Congruent podcast. She works with ambitious, Type A professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs who look successful on the outside but feel exhausted, unfulfilled, or like it’s never enough on the inside. Through her signature Congruency Loop™ process, Lisa helps clients stop living in Doing Mode and create success that feels as good as it looks. Find her at lisacarpenter.ca and on Instagram and LinkedIn @lisacarpentercoaching.
Ready to stop abandoning yourself in the name of love?
If you heard yourself in this episode, if you recognized the pattern of overgiving and calling it devotion, if you’ve been mistaking tolerance for love and endurance for commitment, it’s time to get honest about what this is costing you.
Because here’s the truth: you can love someone with your whole heart and still feel unseen, unsafe, and disconnected. You can love someone deeply and still completely lose yourself in the process. And the highest form of love has to include you.
The Congruency Audit is where we look at the gap between the relationships you’ve built and what you’re actually feeling inside them. We’ll identify the exact patterns keeping you stuck in overgiving, the wounds driving your need to earn love through sacrifice, and what it’s going to take for you to finally create relationships (including the one with yourself) that feel as good on the inside as they look on the outside.
In 15 minutes, we’ll pinpoint where you’re abandoning yourself, what’s driving that pattern, and the single biggest shift that will change everything. Because you didn’t come this far to keep losing yourself in every relationship you enter.
Book your Congruency Audit: lisacarpenter.ca/audit
This isn’t about optimizing the version of yourself you built to survive. It’s about creating congruence so the relationships you’re in don’t require you to disappear. Success that feels as good on the inside as it looks on the outside starts with you including yourself in the love you give.
00:00:06:29 - 00:00:33:12
Lisa
You built success that looks damn good on the outside, but inside it's costing you your health, your relationships, your energy. And no matter how much you do, it never feels like enough. Welcome to Congruent. I'm Lisa Carpenter, the coach. High performers call when they can afford to burn it all down, but they can't keep living like this either.
00:00:33:14 - 00:00:58:24
Lisa
Here we rip off the mask of success and expose what's real. The patterns that you keep running, the price that you've paid, and how to build success that fuels you instead of empties you. Real success is agency. It's powerful self leadership to run your life instead of being run by it. To let your drive and your well-being finally work together.
00:00:58:27 - 00:01:11:04
Lisa
Because the real win is success. That actually feels good.
00:01:11:07 - 00:01:35:27
Lisa
like it's simple take a bath, say a few affirmations, read a quote on Instagram and suddenly you'll feel whole. But real self-love is far more demanding. It's how you speak to yourself when you've messed up. It's the boundaries you keep when no one's watching. It's refusing to make your worth conditional on how well you perform, how much you achieve, or how together you look on the outside.
00:01:35:29 - 00:02:02:07
Lisa
And then here's the part that most people miss. Your relationship with yourself is the blueprint for every relationship you'll ever have. Because if you're constantly withdrawing care or compassion from yourself, you'll keep attracting love that does the same. The truth is, love alone doesn't make our relationship healthy. You can love someone with your whole heart and still feel unseen, unsafe, or disconnected.
00:02:02:09 - 00:02:36:13
Lisa
You can love someone deeply and still completely lose yourself in the process. So today on congruent, I'm unpacking what unconditional love really means, where it belongs, where it doesn't. And how to build relationships that are grounded in integrity, reciprocity, and self-respect. Not just with others, but also with yourself. So this topic of redefining self-love and what real love actually means came up in a recent client call that I had.
00:02:36:13 - 00:03:09:15
Lisa
And then I dug deeper with some of my clients on it, and I thought, you know, I really need to bring this to the podcast because it's something that we're not talking about enough. In my opinion, and it's something that is so incredibly important. So there are so many women and men that I work with that are really reevaluating their love after infidelity, a divorce, or just massive life transitions and so many of us had been taught that being loving means holding it all together, forgiving everything, and making it work.
00:03:09:15 - 00:03:36:22
Lisa
No matter what we've taught. Many of us have, as women, have been taught that love is martyrdom, that you must sacrifice everything in your being for other people in order for you to be a good, kind, loving soul. So this is where the work starts around creating a healthy relationship with yourself, because you truly can't have a healthy relationship with someone else.
00:03:36:22 - 00:04:06:16
Lisa
If you don't have a healthy relationship with yourself. You are going to attract to you what is already inside you. So this is why I love relationships. I have a love hate with relationships. I think relationships are the biggest catalyst for growth that we have with other people, because they're going to show us the wounds that we have inside of us, the places that, you know, we get to choose to work on and grow and in relationships or they're going to grow together or we're going to grow apart.
00:04:06:16 - 00:04:29:08
Lisa
And I know in my own relationship, it was getting to a real crossroads, and there were multiple crossroads in my relationship where I continued to grow so much and evolve so much myself with how I was knowing myself that my relationship was no longer a real fit for me because my partner wasn't growing and maybe you're listening and and really relating to what I'm saying.
00:04:29:08 - 00:04:54:18
Lisa
So this conversation is going to be about redefining love in real human terms through maturity. Honest honesty and congruent. So I think the first thing is to talk about what is unconditional love. Because we've been sold this kind of Disney story of unconditional love. We've been, you know, we've had this definition passed down from generation to generation. But what actually is it?
00:04:54:18 - 00:05:20:26
Lisa
So unconditional love means that love isn't dependent on behavior or circumstances. But for most of us, nothing could be further from the truth. And I'm going to get there. So unconditional love is often defined as this pure divine love that doesn't need to be earned. So when I think unconditional love, I think of my children. They don't need to do anything to earn my love or devotion.
00:05:21:03 - 00:05:42:05
Lisa
Regardless of what they do in this world, I will love them. There are times when I don't like them, but I will always love them. Carl Rogers in psychology called it deep acceptance. So unconditional love is the belief that people grow best when they are loved as they are, right? So they are accepted as as they are.
00:05:42:07 - 00:06:09:19
Lisa
And unconditional love is about seeing and accepting the essence of someone's being, even when you don't approve of their behavior. So really, the again, the only place I really see this happening is with our offspring, with our children. So what I want you to know is that acceptance is not the same as tolerance. You can love someone's essence while still having clear conditions for access, partnership and intimacy.
00:06:09:21 - 00:06:39:15
Lisa
So even with our kids, we can love them unconditionally and still have boundaries and conditions on the things that we expect of them. Right? Like you can't light our house on fire, that that is not okay. That is the worst metaphor I think I've ever come up with, but hopefully you understand what I'm saying. So when it comes to our relationship with our partners, it's a little bit different because there are there are conditions for access, partnership and intimacy.
00:06:39:21 - 00:07:05:28
Lisa
So I'm going to I'm going to dive into that as we go along. So unconditional love is about recognizing someone's humanity without excusing their actions. So I'm going to say that again it's about recognizing somebody's humanity without excusing their actions. There are a lot of horrible things that are happening out in the world, and we can have love for people and not be okay with what they've done.
00:07:06:00 - 00:07:41:09
Lisa
And if we bring it back to our kids, like, I can love my kids unconditionally and still be like, that thing you did was not okay. So where confusion happens around unconditional love is when people think that it means staying forgiving without any type of repair or abandoning yourself in the name of connection. Right? So this is where this kind of Romeo and Juliet kind of idea of unconditional love comes from, because it literally means it doesn't matter what you do, I'm going to forgive you and I'm going to love you.
00:07:41:11 - 00:08:07:03
Lisa
And it doesn't matter what I want or need, because your needs matter more. And I can tell you that back in my 20s and probably even early 30s, I really worked a lot from this place, and I thought it made me the most amazing human that I had the ability to love deeply, to see the potential in people, and to see what amazing humans they are and just like, love them unconditionally, even with all these things.
00:08:07:03 - 00:08:28:22
Lisa
But at the heart of it, what I was really trying to do was to give them the love, to give them the unconditional love and acceptance that I was really unwilling to give myself. And that's that's truly what I needed. So unconditional love does have a place, but it's really only in relationships that support growth and safety. And that is primarily with our children.
00:08:28:22 - 00:08:51:27
Lisa
So a parent role, a parent's role mirrors this divine love because we do provide safety, belonging and acceptance that isn't withdrawn when the child fails or misbehaves. Now that's an in. If you are showing up as a healthy, adult. Because listen, I've worked with many a client who this is not the type of love that they grew up with in their family.
00:08:51:27 - 00:09:14:10
Lisa
There were a lot of conditions on them as children. Which is part of the reason why we start to develop these beliefs about unconditional love as we grow up, because we think, well, I don't ever want to be that in the world, so how can I be? How can I love people unconditionally? So we often when we didn't receive something as children, we will go out then and overcompensate for it.
00:09:14:10 - 00:09:34:13
Lisa
As adults. This is a pattern that happens all the time. So when we're able to provide our kids with this place of safety, belonging and acceptance regardless of who they are, right? And again, you can say like, I love you, that that behavior was not okay, but that doesn't mean I don't love and accept you. That actually builds the secure attachment.
00:09:34:13 - 00:09:58:13
Lisa
And it's the foundation for believing that love doesn't have to be earned. And as I said, for many of the clients that I work with, they grew up believing that love did have to be earned. They believed that love was earned through accomplishments, how they showed up in the world, you know, they were taught that they didn't really that they weren't really accepted for who they are.
00:09:58:13 - 00:10:27:16
Lisa
I mean, I know even for me, and it's no shade on my parents because our parents were really doing the best they could with the tools that they had at the time. But we are trying to create a more conscious, space of parenting. I constantly felt like I had to do better, and it's not because my parents told me I had to do better, but it was this belief that, like, I needed to earn their love and acceptance and who I was wasn't good enough, you know, because I was being told to like, you know, not argue.
00:10:27:16 - 00:10:50:13
Lisa
And why can't you just go along with everything? Lisa. So this is why I started to reframe, and maybe you're hearing me and thinking the same thing. I started to reframe what unconditional really love was and how I wanted it to be in my life. So again, a lot of overcompensating as I grew into an adult. So let's talk about unconditional love with ourselves.
00:10:50:13 - 00:11:12:29
Lisa
So unconditional love for yourself means refusing to withdraw compassion when you make mistakes or fall short of all the things that I work with my clients on so much, at the root of everything is this feeling of shame. Not worthy, not good enough, and nobody wants to admit that they feel this way. And I've even had clients say to me, oh, I don't feel shameful.
00:11:13:02 - 00:11:36:09
Lisa
Only during the course of our work together, them come to really realize what that feeling of shame was. So working with my clients on teaching them how to show up with compassion for themselves like that is truly the key to eliminating shame in your lives. But most of us didn't have compassion as an antidote model to us when we were growing up, so we have to learn this as adults.
00:11:36:09 - 00:12:02:17
Lisa
And it feels odd because most of us learn to just be harder on ourselves, push harder. Like, let's get into that 1% club. And that is not that. Being hard on yourself over and over and over, beating yourself up again. You're actually still working from that shame story of not good enough and not worthy enough. So if you are working on learning how to love yourself more, love yourself better.
00:12:02:17 - 00:12:27:07
Lisa
What does self-love actually mean? Lisa here you go. It's how can you meet yourself with compassion regardless of what happens in your life? And again, you don't have to like things to accept it. But you can say, you know what? Even though this thing happened, even though I didn't like it, I can show up with so much compassion for myself in this moment because I'm learning and growing and I'm getting my lessons.
00:12:27:09 - 00:12:53:06
Lisa
So it is absolutely the only antidote to shame is compassion, and it is a skill that needs to be cultivated in us. And nobody can teach you how to be compassionate with yourself. It's something you have to choose to do over and over. The irony is, as most of my clients are some of the most compassionate people on the planet, they will always meet other people with compassion, but they really, really struggle to meet themselves with compassion.
00:12:53:06 - 00:13:20:16
Lisa
So if you are familiar with Brené Brown, she is a researcher around shame, and she defines shame as the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging. So self-love interrupts that story and says, and this is what self-love and compassion does. It says, even when I mess up, I'm still worthy of love, care and belonging.
00:13:20:18 - 00:13:52:24
Lisa
So with compassion you can love humanity unconditionally. I think for the majority of people are really, really good and we can recognize shared suffering and imperfection without condoning harmful behavior. Right? So this is how we can be, you know, if you want to say love and light, although I can't stand it when people use that phrase. But when we're sending out love to humanity, unconditional love to humanity, we're not saying that what they're doing.
00:13:52:24 - 00:14:14:21
Lisa
If you don't agree with it, is okay. And listen, there are a lot of really tough things going on in the world. I know that I'm not okay with it. So compassion is about understanding, but it's not about enabling. And I think that this is where so many of us get it wrong. So let's look at where unconditional love truly is an appropriate in romantic relationships.
00:14:14:21 - 00:14:46:06
Lisa
Number one, unconditional love becomes problematic because it is so misunderstood, healthy relationships require discernment, reciprocity, and boundaries. So love without those elements often means that you are going to find yourself abandoning yourself like who you are as a human in the relationship. So if love means I'll stay no matter how I'm treated, that's not love. That's you abandoning yourself because they matter more.
00:14:46:08 - 00:15:13:09
Lisa
If love means I'm going to shrink myself or not say the thing to keep the peace that is really just codependency. Dressed up as devotion. In all relationships, you should be able to speak your mind, especially in your romantic relationships. And if you're afraid to do that because you're going to lose the person that really shows that you have this unhealthy attachment or you don't know who you are without them.
00:15:13:12 - 00:15:40:19
Lisa
So if love means I'll keep forgiving without accountability, that's really about just using your spirituality to avoid reality. And I have had some pretty major stuff go down in my relationship and I have a huge heart. Still, I am a very forgiving person, but forgiveness comes with repair. Forgiveness does mean you have to show up and be part of the repair process.
00:15:40:21 - 00:16:07:04
Lisa
I can accept what happened. I can forgive what happened. But in order for me to stay in a relationship, it requires that the other person shows up and is part of the repair process, that they are being responsible for the role that they played in whatever is going down. So I can love someone's humanity, their pain, their history, their goodness, and still have clear conditions for that relationship.
00:16:07:04 - 00:16:34:03
Lisa
And my relationship is such a great example of this. I love my partner, and I could see the pain that he was in, and I could understand to the extent I could understand of why what happened without getting into it. And I had very clear conditions and boundaries for what needed to happen in order for me to continue to stay in that relationship.
00:16:34:03 - 00:17:03:14
Lisa
And to be quite honest, I needed to step back from it. So and people really struggled to understand how I could have such deep care and compassion for him, even after being hurt. I didn't have to remove my love from him, but I did have to have boundaries with myself around him. I had to have boundaries with him, and I had to have really clear, expectations in moving forward.
00:17:03:16 - 00:17:27:15
Lisa
So boundaries sound like I love you, and I'm I won't stay if this continues. It sounds like I love you, but my love can't override my need for safety. So I was no longer willing to just abandon myself so that he didn't have to be in his shame. And this was kind of my pattern in my relationship, is I don't like seeing people in shame.
00:17:27:21 - 00:17:47:05
Lisa
So then I would say, okay, well, I'll do what I can to make you feel better. And this was a really big lesson in me not caring about whether or not he felt better and really making sure that I cared a lot about loving myself and making sure that I felt better. So overriding, that pattern of behavior.
00:17:47:05 - 00:18:04:12
Lisa
And, you know, I'd like to say I took my inner child who loves love. My inner child loves love, took her under my wing and said, I'm going to love you through this, and we're not going to look for that externally, because that has gotten us into situations that have not been healthy for us. So that's mature love.
00:18:04:14 - 00:18:33:21
Lisa
It integrates your heart, but it also has boundaries. It honors the other person's soul while not sacrificing your own real love doesn't mean having no limits. Your limits, your boundaries protect the love instead of eroding it. So let's talk about what healthy love actually looks like. And when I say that we're not talking about perfection because there is no perfection, I mean, how would you even measure that?
00:18:33:23 - 00:19:01:19
Lisa
We're talking about the practice, the ongoing choice to show up honestly, be responsible and keep repairing when things get messy. And this is probably been one of the most profound journeys I've walked over the past year was coming back into my relationship with my partner and both of us putting in the repair work in order for us to move, to move forward together as a healthy couple, as two healthy individuals.
00:19:01:21 - 00:19:19:24
Lisa
So I believe that what happened in our relationship really needed to kind of blow things up so we could see the things that we were still entangled in and now being on the other side and really understanding what healthy love looks like, it is so profound for me what is available to us when we do when we do this work.
00:19:19:24 - 00:19:53:19
Lisa
So let's talk about this. So healthy, mature love is reciprocal I don't think I said that right. Reciprocal. Yes, I did. So what that means is both people are being responsible for the emotional balance of the relationship. So it's not one person doing all the things to maintain the relationship and the other person just kind of taking, if that is you and your relationship where you find your give, give giving all the time and your partner isn't meeting you, that's not a healthy, balanced relationship because it should be reciprocity.
00:19:53:22 - 00:20:15:12
Lisa
So I describe healthy relationships as each person feels like they had the better end of the stick, which means each person feels like they've got the best day. They're they're getting the best. That is the best kind of relationship. When each person believes that, that they're getting the better end of the stick. I don't know how else to say it.
00:20:15:15 - 00:20:35:28
Lisa
It's just so lovely when you don't have to worry about, well, if I give this, am I going to get it back? It's not about give and take. It's knowing the in the relationship that give and take is going to flow so effortlessly and so easily. It's just such a beautiful thing. It's also boundary. So love flows best when it's safe.
00:20:36:01 - 00:20:55:20
Lisa
Boundaries don't block love. They protect it. So boundaries are knowing where you start and stop so that you're not entangled in a relationship where you know what is good for you and what isn't good for you. And boundaries are not brick walls. They are not to keep a person out. It's simply, you know, stating like, this is what I'm not okay with.
00:20:55:20 - 00:21:19:12
Lisa
And if you do this, I'm going to do this. So in my own relationship, there was a really strong boundary around addiction. If you relapse, you will have to leave. And you know that in part is what happened. Like I will not in this relationship if you relapse and I made that decision when the relapse did happen. So powerful stuff to have boundaries.
00:21:19:12 - 00:21:48:16
Lisa
It really lets the other person know where you stand, but it's not about them respecting the boundary, it's about you being responsible for holding the boundary. Healthy love. You're also grounded in yourself. You don't betray what's true for you to be loved or chosen and I see this so often where people are, you know, putting on masks or pretending to be something they're not in order to be liked, loved by you.
00:21:48:19 - 00:22:24:25
Lisa
Right. So the girl who suddenly is, I don't know, takes up golf. She doesn't even like golf. But because the guy likes golf, she's going to play golf. She hates golf. Something along those lines, right? Where? Where you're saying yes to things that you really want to say no to. You know, when I look back on my past history, the things that came up, it's like I remember getting into, like, drinking heavily and I'm not even a drinker, but I so wanted to be liked by this guy that I was willing to be like, yeah, sure, I'll stay up till 3 a.m. and drink with you completely incongruent with who I was.
00:22:24:27 - 00:22:43:03
Lisa
And the thing that I was willing to do so I can find a million examples. And I'm sure if you take a pause here that you can come up with examples in your own life where you've sacrificed yourself and what you really want, need because you really wanted that person to like you or love you. That's not healthy in a relationship, right?
00:22:43:03 - 00:23:03:24
Lisa
You you want to you want to know that that person is going to choose you even if you don't agree with them, even if you say, no, I don't want to do that thing. That's the way it should flow, right? We shouldn't just be. Yes, people in our relationships accountable. So love calls you into repair, not perfection.
00:23:03:24 - 00:23:30:20
Lisa
So if something goes sideways, each person shows up to repair not one person showing up in the other person avoiding. But both people show up to talk through what's going on. There's real open lines of communication, and each person is willing to be responsible for the role that they played in whatever has happened. It's also really important in healthy love that there is room for individual and growth.
00:23:30:20 - 00:24:09:21
Lisa
As a, growth as a partnership. So I still travel a lot on my own because that for me is my own individual, you know, own individual love is to travel and it gives me space for my own personal growth away from my partner. I love being at home. I love what we are building in our relationship. And I have to keep reminding myself, yes, but Lisa, going away on your own and you being in relationship with yourself and being with your friends and doing things that you love that are separate from your relationship, is so incredibly important for you to be not just in a healthy relationship with him, but also to be in
00:24:09:21 - 00:24:38:22
Lisa
a healthy relationship with yourself and intentional. Love isn't passive. It's a daily choice that you show through action, right? How you show up for yourself, how you show up for your partner. Everybody is playing their role because listen, to be in, relationship with somebody else. Each person pays a price to be in that relationship. So it's getting really intentional on how you want to be in that relationship.
00:24:38:22 - 00:25:08:11
Lisa
And I now say that being in a relationship is very, very similar to being an entrepreneur. Being in business, you really need to love and nurture and take care of that relationship. Both people, not just one. And I think so often we get into relationships and then we just kind of go on autopilot and we stop being intentional about what that relationship needs to grow, and we just assume the other person is going to be there and the love will grow.
00:25:08:11 - 00:25:34:21
Lisa
But I can tell you that is not necessarily the case. There are more unhealthy, unhappy relationships out there than there are healthy, happy ones. In my personal opinion, just based on what I've started to see as I kind of go down the rabbit hole, of looking at love, I think there's a lot of very unfulfilled people in their relationships, but it's it's what they they as it's a healthy relationship and they don't want to leave.
00:25:34:26 - 00:26:05:28
Lisa
So a lot of people stay in relationships that aren't necessarily healthy, but they don't know how to be on their own, and they don't want to be, they don't want to leave the relationship or everything that comes with it. So they they compromise and you're compromising a part of yourself if you stay in a relationship that isn't really fulfilling, especially now that I know what is possible when you are in a healthy relationship where there is reciprocity, where there are boundaries, where you are grounded in yourself, where there is this accountability, the spaciousness, and you are incredibly intentional.
00:26:05:28 - 00:26:29:00
Lisa
It is really, really beautiful what you can grow. So healthy love is always going to say, I choose you and I choose me too. It's built on mutual respect, on emotional honesty and alignment, and it doesn't drain you. It expands you. And I think that that is so important to know about healthy love. It needs to expand you, not drain you.
00:26:29:00 - 00:27:05:02
Lisa
And if you're constantly feeling resentful of your partner frustrated, that is not healthy love. That's not how it works. So let's reframe love for the evolved woman, so to speak. So if you're a woman who've done the work, love stops being about endurance and starts being about integrity. And this is one thing when I look at my relationship, I know my values and I can look back now and see where I was completely out of integrity with my values in terms of my relationship, because the things I was tolerating, I should never have tolerated.
00:27:05:04 - 00:27:23:24
Lisa
And that was on me. And this is why the universe gave me the wake up call, that it gave me so, so many of us were raised to equate love with effort, to fix, to carry and to prove. But mature love asks something different. It asks you to stay aligned with your truth. Even when you're loving someone else.
00:27:23:26 - 00:27:55:14
Lisa
It's saying I can love you deeply, but I can also love myself enough to walk away. Is staying cost me who I am. I'm gonna say that again. I can love you deeply, and I can love myself enough to walk away. If staying cost me who I am. And I see this happen in relationships over and over, and I work with so many clients who have overstayed in relationships, and I don't believe we can leave any sooner than we're meant to.
00:27:55:14 - 00:28:26:00
Lisa
So I just need to preface it with that. I believe that we get there when we get there, and for some of us, it takes a while to get across that line. I know with me it does. And it usually you get across the line when you really realize how much of yourself you've lost within that relationship. The things that aren't working, where you are kind of playing these games where you're over giving, overdoing, you're the one always repairing, it doesn't feel there isn't this sense of, reciprocity.
00:28:26:00 - 00:28:59:11
Lisa
So just check in with yourself because, you know, real love. Real love does have conditions, but it isn't conditional. Okay, like I said, you can have compassion for someone's humanity while holding, boundaries about their behavior. That's conscious love, where respect for yourself and care for another coexists. It's not about perfection. It's about presence, honesty, and accountability. Conscious love is always going to say, I can honor your journey, but I'm also going to honor mine.
00:28:59:11 - 00:29:26:07
Lisa
I'm not going to abandon myself in this process. So let's bring this back around to how this translates into self-love. Because it's one thing to talk about how we're showing up in healthy relationships with other people and loving them. So now we understand the difference between unconditional love and actually having healthy love with boundaries. Now let's talk about self-love, because it it's not about bubble baths and mantras.
00:29:26:07 - 00:29:46:13
Lisa
I mean, those are really nice, but that's not really how you get into a more loving relationship with yourself. It's the way you treat yourself when you're disappointed, uncertain or afraid. It's the voice that says you don't have to earn your own care. And, you can ask yourself, like, where? Where am I pulling away from myself when I fail?
00:29:46:13 - 00:30:14:13
Lisa
Am I meeting myself with compassion? Do I keep the promises I make to myself? So self integrity is such a huge part of self-love, because every time you tell yourself you're going to do something and you don't follow through, you're basically saying to yourself that you don't matter. Now imagine if you were in a relationship with somebody else and they constantly broke their promise to you.
00:30:14:15 - 00:30:39:11
Lisa
How long would you be able to to stay in that relationship before you walked away realizing like, wait a minute, this is so unhealthy. Like you never follow through on anything. I can't trust you. Every time you break a promise to yourself and you're out of self integrity, you are teaching yourself that you cannot trust yourself and self trust is such a huge part of loving yourself.
00:30:39:13 - 00:31:07:20
Lisa
It's also about you can ask yourself, am I making my worth dependent on how composed or productive I am? Because true self-love means you stop making your worth conditional. True self-love means you stop making your worth conditional. It's not about what you achieve, how much money you make, the clothes you wear, how fancy you can get dressed up, how put together you are on the outside.
00:31:07:26 - 00:31:34:09
Lisa
How many people think you're amazing? None of that has to do with you loving yourself. Self-love is, not making your worth conditional. It's it's about compassion and accountability, living side by side. And it's saying to yourself, like, I see you, I see you, and we can do better, right? That's meeting yourself with compassion like I, I see you and we can do better not beating yourself up.
00:31:34:11 - 00:31:59:26
Lisa
Which is what, like I said, so many of us tend to do so you can't measure love, but you sure can measure its impact. So when we're talking about loving relationships, whether it's with yourself or others, here are some questions that you can ask yourself to say. Like how? How healthy is this relationship? Does this love expand me or contract me?
00:31:59:28 - 00:32:35:26
Lisa
Am I acting from integrity with myself or out of fear? Do I feel safe to be by myself? And does this relationship support my growth or does it drain it? Love may be infinite, but healthy relationships have structures. And like I said, boundaries make love sustainable. So I'm going to give you a few reflection prompts, a few more reflection prompts that you can journal on so you know, feel free to to jot these down, hit pause.
00:32:35:28 - 00:33:07:00
Lisa
And hopefully they will help you determine where your work is to do so that you can create these healthy, loving relationships so where are you mistaking tolerance for love? Where are you overextending yourself and calling it love? Do I only love myself when I'm performing? What does emotional safety look like for me?
00:33:07:03 - 00:33:16:18
Lisa
And can I love somebody? Humanity and and still say no to their behavior.
00:33:16:21 - 00:33:44:23
Lisa
And can I love myself while still being honest and compassionate with myself about my patterns? So here are some key takeaways from today's episode for you. I want you to know that love is unconditional, but relationships are not okay, so let's go back through this episode and really make sure that you are clear on what unconditional love is and what healthy love is.
00:33:44:25 - 00:34:07:06
Lisa
Boundaries don't block love. They keep it sacred and the highest form of love has to include you. So if you are loving everybody else and giving nothing to yourself, there is a number one relationship that you can and should be focusing on. You can forgive someone and still decide that they are not the right fit for you. You can.
00:34:07:06 - 00:34:24:29
Lisa
You can love them and still choose to leave and choose yourself. And you can tell the truth and still be kind. So real love, whether for yourself or someone else, is truly about alignment. You cannot create peace.
00:34:25:01 - 00:34:48:21
Lisa
While choosing chaos, you cannot build connection while abandoning yourself to keep it. And the most loving thing you can do is to get honest about what's true for you and start living from that truth. That's what congruences. It's the bridge between the love you want and the love you're actually living. So if this conversation stirred up something for you, it might be time for a check in.
00:34:48:23 - 00:35:09:12
Lisa
The congruency audit will help you see where you're out of alignment, what's costing your energy, and it might be your relationship and what needs to shift to bring you back to yourself. Because when you're congruent, love stops being something you chase or you have to perform your way to to have access to, and it becomes who you are.
00:35:09:15 - 00:35:33:02
Lisa
So you can sign up for your free 15 minute congruency audit with my team at lisacarpenter.ca/audit, or through the link in the shownotes. So remember, real love doesn't ask you to disappear, it just invites you to include yourself. So thank you so much for joining me on this episode. It's a powerful one.
00:35:33:02 - 00:35:43:23
Lisa
I hope you've taken a lot of notes, especially if you see yourself in it. And I look forward to catching you on the next episode.
