I AM AFRAID OF YOU
I recently spent a night freaking out that my career was over. A new episode of my podcast Starter Marriage had come out a few days earlier and people were (rightly) mad that I had behaved badly during a moment of conflict with my husband/cohost. I wasn’t listening to where he was coming from and instead doubled down on my perspective, lathering myself up in defensiveness. Marriages have these kinds of moments all the time. The goal is to get better at navigating them and reduce your instinct to fight back rather than listen. But when those moments happen in public, you open yourself up to people assuming the worst about you because they don’t get to see the repair that happens later—off screen.
Knowing this is what led me to having a full-blown panic that after over ten years of making consistent content online, this one interaction was going to be the end of my credibility as a relationship coach and mark the end of people wanting to engage with my work.
