Love Expert: Leaving Doesn't Mean It Can't Work Out Later | Stephan Speaks
In a Nutshell
The core message is that staying in a relationship out of convenience or fear of being alone wastes years when the other person refuses to address issues or grow. Letting go does not mean the relationship is permanently over—it simply means it cannot work under current circumstances, and both people often need time apart to heal and develop individually before any real reconnection is possible. True progress requires choosing partners based on mutual love and readiness rather than a desire to fix or control them, because one-sided effort and false security dynamics always collapse.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Honesty with yourself is the starting point. Examine why you are still in the relationship and what is truly driving you to stay. If the only reason for holding on is convenience, such as avoiding the process of starting over with someone new, you are setting yourself up for disaster. A relationship must be based on a true connection, genuine love, and a real desire for the person rather than an attempt to force something that is not there.
When a person is unwilling to talk about issues, unwilling to correct problems that have already been discussed, or when the two of you are not aligned on what you want and where you are going in life, those are clear signs that time is being wasted. Women's intuition is considered extremely powerful in this context, with the belief that women often know early on that a relationship is not right but rationalize reasons to give the person another chance. This rationalization can turn what should have been weeks of dating into years of unhappy marriage.
The first key indicator is whether you truly love them in return. True love is described as flowing both ways rather than being one-sided. Many people become caught up in infatuation or unhealthy attachments and mistake those feelings for love. When you can honestly say you feel the same depth of love, that mutual feeling becomes the foundation. Choosing a partner simply because they love you is presented as a risky approach that usually fails, because without your own genuine love you can never fully meet their needs and they were never truly what you needed.
Love is defined first as God being love, then expressed through kindness, compassion, patience, understanding, and a willingness to be selfless. When applying love to romantic relationships, additional ingredients are required before moving forward. A person may be loved deeply, but if they are not emotionally ready due to unresolved past wounds or other life issues, it is not the right time to pursue the relationship. The common habit of rushing into commitment the moment love is felt is identified as problematic.
Love is fundamentally about giving rather than what someone does for you. This requires knowing what the other person's needs are and being willing to fulfill them. Connection is described as the spirit recognizing its match, often felt very quickly in the first conversation, first meeting, or first date. Cultivating that connection, however, requires taking time to discuss and address important issues rather than rushing.
Presenting sides of yourself that are not sustainable is considered unhealthy. An example is a man who spends heavily on five-star restaurants to impress a woman while actually preferring a simpler lifestyle. Another example involves women who naturally want frequent communication but hold back out of fear of seeming too eager, leading the man to fall for a lower standard of communication. When her true self eventually emerges, conflict arises because the man did not sign up for the level of communication she actually desires. Only presenting a version of yourself that is truly sustainable avoids this outcome.
Most relationships involving true connection and love are typically hard, not because relationships must be difficult, but because most people carry past hurts, unresolved trauma, and emotional walls. When someone meets a person they feel strongly about, it can feel scary as their true self emerges from behind protective walls. The same walls that once protected them now block blessings and make the process feel difficult.
Bad advice also contributes to difficulty. The book The Game by Neil Strauss is referenced as an example of pickup artistry techniques that work for attracting women in general but fail when a man falls in love, because those methods are not appropriate for handling the woman he truly loves. People who are meant to be together sometimes have the hardest time getting together due to these internal and external challenges.
Once two people conquer these obstacles and recognize each other as partners, the relationship becomes easier. It still requires conscious, mindful effort in how partners treat each other, listen, and show up, but these actions feel significantly easier with someone with whom there is genuine connection and love. Relationships that feel easy often involve two people who are not digging deeper and are simply riding out initial chemistry without facing reality.
People are frequently given advice from a place of bitterness and hurt, disguised as protective guidance. An example of harmful advice is telling men never to fall in love and to keep emotional distance. The problem is not falling in love, which is described as inevitable for most men who have lived enough life. The real issue is a lack of understanding about how to handle love once it arrives, including how to process emotions without losing masculine energy and becoming less attractive.
Everyone possesses both masculine and feminine energy, with one being dominant and the other available to tap into when needed. A man can remain in his masculine energy while occasionally accessing empathy and compassion, but he cannot remain in a needy, emotional state without losing attractiveness. Women are said to become less attracted not because they dislike good guys, but when a man does not know how to maintain his masculine energy. The so-called appeal of "bad boys" is actually the masculine energy they exude, while what is truly desired is a balance of both energies.
Skills for mastering this balance include transparency and communication within the relationship. A partner should be willing to give honest feedback about when too much of one energy was expressed or when more of the other was needed. Over time this becomes second nature. The underlying issue for many men who lose their masculine energy is fear of losing the woman, which causes them to become overly feminine and needy. Developing the confidence that you can walk away if the relationship becomes unhealthy shifts the energy and prevents falling into unattractive patterns.
Compassion, sweetness, and kindness are often misperceived as weakness or losing power. The opposite view is presented: the person who brings calming, peaceful energy to a situation is actually in the power position because they dictate the direction rather than reacting to the existing energy. The same principle applies to women who have been hurt and now view feminine energy as weakness. The feminine energy itself is not the problem; the issue is giving it to someone who does not respect or honor it.
When people have been hurt, they often close off or become more guarded, holding their heart back like covering a wound. This prevents proper evaluation of new relationships because both people remain hidden behind walls. Healing requires removing the protective hand so the wound can breathe and heal, rather than keeping it covered. Being loving, kind, and compassionate is not the problem that caused past hurt; the problem was the person who received that energy. Separating the two allows continued expression of positive qualities while learning necessary boundaries.
The transcript ends mid-sentence at: "Once you get to that place where you're healthy and"
Once you get to that place where you're healthy and confident, you won't find yourself crossing that line anymore. You won't tolerate certain things anymore. We have to heal. We have to be confident. And we have to let our light shine so that we can expose what's in front of us easier.
Sharing your light is not the problem - the person's the problem. We start to doubt whether being a good person, a loving person is actually what wins in the world. The truth is that it does win, but it has to win with someone who can receive it and absolutely hold that space with you and share that space with you.
We've talked about being the loving and kind person, but sometimes we're being the person that thinks we're loving and kind because we want to improve someone, but that person doesn't want to improve.
One big problem is that what's really driving people to pick that individual is that by being the one that can upgrade you, improve you, I have more value here. By having more value, I have a false sense of security. You have to appreciate me. You're less likely to walk away. You're less likely to cheat because you're lucky to have me. I feel like I'm the prize here. But those situations never really work because again, you're choosing someone that is not capable of pouring into you the way that you need.
You're basing this off of what you could do for them. And that's not sustainable. And you're choosing them because again, you have more emotional control here. What happens to so many people, especially women, it's something that I call the unhealthy love cycle of women where women in their first love experience outside of any childhood trauma may have experienced, they're their most loving. They're just out there. They go all the way in. But that typically happens at a younger age, at an age where men are not mature enough to handle those kind of emotions, that level of commitment, so on and so forth.
So, she gets hurt. After she gets hurt, her moment is saying to herself, I will never let this happen to me again. So now the woman starts to consciously or subconsciously choose men who are I don't want to say lower than her, but essentially a man who does not take her there. He's good enough to be with, but I'm not that vulnerable with him. He can't hurt me like that first love hurt me. And so that dynamic usually leads to picking that person I can fix, I can make better, who will appreciate and respect me. But again, it doesn't work out.
And many times you'll see these same situations. The guy will move on to cheat on her. Not because he's a man, but because you chose a man that you could never be the woman that he needed, and he could never be the man that you needed. Once he kind of either gets what he needs from you to build himself up or the smoke clears from him being infatuated with you, he starts to realize, I'm not getting everything that I desire. And now you building him up has brought him more attention from other women. So now the difference between what you're not giving him and what someone else is willing to give him becomes way clearer. Now the temptation gets way stronger and he ends up doing something or she ends up cheating as well because he's safe but he doesn't fulfill her. He doesn't satisfy her. He doesn't excite her in any kind of way.
And that's why I always said earlier like the safe choice is almost always the wrong choice. But that is a function of people trying to choose these fixer uppers because they think it's going to give them some leverage there. It's leverage.
How do you know when it's time to go? Like how do you know when it's like I feel like this is a common question where it's like how do you know when it's just I've tried everything. We've tried together, tried our best. Maybe we went to therapy. Maybe we got a coach or maybe you know maybe we didn't do those things. How do I just know that I feel like I need to go but I'm scared of being alone. I'm scared of dealing with the reality that I put in a lot of energy. A lot of people stay in something for a lot longer than they should because they'd rather not be alone. They'd rather not face reality. They'd rather not lose two years of their life. They'd rather lose two more thinking that this should stay like, how do you know when it's time to go?
Let me first say this. I think I think society needs to change their thinking as far as letting go doesn't always mean it can't work out later. It's just that it cannot work out under these circumstances. All right? Cuz some people say, "Well, I feel like they're the one." Okay, maybe they are, but maybe the time is not right. And it's letting go that will allow you both to do what needs to be done in your own personal lives that will allow you two to come back together and have something way more amazing.
So that's number one thing to consider. But outside of that, it's when one, if that person is unwilling to put in the work necessary, it's time to go. There's like so many times I'll have a video go up about communication and someone will comment saying, "I've tried talking to him and he doesn't want to talk to me." And in my head I'm like, "But why are you still with them?" If he refuses to talk to you, you've already tried. There's nothing else to do. But people will let it linger on and continue why they consistently complain or unhappy about this specific issue. It's not going to magically get better. They're not going to just change it just because all of a sudden they see, oh, it needs to change. No. If they're fighting it now, they have no reason to change it.
And what people have to understand, you know, especially with this whole trying to fix people up, healing and facing your traumas is one of the hardest things for people to do. So, if they already have you in their life, they're essentially getting the incentive or the benefit of relationship without having to do the deeper work. It's almost like if I'm at a job and the job says you need to have a master's degree to work here, but we're going to hire you anyway and give you time to get that master's degree. If getting that degree is super hard to you, you're going to drag that out as long as possible. You may never get the degree until they fire you. When they fire you and you realize, "Oh my gosh, did I if I don't do this, I'll never get this person back. I'll never get this opportunity back." Now, they might go and get it because it's very tough to walk down the path of the healing process. So, if they're not willing to work on it, you guys have already discussed it.
And I think that's a big thing because there's a lot of relationships that end and the couples don't even know what the real issue was. So, the communication, they'll say, "Well, we talked about, no, you guys argued. You guys lashed out. There wasn't a clear communication as to what the problem was, what is expected, how do we go about this. If you've done that, and I believe one of the most effective ways to do that is through a letter. Cuz I feel like verbal communication of deep issues and concerns, they typically don't go well. You know, people get distracted, they forget what they want to say, the other person gets defensive, they're not listening to rebuttal not to understand. But when there's a letter involved, it gives you time to get everything out. You can you can evaluate your tone, leave no stone unturned, and now they have an opportunity to process it on their time to really take it in. And then you guys can come together and discuss the letter. And now it's so much easier to stay on point and get everything covered. If we've done that and they're still unwilling or there's still no progress, it's time to go.
You can't make something last if only one person's working on it. You can't keep hoping and waiting and wishing and like you said that ending doesn't mean forever. And often I found that two people need to grow individually to be able to grow collectively. And we're forcing growing together so hard, but we need space to grow. And if you can't grow together, chances are you need to grow apart in order to see whether you grow together again or grow for someone else. And all of those options are okay. But we put so much pressure on people to grow together that they grow apart. And actually, if they chose to grow apart and grow separately, they could come back together if they learned the lessons.
And I think that's a mistake, too, that sometimes people think, I'm going to go learn this lesson for this person. I meet a lot of people, they're like, okay, they broke up with me because I wasn't XYZ, now I'm going to go become XYZ to win them back. And I always find I'm just like, well, no, you should go become XYZ if you think you are missing XYZ, but not to win them back because you don't know what they're going to do.
So, I 100% agree with you. Like, if we're trying to learn or grow, it needs to be for the benefit of who we are and just whoever we deal with. So, it's almost like if I was a bad communicator in this relationship, I shouldn't learn to better communicate for that person. I need to better communicate for whoever I'm going to be with. If you can't see it in that light, then maybe you're looking at the wrong thing. My thing is this. I think it all depends on what the details of the situation was. What led to the breakup? What were you overlooking? What was missing? Are these fixable issues? Because a lot of people are trying to win back someone where the issues are not resolved. So, it's like, what's the point of going back? We're just going to go in the same cycle all over again. They're letting this idea of I miss them. I don't want to be without them blind them from the fact that you two did not get along well or you two don't want the same things or you you two just whatever it is, maybe there's a lack of sexual satisfaction. You have to stay focused on what led to the end and can this be corrected? If it can, cool. But as you mentioned, correcting it does not guarantee you they're coming back. And even if they will come back, you don't know when they may need. So, you may have figured yourself out in 6 months, they might need a year. And I would argue if you guys are truly meant for each other and they needed a year, you need a year, too. You're just overlooking some things and you're rushing the process because you want to get back to them.
It's I've never found a situation where it was truly only one person who had problems and the other person was squeaky clean. No, no, no, no. You thought you were, but you had some stuff too you needed to correct, of course. So I think we have to be honest with ourselves and just keep striving to be better and rather than focus on winning them back. Just become the best you because if you do and there's a true connection there, the opportunity will present itself again and you two will be able to make something of it.
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