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When I was twenty-six, I couldn’t get a date. I’m now thirty-six, and I seem to get asked out almost every week—and by men I used to think were out of my league. 

When I was younger, I had all sorts of rationalizations for why I had issues with men. I told myself I wasn’t attractive enough, that men in Los Angeles were shallow, and that “all the good ones were taken.” 

At the time, I had no idea how I was playing into the problems I was having with men—or how much power I had to change them.

I know the pain, self-doubt, and powerlessness that stem from believing the problem is “out there”—blaming circumstances or men or the superficial qualities we lack for the difficulties we experience in relationships. 

But I’ve also experienced the transformation that comes with tearing down the walls we’ve unknowingly built and taking ownership for creating a new life, a new self, and a new way of being in relationships.  

That kind of transformation is available to you. 

That is, if you’re willing to reevaluate everything you think you know, take an honest look in the mirror, and lay everything that isn’t serving you at the altar. 

Yeah. Just that. 

So it really depends on you. How much do you want it?

Transformation is no small task. 

It can be brutal. 

But when you become a student of transformation, you begin to see that what is lost in the fire is always pitiful compared with what is gained. 

So, are you game? 

If so, romantic relationships are one of the best windows we have into seeing ourselves more clearly, because so much of what emerges in attraction between two people is the result of forces that are beyond our awareness. 

Relationships can reveal what is beyond our ordinary awareness, providing a portal into our unconscious: That is, they expose what we actually believe about ourselves, not what we think we believe about ourselves. 

That’s why it’s so important to change our narratives regarding our unhealthy relationships. Because relationships aren’t really the problem. But they often call attention to our underlying, invisible wounds that need attention.

Unhealthy relationships are symptoms that guide us to what needs to be healed within. 

If we mistake the symptom for the disease, we will look at our relationship problems without looking inward. 

Focusing on the symptoms, we miss the forest for the trees. This distracts us from doing the real work and saps the energy we need for actual healing.  

And if we keep doubling down on looking at our relationships as “the problem,” we’ll never heal the root cause of our difficulties and we’ll find ourselves stuck in the same endless holding patterns—both individually and relationally. 

When we heal our relationships, we heal ourselves, and when we heal ourselves, we heal our relationships. 

It’s a self-reinforcing feedback loop.

Put another way, our individual problems and our relational problems are one and the same because our relationships are simply an outward reflection of how we unconsciously relate to ourselves. 

Our inner and outer lives are mirrors of one another.

When we shift away from blaming others and assume responsibility for looking in the mirror, new perspectives and possibilities open up. 

It’s not easy work. 

In fact, it’s painstaking. 

But if you undertake it honestly and fully, it will not only transform your relationships, it will transform you at your core. 

That’s what this book is about: reclaiming our power to shape our lives and our relationships and becoming who we strive to be.