Attachment Styles, Secret Relationships & Why We Snoop — Episode 6 with Ryan Weiss, Spiritual Coach

About This Episode

In episode six of And Just Like That… We Found Therapy, host Isabel MV sits down with spiritual coach and relationship expert Ryan Weiss to unpack Sex and the City's "Secret Sex." They dive deep into attachment theory, the difference between attraction and attachment, why we project entire futures onto people we barely know — and what Miranda going through Ted's drawers really says about her.

What We Cover

• Anxious vs. avoidant attachment — what they are, where they come from, and how to recognise them in your relationships

• Why attraction and attachment are not the same thing — and confusing them is where most of us go wrong

• Is Mr. Big an avoidant narcissist? Following actions over words in early dating

• The real reason Carrie spirals after sleeping with Big on the first date — and what her paranoia is actually about

• Secret relationships: what Mike hiding Libby reveals about shame, insecurity and the high school playground we never left

• Miranda's snooping, Ted's kink and why shaming someone's sexuality pushes them away

• Charlotte's rigid dating rules — are they protecting her or ruling her?

• Masculine vs. feminine energy in relationships — and the "goddess time" exercise every high-achieving woman needs

• Real manifestation: why saying no to the wrong things matters more than saying yes

About Our Guest

Ryan Weiss is a spiritual coach and founder of Waking Up with Ryan. He works with clients on a three-month coaching programme covering emotional fitness and conscious communication — helping people move from dysregulation to self-love, and from conflict to real connection. He specialises in helping people through life's hardest moments: breakups, loss, identity and relationships. Find him on Instagram at @WakingUpWithRyan or reach out directly for coaching enquiries.

Transcript

Happy, happy Tuesday, guys, and happy Thanksgiving weekend to those of you celebrating. I am so happy to be sharing with you another episode of And Just Like That, We Found Therapy.

In this week's episode, we are discussing season one, episode six of Sex and the City. It's called Secret Sex. For this episode, I'm bringing to you Ryan Weiss.

He is a spiritual coach introduced to me by my dear friend Casey.

He was absolutely great in this episode, we discussed a lot about attachment styles and also how manifesting has become more saying no to things instead of saying yes to things, which I think I agree with. But as per usual, I hope you guys enjoy it.

I hope you guys share it. And if you're not doing it already, follow this show, rate it five stars and give me any feedback you think I should be hearing. See you guys on the other side.

I love you all. Bye. Hello, and welcome everybody.

I'm here with Ryan. Hello, Ryan, how are you?

I'm really good, how are you? Sorry, my niece, you can hear my niece in the background. I apologize, but she's damn cute, so it's okay.

I have my dog in the room, so we can expect barking later.

Just as a brief introduction, Ryan is the founder of Waking Up with Ryan. He is a spiritual teacher and coach, and he comes from the entertainment industry. But back in 2011, you decided to start this journey.

That sounds right.

Yeah, I've been coaching people mostly on relationships, yeah, for a long time now.

Amazing. Well, I'll also give a shout out to Casey, who put us in touch. I think this is going to be an amazing episode, and that is thanks to her.

But anyway, should we dive in?

Let's dive in. Firstly, I just want to say I love the concept for your show. I can't believe it's not been done in this way before.

It's brilliant. Right?

Yeah. And it needs to, it needed to be done. I needed it to be done.

I'm glad you're doing it.

So today, we're also here to discuss a very fun episode that is called Secret Sex.

Basically, we get introduced to our girl Carrie. She's doing a photo shoot for her column. They obviously play up a lot the sex around her column because it's Sex and the City.

So she's in a bed, she's wearing a dress that is nude collar. And actually, they keep calling this dress the naked dress. Carrie's talking about the fact that they're letting her keep the dress.

Fast forward to, I think it's Saturday night. She's in her apartment with all the girls, getting ready for her first official date with Mr. Big.

And everything about this scene to me screams, Carrie has way too much invested in this first date. Which, on the one hand, I'm like, isn't it amazing that something can make you feel so hopeful and so nervous?

But at the same time, do you think that this is just a recipe for disaster and she's setting herself up? Does half her expectations crashed or?

I think it's wonderful to be excited about a first date. I think it's important because attraction is real and we all want romance and we all want that connection. We all want to meet that person.

And it's really important to know yourself, to know, oh, I'm somebody that has the tendency to get super excited about something without yet knowing where it's going to go and what the potential for long-term attachment is.

So this begs kind of a question around the difference between attachment and attraction, right? Like, attraction is so important. It's a natural part of being human.

We get excited about the connection we feel with people and that's beautiful. What we kind of mess up as human beings, though, is we imesh, we combine attraction and attachment.

And we do so pretty unconsciously until we recognize our pattern, meaning I experience someone, I'm falling for them, I'm excited about it, the sex is good, which I don't want to fast forward too much in the episode yet, but I think this will lay the

groundwork for a lot of what maybe we'll talk about today. We get really excited about it and we're not conscious that we also start attaching to a potential future outcome without yet knowing who this person really is.

And what I mean by that is, how does this person show up when we're in conflict?

What happens after the honeymoon period when we actually start the annoyances with each other and we're starting to notice maybe some of our values are misaligned or your trauma is triggering my trauma?

Like how do I and the other person navigate the inevitable conflicts of relationships?

And once I can see who this person is when we're in a fight, for example, that's when I gather information about whether or not we have the potential to really work toward a healthy, safe, secure attachment with each other.

So the excitement is great, but you just need to know that the excitement is more speaking to the present moment, right? I'm excited right now about this person, great.

But once it bleeds into, I'm excited right now about this person and I have a whole vision of where I think this relationship might be going, that's when we get into some tricky spaces.

So you think then that at this stage, when we get so excited about a first date though, we are enamored by a persona that at this stage is 95 percent our projection. So we are attached to the attraction more than the person.

We're attached to that feeling or that projection.

Yeah, I mean, potentially. Listen, I'm a student of a spiritual text called The Course in Miracles, and it says essentially when you first meet someone, that's actually the truest version of them that you'll ever meet.

Because you don't yet see their pain, their baggage, their trauma, their, you know, all their fucked upness. So I think it's okay. My point is not that there's any problem with attraction.

Like, because then some people would say, okay, well, then I need to tamper down my attraction. Well, good luck. You're lying to yourself.

If your genuine experience is that you're attracted to this person, can you hold that? But can you also hold that you don't know them yet? Then that doesn't mean you can't be attracted to them.

It just means you want to do so mindfully.

So I think this is a perfect segue into the debate that then the girls go into, which is very much around, you know, presenting to us the different personas that each one of the girls is supposed to be within our brain.

So Charlotte, straight off the bat, when Carrie comes out with the naked dress, she's like, oh, you're wearing that. I thought you were serious about this guy. How dare you?

Like, it's obvious that you're going to sleep with him. And then they start talking about the rules. Like, Charlotte thinks that you need to wait five dates to sleep with somebody.

And we've talked about this. I love like stupid mathematical scientific rules around things, but then, you know, take it with a grain of salt. And then we get Miranda, who's a bit more, I think, realistic.

And she's like, listen, whatever you do, as long as you don't sleep with him on the first date, we're fine.

And then Samantha, who for once I'm siding with in this conversation, because she's like, wouldn't you rather know before you get emotionally attached? Which I 100% agree.

But I am curious as to, you know, provided that you are in Carrie's shoes and you know, because she says afterwards that she was dying to sleep with him. The attraction is brutally present.

What do you think is maybe the best approach out of the girls? Or what's your take on it?

So you and your listeners may not like my answer so much. It's a little bit. I don't like those rules.

The rule of you need to sleep with him because then you can know how good is the sex. Or you can't sleep with him because like so much of that psychology is around managing your external reality so that you can feel safe.

And like, again, good luck with that. We're not safe. Being a human being and being in relationships is vulnerable.

It doesn't feel safe all the time. And so coming up with these antiquated rules of how to approach everything. Listen, my personal recommendation for me would be, yeah, maybe don't sleep with them on the first date.

The reason I say that for me is because for me, sex is incredibly powerful. I'm a former dancer. I'm very connected to my body.

I personally think, let's have a little bit more of a foundation before we send this lightning rod of sexual energy into the foundation. So that's my personal...

Yeah, which is very powerful energy in absolute terms too.

But that said, I think if I'm sitting with a client, I'm working with them to just be intentional. So whatever you choose, choose it intentionally.

If you're choosing to have sex on the first date, recognize that on the other side of that, you may have some feelings about that. And how do you process those feelings? And what's your community of support?

And how do you maybe even communicate about it with the person you had sex with? You know, like how do you approach all of it intentionally? That would be my desire for anyone that I'm talking to.

Rather than being so fixated on the rules. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. Because I think at one point Charlotte says when they're, and I'm fast forwarding a bit, but when they're toasting to Carrie's bus, they talk about the fact that Mr. Big's not there.

And Charlotte's like, I knew this was going to be it because you slept with him the first date. So now when you sleep with a man on the first date, you make that relationship only about sex.

In a way, I do think that the rules make no sense, and safety is an illusion.

But when you know, because I think it's undeniable, no matter how okay you might be with dating with no strings attached or sleeping around with no strings attached, it is a very intimate thing. It's super powerful. There's a lot of energy.

And I do think that when you put yourself in that kind of situation as a woman, to me is very diminishing the fact that Charlotte gives the men all the power. What do you think?

Do they have all the power to decide whether or not that relationship is gonna be purely sexual? Because I was like, you're being reductive here.

Hell no, they don't have all the power to decide it. But in some situations, they might.

If the reality is, is that you sleep with them and that's, and you want a continued, like real relationship with them that goes beyond sex, that's not just a hookup, and they don't want that, then that's the reality.

The question to me then is, what story are you telling about that? Are you telling the story that I'm not good enough for them to want to actually date me? Are you telling the story that I'm just a piece of meat that just is here to have sex with?

And, you know, or do you actually have the capacity to tell the story, oh, for some reason, this person is not maybe ready to be in a more intimate, connected, emotional relationship with somebody, right?

And so I think all of these questions come down to the premise of, you know, we're talking about attachment here, but ultimately it's like, how secure am I to the attachment with myself?

How much am I practicing a sense of confidence, love with myself, respect for myself?

How much work have I done to become really conscious and aware of all the self-hating and diminishing thoughts that I have a tendency to think about myself that I learned a very long time ago, probably when I'm like even pre-verbal?

How aware am I that those thoughts can come up in any moment of some kind of a trigger? And how am I able to like push pause. Shit, there's something wrong with me.

If that's where you're at, I would say stop even having the conversation about whether you should sleep with the person on the first date or not, and let's get, do the work on your own internal safety and your own secure attachment with yourself.

Then when you have that foundation, then you can go into the dating, the sex, with a sense of security where you're okay with what happens and what doesn't happen.

And we can even call this, like, from a spiritual perspective, like, how much do you trust life?

If you have sex with somebody on the first date and you want something more, but it doesn't go that direction because they ghost you or they just, the only booty call you, do you have a relationship with the divine to go, you know what, this sucks.

This isn't what I wanted, but let me let go of this. Let me surrender this. And the only reason I'm going to surrender it is because I trust that life has its way of bringing me whatever it is that is supposed to come my way, right?

And so it's like, in that way, it's like, how much do I trust myself? And also, how much do I trust life?

I love that.

And I maybe want to make a pause here for you maybe to explain the different attachment styles because I find it fascinating, but I've also heard that your attachment style can change depending on who you have, like from, well, explain it because I

Attachment styles.

So there's so much for all of us to learn about this, and I think it's if you want to be in healthy relationship with yourself and others, you got to dive into the attachment work.

So when a little baby is born, when you were born, you were completely helpless. And so you were born with a need, in order to survive, to have attachment to your primary caretakers.

And the only way you could feed yourself, protect yourself, heal yourself, get any of your needs met was through these adult figures. And so we're born with an innate knowing that we need to keep those attachment figures close.

When we have a problem, because we have a bubble in our tummy that hurts, and we're like, oh, I'm in pain, and we cry out, or when there's stress in the environment, maybe we notice that our co-parents are stressed about something or arguing about

something, that then we feel a sense of fear because they're supposed to keep me safe, but they're not doing well. So then I feel this upset in my body. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's sadness. I feel this discomfort in my body and I cry out.

And my cries is how I communicate that I need something right now. I need a sense of safety, a sense of comfort that I derive from the connection that I receive from attachment to my primary caretakers. Are you with me so far?

I am.

Okay.

If I'm a child who for whatever reason, whether it's because my parents have other priorities, are too busy, are too stressed, are too absent, are addicted to something, so they're passed out on the sofa and here I am.

If I'm a child who cries out, and the majority of the time no one comes, then I learn I'm all alone and that I get to a place where there's no point in crying out because no one's going to come. And that is what's called avoidant attachment.

Meaning, I experience some kind of a pain or discomfort, but I've learned no one's coming to help me. And so I avoid the discomfort and I avoid communicating with others.

So how this shows up practically in adult relationships is we're in some kind of conflict. I shut down. I walk away.

I ghost. Right? Or I blame you for how I'm feeling.

So to me, the avoidant would be the fuck boy.

Then the anxious would be what they call clingy or needy.

So where does so the anxious attachment, right? So attachment is a spectrum. In the middle is secure attachment.

On one side. And we're generalizing. We're going.

There's much deeper we could go into this, but just for the sake of this conversation. On one side is the avoidant attachment, which we just talked about, which is no one's coming.

The anxious attachment is when sometimes a parent came and sometimes a parent didn't come or a primary caretaker, if it's not a parent. Sometimes they came, sometimes they didn't. And so I never really know, am I supported?

Am I loved? Can I communicate my needs? Can I communicate my upset?

And then I become an adult who's always looking out there at the other going, are you here or are you not? Are you here or are you not? And I derive my sense of safety internally from you being here.

And if you're not here, I have a really hard time establishing my own sense of internal safety. And so that's the clingy piece. Like, are we okay?

Are we okay? Oh no, what happened? Did I say the wrong thing?

Are we okay? As opposed to going, secure attachment is, I'm safe. I'm safe right here.

I'm okay right here. Now I can communicate with you, hey, when this happened, it felt a little funky. Can we talk about it?

Can I share with you?

So the secure one would be one where a caretaker or a parent was always there, so any kind of major need that you had was met.

Correct.

And then within the clingy, the fuckboy, the secure would be basically the holy grail of single people, which is somebody who doesn't play games, and it's just available and honest and transparent.

Beautiful.

Okay.

Yeah, exactly.

We're on the same page.

Yeah. Honesty. It's like we can talk about the hard things.

Do you think then that, fine, maybe there is like an attachment style that we're attached to, but then going back to the episode, Carrie goes on this date with Mr.

Big. They say that they can hold their urges to their own, but they end up sleeping together and they end up in Mr. Big's bedroom floor.

And then right after Carrie is bombarded by this cascade of insecurities and like, there's such a, to me, anxious attachment style that I've seen her be quite like, it can be quite in check for her as we see her through the seasons.

So do you think that there is that ability to change our attachment style depending on who we're with?

Well, I wouldn't say that it's depending on who we're with. It's depending on the work we want to do internally, right? And so, yes.

Ryan, you make us work so hard.

It's always up to us and the journey that we're going with.

Yeah, because if I've healed my anxious attachment, for example, when I'm an anxiously attached person, I tend to get to be attracted to people who are more avoidant in their attachment.

And so if I haven't healed that, I will continue to engage in relationships with a person who hasn't healed their avoidant attachment.

And I'll constantly try to prove myself and my worth to be in relationship with that person, believing that if I was better, if I was more lovable, then they would da da da da da.

But once I've gotten to a place where I've done the internal work, the trauma-informed psychology, like really done the work to revisit that childhood before I'm six months old, and met the needs of that inner child, who is still suffering from the

insecure attachment, and I have helped that part of me feel more safe, I will stop engaging. As soon as I see the telltale signs of the avoidant attachment, I will say, you know, out of self-respect and dignity, I'm no longer making that choice.

It doesn't matter how much I want to fuck you. It doesn't matter how beautiful I think you are. It doesn't matter how much money I think you have.

I choose my own internal health and I can no longer engage in that. And what I believe spiritually from that is we live in a culture where there's so much conversation about manifestation.

And so much of that conversation is about what are you saying yes to? And I think real manifestation is learning to say no to the things that are no longer in alignment with what you really want.

And so when you start saying, you see the sign and you start saying, no, no, I'm not doing that, that's when you make the space to bring in somebody more aligned with where you're going and who you want to be and what you want to experience in

relationship. But back to what you were saying about Carrie, because I wrote this down when I rewatched the episode. I thought it was so great.

So they've just had what it seems like is probably pretty mind blowing sex, Carrie and Big for the first time.

Yeah, so mind blowing that they ended up on the floor.

Exactly. They're on the floor. Her head is on his chest.

And she has this monologue. She's not saying this to him. She's saying this to us as the viewer.

And she says, if he never calls me again, I will always think of him fondly as an asshole. And I thought that was exactly so. So so getting back to what we were talking about earlier around being intentional.

If Carrie's truth was really, if he never calls me again, I'm fine. Right. Always think of him fondly.

I had this great experience with him. Maybe it was one and done. If that's honest, then fuck yeah.

Go fuck all the men you want, like or people you want. Like go engage in one night stands. Like if that's your truth, and that's not being driven by shame or your insecure attachment or whatever, like great.

But what's so clear is that she says, I'll always think of him fondly as an asshole. So that's the piece where you got to like dig. Okay.

So what's that? What's that? That he never called you?

She's basic.

What I see in that is like she became vulnerable. So she kind of like gave him the key, gave up, and is like, I surrender. Here's the key to for you to have the power to tell me what I'm worth.

That's it.

Ish.

That's right.

And she was, you could see visibly when she's laying on his chest and she's debating, what questions do I ask him right now to like find out? Was this okay? Was this not okay?

That's the little girl.

Yes.

Right? That's little girl. Like, ooh, am I okay?

Am I a good girl? Am I a bad girl?

And another question that I have around this scene, because obviously there's two parts of my brain that analyze Carrie around this relationship.

One that is obviously you are so excited about this, that whatever his opinion is, you have decided to respect him so much, it will matter a lot to you.

But the other side is, what would you tell somebody who is giving so much attention and so much power to somebody that is making her feel so insecure?

I would invite them to get really clear on what that core wound is that's getting triggered by this other person.

If I need you to show up, and you're not showing up in whatever way, and that is really setting me off, I need to explore, how does that cause me to feel? Oh, I feel sad, or I feel angry.

And when you're not showing up, what am I believing about myself? Oh, that I'm not lovable, that I'm not wanted, that I'm not a priority. Ooh, how long have I been believing that about myself?

Oh my God, I can go back to the playground. I wasn't picked for the soccer team, right? And it probably even goes earlier than that.

So that then I can discover, wow, I'm walking around the world with a belief that I'm not lovable, that I don't matter, that I'm not a priority.

And until I excavate that belief and ultimately take care of it and hopefully over time, replace it with a new belief about how lovable I really am, and how divine I really am, and how truly organically special and miraculous I am, then I'm going to

continue to find examples of how I don't matter. And I'm going to continue to project that.

And the problem with that is, is that I'm imagining that I have this big hole inside myself, and I'm constantly looking at people, money, sex, food, alcohol, whatever, external resources to try to fill this hole inside of me.

And what I want people to recognize is, you know, it's interesting, in 12 Steps, they say like, you know, sex won't fill the hole inside of you, only God will fill the hole inside of you.

You know, money or narcotics or food won't fill the hole inside of you, only God will fill the hole inside of you.

12 Steps, sorry, 12 Steps, meaning the steps that you need to take if you're an addict, through recovery or?

Correct, the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, which also is, there's many different forms of it.

So in 12 Steps, they say, you know, this thing or this person or this drug or this alcohol, it won't fill the hole inside of you, only God will fill the hole inside of you.

To which I want us to take it a step deeper, which is, it's not that only God will fill the hole inside of you, it's, there is no hole inside of you. There never was a hole inside of you.

The hole inside of you is an illusion of thought that you learned way early about your lack of lovability. And so we need to recognize, ooh, that's actually not true, but that's a journey, you know? That's years of work to get there.

Okay, so to the next scene off the episode, then Mr.

Big takes Carrie to Szechuan, which is like honestly yes, as Carrie says, my dream date, great sex and then go have like greasy Chinese. And the writers introduce here again the topic of the episode, which is secret sex.

So Carrie runs into this friend of hers, that is they're on a date with somebody that he is so dismissive about. And it doesn't feel like it's even a friends with benefits thing. Like you're dating this woman.

You're creating an illusion around her that you're taking the boxes. But it almost feels like you want to date her on an alternative reality where you don't have to live your life and wear your everyday routines. What do you think?

What do you think about Mike?

He's a little boy. Mike's a little boy who cares really deeply about what the world thinks about him. And we can all relate to that.

You know? And Mike is afraid that if the world, his world, sees him with this woman, who we come to find out, because Carrie had to poke and prod to find out like, what's going on there? Why are you keeping this relationship hidden?

And he just kind of uses these generalities of like, oh, she's not my person. She's not the person I'm with. And ultimately, she keeps pushing him.

And he ultimately says, she's not attractive. So he's a little boy who, again, going back to what we were saying before, has a hole inside of him that says he's not enough. Some version of he's imperfect, he's not enough.

And therefore, he's learned that one of the ways he proves his enoughness to the world is by having a woman on his arm who looks a certain kind of way. Right?

And so when he doesn't, when he's clearly attracted to this woman, they have a hilariously beautiful story of how they met in the cheese shop and there's something really erotic about the cheese and the connection that they have is clearly powerful

and sensual and sexual and intriguing. And so they clearly have a powerful connection. He clearly really likes this woman. He likes spending time with her.

They giggle and but...

Because he says, because she's not gorgeous, there's not pressure about performing. So I think he is himself around Libby.

Correct. Correct. He's most himself in this.

So this comes down to, how do I perceive I need to show up in the world in order to believe that I am lovable and accepted? We're all looking to be accepted by our community.

And he has a belief that he can only be accepted if the woman he's with looks how he expects them to look or looks how society expects them to look.

And so the reason I say he's a little boy is he's a little boy in a man's body because a man, an adult, mature man who's done their healing work goes, I don't give a fuck what society thinks about me.

I live my life with my values, with my relationships and I stand proud. And if you have a problem with that, if you think in this case that I'm supposed to be with a woman who looks like this instead of that, that's a you problem, not a me problem.

I'm focused on who am I, what do I want and standing tall in who I am in the world. And like I can relate, right?

Because as a gay man growing up, it was so fucking painful for me to realize that I was attracted to my same sex when I was 10 years old, and then, or my same gender when I was 10 years old. And I didn't have words for it at the time.

I just knew that it was bad and wrong. And so the journey of coming out and then being in a relationship with somebody at 16 years old with a man at 16, my first relationship, which, by the way, we kept secret, which is interesting for this episode.

We could talk about that because there was something very sacred about how we kept it secret. Secret?

Both of you kept it secret and both of you were 16?

He was 18 and I was 16. He was a senior in high school and I was a sophomore in high school. And we were in the dance company together and the performing arts together.

And we were still, in a way, children. And we were in an environment where we didn't feel safe to come out. There wasn't, this is 19, the early 2000s, right?

And this is in California.

In LA, yeah.

Yeah.

That's crazy.

Yeah, so I understand this pain of, I have to present myself, because for me, as a gay man, I figured, and this was all happening without my aware, it was all happening unconsciously. It's like, okay, this thing about me is not lovable.

So I'm not going to be accepted by society as a gay man. And therefore, what do I need to do in order to be accepted? Because for me, it wasn't an option to stay in the closet.

I had to come out eventually. So what, how can I pad my homosexuality so that I'm palatable to society? Okay, well, then I need to have a ton of money.

I need to have the houses and the cars and the bling. I need to be able to charter a yacht.

You basically need to compensate in everything else that society looks up to in order to make up for what you thought was something shameful.

Correct. And so for Mike, it'd be interesting to sit with his character. Was it Mike?

It was Mike.

With Mike, it'd be interesting to sit with him and go, you know, what's that for you?

It's not that you're gay, but what is that piece for you where you feel so deeply insecure about who you are in the world, that you need to make up for it by having what you consider to be or what society considers to be a beautiful woman on your

Right.

I mean, what I'm getting at is that this is just an extension of the high school playground.

Everybody's just trying to show up with either the most expensive latest sneakers to shut everybody up or say, I lost my virginity first, so you're the coolest guy in the playground. We're all compensating for something.

And I guess the people who are more obvious about it have deeper wounds or they're more childish and have more work to do.

You're spot on. We're all a bunch of children pretending.

I love to hear that.

We're children with bigger bodies and more money. That's what adults are until we can do the inner child work.

Okay. I'm going to go back to the episode. So now I think we meet Miranda and her date or fling of the week.

She is at the gym doing a kickbox class with this guy, and she hits him in the face by accident, and they kind of have this meet cute moment where they flirt all the way back to Miranda's house or his house or something like that.

And I thought it was interesting because up until now, we've been presented with a Miranda that seems very cynical, almost anti-men, very feminist. And it was very cute to see her in this very feminine energy.

And I wanted to ask you, what do you think about maybe people changing a bit who they are? And I see this a lot with, especially my girlfriends, some of us that are like chronically single.

We do step into very masculine energies as, you know, we need to do everything for ourselves. And then they get a boyfriend or something, and then you see a much more feminine energy. What do you think about that?

I think we all have masculine and feminine energies, no matter our gender.

I think what matters is that we learn to embrace both, and that we also learn how to have relationships with both in that, if like you're saying, okay, I'm a woman, and I'm a boss, and I make money, and I'm taking care of shit, and I also like have

to do all the masculine things in life. Awesome, hell yeah. My question, though, is how do you balance that? Because that's going to burn you out at a certain point.

Forget about relationships for a moment. How do you balance the do, do, do, go, go, go? How do you get off your phone and get off the social media and get off the plugged into everything and relax into yourself?

So if we're looking at masculine and feminine, the easiest way for me to describe it is masculine is that which does, right, takes action.

Yeah.

Feminine is that which bees, which just is, can just sit still and be present without needing to plug your awareness with any kind of external output.

And so being able to practice that, whether it's through meditation or one of the things that I always recommend to my coaching clients, especially women, I tend to coach a lot of like boss, pardon me, boss bitches, like real powerhouse women who are

either looking for a relationship or are in a long-term marriage and have kids and all. One of the assignments that I give them is called goddess time.

So at the end of the workday, if they're going on a date or if they're about to spend time with their husband and children or whatever, to get into a bathtub, light some candles and put on some music and put your phone away, and for 20 to 30 minutes,

just soak in the warm water without having to do anything. What will happen is because you've been in the masculine mode all day working, you'll get into that bathtub and your mind is still in that, oh, I need to send that e-mail.

Oh, did I check that off the list? Oh, let me send this to my assistant or, oh, I didn't respond to my friend.

But because you're in the bathtub and because your phone is in the other room, hopefully, you'll notice that masculine impulse and go, no, I'm not reacting to you right now. I'm going to sit inside myself.

I'm not getting out of the tap and like dripping all over the room until I get my phone to do.

You have more resistance. You'll be hyped because typically, we get a big notification on our phone and we're like Pavlov's dog. We're just like, we immediately react to stuff.

So we're unconsciously consistently in action or in the masculine. The feminine, in a way, we need to fight for her. We need to fight for the feminine.

We need to consciously pause our reactivity. And what I notice when people practice this goddess time is they feel so much more enriched and connected in their relationships.

They are able to show up on a date and be present and just listen and really be more present and more connected, which is what we all really want. I mean, I've seen relationships with people who haven't had sex in a long time.

And one partner starts doing this goddess time and suddenly their intimate connection comes back because there's room. If you have two masculine partners, right?

Whether you're in a straight relationship, a gay relationship, whatever the configuration of gender and sexuality is, if you have two partners who are, you know, in a masculine, there can be something hot about that.

But at a certain point, one needs to surrender. One needs to give themselves to the other. And that's hot.

Okay, I love that.

So we are celebrating them. There was something about hitting this man in the face that gave Miranda the power to step into her feminine side. Because for some reason, she felt that was very masculine of him.

Because I do think there's that duality. Interesting. So then we fast forward.

We follow the girls are talking about Miranda getting excited about this Ted guy. Carrie obsessing about the fact that she's been hoaxed by the sex on the first date, about Juju. And they keep talking about this secret sex.

They bring in this affair that Charlotte had with like an acidic rabbi or something like that. And I think at one point Carrie's just sitting at home and writing, reading or something.

And she gets that call from Big that if I'm very girly and I put myself in her shoes, yes, it is great. Yes, there's still that tingling of like the attraction still there, but he is to me a very, it's a very sexual tone.

It's like, if I'm honest, if I can be trite, I have not been able to stop thinking about you. And Carrie's like, I managed to escape that hoax. And then they go on this date, and Carrie is over the moon.

I think she's relaxed in this one date because to her, the obstacle was overcoming him, losing interest. And she says, I was with somebody whose name I wanted to scream off the roof, and they ran into this other couple. And then Mr.

Big doesn't introduce them. And she starts her whole paranoia. Gets home, calls Mike.

Why did you take Libby to this restaurant? Is it because you won't run into anybody there? And he's like, yeah, oops, I'm sorry.

She continues down this paranoia. I think on the same date, Mr. Big tells her, I cannot come to your toast about the bus thing.

Another thing that she puts in her paranoia box. And then they're in the bus stop. Mr.

Big is not coming. Charlotte tells Carrie she shouldn't have... Like, she's kicking her while she's down.

You shouldn't have slept with him the first time. Now it's all about sex. Like, what do you think about this?

Carrie's paranoia of like hanging on, because like then we're coming to the end of the episode where she goes drunk. Like, that's the only way that she musters the courage to be honest enough to say, this is what's going on with my mind. Goes to Mr.

Big's apartment and is like, okay, so whatever. We are obviously done because I only fit into this part of your life and you're ashamed to be with me and that's why you take me to this restaurant where nobody can see us.

You don't want to meet my friends. You don't introduce me to yours. Ta-da-da-da, which Mr.

Big explains. So I have several questions for you. Like, what's with the paranoia?

How do we stop it? But also, playing devil's advocate, Mr.

Big, fine, had a bunch of excuses, but at one point, you also want somebody by your side who's going to prioritize if there's any sliver of a chance that you're going to take this as rejection, I want to not take that chance.

I think you just answered your own question. It's like, yeah, that's what we want.

We want a mature adult partner who has a sense of all the things that can go a Ryan relationship, who can notice Carrie's insecure, anxious attachment and love her there and respect her there. Big does not have that capacity.

Fast, going to the end and then maybe we'll work backwards. When she shows up at Big's apartment drunk, like, hey, this doesn't work for me and like what the hell and you're clearly just putting me in this little box. He does have legit excuses.

Well, this is actually the reason I couldn't come to the billboard toast was because I had courtside seats at whatever the basketball or whatever game it was. And he had legit excuses or reasons. I won't even call them excuses.

He had legitimate reasons as to why he couldn't show up in the way she wanted him to. And what he represents to me is that confusion. He's not like so blatantly fucked up, you know, that it's like, oh my god, this is clearly the red flags.

And like, that's where I think a lot of her paranoia comes from because she's like, not sure. She's like, there's really a connection here. Now he has all these excuses that are legitimate.

Okay, now I can keep falling for this man. And that's where things get can get really confusing. And this is where it gets into the category of narcissism.

A narcissist is so powerful in their capacity to pull you in, to prey on your insecurities. And then as soon as you have a problem with them, or you bring up a difficult conversation where you're like, hey, can we talk about this?

Then they have like all the reasons in the world. And then they might even gaslight you of like, well, this is your insecurity. Like, and I think as we continue to watch the TV show, it's easy to kind of say, like, Big is an avoidant narcissist.

He is the center of his own universe. If you want to dive into his universe, and if you want to be in his orbit, like great.

But as soon as you have an issue, or Carrie has an issue with his orbit, he shuts down or he does something to just like pull her back in or puts up a wall or ghosts or... What I would say is, yes, is the paranoia a problem? Absolutely.

Is the way she hikes up her nervous system around this and becomes obsessive about it a problem? Yes. But what I want to say is, she's being given information to follow.

So I always say, don't follow their words, follow their actions. In relationship, words communicate who we want to be. Words communicate how we want to see ourselves.

But actions communicate who we're actually capable of being. So follow the actions is what I always say to people. It's like, it's great that they're saying to you, I love you and I want to be with you and I want to show up for you.

But like, if their actions aren't lined up with that, that's just, she's, there's a version, now mind you, it's television. So everything's a little bit exacerbated and heightened.

And that's what I love about Sex and the City is all these archetypes that are so heightened. So Carrie's a certain heightened archetype.

There's a way, but it just wouldn't be interesting for television, but there's a way that Carrie could just be noticing.

Like what would those scenes be like if she's just like, hmm, interesting, I invited Big to this and this and he's not able to come. Okay, I'm just going to store that in my pocket and just have that as information.

I don't need to jump to the immediate assumption that it's because he doesn't want me or doesn't like me or he's ashamed of me. And I don't need to jump to the immediate assumption that it's just because he's busy.

Let me just collect the information. And so I think that's really valuable in relationship, again, so that we can over time determine, does this person have the capacity for real long-term attachment?

Right, which I think Mr. Big is really not.

Correct.

And we get to that. But I do find something very endearing about his reaction.

There's like, well, because when she says, I only seem to fit into a very specific part of your life, and he says, well, I only know a very specific part of you, but I am learning about more parts about you.

And he still catches her in his arms and is like, you know, this is still something. I'm figuring you out. These are all the reasons and I'm here.

And then Carrie is desperate for his validation. It's like, so this is maybe something for real. And he doesn't really give an answer.

And that's the end of the episode, which is so Carrie and Big.

Totally Carrie and Big. If I was Big's coach and he came to me and he...

Oh, I love that.

Yeah. And he said to me, you know, I've started to see this woman. We've had sex.

We've been on two dates. She showed up at my apartment kind of freaking out drunk that like I'm not prioritizing her essentially.

And she's afraid that my goal for him would be when she is expressing to you her insecurities and her fears rather than making any statements, rather than defending yourself, rather than saying anything like, well, I'm still getting to know you too.

Just ask her questions. Hey, I'm hearing that this is causing a lot of insecurity for you. Like, can you tell me more about that?

Tell me more about where is this coming from? What are you worried about? Like, what, you know, and get really curious about how it feels for her.

And because that's the purpose of relationship. The purpose of relationship is for the healing of both people. And the only way we heal is when we have a safe container to unpack everything that feels unsafe, everything that feels like insecurity.

How soon do you think, though, that somebody can provide us with that container?

Because I think this is also too soon.

Well, I don't think it's ever too soon for me. Listen, if Carrie's barging in the door drunk, going like, like that, it's never too soon. It depends on the emotional intelligence level of, in this case, the man in this case, but of the partnership.

I don't think it's ever too soon to ask questions to understand somebody more. Because the alternative is just to fight. The alternative is just to make statements back and forth at each other.

So I don't think it's ever too soon to ask questions. Is it maybe a little too soon for Carrie to barge in and have that level of conversation in that way? Maybe, but is there a more appropriate way for her to do that, or maybe a healthier way?

Yeah. Is there a way that she could have sat down with him over a date?

Sober?

Yeah, and said to him, hey, I just want to share with you, I really like you, and I'm noticing that I see potential for relationship here, and I noticed there's a couple of places where I've put some eggs in the basket of our relationship and I'm

noticing they're falling through. Maybe she doesn't say it like that, but there's a couple of places where I've invited you to things.

There's a couple of needs that haven't been met.

Yeah. I'd love to talk with you about that. You know, it's interesting.

This episode is all about like, how quickly do we have sex to find out if the sex is good? I would say, how quickly can we have real conversation to learn the emotional maturity level of the other and of myself. That's what my goal would be.

It doesn't mean we have to like unpack everything and all of our childhood trauma, but like, how can I get some sign that you have the ability to feel your feelings, communicate them effectively, listen to me and my feelings, move through discomfort

Okay, so you've jumpstarted into the last section of my episodes that I think it's the best thing, and I love that you offered your coaching to Mr.

Big because I think he needs it the most. But to put a ribbon to the episode, I want to wrap it up with maybe what would your coaching be to each one of the girls.

So to summarize, Carrie, you know, she would come to your office and say, met this guy, oh my god, I didn't want to sleep with him, I slept with him, he ignored me. Like you're going maybe through the motions. I was like, hi, low, hi, low, hi, low.

So what would your coaching have been to her?

I would need three months with this person. I think that's too little. Well, I'm a really good coach.

My coaching would be we need to go into a process for you to learn how to regulate your system. Because your system right now is so incredibly codependent, meaning you're looking outside of yourself to determine how you get to feel inside yourself.

And I need to break, we need to break up with that codependency so that you can learn to regulate your system inside and then approach dating.

It's not that you can't approach dating while you're learning these things, but that would be my work with her. It's like I need you to learn who you are and how to take care of yourself.

So you stop consistently only looking to others to determine how you feel about yourself on the inside.

I think that makes a lot of sense. Then, okay, so Miranda, oh my god, we haven't talked about this, but Miranda basically then has a sleepover with Ted. And Ted is so sweet and he's like, oh, I need to catch a flight.

Off I go, stay here, please don't rush. And the minute he closes the door, Miranda goes through his apartment and finds this movie called Spanked. Yeah.

So what would your coaching be to her about that? And then we also see how she kind of addresses the kink. And yeah, and she's like, okay, I'm willing to embrace it.

And he decides to not call her again. So what would your coaching be to her? And do you care to comment on what you think that kink means from her?

I'm not a diagnostician.

So, right, and I kind of interrupted you. I want to apologize because I spoke over you right when you were saying that she found those spanking, like porn spanking tapes in Ted's drawer.

Firstly, stop it with the fucking snooping, because if you want to find something, you will find something, right? And there's a reason that he has chosen to put that in a drawer and not just have it out in the open.

And so, the snooping piece to me, it's like again, Cynthia Nixon, but Miranda, what is it in you that's needing to find something?

Like, what is the insecurity in you that you need to find something to make you feel more secure in this relationship or learn something about this person?

And can you be an adult and push pause on that kind of addict mentality of like, oh, I have a thought, what's here? And oh, I'm just going to act on it without thinking.

Like, you are an adult, you have the power for delayed gratification to pause, to go, hmm, is this the best thing for me to do right now? Because I will find something, whatever it is. I will find an email.

I will find, you know, if I go snooping in my partner's text messages, I will find something.

And because I'm in the mode of looking for something naughty or looking for something off, I'm probably going to interpret some things through that lens, right? And it might be accurate, but it might not be accurate.

That's, and also, they've like been on one date or two dates. Like, maybe later down the line, she could have a conversation with him and say, what are some of your kinks? You know, do you have any kinks that you like to keep hidden?

I'd love to know because, you know, maybe I find them hot. Like, maybe I want to like put you over my knee and smack your ass, whatever. So that's the first thing is like we all need to monitor and explore our desire to search and snoop.

What's really motivating that? So that's the first piece. But now she found the spanking tapes.

I think, you know, doesn't she have a conversation with her girlfriends about it?

She goes to Carrie's apartment, puts the tape on, and she's like, what do I do now? And like, by the way, obviously, he fell for you once you kicked him in the face in kickboxing, because like he's into that.

Oh, interesting.

I didn't connect there. She's very judgmental. Very judgmental about it.

And like you said, fine, we need to suppress that like wish to explore and snoop around. But like, I think it is, it's not possible to suppress like what you're attracted to. I'm like, bless him.

It gets him off to be spanked. Yeah.

There you go. So regardless of where the kink comes from, we all have kinks. We all have kinks.

And I've shamed myself about my kinks historically my whole life and told the story there's something wrong with that. And so then I need to keep it hidden.

And what I've learned through trauma-informed therapy and is actually my kinks are kind of interesting. Well, and the only way I was able to get there was to explore, what is this shame piece, right? And shame is not I'm doing something wrong.

Shame is I am wrong. And so because I had these interests in these fetishes and things, that there's something wrong with me. And it's like, firstly, let's just be very, very clear.

My personal fetishes are not no one's getting hurt, you know, like there is no illegality involved. It's totally normal human behavior. And I thought there was something really wrong with that.

And I think with Miranda and, what's his name, Ted, thank you, she finds this. She also shames it. So he has good reason to hide it, right?

Because look at how she reacts. And then instead of bringing it forward, maybe it's like if I'm coaching her, I'm like, hey, like, let's put this in your back pocket for a little while.

Let's wait for the two of you to feel like you have a secure, you know, vulnerable, respectful connection where you can actually bring up topics that are a little more taboo, right?

And then once we feel like we get there, then there's a way for her to say, hey, I got to like out myself on something like our first date.

I was feeling insecure and I wanted to find something and I found these tapes and like, I want to talk to you about it. Like, and there's a way to talk about it that is like, do you want to explore this together? Like, is that a desire for you?

What's that about for you? And for Ted, Ted, I'm not great with names. For Ted, there's so many names.

That's why I wear my Carrie Bradshaw necklace. Your audience, I don't know if they watch the video, but yeah, I wear my name on my neck to make it easy for people.

But for Ted, clearly it is something like when she says that to him, you know, I wish we could go back in time and interview the character, right?

While they're still in character, to be like, hey, Ted, what was it about that moment when she's bringing forward your kink at the end of the episode? So Miranda confronts him, right? She says to him something like, oh, maybe I should spank you.

I don't remember exactly what the line is. And he-

Something along those lines.

Yeah, he freezes for a moment. And I'm curious, what's going through your mind? Is it you feel ashamed that that's your kink?

Or is it-

Is it that Miranda went through your stuff?

Is it that she went through your shit? And like, disrespected your privacy, you know? And what I would just say is, don't shame your kinks.

As long as no one's getting hurt, as long as everyone is a consenting adult, let's not shame ourselves for our kinks.

Okay, I think that's all very fair. And we can only hope that Ted dumped her rightly so, because she went through his shit. Okay, then, Charlotte, what...

By the way, it could very much be that he's ashamed of his kink, which again is why he hides it in the drawer and only like...

Which I think...

You know?

Yeah, I think that's what they were alleging too, that he was ashamed.

Sure, which I would understand.

That's very human.

Yeah. What about Charlotte? What would you tell somebody who would like come to your office like, oh, my friend, you know, she's my best friend, she's great, but like she's dating this guy, and she did this wrong, and the rules and this and that.

What would you say to her about somebody who is like, so by the book, and there's like a proportional amount of dates that you should go to before, da-da-da? What would your work with her look like?

I would start by like, how well is that working for you? Like, do you feel happy as an individual? Like, do you feel like you're living life fully?

Do you feel like you have ideas for things and you go after them? Do you feel confident in your sense of self? How sexy do you feel?

How alive do you feel? Are you enjoying life? Like, I would explore that.

And then I would start going, because I would imagine the answer would probably be pretty not, not activated in her life. And then I'd start exploring like, okay, so, you know, what are these rules? Where do they come from?

Where is it that you feel that you, where did you learn that in order to feel okay in the world, you needed to have these very strict rules that inside of which you can engage?

And what we would inevitably find would probably be a whole lot of not feeling safe in her early life. And probably some version, what I would typically find is more often than not, it would be parents who were super, super messy.

And super undisciplined, and maybe addicts.

And like there was a messy household, or maybe I was talking to somebody the other day who like grew up with a lot of money, but by the time she was like 10 or 11 years old, her father lost all of his money and then became an addict and like didn't

get off the couch. And so she learned like, ooh, that could happen to me. I don't want that to happen to me. So I have to build a very regimented, rules driven life so that I can avoid that pain.

So what I would ask her, ultimately what I'd want to unpack is, what pain do you believe you're avoiding by living your life by such strict rules? What do you think that's going to save you from? And then from there...

I mean, the thing is that as a woman watching this show, I love that she always has an answer that is almost like mathematic about how you're going to get out of here.

Like it takes you half the time that you dated the guy to get over the guy. So it gives you a bit of like that solace.

I don't know if that's the right word, but like, you know, I know that at least let me get to that point and then I'll reevaluate whether this is working for me or not, but like just having that hope makes me feel better instantly.

That's great. And so that's wonderful that those rules are helpful. However, my question would be, are you ruling the rules or are the rules ruling you?

Like at what point? That's a very Carrie Bradshaw sentence. She definitely ends her article that way.

So I got to wondering, are the rules ruling me or am I ruling the rules?

So I think if you're ruling the rules, if you're in charge, if you're using that as information, as input to help you make better decisions and that feels really good for you, great. But what I think we see with Charlotte is that the rules rule her.

She's in a way addicted to needing these really strict confinements with which to live her Upper East Side life. And that's where I would just say, like, let's fuck this up a little bit. Like, let's find it's so black and white.

And I understand the drive for black and white because it creates a sense of safety and structure. But the truth is life is very gray. And relationships are very gray and love and connection is very, very much in the gray.

And so are we avoiding the existential gray of being alive by having all these rules? And if we are, how can we make more permission to live a little bit in the gray in the unknown?

Right. Okay. I love that.

And then last is Samantha, but Samantha has not much to go on. So would you rather coach Samantha or maybe Mike for this episode?

I don't even remember what was going on for Samantha in this episode.

Samantha basically just appears to celebrate Carrie's toast. She goes over to her place to see how the spread looks like. And they're talking about...

Carrie asks her, Have you ever been ashamed of anybody that you slept with? And Samantha keeps pointing out all this men that are obviously worthy of being ashamed of. And she's like, well, then I guess not.

And then she tells Carrie about Charlotte's Hasidic Folk Jew artist. So I think she has a very healthy, like she embraces that part of herself in a very healthy way in this episode.

I agree.

So I don't know if maybe you want to coach Mike, who was very ashamed of Libby, because I think Libby also was like, bravo.

The minute that Mike said like, fine, now I'm ready to like show you off, she was like, you know what, I would rather go out with somebody else. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

I wish we could have that conversation with Libby to be like, what drove that decision? Yeah.

I mean, with Mike, I'd probably given him an assignment, which is hopefully I'm getting him early enough in their relationship, so she's still available for this.

But if he showed up and was like, I'm having sex with and dating this woman, but I don't want to bring her around my friends because I'm ashamed, as quickly as possible, I would try to unpack that shame with him, help him to see like, you need to

live your life based on what you want and what you feel connected to and fuck what people think. And then I would have him test it by assigning him to have a dinner party and invite Libby and give him the tools to become aware of the triggers that

arise inside of him when he's introducing Libby to people, to notice, ooh, this is bringing up insecurity. Okay, well, when that insecurity is coming up inside of me, how do I navigate that so that I don't need to avoid it by hiding? Right.

So essentially, he's hiding her as a way to hide his own insecurity from himself. Right. And isn't that what we're always doing in life?

Yes.

But I love that homework for him. Okay. So I think that's it for the episode.

Thank you so much, Ryan. Now, I would love for you to maybe share how you work, because I would love to add to the show notes your website and your Instagram, because I think it's full of very good tips.

If you want to tell us a bit of how you work with your clients and what your business stands for.

Yeah. So, I mean, there's a lot of different ways I can talk about this. So my coaching process is a three-month coaching process.

I have two pieces of curriculum. One, I call emotional fitness, which is a three-step process that I can use in any moment that I'm dysregulated. I'm afraid, I'm upset, I'm anxious, I'm overwhelmed, I'm hating myself.

Any form of dysregulation, it's a three-step process to move from the insecurity to a sense of safety, security, self-love. Then the second month is called conscious communication. So now that I know what's going on inside myself more deeply, right?

I'm not just paying attention to the surface level problem. I'm now paying attention to what is the surface level problem bringing up inside of me.

Now, how do I communicate about it with you, my lover, my brother, my parent, my business partner, in a way that you can actually hear me, so that we can learn to navigate conflict together.

So I work with people for a three month curriculum, and we have weekly sessions, just like with your therapist, but then you also have access to me as needed through asynchronous voice notes.

So that's, I really love that part of the coaching, because if you're having an, if we're talking through an issue on Monday, but now it's Thursday, and the issue's coming up, and you're like feeling stuck, or you're overwhelmed or anxious, you and I

can go back and forth in real time, so that you can take a different action in real time, so that you can experience a different outcome in real time. And that's how your behavioral change happens, really, really quickly.

So that's the coaching piece. Typically, what I'm really doing is helping people learn how to embrace their darkness.

So how to embrace all the parts of ourselves that we have felt ashamed to share with the world, or the parts of ourselves that we deem unlovable or just not respectable.

And often, I'm working with people who are going through some of life's hardest moments.

You know, whether that's they've lost a loved one, or they've gotten a really painful health diagnosis, or they're going through a breakup that feels really painful.

And then in terms of where people can find me, it's all word of mouth, it's all referral. So, if you, anyone wants info on that, they can send me a message and we can have a conversation. My Instagram is at WakingUpWithRyan, and I share my musings.

Yeah, I share my musings on there.

Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. This has been so interesting.

Thank you, Isa.

I appreciate it. I'm so excited for you.

And me too. I hope this, you know, turns into something big.

I'm sure it will. And turns into something Mr. Big.

Mr. Big. I'm sure it will.

All right.

I'll talk to you soon.

Thank you.