Love Inside Out with Adele Testa

22. The four wounds of dysfunctional love - and the secret of healing

Why do you push away the people who are genuinely good for you — and feel strangely at home with the ones who aren't? If steady, kind love feels boring, suspicious, even suffocating… if a caring partner has ever made you think "this is too good to be true"… if you keep choosing chaos and calling it passion — this episode will hit close to home. In this episode of Love Inside Out, we explore what happens when we grow up in a dysfunctional family — not an unloving one, just one that quietly handed us some difficult patterns. Using the story of the chained elephant, we will unpack why your nervous system still lives in a world you've long outgrown, and why that "chain" shows up in your romantic life every single day. Together we look at the four wounds a dysfunctional upbringing can leave behind and the crucial difference between what feels familiar and what actually is care. Because confusing the two is how good people walk away from good love. This episode is gentle, honest, and a little tender — but it ends on a turning point. The love you've been running from might be the love you were looking for all along. This week's Heart Work is a four-step reflection exercise to help you start spotting your own chains: name it, separate then and now, redefine home, and get a witness. 🤎 Three standalone newsletters going deeper on this topic are on the Substack — link below. https://substack.com/@unromanticisedlove Chapters: * 00:00 - Understanding Dysfunctional Family Dynamics * 03:42 - The Impact of Dysfunction on Relationships * 07:55 - Identifying Core Wounds from Dysfunction * 11:48 - Recognizing Familiarity vs. Genuine Care * 16:45 - Relearning Healthy Relationship Dynamics * 19:21 - Practical Steps for Healing and Growth Episodes mentioned in this episode: * 🔗 Episode 1 — Love Storytelling: The Lies We Tell Ourselves About Love (love = drama, love = sacrifice) → https://plinkhq.com/i/1877487346/e/1000749826870 * 🔗 Episode 9 - How to Recognise Your Person (Dating Framework) → https://plinkhq.com/i/1877487346/e/1000749826767 * 🔗 Episode 8. - The Power Couple Myth (3x Rule) → https://plinkhq.com/i/1877487346/e/1000749826924 * 🔗 Episode 4 - Self-Love and Romantic Love (7 Hs Framework) → https://plinkhq.com/i/1877487346/e/1000749826766

21. How to strengthen your relationship

We've all been sold that fixing our relationship takes a weekend retreat, a couples therapist, or a three-hour conversation at midnight that leaves both parties both wrung out and staring at the ceiling. It doesn't. In this episode, I'm giving you part one of my coaching framework — three small, ordinary acts, done together every day, in five minutes total. The kind of acts you used to do for each other when you were trying to win them over, and somewhere along the way quietly stopped. This episode is for you whether you're: * In a crisis, actually wondering if you're going to make it * In the apathy, years in, gone flat, no drama but no fire * In the post-butterflies lull, where the early spark has worn off and nobody warned you about what comes nex * In the post-move-in settle, where the giddy first-flat energy has cooled into something far more domestic than you thought it would Chapters: * 00:00 Rekindling relationships with amall acts * 02:14 Understanding relationship dynamics * 04:39 The power of appreciation * 07:05 Small gestures matter * 09:15 The challenge of non-escalation * 10:42 Building connection through consistency * 12:22 The importance of daily efforts * 14:28 Transforming relationship dynamics * 16:42 Practical steps for change * 19:01 Commitment to improvement If this episode lands for you, I'd love to hear about it. And if you're curious about parts two and three of the coaching framework — message me. I'll walk you through them. 🤎 Instagram — @adele_thecoach [https://www.instagram.com/adele_thecoach/]✍️ Substack — https://substack.com/@unromanticisedlove Ciao.

20. Retroactive jealousy: the ghost in your relationship

Your partner's ex. The one you've never met but can't stop thinking about. That's the ghost in your relationship — and in this episode, we're talking about why someone who is no longer part of the story has more power over your peace of mind than the person sleeping next to you. Today we focus on retroactive jealousy. In this episode, I break down what retroactive jealousy actually is, why it takes hold so deeply, who keeps the ghost alive without realising it, and what you can do — practically, honestly — to stop it from running your relationship. If you've ever stalked your partner's ex on social media, asked a question you didn't actually want the answer to, or felt your stomach drop at a name from their past — this episode was made for you. Press play. CHAPTERS * 00:00 Understanding retroactive jealousy — what it is, how it differs from reactive and possessive jealousy, and why we're only covering this type today. The others get their own episode. * 03:11 The emotional impact of retroactive jealousy — what it actually feels like from the inside, the obsessive cycle of digging and spiralling, and how friends, family, and even your partner can keep the ghost alive without meaning to. * 10:34 Identifying the root causes — low self-worth, anxious attachment, and the imagination problem that turns your partner's past into a film that's always worse than reality. * 18:23 Strategies for managing retroactive jealousy — six practical steps, from stopping the detective work to building the relationship instead of investigating it. * 19:33 Heart Work of the week — three questions to carry with you this week. The kind that change things if you sit with them honestly. * 21:10 Conclusion — the past is where stories go when they're finished. Yours is still being written. If this episode landed — or if you want to tell me which part hit hardest — send me a DM on Instagram @adelethecoach. I read every single one.🤎 I also write a weekly newsletter on Substack where I go deeper into the topics behind each episode — standalone articles you can read in two minutes with your morning coffee. https://substack.com/@unromanticisedlove Don't let a ghost run your love life. Ciao, Adele 🤎

19. Be careful who you talk to about your Love life

This episode is for anyone who's ever left a coffee, a dinner, or a group chat feeling quietly worse about their relationship — without being able to say exactly why. For anyone who's compared their love life to a friend's highlight reel and come up short. For anyone who vents to the same person every time and wonders why nothing ever shifts. But here's what happened. This Sunday I accidentally ran a mini group coaching session about love. With three strangers. On a park bench. Before brunch. I did not sign up for this. I watched one woman's sense of her own marriage swing from relief to shame in ninety seconds — based entirely on two sentences from two people she'd just met. And I couldn't stay quiet about it. Because what happened on that bench happens to all of us. We just don't notice it. Press play if you want: The comparison trap — To understand why casual conversations about other people's relationships quietly sabotage how you feel about your own. Standards, not comparisons — A three-column framework for deciding what is okay, what is negotiable, and what is a no-no in your relationship — so you stop outsourcing your compass to strangers on park benches. Choose your person on purpose — The difference between a sounding board that calibrates you and one that just cheers you on. Why co-rumination — the thing that feels like support — actually embeds the hurt deeper. And how to pick the right person before you need them. Heart Work of the week: three things to do this week to turn what you heard into what you practise. This episode is less theory, more story. I think you'll recognise yourself somewhere in it. Chapters: 1. Introduction: 0:00 - 0:49- 1:32 2. The Park Bench Story: 1:32 - 5:56 3. Comparison in Relationships: 5:56 - 9:20 4. The Concept of Standards: 9:20 - 15:23 5. Sounding Board and Support: 15:23 - 21:39 6. Heart Work and Conclusion: 21:39 - 27:57 Let's stay in touch. I'd love to hear which part landed most for you. 📩 DM me on Instagram: @adele_thecoach✍️ Read my weekly articles on Substack: https://substack.com/@unromanticisedlove [https://substack.com/@unromanticisedlove] Love Inside Out is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts — wherever you listen to podcasts.

18. The imaginary race & FOMO in love: why you're comparing your love life to a timeline that doesn't exist

You're not behind. You're scrolling and play a lose-lose game with endless comparisons. Nobody tells you this, so I will: the most damaging thing you can do in love is measure your real life against someone else's highlight reel. That knot in your stomach when a friend gets engaged. That restless ache when you see a couple on holiday and yours feels quieter. That voice saying you should be further along by now. That's not intuition. That's FOMO. And it's running more of your love decisions than you think. FOMO in love is not jealousy. It's not envy. It's a fear — the fear that your love life is falling behind a timeline nobody actually agreed to. And it doesn't just hit single people. It hits those in relationships, those in situationships, and those who've been through divorce hardest of all. In this episode, I go deeper into FOMO than I've gone on any topic so far. And I think it might change how you see your own love life. 🤎 WHAT'S INSIDE THIS EPISODE 🤎 The Imaginary Timeline — where your love roadmap came from, and why it was never yours to begin with. 🤎 The Comparison Trap — how social media hijacks your nervous system. 🤎 The Grief Nobody Recognises — FOMO often masks grief for a life that didn't happen. Until you mourn the imaginary version, you keep chasing it. 🤎 FOMO and Your Attachment Style — why anxious attachment turbocharges FOMO, and why avoidant attachment uses it as a costume. 🤎 The Sunk Cost Trap — why people stay in wrong relationships because leaving feels like wasting the years they invested. 🤎 The "What If" Loop — and a practical tool called the What If Audit to break the spiral. 🤎 Heart Work — three questions to sit with this week. If something in this episode landed — or if you want to tell me which chapter hit hardest — send me a DM on Instagram @adelethecoach. I read every single one. Your pace is yours. Always has been. — Adele 🤎 REFERENCES * I also reference our episode on The Power Couple Myth - everyone wants to be the Obamas (but no one wants to do the work) — because the pressure to look like you're winning at love is FOMO's older, louder sibling. Listen https://plinkhq.com/i/1877487346/e/1000749826924 [https://plinkhq.com/i/1877487346/e/1000749826924]. * Leon Festinger — Social Comparison Theory (1954). The foundational research on why humans evaluate themselves by comparing to others. * Barry Schwartz — The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (2004). Research showing that too many options lead to paralysis and dissatisfaction. His distinction between "maximisers" and "satisficers" applies directly to modern dating and relationship decisions.