Kim: You say that all of us need to be single at some point in our life. Why is that?

John: Because I think we live in a world where we’re obsessed with just finding love as fast as we can. And if we’re single, we don’t like to sit with ourselves; we think there’s something wrong with that. And so I want to empower singlehood, give it a cape. I think it’s been vilified for so long.

K:

John, I’ve been single for a while, and I think it’s difficult for some people to understand that conscious pause.

J:

Single on purpose doesn’t mean single forever. It doesn’t mean that you’re not looking and you’re not open. It means you’re building a better relationship with yourself. And if you find someone who deserves you and who you want to invest in, that’s great.

K:

Right. Exactly! But so many people jump from relationship to relationship with not much of a cooling-off period.

J:

Yeah, and I think that’s a way of hiding, a way of running away. For me, it started with a divorce, a marriage that fell apart, a lot because of my lack of tools and being a child. And so, I spent about four years shaking up my whole life. Meaning I started a new career as a therapist, and I wanted to connect to me, get to know who I was. So I bought a motorcycle and started riding it in LA; I started working out, finding myself through fitness and that community. I tell people I found myself through a motorcycle, barbells, and donuts. And I don’t mean to eat your feelings. I mean, give yourself what you need and treat yourself. It’s okay.

K:

I think being alone, at least for me, allows time to figure out what it is that I want and how that would fit into my life.

J:

Yeah, absolutely. You do have to investigate where things come from, and I think many people in relationships are reactive; they don’t look inward. And if you’re not doing that, you’re not growing and evolving. You’re just repeating the past, you know?

K:

So how would someone begin to build a healthy relationship?

J:

You’ve got to begin with the truth. Begin with being really honest with yourself. If you’re not honest with yourself, there’s nowhere to go from there. It’s very slippery. Know where you’re at in your life. What do you want? Some people go on a self-betterment journey—everything from getting involved in your community, to therapy, to the stuff that’s happening online. Just getting out of your house, out of your head, and connecting back to who you were or, if you never knew, then who you are.

K:

With diversity being so much a focus in our society, it sort of lays on a whole other layer of understanding of what relationships and intimacies are, right?

J:

Yeah, and with the new generation, monogamy is kind of on trial. There are so many people getting involved in different types of relationships—open relationships and poly (polyamory) and all of this. So when you’re single, I think it’s time for that exploration because when you do get into whatever relationship you want to get into, now there are conditions, and there are agreements. And you don’t have the freedom that you had when you were single. So I always say that when you’re single, that’s the richest soil for growth. It’s when you’re no longer obligated to anyone except yourself, which is freeing, empowering, not de-powering.

K:

On your website, you have lots of different tools for visitors to talk about attract vs. the chase.

J:

I spent most of my twenties chasing, growing up in LA, just chasing shiny things. I didn’t allow myself to be happy until I got those things. And because those things never came. I was angry and miserable, you know? And so when you have a better relationship with yourself, you start attracting. If you have a poor relationship with yourself, it’s a lot of desperation and chasing. So when it comes to singlehood, I think a lot of people are chasing instead of attracting. And when you chase, you’re less attractive.

K:

(giggling) That is so true; when you chase someone, you’re definitely less attractive to them.

J:

I also think we’ve turned into baseball cards. I think that because of the filters and false advertising, and hiding behind our phones, we’re not showing up in an honest way. And so we’re setting ourselves up for very short runs, nothing that’s sustainable because there’s a lot of hiding behind the veneer.

I remember when I was dating, you had to actually go up to someone to ask for their phone number, and you had to talk to them on the phone. And you had to think of creative things to do. Today it’s like people are swiping while their date is in the restaurant.

K:

So why do we get into unhealthy relationships, sometimes repeatedly?

J:

 A lot of our choices we make aren’t really choices; they’re 90% subconscious. They’re based on familiar things. Most of us didn't enter adulthood un-scarred. Meaning there’s trauma. There’s chaos. There’s all of that. And so the partners that we pick a lot of times we are attracted to the messy or the dysfunctional, and we’re not even aware of that until we no longer want that anymore. And then we take a deep dive, and we actually look at it. So a lot of it is default. A lot of it is just if you don’t make conscious choices, you’re going to default to unhealthy. You know?

K:

Some self-help books say to be loved by someone, you must first love yourself. Thoughts?



J:

I wouldn’t even say love yourself. I’m going to say you have to like yourself because it’s harder to like yourself than to love yourself. I think loving yourself is a choice. And I think liking yourself has to be earned. And to like yourself, you need to go on some kind of journey. It doesn’t have to be a motorcycle, barbells, and donuts. Whatever your journey is, you have to go on it to get to know who you are to like yourself. Because when you do like yourself, you feel that you have more value, more substance.