What Self-Love Really Means in Dating with Jonathon Aslay

Reza Ghaemi: Hello, hello, hello, hello. Welcome back to the Res Podcast, the show where we explore relationships, personal growth, mental health, and the experiences that shape how we see ourselves and the world around us. I'm your host, Reza Gayemi, and today we're talking about something that affects nearly every part of our lives: the relationships, the relationship between self-love, self-worth, and the people we choose to date. My guest today is Jonathan Aslay, one of America's leading midlife self-love and relationship coaches. Jonathan has built an audience of more over 200,000 followers on YouTube, where he helps people better understand dating, emotional health, and what it truly means to love yourself. His own experiences with love, loss, and personal transformation led him to look beyond conventional dating advice and recognize that our relationships often expose something much deeper, how we genuinely feel about ourselves. He's also the author of What the Heck is Self-Love Anyway? A book that offers practical and spiritual approaches to developing. Greater self-worth, self-regard, and emotional awareness. Jonathan, welcome to the Res Podcast.

Jonathon Aslay: Thanks for having me on. I appreciate the rewrite of my bio. Can I borrow yours?

Reza Ghaemi: ⁓ I'm known to have the ⁓ kind of the over-the-top intros for the guests. I love it. Well, thanks again. Thanks for making the time, Jonathan. ⁓ so I want to get right into things. ⁓ a lot of dating advice focuses on how to attract someone, keep their interest, or avoid making mistakes. You seem to go underneath all of that and focus on self-love. So, what do you what do you believe self-love is that or

Jonathon Aslay: Yeah.

Reza Ghaemi: Why do you believe self-love is that real foundation of a healthy relationship? And it's it's sort of to me is like a cliche. Like everybody talks about self-love. So talk to me about that.

Jonathon Aslay: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to address it in a couple angles. First, you know, dating is very performative today. It's based on attraction, entertainment, romance, and physical connection versus what it's really designed to do. What is the purpose of dating is the question people should be asking. And that's to vet to see if this person that you don't know, you know, spending time with a person you don't know, you build enough rapport, trust, and attraction. To explore a relationship with. And then what is the purpose of a relationship? What's the definition of a relationship? And a lot of people go into it so ambivalently, so unconscious, without any intention, that no wonder it's a cluster F out there. I don't know if it's okay to curse, but it's a okay, so it's a clusterfuck out there to some degree. So that's just one of the many challenges that we're faced with. Why some

Reza Ghaemi: ⁓ it's totally okay to curse, yeah.

Jonathon Aslay: Self-love is so important is that every human being, adult human being, has an emotional six-year-old inside of us. ⁓ I don't care if you were raised in the most perfect of conditions, or sadly, if you were raised in a horrific condition, there's an emotional six-year-old that's been traumatized, traumatized to some degree within ourselves. And it's both in our child experiences but also our adult experience as well. And when I say traumatized, even a breakup that of a short-lived experience could be traumatic to that emotional six-year-old inside of us. So if we all Have an emotional six-year-old inside of us. What self-love is, is the nurturing and the support of that little six-year-old inside of us through you know self-awareness, through understanding our fears, our insecurities, our negative patterns, our our limiting beliefs, our judgments of others, how our actions affect other people. And so through a more self-aware approach, we begin to and a self-examine approach of. Of that emotional six-year-old inside of us, we begin to become better partners for another human being. Because sadly, we have a walk, a population of walking wounded running around, both those that are single and looking for love and certainly those that are in relationship, and they're bouncing off one another because they don't have the tools to both love themselves and actually be of service to another human being.

Reza Ghaemi: Interesting. ⁓ Jonathan, when you say six year old, ⁓ is that like an actual number like six year old or like

Jonathon Aslay: ⁓ I I I should preface this. I'm I'm calling it an emotional six year old. ⁓

Reza Ghaemi: Okay, okay.

Jonathon Aslay: I think as human beings, we are just still scratching the surface of emotional maturity and relationship skills. And here's the fallacy most people live in. They everybody thinks they're an emotional adult. You know, it's the delusion that the ego feeds us. But I believe, and I chose six-year-old because that seems enough to know where you know a little bit, but you clearly don't know much at all. And and the way a six-year

Reza Ghaemi: Okay.

Jonathon Aslay: year old reacts to trauma the way a six year old reacts to fear the way a six year old reacts to thing is is a lot different and that's why I chose that number but that's my made-up number but it's but I would say therapists all say between the ages two and twelve is the formation of our emotional identity.

Reza Ghaemi: Okay, okay. And and I just want to ask you a question because I often have heard in self help advice that when we are children ⁓ and you use six year old, we're not socially ⁓ conditioned yet. And so we're tab tend to be happy as a six year old. Is is is part of what you do kind of related to social conditioning and what happens, or is that off topic?

Jonathon Aslay: Mm. Well no no. So, you know, when you think of a six-year-old, actually, I think we are born of love. I mean, when we come out of the womb, there's a divinity within us. And certainly there's joy and happiness, but there's also, you know, the minute you poop, you start crying and stuff like that. But I want you to imagine at roughly at age three to six, give or take, you know, you've heard the word no how many hundreds, if not thousands, of times. And to, you know, like your parents say, no. Don't touch the stove, or no, don't touch this. And to an emotional, you know, to a six-year-old, that no can feel violent. Just the word no, let alone all the other things that happened in childhood. You know, I'm a baby boomer, so I was I was raised with, you know, my dad slapped me, my dad hit me, my mom slapped me, my mom hit me. ⁓ that was very common for that. ⁓ certainly that shifted now, but just think, and by the way, I would tell you that.

Reza Ghaemi: Mm-hmm. Okay.

Jonathon Aslay: That I was raised in a good middle class home. I got, I got, my dad beat the shit out of me once. I remember it vividly. And that's just to name a few things. So coming back to the social conditioning. You know, to some degree we've been socialized from the moment we're born. You know, b babies, you know, boys have blue nurseries, girls have pink nurseries. the way we're raised, there's always a social conditioning. There's cultural conditioning going on, there's economic conditioning going on. So we're all raised with some sort of conditioning that makes up our identity, who we really are. And I would venture to say most adults are struggling. With their identity. They're struggling with the emotional ⁓ regulation. And I would say that the number one emotional health wound that every adult is experiencing, and this is the world according to Jonathan, this is not a statement of fact. This is my opinion. But the number one emotional health wound is I'm not good enough, I'm not lovable, and I'm not likable. And sometimes the most confident of people have the weakest little six-year-old. Yeah.

Reza Ghaemi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. Okay. Brilliant. Jonathan, I I kind of wanted to ask you, you know, one of the ideas I talk about on my podcast is separating our self worth from the external character we're playing in life. But in dating, people often measure their worth by attention, matches, messages, or whether someone chooses them. How can someone stop using romantic attention as proof of their value?

Jonathon Aslay: Yeah. Mm. Sure. Well, I I think it requires the ability to live a self-examined life. And where I talked about earlier that self-awareness around our fears, our insecurities, our negative patterns, our limiting beliefs, our judgments for others, our our recognition how our actions affect others. So within that scope of what I just laid out as self-awareness, is to separate yourself from the ego that might. need that attention or like or validation or or text message to validate them to recognize that we are we our soul is a self-contained being we can nurture all of our needs can be met within oneself okay it requires taking a step back but sadly most humans don't have that capacity because they haven't done personal development work self-help work spiritual work or even therapy to Examine our thoughts and our actions and our emotions. And quite frankly, for those that choose that journey, it's a very juicy, delicious roller coaster ride filled with a lot of ups and downs. But when we when we recognize, or when a person recognizes that we are not of that, it's just a part of what we experience, we can actually start looking at it with a lot more joy and reverence.

Reza Ghaemi: Interesting. And you've said, Jonathan, that relationships can be one of the most ⁓ one of the best paths towards self-love. How does being close to another person expose the insecurities, attachment patterns, or emotional wounds that we might not recognize when we're alone?

Jonathon Aslay: Yeah. Yeah, so when we are alone, there's very little that triggers us. You know, a a lot of people, ⁓ there's there, you know, years ago there was the MGTOW, men going their own way, and now women are decentering from men, and people are saying, you know, I'm happy being single. And that's great when you're single. There, you know, when you can go to bed when you want, you can wake up when you want, you can do whatever you want whenever you want, whenever you want, you have all this freedom and autonomy, and it's great. But

Reza Ghaemi: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jonathon Aslay: To the extent to grow, we we grow when we're triggered. You know, we I mean to some degree we can grow by doing spiritual retreats and things like that, but nothing creates faster, you know, emotional growth than being triggered. And trust me, you could have the most loving of partners and they're gonna trigger the fuck out of you, you know?

Reza Ghaemi: Mm-hmm. Love that. I love that. Yep, yep, yep, yep. No, I love that. ⁓ my God. Yeah. So when you say triggered, you you're you're talking about when you're by yourself. I'm still trying to understand that because I feel like if I'm by myself, I'm I'm triggered in the sense that I feel lonely. Isn't that a trigger?

Jonathon Aslay: So that's a great question. So, and and I I to the extent this is relatively, I want to say not a new phenomenon, but there's this ⁓ there's this culture of loneliness that's happening, more so since COVID. So that's that's really ⁓ an it worth an examination. And the question is loneliness will trigger or activate oneself. Okay. ⁓ now what a lot of people is they're putting a protective cloak. Around themselves. They're going, I'm so happy being single. I'm living this, I'm living my best life being single. But if there's a part of you that deeply wants to be in a loving partnership with another, then what you're doing is spir bypassing the pain in that cloak of I'm happy being single. But again, that's if you if you're having that desire to be in a life partnership. If you're alone and you're happy being alone, then you're not triggered. You're only triggered because you think you're missing something.

Reza Ghaemi: Mm. Okay. Okay. So self awareness again is is key. Okay. ⁓ Jonathan, the dating world is filled with coaches, teaching strategies, confidence, attraction, and social skills. Some of the advice can be useful, but where is the line between genuinely improving yourself and simply performing a more attractive version of yourself to receive validation?

Jonathon Aslay: Yeah. Yeah, you know. Ever since COVID and the boom of TikTok and ⁓ reels and shorts, we have a proliferation of people giving dating advice. And a lot of it is rage bait driven. In other words, it's designed to create aggravation, agitation, and and it creates a lot of separation between men and women. I would venture to say that the largest percentage of relationships. Advice out there through social media particularly, okay, just hear me out. Is that it's it's designed to make pit men against women. In fact, so much so that remember I told you MiGTower, the men going their own way, it's because there's almost, I'm not suggesting this, but there's almost a hatred towards women. And the de-centering of men is the same thing. You've got the manosphere out there that's telling all these young boys and young men what's wrong. It's feminist movement and such like that. So there's a lot of toxic ⁓ noise out there. So, so, and and I would even say, as I look back to the advice I've given over the last decade, you know, I mean, I've been a I've been a party to that. So, I want to raise my hand and take some ownership of that.

Reza Ghaemi: Yep, yep. Hundred percent.

Jonathon Aslay: I think the challenge with dating advice is I don't I think a person who's really done the work on themselves internally, and they've done work like particularly in the area of communication skills. So I was in group workshops for years. ⁓ not as the host, as a participant, helped me tremendously with my communication skills, interpersonal skills with other human beings. So the so So the individual that does that, and the individual that, you know, you could hire a coach and say, hey, help me make my dating profile a little bit better, help me understand things, that's all valuable and such. But to the individual that's done a fair amount of work, the question is, how am I going to meet my potential partner? You know, how am I going to meet, how am I going to be seen by another individual? Because that's the greatest challenge. How am I going to be seen to either ask someone out or to be asked out? And the way we live today makes it incredibly difficult. I I live in a beautiful I'm by the way, I'm in a loving relationship. I'm ⁓ I have a life partner, we live together, okay? But I live in a beautiful city with thousands of thousands of people. I know so I live in Redondo Beach, California, which is just 15 minutes well, actually in Torrance, but ⁓ my office is in Redondo Beach. That's where I'm at right now. and and and I I barely know 10 people within ⁓ you know

Reza Ghaemi: Where do you live, Jonathan? ⁓ nice, nice. Very beautiful. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay, okay.

Jonathon Aslay: One mile radius of me. I have friends all over the area, you know. I mean, I have lots of people I know, but I barely know ten people. You know, I mean, probably that's I mean, a little bit more than 10. But when you think about it, we no longer live in environments where we're interacting with other people on a regular basis. So coaches will tell you, well, go do the things you love. Join a cycling group, join a pickle girl group, join this or that to meet people. Yeah, you ⁓ you know, just like a

Reza Ghaemi: Yeah, yeah.

Jonathon Aslay: Broken clock, you know, it's right twice a day, you will get lucky. But now nothing beats meeting people faster faster than through the internet, through whether it's dating apps or social media. The problem is

Reza Ghaemi: Yeah.

Jonathon Aslay: We have a lot of wounded, walking wounded going on out there, you know, in the marketplace. So the the trick is then to decipher who's emotionally grown up to be in a relationship, who's capable of a relationship, who shares my values, my lifestyle, and emotional maturity. And that's where it gets tricky because quite frankly, to be a good dater, remember I said dating was to vet for relationship. To be a good dater, you have to be a detective.

Reza Ghaemi: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jonathon Aslay: There's no way of getting around it, you know, and what is a detective? Their sole job is just to get to the truth. That's their job. Their job is to get to the truth. That's what being a detective is. So whether we like it or not, we have to be a detective.

Reza Ghaemi: Are you talking like red flags? Mm-hmm. So what, detecting red flags and stuff like that or?

Jonathon Aslay: No, it's well, to to detect truth. To detect, I mean to detect truth, to detect vulnerability, authenticity, transparency. And this is a skill that we are so terrible at. We human beings are very poor at that. Now, there's a person listening that's going, well, I'm good at this, trust me. You know, I'm still scratching the ant's belly, and I do this for a living, okay?

Reza Ghaemi: Mm-hmm. Authenticity. Okay. Hmm. Hmm. Interesting. ⁓ Jonathan, I wanted to kind of cause you mentioned the ⁓ what was the term you used? The the movement ⁓ term? Mktau. Yeah, yeah, Migtao. What is what is red pill, blue pill, all that stuff? D are you familiar with those terms?

Jonathon Aslay: ⁓ Mk Tao or men going their own way. I mean to the extent that I have a base understanding of the manosphere that's the Andrew Tates of the world and such, ⁓ Yeah, I I equally do.

Reza Ghaemi: I I I hate Andrew Tate personally. ⁓ I I I really Okay, okay. I'm glad we have that in common. Yeah.

Jonathon Aslay: So if if to those listening, many people understand it. ⁓ it's in my opinion, this is purely my opinion, it's a group of men who have this belief that feminism killed relationships, that it's the feminist movement and women's empowerment that's made it difficult for you. ⁓ you know, person who's saying, you know, young man who's 21 years old looking for just a connection with another human being. And this group of individuals.

Reza Ghaemi: Mm-hmm.

Jonathon Aslay: Individuals have fed to some degree there's truth in what they say. It is based in some level of truth, whether we talk about hypergamy or that you know a major a significant percentage of young women are only going after a small percentage of the highest, what they perceive to be the highest caliber of man. ⁓ That's what that conversation, the red pill is and the blue pill is simply comes from the movie The Matrix, and it's do you want the truth or do you want the lie? And that's where that comes from.

Reza Ghaemi: I see. Now that group of men, in my opinion, have given up on dating, right? Essentially.

Jonathon Aslay: Well, I would say ⁓ a significant percentage of those men Have a disdain for women in general outside of what those women can do for them. In other words, they look at women still from an objectified ⁓ object point of view. I would say a significant amount, because they're not coming at it from a real sense of love, of empowerment, of cooperation, of reciprocity, of teamwork. By the way, none of their conversation talks about the purpose of a relationship.

Reza Ghaemi: Exactly.

Jonathon Aslay: and how to build a successful relationship. It's all designed to make young men angry around women. And yeah. Yeah.

Reza Ghaemi: Exactly. It's such bullshit. I hate it. I hate that Andrew Tate stuff. ⁓ all right. Well, Jonathan, I ⁓ I wanted to ask you something about w like so I'm in a relationship as well. You mentioned you are. I'm in a happily happily relationship. ⁓ we love each other, everything is great. what does a healthy self love look like without becoming selfish or emotionally distant? So how do you remain committed to another person without losing your identity?

Jonathon Aslay: Yay.

Reza Ghaemi: or making them responsible for your happiness. I guess what I'm getting at is codependence. Cause sometimes a question, right? Like I I'm I I told you I'm happy. But at the same time, it make like if she doesn't r text me back, ⁓ I get so anxious. Like it's weird.

Jonathon Aslay: Yeah, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, so so you have okay, and by the way, I'm the exact same way. I have a I I was raised or was ⁓ indoctrinated, I would say, into an anxious attachment. For those that are familiar with the book Attached by a mean ⁓ mean

Reza Ghaemi: Yes. I forgot her name. Yeah. I forgot. Attachment styles. ⁓

Jonathon Aslay: ⁓ God, how can I not know his name? I mean Levine and ⁓ Rachel Heller, excuse me. Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. ⁓ there's ⁓ basically there's anxious attachment, avoidant attachment, secure attachment, and within the anxious and avoidant, there's subcategories within that. So I get that you're anxious, okay? So

Reza Ghaemi: Yes. Okay. Mm-hmm. Yeah, a little bit. For sure.

Jonathon Aslay: So here's the thing, you're aware that you're anxious. So you let's let's use you, and by the way, I'm exactly the same way. So you're aware of this, you know this, okay? So when that text message doesn't come and you start to feel anxious, you can take a step outside of yourself. Okay? Remember that emotional six-year-old, the taking care of the emotional six-year-old is pulling away from the emotional six-year-old that's feeling anxious.

Reza Ghaemi: Mm, mm.

Jonathon Aslay: And stepping out and saying, wait a minute, what's really going on? What's going on? I'm triggered. Okay. I'm triggered because I haven't gotten a text. Let me think about this. Every single time I've had this experience, she's always come back to me loving, or there's always been something. So, so so you and then when by the way, when she reaches Yep. Okay.

Reza Ghaemi: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. It that's the that's the funny thing. It's like it's all there's never been a problem. But as soon as it takes a long time, I get stressed. Yeah.

Jonathon Aslay: But you can pull yourself out of that and regulate yourself through self-awareness. You're, you know it, right? So you were laughing about it a moment ago. So that's the best place to be is I'm aware, and boy, isn't it amazing that I still keep doing this after all this time, okay? So, like anything, you have to practice self-soothing in that moment. You have to practice, you know, ⁓ you have to practice self-awareness, you have to practice mem, you know, remembering.

Reza Ghaemi: I know.

Jonathon Aslay: That this is just something made up in my head, because guess what? That's just a story in your head. A story, okay? When you watch a movie that you see something, do you go, ⁓ that's real, or is it just a story you just saw? So if you're, you know, if you if you're watching something and you think that's real, well, that's what's happening, but you have the ability to go and go, wait a minute, that movie I'm watching isn't real. I mean, it's a great story, but it's not real. And that requires practice. And that's the thing. It takes repetition upon repetition upon repetition. Whether you like it or not, we humans haven't learned how to snap our fingers and be emotionally regulated. It takes practice. Some are better at it than others, though.

Reza Ghaemi: Interesting. Right. So is anybody fully secure? Like 'cause like this attachment theory stuff, like, is there anybody that's fully secure, Jonathan?

Jonathon Aslay: You know I believe we all have a default, whether we like it or not, we have an anxious or avoidant default to some degree. I would think that, you know, that couples can reach a very secure place. Are they a hundred percent secure? I mean, to some degree, keep in mind, you know, we, you know, now we're getting into Buddhist philosophy around attachment and where suffering comes from attachment, right? So so I would say that I don't think. we ever reach 100%, but it's something to strive for. But I think there are couples there. Okay, I'm gonna say something that's probably gonna irritate some people. I think genuinely loving, happy couples are the exception, not the rule. I mean, two people fully committed to each other, to be in service to each other, that have great sex together, that love each other's company and they're true friends. I think that's the exception, not the rule. I think most people are experiencing some sort of dependent, dysfunctional to now. Let me just put it in grades, though. It might be 10 or 20% dysfunctional, it might be 50%, it might be 80 or 100%. Okay. So I mean there are certainly a couple.

Reza Ghaemi: Mm.

Jonathon Aslay: ⁓

Reza Ghaemi: Yeah. Got it.

Jonathon Aslay: But I I think we are still in the infancy stage of human development, particularly in the area of relationship and good communication skills, good relationship skills, all of these things, good self-love skills. We're still at the infancy. And we are gonna be at this for a long time before we get really good at it.

Reza Ghaemi: Amazing. ⁓ Jonathan, ⁓ it's been a pleasure to have you on. So much great insights. ⁓ I'm gonna listen to this again on my own my my drive to

Jonathon Aslay: No. I'm gonna listen to it. I I appreciate you as a you're a great interviewer, Rez.

Reza Ghaemi: Thank you so much, Jonathan. And it's it's amazing ⁓ that that you were on here. ⁓ 'cause I know you're so busy. where can people find you?

Jonathon Aslay: Okay, my name is listed right here. You cut and paste it, you put it in Google. First thing that will come up is my YouTube channel. Next thing that will come up is my website. Third thing would most likely be my book on Amazon or Instagram or social media. If you found what I had to share was even remotely helped you in a little bit, go check out any of those platforms.

Reza Ghaemi: Amazing. ⁓ Jonathan, I'm gonna hit stop on the recording.