The Emergent Love Model of Therapy
You don't need help, you need a safe place to learn love, symptoms are secondary to feeling safe inside a relationship. When we are seen, our story held, we heal exponentially.
THE EMERGENT LOVE MODEL OF THERAPY
The below examples of real people in therapy are protected by combining authentic stories of those in therapy such that they reflect the essence of the experience for many in an emergent love concept of therapy and to protect confidentiality of those still in therapy with me. Their sentiments as they started experiencing an emergent love method of therapy is the highlight here, although the individual work, tools and inner work journeys of all the individuals I meet with could be whole novels of self-exploration in and of themselves. Everyone I meet with is in one stage or another of coming home to authenticity. Below barely scratches the surface of individual work. What you will feel, hopefully, is their own wonder at how that felt sense of a sudden “safe” feeling in a relationship brings a brave new awareness of what is possible.
Before we dig in here, some things to convey are that I have been a therapist for 17 years and developed this concept from both sides, that of a person healing trauma and as a trauma therapist.
So, combined I have been “doing the work” for 23 years. My family might say I was always a little relationship builder, wanting to know how everyone was feeling, so the “experience” could be a lifetime’s worth, so far. What I find now is that being in a therapeutic relationship is a true lesson on love and one can do this internally, with a therapist, and with all interactions. It is all levels of love, and that process is forever emergent.
Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh researched her emergent love concept as it applies to helping couples find true love, and also what gets in the way. Her research is both qualitative; from 312 couples over a 10-year period, and quantitative; developed into an inventory called the Relationship Panoramic. The content below uses the concept of emergent love and concepts from helping couples in other modes of therapy, such as Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy, and it applies it to therapeutic relationships. The therapeutic relationship and the style I discuss below is an approach I follow along with the concept called ENYA, Everyone Needs You Always. It surmises that we all need to do this inner work and yet also need each other to have tools for holding space in which we listen better and reflect back our stories to one another with an invitation to: IN-TO-ME-SEE (Intimacy). Rather than, as is the common occurrence in much relating today, see one another as triggers, and walls form brick by brick or words and actions impulsively to self-destruct the relationship we could be using to learn, grow, and heal. Of course, there are people in our lives that are not ready for emergent love however you can determine that with as much kindness as possible when you start on the path of it with yourself and in therapy or your own explorative self-help.
Our parts that are buried are our most wounded and they need emergent love relationships, so these parts are safe to come out relationally when triggered instead of staying hidden behind shame, reactivity or self-destructive habits. The concept of “parts of self” forms the base of Internal Family Systems (IFS). Emergent love, Relational Life Therapy concepts, IFS, The Fragmented Self and Trauma Informed Therapy concepts that include the way we connect in a felt sense, all contribute to a new concept of what it can be to get and receive therapy. In fact, this isn’t all that new, but we need more and more ways to feel its reality can be both covered by insurance when getting therapy from a therapist and offered and received in real life if you are equipped with a map, tools and the felt sense of having had it happen, just once. The map and tools are developed inside the Emergent Love Relationship that therapy can provide, and it is the space creation that forms the model however this does not only have to apply to therapy, but many relationships can also become more healing with this model of relationship as a way to build emergent love.
Many individuals are suffering from isolation, not understanding themselves enough to make sense of the way they feel so misunderstood in relationships. We may understand much about ourselves through our years of getting through things but somehow, for many of us, it is not enough to form a balance that has a sense of presence or staying power, embodiment. There is no felt sense of knowing that lets us stop striving, just do nothing, and be good enough. Feeling misunderstood, as much as it may be happening in the now, is likely a deep wound from the past at its core. The degree to which we are all misunderstood starts internally and our adult selves need, in a large sense, that ideal parent kind of love, no one can veritably get 100% of in childhood. So, a therapeutic bond is that ideal regard but with a realistic twist. We need an advanced form of unconditional positive regard, which is thought to be the foundation of the therapeutic relationship. We need a model that allows two people to build the relationship such that it is the felt sense of building love.
Therapists are told to have boundaries; don’t try to save everyone and be careful about being too personal. Conversely, trauma informed care tells us to assume that at any point of contact someone could be holding something emotionally heavy, a therapist must understand a no show, a billing issue, and insurance are loaded issues and not just operational procedures separate from the emotional space. How are we to both open and create limits to our openness? I don’t know the answer unilaterally, but I do know what makes me feel like the best therapist, I do this with authenticity and the emergent love concept of therapy. This can then be a foundation for all relationships, as many therapies already promote these very skills through coaching and psychoeducation. However, therapists, let’s use the relationship itself to feel the power of it rather than just talk about it.
Let’s look at some examples of a sense of emergent love from therapy. The tools from Therapists Are People Too and ENYA page were open to these individuals in combination with the concept. Then we will flesh out how this operates. I truly hope this helps you believe it is possible. I am a work in progress asking, providing and sharing. Share it, ask for it, try to be in the concept yourself. It is inner work, but it could also be a collective movement if you believe.
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Chad (he/him/his) is 37 and in therapy now once every other month. He is seeing me for 3 years after he got divorced, lost his job and began having panic attacks. Always a drinker, he developed a dependency and could not structure his day without a twelve-pack on hand. We uncovered childhood trauma memories that were repressed and then gently reprocessed and uncovered things he had been through that also needed validation. We worked with tools from EMDR, Somatic Experiencing and Internal Family Systems, IFS.
Therapy is not at all what I thought it was. I talked to friends and family. Each one I told, “Hey, so I met this therapist, we’ve been talking for a few months”, thought I was talking about finally finding someone to settle down with. They all told me that was the vibe until I made it clear, “No, I am actually in therapy, like it’s an appointment I keep going to”. They all remarked on how it seemed like it was truly meaningful to me. They told me I seemed proud about what I was learning and said to me basically that it was too bad I couldn’t do this in real life. I realized I totally could and brought it up with my therapist, she told me about how she applies an emergent love concept to the therapeutic relationship. She reminded me of when we were building respect, and I would spend sessions describing my work as a contractor. As an ex-con I felt more comfortable doing it all on my own, but I needed help, and I didn’t want to admit it. I was drinking daily and missing child support payments, but we sat and talked about this part of me that just wanted to hire help and the other part of me that heard my father in my ear telling me I had no eye for business, and I should go work for someone who already had the stability. I will never forget it. I said he was right, my mind was a mess with the drinking, and I never had the organized mind to begin with. With complete respect she looked into me, like eye to eye, and told me no one has an organized mind, if they did, she would be out of a job. You just need tools, and you need to believe I can show you them, can you do that? It was like I wasn’t in therapy anymore as some failed man, I was me but, on the way, to better me, I don’t know if that makes sense?
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Sandra (she/her/hers) is 57 and comes to therapy once a year now, or as needed. She saw me for 6th months and on a weekly basis after developing vertigo and a fear of leaving her home except for work. This was right after her adult son moved home and stole her car. She felt confused by this trigger, and we glided gently towards reprocessing teenage trauma. She had suffered from a deep depression requiring hospitalization in her teens and although she stabilized and “moved on”, she never spoke about the trauma or the suicide attempt that initiated her traumatic hospitalization.
I never thought therapy was anything that would help, I figured the medication was the thing, getting that right, being on it for the rest of my life probably. Then I realized I liked going, like I was holding things and reflections, waiting for it, waiting to share. I realized I like my own process, even when it was hard. It was the way it was respected, the curious way she wanted to understand it through my eyes. I remember one day thinking, “why can’t I find a real person like this”, so I brought it up in session. My therapist told me the foundation we had built took both of us. She told me it was emergent love and that if I had done it there, that I had the basic ingredients already. She reminded me of that time something I had said made her tear up and she told me why, even though I was pretty numb while I was talking about it. I remembered then, she felt my teenage girl, the me that was 17 waiting and waiting for my too much older boyfriend to come back to the car. He didn’t and it was three hours before I figured it out, I should walk home, he wasn’t coming back. I found out the car was stolen, and he was married. I was so dumb and that was why as I told her I felt nothing but maybe disgust towards her, my teenage self. Then I looked up and she had tears in her eyes. She said she was so sorry that it happened to me, that it must have felt so cool and so safe to ride in a car with an older guy, exciting too and then to have it crash down like that. She told me it was okay to not be over that rejection entirely, in one part of me. That really changed things that day. I felt like it was okay to feel it because she was a therapist I already felt safe with but then I felt like she was also a real person, and it gave me hope. Now I do real people more than therapy, but I still go, it’s where I tune up. I think I was hiding in therapy before I realized it really is for finding love, maybe for myself but it is somehow opening me to real people too.
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Sam (they, them, their, theirs) is 22 and comes to therapy weekly, although sometimes he requires another session and comes twice a week because a part of him can undo the safety he gets in session and sabotage his effort. He has been seeing me for 4 months after he began speaking about wanting to die as “just a choice I feel I should consider”. Sam has selective mutism and they had not been talking for 13 years until a drastic weight loss had Sam facing a forced fed diet. Something shifted when they realized the control resisting food and talking was bringing less and less of that. Sam was given an ultimatum, therapy for a year or a month of residential treatment.
I thought it would be just like when I was 14 and therapist, after therapist, after therapist would call me resistant. I was testing them all, waiting for their real side to come out in frustration. I was right, they all wanted to fix me, I just wanted to feel safe. Then when I turned 21 and I started remembering the other reason I stopped talking. At that point I didn’t know how to trust, how to get it out in words. All I could manage was wanting to die. Luckily my mom put me in therapy and when the therapist told me that saying, “I have a right to choose my own death” might be one part of me saying “what’s the point of talking about it now, I couldn’t choose this life so now I choose death”, I felt finally seen and heard. She showed me to be curious about the part of me that chose not speaking as protection. It helped me see myself and all these attempts at trying to stay alive and keep going. Therapy was not what I thought at all, so I kept going and I remember asking her, “how does this work, I feel like I am getting better, but I don’t know how exactly?”. She told me about the emergent love concept of therapy and told me, “You change me by telling me how to know you by your story, what you have been through, I change you by listening and seeing it, we emerge together like we get it, we see the same thing.” She told me her age and how it can mean life experience but not my life experience. She validated my younger self knowing what I needed but not trusting grown-ups telling me to drop the protection of not talking and restricting. Maybe an older person knows better, but she heard me knowing exactly what I meant about wanting to die and she knew she had to respect that and listen. I felt like suddenly I could make complete sense to anyone I wanted to. I feel like I could really do this with a real person, I mean my therapist IS A REALL PERSON!!!!
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Jake (he, him, his) and Angela (she, her, hers) are both 59. They were married for 7 years and are now divorced and dating each other again on and off. They never tried couples therapy when they were married. Angela came to therapy to “see why this therapy hasn’t fixed you yet”. She had felt she really tried to hold on to Jake and make the marriage work, but his moods would shift from engaged and attentive to cold and deliberately dismissive. She had been wounded in a first marriage by infidelity and done some inner work. Jake began attending to help him “come off better” because someone at work had called him a narcissist. He was afraid he was just like his father suddenly. We talked about a narcissistic parent being a traumatic childhood experience that is very complex. That he could be “fine” however struggle in intimate relationships.
We both feel like, if we are being honest, we entered therapy because it was going to prove which one of us broke the marriage once and for all. When she would stop one of us in session and gently sit back to create a pause, then ask if it was okay she share how that was landing on her, we were both like, what? But she shared what she heard and then how it created a story inside her and how it brought up feelings and then asked us to consider if that was happening to our partner, would that change things; like would it change things if we knew we kept having completely different stories happening when we both thought we were communicating THE STORY. Well that shifted something. We both remember this time she said the story that was happening for her was like a thought considering something. It was considering if I really hated Jake for withdrawing or that I was scared that he could do that so easily. Then she said she felt almost like she could cry and so she asked me if I felt like crying instead of yelling at him. I could feel Jake looking at me and she told me to look back at him, but I didn’t want to. She asked me to try, and I did. We both cried then, almost immediately we both cried. It was like we never really saw each other when we were in conflict and suddenly, we did. She saw both of us, she didn’t have to point to who was right or who was wrong. We didn’t always want to go to therapy but most of the time we needed to be seen, that changed us.
The Model
The emergent love model of therapy is one that melds well with the use of Internal Family Systems (IFS). I have written about this before. As a refresh, Internal Family Systems (IFS) conceptualizes the way we exist as a perpetual divided and potentially coming together self. In order to move on with what happens in life, we develop parts that hold the unprocessed pain, parts that soothe it impulsively, erratically or compulsively with unquestioned or stressful repetition that only serves to regulate the system in an endless repeat cycle. Our Internal Family System consists of parts that manage, parts that fight emotional fires quickly and parts that are wounded and submerged. There is, however, a core self that comes in as wisdom or a memory of safety or a felt sense of knowing. We all have this and yet it takes an integrated Internal Family System to hold onto it. As a therapist, I must be in touch with my core self and the various ways I open to it, protect it, stray from it or abandon it and come out of my authenticity both professionally and personally. The core self “gold standard” is what I need to hold the model of in my self-care and is part of Emergent Love Model of Therapy. The core self is depicted in the diagram below:
When Dr. Sara Nasserzadeh uses the concept of Emergent Love with couples, she depicts a pyramid in which the base of what becomes emergent love is attraction and upon this layer is compassion and empathy. The other layers are compatibility, shared vision and mutual respect. We build the layers, in her theory, so love has something stable to rest upon at the top of the pyramid. She correctly flips the standard model of love, one in which the triangle wobbles on it’s tip, with an idea of “love at first sight” that is supposed to form the foundation. She correctly points out how “we have so much in common and finish each other's sentences” is not a love to build on. She points out that love is built up to and not the foundation. Here is the brief image below. How we rework that to form a therapeutic emergent love is altered next into a model shown below ‘Romantic Love’. Briefly, therapeutic love is work between two individuals. A supervisor in my younger therapist days had once told me “if you are doing more work than your patient, something is off”. I tend to disagree because early on in the relationship, my effort can create the foundation, and if that extra effort is not met after a while it can still be looked at compassionately; do they struggle in his way in other relationships or can’t take it in because of the threat in kindness from unstable caregivers? There is so much vulnerability in starting a new relationship, no matter who you are, therapist or patient, why pretend this is all so formal and clear as set boundaries and procedural steps when it is the hardest thing a person can do?
So, if we can accomplish this as the container for healing, individuals can leave therapy with a model for building love and continuing their healing with the insights and tools they have gained. This can be the new gold standard of treatment in my view.
Romantic Love
Therapeutic Love
The therapeutic relationship is an emergent love relationship. Now, some may say a therapist should not talk of love in the therapeutic relationship and that is fine, I know that there is an embedded fear for providers and even the general population seeking therapy, one that dictates a protocol standard for boundaries. We can have boundaries and do so deliberately within this model. However, they will be emergent inside unique relationships, there is work there, like any relationship and it is a powerful healing element. While we can use therapy to provide a service of support why not go all the way and aim for the gold standard in healing emotional wounds? The relational model developed in session after session can act like a therapeutic balm that can be applied well beyond the “treatment” duration. There is a concept from Terry Real’s Relational Life Therapy that posits all relationships require a pattern of harmony, disharmony and repair. If the therapeutic relationship does not attempt an authentic and emergent love, it cannot teach individuals how to keep their progress whole in real life, in relationships that will become disharmonious.
The ingredients are pictured above. There is more depth added to them below. I use this section at the end of the book because I am hoping you may be inspired to get what you are looking for from the therapeutic relationship and if you choose therapy, perhaps show your therapist, “can we do this”? Or consider aiming for this in one of your relationships if you suspect it is good for your healing container too.
INGREDIENT ONE: ATTUNEMENT
Emotional Attunement is about developing connection in which you feel like you are truly understood and empathized with emotionally. It's the ability to tune in and connect with another person on an emotional level, creating a sense of understanding, validation, and support.
In this section, we'll explore what emotional attunement is, why it matters in relationships, and how you can cultivate it for more meaningful connections.
Understanding Emotional Attunement
Emotional attunement is the “leaning in process” of recognizing and responding to the emotions of another person in a way that validates and supports their experience. I like to mention the way it is a literal and figurative lean because it eventuates the felt sense, you feel it. It involves being present and attuned to another person’s emotional cues, whether they are expressed through words, body language, or facial expressions. When you are emotionally attuned, you can understand and empathize with what the other person is feeling, even if their emotions differ from your own.
In essence, emotional attunement is about creating a safe space for emotional expression and connection. It allows individuals to feel seen, heard, and understood, fostering trust and intimacy in relationships. It goes beyond mere sympathy or surface-level understanding and delves into a deeper level of emotional connection. In therapy we often call this “holding space” and I have mentioned this in various ways as a well-known necessity for healing.
Cultivating Emotional Attunement
Let's explore some strategies to cultivate it in your relationships:
Practice Active Listening: Actively listening means paying attention to how someone expresses their emotions. Notice holding back non-judgmentally and watch for a story you might create about it. Give them your full attention, maintain eye contact, and show genuine interest in understanding their perspective. Avoid interrupting or dismissing their feelings.
Empathy and Perspective-Taking: Put yourself in the other’s shoes and try to understand their emotions from their point of view. Validate their feelings, even if you don't necessarily agree or experience the same emotions. Remember, empathy is about understanding, not necessarily agreeing.
Non-Verbal Cues: Pay attention to non-verbal cues such as body language and facial expressions. These can provide valuable insights into your partner's emotional state. Be sensitive to their cues and respond accordingly.
Validate Emotions: Validate the other's emotions by acknowledging and accepting them without judgment. Let them know that their feelings are valid and understandable. This helps create a safe space for emotional expression and fosters emotional attunement.
Communicate Openly: Share your own emotions and vulnerabilities with boundaries. I often say, “so the story that happened for me was __________, and I started to feel _____________, how does that land in/on you?”. When I need to use a more person than therapist side of myself, I own it as mine and always ask in multiple way “how does that land?” or provide choice, “this can get taken in or not, partially or in degrees, add to it and make it more yours”. By being open and authentic about your feelings, you create an environment that encourages emotional attunement and reciprocity.
Practice Mindfulness: Cultivating mindfulness can help you stay present and attuned to your own emotions as well as the other's. Mindfulness exercises, such as meditation or deep breathing, can enhance your ability to attune to emotions in the present moment.
Seek Professional Help: If you find it challenging to cultivate emotional attunement in your relationships, consider seeking the guidance of a therapist or relationship coach. You can speak about what you learned about Therapeutic Emergent Love. They can provide valuable insights and techniques to enhance emotional connection and attunement.
Emotional Attunement Takes Time and Effort
Building emotional attunement in relationships is a continuous process that requires time, effort, and commitment. It's not something that happens overnight, but with practice and patience, you can create a deep emotional connection that enriches your relationship. Remember, emotional attunement is about being present, empathetic, and responsive. When you prioritize emotional connection and actively work towards attuning, you create a foundation for a fulfilling and harmonious relationship.
So, embrace the power of emotional attunement by no longer seeing your another through how you want them to be, but by really seeing them for who they are. If you can give and receive that level of attunement in your relationship, you will see your connection with each other flourish with a deeper sense of understanding, empathy, and love. This concept is deliberate; you may not choose to do it everywhere in life. I find, however, if you practice it in just one relationship it becomes like a rhythm in you that just picks up the beat when you need it in other relationships.
INGREDIENT TWO: EMPATHING NOTICING/COMPASSION
There is no greater relief to someone suffering than to feel completely listened to when they are taking that brave and risky step of communicating. We miss so many opportunities to listen and there is a direct link to this and the suffering in the world. Here, with this skill, truly anyone can be a hero, if only for one conversation. Just remember that the memory you may create for another person, that lasts.
Author Josephine Billings stated:
“To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.” Leal, 2017, p. 32
Empathic listening allows us to step inside the speaker’s story to feel their emotions. It provides a safe place to work through complicated emotions. You might be asking what the empathic listener gets from their effort, because it is effort, and we are not always sensing an immediate sign of helpfulness. Know that you may be creating a legacy of compassion in how you land on and inside others’ hearts and minds.
Empathic listening is a type of listening that includes the mechanics of active listening and takes the listener a step further. The empathic listener begins with the intent to immerse themselves fully in the other person and what they are experiencing. Applying empathic listening techniques includes emptying ourselves of the need to be right and our individual autobiography, as our personal narratives may interfere with the speaker’s story (Covey, 2020).
Another way to think about empathic listening is to project yourself into the other person’s life momentarily, which includes suspending your own ego and judgment (Hybels & Weaver, 2015). I have found this to be one of the most challenging aspects of being a therapist. I do not want to lose myself in their life, for example become helplessly overwhelmed or equally frustrated, it requires centering myself with reminders that my job is to listen and hold space between seeing the story of their life, feeling it too, but also to be fully present with curiosity at what parts are stuck and create even more space to explore that.
In addition to supporting the speaker, the empathic listener creates intimacy by listening, identifying feelings, and allowing the speaker to find solutions. Empathic listeners know how important it is for speakers to both own and solve their own issues (Hybels & Weaver, 2015).
Carl Rogers, a humanistic psychologist, was expansive on empathic listening and warns that being empathetic is a “complex, demanding, and strong—yet also subtle and gentle—way of being” (Rogers, 1980, p. 143). He describes it as a multi-faceted process rather than a state where the listener is “entering the private perceptual world of the other and becoming thoroughly at home in it” (Rogers, 1980, p. 142). It involves a moment-to-moment sensitivity of the speaker’s feelings and temporarily living within the life of the other without judgment.
We all need to be aware of unconscious feelings that we might see more easily than the speaker and engage in taking care not to divulge something that may be below the speaker’s conscious level, posing a threat to them. This happens often in couples. One partner may say to the other, “of course you would pick that, it is that selfish side of you like your father has”. Shrinking someone’s unexplored patterns is a common sign of missing empathic noticing, related to empathic listening. We can aim to sense another’s world through fresh eyes, particularly threatening aspects, and begin checking in with the person about what is being sensed. For example, “to me it seemed you picked that quickly, how does that land with you?”.
To improve your empathic noticing and listening skills begin with cultivating more curiosity. While it can be complicated to cease embedded behaviors, such as judging and evaluating, curiosity changes perspectives, allowing us to approach the situation from a different vantage point.
Listen to the story, watch it like you would a movie, absorbing it as it is not as it should be. When I am watching one of my favorite shows, “Breaking Bad”, I am so engaged, if I feel like I missed something, I will pause and go back, watch whole episodes over, I want to hang on to the complicated story line, I believe in it always being good and entertaining and I am invested in it. Remembering the story the speaker has told and demonstrating that you value what they’ve shared is key given people struggle with insecurities, and advice, as opposed to empathic listening, often adds to their insecurities. If you don’t know what to say, just verbally acknowledging their courage for sharing their challenge or how complimented you are to be trusted, is going to land well.
According to Michael Sorensen, author of I Hear You: The Surprisingly Simple Skill Behind Extraordinary Relationships, “The truly good listeners of the world do more than just listen. They listen, seek to understand, and then validate. That third point is like a secret ingredient (Sorensen, 2017, p. 18). Validating the emotions of the speaker, is that leaning in interest, where the other can tell they have the listener’s full attention and observation. The listener can then note word choice and facial expression, mannerisms, and body language.
Sometimes I close my eyes briefly to note the voice and open them to see if the body language matches. Often, I can hear a tone of “I’m fine” and then when I open my eyes, I see a tapping foot and the motions of trying to crack knuckles. I hear “it’s hard to sit here right now” along with “I wish I were fine” or “mostly I am fine but now that I am here, I should talk about the not fine”. At that point, I know to lean back, provide space, listen with my own movement. Conversely, we can mirror the speaker when responding. If they are eager to talk, offer micro-validations such as “really” and “that makes sense” to show we are listening, and be aware of pushing out our own emotions before reading how it could land on that energy.
In can be scary to notice the control we give up when we allow others to lead the conversation, that is why being mindful of the emergent love you are building is helpful. Knowing these concepts are all part of a model that is the only way to build an emergent therapeutic love can help you want to do this with just one person, possibly a therapist at first, and then be able to spontaneously let it flow into other interactions.
The take home message here is that empathic noticing and listening is the embodiment of connection and a foundation for healing hurt. We all notice how much compassion is at risk these days. According to Elizabeth Segal, social empathy (insight into the plights and realities of others’ lives) is waning (Kilty, Hossfeld, Kelly, & Waity, 2018). Empathy gives compassion a way to keep taking flight, given people’s lives that added lift.
Maya Angelou said:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Gallo, 2014
STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT THREE INGREDIENTS: Compatibility, Shared Vision, Mutual Respect
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