Anna Runkle
speaker
240 appearances
7 recordings
2 series
first heard May 2025
last heard 19 Nov
Anna Runkle’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Nov 2025 with 5.
Appearances
I probably have a skewed perspective because my audience is not totally representative. But young women, and especially lately, have it. Because a lot of people have long-distance relationships by chatting with somebody online, if you're a young woman and you're chatting online with somebody for a long time, there's a lot of opportunity for this to tip over into pretty toxic obsession.
Yeah. Yeah. And I notice it with a lot of young women who are very pressured by their families to achieve things, go to school, do things that they actually weren't really craving to do themselves. It was just some expectation. They haven't really become themselves. They're living up to some parental expectation. And so there's this emptiness. And sex is amazing. You
It really changes everything, doesn't it? And it can feel like that is the thing that was missing, the only thing that was missing. But in women, especially, it lights up this whole other belief. The way that sex feels is what love is. And so if I have this experience with somebody, it's absolutely the full dimension of love and it's what I must have. And it's this particular person.
And it's very sad because... It's very sad, but I don't think that's the only reason it happens. I think there's a need for love that's totally unmet and there's a practice. It's almost like a developmental delay is how I see it.
It's like a developmental delay that you don't know how to pay attention to how I really like this about this person I'm having dinner with, but this is a little weird and that's kind of a red flag. I should ask a question about that. It just becomes a total I'm all in. Men have it too. And they have their forms of idealizing. And some guys, it's like a woman is way up on a pedestal.
The most beautiful, the most amazing. Everything she touches, there's a light coming out of her. But there's this other kind that I see where they want to save a woman. They'll ruin a perfectly good marriage because of some woman. Yeah, I had a letter from a guy. He saw a woman unconscious on the sidewalk. And he called 911 and he stayed with her. And then he went to the hospital.
And the next thing you know, his whole life became about her and what was possible there. So you can see it's not real. And in that case, with people who are fragile like that, it's the same thing. We have an ethical responsibility not to mess with their emotions. In her case, she was a drug addict. She was unconscious because she needed Narcan or something.
Oh, about that guy.
I mean, obviously it can, but I don't think that's necessary because people get this way over people they've never had sex with. You know, they can only imagine. And so that's not a necessary component.
But I do think, you know, I'm sort of in the camp of for women even more than men, you have to guard that thing that happens, you know, with your whole neurobiology around sex and oxytocin and orgasm because it will bond you with somebody whether they're right for you or not, whether you like them or not. It just will... throw you over a cliff, you're under a spell and now you must deal with it.
And if you're not good at getting out of relationships, you just kind of cost yourself years of happiness.
Well, the best advice anybody ever gave me was that the definition of dating is to find out who somebody is and whether you would like to get close to them. But dating kind of, in our culture today, it means having sex with. Oh, I'm dating this person. It means having sex with. It could be casual. It could be, well, if it were more than that, you might use different words.
But dating properly, it's spending time with somebody in a fairly structured way so that you can find out what's the deal, and you can get your cards on the table. It's like, listen, I really am aiming for marriage. I already have a child. How do you feel about that? Are you open to that? Are you into monogamy? I am.
Those conversations, when I work with people who are damaged around their ability to bond like that and who have gotten into one unavailable obsession after another or actual relationship with somebody unavailable, or they've been tucked into polyamory, even though that's not what they want, but the mind, hope springs eternal, right? I'll change this somehow. Yeah.
And, um, and so when I coach them, I always start everybody out and say, you know, could you just describe like, what's your heart's desire? What do you most want? And I would say most people, men and women, what they want is to be married. And, but there's this huge social taboo. You're not supposed to want that. You're not supposed to say it. Like it would be shameful to say it on a date.
You're trying to label things. I'm just like, oh gosh, this whole thing, this whole thing has really messed people up. And it's okay. And that was a huge part of my personal development to learn that I could be open about, I want to get married. I want to have kids. And if you're not into that, goodbye.
That's right. And it's not only costing you time that may be precious if you want to have children. It's precious under all circumstances, really. It's everybody's precious time, but it's costing you time, but it's also grinding you down. That experience of, I call it being cool girl, you know, cool girl. I'm like, oh, that's cool. You know, oh, you're seeing somebody else tonight? Never mind.
It was my birthday. I was, well, anyway, you know, that's cool girl. Like, no, that's cool. Sorry. And I always say if I had a nickel for everything, Everybody who came to me because they had been trying to lie about who they were and how they felt to be okay in the eyes of somebody else, I would have a lot of nickels, at least $1.50. I don't know.
Maybe a little more, but it's really, really common. We've all been programmed. You're not allowed to like that. One of the things I do with people is I just give them permission to want what they want. Just want what you want and just be open about it. It doesn't mean you're going to get it. Life is not Amazon.com.
You don't always get what you ordered, but you're definitely not going to get it if you're just all wobbly about it and you keep bonding with the wrong person.
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