The Best Relationship Advice I’d Give My 27-Year-Old Daughter

Exceptional Person vs. Right Partner

Mel Robbins explains that a deep, internal dread often signals a mismatch in a relationship, even when the person is wonderful. This feeling may arise from wrong timing, personal unhealthiness, or fundamental incompatibility. Robbins draws from her own experience, sharing that she felt this dread with amazing people before meeting her spouse but was not healthy enough herself to be in a relationship. Unhealed trauma and untreated mental health issues, such as her undiagnosed ADHD and dyslexia and childhood trauma, made her anxious, on edge, and often self-medicating, making it impossible to have a healthy partnership. Robbins emphasizes that being in a healthy relationship is very difficult if one is not personally healthy, regardless of how great the other person is.

New love can mask personal issues due to the neurochemical rush—making early romantic feelings exhilarating and problems seem to disappear. However, as the initial intensity fades and the relationship settles into everyday life, unresolved personal issues resurface. This can lead to mistakenly blaming the partner or the relationship, when the real issue is one’s own unaddressed problems.

Recognizing Non-negotiable Dealbreakers Versus Changeable Characteristics

Robbins stresses the importance of distinguishing between non-negotiable dealbreakers and changeable characteristics. Abandoning your dreams or values to stay with a partner breeds resentment and sets up the relationship for failure. Some aspects—such as learning domestic skills or building habits that support a healthy relationship—are teachable. Adults can learn to participate in household maintenance and to develop positive relational habits.

In contrast, traits like kindness, curiosity, intellectual engagement, and a sense of adventure cannot be taught. Robbins emphasizes that wanting a partner who is intellectually curious and kind isn’t superficial—these are core personality traits. Similarly, being boring, mean, or unambitious are fundamental aspects of character that typically worsen, not improve, over time.

Sawyer Robbins highlights that people often confuse traits someone can learn with those intrinsic to who they are. For example, a person who is boring or not funny cannot “learn” to be fundamentally different in these areas. Distinguishing between skills someone can acquire and immutable traits is crucial in evaluating long-term compatibility.

Embracing ...

Mel Robbins and Sawyer Robbins explore the deep importance of spending meaningful time single in order to foster personal growth, heal from recurring patterns, and develop self-acceptance.

Recognizing the Need for Extended Singleness

Relationship hopping—moving from one relationship directly into the next—can hinder growth and mask underlying patterns that need addressing. Mel Robbins describes being an “overlapper,” someone who moves to a new relationship before fully letting go of the last. She notes that many people use relationships to regulate themselves rather than confronting the fundamental issues making them unhappy. When another person becomes a distraction, it postpones genuine personal healing and growth.

Robbins shares her own regrets over never being single from age 13 until meeting her husband, which cost her the development of deep friendships and delayed her healing by at least 15 years. She wishes she could have taken her college and law school years to remain single, which she now recognizes as an essential period for building friendships and forming an independent identity away from constant relationships. Sawyer Robbins echoes this, describing her six years of singleness during and after college as the best decision she made, even though it was a period of anxiety and internal struggle. Both emphasize that delaying time alone only postpones opportunities for personal development and true healing.

Understanding how Unbroken Relationship Patterns Repeat Themselves

Without taking time to examine previous relationships, individuals often repeat the same mistakes in their partnerships. Mel Robbins explains that unexamined past relationships lead to repeated, unhealthy patterns and that these often have deep roots in childhood experiences. She stresses the importance of a deliberate pause between relationships, during which a person should reflect—ideally with a therapist—on connections between failed relationships and early life patterns.

If someone is used to dynamics of disrespect or devaluation, they may chase validation in the next relationship, mistakenly believing that another person’s acceptance can heal their feelings of inadequacy. Robbins insists that these patterns cannot be broken within a new relationship; they require intentional, single reflection and therapeutic ...

Mel Robbins shares insights on reconciling personal ambitions with the needs of a partnership, emphasizing that achieving balance is an evolving process that requires communication, understanding, and flexibility.

Understanding That Life's Seasons Require Different Priorities

Robbins notes that life unfolds in different seasons, and sometimes ambition and personal goals must take precedence. For example, building a business, writing a book, or pursuing intensive professional or creative ambitions may require so much time and energy that it's impossible to fully invest in both these dreams and a relationship at the same time. She asserts that recognizing and accepting these periods of imbalance helps prevent resentment. If one partner’s career—such as being in a residency or graduate program—demands precedence, the other must choose whether to support them fully, perhaps even moving cities, or find another way to compromise as a couple.

Robbins explains that only partially investing in crucial ambitions can lead to lasting regret, negatively affecting both self-worth and the relationship. She cites the example of someone whose career as a singer needs her full attention; being single right now allows her to focus entirely on this passion, and she would regret not pursuing it wholeheartedly.

Backing a partner’s ambitions can be just as meaningful as pursuing your own. Robbins shares a personal anecdote about relocating to Boston so her husband could earn his MBA, sacrificing her job and city. She admits it was difficult, but she consciously chose to support his growth because their partnership mattered more to her than staying behind for her own work.

Financial Power Creates Decision-Making Power In Relationships

Robbins discusses how financial power directly influences decision-making within relationships. The primary earner often drives major decisions, like where to live or what priorities take precedence. Robbins emphasizes the importance of achieving financial independence, especially for women, so they retain personal agency and choice in any partnership. Money, she insists, is power, freedom, and the ability to make choices.

She stresses that open communication is vital to avoid simmering resentment. Partners should talk about their needs and how long one’s ambition will take precedence, clarifying what support or reciprocation is necessary, and revisiting these discussions as situations evolve. Expressing needs explicitly—such as requesting dedicated time together—helps ensure mutual support and prevents the buildup of resentment when one partner is giving more than they’re getting.

Addressing Support Without Enabling or Controlling

Robbins cautions against increasing pressure on a partner who is facing unemployment or career setbacks. She observes that people in this position usually already feel deep sham ...

Mel Robbins emphasizes that every disagreement or behavioral frustration in a relationship can be reframed as an opportunity to deepen connection with your partner. Instead of focusing solely on changing the other person or winning an argument, real intimacy and support are built by delving beneath surface-level disputes to understand the true reason why an issue matters to someone. Through this approach, couples create lasting and meaningful relationships, even though superficial changes rarely happen in the ways we wish.

Connection Must Take Priority Over Being Right

Disagree: Defend Your Position or Deepen Connection, Not Both

Robbins argues that, during disagreements, partners face a choice: either defend their own position or prioritize relationship connection. A question from Sawyer Robbins illustrates this with the example of one partner wanting to keep her maiden name after marriage, while the other feels deeply that she should take his surname. When neither side wants to compromise, this signals a need to explore the root reasons behind each partner’s feelings, rather than remaining fixated on outcomes.

Understanding why Conflicts Matter Transforms Arguments Into Intimacy Opportunities

Robbins shares her own experience of initially keeping her maiden name, Melanie Schnabelger, after marrying Christopher Robbins because she found the name change inconvenient. Over time, after traveling with her family and facing logistical challenges, she realized that having the same last name signified family unity to her. She suggests couples should similarly examine why a point of contention (like a last name or religious upbringing) is important to each person. This often reveals opportunities for deeper connection and understanding.

Coexisting Solutions: Professional Maiden Name, Social Married Name, Dual Religious Traditions

Robbins notes that many couples navigate conflicts with creative, coexisting solutions. She offers the example of using her maiden name professionally and married name socially or on legal documents. In the context of religious differences, some families expose children to both traditions. These approaches demonstrate that issues can often be resolved without a zero-sum outcome if couples focus on mutual understanding and flexibility.

Recognizing Different Personality Types and Adjusting Expectations Accordingly

Different Capacities For Risk, Adventure, and Growth

Robbins explains that people have different inherent capacities for risk, adventure, and personal growth, using an analogy from Oprah Winfrey and Pastor TD Jenks: some are “10-gallon people” who seek and handle a lot of change, growth, and deep connection, while others are “pint-sized people” who are comfortable with small doses of these experiences. Both types are normal, but each requires different expectations in a relationship.

Validating Small Growth Steps in a Less-Ambitious Partner Encourages Future Risk-Taking

Robbins advises that if you are a “10-gallon person” partnered with a “pint-sized person,” it’s important to notice and celebrate even small steps your partner takes. A “pint-sized risk” might seem m ...

Sawyer Robbins raises the question of how to rebuild confidence after feeling undesirable or unchosen in dating, a sentiment that resonates in today's dating culture where it’s easy to feel reduced to a commodity. The response emphasizes that feeling unchosen does not reflect any personal flaw; rather, it simply means you haven’t yet met someone who truly deserves you.

Understanding Rejection as Redirection Rather Than Personal Failure

Rejection is often internalized as a sign of unworthiness, but the reality is that not being chosen says nothing negative about one’s value. You haven’t met a person who deserves you yet, and that’s the only reason for your current single status. Rejection is better understood as redirection, an opportunity to focus your energy inward rather than seeing it as a personal deficit. The pressure and disappointment of “depleted dating” amplifies these feelings, but redirecting that focus towards yourself can transform this period into a time of positive growth.

Investing In Yourself Through Physical and Personal Development

One of the most powerful ways to rebuild confidence is to invest in yourself, especially through physical activity. Changing your physicality—whether it’s exercising, setting fitness goals, or learning a new skill—fundamentally changes your mentality, emotions, and self-assurance in ways that dating cannot. Moving your body shifts your mindset and your spirit. For example, joining a gym for the first time and lifting weights, perhaps by working with a trainer just once or twice, can provide a tangible sense of achievement and visible physical change, boosting self-worth.

Fulfilling postponed interests—whether it’s taking up shuffle dancing, learning to jump rope, or rediscovering a creative hobby—offers genuine satisfaction independent of relationship status. Instead of waiting to find the right partner, start engaging in the activities and hobbies you’ve shelved. Building strength, whether physical or personal, enhances self-worth and naturally attracts healthier, more fulfilling partnerships in the future.

Processing Breakups as Necessary Grief Rather Than Failure

When facing a breakup, it’s important to recognize that you are grieving the end of an imagine ...