How To Build Secure, Healthy Relationships: Master Detachment, Set Better Boundaries & Stop Seeking Validation Ft. Margarita Nazarenko

The Bossticks

Lauren and Michael Bostick sit down with relationship psychologist and author Margarita Nazarenko to dissect the mechanics of anxious versus avoidant attachment styles.

Key takeaways

• Margarita Nazarenko explains that anxious attachment often stems from childhood validation gaps, causing individuals to over-function and people-please in adult relationships.
• The hosts and guest discuss how 'desperate energy' triggers a psychological repulsion effect, where chasing someone signals low value and removes their freedom to choose you.

Main topics

• Anxious vs. avoidant attachment styles
• Self-validation and nervous system regulation

Notable quotes

"A poodle is to me, aloof. It's unbothered... It could take it or leave it because it cares about its own internal experience more than managing the experience of other people."

Conclusion

The episode provides actionable psychological frameworks for shifting

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) Welcome to the Bosticks. Starring Lauren Bostick and Michael Bostick. Speaker 1 (0:07) Together, they are the Bosticks. Speaker 2 (0:14) Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of The Boss Six. Today we're sitting down with Margarita Nazarenko, who is an author, creator, and powerful voice in the conversation around self-worth. relationships, femininity, and personal power. Her new book, Unbothered, The Art of Letting Go to Find Yourself, tackles something many of us struggle with, which is knowing when to stop chasing, fixing, explaining, and trying to control what's never ours to control. Some of the other themes we talk about in this episode are detachment, alignment practices, release and control, setting boundaries, relationship patterns, acceptance, energy exchange, and nervous system regulation, which is important for everybody. We really enjoyed this conversation with Margarita. With that, Margarita, welcome to the Bostics. Speaker 1 (0:50) Listen, I was on TikTok. I'm scrolling TikTok and I see your face, which is beautiful. Go watch YouTube. Stop. And you pop up. You have the most gorgeous accent and you were speaking my language and the things you were saying were exactly how I got my husband. Speaker 3 (1:08) Girl. And Speaker 1 (1:09) I thought, oh, my God, she's telling all my secrets to the world. Can I say something to you? Speaker 3 (1:14) Do you remember? I've listened to your podcast for a little bit. Do you remember the poodle reference? Yeah. you will like act like a poodle. And every time you mention it, I'm like, develop the thought. Come on, Lauren. You're like, you know, and you just keep going. It's the poodle. Unbothered is the poodle. What is the poodle? What is the poodle? You tell me. Speaker 1 (1:31) That's to be, that's a little tease. I'm Speaker 3 (1:34) on Speaker 1 (1:34) content marketing for that. Yeah. Speaker 3 (1:36) A Speaker 1 (1:36) poodle is to me, aloof. It's unbothered as your book. Yeah. And it could take it or leave it. Speaker 3 (1:45) It could take it or leave it because it cares about its own internal experience more than managing the experience of other people. A lot of people, a lot of women want the guy to be okay. What is he thinking? Is he, you know, what is he feeling? Does he like me enough? Does it matter? Does it matter? Do you like him? You see what I'm saying? Speaker 1 (2:02) Why do you think that that's the first go-to for a lot of women? Meaning like managing what the guy thinks of them? Speaker 3 (2:10) Because we are raised and... And you'll see it from your daughter. We go to school, we get good grades. You know, if you communicate well, if you're a good listener, if you do things well, you can get a dream job. You can achieve at work. It's all masculine energy, right? You go forward, you can do the thing. And then we take that and we're like, great, I'm really good at stuff. And you're like, I'll apply that to relationships. And you use the same energy on men. And they're like, whoa, stop micromanaging me. Stop telling me what to do. You're taking the one thing that men really value and that's freedom. The reason men like a poodle is because they like the freedom to choose the poodle, not someone who's going to tell them, you have to like me and this is how you have to like me and this is how you have to love me. I just saw you nod. Oh, Speaker 1 (2:51) Michael's freaking out right now. He's freaking out and I'm going to say that. I've got to be careful on this episode. You don't because Michael Speaker 3 (2:58) often says, I know, you know, men and women, they're kind of the same. I've got to be careful. Don't be careful. They're different. No, I don't say Speaker 2 (3:03) they're the same. I say they're different. And you've got to be careful. That's Speaker 3 (3:06) why Speaker 2 (3:06) I've got to Speaker 3 (3:06) be Speaker 2 (3:06) careful saying that. But it's true. I mean, like, I have a lot of... female friends and I have a lot of male friends and the conversations we have about relationships are very different and anyone that says any guy that says different is lying to you. They're lying. I say that Speaker 3 (3:21) and they're like how could you say that? I just want to be myself. I just want to be honest. I just want to express to him how this relationship is going to go and I'm like do you want him? Do you want to win or do you want to be right? Because I want to win. It's a strategy like you want the person you want. And you, of course, want to be yourself, but you have to mitigate yourself. Like we always say, I just want to be myself. What does that even mean? Yourself is a series of reactions you've learned to have since you were a child, which you think will give you a result that you want. I Speaker 2 (3:47) won't get so deep in the weeds in relationships, but I think that some people should not be themselves. Correct. And because it's not working for them. It Speaker 3 (3:54) didn't work for me when I was younger. I was such a desperado. Like looking back, I think we all are maybe in our 20s. And then when I looked at the series of things I did, I was like, hmm, that's not getting me the love or attention or whatever I want. But this will. And now that feels nice. Now I'm getting the love and attention I want. Great. Speaker 2 (4:10) You know, maybe this is the wrong example, but like at one point the Grinch was being himself. Speaker 1 (4:15) And nobody liked Speaker 2 (4:16) the Grinch. And so he had to change himself. He had to open his heart and he had to go and... give those small children the presents back. Exactly. Speaker 3 (4:23) It's just trying. But the Speaker 2 (4:25) point is, is that like, I don't know. I think like, my personal belief system is like, everything is my fault. Everything in a business is my fault. Everything in a relationship, everything in parenting. And so if you take that perspective, then when things are not going the way you want them in life, then what you have to do first is you have to change what you are doing. Yeah. And that's Speaker 3 (4:42) empowering. I got asked on a podcast in LA, like, But women might find your message, you know, upsetting and they might get a bit upset. And I'm like, well, let them be upset. Like, it's OK, because I want them to win again, not feel nice. And if everything's my fault, then I've got the power to change it. And if nothing's my fault, then we're just sitting here crying. Or what are we doing? Kumbaya? Speaker 1 (5:01) What do you think makes a desperado? Speaker 3 (5:05) It is thinking that you can control another person over controlling your own environment. It's trying to water their garden as opposed to watering your own. It's thinking, okay, so if they feel a certain way, I've got to fix it or change it or make them perceive me in whatever way that I want them to see me. As opposed to being like Simon Cowell, you are the American Idol judge. You've got to be the one saying, do I like them enough for them to be in my life? Not in a horrible way, but you've just got to be like. Is he enough for me? Do I like him? Do I like the way he acts? Is this a person that I really want to be with? A lot of women are desperate just to impress the guy. It doesn't matter what he's like. As long as he likes her, she feels like she's winning. Speaker 1 (5:44) I also think that... I look at myself as a mixed berry pie. Yeah. And when someone gets a piece of my pie, that doesn't mean they get access to the whole pie. You have to do a lot of work to try all my different kind of berries. Like, I don't just because I'm dating you doesn't mean you get access to every little bit of my energy. Like, it's going to take a while for you to try the whole pie. It might take years. You still might be trying the pie. You might not even know what the pie Speaker 3 (6:09) tastes like. Speaker 3 (6:11) He's like, too much of the pipe. I'm just Speaker 1 (6:14) saying, like, I think that there's this theory like you guys are talking about being yourself. I think that you can be yourself, but you don't need to give your whole self. You can. What is the self? There's an Speaker 3 (6:23) evolving self as well. So if you're watering your own garden and you're developing yourself and you're interested in your own life and you're interested in curating your life, right, then that person has something to be interested in. If you're a shadow of another person following what they want to do, being so interested in them. And that's. a place that women fall into a lot in their early 20s. You know, he likes a hobby. She follows him. He speaks in a certain way. She thinks it's great. She likes everything he likes. But what is the end result? Who is he going to like in return? Just like a sidekick? When Speaker 1 (6:54) you say this, why do you think you get pushback? Because is it projection from people doing what you're saying? I get either extreme like. Speaker 3 (7:03) relief that there's a solution because you know what it's it's it's Speaker 1 (7:06) a Speaker 3 (7:06) horrible feeling to feel anxiously attached to someone to have anxiety and feel like they hold your worth is a really shitty place to be in to feel like you can't feel good on a certain day if clive doesn't like you or if gerald isn't you know replying to you as a shitty place to be in because your mood depends on their validation of you but if you validate yourself it is both heavy in responsibility but freeing in the fact that you can take that responsibility and, you know, live your own life. 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You can explain to them the importance, and you can give them the... this masculine skincare line that no man is going to feel overwhelmed by. If Speaker 1 (10:34) you're looking for a gift to actually use every single day, this is it. Go to calderalab.com slash skinny and use code skinny for 20 % off your first order. Speaker 1 (10:45) How did you discover this theory? Speaker 3 (10:48) I discovered it because, again, and you know what? I noticed a thing, and this is a bit of a derailment, but you'll see where I'm going. I love a derailment. Women who have a natural confidence, a secure attachment is what it's called in psychology, have fathers who were either devoted to them, loved them, or were around. I presume yours was. All three. Yeah. See, and you have this quiet confidence. And I noticed it with girls at school. Mine was not around. I don't give that energy maybe anymore. But I noticed that dads who are maybe absent at work or didn't give that much investment or time. Mine was around until I was like five and then my parents divorced and I did not see him ever since. They start to have an energy to them. And I know you believe in energetics of like. trying to see into men and trying to see if they're good enough and trying to measure themselves through the value of that lens because they never got it from their father right makes Speaker 1 (11:40) a lot of sense yeah Speaker 3 (11:40) you don't have that because you already got that validation from him so you don't need to seek it in a man in another way So a lot of women are having that experience. Even when their dad was there, maybe he was busy at work. Maybe he never saw them or validated what they wanted to do with their life. Never thought they were interesting or amazing or even pretty. Like let's not call little girls pretty is the thing. But I think fathers should because... I want to be told I'm pretty all day long. Speaker 2 (12:05) I call my daughter, she's pretty all the time. Exactly. I would never listen to advice that says not to say that. But Speaker 3 (12:10) the new rhetoric is just to say she's smart and not pretty. But some other guys... I Speaker 2 (12:14) tell her Speaker 3 (12:14) she's smart too. Exactly. Tell her everything. I tell her all of it. Because then she won't be anxiously attached to a man trying to get that validation. Anyway, I grew up like that. My mom was a single mom. I went to school. I got boyfriends. And I was always like that kind of like seeking into them energy. And the more I try to make people happy, and it was with friendships as well sometimes, but mainly with boyfriends, the more off me they became. So the more I tried, the harder it was for them to be interested in me. I was like, what is Speaker 1 (12:43) going on here? Speaker 3 (12:45) I'm being nice. I'm being funny. I'm being accommodating. Like if he wanted to go to a certain restaurant, sure. If he wants a certain cuisine, like sushi, whatever, sure. If he stands me up, oh, I've got to be understanding. And then it got worse and worse and worse and worse until it clicked to me that I think it got so bad that I think my boyfriend was actively cheating on me. He went to a bar somewhere with people, with a girl. He was cheating. on me with and other people and I just turned up to be like there along for the ride just to like see what he was doing and you know make sure that I could still be there around him I don't know what I was doing it was so long ago I can hardly remember But I started to read about attachment, secure attachment, anxious attachment, which was me. Just, I just want to be around to be accepted and that will make me feel better. And then there's avoidant, which is a lot of men. You know, women talk about men being avoidant in terms of they're like too busy. They don't reply. They don't text back. That is the opposite of the spectrum of anxious. So there's secure people, which is kind of like you guys, like you, if you're. happy with someone, you're happy. And if someone does something bad to you, you don't want to be around them. That's normal, normal reaction. And the other half is either anxious, like I was, or avoidant. And they often go together a lot because it's like a self-fulfilling prophecy. The anxious person chases. You're saying the Speaker 1 (14:02) anxious Speaker 2 (14:03) person ends up being Speaker 1 (14:04) with the Speaker 2 (14:05) avoidant person and they're both not matched for each other. Speaker 3 (14:08) Well, what they do is it's Speaker 2 (14:09) a Speaker 3 (14:09) self-fulfilling prophecy. An anxious person feels I'm always going to be left and abandoned. An avoidant person delivers that. to them and an avoidant person usually comes from a background where their parents always told them what to do always made them you know like engulf them it's like a feeling of being monitored constantly made to study a lot or completely abandoned so they go do you know what i've just got my own back i don't really need anyone else and everyone who's going to try and come for my energy is actually going to derail me from my life and i don't want that and here is this anxious person me for example in the past hello be my friend like do this and they're like whoa and so i'm chasing that person is avoiding Speaker 2 (14:44) and we're just doing this dance. Speaker 3 (14:47) And I say to women all the time, it's up to, and this is controversial, it's up to the anxious person to stop that interaction. The avoidant person is not in that much pain for them to change. Why? Because they've found a solution. Speaker 2 (15:02) To self-soothe by themselves. To self-soothe Speaker 3 (15:04) by themselves. It's through hobbies, through work, through whatever. They might have come from the same trauma. For example, not enough parental love, like something happened and the anxious person decided, I will try and get it by being pleasing, by being there, by being open. And the avoidance said, do you know what? I don't need anyone. I got my own back. That's not as painful. And Speaker 1 (15:25) you're saying that this also applies to friendships. Correct. Speaker 2 (15:29) Does this also, though, is a common thread through this is there's an individual that believes they can change another individual to their needs. Yeah. But that's, and so like, Speaker 3 (15:39) when does that ever work? The underlying thing of being so anxiously attached is it's not an innocent thing to be. It's actually a codependent thing to be. And it's a manipulative thing