Veronica Grant had her sights set on lasting love from early on. After a spree of mismatches and breakups, she learned what real emotional availability looks like—which made way for deep love.
Today she’s a life and love coach, and the author of the new book, You Are Meant For Love: A No-Nonsense Guide To Help Smart, Successful Women Attract High Quality Partners and Real Love.
This week’s Girl Boner Radio episode explores Veronica’s personal journey, from what she learned about sex and romance early on to ways she later used sex to save relationships and the heartache that finally prompted her to seek healing. Plus, what one relationship taught her about her sexuality, which brought her a lot of comfort and confidence.
Stream it on Apple Podcasts/iTunes, iHeartRadio, Amazon Music or below. Or read on for a lightly edited transcript.
“Finding Deep Love After Heartbreak: Veronica Grant’s Story”
a lightly edited Girl Boner Radio transcript
Special offer
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[Intro music that makes you wanna dance]
“Are you ready to arouse your life? To experience more connection, more pleasure, more realness – in and outside of the bedroom? I’m August McLaughlin and this is Girl Boner Radio.”
Veronica:
And so I called her and I was like, “Can you please tell me what you did to save your relationship?” I was literally wanting a play-by-play or a playbook from her because I wanted to do that, you know? I wanted to replicate it. Obviously, it doesn’t really work like that, but I really believed that.
[encouraging, acoustic music]
August (narration):
Veronica Grant started setting her sights on finding her one true and lasting love in the 6th grade.
Veronica:
I was really introduced to the world of boys and making out behind the bleachers and slow dances and all that kind of stuff, from a very young age. And I really, from that age, wanted to meet my husband. And I know that sounds so crazy—like 10 years old—I didn’t even know the concept of what it means to have a life partner. But it was obviously the very tween way.
August (narration):
After her tweens and teens, Veronica was still on that mission. In fact, she was so into the idea of finding her life partner that years later, when the American sitcom “How I Met Your Mother” came out, she was hooked—and sort of used it as a template in conversations.
Veronica:
I was obsessed with that show because I so related to the “Oh, maybe today’s date or this date will be my last one or be my soulmate.” I was so enamored by that whole concept. So much so that I shared my own story of how I met my husband, like, in a very “How I Met Your Mother” style.
So instead of saying, “Oh, yeah. We just met at a party.” I gave the backstory of why I was at the party. How did I know the person that was at the party with or whatever… I documented the whole thing, because I do actually think it’s so interesting how all these things lead up to everything. But yeah, I really wanted it from a really, really young age. I was never into one night stands. I couldn’t emotionally take it.
August (narration):
Veronica’s mission wasn’t about “saving herself for marriage” sexually. She grew up Jewish and wasn’t involved in purity culture. Sex was more of this unspoken thing, she said—except for the time, her mom sat her down to tell her what it was.
Veronica:
And I was like, “Wait, what?!?” I was, like, so shocked. I was like, so I was like, “Well, I guess I’ll just keep my shirt on.” Because that’s like – woah. That’s like way too much. Like, that’s weird.
And then she handed me a book called “Your Body, Your Self,” which I’m sure you’ve heard of. And I actually love that book. I read the book like five times. I found it so fascinating.
August (narration):
But that was all she had. And she was a self-described “goody two shoes,” a rule follower. She still is, to an extent, today. And most of us don’t learn that you can be a “good girl” and embrace sex… Plus, she still didn’t know much about the whole sex thing, so she avoided talking about it. Her classmates, on the other hand, did bring it up.
[school kids shuffling/murmuring]
Veronica:
I remember one time at the end of the school day, all the kids that were getting on my bus, you know, we all got on the bus. And like there’s these kids that were—they weren’t quite bullies but they weren’t nice, either.
And one of the girls got on the bus and she said, “It smells like sex in here!” And I just sat down and I was like, Am I supposed to know what that smells like? And, like, I had no idea what, like, it was supposed to smell like so I was, like, trying to figure out like [sniff, sniff, sniff], what do I smell? [she and August laugh] So I could like learn what sex smells like, and so I just felt like there was these things I was supposed to know but I didn’t know. But then you have to pretend like you know. And then you have to be careful about saying the word “pencil” because like “Oh, hahaha, you know what I mean.”
August:
Wait, the word pencil?
Veronica:
Yeah, because it’s like a penis, I guess. [laughs] So silly.
August:
Oh, I didn’t know that. I was probably running around saying “pencil pencil pencil” with people thinking, “she’s really into this.”
Veronica:
[laughs]
I just remember just constantly being so afraid to like not want to be figured out that I don’t know anything about sex and also not say anything wrong that could be viewed as perverted or sexual nature like, you know, the word pencil. [laughs]
August (narration):
Another thing Veronica hadn’t learned about early on was her emotional needs. Years after the awkwardness of puberty, she started to learn what real emotional availability looks like the hard way — after a spree of major heartbreaks while she was living abroad and one in Washington DC, after she finished working as a paid staffer on Obama’s campaign.
She wrote about these breakups in her new book, You Are Meant For Love: A No-Nonsense Guide To Help Smart, Successful Women Attract High Quality Partners and Real Love.
[encouraging, acoustic music]
Veronica told me that the first two breakups, which happened back-to-back in her 20s, were the catalyst for where she is today. When the first one happened, she was in grad school in Jerusalem.
The relationship started after a guy she knew of from college invited her to a party in the Palestinian city, Ramallah.
[Arabian pop music]
Veronica:
…he invited me out to a night in Ramallah and here I am, a Jewish girl and partying in Ramallah. Okay, cool. I like the paradox. Like, that sounds fun. So I went, not thinking anything of it other than like, I’m gonna go check out Ramallah. That’d be really interesting.
So I went and he started flirting with me and was very obvious about it.
August (narration):
Pretty soon, she was checking out more than Ramallah.
Veronica:
I was so enamored by this guy, but I think mostly it was because he was this popular guy on campus. And he was really hot, and oh my god he liked me. He was flirting with me. He was making all the moves like holding my hand, asking for my number. So it wasn’t long after that that we started dating.
August (narration):
Veronica knew from the beginning of the relationship that he planned to move back to the States. And six months in, it became clear that he had no intention of discussing where that would leave the relationship—and that his departure would simply mean it was over.
Veronica:
And I couldn’t figure out how he could date someone like that. I was like, “I’m not saying that we should definitely continue this and be long distance,” but I thought at least we’d have a conversation.
August (narration):
She said it made her feel like a rental car: the wheels he picked up to have fun with while he was abroad. And when the trip ended, no more wheels.
[sports car screeching to a halt]
Veronica:
I just couldn’t figure it out. And so the last few months, we stayed together, but it just became like this countdown until our breakup.
August (narration):
He would allude to the breakup, but dodge any conversation about it.
Veronica:
And he even said…one night, I was over at his place, and I cooked a lot for him. I really like cooking. And so he even said something along the lines of “Man, I don’t know what I’m going to do if my next girlfriend doesn’t like to cook.”
August (narration):
Those words hit Veronica like a punch in the gut, she said—it certainly didn’t fit into her “finding a life partner” plans. But she felt the need to play it cool, to laugh it off.
Veronica:
But I was just torn up inside because I was like, No, he doesn’t see this going anywhere.
And then when we got to the final month or two, we did start having discussions because emotionally, I just couldn’t hide it anymore.
But his viewpoint, his intention, his feelings just—they just were always the same, which is ‘this is temporary.’ And I could not – other than just the hurt and just like feeling again like that car rental – I couldn’t understand. I think that was the part that probably drove me the most crazy. I was, like, how can you just be with someone and then just like, “Okay, cool. We’re done.” I just didn’t understand.
August:
And was the relationship good otherwise? How would you describe the good parts of the relationship? It sounds like it wasn’t super serious, but it sounds like it was fairly serious and committed while you were together.
Veronica:
Oh, yeah. I was his girlfriend. We definitely had that container for sure. I was friends with all of his friends. He met my mom, when she came over to visit.
It seemed to me like it was, not serious in the sense like, “oh, let’s go pick out rings,” but serious in the sense of we saw each other all the time. We went on trips together.
He had a more comfortable setup, so I was at his house more often. But definitely every weekend and then usually a night or two during the week. I mean, it was a serious relationship in terms of time and energy.
August:
And was he a kind person? On one hand, it seems like you two had very different goals or ideas about relationships, or at least that relationship. But it seems like there was a coldness about him and how he left.
Veronica:
Yeah, it was really cold. I mean, he was very popular. He’s very charismatic. He has a lot of friends. So a lot of people like him.
August (narration):
He was also a bit full of himself, she said, very confident about his looks and his smarts, his Ivy League grad school education.
Veronica:
I don’t know. And it’s funny, because he told me that he, I forget the exact words, but he told me towards the very end that he really wanted someone who was more on the same career track, and more of like a political mindset. And back then I was in Middle East politics and that was really my career track and everything. And that was his ideal career track. And I was like, what does he mean by that? And once I talked about it with my friends, they’re like He doesn’t think you’re smart. And he wants to be with someone smarter.”
August (narration):
So maybe…not so kind. They managed to have fun together, and at least the sex was good. More on that later.
But once the countdown to his departure and the breakup it would signify arrived, he definitely wasn’t kind about her feelings.
Veronica:
It wasn’t good… Emotionally, it was a lot, and he basically told me, I needed to get my emotions together. He was very cold.
August (narration):
She said maybe that was his Capricorn nature, or the “shadow side” of that sign. Nothing against Capricorns – Veronica’s one, too. But in the case of this guy, she said, that shadow side was showing.
Veronica:
And so his roommate and I remained really good friends and like, you know, we’re still pretty good friends. And so he had a car so he drove him to the airport. I went with, and, you know, we said our goodbyes. I’m assuming we had one more kiss; I don’t remember, to be totally honest.
And then I got in the car and I was just like – maybe my Capricorn self was coming up, because I was just stoic. And I think at that point I was just so emotionally spent.
[emotional, acoustic music]
August (narration):
Veronica talks about two parts of getting over an ex. There’s getting over the actual person, and then there’s getting over the lifestyle and all you shared. That latter part often takes more effort, she said, especially if you placed your value in what you’d shared, like she did.
Veronica:
…because he chose me, I made that mean something about myself. And I rode that worthiness high for almost the year that we were together.
August (narration):
Looking back, she sees that she needed to process what the relationship helped her believe about herself and then learn to generate those good parts from within herself—or see them; maybe they were already there—no relationship required. Instead, she did what’s easy for most of us to do after a break up. Before she was ready, she got into another relationship.
She did have a short break though. That summer, between two years of grad school, she decided to get out of there – a change of pace could do her good. So she moved to Syria for a couple of months.
Veronica:
It was just an awesome experience. But one thing that was really nice was, it was just a lot of me time and just being by myself because my Arabic was okay, but it wasn’t great. And so I was just really with myself a lot.
August (narration):
In some ways, Veronica found that experience healing.
Veronica:
I think it did help me get over the person. But it did not change or help me heal the part of me that sourced all of my worthiness to the relationship.
August (narration):
That is when Veronica met, we’ll call him Guy #2. At the time, she’d returned to Jerusalem and was working for a human rights organization.
Veronica:
And I met this guy who was working there, and I just became completely enamored by him. Again, like he was interested in me. I was kind of making more effort than I was with the first guy, but also, like, it was also very clear that he was very interested in me.
August (narration):
And that felt good, tapped into her need to feel worthy. Plus, she was really attracted to him.
Veronica:
Well, he was like my type, physically. [laughs]
August:
What does that mean?
Veronica:
So I’m a really big fan of – kind of the mountain man guy. So like the full beard, darker kind of coarse hair. That is just like my jam. [laughs]
August (narration):
He was also Jewish.
Veronica:
This last guy wasn’t Jewish, which I was okay with. But I would more ideally like to marry someone Jewish.
August (narration):
So she thought-
Veronica:
Oh, he’s really cute. He’s really into me. And he’s Jewish…So I created this story in my head like, this is it! I just went through this horrible breakup. This is how all the rom coms go. And now, here he is. [laughs] And so I think I just created the story in my head, not just of who he was, but also what the relationship was going to be.
August (narration):
And what she imagined really was a story – the fictitious kind you daydream up through hopeful, rose-colored glasses. In reality, Guy #2 was less committed than Guy #1…the one that made her feel like a spin in a rental car. [sports car screech]
Veronica:
Because that relationship was nowhere near the similar amount of seriousness. We were never officially together. I was never officially his girlfriend. I would say the first two or three months were super, super fun and both really liked each other.
August (narration):
But, there was no life-partner or even significant other commitment. She couldn’t help but wonder, what’s going on?
As it turned out, he wasn’t into labels. He didn’t believe in them. That’s also known as relationship anarchy, by the way—it’s a dynamic that’s valid and worth embracing for those who feel connected to it. But Veronica did not. She wanted what many of us do: a committed partnership. And she wanted labels, the “official-ness.”
August:
So you had the talk of, are we a couple and he was like, “I don’t want to label. Don’t put me in a box.”
Veronica:
Yeah. And I pretended to be okay with that.
August (narration):
They had a few conversations about it, which continued to highlight their differences. It seemed like the more it came up, the more he pulled away. Meanwhile Veronica tried to push them back together.
Veronica:
After that, it just became a game of me getting us back to how it was at the beginning of the relationship where I felt like he was super into me and also a game of getting him to see how awesome I was so that he would want to be with me.
August (narration):
He was a political anthropologist, applying for a PhD and doing research around social movements and politics in Israel and Palestine.
Veronica:
And so I thought I was like, Well, how does he not like me? I’m a Jewish girl. And I live in Ramallah. Doesn’t he think that’s cool?
August (narration):
To try and make their compatibility more clear, she even threw a Hanukkah party and attended protests with hopes of impressing him.
Veronica:
I mean not that I disagree with all that stuff. But I just thought he would think it was cool.
So I just did all of these things to show: ‘look how awesome I am. Look how well matched we would be, how we’re on the same wavelength in terms of valid values and politics and all that kind of stuff.’ And obviously, it never worked.
August (narration):
Veronica felt like she was stuck in a state of limbo for several months, and it made her miserable. And her tireless efforts to prove herself to him took a toll on her mental health.
Veronica:
Again, if I had a text from him, I was great. Everything was awesome. Life was great. But if I felt he was pulling away or I hadn’t heard from him or if we didn’t have plans set or whatever, it wasn’t just like, “oh, that’s a bummer.” It was hard to get out of bed in the morning. It was hard to do all the work I needed to do for grad school. I had to start thinking about, Okay, what am I going to do after grad school and apply to jobs and to move back to the States. Do I want to stay? It was just hard, if not impossible, just to do anything, other than just lay on my bed and watch “How I Met Your Mother.” I spent a lot of time that year doing that.
August:
Oh, my heart. That is such a visceral experience you’re describing and it just makes me sad. And I also remember being in those places where your self worth is so based on this person in this dynamic, and like, it’s almost like I will be an awesome person if this works out.
Veronica:
Yeah. It was really, really miserable. And then one, I think I just couldn’t take any more. My friends were like, “Just talk to him.” They’re trying to pump me up, like “It’ll be fine… Just get on the same page” and blah, blah, blah.
So we’re hanging out and I said, “I think we need to talk.” He was like, “okay.” And I honestly can’t remember what I said, but he said, “You know, I think I’m just really over us. I just need to move on.”
August:
Did it feel out of the blue?
Veronica:
I don’t think so. I think part of what felt so horrible was that deep knowing that I knew it was over, many months before, but trying to convince myself or parade around to make it not be true.
August (narration):
In all, their time together was shorter her than with Guy #1—and more of a situation-ship, Veronica said, than a relationship. The guys were very different from each other, too. But one important thing had not changed.
Veronica:
It certainly wasn’t as serious or, quote unquote, official as the first one. But the pattern of me just completely outsourcing my worthiness to the outcome of the relationship, that pattern was very much still in place.
August (narration):
Looking back, Veronica sees a pattern in the sexual aspects of both relationships, too.
Veronica:
I think in both relationships I used sex to try to get them to like me.
With the first relationship, that guy just wanted to have sex all the time. And I like having sex but I don’t want to have sex all the time like he did. But I just did especially during those months where I was like I gotta do everything I can so he doesn’t just drop me.
And then the second relationship it was a little bit more of, I would say, trying to seduce him.
August (narration):
At one point, with Guy #2, she was feeling insecure about the relationship and they had one of their “what are we” talks.
Veronica:
And he had more or less said he didn’t want to be in a relationship with me. And we had sex right after that. And it was really good sex. And I really wanted to make sure that he just felt like this amazing physical connection with me. And it worked, because we definitely kept seeing each other after that.
August (narration):
Sex may have kept the situation-ship going, but it prolonged Veronica’s suffering. And it seems to have hurt the guy a bit, too. During one of their later “what are we” talks, moving toward their final breakup, he said:
Veronica:
“I basically told you that I didn’t want to be in a relationship with you. And then like we had sex.” I don’t think he was blaming it on me, but he definitely saw how sex was being used to continue even though there was nothing really there.
August: 23:24
That sounds like a form of breakup sex. I think people sometimes do try to leverage it that way. I hadn’t thought about it in my own experience until you shared that but I had a bad experience with breakup sex where I thought we were having sex, just to be like, it’s over and here’s our last hurrah. And he thought it undid the breakup.
Veronica:
To me it felt, probably how your partner felt. Like, Okay, well, he just told me he don’t wanna be in a relationship. He just had really great sex. I mean, I know he did. So and then he but he just went along with how I perceived it, I guess, because we kept seeing each other after that.
Veronica: 30:12
And it’s funny because like, I don’t want to, I don’t know how raunchy you want to go but like, I didn’t even really like having sex with him to be honest. [laughs]
August: 30:22
Was it not pleasurable? Or did it just feel? All those different emotional? Because it sounds like for you, the emotional bond, like you said, you’re not into the casual scene? Is that an important part of sex? And when that is struggling, suffering, it’s like, I’m not feeling it as much.
August (narration):
Veronica told me she didn’t really even enjoy having sex with Guy #2, maybe partly because it was strictly about getting him to like her. Guy #1 was a different story. Orgasmic for her, every time. And sex with him taught her a lot about her sexuality.
And here’s why. The boyfriend she’d had before Guy #1 was her college boyfriend, who started out as her best friend.
Veronica:
…the most amazing, sweet guy. And then he confessed his love. And then I was like, I don’t think so. And then eventually, I decided to come around. But I think I was just so enamored by, like, how cute the story would be, like, if we were best friends and then fell in love and then got married. So we were best friends. And we dated. And, of course, I loved him dearly. Like he was a really, really good friend. He was an amazing guy, so sweet. Um…
I never want to have sex with him. And I used to justify it to myself by saying, I’m just not that sexual a person. And that’s what I would tell myself that whole time that we dated.
And so then I met the guy living abroad, the first boyfriend I had, and I really did like having sex with him! It was great, I loved it. I have gratitude for that, because that showed me I am a sexual person, and I do like having sex.
Like, the problem in that last relationship wasn’t just the fact that I just am not a sexual person. The problem was I just wasn’t sexually attracted to my boyfriend.
Which just gave me so much confidence and comfort because especially when both of those relationships, the two relationships in a row that were falling apart, I used to regret: why did I break up with my college boyfriend? He was willing to give me everything that I wanted. He was so sweet. He was so funny. So emotionally available. I could have been engaged already probably, you know, with the direction we were going. Especially after those two breakups, I definitely fell into that, ‘did I make a mistake?’ kind of trap. And then I would just have to remind myself like I didn’t want to have sex with him ever. And I like having sex. So that’s a problem. And that gave me a lot of comfort.
August (narration):
Around the end of her relationship with with Guy #2, Veronica’s mental health was in a really dark place. So for the first time, she decided to seek out professional support from a therapist.
Veronica:
And she was asking me about my childhood, my parents, all that kind of stuff. And I was like-
August (narration):
“Why is she asking me this?”
But Veronica answered the questions anyway. She said that what the therapist said next is imprinted in her brain forever.
Veronica:
And she just says, “Huh, okay. So, you know, it sounds like your family wasn’t very emotionally close growing up.” And I just sat there. And I was, like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I think you’re right.”
That’s when everything clicked. Like, I’m a human. I have emotional needs, but I wasn’t getting those emotional needs met in my upbringing. And I was trying to get them met through these guys that I was dating. That was part of the reason why I was just latching myself onto them completely blindly.
August (narration):
That realization wasn’t an instant fix, but it was what she needed. And it started to change everything.
Veronica:
Because until that moment, I just felt like I was missing something or I didn’t know something.
August (narration):
During one of her impactful relationships, she recalls calling up one of her friends who’d had a really rocky start to her relationship with her now husband. No one thought that this pair would make it, but somehow they worked it out, and cultivated what seems like a really strong and happy relationship.
Veronica:
And so I called her and I was like, “Can you please tell me what you did to save your relationship?” I was literally wanting a play-by-play or a playbook from her because I wanted to do that, you know? I wanted to replicate it. Obviously, it doesn’t really work like that but I really believed that.
August (narration):
And that moment with her therapist helped her see that there is no playbook. There is, however, healing work we can do within ourselves.
Today Veronica is in a very different place, in pretty much all ways. She’s married, she’s a new mom and she’s a successful life and love coach with the new book out, I mentioned.
On her website, she says, “I help women do the deep work so they can find deep love,” love that stems from within and from healing, versus outsourcing your worthiness to others, as she once did.
I feel like I should mention that this is different from the message that we have to love ourselves fully or be “whole/healed” human beings to deserve or experience love. That’s not what Veronica’s getting at. Her work is about helping other find healing, as she has.
I asked Veronica to share a bit of advice around doing that work in our lives.
Veronica:
I think the easiest, most practical thing to do is just no matterwhere you are right now, if you’re in a crappy relationship, if you’re single AF [chuckles] if you just made a big mistake…instead of beating yourself up about it—because that’s only going to perpetuate whatever pattern that’s probably keeping you in somewhat crappy situations or relationships is—instead, just be compassionate with yourself. Like, “Oh, goodness, gracious. I just went out with that guy last night, even though I knew he was a jerk, and I did it anyway.” You could beat yourself up about it or you could just be really compassionate with yourself. Imagine it was your 10-year-old self making a mistake or a five-year-old self. Would you beat her up about it? Would you be mean to her? Probably not.
And same thing for you. And that doesn’t seem like a big thing but a lot of times, the way we treat ourselves are – it reflects the pattern that is in our romantic relationships, right?
I got confidence from being skinnier or getting straight A’s or whatever. Likewise, I got confidence from having a guy like me back. And that’s when I could be nice to myself, when I reached my goals and I attract everything right? But then I’d beat myself up about it if I wasn’t.
And so if I instead just had compassion when I, quote unquote, “made a mistake,” that could have slowly begun to untangle this pattern that I had gotten myself in.
Everyone can be even just 1% nicer to themselves… Just saying one nice thing to yourself doesn’t seem like that big of a deal but if it begins to unravel this pattern and this worldview we have of how we get love or whatever, that’s actually pretty significant.
August (narration):
Learn more about Veronica Grant at veronicagrant.com and order her book, You Are Meant for Love, from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Apple Books. She described the book as a note to her 20-something self. In it, she dives deeply into the two relationships we touched on today, and shares a process for finding what she calls “soul lessons” from your past relationships – to help you gain clarity around patterns that aren’t serving you so you can change them. And soon, you’ll be able to hear bonus excerpts from my conversation with Veronica on Patreon.
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[outro music that makes you wanna dance]
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