Why There’s No Such thing As the Right Person at the Wrong Time & Why Your Ex Was Never The One

Do you believe in "right person, wrong time"? Do you have realistic expectations about dating? Today, Jay will discuss the popular notion of the "right person at the wrong time." He explains that this idea often stems from nostalgia, which can distort our memories by emphasizing the positive aspects of past experiences and minimizing the negatives. This romanticized view of the past can prevent us from addressing present realities and hinder our ability to form healthy relationships. Jay also talks about the various factors that influence relationships, such as a person's relationship status, goals, and healing journey. He argues that a person's current circumstances, such as being newly single or single for a long time, significantly shape who they are and their readiness for a relationship. Furthermore, in a healthy relationship, partners should respect and support each other's goals rather than expecting complete alignment. He also highlights the importance of patience and mutual support in the ongoing process of healing from past traumas. In this episode, you'll learn: How to align goals in a relationship How to manage expectations How to build a healthy relationship How to embrace new possibilities By letting go of romanticized notions of the past and embracing the present, we open ourselves to genuine connections. Be open, curious, and positive about dating, we can find meaningful and fulfilling relationships. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty What We Discuss: 00:00 Intro 01:00 Right Person, Wrong Time 03:37 Nostalgia Overshadows the Negative Experiences 11:15 Relationship Status 13:34 Goals 15:50 Trauma 18:26 Potential 20:24 Standards See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:43Jay Shetty?

  Give your clothes a second life with Vinted. Download the Vinted app for free to start selling with no seller fees, so you keep every dollar you earn. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Are you feeling September reset too? Shorter days, longer to-do lists, earlier alarms, all those routines you promised yourself you'd pick back up. It can feel like your whole life is recalibrating. And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically-backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop.

• 1:26Jay Shetty?

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• 2:10Jay Shetty?

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• 2:42Jay Shetty?

  Mental health is now talked about more than ever, which is awesome. I mean, I don't have to tell you that it's a primary focus of On Purpose, but on a day-to-day basis, many people don't know where to turn or which tools can help. Over the past couple of years, I've been working with Calm to make mental wellness accessible and enjoyable, or as I like to say, fun and easy. Calm has all sorts of content to help you reduce anxiety and stress, build mindful habits, improve sleep, and generally feel better in your daily life. So many bite-sized options from the most knowledgeable experts in the world, along with renowned meditation teachers. You can also check out my seven-minute daily series to help you live more mindfully

• 3:23Jay Shetty?

  each and every day. Right now, listeners of On Purpose get 40% off a subscription to Calm Premium at calm.com/jay. That's C-A-L-M dot com forward slash J-A-Y for 40% off. Calm your mind, change your life.

• 3:40Jay Shetty?

  Now, I'm not saying this to make you feel down about the fact that there isn't someone there for you. I'm saying it because I want us to live in reality more than I want us to live in imagination. We believe that this fake person is out there because it's comforting, and what that stops us from doing is dealing with the real person in front of us who presents real opportunities and real challenges.

• 4:06Speaker 01

  The number one health and wellness podcast.

• 4:08Speaker 02

  Jay Shetty. Jay Shetty. The one, the only Jay Shetty.

• 4:15Jay Shetty?

  Hey everyone, welcome back to On Purpose. It's your host Jay Shetty and I am so grateful and so thankful that you're here right now. It is incredible that you've chosen to invest in your health, your happiness and your healing by tuning into On Purpose. And thank you so much to each of you that have left a review, shared it with a friend or are listening every single day. Now, I'm sure you've heard people in your life or a friend, a family member, someone you know, say something like, "Ah, it was right person, wrong time." Right? "He was the right guy, it was just bad timing." Or "She was perfect, it just didn't make sense right now."

• 4:59Jay Shetty?

  And this idea of there being a right person at the wrong time has kind of become culturally quite a big thing. We saw it in movies like La La Land where you look at Emma Stone's character and Ryan Gosling's character who you know you want them to be together, you're yearning for them to be together, you're dreaming for them to be together. They seem destined to be together and yet it was right person, wrong time. And today I want to break that down because I've been thinking about it a lot. And I've been talking to a lot of my friends, I've been listening to a lot of you, I've been talking to a lot of experts on the show and it's pretty clear that most of them agree

• 5:40Jay Shetty?

  that there's no such thing as the right person at the wrong time. I know it's painful to hear it, I know it's uncomfortable to hear it and I know some of you right now are saying, "No Jay, what are you saying?" But I promise you that it's not a hopeless thing for me to say, it's actually going to redirect your mind in a healthy way. So when you say there's right person, wrong time, it's often something we say to make ourselves feel better about the one that got away. Oh yeah, they were the one that got away. They were amazing. Oh, they were so special. That could have been amazing.

• 6:19Jay Shetty?

  Or we say it to make ourselves feel better about an inconvenient truth we don't want to accept. We don't want to accept that we were in a bad place, that they were in a bad place. We don't want to accept that there wasn't this perfect relationship out there. And so we can't accept that inconvenient truth. And we keep saying it to ourselves. Oh, they were just the right person at the wrong time. I'm sure you've all said people in your life, maybe say, hey, I miss my ex, you know, they were amazing or like, oh, like even though they were bad, like they weren't that bad, like they were actually great. Wait a minute, the one that treated you badly? Wait a minute, the one that you always used to complain that made you feel insecure?

• 7:02Jay Shetty?

  Wait, you're talking about the one that never showed up on time and cancelled on you? Wait, you're talking about the one that cheated on you? Like, you know, it's literally that bad sometimes. And we convince ourselves that there was a right person at the wrong time. Nostalgia is really, really interesting. And it does one of two things. In some cases, it makes the past seem worse. But in most cases, it makes the past seem better. It amplifies the good stuff and it overshadows the negativity, the stress, the overwhelm, and the challenges we felt back then.

• 7:45Jay Shetty?

  So I wanted to do a bit of understanding about this because I think we have a pretty weak understanding of nostalgia. And if you talk to most people, they'll say their favorite experiences are from college, their past experiences were better, their relationships were amazing. Like, we often look at our past through rose-tinted glasses. Now, I'm reading this from a couple of references. The first is from the Memory and Reward Systems Co-produced Nostalgic Experiences in the Brain. This is 2016 July from No Riu Chi. And then I'm also reading from Barrett's. These are two journals that I found through Neurology Live. So nostalgic experiences stimulate metabolic activity and blood flow in several regions of the brain.

• 8:30Jay Shetty?

  Interestingly, people who rated higher on the Effective Neuroscience Personality Scale, which measures a person's tendency to sadness, were more prone to experience nostalgia.

• 8:42Jay Shetty?

  This correlation does make sense as people who generally experience stronger emotions should experience a range of powerful feelings, whether those emotions are happy or sad. But nostalgia itself is not linked with depression or any other affective disorder. In fact, one study linked nostalgia to an overall trait of resilience. So nostalgia is something that we use positively, but it can be positive emotionally, but it can set us on the wrong path mentally as we make decisions. So let me explain to you why nostalgia feels good from that neuroscience perspective. The reward centers of the brain are activated during nostalgic activity.

• 9:24Jay Shetty?

  This reward center involvement explains the very common phenomena of feeling pleasant emotions upon hearing a song from the past. Even if the song was not necessarily a favorite song at the time, it was prevalent in popular culture or in a person's life. Now, listen to this. This is the most interesting part to me. The positive responses evoked by nostalgia can help protect people from emotional burden of a situational disappointment and even from anxiety. That's exactly what we're talking about here, that there has been a situational disappointment. And the feeling that we look on it positively, oh, right person, wrong time, it actually emotionally protects us.

• 10:09Jay Shetty?

  But that doesn't make us make good decisions. We can often live in the past. We can linger on and make a relationship last too long. We can feel that we missed out on something and that it got away. We can feel that anything we experienced today isn't good enough. It's not the same. When used as a coping strategy, a person can deliberately trigger feelings of nostalgia by listening to familiar music, looking at old photos, or visiting comforting environments of the past. And this is one of the reasons why I think it's so effective when people use a burn box to burn old memories. I remember... Nessa Barrett talking about that on the podcast. She has a song called Burn Box. And this idea of like, you don't want to hold on to those memories.

• 10:53Jay Shetty?

  You don't want to keep them present for you to keep creating or recreating nostalgia for you. And this is where the study gets really, really interesting. Nostalgia can be so easily provoked that it is possible to become addicted to the pleasure of nostalgia, just as a person can become addicted to any activity that stimulates the reward centers of the brain. Nostalgia can be used excessively as a crutch and the positive feelings of nostalgia may serve as a substitute for living in the present day if current real life troubles take more effort than a person can tolerate. Oh my gosh, like I'm reading this and I'm hoping you're having the same reaction as me going, wow, I get it.

• 11:38Jay Shetty?

  I get what I'm doing to myself. I'm using the right person, wrong time as a way of making up for the fact that dating is hard right now, as a way of making up for the fact that things aren't going great right now. And hey, in the short term, it's a great way of staying positive and keeping upbeat. But long term, it's letting me down. It's making me turn away great relationship prospects. It's making me judge people differently. It's making me close the door on other people that actually deserve a chance. Like where is nostalgia tripping you up? Now, I want to give you a kind of light example to do with this. If you look at where we are in society today, there are so many reboots, right?

• 12:22Jay Shetty?

  So we had a reboot or IP based on the past. You have the Barbie movie. Amazing movie, great movie, but again, we're using IP from the past because it sparks nostalgia. How many of you watched that and had a nostalgic feeling if you happen to own a Barbie or a Ken? Now, Super Mario Brothers, same thing. I remember back in the day, having to go to my friend's house to play on their Nintendo. And the Super Mario Brothers movie comes out and all of a sudden it's past IP being rebooted. You've got the Pinocchio remake. You've got all the live action movies coming out. You've got the Sex and the City reboot. So. There's an interesting thing in society where we have all these reboots

• 13:07Jay Shetty?

  that are often based on, well, not often based, always based on playing on nostalgia and triggering positive nostalgic feelings. But guess what? Is the reboot ever that good? Is the use of old IP ever as satisfying? Will the new Jurassic Park ever be as good as the original one? Like, it won't. And there's something in that, like, there's this false excitement that we have. But it doesn't actually follow through. And a lot of us, this other study from Yang and Bacho says that we aren't just longing for our past, we're remembering a romanticized version of our past.

• 13:51Jay Shetty?

  This line in the study completely sums up what I'm trying to say. That we're not just longing for our past, we're remembering a romanticized version of our past. According to Bacho, there's a reason our memories become fonder over time. Why the negative bits tend to fade away faster. The study says, take parenthood, for example. Remembering things as better than they were serves an evolutionary purpose. If people were to remember things faithfully to the original, most women would never want to have more than one child. Bacho says, laughing, it's a function of species survival that we can gloss over the bad portions of the past.

• 14:33Jay Shetty?

  So nostalgia is great as a temporary escape during difficult times. But if it becomes the basis of our decision making, we can actually be led down the wrong path. And I want to focus on this statement, right person, wrong time. It wasn't the wrong time, there was something else that was wrong. One of the first things I want to talk about is what about your relationship status? What about their relationship status? Maybe they just got out of a relationship. Maybe they'd been single for too long. Now, we look at that as wrong time, but that's far more defining of that person than we give it credit to be.

• 15:18Jay Shetty?

  If someone's been single for a long time, that's a part of who they are. It's a part of who they've become. If someone's newly single, that's a part of who they are and where they are in their emotional maturity to be able to spot an amazing opportunity for it to be the right thing. Now, I'm not saying this to make you feel down about the fact that there isn't someone there for you. I'm saying it because I want us to live in reality more than I want us to live in imagination. We believe that this fake person is out there because it's comforting. And what that stops us from doing is dealing with the real person in front of us who presents real opportunities and real challenges. That's really what life is. That's what a partner is.

• 16:03Jay Shetty?

  It's a set of pros and a set of cons. It's a set of things to look forward to and a list of things that will set us back. So I want you to think about the relationship status part. If someone is just newly single and you're scared of rushing them along, instead of saying right person, wrong time and moving on, can you be more patient? Maybe you do want to get married, but maybe they need time. Maybe you don't rush it if they're worth investing in. Maybe they could be the right person if you didn't have this idea of right person, wrong time because you wanted everything to perfectly align. What else about the relationship status that you're in? You don't want to rush yourself. You don't want to move along.

• 16:48Jay Shetty?

  Now, of course, if the conclusion you both come to is we're both not ready right now to wait longer for the other person, then that's not the right person. And that's okay. It doesn't mean that you don't deserve love. It doesn't mean you won't find love. It doesn't mean that you won't have the opportunity to be in love. But what it does mean is that it's the wrong person. And the timing is somewhat not relevant. Recently, I became a relationship advisor at Match because I really want people to connect based on their values. So what we did together was we collaborated and built a set of questions that will help you understand your values and pair you up with people with similar values

• 17:31Jay Shetty?

  and in a way that you can be aware of what their priorities are. I think so often we start dating and then we find out down the line that we're going in different directions. We have different focuses. I want to help you build a life where you're aware of what people care about and they're aware about what you care about. Head over now to match.com/j to find out how you can date based on your values and your vision. I want to talk about goals. I think we saw that in La La Land where they had different goals. And goals is a really interesting thing because in a healthy relationship, it's not that you're going to find someone with the same goals. It's actually that you're

• 18:13Jay Shetty?

  going to find someone who respects your goals and values them and helps you get to them and the other person does the same. I have a lot of friends who are performers, speakers, musicians, and they're all saying, well, why is my partner not in the front row? Right? Why is my partner not in the front row? And maybe their partner has their own dreams that keep them active at the same time. I mean, you know, talking about pop culture, I think you see it right now with Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Like, both of them are high performers. Both of them are achieving. I'm sure they can't be at every single game. She can't be at every game and he can't be at every concert, but they're making it work

• 18:56Jay Shetty?

  by saying, I see that that's what makes you happy. I see that that's what makes you you. I see that that's what makes you attractive. And I'm gonna show up for you when I can. We'll even perform together when we can, like, we'll make it happen. But I'm not gonna make you give up the thing you love in order for us to have the same goals, in order for us to have the same priorities. And so it's interesting, we've kind of been presented this either or, where it's like, you either both sacrifice your goals for each other, or one of you sacrifices their goals for the other, while one of them lives them through. And in reality, a healthy relationship is saying, well, I'm not gonna let you sacrifice your goals, and I'm not gonna sacrifice mine. And yes, we may spend a little less time with each other,

• 19:41Jay Shetty?

  but I know you support me deeply. I don't need you to be in the front row to know I'm front of mind for you. I don't need you to be cheering me on right now, because I know you're gonna be there to cheer me on in and around that area, in and around that activity. And I think so many of us can lose a great relationship because we think, oh, well, our goals have to perfectly match. Our goals have to perfectly align. Now, another area is trauma. A lot of people today say, I wanna be with someone who's gone to therapy. They have to be focused on healing. The truth is, we don't know when someone's healing journey is going to start,

• 20:26Jay Shetty?

  and we don't know when ours is going to end. Let me say that again. You don't know when someone's healing journey is going to start, and you don't know when your healing journey is going to end. You could feel that you've done a lot of healing, and something next year could trigger a new reason to heal. And someone else may have gone to therapy for years, and they may actually be in a peaceful place right now. The right person will heal themselves as they watch you heal. The right person will be patient with you as you are patient with them.

• 21:08Jay Shetty?

  The right person will make time and space for what you need as you make time and space for them. The right person will not be the person who's perfectly healed, because neither are we. The right person will not be the person who's already done all the self-work before they met us, because we've also got so much self-work left. If anything, the right person becomes our partner in the journey of healing and self-work, in the journey of inner work. We become companions and partners who understand each other, see each other, hear each other. And that's not perfect. This isn't ideal. This is conflict. This is hard.

• 21:53Jay Shetty?

  This is heavy. It's challenging, but it's what builds greatness in a partnership. There's this old story about rocks that are put into a bag. And when the bag is moved, the rocks rub against each other slowly to become softer-edged. The rocks didn't become softer because they were made softer independently. They became softer because there was conflict and tension between the rocks, but they eventually softened each other out. That's what the right relationship will do. This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs.

• 22:37Jay Shetty?

  Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.

• 23:19Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market. If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores, from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colours, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods, Market, in-store or online. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision-making, and that extends to the practical stuff too, like making sure your coverage actually works for your life.

• 24:03Jay Shetty?

  State Farm is there to meet you where you are, and they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbour, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state, coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.

• 24:28Jay Shetty?

  In the right relationship, your fights will make you closer. Your arguments will make you more thoughtful. Your disagreements will make you more considerate.

• 24:41Jay Shetty?

  And the words you wish you never said will make you more mindful. That's what happens. Now, a lot of us, the next one is, we live in a state of they were the right person at the wrong time because we saw their potential, we saw what they could be, we saw what we wanted them to be. And really what it was is, they were who they were, but we had this imagined version of who they could be, should be, would be. Again, they weren't the right person because the right person was what you dreamed up in your potential person, the real person. And that's why I almost want to get away from this language of the right person.

• 25:24Jay Shetty?

  It's the real person. We're dealing with real people. And the right person will be the person you want to make it right with. The right person will be the person who you choose to do the right thing for and they choose to do the right thing for you. That's the right person, which is a real person. I think we've kind of made it so that, oh, the right person will be all these things. And I'm like, the real person will be all those things and a whole set of another things, right? That's the real person. The right person in your head only is your perfect checklist. And I promise you, you'll meet people who have that checklist and they have everything else as well. And because they have all these other things that you didn't have on your checklist, that you don't recognize,

• 26:08Jay Shetty?

  you write them off as the wrong person. It's funny how we write people off as the wrong person because they have everything we want, but they come with a lot more baggage as well. And that's the real situation that we're in. A couple more things that I want us to focus on because it's not time. So it's right person, but real goals. Right person, but real trauma. Right person, but real relationship status. Right person, but real no potential or potential. Right person and real standards.

• 26:50Jay Shetty?

  Sometimes our expectations get the better of us. Sometimes someone wants us to lower our standards beneath what we deserve. Neither makes someone the right person. And it's amazing how in the rearview mirror, everything looks more beautiful. Everything looks more amazing. Everything looks like it was more exciting. And I think a big part of this is because there's a part of us that loves that feeling and a peaceful, healthy relationship doesn't provide that spark.

• 27:27Jay Shetty?

  I think a lot of people who are in happy, healthy, right person, right time relationships, real person relationships, find peace more than pleasure. And I think the problem is people think a peaceful relationship is a boring relationship. And that's not true. A peaceful relationship is a relationship where you're not creating drama and neither are they, where you're both not triggered over petty things, where you both don't make something out of nothing to fight for each other's attention, where you're not playing games or manipulating in order to get someone's validation, where you actually communicate honestly about what you want.

• 28:09Jay Shetty?

  And the funny thing is, we'll all say we want this, but we won't behave that way with the person. So I want you to really take this episode in because it's a reality check. And the reality check is to encourage you to say, let's stop thinking about the right person and let's look at real people. What does a real person have? What does a real person come with? And a real person comes with all these things, but love is saying, can we take all of that into account and make it make sense? And if we can't, let's not glorify or put that person on a pedestal for the rest of time because it makes us feel better. Let's actually say it didn't, wasn't the right person, and I'm going to keep looking for that real person that I can connect with. I really hope that you'll share this episode with a friend.

• 28:51Jay Shetty?

  I hope it will help clarify so much of our mind and brain works and makes decisions. And I hope it's going to make you more open, curious and positive about dating. I'm so excited for you. I'm forever in your corner and always rooting for you. Thanks for listening. If you loved this episode, you're going to love my conversation with Matthew Hussey on how to get over your ex and find true love in your relationships.

• 29:17Speaker 02

  People should be compassionate to themselves, but extend that compassion to your future self. Because truly extending your compassion to your future self is doing something that gives him or her a shot at a happy and a peaceful life.