Stop Blaming Your Ex: Accountability, Attachment, and Owning Your Love Life (Featuring Angela Spinner)
Let’s be real: most people want better relationships without doing the work. They want intimacy without vulnerability, passion without communication, and growth without accountability. Today’s Spicy Bananas episode tears that fantasy to shreds.
Our guest, Angela Spinner, relationship coach, mentor, single-mom powerhouse, built her practice on fifteen years of trauma, messy breakups, and raising three kids. She does not sell Band-Aids. She hands you a mirror. If you have ever spent an hour dragging your ex and walked away with zero self-awareness, this one will sting. Good. That means it is working.
The Premise: You Might Be the Problem
Angela’s take is simple and uncomfortable: most clients arrive certain they are the victim of other people’s dysfunction. Mid-rant, the truth comes out, they are participating in the pattern. Not because they are bad people, but because they have outsourced responsibility for so long that they can barely feel their own emotions without numbing out.
Cue the usual escapes: busyness, a drink, a scroll, a joke, a hookup, a hit. Anything but the work.
Angela’s C4: The “Explosive” Framework That Blows Up Excuses
Angela calls her method C4, not cute branding, but a demolition plan for self-deception:
- Communication: Say the real thing, not the palatable thing. If you felt dismissed, say dismissed. If you want something in bed, say it.
- Connection: With yourself first. Self-betrayal is the fastest way to torpedo intimacy.
- Consistency: One apology and three good days will not undo six months of chaos.
- Confidence: Not a pose. It is the quiet certainty that you will tell the truth and handle the outcome.
C4 does not make you nicer. It makes you honest.
Attachment Runs the Show
We repeat what we do not repair. If you keep choosing unavailable partners, you are likely emotionally unavailable, too. Anxiety chases. Avoidance runs. Healthy attachment does neither, because healthy people do not need chaos to feel alive.
Pattern spotter:
- Do you escalate when ignored?
- Do you withdraw when pursued?
- Do you romanticize chemistry that only appears when there is a risk of rejection?
If yes, your nervous system is writing your love story, and it is picking the same plot every time.
Red Flags You Keep Excusing
- “I’m emotionally unavailable right now.” Believe them. Then leave.
- Perfection at the start. If they say exactly what you want to hear, it is not fate. It is performance.
- Mom still runs the calendar. Adults say “my mom,” not “mummy,” and set boundaries without a committee meeting.
- Tipping like a cheapskate, treating service staff poorly. Generosity and respect are character tells. If they will not invest ten bucks in a human, they will not invest in you.
Stop rationalizing. Start deciding.
The Sex Part Everyone Pretends Is “TMI”
Newsflash: sex is not separate from the relationship. It is the relationship, compressed. Confidence, communication, curiosity, and care show up there first.
Angela’s stance:
- Toys are tools, not threats.
- Confidence is hotter than perfect. Your partner is not zooming in on your cellulite; you are.
- Shared play keeps the bond alive. Bored people do not have dead bedrooms. Avoidant, resentful, and dishonest people do.
If your intimacy is stale, stop catastrophizing and start experimenting, with conversation, with play, with yes or no or maybe lists, with time together that is not doom scrolling.
The Hardest Truth
Your relationship is not failing because fate is cruel. It is failing because you avoid the conversations that would save it. You say, “I’m fine.” You clock your partner’s flaws and skip your own. You want the feeling of love without the practice of loving.
Maturity is doing the necessary reps:
- Naming needs without weaponizing them.
- Hearing feedback without collapsing or counterattacking.
- Repairing ruptures quickly.
- Choosing alignment over ego.
A No Fluff Playbook You Can Use Today
1) Audit your story.
Write down your last three relationships. For each, list how it started, the first red flag you ignored, the fight you had more than once, how it ended, and your part in it. Circle the common pattern.
2) Set a 30-day communication rule.
No sarcasm. No “I’m fine.” No mind-reading games. Use: “When X happens, I feel Y, and I need Z.” If that sentence feels corny, you have been performing instead of communicating.
3) Replace avoidance with a protocol.
When triggered, take a 20-minute break, then return. No disappearing acts. If you need a day, say it and schedule the reconnection.
4) Bring curiosity to the bedroom.
Each partner answers:
- What turns me on that we have never tried?
- What do I want more of, less of, different?
- What makes me feel safest during intimacy?
Share answers. Choose one small experiment this week.
5) Audit your inputs.
Friends who normalize chaos, content that glamorizes hot and cold, substances that numb emotions, downgrade all of it. Your nervous system needs consistency to relearn safety.
6) Get help like an adult.
Therapy is not punishment; it is training. Interview therapists. Ask about trauma, style, and approach. Pick fit over proximity.
Accountability, Not Aesthetics
Confidence is not shouting, “I am a strong, independent woman or man.” That is theater. Real confidence is the quiet willingness to look at your part, own it, and change it. You do not need to become someone else. You need to become someone honest.
If You Only Take One Thing
Stop auditioning partners for a role you have not defined. Decide the relationship you are building, then become the person who can sustain it, regulated, communicative, consistent, and awake to your own patterns.
About Our Guest
Angela Spinner
- Website: RealRelationships.com
- Podcast: Real and Raw Relationships: Unfiltered
- Program: 8 Week No BS Relationship Reset
- Socials: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook under Real Raw Relationships
First call is free. She will give you the truth, not a lullaby.
Listen, Review, Act
If this episode made you laugh, flinch, or consider texting your therapist, do something with it.
- Follow Spicy Bananas.
- Drop a 5-star review if we earned it.
- Journal one pattern you are done repeating, and what you will do differently this week.
No shame. No sugar coating. No bullshit. Just the work. That is where everything good starts.
🎧 Listen to the full episode now:
👉 Why Wellness Breaks When Life Gets Real
– Episode 14