Let's Talk Love | A Real Love Ready Podcast

About Let's Talk Love | A Real Love Ready Podcast

Welcome to Real Love Ready: The Series. After four years and 100+ conversations with relationship experts, Robin Ducharme shares what she's learned about loving well in a world longing for connection. Real Love Ready is a series exploring why love can feel impossible today and offering a framework to believe in it again. Robin sits down with therapists, coaches, authors, and people from all walks of life who, because of who they are or what they've been through, have something to teach us about love. New episodes every Tuesday. Distributed by Realm.

Publisher

Real Love Ready

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Jan 2022

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 156 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026

   Dr. Jessica Zucker – Miscarriage, Grief & the Things We Keep Quiet | Real Love Ready Ep 24

   What does love look like when there is nothing you can do to make the pain go away? Dr. Jessica Zucker spent years working as a clinical psychologist in reproductive and maternal mental health before experiencing a miscarriage herself at 16 weeks. The loss changed the course of her life and work, eventually leading her to create the #IHadAMiscarriage campaign and write I Had a Miscarriage and Normalize It. Through her own experiences with pregnancy loss and breast cancer, Jessica began to see just how often grief is made harder by everything surrounding it. The silence, the shame, the pressure to be okay, and our discomfort with pain we cannot fix. In this episode, Robin and Jessica explore what happens when we stop trying to tidy up each other’s pain. They talk about the instinct to reach for silver linings, the ways women are taught to question or minimize their own experiences, and why emotional intimacy requires us to stay present even when we don’t have the right words. Jessica also reflects on how loss has shaped her relationships, her work, and her understanding of what it means to truly be there for someone. This is a conversation about making room for the things we cannot make better. About telling the truth when silence would be easier, asking people what they actually need, and allowing ourselves to be fully known in the hardest chapters of our lives. Because sometimes the most loving thing we can do isn’t to take the pain away — it’s to stay with each other through it. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. IN THIS EPISODE (00:02:14) Introduction (00:03:23) Jessica’s Earliest Memories of Love (00:09:15) Experiencing Miscarriage at 16 Weeks (00:11:11) Breaking the Silence Around Pregnancy Loss (00:17:10) The Cycle of Silence, Stigma & Shame (00:26:33) Jessica’s Breast Cancer Diagnosis (00:35:06) Creating Rituals Around Grief & Loss (00:39:12) Loving Someone Through Pain You Cannot Fix (00:46:12) The Things Women Are Taught to Keep Quiet (00:49:20) Aging, Desire & Letting Go of “Should” (00:52:00) What We Teach Our Children About Love (00:52:49) Being Seen & Finding Our Way Back to Ourselves (00:57:05) How Love Changes Over Time (00:58:41) What Is Love? QUOTES “Can we replace silence with storytelling? Can we help women not go to that place? And can we see pregnancy loss as normative, albeit heartbreaking, so that we can talk about it?” — Dr. Jessica Zucker “We have to go through it. We have to feel it.” — Robin Ducharme “I think that true emotional intimacy only exists when we can be present through pain and through roadblocks and through joy, of course, as well.” — Dr. Jessica Zucker “I really want to remove ‘should’ from our language. It’s not productive. It’s not helping.” — Robin Ducharme “Time helps with healing, but talking really helps us find our way back to ourselves.” — Dr. Jessica Zucker ABOUT THE GUEST Jessica Zucker is a Los Angeles-based psychologist specializing in reproductive health and the award-winning author of Normalize It: Upending the Silence, Stigma, and Shame That Shape Women’s Lives and I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement. She is also the creator of the viral #IHadAMiscarriage campaign. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ihadamiscarriage/ Website: https://www.drjessicazucker.com/ GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow Us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

2. 

   6 Oct 2026

   Mary Bonnet – Beyond Selling Sunset: Learning to Heal and Love | Real Love Ready Ep 23

   How do you heal when your hardest moments become entertainment? For six years, Mary Bonnet shared her life with millions on Selling Sunset. Viewers watched—and scrutinized—as she built a career, fell in love, navigated fertility, and grieved in real time. The cameras captured a lot, but they never captured the whole story. Mary became a mother at 15 and has lived through an abusive marriage, financial control, sexual assault, pregnancy loss, and the deeply complicated experience of having private pain become public conversation. In this episode, Robin and Mary talk about the intuition that has guided some of her biggest decisions, the ways trauma can remain in the body long after the threat has passed, and the difference between pushing through pain and actually healing it. Mary opens up about reaching a point where Selling Sunset was taking more from her than she was willing to give—and realizing she wanted her life to feel like her own again. Mary’s story isn’t powerful simply because she survived. It’s powerful because survival was never where she wanted to stay. Through heartbreak, loss, reinvention, and years of public scrutiny, she has continued to trust her instincts, choose kindness, and believe in love. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. IN THIS EPISODE (00:01:19) Introduction (00:03:22) How Mary Learned About Love (00:08:16) Becoming a Mother at 15 (00:13:23) When Drive Becomes Tunnel Vision (00:16:45) Surviving Financial Abuse (00:22:05) How Trauma Lives in the Body (00:26:19) Self-Love, Reality TV & Public Scrutiny (00:30:30) Miscarriage, Grief & Being Watched (00:35:00) What Healing Looks Like Now (00:37:03) Walking Away From Selling Sunset (00:41:42) Life After Selling Sunset (00:49:12) Choosing Kindness (00:52:12) Loving Yourself Through Heartbreak (00:55:25) What Is Love? QUOTES “I think in so many ways, you just have to trust yourself. I think we all have intuition, and we have it for a reason. It’s to help guide us and to help protect us.” — Mary Bonnet “When you follow your intuition, it’s like everything in you—your soul, your spirit—is saying, ‘This is it.’” — Robin Ducharme “I feel like I just had this big fake smile on for a while because I had to. But inside I was kind of dying.” — Mary Bonnet “I think our tolerance for bullshit changes as we get stronger and more whole in ourselves.” — Robin Ducharme “People don’t understand that you’re still human. If you’re on TV, you still have feelings.” — Mary Bonnet “Everything that’s been done has been done… I’m not going to dwell on what I can’t change. I’m saving the fucking dogs.” — Mary Bonnet ABOUT THE GUEST Mary Bonnet is a luxury real estate agent, Vice President at The Oppenheim Group, longtime cast member of Netflix’s Selling Sunset, and author of Selling Sunshine: Surviving Teenage Motherhood, Thriving in Luxury Real Estate, and Finally Finding My Voice. With more than $140 million in career real estate sales, Mary was also named one of Variety’s 40 Most Powerful Women on Reality TV. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themarybonnet/ GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow Us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

3. 

   29 Sept 2026

   Vienna Pharaon – Origin Wounds: Why the Past Keeps Showing Up in Your Relationships | Real Love Ready Ep 22

   Have you ever reacted to something in a relationship and wondered, where did that come from? Vienna Pharaon is a licensed marriage and family therapist, founder of Mindful Marriage and Family Therapy, and bestselling author of The Origins of You. Her work explores the origin wounds we carry around worthiness, belonging, prioritization, trust, and safety—and how experiences from our past can continue shaping the way we love in the present. In this episode, Robin and Vienna explore why we can understand our patterns and still find ourselves repeating them. They talk about the moments that activate old wounds, dysregulation as active self-protection, and what it actually takes to respond differently instead of falling back into familiar roles. Together, they explore what changes when we understand not only our own history, but the history of the people we love. Because healing isn’t about never being triggered or never getting it wrong. It’s about creating enough space to make a different choice, repair more quickly, and stay connected through the hard moments. As Vienna says, healing is the shift from survival to choice. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. When life feels overwhelming, therapy can help. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/loveready. IN THIS EPISODE (00:00:00) Introduction (00:04:12) Vienna’s Origin Story (00:07:36) Why We Repeat the Same Relationship Patterns (00:09:23) What It Looks Like to Do Something Different (00:15:32) What Are Origin Wounds? (00:20:35) Dysregulation as Active Self-Protection (00:24:54) How a Prioritization Wound Shows Up (00:30:15) Why Awareness Alone Isn’t Enough (00:35:43) Healing: From Survival to Choice (00:36:49) Why Knowing Your Partner’s Story Matters (00:39:37) How Healthy Relationships Move Through Hard Things (00:44:22) Origin Wounds & Inner Child Work (00:48:23) Does Healing Mean You Stop Getting Triggered? (00:51:04) Why Romantic Relationships Activate Our Wounds (00:58:16) Changing Long-Standing Relationship Patterns (01:00:31) Doing the Work While You’re Single (01:04:57) Parenting, Repair & Owning Our Mistakes (01:09:00) The Myth That Healthy Love Should Be Easy (01:12:21) What Is Love? QUOTES “One of the greatest loving gifts that we give to each other is to learn about each other’s origin stories and wounds and histories.” — Vienna Pharaon “I believe that you cannot love better without first understanding what you’re carrying.” — Robin Ducharme “It is not about wishing or wanting for the absence of hard. It’s about being able to go through the hard and stay connected with one another and come out the other side. That is what builds secure, healthy relationships.” — Vienna Pharaon “We have to open our minds to this concept, because this whole thing of falling in love on the first date, second date, third date—you don’t know this person. You really don’t. It’s important to get to know somebody over time and through conflict, through all the things.” — Robin Ducharme “Context doesn’t excuse behavior, but it is the bridge. It really helps us move into that space of compassion while still holding accountability and ownership and responsibility.” — Vienna Pharaon ABOUT THE GUEST Vienna Pharaon is a licensed marriage and family therapist and one of New York City’s most sought after relationship therapists. She has practiced therapy for more than 17 years and is the founder and owner of the group practice, Mindful Marriage and Family Therapy. She received her masters of science in Marriage & Family Therapy from Northwestern University. Her book The Origins of You is a national best seller. Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mindfulmft/ Website: https://viennapharaon.com/ Substack: https://substack.com/@viennapharaon The Origins of You (book): https://a.co/d/02lkGkBC What's Your Origin Wound (free) Quiz: https://1wsm6geg69z.typeform.com/to/d981R7Cl GET THE REAL LOVE READY BOOK Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy is a clear, compassionate guide to the knowledge, skills, and daily practices that help us love with greater intention, truth, and heart. https://geni.us/RealLoveReadyBook Follow Us: @realloveready @robinducharmeofficial @soulprintmediaco Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Inside a recent episode

Jessica Baum - Building Safe Relationships

Published 11 Dec 2025 · Transcript excerpt

[…] Like it's a pathway in and then the sense of safety that two people feel. And I talk about anchoring relationships. So it doesn't have to be your therapist. But I talk about how to have these anchoring relationships. Because my nervous system is lending itself to her. And so while she's experiencing this, I'm increasing her window of tolerance by co -regulating with her and going there. And through the holding and being with more and more unfolds organically, because our own system has a beautiful inherent knowing and a wanting to heal. And when we have people who can hold space, our system literally will start showing more and more. […]

Who has been a guest on Let's Talk Love | A Real Love Ready Podcast

Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.

• Dr Sue Varma
• Dr Amanda Hanson
• Julie Krafchik
• Yue Xu

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

279,308

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

10 ratings

Spotify

4.3 / 5

40 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 73 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

91

Social presence

0

YouTube

86

Engagement

51

Contact Let's Talk Love | A Real Love Ready Podcast

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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Questions about Let's Talk Love | A Real Love Ready Podcast