No matter the generation, the entry point to healthy love is the same: knowing yourself first. Robin Hamilton has spent over 20 years working with couples and individuals across generational lines, and the pattern she sees is consistent:
- Gen X latchkey kids who learned self-reliance but not self-examination.
- Millennials who raced to check the marriage box before they knew what they wanted.
- Gen Z retreating behind screens and AI companions to avoid the real-world friction that builds identity.
In this episode, Tess and Robin explore how each generation’s specific pressures produce the same fundamental problem: people bringing unexamined selves and unresolved wounds into relationships and wondering why the same dynamic keeps repeating.
They cover attachment wounds, what words actually do to love over time, why couples therapy rarely works without individual work running alongside it, and why self-knowledge is not a destination. It evolves across every decade of a life, and there is always more to find.
Follow the Gen Mess with Tess for weekly episodes, where we aren't just fixing the generational mess, we're learning how to live in it.
Visit tessbrigham.com/podcast to learn more.
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