Zach welcomes back Robin Ducharme, founder of Real Love Ready, for the first of three conversations. The last time listeners heard from her, she was here with her partner, Hector. This time she comes alone. Her mom died three months ago, and a few weeks later, she and Hector broke up. Robin calls it a double whammy, and she doesn't soften what it did to her: "It fucking took me down."

Robin walks Zach through the weeks after her mom's death in Miami, the cremation logistics across borders, the celebration of life in Calgary, and then the ten days at home when grief finally caught up with her. She couldn't leave the house. She sat by the water, cried, and took up smoking for a couple of months while her son's nurse, Catherine, looked after her and her kids. She talks openly about the spiritual openings she's had after each major loss, starting with her twin brother, Reece, in 2012. And she describes the partner who showed up during that stretch as a stranger: cold, suspicious, and short on empathy. Zach, who admits he has little personal experience with death, stays curious. He wonders out loud whether Hector's behavior was his own trauma response, and he offers a reframe on the empathy debate: you may not always be able to feel what someone else feels, but compassion is always available.

From there the conversation turns to what "doing the work" actually means. Robin names her own patterns: high-functioning codependency, people pleasing, and the reflex to apologize and fix. She shares her recovery from alcoholism and the four months of daily AA meetings it took. Zach presses on the point that change takes time and effort you can see, and Robin lands it: "Awareness plus new action creates change." They close on grief and acceptance, where Zach offers a line worth keeping: acceptance is the end of grief, but pain isn't a phase. Pain is a fact.

This is an honest, unpolished conversation with someone in the middle of it. If you've ever lost a person and a relationship in the same season, or wondered why someone you loved stopped feeling familiar, Robin's story will land.

Key Takeaways

• Grief can be postponed, but it can't be skipped. It shows up when you finally stop operating.
• Acceptance doesn't remove the pain. You can fully accept a loss and still be heartbroken.
• Pain isn't a phase of grief. It's a fact of loss.
• You may not always be able to feel what your partner feels, but compassion is always available.
• A crisis often doesn't create someone's behavior. It reveals patterns that were already there.
• Doing the work starts with asking where your part is, not who's to blame.
• People pleasing and constant apologizing can look like love, but they're self-sacrifice.
• Insight alone doesn't change anything. Awareness plus new action creates change.

Guest Info

Robin Ducharme Founder and CEO of Real Love Ready, a former professional matchmaker and love coach, and host of Let's Talk Love and Real Love Ready: The Series. She's the creator and producer of In Bloom: A Love & Relationships Summit and the author of Real Love Ready: A Guide to Relational Literacy (published April 2026). Robin has appeared on MTR twice before with her former partner, Hector. In this episode she returns solo to talk about the death of her mother, the end of that relationship, and what relational literacy looks like in practice.

• Website: realloveready.com
• Instagram: @realloveready

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