Love Inside Out with Adele Testa

Solo trip is a great opportunity for learning more about your relationship, your life and most importantly yourself. What to expect? What's unwarranted? Everything in this episode.

We often imagine a solo trip as an escape: a few days away, a reset, some peace and quiet. But what happens when nobody around you knows you, needs anything from you, or expects you to be a certain version of yourself? In this final Heart Note of the summer, I explore what travelling alone can quietly reveal: your real preferences, the parts of yourself you perform for others, who you actually mis...

The summer breakup almost never comes out of nowhere. It has a start date, usually months earlier, in a November nobody talked about. This Heart Note is about the gap between knowing a relationship is over and finding the words for it: - why the person leaving often turns suddenly, painfully polite; - why waiting can be compassion and avoidance at the same time; - and why summer, with the commute,...

Ever had a reaction that felt completely out of proportion to what actually happened? A cancelled plan, a short message, one tiny comment and suddenly you're saying things you wish you could take back. In this episode, we’re getting underneath anger and rage: why the people closest to us can trigger the biggest reactions, what might be hiding underneath the explosion, and why trying to control...

How to tackle this complex month? The answer in this episode

A short yet rich summary of communications gems to steal and apply straight away. Extract from episode 17.

Why your hardest conversations keep dying at the kitchen table and where they come back to life You sat down to talk about it properly. Two chairs, phones down, "we need to talk." And it went nowhere. Then, days later, walking the long way home, the exact same conversation just… comes out. This week's Heart Note is about why. There's a Kyoto University study in here you'll want to test tonight, an...

Nobody posts the argument in the car park. We only ever see the highlight reel and then wonder why our own love doesn't look like that. This week's Summer Replay pulls back the curtain on the so- called power couple. What's actually holding those decades-long relationships together isn't chemistry or grand gestures. It's something far less glamorous, and far more learnable. If...

Winter is supposed to be the hard part of long distance. So why does summer quietly wreck people even more? The longer evenings, the barbecues, the parks full of couples, the photo where your person looks genuinely happy without you: none of it makes distance easier. It competes for the attention that used to be yours by default. And that tightening in your chest when their night looks perfect and...

From episode 13, today we speak about the invisible contract: all the things you expect from love that you never actually said out loud . In this episode I cover the difference between assumptions, standards, and expectations, and why the silence around them is what really damages our relationships. I explore where these hidden rules come from : our families, our culture, the movies we grew up on,...

Holidays with the in-laws are the narrative of many TV comedies for a reason. We treat the family visit as something to survive and as a chance to assess who we've ended up with. But a family holiday is a mirror, and it gets held up to both of you. This week, I explore what a summer trip to the in-laws really reveals: why your partner regresses at their mother's kitchen table (and why it's loyalty...

Have you ever talked yourself out of asking for something you needed, because it could be worse? At least he doesn't cheat. At least she's loyal. At least they come home every evening. We call it gratitude . Sometimes it is. And sometimes it's just the most socially acceptable way to stay quiet about something that actually matters to us. This episode is about the blurry line between the gratitude...

You opened your phone to check one thing and there they were. The single friend "finally having her summer." The couple who make it all look effortless. And you, on a perfectly ordinary evening, somehow feeling behind on both . This week's Heart Note sits with that quiet ache: the two summers we're told to perform, and the shame of feeling like we're doing neither one right. One question to carry:...

If you've ever quietly believed you need to become a fixed, better version of yourself before you're ready for real closeness, this episode is for you. We'll untangle self-love from the things it keeps getting mistaken for, like the spa day, or aspiring to be perfect. Then I'll hand you the tool I actually reach for on the days I've been unkind to myself: seven words, all start...

It was my birthday week. Golden light, my hometown beach, my partner and my child beside me and when the phone came up, I found a reason to leave. Because that isn't the body I wanted back after the pregnancy, and I didn't want it standing there forever. I protected myself from the picture. And I lost the day. This Heart Note isn't a pep talk about loving your body. It's about the quiet trade so m...

Are you single and wondering if love will ever find you? Or are you dating and unsure if this is the right person? This episode is for anyone navigating the messy, confusing world of relationships and choice. I explore three powerful ideas that can transform how you approach dating: Know yourself first by understanding your patterns and what you actually need (not just what sounds good on paper)....

It starts with a quiet Sunday evening. The sun is still up, everyone else seems to be out living their best summer, and suddenly you are downloading the dating app you swore you deleted for good. In this Summer Heart Note, we look at what that ache may really be: the wish to feel wanted, the need for someone to share a sunset with, the discomfort of arriving alone to another barbecue, or simply th...

Most of us think the fight is the damage, but the real damage usually happens after , in the silence nobody teaches us how to handle. This week's Sunday Heart Note was about the careful quiet that shows up on holiday. So I'm bringing back one of my favourite episodes on a different silence entirely: the one that lands right after a row. 🤎 In this extract of episode 11, we get into why you...

A holiday is basically a relationship stress test in a sunhat. Take away the work, the routine, the separate friends, the rooms you can escape to; and it's just the two of us, sharing a bathroom, a bed, and every single decision about where to go and what to eat. That's exactly where the friction I'd been quietly avoiding for months had nowhere left to hide. In this Heart Note: I get i...

Sunday's Heart Note left us with an idea: wedding-grief isn't a wound, it's a compass, pointing at something you still want . Today's replay picks up that needle and puts it on the table. This is the Episode 3 extract: are you where you want to be in love? We will try to explore the complex question: if nothing changed for a whole year, if twelve months from now your love life look...

You can be genuinely happy for the groom and bride, and still go home feeling sad. Those two things co-exist at the same time when you are in a challenging spot in your love life. In this Summer Heart Note, we explore the quiet feeling that sometimes follows weddings, engagement announcements, and other people's love stories. We try to understand what that mixed-emotion might be trying to tell you...

What if the argument is not really about the dishes, the bins or the unanswered text? Sometimes the relationship is not the problem. Life is. Work pressure, exhaustion, children, ageing parents, money, commuting and the mental load can quietly change how we speak, listen and react to each other. A small comment lands badly. One person withdraws. The other pushes harder. Suddenly, you are arguing a...

Have you ever noticed that a different version of you seems to appear a few days into a holiday? Your body softens. You laugh more easily. You become more curious, more spontaneous and more open to the person beside you. Then you come home—and that version of you seems to disappear almost immediately. In this first Summer Heart Note, we explore what might really be changing when we step away from...

Six sorries in two minutes — and the argument only got worse. If you've ever said "sorry" just to make the discomfort stop… if you've ever been handed an apology that left you feeling more unseen, not less… if you're quietly waiting for an "I'm sorry" that never seems to arrive — this one is for you. Most of us were never taught how to apologise. Very few of us ever received a real apology from a...

I once had someone fade on me so gradually that I didn't see it happening. He dressed the distance up as a busy season — a big project, a phase, nothing to worry about. By the time I understood what was going on, I'd already mentally planned our second anniversary. Fifteen years later I can still feel it: the confusion, the hollow space, the not knowing whether something had ended or whether I was...