While scrolling through TikTok, Lauryn came across a video from author Margarita Nazarenko, and her immediate reaction was, “Oh my god, she’s telling all my secrets to the world,” because Margarita was literally describing how Lauryn got Michael.
So who is Margarita Nazarenko? She’s one of the most talked-about voices on TikTok right now on self-worth, detachment, and feminine energy, as well as an author, a content creator, and a former beauty pageant contestant.
This post covers who she is, where she came from, her books, her marriage, and the big ideas behind her message, plus what she shared when she sat down on The Bossticks.
We hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did. This one is for every single person anxiously waiting for their significant other to call or text back. If you’re currently left on read, this conversation will truly resonate with you.
Watch Lauryn and Michael’s full conversation with Margarita Nazarenko below.
Who Is Margarita Nazarenko?
Margarita Nazarenko is an author and the mind behind the women’s confidence and relationship podcast Being Her. Her advice centers on self-worth, anxious attachment, detachment, and feminine energy. She’s written two books, which we’ll dive into more down below: The New Rules” and “Unbothered.”
Margarita trained for 3 years at the Academy of Live and Recorded Arts in London. After that, she acted on The Bill, Doctors, and Home & Away. She was also a beauty pageant contestant of Miss Universe, and she is qualified with a Diploma in Life Coaching.
She and her husband now reside in Sydney, Australia, with their 2 children.
Margarita’s content resonates with so many women, as she has a combined following of over 2 million across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, a top 25 podcast in the education category worldwide, and a publishing deal with Hachette Australia.
What drew Lauryn and Michael in is how fresh and raw her content is. They had been trying to book her for a while, and her ideas line up with how they run their own marriage. Michael describes theirs as a secure relationship with clear lines that don’t get crossed, and says he told Lauryn early on that he didn’t want the big blowouts some couples live on.
Margarita Nazarenko’s Background
Her story matters here, because her entire philosophy came out of her own life.
Growing Up
Margarita Nazarenko was raised by a single mom, as her parents got a divorce when Margarita was about 5 years old, and she has not seen her father since. Her mom is Eastern European. She was born in Russia, raised in the United Kingdom, and is now based in Australia.
She has said she thinks that when women are very quietly confident, it’s because they had a father figure who was very present in their life and devoted to them. This was very intriguing data to Margarita, as she came to understand the hole in herself was something she was seeking validation from men to fill.
Her Anxious Attachment Era
Margarita’s anxious attachment era was exhausting, and she calls feeling anxiously attached to someone a horrible feeling. She would try harder and harder for these guys, but the more she would try, the faster they ran in the opposite direction.
Since childhood, Margarita believed she had to over-function, meaning do too much, or please people to get attention. In her words, “I just decided somewhere in my childhood that in order to get people’s attention, I needed to… act people pleasing.”
Margarita talks about how she’s done things so many of us women are probably guilty of that are not coming from a position of self worth or healthy attachment. At one point, Margarita thought her boyfriend was cheating on her, and she describes going to the bar where he was with another girl just to keep an eye on him. She can barely remember why she was there. Another time, when she tried to sit next to him at a bar, he got up and moved away, and she could feel the pity in her friends’ eyes.
Margarita then learned about secure attachment and anxious attachment and realized how anxious she was for acceptance. She asked herself, “What if I act how secure people act?” and says the change was so complete that “the fiber of me changed.”
Margarita Nazarenko and Miss Universe
Her modeling career is where the pageant piece comes in. Margarita is described by her publisher as a qualified life coach whose modeling career included contending for the title of Miss Universe.
Becoming a Creator
The creator’s career grew out of all that self-study. She’s a qualified life coach, YouTuber, and TikTok sensation who advises women on handling relationships with men.
Since posting her first TikTok in 2021, Margarita has built 1.5 million TikTok followers and 600,000 Instagram followers. She also hosts a podcast and show called Being Her, which her website says has held a top global spot for over 80 weeks.
Margarita Nazarenko’s Husband
Margarita says that seven days after breaking up with the cheating guy, she met her husband in a bar in London. Within three months of dating, he told her that he was moving to Australia, and she was cool with it. He paid for her tickets to see him on the roughly 25-hour trip from London to Australia.
Margarita explains how she didn’t rearrange her life for him. She kept her plans and went to work, and when he suggested she move to Australia, she told him, “for a boyfriend that’s not going to happen.” Then he asked her to marry him, telling her she would do it for a husband.
Margarita and her husband currently reside in Australia with their two children. (She has never publicly shared his name, so we’re leaving it out here.)
You can listen to Lauryn and Michael’s love story for how the hosts got together. Different story, same lesson: security, boundaries, and no chasing.
Margarita Nazarenko’s Books
Margarita has written two books, both published by Hachette Australia.
The New Rules
Her debut book, The New Rules, was published on May 29, 2024, and you can grab Margarita Nazarenko’s book The New Rules on Amazon.
It’s written for women who want to build amazing lives, with or without a relationship. Her publisher describes her as an agony aunt, big sister, and best friend rolled into one.
Unbothered: The Art of Letting Go to Find Yourself
Her newest book, Unbothered: The Art of Letting Go to Find Yourself, was released in Australia via Hachette Australia in May 2026 and in the United States on September 1, 2026. It’s the one she came on the show to talk about.
The premise of Unbothered is that letting go is a show of strength: that women should value peace over potential, and that you shouldn’t try to control another person’s perception of you. It’s written for women who are tired of over-functioning in love, and it draws on psychology, nervous system regulation (learning to calm your body’s stress response), and feminine identity to reframe emotional detachment as strength rather than coldness.
On the show, she says she hopes readers will “start bothering about themselves and being unbothered about other people.” You can order Unbothered by Margarita Nazarenko on Amazon.
Margarita also offers a free email course on her website called the 30-Day Reset, which offers 30 days’ worth of emails to recalibrate the way you think, feel, and show up. You can also find her Unbothered 3 Day Intensive there.
What Is Margarita Nazarenko Known For
Ladies, you’re going to absolutely love her vibe. Margarita is giving know your worth, confidence, and loyal to boundaries above all. She not only gives us the permission to have thriving relationships with men, she shares exactly how it’s done. Her content is built on a handful of big ideas that keep going viral, usually because she gives them funny, sticky names.
The Poodle Mindset
If you’re an OG Lauryn & Michael gan, you’re going to love this one. One of the buzzwords from this conversation is the poodle mindset Margarita mentions early on. It actually started with Lauryn, who Margarita remembers telling listeners to “act like a poodle” before they ever sat down together. Here’s how Margarita describes it: “A poodle is to me aloof… It’s unbothered,” and it can take it or leave it, because it cares about its own internal experience more than managing the experience of other people.
And apparently, it’s extremely attractive to men, because they like the freedom to choose the poodle.
Being Unbothered
Being unbothered overlaps with Mel Robbins’ Let Them Theory in the sense that you’re saving all that energy by not trying so hard to control others. Margarita digs deeper, though, into how women over-function and try to control the narrative instead of accepting what they can’t control. In her words, “trying to control other people’s thoughts, actions, lives, and perception of you is a loser’s game.” Be unbothered by the opinions and actions of others, and simply don’t entertain it.
Margarita says realizing you can only change yourself is empowering, and when the hosts point out that the only person you can control is yourself, she agrees.
Anxious vs. Avoidant Attachment
The conversation dives into anxious and avoidant attachment and why so many anxious and avoidant people couple up: the avoidant running away is the anxious partner’s worst fear being realized, which is abandonment. As Margarita puts it, an anxious person feels “I’m always going to be left and abandoned,” and an avoidant person delivers that to them.
Secure people, she explains, are happy when things are good and walk away when someone treats them badly. Anxious people chase, avoidant people self-soothe through hobbies and work, and the two end up doing a dance.
According to Margarita, in an anxious and avoidant relationship, it’s up to the anxious one to rock the boat, as “the avoidant person is not in that much pain for them to change.”
If that all makes sense to you, but you’d like another expert to explain attachment theory and dynamics in relationships, our conversation with dating coach Logan Ury will be perfect for you.
Feminine Energy and Not Mothering Your Partner
Margarita sees being unbothered as a feminine energy thing, but when it comes to work, she taps into a different energy. If her book were about business, she says it would be super bothered, and she loves seeing women deploy their masculine energy in business, just not in their relationships.
Margarita shares her diaper story with her husband. Instead of nagging, she let him meet the natural consequences, which was a healthy response.
She also explains how important it is for women not to mother men in relationships, and what men feel as a result: “When you mother him, he feels like a child. When you manage him, he feels like an idiot.” And when you martyr yourself, he feels guilty.
Validating Yourself Instead of Seeking It From Men
Instead of getting validation from men, Margarita encourages validation from yourself. “You need to treat yourself like the person that you love,” she says.
If you wouldn’t skip your pet’s medication, why are you skipping your own care? She points out that most people give their pets medication on time far more reliably than they do for themselves.
Margarita encourages viewers to prove to themselves that they matter by taking care of themselves, because “you’re going to prove to yourself neurologically that you’re worth something.”
Margarita recommends giving yourself what you need when you need it, like drinking water when you’re thirsty and working out when you should, and doing it “every single day until you feel selfish.”
If you’re looking for more inner healing and self-worth practices, Louise Hay’s You Can Heal Your Life is perfect.
Martyring, Boundaries, and Detachment
According to Margarita, martyring in a relationship is self-sacrifice that isn’t asked for, like organizing everything and giving up your own sense of peace without communicating it.
She goes on to explain that “nobody is just a victim,” and there is some element that serves people when they do things no one asked for.
Michael chimes in to say it works on both sides, especially with careers, like the partner who works nonstop and then says, “Look what I’ve done for you.” He even admits he has to catch himself when he’s going too far.
The solution to martyring, Margarita believes, is boundaries and detachment, which means focusing your energy on yourself and what is important to you, or as she puts it, watering your own garden instead of someone else’s.
Why Is Margarita Nazarenko Controversial
Margarita speaks candidly about the backlash she receives. You know we personally love a controversial figure, it means she has a unique point of view so we’re definitely here for it. Some people don’t like what she has to say about feminine energy and the differences between men and women, and some people use the term “mind games” to describe her advice.
She owns it: “I do mind games,” she says, but for her it means letting the chips fall where they may and letting people meet the natural consequences of their own decisions.
When she’s told that some women might find her message “upsetting,” she says to let them be upset, because her goal is for women to win.
Instead, she encourages anyone who gets angry at her content to stop and “examine why this upsets you,” because there is something to be learned from it. As for the hosts, Lauryn says she does the same thing when certain content hits a nerve, and Michael adds his own counterpoint that over-giving happens on both sides, which keeps the conversation balanced.
Margarita Nazarenko on The Bossticks
Margarita joined Michael and Lauryn on The Bossticks to talk about her book Unbothered, anxious attachment, her marriage, and learning to stop chasing and let go of what’s not in your control.
Two highlights stand out. The first is the boring uncle theory, meaning if someone treats you disrespectfully but it’s not that serious, you stay cool and polite. Treat them like the boring uncle at Thanksgiving, say “Oh, yeah, hi, how are you?” and put your attention somewhere else.
The second is why some people confuse intensity with compatibility, and why a secure relationship can feel boring, which may not be such a bad thing.
Watch the full conversation here.
Margarita Nazarenko FAQs
How Old Is Margarita Nazarenko?
She said she was 38 in a September 2026 interview with NewBeauty, which puts her in her late thirties.
Where Is Margarita Nazarenko From?
Margarita grew up with an Eastern European single mom and trained as an actor in London. Currently, she and her husband and two children live in Sydney, Australia.
Does Margarita Nazarenko Have a Podcast?
Yes. She’s the mind behind the women’s confidence and relationship podcast Being Her, which has been featured as a top 25 education podcast in the world.
Where Can I Follow Margarita Nazarenko?
You can find her on Margarita Nazarenko’s TikTok, and Margarita Nazarenko’s official website has all of her socials and more, which is where she points everyone at the end of the episode.
Where to Watch the Full Episode and Keep Exploring Margarita Nazarenko’s Advice
To hear the entire conversation with Margarita Nazarenko about anxious attachment, watch it on The Bossticks YouTube channel and subscribe so you don’t miss future guests like her.
For more conversations like this one, browse the full episode library.
Disclosure: Lauryn and Michael are not therapists or mental, medical, or relationship professionals. The conversations on this show are not a substitute for professional advice. We’re just two normal humans who have our own wounds, biases, and baggage, like the rest of you. While we do our best to fact check and source our advice, always seek the help of a professional for medical, legal, or mental health advice.