Rethinking Relationships

This week we are discussing how we can improve our relationships. How we relate to others starts with how we think about ourselves. Focusing on improving the quality of our thinking as it pertains to our own experience allows us to show up more fully in connection with others. It also helps us determine whether a relationship is worth continuing to cultivate.         

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Transcript

 Hey, besties, how are you? I am good, and I'm super excited about today's topic. Today we are talking about relationships. I have talked a lot about different aspects of relationships and ways to navigate relationships with boundaries and people-pleasing, but I've never really talked about it what I believe relationships are and what I believe the key to having better relationships is. I wanted to talk about this today because I feel like a lot of the conversations I'm having with people in my life surround the relationships they have with others.

Perfect example is the friend I mentioned last week and her wanting recognition from other people. That is about her relationship with other people, but it's also about her relationship with herself. So we are going to talk about both today because when it comes down to it, they are the same thing.

There is no difference in definition for the way we relate to ourselves versus how we relate to others. Now you might be wondering how that can be possible, but it is possible because every relationship in our lives, including the one we have with ourselves, is based on the experience we are having of that thing.

And all of that is based on the way we are thinking about those things. Our relationship with something is just our thoughts about the thing. If you currently have a bad relationship with something or someone, you can improve that relationship by changing your thoughts, and this is where things get interesting because in order to do this, you have to be willing to reexamine some of the things that you think are just facts, but which are in reality, just your interpretation of that, and in fact, there are very few actual indisputable facts present in most situations. Our lives are mostly made up of the stories we tell ourselves about things, but we think that we're just reporting the truth. There is no real objective truth. 

I was listening to the most recent episode of Your Wrong About and the way the New York Times has been reporting on trans issues in recent years, and first of all, it's absolutely abysmal. Whether they're attempting to be harmful to trans people or not, it certainly is what's happening. So go listen to that because that's wildly eye-opening. But one of the things that stood out to me was Tuck Woodstock, who was Sarah's guest, pointed out how objectivity is handled in journalism versus other fields.

Sarah was saying that in journalism, often the journalist believes they are an objective witness just reporting the Capital T truth. But Tuck offered a quote about how in qualitative research, It is expected that the researcher understands that their beliefs and experiences will color their analysis, and that's covered by stating their positionality, not by trying to hide behind it being objective. So they're just upfront saying like, this is the position I'm taking on this, and I understand that that's going to inform the results and the analysis that I'm doing here. 

And I believe that this is the biggest issue with how most people live in general, but especially with how they behave in relation to themselves and with others. So if we start with our relationship with ourselves, we can do an inventory on the most common thoughts we think about ourselves every day. What do you think about you? What we think about ourselves really impacts the way we show up in the world. A perfect example of this comes from. My dance teaching where I would've students label themselves right as good at certain things and not good at others.

So the most common being that there was this binary between being either a good turner or a good jumper. It is true. You may feel better doing one or excel at one compared to other people, but when you believe you are not a turner, What are you basing that on? Because there is no fact in just the statement, I am not a good turner.

What information are you using to make that conclusion? Have you never been able to do a pirouette? How long have you been trying to do pirouettes? Is it that you can only consistently do a double and you wanna be able to do six and someone else can do six, but you can't do six? But here's the thing, because of that trash relationship with themselves, I'd see kids psych themselves out and never learn how to be consistent at any number of turns, which just confirms their belief that they're not a turner.

So it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, and this is the problem with thinking that we just know something about ourselves and that it's a hard fact. When we're just basing it on really subjective things, and this isn't just about ability, it's also about behaviors and emotions. I follow a lot of like queer creators and accounts on Instagram, and this is an interesting example, but the topic of open relationships and polyamory comes up a lot and I see all the time comments in judgment of others.

Who are in polyamorous relationships with statements like, oh, I could never do that. I'm a jealous person. You're not a jealous person. No one's a jealous person. You are a person that experiences jealousy like all people. But the difference is, is that you don't wanna learn how to process that feeling.

You don't enjoy feeling jealousy, and you think jealousy is just happening to you because of somebody else's behavior. But that's not why jealousy is happening. You're feeling jealous because humans feel jealous and people feel jealous because of the thoughts that they're thinking about the behaviors.

Of other people, the behavior isn't causing your jealousy. And I wanna state that it's fine to not want to have to like navigate the emotions, right? And the difficulty and complexity of an open relationship or polyamory. But I would also posit that like monogamy is not. Necessarily the like easiest relationship form either, like it's, it's, there's going to be difficulty in every relationship and there's going to be benefits in every relationship style.

So this is not to have an opinion about one being better than the other. It's just to say you cannot like exempt yourself from an experience of an emotion just because you decide not to participate in a certain type of relationship. And again, no one has to want to deal with that type of relationship.

But if you're in a monogamous relationship because you think that you won't have to worry or deal with jealousy, I will offer that. Like the commitment is just an illusion there. We never know what people are actually doing, and we see that in the majority of relationships, infidelity is happening.

People just don't know about it. So jealousy can still come up and I offer that it might come up more because if your monogamy is based on fear, and I'm talking about fear of emotions, fear of feeling bad, right? Like that, that. That you're gonna see your partner with someone else, and you're gonna have bad feelings about it instead of just a mutual respect for each other, right?

You're just asking someone to obey rules that you've placed on their body so that you don't have to feel bad. And again, if we go back to these thoughts about ourselves and our relationships with ourselves, if we went with your label of you being a jealous person, Right then that would mean that you experience jealousy all the time everywhere and every aspect of your life, and not just romantic relationships.

So I would offer that like you again, are a person who experiences jealousy, and a lot of the reason you're experiencing jealousy is because of the way that you have been conditioned to think about relationships and intimacy and what's appropriate and not appropriate. Within and without those kinds of relationships.

But anyway, in this instance, Your relationship with yourself is impacting your relationships with others, because if you believe that you're a jealous person and you cannot help or control your jealousy, then you get to show up in whatever way you feel is appropriate to soothe your jealousy, including trying to control the behaviors of other grown adults.

And this is different than having boundaries and agreements with people. A boundary means that there is a communicated consequence. In this case of a relationship that is based on monogamy. If you don't wanna be in a relationship that includes infidelity, then you can state that and also state that it would mean an end to the relationship should it happen, versus, I don't want you talking to anyone you might be attracted to because I feel things I don't like feeling and I am making you responsible for my emotions.

So that's one way in which our beliefs about ourselves right, can then dictate. The kinds of relationships we're in with our romantic partners and how we show up and how we expect that they're gonna show up and what we're gonna make all of that mean about us and about them. So now let's talk about our thoughts about other people.

If you have a difficult relationship with someone, it's because of your thoughts about that person. First of all, why are you defining it as difficult? I had a client once who hated that her partner yelled. She had all these thoughts about the kind of person that he was and what it meant about her, that she was with him because of the kind of person he was right now.

We could nitpick and question if he was actually yelling or not, because what she calls yelling, someone else might not call yelling, but I didn't find that useful here. But that is one of the. Things to examine, like that is a place that is worth examining at times. But here, what was useful was her exploring how other people experienced him.

So one time she got really upset on, on behalf of his sister, right? Like she was upset for her. Because he was yelling at her and she didn't think that he should be yelling at his sister. But when she explored it, she could see that his sister didn't really seem to be as bothered by it, and it was just kind of like, oh, that's just how he is.

And it didn't really phase her. And why this was so helpful is because in seeing this, it gave her agency. To decide how she wanted to think about his behavior. She realized that she didn't need to change him because she saw another person have different thoughts about it, and that this wasn't like a universally agreed upon bad thing that he just does, but it is something she didn't like.

And she did wanna set a boundary around it. So when we're willing to reexamine what we think we know about people, it really does give us our power back. Realizing that our read on people is not the objective truth gives us so much of our lives back. She could stop trying to figure out if he was a good or a bad person or whether or not she was fucked up for staying in the relationship, and she could stop looking for a consensus outside of herself and just decide what behavior was okay with her and what wasn't and what she wanted to do about it.

Another example is thinking that someone is like constantly frustrating you or annoying you or upsetting you, when in reality it's you frustrating yourself with your thoughts. I've talked before about our manuals for others, right? And how we hang our emotional wellbeing on whether or not people are showing up in the way we think that they should.

Well, when someone continues to show up in a way that you think they shouldn't, you get upset because you tell yourself they should not be doing that thing. It's like the yelling example she was saying he shouldn't be yelling. That was a manual she had for him. She thought he should be different. So like say that your boss regularly compliments your coworker and you get mad because you want her to compliment you, that you work just as hard.

Maybe you work harder, right? You can see how your frustration or your anger is coming from the belief that someone else should be different in that moment. Or another example, your mother comes and cleans things in your house, and you make it mean that she thinks that you don't do a good enough job cleaning.

Now, maybe she does think that, but she's also allowed to think that you might have different standards. But when you think that she should just be showing up and praising you, then notice how you're probably not appreciating that she's cleaning your fucking house for you, right? Like who cares what she thinks?

One less thing for you to do. Like for me? Yeah. My stove is not clean. I hate cleaning my fucking stove, and my mom does a better job of it, so. So what if your mom comes and does things for you and maybe she complains about it, or maybe she says things that you think are like little jabs at you. My mother does not do this actually.

She loves coming and doing stuff for us. She loves to do stuff for her children. She is great. But if this is your dynamic, this is where your relationship with yourself might come into play. If you are already telling yourself that you're failing by not being able to do all the badass shit that you're doing and being able to keep a clean, immaculate house.

Then you're gonna be mad that she comes and cleans because in your eyes, it's just confirming your own shitty thoughts about yourself. So can you see how our relationship with ourselves really does impact the relationships that we have with other people at times? Here is where the work of improving these relationships happens.

What do you want to decide about yourself? What thoughts do you want to think about yourself on purpose? What thoughts do you want to choose to have about other people? Brene Brown wants posed the question of what is the most generous assumption that I can make about another person, or that I can make about the person in this situation?

Something like that. So I like to go there where I'm considering my relationships that I find difficult often. The most generous assumption that I can make is that they're doing the best they can with the tools they have. And I don't mean this in like a judgmental way, that like I'm better than them, but just that like we have different tools and we have different access to different tools, right?

So there are people in my life that I want to go to therapy cuz I am tired of taking on the extra labor. But in the absence of them choosing this, I accept that they cannot show up any differently. And if I want to preserve my energy, then I can limit my interactions with them without needing them to change.

And if I do choose to be around them, then I am making the choice to do the work to be around them. And I also don't need to try to do it perfectly because that was another thing that I used to do to myself is say like, well, this person's not gonna change, but then I need to be perfect in the situation.

That's just not true, and it's no one else's responsibility to create the experience I want to have, but me. So I am going to look at, okay, what do I need to be thinking about both myself and this other person in this situation? And that's gonna help me show up the way that I wanna show up and continue to have a relationship with that person.

Without me requiring them to be any different or for me to decide in other circumstances that I might not wanna continue to have a relationship with someone. My client I was talking about before, she's no longer with that person, so she eventually decided that there were behaviors that she no longer wanted to tolerate, but it didn't have to mean anything about him overall as a person.

He didn't have to be a bad person in order for her to make that decision. And we've talked about this before in terms of breakups. Like we don't have to make someone horrible. And Detestable to decide that we're no longer interested in investing in whatever it takes for us to be in that relationship.

So what is the most generous assumption you can make about yourself? I want to do an episode on affirmations and why I don't think that they work, but for now I wanna say that we can change the way we are thinking about ourselves with some compassion. That feeling of curious compassion I have when I meet with a client can go a long way when applied to myself and to others outside of my work.

So this is how we can. Improve the quality of our relationships, and also use this as a gauge for the kinds of relationships we wanna enter into from the get-go. When we can start to choose how we wanna see people and what we're gonna be willing to invest in when we meet them and start building that relationship and how we can.

Work toward being more accepting of exactly who people are and accepting who people are doesn't mean that we condone their behavior. It just means that we're not going to expect them to be any different than they already are. And when we free ourselves from expecting them to be different than they already are, it again frees us up to make better choices about what's right for us in our lives.

So I hope that this helps you think a little bit more about the types of relationships you wanna have with both yourself and the people in your life. Have a great week, friends Talk soon.