Hello gorgeous!
This time I want to talk about human relationship. I'd like to figure things out like why this person behave this way? I always love to learn about this but, this time is a bit different because I watched quite a lot of podcast about human relationships. For instance, Jay Shetty, Stephan Speaks, and Lisa Bilyeu. Of course I don't watch all of their podcast. I choose what I want to watch based on the interviewees. As far as I watched, I'm more to Stephan, Najwa Zebian, Lori Gottlieb, Sadia Khan, and dr. Ramani. Oh I also write a summary that you can find from my highlight on instagram :) and the reason why I wrote that because I might be come to watch the podcast anymore when I feel like I want to but there is a feeling where I think it's tough since the length of videos mostly are 1-2 hours so I decided to make a summary.
Maybe you would think that it is such a waste of time because we could get this kind of knowledge from everywhere. Such as, reels from instagram and tiktok. I admit it because we could get knowledge from everywhere but, learning the conversation from the interviewees who expert on that field is another level. But learning their point of view and experience from watching those podcast are something that you cannot find in anywhere. There will always a story behind their journey and I love to watch where they give an example about how they treat and handle their client with different issue.
I'm more adore in learning this thing since I watch Transit Love. If you like to watch a korean variety show, there is that show called Transit Love where all the exes are gather in one house and noone knows whose x is who. As the episode is going, they tell about their issue in their relationship like the reason why they broken up and do you know what is the exact reason? It was just a trivial things but it matters since it happened over and over again. For example, the man who never give a safety and a clarity to his partner, or different style of communication where the man is a straightforward type and the woman feels like her man like to complain a lot of stuff and makes her look like a small person so it hurts her feeling, and many more.
I always know what I want and I don't want but there are some points that make me questioning myself where I cannot find the answer then I watch their podcast and I got something like, "wow.. so this is how I feel. wow, so I should do this instead of this. wow, so this is how I handle this, or wow, so that's never mind if I feel this way," and many more.
So what are the things that I learn?
Boundaries
As far as I can remember, we create boundary to ourselves to make a limitation to other people that we don't like to be treated this way. Period. But what boundary truly means?
Boundaries are, you are deciding for yourself what you will do, not what the other person will do. It's just realizing what is the trigger really about and then how can you as a partner support that. Boundaries are not to control other people's actions towards you. There to control your own actions based on what others do to you. The important part about boundaries is maintenance. It's not just one time. For example, let's say that you say to someone you know if you yell at me, if you raise your voice, I'm going to end the conversation we had this on the podcast. The father was kept talking to his daughter about when are you going to get married, when are you and your boyfriend going to get married, and she said to him if you bring that up, I'm gonna end the conversation. I'm gonna leave the room because I want to have fun with you when I'm with you and this just makes it really stressful and so every time it had to be in, every time he mentions that, you say, "dad just reminder we'll talk another time" and if you don't do that, if you don't do it consistently, like let's say that you do it 10 times but then one time you let that conversation continue, the person thinks "oh I can still talk about this because they're not going to leave the room." They're not going to end the conversation so again it's what you do you have to hold the boundary every single time for yourself and the other person is going to realize at a certain point if I want to be in that person's presence, I can't bring this up because every single time they're going to leave.
The other thing about boundaries are to bring you closer. There is a sign of closeness because if someone actually learns about your boundaries, they actually are learning about some of the most intimate details about you because if you're saying this triggers me or this makes me feel upset or this really gets to me, you're actually displaying vulnerably something that's so significant and meaningful to you and so it should bring you closer to someone else. It's like that person actually value and respects you so much to actually open up and share with you a weakness or a pain point.
Another definition of boundary from another podcast, boundaries are an invitation. They are saying, "Hey I want to have you in my life and I want to have a good relationship with you and here is a limit that I know I need to preserve from my own mental health, my energy, my time, and my safety. If you will join me in respecting this limit, then our relationship can be trusting, respectful, joyful, and free and if you can't respect this limit, it's going to lead to resentment, dread, anxiety, and mistrust." So boundaries are really about creating freedom in relationships and making them better.
Healthy dating relationship standard
Healthy dating relationship is when you're looking for willingness to show up, willingness to take responsibility, willingness to apologize, and willingness to bring things up and are you willing to hear what the other person has to say. In podcast Lori said about her client, a lot of times when I'm seeing a couple and someone will say "this person never brings things up. I'm less interested." In the fact that they don't bring it up, She's more interested in why, what are you afraid of? why can't you talk to your partner? They might say, "when I have brought things up, my partner tries to talk me out of the way that I feel, when I try to bring things up my partner tries to tell me I'm wrong, when I try to bring things up my partner shuts down, when I try to bring things up my partner yells, and when I try to bring things up my partner acts like they don't like me anymore." so then they say "okay I'm not going to bring things up" Well this is a dance the two of you are doing. It's not just that this person is avoidant, it's that you are inviting the avoidance so no one's to blame here it's just that you guys are doing a dance and you both have to change your dance steps if you want to change the dynamic in the relationship.
Journaling is important
The thing about journaling is no one's judging you. No one's seeing it. It's just for you. The interesting part about journaling is, every writing that you pour into the paper or book, you can watch your progression because you've written it down. I think that journaling is really valuable and it reminds of something that we often say in relationships that "it's easy to notice the person who gets angry in a relationship and harder to notice the person who smiles all the time" so when people say like "oh my partner's angry all the time and well because you're ignoring. That person's holding the anger for both of you. If you journal, you might notice if you're the person who smiles all the time, maybe you have some anger too, or maybe you have trouble bringing something up.
For me journaling's always been a great way of looking back a week ago, a month ago, a year ago, and going what I was thinking about then where was I in my headspace, what was I worried about, and often I found when I've gone and done that you can actually see growth. If you're not journaling every day, you kind of don't know whether you're moving forward or backward because you don't have something to think about.
What did you use to get a person?
I love the conversation from this podcast but I need to recall the guest because I totally forgot. So she said,
What did you show of yourself, what did you display, what was your best behavior, and what I've discovered is that "when your relationship starts like an interview chances are it might end like a firing" because we start with our best behavior, we start with our best performance, we start with "oh look how attractive I am, look how wealthy I am", so if we're using things like money to impress someone what do you think you're attracting? you're attracting someone who's with you because of that particular asset. Now if that asset ever diminishes, if that asset is never accessible to them, if that asset is not something that they get to take part in, now all of a sudden they're not interested. If someone's only with you because of how you look, because that's what you displayed, so you have to ask yourself. Am I displaying what I want someone to be attracted to or am I trying so hard just to attract them? That I'll show them whatever they want to see and so to me when I think about it, I want someone to be attracted to my values. I want someone to be attracted to my purpose. I want someone to be attracted to who I actually am not who they want me to be or who I could be. So I always say to them be so transparent and honest about where you currently are because then if you don't attract that person, you're safe because if you attract them through something you're not, you're going to lose them through Who You Are.
Besides, this is from Stephan Speaks, one is are you even being yourself or can you be yourself with this individual. If you're presenting your representative, then this is not a real connection. This is them falling for that person that you're presenting but that's not real. So to me, you should be already being yourself but with that person you have a connection with. It's a more natural flow. We don't have to force it. We just feel so much more comfortable around them. I think in addition to that is, when you find yourself all caught up in the moment, and caught up in that chemistry. Again, you have to ask yourself. What am I really attaching myself to? What do I really like about this individual? What I find is that when it's really about chemistry we're still on the surface. You don't really know about them yet. You just know you guys had a good time. Maybe you had fun. I think connection is our paths align, our purpose is align, so for us to align, we have to have a deeper understanding of where we're headed and can we head there together so that's why I think though you may feel it or you may feel like you're feeling it, you have to do your due diligence to dig deeper to find out "Okay is this just I got caught up on the surface or there is something real here" and I think once we ask enough questions because I think that's the other big problem, we have this experience where we feel this chemistry we're so excited and now we're afraid to ask questions because we don't want to blow up the fantasy. You know what I'm saying, we're just like no no I want to keep believing this is great so let me not ask anything let me not run this person away, let me not rock the boat, but that's going to be what tells us if this is real or not.
Also anything that is not sustainable is unhealthy. Connecting to the previous topic about showing our true self, this will happened if you're not being yourself. Let me give you an example, I'm a man and I'm meeting this woman. I want to impress her, so I'm like okay I'm gonna try to spend all my money take a nice five-star restaurant all these things but deep inside I prefer a more simple lifestyle. That's unhealthy because you can't sustain what you're presenting to that individual.
We think people change but actually they just start to understand themselves exactly they went from being completely unconscious about who they were you met an unconscious version of a person and now you think they're changing but they just became conscious of who they are.
Why men ghost us and it encourages us to try harder?
It starts with people seeking out validation and it's a pride thing. It eats away at their pride when you reject them. You don't give them what they were hoping for now to feel better about themselves. They go on this pursuit to gain that validation, gain that attention but the crazy thing is for many people once they get it, they'll go back to realizing you just missed the attention. You missed how it made you feel. I think we have to not confuse the fact that it's not simply the mistreatment that keeps them around. It's the high level of "Desire" they have for you despite the mistreatment.
The person who's genuinely ghosting you just ghost you and the guy who's using a tactic he may still throw out some feelers to try to see if you'll stick around. So women have to consider "okay how was this man treating me before this action". If he was treating you poorly before he ghosted you, for example, there's a reason to believe that this is either him just losing interest or it's a tactic if he was treating you amazingly then he ghost you again. It's tricky because it can still be a tactic or it could just be he backed away because he felt like you weren't showing interest. They forget the role they play in building a relationship so essentially they meet this man that they want, they have this mindset of he needs to prove to me that I can give him my time and my energy and she has this kind of wait and see approach but in doing that she's not expressing desire, she's not showing him that she's serious about him.
If a guy is looking for something serious, you pretty much know it from almost day one
For the most part, I think the pursuit of a man who just wants sex is typically going to look a little bit different from the man who wants a relationship because the man who just wants to have fun or something casual, he wants the most for the least basically whatever least amount of effort. I have to give here to still get what I want. That's the goal. Whereas the guy who is serious about you, he's prepared to pour in all the different ways and I think that's why it's so important for women to not only stand in their truth about what they want as far as the seriousness of the relationship but what you need as far as how he shows up in this relationship because the guy who's serious about you. For example, there's an issue for you but in you expressing that issue now, you're going to see where he really stands because if you let a man know how you feel and he dismisses you makes excuses or does not correct the action but continues to pursue you, that's not a man trying to be serious with you. But if he's always making the corrections hearing you out discussing the issues there's much more reason to believe this guy is serious.
How we start to not just dictate it based on how we feel about someone but more about our integrity and how we actually want to show up every day and more have concrete boundaries than just rules depending on how we're feeling?
I think what's important for people to understand is before you start creating rules, you have to make sure that this is this person in alignment with my values and desires because I think that sometimes we're trying to put rules on people who may not fit in your life and it's only going to blow up in your face later. What I mean by that is, let's say I'm a man and I want a woman who doesn't like go out all the time. So if he meets a woman that he really likes and now he enforces this rule on her but deep inside she's a woman that likes to be out, you'll have this woman who will try to accommodate this man's rules but then, go against her true desire and it might work at first but at some point it creates a conflict. This happens in so many marriages in that conflict it's going to come out in different ways. It would either be her not being happy with herself because she felt like she's lost herself, she doesn't know who she is anymore that can lead to her depression, so now that negative energy starts to pour over into the relationship. It may come out in resentment towards him because in her mind, "I'm not allowed to be myself. I'm not allowed to do the things that I like and it's your fault that I can't." She shifting it on to him even though she has to embrace the responsibility. She had in accepting that choice but that's how it may come out and either way whichever way it comes out it starts to deteriorate the relationship.
I always tell people you should not be trying to date people you need to mold. Molding is we're learning how to love each other, how to pour into each other, and it doesn't go against who we truly are as individuals but if molding is changing your character, and making you into something you aren't, this is a recipe for disaster. I just think we have to be careful first discover who this person is as themselves, what kind of rules do they have for themselves, and are those rules for themselves in alignment with who you are, and what you believe now. We have to be honest about do we want to live up to those standards. I think it's so important for women to not fall into the trap of "I really like this guy so let me try to be what he likes" because if it's not who you truly are it's not going to work in the long run.
Manipulative tactics to know that are dangerous warning signs
According to Najwa Zebian podcast, there are 2 things that we should consider when we meet someone new.
When I meet someone new, if they are overly nice for no reason or if they are overly complimentary for no reason, that's a huge red flag because I know me I know I'm a nice person and I know I deserve to be complimented on everything I've been through and everything I've accomplished but, that person still doesn't know that. So what is it that you are trying to get by being overly nice or over complimentary? That's the first thing that goes through my mind. Is this spells danger? because it's a big sign of potential love bombing setting you up for a relationship. That's transactional where it's like, I'm going to offer you so much so that you could feel indebted to me one day or I'm going to offer you so much more than anyone else has ever offered you so that you could look at me always as someone who stood out in that way and I've just given you so much or it could be that they are giving you 100% at the beginning and then they start decreasing that percentage over time bit by bit in very subtle ways and you're at a point at the end where you're like what happened. You used to be so nice, you used to be so kind, so that over nice and kindness and being complimentary for no reason that's a big red flag for me.
Another one is the way I feel in my body. Your body is very important with people so whereas in the past, if I was around a person who represented a familiar pattern from my childhood or from my adult years where I get that feeling of safety as in this is familiar, I know how to navigate even though I can tell it's toxic. My body feels safe because it knows how to survive in an environment like that. Now that I've done the work to tune in to how that familiarity actually feels in my body cause it doesn't feel good to be in the presence of something familiar that's now you're aware is actually toxic, is actually manipulative, is actually narcissistic, is actually abusive. When you are aware, that's what the safety in your body is like. You're like, that's not the safety I want. I want to live a life that's authentic, and to live a life that's authentic, I shouldn't be going toward a definition of safety. That's protective, like I know how to survive this I should be going toward a definition of safety. That's expansive. Like I can be vulnerable, I can fully be myself, and I can feel safe, so now that I recognize that when I meet someone new and I feel that familiarity from the past immediately, I'm like nope. We this familiarity, we know feels like tension in my arms. It feels like I can't breathe properly, like my chest is collapsing. I don't like this feeling and so you know sometimes people say, well how can you trust your body like what if your body's just scared of something that's really good for it? like how can you just say trust your gut when you don't have actual evidence? and this is my answer, the moment you took your first breath in this life, that's how long your body has been with you. Your body remembers things that you don't remember. You don't remember what your body learned but, your body knows so if you're in a situation where your body says we don't feel good, we're agitated, we're feeling un easy or feeling like this is way too overwhelming way too much., you can trust it without having physical evidence.
So this was one of the most mindblowing lessons I learned in therapy and I actually wrote about it in the only constant. I was in a therapy session and I told my therapist I know these relationships that are in my life are toxic, I know they're not good for me, I talk to people about walking away from relationships like this, I know they're not healthy for me, I know I don't feel good, but somehow I choose to stay. Why? and I judge myself, I can't sleep at night, I wake up in the morning, and I'm like, I can't believe I'm still keeping those bonds in my life. She goes to me, have you considered that your body also has a choice? and I was like what? Your body can make a choice just like your mind does so maybe your mind knows that you need to leave or that you need to end these relationships and cut these cords and these bonds but your body is like, I'm protecting myself by not walking away because your body thinks that if I walk away, what's happening is you're pushing the limits of your survival mode and your body's like that's danger. It's what happens when you feel like you really want to physically get up and open the door and walk away but, you feel like you're sinking into the couch. It's because maybe when you were younger you learned about unconditional loyalty in relationships. No matter what happens, you stay. Maybe you saw your parents go through a cycle like that so you learn that leaving is extremely dangerous so even though your mind knows it's the best thing for you, your body's trying to protect you and it shuts down. It's really about changing what your body's familiar is and you use the word comfortable like maybe your body's comfortable. If you ask it what that familiarity feels like sitting in a toxic environment that you know how to navigate, you know that you need to be quiet at certain points, you know that you need to reward something so that they don't get defensive or whatever that's familiar to your body and it's it's a way those are strategies to protect yourself. But if you ask yourself how does this feel really it's not comfortable? it's extremely uncomfortable because you're you're fighting with yourself like your body's like shaking sometimes or you're just pushing down what you really want to say or the life that you really want to live. It's extremely uncomfortable. I always ask people this question I say, "What was your snapping point? What was the moment you just you got up and you left?" I ask this all the time because people know for a long time before they're going to end a relationship or before they cut a bond they have with a family member or they just they know for a long time and they feel stuck and they feel like they just can't move forward with it. It's too scary. But then there's always that one little event that happens and it's like the blurry thing that was in front of them just disappears and they see things clearly and they're like, that's it. I'm done and they never look back. It's interesting how in a moment like that everything flashes before your eyes. It's like, you look back at yourself and you say how did I accept that. Like, I right now don't accept that and I feel like every version of me that existed in that relationship also didn't accept that but I somehow convinced myself that it was okay for me to accept that or there was no other option I had to and it's it's a truth because if what's more important for you is to keep the relationship, you're going to lower your standards.
You're going to overlook so many things and if you are with a manipulative person, the littlest grievance that you bring up isn't met with openness, acceptance, and willingness to understand your feelings, and sit with you in those feelings. It's usually met with either defensiveness or they're blaming you for your own feelings or for bringing something up or if you're not happy just leave and so you know if you bring something up, there's going to be the threat that this relationship will end so give yourself compassion and say, "my intention wasn't to be manipulated. My intention wasn't to be lied to. My intention wasn't to be put in a position where I have to choose between myself worth and what I deserve and staying in this relationship." I think a big part of what you're saying is you've put words and language to all the things that had happened.
It's okay to feel your emotion
There are a lot of times when you hold your emotion just because you don't want to be seen as vulnerable. For example, in Najwa podcast, there are a lot of times women said something, "I let my man does everything. I won't get mad." Maybe you won't get mad. Or maybe you feel sad, upset, or confused, and that's perfectly okay. If he's a good partner, you can talk a lot things to him without any hesitations and he would said "I'm so sorry that you feel this way."
It's okay to say he's not the right person eventhough he's nice and kind
Trust me, be nice and be kind are just bare minumum in relationship. There are many aspects that we have to look deep in relationship to make it work.
It always starts with self, and you have to be honest with yourself about why are you still here, why are you holding on, what's really driving you, because just use an example let's say you're a woman and the only reason why you're holding on to this guy is because he's a nice guy. You don't feel like starting the process over with somebody else so even though you're not feeling it with him, you figure "let me try to make it work." You're wasting your time. This is where you're setting yourself up for disaster every single time. If it's not born out of a true connection, love, a genuine desire, you really like this individual of course there's always things we have to work through but is the foundation strong enough for us to say "okay we can make something special here". I think once we are honest with ourselves that kind of helps answer the question because sometimes we get so caught up trying to analyze the other individual that is like we get in our heads and now we're missing the mark on what's really important here and we can't always say for sure what's going on with them.
I will say that in general if this person isn't willing to talk about things they're wasting your time, if they're not willing to address or correct things that have been talked about they're wasting your time, if you guys aren't on the same page about what you want and where you want to go in life wasting time, so there are some things I think we can just look at and say listen this is pointless here but a lot of times and I have to say this especially for women.
Women's intuition is extremely powerful. I'm a huge believer in it and I feel like women know very early this isn't it but they rationalize reasons to convince themselves to give this man a chance and this again is a waste of time because it just doesn't work.
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