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What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today we are going to talk about self respect. So this episode is probably going to piss some people off, and that's okay, but I was with a teammate just literally 10 minutes ago, and I was on my way to record a podcast in my office, and I completely trashed the podcast because I was like, this is way more on my mind. This is something I feel much more passionate about, which is that person is going through a breakup. And going through a breakup sucks. I know that. And as they were talking about the situation, I said, you know, hey, I can relate. I've been through situations with family, friends, past breakups, et cetera. You know, one question that's always helped me a lot to get through things is to ask myself this one thing, which is, does being with this person make me respect myself more or less? Now, I know that that is not. That's contrary to what a lot of people say in current culture. I do not believe that there's any such thing as a toxic person. I only believe that there's you. And you either choose to stay in a situation that makes you lose respect for yourself, or you choose to leave a situation that makes you lose respect for yourself. So I get a question like this pretty much constantly, which is, people are asking me, should I stay in my job? Should I stay in this relationship? Should I stay in this friendship? What should I do with my family? What should I do with my friends? And I never actually know what to tell them because I. I don't know their partner, I don't know their family member, I don't know their, you know, relationship. I don't know their friends, and I certainly don't know their specific situation enough to gather from an Instagram dm. But I do know that most people are just asking the wrong question entirely because they're asking the question, is this person good or bad for me? When they should be asking the question, do I like who I'm becoming in this relationship? And that is a totally different question. And I think this is what changes everything for you. So what I want to do is I want to give you a framework. Not so I can, you know, tell you what to do in your relationships, but so that you can figure that out for yourself and you can actually feel confident about the decisions that you're making about who you keep in your life. So first, let me just really explain this to you by painting a picture. So you probably know a couple like this. In fact, you might actually be this couple, or you Might know many couples like this, right? It's like, every. Everything's really good for a few weeks, maybe even, like a couple months. And then, boom, something happens. Maybe it's like, oh, he forgot to text back. He went out late with his friends. She went to the bar, she made a comment about his friend, whatever the fuck it is. And then there's a fight, and it gets really bad. And then someone, you know, drives around for an hour. Maybe they, you know, separate ways, like, I'm going to my house, or you sleep on the couch, or whatever it is. And then literally two days later, there's a makeup, things are good again. It's passionate. And then they're like, we're back. Everything's fine. It wasn't that big of a deal. But if we, like, zoom out of this, did anything actually get fixed, or did you just stop fighting? It's literally like. I call this the doom loop, which is like, you basically fight, you make up, pretend it's fine, and then repeat without having learned anything. And what eventually happens is the gap between those fights get shorter and shorter every time. And so maybe it used to be a couple months, maybe even every few weeks. And then suddenly it becomes like, every week, why are we fighting about dishes every night at 11pm why is it that we're fighting about you being with your friends every week when you do something? And the crazy part is that both people that are in the doom loop swear up and down that they have talked about it, that they have communicated. But let's be really honest. Most people don't actually communicate. They vent, they cry, they emotionally vomit on each other. But talking is not the same as changed behavior and communicating. We communicate so that we can change our behavior or we can express our preferences. And so if the behavior doesn't change and you continue to do this loop, then that means the conversation didn't work, meaning you didn't communicate effectively. So I understand I'm probably gonna lose some of you here, but if your partner. And guys, I'm putting a caveat on here, which is like, absolutely, like, dangerous, toxic, violent. I'm not speaking to that. That is a completely different category. But if your partner treats you in a way you don't like, that is not violent or demoralizing. You probably trained them to do that. Now, this is not something we do on purpose. But every time they did something and then you stayed around, that was a lesson that you taught them. You taught them, this is acceptable. I will complain, but I won't leave. So you can Keep doing it. So think about this, right? It's like in the beginning of every relationship, everybody's on their best behavior. It's like they're getting dressed up for date nights. They're being thoughtful. They're paying attention to each other. They're getting romantic. It's like all the things and all the wonderful, beautiful, sloppy emotions, and you forget about everything and you're so immersed in that person, right? And then slowly, over time, it's like one person first starts to test the boundaries, right? Maybe it's like, okay, stop planning date nights. We just go to. I don't know, we just go somewhere else and grab something casual. We stop dressing up for each other. And then basically what happens is you accept a little less, then a little less and a little less, and then suddenly the standard is literally the bottom fucking floor of the elevator. And the thing is, this goes both ways. So like, maybe, you know, the girlfriend stopped doing stuff, and then maybe he stopped doing stuff, too, and then he accepted it. And then they both trained each other to essentially do the bare minimum to keep the relationship. So what you end up with is two people that are doing the bare minimum possible to keep the relationship with the other person. Sucks, right? So here's the reframe for this. Changed how I think about all this, okay? One, that guy who doesn't like planning dates, there's for sure a woman out there who hates planned dates. She wants spontaneous and she would fucking love him. And then for the girl who never dresses up, there's a guy who doesn't care about that stuff at all. He just wants her in, you know, hoodie sweatpants, watching movies on the couch. And so the wrong person for you is probably the right person for someone else. So it's like, they're not broken. You're not broken. It's just not a fit. We don't need to call them toxic. We can just say, it's just not a fit, it just didn't work out. But instead of accepting that in so many of these situations, instead we stay and we try to change the person, and then we complain to our friends. We read articles about people who are narcissists and they have toxic traits. And we do every single fucking thing except the obvious one, which is acknowledge that maybe this isn't my person. And now why is that, right? Because usually we didn't even think about what we wanted in the first place. For real. Most people put more thought into what they fucking order at Chipotle than they do into choosing their life. Partner. They just like end up with somebody. Like, they just, it's literally just like they're dating and then suddenly they're exclusive and then suddenly they're living together and one day they're like, oh, I guess we should get married. And then one day they're married and they're like, how the fuck did I get here? They had no forethought, they didn't think about it. There was no strategy and there was no clarity on what actually mattered to them. It was just like, oh, it was convenient. It was the next best person I was dating, whatever it might be. So I want to offer you guys a frame to think this stuff through instead of, is this person good or bad? We are going to ask ourselves, does this relationship make me respect myself more or less? It's not, do I love them? It's not, are they a good person? It's do you respect yourself more for being in that relationship? Because at the end of the day, you are the last person with yourself before you close your eyes at the end of the day. And when you're lying in bed at night alone with your fucking thoughts, how do you feel about the person that you're becoming? So there's a few questions that you can sit with, right? One, what makes you gain or lose respect for yourself in general? Like, think about this relationship. Agnostic. When do you feel proud of yourself? When do you feel like you're a fraud? Good questions to ask and you want to get clear on that first. Like, what are the things that build your self respect for yourself? Like, you do this and you're like, I respect myself for doing that. And when do you do things that make you feel like, gosh, I don't respect myself for doing that. I don't feel great when I do that. Write them down. Like, it is so good to write them down. Because there's some things that you just do inherently every day that it's just like a little chip, chip away at the self respect tank and you don't even realize you're doing it now. Now you can look at your relationship through that lens, right? And a good question to ask is, if your friend was in this exact relationship, would you respect your friend more or less for staying pretend it's not you? What would you honestly think if they were in your situation? It's a great frame to ask through. And then the last question I would ask is, does your partner, friend, spouse, whatever it might be, make it easier or harder for you to be the person you want to be? Not the person you are today, but the person you want to be, you desire to be, you're working towards being. This is like one of the biggest questions that you can ask yourself because, like, is that person in your corner? Do they actually fucking want you to win? Or are they, like, low key, trying to keep you fucking small because you threaten them by growing, right? Like, for me, it was so important to me. I had so many, you know, what I will say is, like, good relationships before my husband, but nobody wanted me to go as big as possible, you know? And then I met my husband, and it's like, he was not intimidated by my ambition. Instead, he was fueling it. And that made me respect myself more. And I do the same thing for him. And that's just like, part of the game. That's why our relationship works well. That's why I value it so much, is because it makes me better, not worse. It makes me more of the person I want to be, not less of the person I want to be. So as you're listening to this, I'm sure that now you're like, okay, I get it, I get the frame. How do you audit this? Like, how do you look at different areas of your life and honestly assess yourself? Has being in this relationship made you know, you know, each one of you better or worse? Honestly? This is something one of my first mentors did, basically said, look at your stats. So there's health, money, happiness, career, friendships, perception. Let's just say those are things, right? You can also add in spirituality, family, whatever you want. I'm just. There's a million that we could go for, but these are ones we're going to start with. Health. Are you taking better or worse care of yourself? Did you gain weight? Did you stop working out? Did you start stress eating? Did you get healthier because they inspire you? Money? Are you more financially stable? Are you building more wealth? Or are you more stressed about money and spending more than you should and not hitting your goals because of things that they want to do? Happiness, probably the simplest. Are you happier with this person than you are alone? Career. Are they supporting your career ambitions? Or do they make you feel guilty for working? Do they celebrate your wins, friendships? Do you see your friends more or less? Have you lost relationships because of this person? Or do they encourage you to have friends? Do they set up dinners and lunches? Now, the key is here, is like, you probably value a couple of these areas more than others. You need to start with the ones that matter the most to you. What is most important to you right now in your life, Is it your career? Is it your health? Is it your happiness? Is it your friendships? It's different for everybody, and that's totally fine. But you wanna start with the ones that are actually most important to you so that you can prioritize what that person has influence over. And that's because, you know, not everybody cares about these all equally, and that's fine. But if the relationship is helping the things you care about most, that's fucking great. That's a good thing. Now, if it's hurting them, that's probably a problem that you want to take care of right now. The one thing I will say is this for some context. Before you go around and you're, like, blowing up your relationships or just cutting people off, I just want to say, like, there are seasons to everything. So, like, there will be times where your partner might be heads down on a project, which maybe it's themselves, maybe it's in the work, whatever it might be, and you barely see them, or it might be opposite and you're barely available. And, like, that does not mean the relationship is broken, right? For example, you know, when Alex is writing a book, I will not see him for months. You know, he's up super early, working all day, he's fucking tired by dinner, and I could make it mean that something's wrong. He's not supporting me, he's not there for me, he's not helping my happiness. Or I could say it's a season and he told me his goals, I'm going to support him, and we're good, and the opposite is true. Like, there are seasons. Like, this last quarter, I hired six executives. And I'm like, listen, when I'm onboarding people and going through this, like, it's a different season for me. I'm trying to get them up and onboard, and I'm trying to fix my health, which has been something I struggle with this year. And so the problem isn't seasons, the problems and people don't communicate about them. You know, like, Alex always knows what season I'm in. I'm like, listen, the most important thing to me right now is my health. Because if I can get my health in order, everything else is easy. Business is easy, friendships are easy. Marriage is easy if my health is dialed. And so that is my number one priority. But if I were to just, like, disappear and I don't tell him what's going on, then he's gonna feel resentful. He might feel neglected. But if I say, hey, I'M just sprinting to fix my health for the next three months. Here's what that means. I just wanna give you a heads up. It's like a totally different dynamic. And so I say all this because, like, you have to talk about the relationship, not just in the relationship. And most people never zoom out. They're always reacting to each other all day. They're never stepping back to say, like, how are we doing? What's working, what's not, here's what I'm doing that's going to affect the relationship. Last thing, I think that most relationship problems come from unexpressed expectations. Like you have this entire picture in your head of what you want and your partner has no fucking idea. And then you're mad when they don't actually deliver on something that they never fucking agreed to. And so the first step in relationships is tell them what you want. Here's what's important to me in a relationship. Can you commit to that? Is that important to you too? Guys? It's one question. Most people don't ask it because they just. The cost of the discomfort of asking a heavy question is worse to them than the cost of not getting a relationship they want. Like, they're just constantly trading short term comfort for long term dysfunction in a relationship. You can't do that. If you want a great relationship, you're going to have a lot more present day short discomforts than you are long term dysfunction. But you have to make the trade now. The second step is to learn the difference between expectations and preferences. Okay, an expectation is saying that you're like, this is a deal breaker. If this is not something that we are expecting of each other in this relationship, then this relationship doesn't work for me. And there should only be a few of those. And they should be very clear, like, you know, hey, if you cheat on me, we break up. If you, you know, harm somebody or do harm to people, like we break up, like stuff like that, right? That's an expectation. And some of you are hearing this and you're like, well, that's obvious. Not really. Not really. Not in the world we live in. So you should say those things up front. Whereas a preference is, I would like it if you did this. I would prefer if you did this. You don't have to, but it would be nice. It would delight me. I think of it like Target has. It's full. When I go into Target, it's full of things I would love to buy. I'd prefer to buy. It would be delightful to buy this Thing from. But, like, I don't need it. It's not an expectation. I don't need it in my house every day. And I think the issue is that a lot of people treat every preference like an expectation. And then they're like, why am I constantly disappointed, right? I think that you want to have few preferences and few expectations in a relationship, right? There's, you know, I prefer that Alex does certain things for sure, and sometimes he does and sometimes he doesn't. And I'm not going to be in a bad mood all day and like, stomp my feet on the floor and be like, he's not a good husband because he left his clothes on the floor. Because that's a preference for me, not a standard, right? And so I would say, like, save hard lines and expectations for things that actually fucking matter and move the needle in your relationship. Not just things that are nagging, irritating, like low level, like buzzing, annoyance. There's no point trying to put that on a person. Like, you are not trying to control another person. You are trying to build a life with them. So, look, all this to say this episode is not meant to tell you, hey, you need to stay or you need to go in this relationship. Like, I do not know your life and I don't have context on it. But I will tell you this, and I've seen this time and time again, this frame has helped. If you are constantly losing respect for yourself, constantly feeling worse about the person you're becoming, and constantly shrinking your life rather than expanding it, that is not sustainable. And blaming the other person is not going to help you either because they're not doing this to you. You are choosing to stay. So you either you choose differently or you stop complaining. Right? Because the question is not, is my partner toxic? The question is, does staying make me respect myself more or less. And if you can answer that with total honesty, you will know what to do next.