- How do you know it's time
to end the relationship? If you've ever been through a rocky period in a relationship, you know that this is the most painful question to answer for yourself. Do you stick it out? Do you cut the cord and run? Do you sacrifice more and
more hoping it will work? Or do you demand that your
partner give away everything and run away to Fiji with you
to live happily ever after? These are the hard questions that we're gonna try to answer today. And to help us out, I'm gonna be roasting a fan relationship. I'm gonna be going over
five real world examples sent in by you guys, fans and listeners who have been struggling with their relationships. And I'm gonna share the three questions that I believe we need
to all ask ourselves to figure out if it's time to break up, or if we should stick it out longer. So get your hot sauce ready because this one's gonna get a little bit spicy and dramatic. Maybe even have your
partner join in for it it could be fun, or it
could ruin your marriage. Either way, there's only
one way to find out. - [Narrator] The podcast
that's saving the world one fewer at a fuck at a time. It's "The Subtle Art of
Not Giving a Fuck" podcast with your host, Mark Manson. - So in this episode, we are going to confront the perennial question, the question that everybody runs to at some point in their life, which is, should I stay or should I go? See here at Mark Manson Industries, we receive hundreds if not thousands of questions each month. We decided to take
buckets of these questions and turn 'em into themes
for podcast episodes. So Drew's gonna read
off the questions to me, and in each situation I'm
gonna give my opinion, is it gonna work out or do I
think they should break up? And while we're going through this, I'm gonna focus in on
three fundamental questions that I think every couple needs to ask themselves when they're
going through hard times. The answer to these three
questions will help you determine whether the relationship is salvageable or whether it's a total dumpster fire. Without further ado, Drew - Mark Manson Industries. I like that. - Surprise every day. You, you didn't even know, did you? - I didn't even know that's where I was employed, all right. - [Mark] We got a studio lot. We got trailers, the whole nine yards. - What the fuck, I don't got a trailer. All right, so the first question, dear Mark, my marriage is not healthy. It's not one-sided either. I know I have issues I need to work on. Specifically defensiveness
when my wife triggers me. My wife is mean when she gets upset and is unapologetic about it. For example, instead of saying, "You hurt my feelings," she'll say, "you hurt
my feelings you jerk. How can you be so dense? You're such an asshole." - Okay, we're off to a good start. - It gets better. If I bring up that her name
calling hurt my feelings and she didn't need the attacks. She just says, "Well you're being
dense," with no apology. I've been through multiple
personal therapists and several of your courses. We went to couples therapy, but she thought it was a
waste of time and money, since when I call time out, she doesn't give it to me. I feel like I should leave. Now my problem is, I keep
reading things like Gottman's, "Your partner is reacting to how you act." Or even the Buddhist, "You create the world around you." So I wonder, what am I doing to cause my wife to be so abjectly and unapologetically mean to me? This has been going on so long and has been so damaging that
my family is worried about me and wants me to get out
of the relationship. I've lost a couple of jobs and my depression has come
back with a vengeance. What do I do? - Geez. - Losing jobs, family
coming in, everything. We got the whole thing here. - The whole support network
is calling it SOS right now, sending up flare signals and this dude is blaming himself. It's funny, whenever you
see like really toxic relationships, there's a very repeatable dynamic that happens over and over. There's always one person
who no matter what happens, it's not their fault, it's your fault. And then there's one person
who no matter what happens, it's not your fault, it's my fault. And these people tend to find each other and stick together for quite a while. And so there's just kind of
this unidirectional blame. Nothing actually ever gets better because to improve a relationship, you actually need two people fundamentally working on themselves and working on the
relationships simultaneously. So the thing that jumps out here, and this dovetails perfectly with the first question I think everybody should ask themselves, are both people equally
aware of the problem and equally putting an
effort to fix the problem? If the answer is no, then you're fucked. There's not really anything you can do. And in this situation, it sounds like the wife is taking zero
responsibility for her own behavior, and she's turning everything around and blaming it on him. And it sounds like this
guy has a propensity to kind of make it about him too. So now, whenever I say this to people, this is where you get the classic like, whoa, but she wasn't always like this, or maybe she'll change or you know, she's just going through a hard time or whatever. And there's a lot of
excuse making that happens. There's a lot of enabling and justifying. And the fact of the matter is, if somebody doesn't wanna change, you can't make 'em change. And you're crazy to sit around and wait for them to change. And people don't like hearing that, especially in these situations where there's one person in
a relationship who's like, I'm gonna fix this, I'm
gonna do whatever it takes. And then there's another
person who's like, this is all your fault
motherfucker I'm perfect. You can't force somebody
to take a perspective they don't have. You can't force somebody to take actions they don't wanna take, you can't force somebody
to change behaviors that they don't wanna change. And so if you're stuck in this situation, and it sounds like this guy has been stuck in this
situation for a long time, repercussions in his professional life, there's repercussions in his family life, fucking family members are
reaching out to him being like, dude, you should get out of there. I would take that as a
pretty telltale sign. - I will say, I'll give him
points for taking responsibility for his defensiveness as he says it. What is the line though, do you think, between taking responsibility here and just being codependent and taking on all of the blame? - That's a great question and it's hard to tell from
just an email like this, right? Like on the one hand he is
taking responsibility for it. On the other hand, the way it was phrased was kinda weird, which is like, I'm also
part of the problem because I get defensive
when my wife is a bitch. And it's like, well wait a second, we all get defensive sometimes and we all get triggered sometimes. And we all say things
that are disrespectful that we kind of regret. What matters is how we
react to those situations. So I'll take my own marriage
as an example, right? This actually happened a week or two ago. I was in a crap mood. My wife came into the office, she started to tell me something and I just made like a
very sarcastic remark. And it was one of those things where like in my head it didn't sound that bad, but when it, as soon as
it came outta my mouth, I was like, Ooh, I'm an asshole. I shouldn't have said that. And she got pretty off at me and she was like, wow, okay. And kind of told me off and stormed outta the office and sure enough, like an hour went by. I am like, wow, I should
not have said that, I'm such a dick. So later in the day I went up to her and I apologized. I was like really sorry
that was uncalled for. I didn't mean it to sound like that. You know, et cetera, et cetera. We all make mistakes in relationships. We all get emotional,
we all get triggered. We all say things that we don't mean or that they don't come out right. We're all occasionally disrespectful when we don't mean to be disrespectful. That's just being human. What matters is how you
compensate for that afterwards. Do you admit fault? Do you admit mistake? Do you apologize? Do you forgive? If you're able to do all
those things, then fine. Like the relationship's gonna be great. If one of the two people
cannot do those things, then you're gonna constantly
run into these problems over and over and over again. And if that person who
cannot do these things is not aware that they can't do them, which it sounds like the
wife is in this case, you can't make somebody
apologize for things that they don't think are wrong. My take here is get
the out, save yourself. Like you can have a relationship
that's a dumpster fire, but if both people in it recognize that there's a dumpster fire and they've got buckets and they're ready to go fetch
water, you can make it work. It might be hard, it might take years. You can make it work. If you've only got one
person with a bucket and the other one is like
pouring gasoline, you're done. - Yes. Well, let's keep this moving yeah. Dear Mark, how do you determine if you should end a
relationship or marriage? My husband and I met in high school. We've now been together for 19 years. We've had our share of marriage struggles, but nothing like what we've been going through over the past two years. My husband is severely ADHD. He's also had a traumatic childhood. He's been doing individual
counseling the past three years in an attempt to grow and heal, which has led him to panic attacks and many emotional breakdowns. Last year he quit his job to take time off work to
start training for marathons. I was raised in an
emotionally neglectful home. I've done individual counseling
to improve my ability to identify and express my emotions. I've also started to discover a lot of codependent behaviors, I've been doing our entire marriage and I'm working to set
healthy boundaries for myself. I just now feel entirely
incompatible with him. I want space and autonomy. He wants closeness and maximum intimacy. I want peace and quiet. He wants continual
conversation and stimulation. We've been to couples counseling, which wasn't very helpful. I've got two kids, a beautiful home, shared finances. Part of me says, just suck it up because all relationships
have their struggles. What do I do next? Any advice you can give me
would be so appreciated, even if it's just shut the up and appreciate that your
husband still wants you after all these years. - That's probably part of it. - Don't discount that yeah. - I like this as a
counterpoint to the first one because this is an example of two people in a marriage. They've been together
for a long, long time. They're both starting to
do a lot of personal work, dig into their baggage, their trauma, their history, and they're making a lot
of individual progress. But the result of that
individual progress is that it's disrupting the equilibrium
within the relationships. Now this isn't completely unusual and I have more hope for
this relationship than I do for the first one, simply because both
individuals are on this path. They're going through a rough spot, but they've already seen
that things have changed and it's very likely that things will continue to change
in the near future. You have to be honest, if you're coming from an abusive or neglectful childhood like
each of these people are, and you just spent the first 20 years of your adult life just burring and ignoring that shit, the first few years that you start to come to terms with it
is gonna be very turbulent. And what I notice with
a lot of people is that, when they start addressing
a lot of their issues after decades of ignoring them, there's kind of a rubber band effect, which is like they've been
bearing the emotion for so long that it kind of slingshots them in the opposite direction. So they overcompensate, right? Like it's this guy quits his job and starts running marathons all the time and she goes from being super codependent to wanting to be alone constantly. There's probably a lot of overcompensation that's happening right now as these two people fundamentally discover who they are for the first time. And my guess is, is that
a lot of these extremes that they're experiencing at the moment will be moderated over the coming years. Does that mean that they'll necessarily land back in a spot where
they're still compatible? Maybe not, but, I've also
seen a lot of couples that they do land back in a
spot where they're compatible. And actually if they do
make it through this period, I think it will be way
more powerful to them because they'll actually be coming to each other from a very healthy place with their own individual identities without a bunch of emotional baggage reacting off of each other. Like if they can get to
the other side of this, I think there's a much happier and healthier relationship
waiting for them. It's just a question of
whether they can get there. And so I do think it is
worth putting in a few years, struggling, having these conversations very openly with each other, checking in with where each person is. There's reason for optimism here, - Right and there's kind of this notion about growing apart
versus growing together and it seems they're in a stage of the relationship where
they've grown apart, obviously. What do you think? One thing I think that
jumps out to me at this, what do you think that
getting together so young, how does that affect that dynamic? - So much of the project of your teens and early twenties is identity formation, figuring out who you are, what you value, what's important to you. And a huge part of that project of identity formation is experimentation. It's try new things
going out in the world, try new things, challenging yourself, adopting different habits and lifestyles and seeing what fits. What you find is that people
who have a lot of codependence, like it sounds like these two do, they never embark on that project. They're too reliant on the relationships in their lives to tell them who they are. So they never develop that
individual identity themselves. And I think what happens a lot, you see this a lot with
middle-aged divorced couples. Couple gets married at
18 or 20 or whatever, stay together for 20, 25 years, divorce at like 45. And then you see each
person in the relationship, they start acting like college kids, but they're in their mid forties, like they're partying every night, they're traveling all the time, they're like taking
MDMA for the first time. Things get fucking weird. And then they do it for like a year or two and then they stop and they settle down
into another relationship and then they move on. And I think ultimately what that is, is they never had that project of identity formation at a young age. They were in a relationship that consumed all of their
identity for 20 years. And so when they come out of it, they need that
experimentation to catch up. What can happen though, and it sounds like this is what's happening with this couple, is that identity formation project can happen within the marriage. It causes a lot of turbulence, makes it very fucking complicated. But it sounds like this is what's happening with with these two. The husband quits his career
starts running marathons. Wife is like suddenly withdrawing wants to be alone all the time. These are very much
identity seeking behaviors. On an individual level, they're very normal and healthy and they should be encouraged. At a relational level, it's caused a lot of discord and tension. The goal here would be to
abide the discord and tension, make compromises, keep
in constant communication about each person's project until those projects can kind of complete. Until they both can
kind of reach that place where they're like, okay, I feel like I know who I am and I'm happy with who I am. Once they're both at that spot, then hopefully they can come back together and say, okay, this is the new me. Let's see if they get
along with the new you. And in a lot of cases they will, and in a lot of cases they won't. And that's fine either way. But I would say if you get divorced, you don't want the divorce to be because of the turbulence and discord of figuring out who you are. - Right. - You ideally wanna figure out who you are and then figure out can I make
the marriage work with this? And then if not, then you break it off. You know, with this couple, I would just encourage them like really put in a few years
of good faith effort. You got the kids anyway, there's a decent chance
this can turn out, okay. - She mentioned in this
too about compatibility, but I think this next question gets to the heart of that. So let's hop into that one. Mark, I had just told
my partner this morning how lost I'm feeling. My partner and I recently
graduated with our PhDs burnt out and eating a break. We decided to work on his dreams and take a one year 'sea'bbatical to live in cruise on our sailboat. I tried my best to make it my dream, but I've had three panic attacks since we set sail a few months ago, with no job separation
from friends and community and no sense of daily purpose, I've felt so lost. He recognizes that I'm in pain, but we don't know what to do. And putting a toll on our relationship, we have a few months of the boat sitting in a harbor for repairs as I figure out what to do, any advice? - I sympathize with this question a lot. I think if you have a
partner who has a dream, it's a very noble intention to try to live that dream with them. And I respect that. I also think it's very unrealistic to expect that you're always gonna enjoy your partner's dream as much as they do. In fact, I think it's probably very rare that you're gonna enjoy their
dream as much as they do. And in this case, it sounds like his dream is making you fucking miserable. So this is a great question to get into the nuts and bolts of compromise. Like what is compromise? What's a good compromise? What's a bad compromise? Like we all hear that we should be compromising in our relationships and compromising with our partners, but like, what the does
that actually mean? Compromise isn't about
making everyone happy. In fact, compromise means making sure nobody is miserable. This question reminds me a lot of a situation that my wife
and I had when we first met. So my wife's Brazilian,
I met her in Brazil. I was living a nomadic lifestyle, so I was bouncing all over the world. I had an internet
business, I was blogging, I was living in this
country for a few months in this country for a few months. And I went down to Brazil for three months and that's when I met my wife and we started dating. I was very clear from the get-go of like, I'm in my twenties, I love this lifestyle, you seem great, but I'm not gonna stop. And so she and I came to
an initial compromise, which was, she said, "If you gimme a year, I
can save up some money, I can quit my job, I'll take a sabbatical and then we can go travel
around the world together." And I was like, that's amazing. Best of both worlds, right? So I stayed in Brazil for about a year. She saved up all the money, quit her job. It was kind of this
big momentous occasion. We had a big going away party and said goodbye to her
family and everything. She sold all of her shit. And then we both got
on a plane to Thailand and we were gonna go
spend six months in Asia. And we got there and within two days I was like opening my laptop and having a great old
time, like typing away, getting some work done and she just sat there
and freaked the fuck out. She absolutely had no idea
what to do with herself, was completely miserable. And within a few weeks she told me, she was like, "I need to go home, like I can't do this. I can't live this way." That was like the one big crisis
point in our relationship. We had a very long and emotional conversation about whether we should
actually break up or not, because I was very clear that I don't wanna stop living this way. Like this is the only period in my life that I feel like I'm
gonna be able to do this. And if I don't do it, I'm gonna regret not doing it. It makes me very happy. And so we decided to try an experiment, which was like, okay,
well what if we slow down? Because up to that point, I had been kind of doing like a month here and two months there and two weeks here just bouncing around all over the place. And she said, I really need more stability and I need community. And so we agreed that we would go, we would find a city with a lot of expats and find a city with
some people that I knew and we would settle in
there for six months and we agreed that we
would, everywhere we went, we would do it for three
to six months at a time. And everywhere we went we would only go if we knew there was a community of people of expats there that we could meet and hang out with and and spend time with. And it worked. We ended up doing that
for about two years. She wasn't completely
happy, but it worked. I wasn't completely happy, but it worked. But I guess the point in that is that, I think good compromise is much more about mitigating misery than it is necessarily making
everybody happy all the time. And this situation with the 'sea'bbatical, it's very clear that this
lifestyle makes her miserable. And so the question becomes, is there a compromise
here that they can make that he's still relatively happy but she's no longer miserable? Maybe that means go to
shore every couple weeks. Maybe that means do one
month on, one month off. Maybe that means she flies
back home every couple months and spends a month with her friends and family and then
flies back and meets him. Whatever the arrangement, there's gotta be something there. I generally think that
logistical arrangements are tend to be the
easiest to compromise on. It's much harder to compromise on things like values,
or family, or priorities. I'm bullish on this couple. They've got PhDs, so they should be smart. They should be talking about this shit. I don't think it's rocket
science to figure it out. I think ultimately it's just they need to take her panic attack seriously. That's a signal, she's not built for this, she should not be doing it. Find a solution that makes
everybody not miserable. - I think this is becoming more common where they say, oh, I compromise. What's the point of the relationship in the first place then. If you're gonna be compromising and you're always,
you're gonna be 70% happy or you're gonna be whatever. Like what do you say to someone like that? Asking for a friend? - Obviously you don't want
to compromise on everything. If you're compromising on everything, yeah, then that's not a
sustainable situation. Ideally you guys should
overlap in your values and interests enough that you're only having the compromise occasionally on things And that you can live
with those compromises. You know, the compromising
to mitigate misery, I actually think it ends up
generating more happiness for both people simply because happy relationships make you happy. And that's kind of what I
discovered with my wife is I gave up 10% to 20% of my happiness, my lifestyle happiness, but I gained an extra 50%
relationship happiness. And relationship happiness is all, is like a very powerful happiness. So that ended up being a fantastic deal. I was more than happy to give that up. I do think if you find you're
having the compromise 50%, 80%, a 100% all the time, then yeah, that stops being a good deal. Which this ties into the second question that I think everybody
needs to ask themselves, which is when compromising are the compromises making the
relationship better or worse? Ideally in a healthy relationship, any compromise either of you makes should have a multiple effect. You give up 10% of something and you get back 40% more
relationship happiness, right? Like my wife's super clean and I'm messy and one of the compromises I make is I just clean up more
than I feel like I should. I clean enough so that
she's not miserable, I don't clean enough that
she's completely happy. - That is so sweet of you, Mark. - I know I'm a romantic, what can I say? But it's funny because I think that is the optimal amount of compromise. It's not much for me, I'm only giving up 10, 15 minutes a day. Like we're preventing a
lot of misery for her. Whereas if I gave up like an hour a day to clean a bunch of shit, she's probably not that much happier. But I'm definitely a lot less happy. So I don't know, there's
like a equilibrium we could like do like
the supply demand charts with relationship compromise. - Find the marginal cost of how much- - Exactly the marginal cost. - Every minute you spend cleaning. How much happiness is that? Okay, that's a hard
spot to find, obviously that's the point you're making is it's- - Yes. - Tough to figure out
in the moment for sure. And I think this next reader kind of illustrates that as well. I'm 34 and fairly career oriented. I have a tiny family
and I'm an only child. I've spent my life on an exciting path living in various
continents around the world, I plan to continue that. During Covid, I started dating a girl who is the complete opposite of me. She comes from a huge
family, lots of siblings, works a simple job in the family business, lives for a peaceful daily existence and has never lived
outside of her hometown. She doesn't believe in hard work, but believes in living
a happy and cozy life. We're now three and a half years together and we want different things yet because we are so opposite, we positively influence each other in so many powerful ways. So my question to break
up or not break up? Given that our difference in values- - Wait a second. This guy spends five minutes explaining how happy he is and how positive of an influence they are at each other. And then he is like, so should I dump her? Like, what the fuck dude? - He's, there's a huge gap between them. So he's kind of seeing that at least I, but yeah. - Okay. - Okay, I understand. - Go on, finish it, finish it, Man she makes me so happy
and she's changed me and I change her and it's great. I think we should break up. Anyway sorry. - Yes, it continues. Given that her difference in values and lifestyle benefits each other, but also makes our future
seemingly unworkable without huge compromise, I constantly feel we should end it, but I also feel I will regret it because she's such a wholesome, good and happy human who impacts
me in many positive ways. - Yeah okay first of all, it's funny because this
guy seems like quasi aware. I mean this is why opposites attract in a lot of cases, right? The more extreme part
of our own personalities need a counterbalance to kind of moderate us and mellow us out. In a lot of cases that's very therapeutic. It makes us more functional human beings and that's why we, a lot of times we end up in the
relationships we end up in. It sounds like this guy
has found that like, it sounds like he's had a
pretty extreme personality and lifestyle and he is found somebody who moderates that makes him more
functional, makes him happy. Yet he's so committed to his ideals and values that he doesn't see a way that this is gonna last even though it's lasted three and a half years. Even though he is still happy, even though he still loves her very much, even though there's not really a problem other than in his head that he is projecting into the future. Let me just say this, and I say this as a recovered
commitment phobe myself, and I say this with pure love. Commitment phobes are
constantly imagining reasons for a relationship to end. And in many cases we're
able to convince ourselves that those reasons are real or they're going to be real. One rule I made for myself after completely bombing multiple happy
relationships that I was in. Was I made an agreement with myself that I would never break up with somebody for something that might happen, or that hadn't happened yet. That I would only break up with somebody if I was unhappy in the moment. And it was funny because when I got into a
relationship with my wife the first few years, I constantly had these feelings of like, wow, this isn't gonna work. Now she wants to do
this and I wanna do that and she's this way and I'm that way. And oh, this is, there's
no way, there's no way. But I kept reminding myself, you're not gonna break up with her for something that hasn't happened. Like, are you happy today? Yes. Were you happy yesterday? Yes. Do you think you're
gonna be happy tomorrow? Yes. Okay, don't break up then. And sure enough, as the years went on, I just never stopped being happy with her. Like all the things that
I imagined might happen, all the horrible, impossible compromises that I thought were gonna have to be made never had to be made. So I would just tell this guy, if it's good, don't fuck it up. And also, I think there's
an important point to be made here too, which is, I think people vastly
underestimate the compromise that's possible within a relationship. Like, dude, if you wanna continue to live this wild lifestyle
and travel all the time and work super hard, you
can probably still do that. Like you can do that
within the relationship. There's nothing, just
because she's a certain way doesn't mean you have to
be that way and vice versa. You can find arrangements in situations that you're both very
comfortable and happy and get to experience
what you need to be happy. Again, commitment phobes tend to imagine themselves imprisoned. Like, oh, my girlfriend
doesn't like traveling so I'll never travel again. Whatever dude, like buy a plane ticket tell her you'll see her in a week. It's not a problem If there's like trust and respect in the relationship, it's not a fucking problem. - Yeah, I think the, you're right, the commitment phobes they
see it as an identity issue at that point, right? They're like, oh, if I
get into the relationship with this person, my identity is now tied to theirs in lockstep and there's nothing I can do about it. - Yeah, for sure. In a healthy relationship, you each have your own individual identity and respect and honor
each other's identities. Honestly, that was one of the things that kept my relationship with my wife alive is like when we were living abroad, every couple months I would look at her and I'm like, I need to get on a plane, I need to fly to this place. Do you want to go? And she'd be like, no. And I'd be like, okay, I'm going. And you know, the first couple times it was a little bit awkward and maybe had an argument about it, we realized it's not a big deal. I'd come home happy, she'd be happy 'cause she didn't have to
go anywhere, it was fine. - Yeah and so there's just a communication around that, that they need, you think. - [Mark] Yes. - This relationship, you think they, they should stick it out and just be more open
about what's going on. - I think this guy is
breaking up over mirages. There's nothing in that question that makes me think this
guy can't be fulfilled and happy within this relationship. So yeah, stick with it bud. - Oh, you're gonna like this one Mark. I just ended a two year
relationship with my girlfriend. We went through Covid together, death of a dog, family drama. It felt a lot longer than two years though she did some things that made me question her
character and commitment. I both feel a bond and responsibility to be there for her and the relationship ups and downs. We bonded hard through
the lockdowns here in NYC. - I'm at four red flags. I don't know, or I don't know what your score is at home kids, but I'm at four red flags already. - I hope you have more behind you. It's not easy to walk away from this. There's an immense feeling
of guilt that I feel and I know I can help alleviate both of our pains if we get
back together again. - No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. - [Drew] Third breakup
in two years, he says. - No, oh. So wait, three in two. - Three and two years, yeah. So what's the line between resilience and abandonment of a relationship? What are the rules or guidelines for not giving up on someone
that you wanna change? - Abandonment. Is he like leaving her at a
train station or something? Like abandonment? What the fuck dude? You are a grown adult,
she is a grown adult. You can choose to be together. You can choose not to be together. Nobody's abandoning anybody. What the fuck? Let's go through all the red flags here. There's a lot of 'em. Been together two years, feels like a lot longer. This is a nice litmus test listener. Let me look at camera two. If the statement, we've
been together two years, but it feels like a lot longer. If that sounds romantic to you, you might be in a toxic relationship, that is not a good sign. Like experiences that feel a lot longer than they actually are, tend to be that way because they were very unpleasant, pleasant experiences tend
to go by very quickly. When my wife and I, we've been together for almost 12 years. We often look at each
other and we're like, wow, it feels like we've
been together for like four. Whereas I think about like
my college girlfriend, we were together for three that felt like a eternity. Felt like I lived and died like eight lifetimes within
the span of me dating her. Which I probably did from a
self-esteem point of view. Anyway, yeah, felt like
much longer than two years. That's probably 'cause there's way too much drama in fighting going on. He mentioned he felt responsible for alleviating her pain. Dude, her pain is not your responsibility, it's her responsibility. Three breakups in two
years need I say more. I guess if this guy was
sitting in front of me, my question would be like, okay, what's gonna make the fourth
time the charm, right? Like, okay, you're getting back. You've tried this, this is gonna be number round four. What's different this time? What has fundamentally
changed in the two years that you guys have given this four tries? I'm being hard on this guy, but honestly we've all been here. I've definitely been here, absolutely. Like I hear this question and I hear 21 year old Mark listening to Dashboard Confessional, silently weeping about breaking up with his girlfriend for the
fifth time in three years. This is an example of how when you're in an unhealthy relationship, it becomes all about the feelings. This is actually a nice test to test a healthy versus unhealthy relationship. A healthy relationship is
about values and behaviors. An unhealthy relationship
is about feelings. Unhealthy relationship,
it's all about the drama. You made me upset, you said
this thing that hurt me. I'm feeling bad today, so I'm gonna take it out on you. Everything's about like, I feel bad, so you need to feel bad or you feel bad. So I need to make you feel better. Like it's all about feelings all the time. Healthy relationship, it's about behavior. Do you respect me? Do you trust me? Do our values align? Like that's what a ultimately what a relationship is about. Because a healthy relationship, both people recognize sometimes you're gonna have good days, sometimes you're gonna have bad, sometimes you're gonna be in a good mood. Sometimes you're gonna be in a bad mood. Sometimes you're gonna
get upset with each other and say something hurtful. Sometimes you're gonna be madly in love and feel euphoric, like the emotions come and go. But what stays the same and what you have total control over, are the behaviors. Are you treating each other with respect? Are you trusting each other? Are you aligned on your
values and your worldview? And in this question,
I don't hear anything. Well, actually the only thing he said about her values is that she's
not a person of integrity. Which dude, I mean, look man, I get it. Riding that rollercoaster
was probably a ton of fun. Very exhilarating, you
probably felt incredibly alive. I'm sure the sex was great. Don't go back to it, move on. It's not your job to
make everybody feel okay. You gotta find somebody who's
gonna treat you with respect, who's gonna appreciate you, and who's gonna be there
on a good day or a bad. I hate to bring up that
stupid Marilyn Monroe quote. "If she doesn't appreciate
you on her worst day, she doesn't deserve you on her best" - Mark Manson, Marilyn Monroe. - Yes so have some self-respect, bro. You live in New York for god's sake. There's 8 million women in New York. You have no excuse to go back to this one. - Okay but there there is one
point you make in there about, you know, you're not responsible for someone else's happiness. And you've talked about that a lot in a lot of different places. And I totally get that,
totally agree with that. The only thing is that, that it's really, really hard for people to kind of get their head around that. But what do you say to
somebody who is like that? Who is like, they are going out and they're trying to make someone feel a certain way or help them or take on their pain as this person said. - I mean, look, you can make somebody happy in the short term. I can go buy my wife like, I don't know, a nice gift on the way home today. It'll make her happy. She'll feel really good for
a few hours, that's fine. Like I think where people get lost is, is this idea of like,
you can fix somebody. Like you can take somebody who's chronically unhappy and then teach them or
force them to become happy. And you can't, like you can influence somebody's emotions in the short run, but you can't fundamentally change how they feel about themselves or about the world in the long run, only they can do that. You can't feel responsible for how somebody else feels because you can't control it. This is the third question. First one is, are both people making a good faith effort towards improving the relationship? Second one is, are the compromises making the relationship better or worse? And the third one is, are you only compromising,
hoping somebody will change? If the answer's yes to that last one, then you're fucked. Like this guy, he's in a
situation, he's like, okay, things have not worked out multiple times. I don't totally trust her. I don't think she has high integrity, but she might change. So should I go back to her? If that's the question
is not gonna end well. You see this go both ways, right? A lot of people, they don't love who their partner is. They love who their partner could be, or they love who their partner used to be. And they stick around for year, after year after year, hoping that their partner will either become the person that they hope that they can become, or their partner will
revert back to the person that their partner used to be. And you can't do that. You have to love the
person in front of you and you have to compromise with the person in front of you, or be willing to compromise
with the person in front of you. You can't compromise yourself hoping, well, maybe one day they'll figure it out because nine times outta 10, either they're not gonna figure it out or they're gonna figure
it out in such a way that they realize they
don't need you anymore and so they're gonna fucking move on. So it's just, it's a recipe for disaster and I think this guy
should stay far, far away. - You also can't, I think the best way to spread happiness or whatever you wanna say is to just be happy yourself. So if you're staying in a relationship to make someone else happy, but you're miserable, you, that is counterproductive right there. - Yeah, absolutely. I think that's probably
a really good principle and takeaway as well, is that the best way to make your partner a better person is to be a better person yourself, right? Lead by example, lead
through your actions. Are both people in the relationship making a good faith effort to improve it? Are the compromises being made
making it better or worse? If they're making it worse, then that's a bad sign. And are you only compromising hoping that your partner will
change or be somebody else? If that's the case, you're
gonna have a bad time. - Yeah I hope we didn't ruin
too many relationships here. - No man, we're saving
relationships, dude. We're like, we're the Batman and Robin of relationship saving. - I'm Batman in that situation, right? - Sure, go for it. If you guys listening, if you guys want to ask me a question, want us to talk about it on a podcast, go to markmanson.net/newsletter, sign up for the newsletter and then reply to one of those newsletters and we collect these and filter them into buckets and then create episodes out of them. So if you want your
question answered on air, sign up for the newsletter,
reply to the newsletter, be sure to review the podcast. This is a new podcast, so we need five star reviews. We need the world to know how
special and amazing we are. So please go to Spotify, Apple Podcast, whatever you're listening on, give it a five star review, tell everybody how handsome we are and we greatly appreciate that. And finally, I guess buy
my shit or something. I don't know, I don't know. Like how do people end podcasts? This is so fucking weird. Drew's just sitting there
like, is this over yet? Alright guys, get the fuck outta here. ♪ Beat me black and blue ♪ ♪ Every wound will shape me, ♪ ♪ Every scar will build my throne. ♪
