Why Relationships Are So Hard

you have to kind of take the risk of being vulnerable because if you're lucky the other person will also reciprocate that and be vulnerable to you I see Life as this fascinating Journey we're all on where we're learning about what it means to be human we need people everyone wants love in a sense it's two things it's a deeply personal path where I'm learning about myself and how to have a healthy relationship with myself but it's also about learning to connect with and coexist with others these two things my relationship with myself my relationship with others seems to be deeply connected in in strange and curious ways on this journey I am making some discoveries that I'd like to share with you might as well share and compare our notes as we go along right as ramdas put it we're all just walking each other home so to make this video I sat down with perhaps the single best person to explore this topic with and that is Lana Blakely who I'm sure some of you are already familiar with she has a wonderful YouTube channel of her own exploring exactly these things I've pulled some excerpts from my conversation with Lana to bring them further to life in this video even just before we started recording this the topic of loneliness came up yes if you'd like to watch the full conversation it's available now on no backup plan my podcast [Music] there are times where I'm completely okay with being on my own and there are other times when I'm don't feel okay being on my own and I think the difference sometimes is I get this idea in my head oh I should be with someone right now like I will be putting the pressure on myself what kind of lonely friendship lonely or romantic lonely because I think you can have friends and platonic connections maybe even plenty of them I still feel like something is missing or you could have a romantic partner and feel like something's missing and where do you think that pressure comes from well that's a that's a really good question that's an ongoing exploration sometimes I wonder if I'm creating these narratives because I'm you know I'm trying to just feel good the idea of being around somebody and having their validation right but maybe that's just a lot more about running away from being with myself I mean I also have felt sometimes that I'm completely fine being like having a small friend group and not having a major social life but then I go on social media or you know something is influencing me to believe that my way of living might be wrong or like I'm missing out on something or maybe they are like the way that those people that I'm seeing online for example are living life the right way I'll question if I'm living life the right way even though I know that like deep down I'm content yeah and I enjoy living life the way that I do but it's definitely something to be said about being influenced by other people like oh I'm in my 20s I should be dating or I should be going out to I don't know the club or the bar or you have these thoughts not that much anymore I think more in my early 20s a lot of people actually live life in a way that's more like what they're expected to do but see that's the thing I get what you're saying but I think I don't feel as much the peer pressure from other people like I don't care what other people think about my life it's that kind of Yearning it's that longing that I feel that deep intense curiosity to experience more things the more I think about it the more I feel like there are two forces at work in our lives and this is something I'm going to try to illustrate here with this drawing these two forces guide us through life in all things in work in relationships all of it the first I like to call fear this is the negative Force at work and the way I like to think of it is that it's sort of like a pushing force when I feel that loneliness sometimes it's me feeling like maybe I'm trying to run away from certain feelings Within Myself the way fear works is that there is something that scares me it could be anything and fear is leading me to run away I'm allowing myself to be pushed away from something but sometimes it's like uh almost like an impatience like I I want to have these experiences so badly like is it fomo sometimes it's fomo and sometimes it's a it's I don't know how to describe it other than like a kind of impatient the other force is a positive one and it can be called love or curiosity and in many ways it's the opposite of fear it's being pulled towards something I am propelled to explore and my world expands ends and something that makes me curious draws me in I deeply deeply want to know what it means to love right or to be loved now these two forces are a decision because it could be the exact same thing that creates that fear response that pushes me away that also triggers the exact opposite the Curiosity response where I move towards it I've been guilty of kind of promoting a little bit I think like The Loner lifestyle especially in the beginning of like my videos and stuff but my intention was never to make anyone disregard the importance of human connection like I think we are a little bit on social media and stuff promoting like be your own best friend and be your own take yourself on dates and like all these things which I agree with to an extent but also we need people and we I think everyone wants love I like to briefly thank the sponsor of this video who made it possible for me to visit Sweden and Norway and visit Lana and create this video and that is audible I've been using Audible for years now I'm a huge fan they have a massive library of audiobooks and I actually have a recommendation for an audiobook if you're looking for one right now and that is the creative act by Rick Rubin so good he has an incredible voice incredible energy and there's so many nuggets of wisdom in there totally worth it for anyone whether or not you think you're creative so I've actually made a custom list of audiobooks that I recommend and a listening list if you will and I'm going to be doing an Instagram live book club on August 15th if you'd like to join I'll leave a link in the description to my account my profile on there it's just at Nathaniel Drew underscore I'm particularly excited about this because I've selected these audiobooks around the theme of better navigating the 21st century as I feel the world is changing very quickly and many things we were taught in school no longer apply they worked for previous generations but the world is different now and so it's incumbent upon us to rethink things and that's what these audiobooks are doing they're helping me rethink my relationships and my approach to work and my place in the world and I really want to share this with you this is sort of like an extension to the salons I've talked about doing here in Paris if you're interested in checking out audible there's also a link in the description where you can get a 30 day free trial and I think it's a fantastic investment for anyone who's curious about the world I think the Instagram live is going to be a lot of fun I hope to see you there thank you audible for sponsoring this video now let's dive back in recently I would say like the last couple of years only I've been exploring more of being more open and more vulnerable with like my friends the people close to me I remember specifically I went through something like a dip and I was meeting a friend for dinner and normally I would think to myself I'm not gonna go too much into it with her how come I guess I've had this feeling of putting burden on someone else it's just been overall uncomfortable I think but then I met her for dinner I really told her everything that had happened basically what I noticed which was super interesting was that from that dinner on like our friendship just deepened but it deepened in a way that it had it before partly because me being opened with her welcomed her to really offer her opinion and her advice in a way that was more genuine than if I would have just kind of touched the surface on how I was doing totally and also and this is something that I've learned was that you have to kind of take the risk of being vulnerable because if you're lucky the other person will also reciprocate that and be vulnerable to you and that is going to form a deeper connection and not everyone is going to reciprocate that some people you'll open up to them but they will kind of still be closed off and not really go there and that's fine but when they do when you do like God really I think deepens the connection and that's why I think it's so important to like when you are investing in a friendship that you are investing in people who you know are also interested in like growing and exploring and learning so I've had that with you know past friendships where we were very good friends but then you know as time went by our values kind of started to drift further and further apart our ways of living our ways of viewing the world and at that point you get to a point where it's no longer fun or inspiring or comforting or any other things that you're seeking in a relationship those things aren't present the way that they were when you initially form the Friendship perhaps and at that point it's no point really in maintaining a friendship that the both of you don't fully want to have I want to share with you a little drawing that illustrates the phases of life as I see it and the ways in which we as people weave in and out of each other's lives to do this I'm going to call this year 25 as I'm 25 years old although it could be any number any chapter in your life I am the dot in the center as I play a constant role in the play or the film that is my life and this is true for all of us there are other dots around me which represent other people in my life the closest points in this drawing are the people closest to me so my close friends and family and the dots that are further away from me might be acquaintances strangers I run into distant relatives you get the idea in a sense the reason vulnerability is so great but so difficult is because it's always a risk right it's always I'm gonna show a little bit of my heart and I have no idea how you're gonna take it exactly am and you might just like take it thrown on the floor and stomp on it or something right because if you don't take a chance with the relationships that you have whether that's platonic or with a romantic partner of being open and putting yourself out there you're not really exploring what that connection could turn into yeah you're holding yourself back and you're holding the potential of that relationship back the thing is this is an illustration that works across time people aren't dots they're vectors or lines so there's a Continuum between me in year 25 and me in year 26 and the challenging reality is that none of these lines are moving in exactly the same direction we all desire a sort of permanence with the things that we love and are attached to but that doesn't exist I have a close cast of characters in my life and there are moments that I feel closer to them and other moments when I don't but even with the closest people in my life those Ebbs and flows exist and in general this constellation of people that make up my network looking good bro I know make up my world is constantly shifting some exit While others enter at different moments in my life it comes down to aligning with those people but depending on the phase of Life each of us is in we might be looking for or working through different things I can get bored yeah you know things can get a little too stable and stuck you know and then the search begins again if that makes sense I felt this desire to go inward again and slow it down there was more to be explored by paring it down having having less people for a period of time there's a zyro felt to figure out my people and then have that sorted for the rest of my life but the reality is much more nuanced I feel connected to different people at different levels of intensity and different moments in my life instead of a fixed image of a school of fish a painting photo with everything locked into place The Ensemble of people in my life feels much more like watching a school of fish swim Shuffle reorder itself break up and come back together some people I used to be close with and I'm no longer and there are still people I don't even know that I will become close with in the future and there's a sort of wonder that comes with that it makes me curious who else will I meet a few years ago I didn't even feel like I had very many friends and it was this thing I I remember I made a video to My Future Self saying I hope that you have more people in your life that you're surrounded by that are share your values and are interested in doing some of the same things right by putting out work and being open and giving it a shot I met some really cool people like honestly we met this week and it's part of that trajectory in my life and it's been really cool it's almost like when I ask people for more they open themselves up more and I can give more as well if that makes sense and that's what has led to deeper connections the depth keeps increasing it's like I'm unlocking levels I feel that looking at things this way helps me get clear about a few things regarding relationships the first is that everything is impermanent the second is that people come and go the third is that you pick who you spend time with and the fourth is that it's important to cherish the people in your life while you have them nothing is constant the things I'm looking for keep changing and shifting as I keep going deeper but there are certain experiences in life that no matter who you are what you do you're on your own right I mean you're kind of always on your own and yeah in a sense right you're kind of always on your own and you're kind of never on your own we're all figuring this out in our own little ways and I think we're a lot more connected to each other than we realize there's a desire that I feel to try to provide concrete tips on this fuzzy great topic of relationships tips I myself could also use so that you and I never have to feel loneliness again when I was younger I used to do that kind of thing but I don't anymore because I realized I can't loneliness is one of those things that are just a part of life in all of its richness as inevitable I suspect as anger and sadness and joy I think it's what makes it so special when you do connect with someone no matter how brief or long lasting that might be all I know is that for me the journey continues it all just keeps getting more interesting as I continue my search and open myself up in every way I can to everything that happens the cast of characters in my life keep shifting as I age some people stay some people go and through it all there I am learning thank you [Music] foreign

Channel: Nathaniel Drew

Views: 172,060

Keywords: lana, blakely, lana blakely, loneliness, lonely, how to connect, how to make friends, how to love, love, loving, how to love more deeply, nathaniel drew, nahtaneil, nahtaniel drew, nathaniel love, nathaniel how to love, nathnaiel, nathaniel, nathaniel and lana, nathaniel drew and lana blakely

Id: AGgqZe7iHho

Length: 15min 13sec (913 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 16 2023