2139: Trust in Human Relationships by Steve Pavlina on Understanding & Expectations on Partnership

[00:00:00] Now before we start, you might want to check out our other podcasts covering topics like

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[00:00:17] This is Optimal Relationships Daily, episode 2139, Trust in Human Relationships by Steve

[00:00:25] of SteveHavlina.com. Hello everybody, happy Tuesday. I'm your host and narrator, Greg Audino,

[00:00:33] thanking you for being here and for trying to do right by your relationships.

[00:00:37] I appreciate it and I'm sure the people you are in relationships with do too.

[00:00:41] We'll be reading today from the great Steve Pavlina. He has a particularly blunt and truthful

[00:00:47] article for us today, which I personally always love. What do you say we jump right into this

[00:00:52] post and start optimizing your life? Trust in Human Relationships by Steve Pavlina of

[00:01:02] StevePavlina.com. Imagine being in a relationship with a partner you don't trust. Would you be

[00:01:09] able to have good clarity in such a relationship? If you don't trust your partner, you won't be

[00:01:14] able to trust that they'll do what's mutually beneficial for your relationship. This will

[00:01:19] make it harder to invest in your relationship. You'll feel inclined to hold something back.

[00:01:24] You'll feel a need to protect yourself against the risk of dishonesty,

[00:01:28] betrayal, harsh judgment and so on. But the odd truth here is that if you knew for certain

[00:01:34] that you couldn't trust your partner, you could still experience a strong level of clarity.

[00:01:40] You wouldn't bother investing in a trust-based relationship with such a person.

[00:01:44] You'd focus on self-preservation instead. If you knew that your partner was going to lie,

[00:01:49] cheat and perhaps act abusively, and you grew to expect such behaviors and to tolerate them,

[00:01:55] you could still feel reasonably clear about the relationship and where you stood within it.

[00:02:00] You'd be savvy enough to learn to control and manipulate your partner

[00:02:04] instead of trusting them. There are indeed relationships like this,

[00:02:08] and they're often fairly stable over many years, so our model of clarity must account for this.

[00:02:15] A low-trust relationship can still be a fairly predictable one,

[00:02:19] and hence it can have relatively high clarity. Suppose, for instance, that you get into a

[00:02:24] relationship with someone for the secondary gains, such as access to a wealthy lifestyle,

[00:02:29] and you could freely admit that to yourself even if you hid that intention from others.

[00:02:34] And suppose your partner abuses substances regularly. If you're honest with yourself about

[00:02:39] your reasons for being in such a relationship, and if you feel willing and able to deal with the highs

[00:02:45] and lows because you really want those secondary gains, you could actually surrender to the truth

[00:02:51] of your situation and thereby feel pretty clear about your path within the scope of that

[00:02:56] relationship. You wouldn't delude yourself into thinking that you have a fairytale romance.

[00:03:02] You might put on a good show for other people, but you'd know and accept the truth of your situation.

[00:03:07] You wouldn't be so naive as to be fooled by your partner's frequent lying. When you felt it was

[00:03:13] important to know the truth in areas where you suspected lying, you'd conduct your own independent

[00:03:18] investigation rather than accepting your partner's word. You'd take steps to protect yourself

[00:03:23] from potential abuse, and you'd accept it as a cost of doing business, so to speak.

[00:03:28] In a way, you'd actually trust your partner, as in trusting them to behave like a substance

[00:03:33] abuser or a scoundrel. You'd trust that you couldn't trust them. As long as you stayed

[00:03:38] aligned with the truth of your situation and didn't pretend that it was something other than it was,

[00:03:44] you could still feel pretty clear about your journey together and where you were headed.

[00:03:48] Maintaining a cynical view of your relationship would actually serve your sense of clarity.

[00:03:55] On the other end of the spectrum, what if you did trust your partner?

[00:03:59] This can lead to strong clarity as well. You'd make different predictions about your partner's

[00:04:03] expectations based on trust. You could expect your partner to be honest with you. You could

[00:04:09] expect some degree of loyalty to your relationship. You could expect to be treated fairly. Your

[00:04:14] partner's past patterns of behavior would give you good cause to form these expectations.

[00:04:20] In either type of relationship, you could feel psychologically safe, but only if you don't succumb

[00:04:26] to self-delusion. In the low trust relationship, you'll need to develop self-preservation skills

[00:04:32] in order to feel psychologically safe. In the high trust relationship, you could achieve

[00:04:36] psychological safety through feelings of love and caring. At these extremes, we can have good

[00:04:42] clarity. But what about the gray area in the middle? You can still achieve decent

[00:04:48] clarity when you're not at the extremes, as long as you seek to align your expectations with reality.

[00:04:53] What muddies your sense of clarity is when you cross the streams. Try to blend a high trust

[00:04:59] relationship with lots of suspicion. Or try to combine a low trust relationship with an unrealistic

[00:05:05] presumption of honesty. That's going to pollute your sense of clarity, because your expectations

[00:05:11] will be out of alignment with reality. Expect human beings to behave like human beings,

[00:05:16] which means that sometimes they'll behave like heroes and sometimes like villains. It's reasonable

[00:05:22] to expect that in the world of humans, you'll encounter some dishonesty, cheating, cruelty,

[00:05:29] and other human follies. Humans have been practicing such behavior for millennia.

[00:05:35] To assume that your life will somehow be devoid of such issues isn't likely to match up with

[00:05:40] reality. Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns, but nor is it all zombies and pirates.

[00:05:46] Within this expectation comes a deep level of forgiveness. Not just of other people,

[00:05:52] but of yourself. When you accept that other human beings will sometimes behave chaotically,

[00:05:58] it helps you accept this about yourself. I share this as someone who has walked in the

[00:06:02] world of villains and in the world of heroes. And I'll tell you that villains have their

[00:06:06] heroic moments and heroes have their villainous moments. We're all at our core infested with

[00:06:12] human chaos. And this is part of the beauty and magic of life. To deny the presence of this chaos

[00:06:20] is to reduce your sense of clarity. It makes no sense to deny what you've seen and experienced so

[00:06:26] often and can reasonably expect to be part of your reality in the future. But if you can accept

[00:06:31] the chaos and even learn to love it and to play with it, especially in your human relationships,

[00:06:37] you can stroll through the world of humans while maintaining a strong feeling of centeredness

[00:06:43] and psychological safety, even as the world throws you for a loop now and then. You may not be able

[00:06:49] to predict the events of each day, and you'll often be surprised. But you can predict that

[00:06:54] if you embrace and accept the chaos, you'll be in for a fun ride.

[00:06:58] You just listened to the post titled, Trust in Human Relationships by Steve Pavlina of

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[00:08:29] And a great, really sobering post from Steve today, right? He brings up some raw and

[00:08:35] interesting insights that I think anyone would be wise to apply. To me, though, a secondary concern

[00:08:41] to become aware of is how your feelings of what's acceptable and what's unacceptable can shift with

[00:08:48] this thinking. To be realistic about and accept the drawbacks of any one person you're in a

[00:08:54] relationship with is great. But it should also beg the questions of, A, are these drawbacks

[00:09:01] worth dealing with alongside the benefits? And B, am I pigeonholing myself into thinking that I cannot

[00:09:08] acquire a relationship without these drawbacks should they be unacceptable. So it really is a

[00:09:13] great exercise in not being, I guess, delusional and embracing sacrifices. But we mustn't go all

[00:09:21] the way in that direction that we still aren't seeking an ideal blend of sacrifice and

[00:09:26] satisfaction. And that takes a lot of effort. Okay, time to wrap up for today, everybody.

[00:09:31] Thanks a lot for joining. I hope you found this post as thought-provoking as I did.

[00:09:35] I always love Steve's work. Have a great rest of your day, everyone, and know that I will be

[00:09:40] back with you again tomorrow for more narration where your optimal life awaits.