2148: [Part 2] Love is Not Enough by Mark Manson on Prioritizing Well-Being & The Importance of Self-Love

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

[00:00:04] development and minimalism, money, health, relationships, and more. So to optimize your

[00:00:10] life in other areas, just search for Optimal Living Daily in your podcast app.

[00:00:15] Now onto the show. This is Optimal Relationships Daily, Episode 2148. Love Is Not Enough,

[00:00:23] Part 2 by Mark Manson of MarkManson.net. Hello everybody, I'm Greg Audino and again this is

[00:00:31] ORD, the podcast on which I'm here with you each day to narrate and comment on different articles

[00:00:36] about relationship building. Now today we'll be finishing off a longer post that we began yesterday

[00:00:42] so be sure to check out that episode first if you haven't yet but if you're all caught up

[00:00:46] then let's jump right into part two as we optimize your life.

[00:00:54] Love Is Not Enough, Part 2 by Mark Manson of MarkManson.net.

[00:01:00] Number 3, Love Is Not Always Worth Sacrificing Yourself For

[00:01:05] One of the defining characteristics of loving someone is that you are able to think outside

[00:01:10] of yourself and your own needs to help care for another person and their needs as well.

[00:01:16] But the question that doesn't get asked often enough is exactly what are you sacrificing

[00:01:21] and is it worth it? In loving relationships, it's normal for both people to occasionally sacrifice

[00:01:27] their own desires, their own needs, and their own time for one another. I would argue that this

[00:01:33] is normal and healthy and a big part of what makes a relationship so great. But when it comes

[00:01:39] to sacrificing one's self-respect, one's dignity, one's physical body, one's ambitions

[00:01:46] and life purpose just to be with someone, then that same love becomes problematic. A loving relationship

[00:01:53] is supposed to supplement our individual identity, not damage it or replace it. If we find ourselves

[00:02:00] in situations where we are tolerating disrespectful or abusive behavior, then that's essentially what

[00:02:06] we're doing. We are allowing our love to consume us and negate us, and if we're not careful,

[00:02:13] it will leave us a shell of the person we once were. In fact, this is the paradoxical conclusion I come

[00:02:19] to in my Healthy Relationships course in the Mark Manson Premium subscription, that sometimes,

[00:02:25] the best outcome for a relationship is for it to end. Some things are not worth sacrificing for,

[00:02:31] some things just cannot be fixed. The Friendship Test

[00:02:36] One of the oldest pieces of relationship advice in the book is,

[00:02:40] you and your partner should be best friends. Most people look at that piece of advice in the

[00:02:45] positive. I should spend time with my partner like I do with my best friend. I should communicate

[00:02:51] openly with my partner like I do with my best friend. I should have fun with my partner

[00:02:56] like I do with my best friend. But people should also look at it in the negative.

[00:03:01] Would you tolerate your partner's negative behaviors and your best friend?

[00:03:06] Amazingly, when we ask ourselves this question honestly,

[00:03:09] in most unhealthy and codependent relationships the answer is no. I know a young woman who just

[00:03:15] got married. She was madly in love with her husband, and despite the fact that he had been

[00:03:20] quote-unquote between jobs for more than a year, showed no interest in planning the wedding,

[00:03:26] often ditched her to take surfing trips with his friends, and her friends and family

[00:03:31] raised not-so-subtle concerns about him, she happily married him anyway. But once the emotional high

[00:03:38] of the wedding wore off, reality set in. A year into their marriage he's still between jobs,

[00:03:44] he trashes the house while she's at work, gets angry if she doesn't cook dinner for him,

[00:03:49] and at any time she complains he tells her that she's spoiled and arrogant.

[00:03:54] Oh, and he still ditches her to take surfing trips with his friends.

[00:03:57] And she got into this situation because she ignored all three of the harsh truths we've

[00:04:02] talked about today. She idealized love. Despite being slapped in the face by all of the red

[00:04:08] flags he raised while dating him, she believed that their love signaled relationship compatibility.

[00:04:14] It didn't. When her friends and family raised concerns leading up to the wedding,

[00:04:19] she believed that their love would solve their problems eventually. It didn't.

[00:04:24] And now that everything had fallen into a steaming pile of you-know-what,

[00:04:29] she approached her friends for advice on how she could sacrifice herself even more to make it work.

[00:04:35] And the truth is, it won't. Why do we tolerate behavior in our romantic relationships

[00:04:41] that we would never, ever tolerate in our friendships? Imagine if your best friend

[00:04:47] moved in with you, trashed your place, refused to get a job or pay rent,

[00:04:51] demanded you cook dinner for them, and got angry and yelled at you anytime you complained.

[00:04:56] That friendship would be over faster than Paris Hilton's acting career.

[00:05:00] Or another situation. A man's girlfriend who was so jealous that she demanded passwords to all of

[00:05:06] his accounts and insisted on accompanying him on his business trips to make sure he wasn't

[00:05:11] tempted by other women. This woman was like the NSA. His life was practically under 24-7

[00:05:17] surveillance, and you could see it wearing on his self-esteem. His self-worth dropped to nothing.

[00:05:23] She didn't trust him to do anything, so he quit trusting himself to do anything.

[00:05:28] Yet he stays with her. Why? Because he's in love.

[00:05:33] Remember this. The only way you can fully enjoy the love in your life

[00:05:37] is to choose to make something else more important in your life than love.

[00:05:42] You can fall in love with a wide variety of people throughout the course of your life.

[00:05:47] You can fall in love with people who are good for you and people who are bad for you.

[00:05:51] You can fall in love in healthy ways and unhealthy ways. You can fall in love when

[00:05:56] you're young and when you're old. Love is not unique. Love is not special. Love is not scarce.

[00:06:03] But your self-respect is. So is your dignity. So is your ability to trust.

[00:06:09] There can potentially be many loves throughout your life, but once you lose your self-respect,

[00:06:15] your dignity or your ability to trust, they are very hard to get back.

[00:06:20] Love is a wonderful experience. It's one of the greatest experiences life has to offer,

[00:06:26] and it's something everyone should aspire to feel and enjoy. But like any other experience,

[00:06:31] it can be healthy or unhealthy. Like any other experience, it cannot be allowed to define us,

[00:06:37] our identities, or our life purpose. We cannot let it consume us. We cannot sacrifice our

[00:06:44] identities and self-worth to it. Because the moment we do that, we lose love and we lose ourselves.

[00:06:51] Because you need more in life than love. Love is great. Love is necessary. Love is beautiful.

[00:06:57] But love is not enough.

[00:07:03] You just listened to part two of the post titled Love Is Not Enough by Mark Manson of

[00:07:09] MarkManson.net and be sure to stick around for my commentary in just a sec.

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[00:08:33] And thank you so much to Mark for a great finish and a great post overall.

[00:08:38] This idea of the friendship test was really interesting to me. It's a great form of measurement,

[00:08:43] but we also have to be careful with it if we find ourselves answering that yes, we would

[00:08:49] tolerate that negative behavior from our best friends because we love our best friends and

[00:08:53] feel proud to stick by them as we might with our partners. You might love the loyalty that you

[00:09:00] bring to your relationships and put that first and foremost potentially putting you in a position

[00:09:05] in which you would tolerate too much simply because you already made a commitment.

[00:09:09] This in itself is a separate issue that might come up depending on your response to the friendship

[00:09:14] test. And in this case, we might need to look at not just whether or not we're relying too

[00:09:20] much on the concept of love, which is what this article is really about, but also our

[00:09:25] abilities to set boundaries and cope with conflict or potentially the loss of people who we want

[00:09:30] to be close with. These could be foundational issues at a personal level that cause us to

[00:09:36] remain in unhealthy relationships for too long. So lots to think about today,

[00:09:41] but thanks again to Mark for giving us all this guidance and knowledge.

[00:09:44] Consider it, put the lessons from this article to use, and I'll hope to see you again tomorrow

[00:09:49] for the beginning of our parenting leg of the week. That's where your optimal life awaits.