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This is The Art of Charm.
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Learn everything you need to know to crush it in business, love, and life.
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The Art of Charm is where ordinary guys become extraordinary men.
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Welcome to The Art of Charm, I m Jordan Harbinger.
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The Art of Charm brings together the best thought leaders, teachers, and exceptional individuals to teach you how to be a top performer in life, love, and at work.
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Imagine having a mix of experienced mentors teaching you their expertise and packing decades of research, testing, and tough lessons into a curriculum.
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We may not have all the answers, but we definitely have all the questions.
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Make sure to stay up to date with the Art of Charm and get some great stuff that we don t or can t share on the show by signing up for the newsletter at theartofcharm.com.
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We ll give you our fundamentals toolkit that covers topics like body language, nonverbal communication, attraction, dating, persuasion, networking.
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In fact, we just mailed out our networking e-book and strategy guide for everybody who s on that.
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If you re not on that, I don t think it s too late.
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You can go there and grab that.
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Well, depending on when you re listening to this, you can go to theartofcharm.com and grab that as well.
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Public speaking, negotiation, a whole lot more.
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We ve also got our live programs running here in L.A.
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If you wanna really dive in, we re sold out a few months in advance, but just reach out, jordanattheartofcharm.com, get you some info on that, plan ahead.
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Looking forward to meeting you here at the Art of Charm.
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Today we re talking with my friend Mark Manson.
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He s an author and a blogger, but he s pretty prolific when it comes to dating and relationships, and it s funny, because he came also from that sort of pick-up artist school of thought and has escaped
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much like us years ago, and now he s just a good dude, you know, getting married, has a functional relationship as far as we can see.
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So we re going to talk about why love is not enough and how people prioritize love over other more important values.
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We re going to discuss that and how to make sure that s not you.
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The relationship scorecard and other toxic habits that ruin relationships as well as boundaries
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how to know if yours are being violated, where they maybe should be, and how to get out of a tough bind if your boundaries are being invaded, or let s just say taking inventory of your boundaries.
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So enjoy this one with Mark Manson.
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Mark, I m glad to have you here, because we both have a common foundation in
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I even hate saying it out loud, but I m going to, this sort of pickup artist community from five plus, maybe even almost 10 years ago now, where we started working in this industry, and both of us have long since exited, at least half a decade ago probably, because of what we sort of found in the industry, without getting too much inside baseball on it, it just wasn t what we had hoped it would have been, and or we grew out of it, probably a little of both.
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in terms of needing those skills, but you and I were talking pre-show, and you brought up a really interesting point, which is, this stuff that you learn when you re doing the whole pick-up thing, the reason that some women hate it is because it s manipulative, but the reason that a lot of men hate it, and women for that matter, is because it s actually a bad screen.
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It s like a...
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It s like filtering a bunch of water and then you lick it, right?
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And you don t drink the clean water on the other side.
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Because you re only getting the crappy part when you filter in what you get from when you re using canned lines and dumb communication tactics because you re filtering in low self-esteem people.
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And then that kind of goes back to bite you and goes, wait a minute.
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the people who are responding to this aren t what I really wanted to solve my problems, and it s like that analogy where you re born in prison, you think the whole world is what you can see from your window.
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Does that make sense?
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Yeah, and basically you have a population of people who have never licked anything in their life, so they lick all this scummy crap that just got filtered out, and they re like, oh my god, I m licking something, it works.
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This is success.
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It s better than nothing exactly it s sort of a weird self-fulfilling prophecy because then yes if you come into it And you re not that social or even if you are, but you have bad quote-unquote luck You have bad skills right you get a bunch of attention But you get the wrong kind then you start to get really good at you make bad habits out of this communication So you start dating people who are?
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Crazy or have problems or have low self-esteem or whatever and you start to think all women are like this
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because you re surrounded by it.
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Right, and it s the only experience you ve had.
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You just assume that this is what dating is, is these type of manipulative games and he said, she said type stuff.
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To analogize this to your business and my business, we had to change our own brands.
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really dramatically to escape from this, right?
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We didn t wanna be pickup artist guys anymore.
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We didn t even wanna be dating guys that much anymore.
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But when you do that, you re afraid you re gonna lose your customers, the people who pay, you keep the lights on in your office, you re gonna have to fire your staff because you re not gonna do it.
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And I think in the dating world, it s the exact same thing.
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Once you get into this and you get good at it, it becomes kind of an addiction because one, it feeds your ego, but two,
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How do you rebrand yourself?
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How do you get out of this when that s all you know and it s kind of working even if the results are toxic?
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you know, for both you and I are actually, I don t know your business history.
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I think you used to be a lawyer.
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I did, yeah.
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But I mean, starting your first business, for me, this was starting my first business and it s the first time I had business success as well.
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And you learn a number of marketing and sales tactics and you know, this is what your sales pitch should look like and these are the types of banners that you should put up and you should email and spam a bunch of people saying stuff like this.
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It s the exact same dynamic that when you ve never sold anything before and you get your first sales by doing these kind of, again, manipulative and just kind of scummy tactics that you don t realize that there s a whole demographic of people out there that don t respond to those things.
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A big change for me and my business and my career was coming to the realization that I can still
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sell my work and make money without having to push it on the people or without having to write my marketing a certain way or without having to promise these three lines will get any girl to call you back or stuff like that.
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There s a whole population of people out there who don t respond to that kind of cheesy, forceful, manipulative communication style.
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It s ironic that that was a huge realization for me in my personal life with my relationships.
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I don t have to communicate this way with women.
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I don t have to communicate this way in my relationships.
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In fact, if I don t, what I ll do is I ll screen the right people into my life and applying that to my business, it was the same thing.
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If I stop communicating this way, then the people who will read me and support me
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who actually be like the cool, honest, open people who are there for a legitimate reason.
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And I feel like people do this in their lives in a lot of ways, the rebrand, right?
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But it s always scary, and in order to take that leap, you either have one of two things.
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You re so optimistic and positive that you see that you can succeed in anything, which would be great, right?
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But that s a little bit of a cherry-coated or maybe sugar-coated type of
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type of sentiment.
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The other one is you re in so much pain from doing it this way that anything else becomes preferable.
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So the risk becomes worth it to take the leap.
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Yeah, I would even go a little bit deeper.
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I think this style of communication, this style of almost like salesmanship that s kind of present in our relationship, our businesses, just the way we talk to normal day-to-day people, I think it s become very much embedded within our culture.
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It s almost seen as normal at this point.
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It s seen as normal.
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It s not enough to just go out and meet a few people and just talk about, just shoot the shit and talk about sports or whatever.
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People feel like they need a reason.
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They need to have a goal that they re working towards.
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Like, okay, I m networking for business right now or I m going to try to score this many phone numbers or I m going to try to prove that I m this really successful guy.
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I think in our culture today, this has become just par for the course.
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This is just accepted that it s something that everybody does and I think people always have an ulterior motive.
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I think what we re talking about is just removing that and simply the way I describe it in some of my work is communicating unconditionally, which is basically saying that whatever you say or do, you re doing without any expectation of anything in return.
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It s like pure expression.
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of how you feel or whatever your thought is.
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It sounds really kind of like abstract and subtle, but to me, I mean, it s one of the most life-changing realizations that I ve ever come to.
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Tell us what you do in your own words in one sentence.
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Can you do that?
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I am a writer, author, and blogger.
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You re pretty prolific you re out there.
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You ve written a couple of really viral posts as well one of which I m gonna get the title wrong was something like Fuck yes, or hell no or something like that was am I close it was called fuck.
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Yes, or no, okay?
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I was close.
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I added a hell in there and that went crazy I mean everybody saw that like everyone if you haven t seen that we ll link it up in the show notes, and it s really good It s about selecting relationships, and it s kind of in line with what we had just been discussing But why should people listen to you other than if they haven t seen your writing?
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Why should people go and check it out?
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You know, I get this email a lot from readers.
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They say, sure, I really like your articles, but why should I listen to you?
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And my answer is always, I don t know.
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You shouldn t like, I always just tell people, read some of my stuff and if you like it and if it makes sense, that s great.
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And if it doesn t, that s also great.
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I don t have any sort of,
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you know, amazing credentials other than just a lot of people read me and listen to me.
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So people should choose for themselves whether they want to.
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Right, and take it from me, a guy who has a law degree who you shouldn t trust with anything important legally, a degree is not gonna make a damn bit of difference, right?
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But I do understand people, I think the reason people ask you that is because they wanna trust you and they re looking for, they wanna figure out if there s a hole in it somewhere, right?
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And some people are hung up on academics, but I believe that that s less than the people that just,
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they need you to sell them a little bit, because you re asking them to do really hard things, like ask the questions that we re gonna talk about in a bit.
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I totally agree.
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I think some of it is they want to trust me, and then I think some of the people, they come across me, and something I say or something I write kind of makes them go, whoa, what the hell, never thought of that before.
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I think they re just so accustomed to like, well, if a really important idea just hit me, it must be coming from like a really important and credentialed person.
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But I m not, so.
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Sad trombone, right?
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Yeah, exactly.
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Excellent.
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Well.
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You ve written some really great pieces that I m interested in personally, one of which is called Love Is Not Enough.
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And it s about the mistakes people make and the way that people look at love and relationships as sort of a tool or a problem solution or something that quote unquote conquers all.
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And I love this article because it really does nail
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the mindsets that lead a lot of people to really crappy, destructive, codependent relationships, divorces, and things like that.
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And I d love for you to tell us a little bit about that, because I think that s kind of revolutionary for a lot of people.
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I think people know some of this stuff academically, but applying it to yourself is another thing.
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So I m gonna ask you to teach us how to do that as well.
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Sure.
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So love is not enough.
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It was actually inspired by a friend of mine, actually down here in Brazil.
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And basically she was, her boyfriend was a deadbeat, like he was a loser and treated her really poorly.
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And she was still in love with him.
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And for years,
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all of her friends, you know, we were constantly kind of telling her, like nudging her, like, hey, get rid of this guy.
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And she never would.
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And her justification was always just that, well, I love him.
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And so finally, I kind of got frustrated one day.
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And I was like, I need to write about this, you know, and because I could look back in my life, and I could see a few relationships myself where I put up with a lot of
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things that were very bad for me and very unhealthy for me just because I had strong feelings.
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One thing I believe strongly and pops up in my work a lot is that feelings are their signposts, their feedback mechanisms.
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They re not laws.
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Just because you feel something doesn t mean you have to – doesn t mean it s right.
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It doesn t mean that it s an obligation.
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So I basically – I put together this article.
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I have some fun stories in there about John Lennon and Trent Reznor and basically making the point that this whole idea that love conquers all, that happily ever after, that as long as you love each other, everything will work out.
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Just from my personal experience, the people I know, but also from like digging into the research on relationships, it s not true.
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What s far more important are things like trust and respect, basic communication habits.
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You can feel really, really strongly about somebody who is bad for you.
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And that s just a fact of human nature.
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And so I basically wanted the article to say that.
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I think it s amazing because it s so obvious when you read it because you see it from the outside perspective.
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We don t see it from the people who are in these relationships, right?
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We don t see all the hard stuff and a lot of people equate or mistakenly equate love with things like compatibility.
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And in your article you write that just because you re falling in love with someone doesn t mean they re a good partner for you.
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And I agree.
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One of the prime teachings here at AOC is that love is an emotional process and compatibility is a logical process.
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They don t really play together very well most of the time, right?
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Like buying something you really want because it s cool, it s seldom a really good investment.
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Right, and so you see people who don t know how to manage money, often it s not because they don t know how to manage a 401k or invest in index funds, it s because they don t know how to make logical decisions instead of emotional decisions.
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And it s the same thing with relationships.
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They re impulsive basically.
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Impulsive or their calculations are just completely wrong.
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I think a lot of people who aren t just like I ll buy this right now because I want it.
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There s some of that, but there are some people that don t even see why buying a new flat screen every single year because it s five inches bigger is not a good move.
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There are people that don t get that you don t have to have every video game, because it s important in their world to feel good as much as possible, because maybe they spent a lot of their life feeling bad.
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They re still doing it, right?
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They re using it to cover something else.
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And a lot of times people who fall in love have different goals, or they have different ways of being in a relationship, and love can mask all of that for a limited amount of time.
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Totally, totally.
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Can you speak to that a little bit?
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Because you put it very geniusly, if geniusly is a word.
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Actually, I m not sure if it is, but it is now.
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I ll take it.
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In the article.
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I need credentials, Jordan.
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I need them.
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Yes, you are a genius dot L-Y.
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I mean, one thing that s true about human nature in general is that we are constantly biased by our emotions.
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None of us are very rational creatures or at least we struggle to be rational.
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It s something that we have to consciously work towards.
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Science is shown again and again that people generally
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when faced with important decisions, they tend to take whatever they feel and then make up explanations to justify that feeling.
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And it takes a lot of self-awareness and practice and effort to start to overcome that tendency.
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And I think like anything else, some people are just kind of naturally better at it than others.
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Some people have more practice at it than others.
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but I think getting swept away and being in love with somebody and just assuming that that by itself, the emotion by itself has this gravity of this meaning that s, it s not necessarily there, it s not necessarily true.
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So how do we uncover this mask?
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How do we look beyond the mask?
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Because it s one thing to know like, hey look, maybe love in my head conquers all because I m young or I m blinded by it, but how do we know if we re falling in love with somebody who sucks for us and sucks for our happiness,
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How do we see that in the moment, or when do we even get to look for that?
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When are we able to see that?
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Well, I think there s another article I want to write.
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I haven t written it yet, so maybe this is the sneak preview here on your show.
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Okay.
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But trust yourself less.
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Like I said, we all have a natural inclination to just want to justify what we already feel and I think a really, really important habit for people to develop is an ability to look at their initial thoughts and feelings about a situation or about a relationship or about a major life decision and then not trust it, question it, be skeptical of it, say,
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All right, is this person really an amazing girlfriend or boyfriend or am I just totally kidding myself?
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Am I just being desperate or am I being, is this my insecurity that s getting played to or do I just like...
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the benefits of being with this person rather than the person themselves.
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I think these are questions that most people don t like to ask themselves because they re uncomfortable.
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It causes you to think about things that are very, very unpleasant.
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But I think they re important and I think it s a skill that should be practiced and developed as much as possible.
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is an interesting concept.
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I mean, it s something that kind of goes against a lot of what s important for confidence, but I think it s about putting that confidence, that trust in the right place, not maybe generally trusting yourself less, right?
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Like, you can have low self-esteem, it s not necessarily, because you don t trust yourself, not necessarily gonna end up with a better relationship for sure.
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The way I like to think of confidence is simply being comfortable with failure.
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I think the two kind of go together well in that.
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So let s say, I mean, social confidence is essentially being comfortable with the idea that, you know, some people aren t going to like you and some people are going to disagree with you.
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I think that actually goes along pretty well with not trusting yourself because I think to be comfortable with other people potentially not liking you or agreeing with you, you have to be comfortable with the idea that you re wrong and that what you re saying is actually stupid.
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I think a lot of people have this kind of knee jerk negative reaction to these kinds of ideas because they assume that when I say,
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consider the idea that you re wrong or that your feelings are wrong and that you shouldn t follow them.
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They take that as meaning as just assuming you re wrong, assuming you re a failure already.
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And what I m talking about is kind of walking that tightrope of
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being able to consider the alternative, being able to consider that you re wrong about everything and that you kind of suck at a lot of things that you don t know about without necessarily accepting it, without necessarily knowing that it s true, if that makes sense.
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It does.
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I think, and correct me if I m wrong here, but you re saying you should be comfortable being wrong without it affecting your identity and meaning something about who you are.
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Right.
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And this comes back to what we were just talking about at the beginning of the show, which is communicating unconditionally.
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A lot of people have this idea that
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People who are not comfortable with the possibility of being wrong or being inferior or sucking at something, these people will always approach communicating with others in a conditional way of trying to prove something, trying to prove that they re right or prove that they re smart or prove that they re cool or prove that they re confident, when actually real confidence is the complete opposite of that.
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It s real confidence is the state of having proved nothing to anybody, including yourself.
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Alright, back to Mark Manson.
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Right, it kind of reminds me of Elon Musk versus maybe some Wall Street guy.
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Maybe even better, remember that minister in Iraq who was like, there s nothing happening here, the war has not reached the capital and like there s a building on fire behind him and people are running.
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And it s like, there s that guy, and then there s Elon Musk, who s like, yeah, the rocket blew up, okay, here s what we re gonna do.
2
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And before he s even talking to the media, and he s talking to his team about what went wrong, what might have gone wrong, who they need to contact, like, he s not going, oh, I m a failure as an engineer, and as a human, and as an entrepreneur.
2
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It s really, really deeply ingrained in him that he can do it, and that this is just a part of the process.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, you see this a lot in a lot of great business people or entrepreneurs.
2
SPEAKER_03
There s a lot of Steve Jobs stories, Bill Gates stories that are similar.
2
SPEAKER_03
Actually, this is kind of like the major theme of the book that I m working on right now is that success in life comes from a comfort with the negative.
2
SPEAKER_03
It comes from being comfortable with failure, being comfortable with your insecurities, being comfortable with saying something stupid or doing something wrong.
2
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It s a very backwards way to look at self-help and improving one s life, but I think it s more important than anything.
2
SPEAKER_02
I agree.
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I think it s one of the keys to growth, and it s tough.
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It s easier said than done.
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It s really hard to go, okay, from now on, I m gonna be comfortable with failure.
2
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It doesn t really work like that for most of us.
2
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And bringing it back to love, when you re looking for a partner, you ve gotta use your mind as well as your heart.
2
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In other words, use your logical brain as well as your emotional brain, because
2
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you ve got to evaluate for long-term compatibility, you ve got to evaluate their values, how they treat themselves, how they treat others, especially their family, their ambitions, their worldviews, as you put it as well, because once you fall in love with somebody who s incompatible with you, and we see this all the time, you see like, wow, they re the most unlikely couple, and then,
2
SPEAKER_02
Which is fine, often, depending on the circumstances, but you re looking at a lot of people where it s like, look, I can t believe those two are a match, their parents don t like it, their friends don t like it.
2
SPEAKER_02
There s usually a reason for that.
2
SPEAKER_02
You wrote in your article, as the ski instructor from South Park once said, you re gonna have a bad time.
2
SPEAKER_02
When I read that originally, I looked at arranged marriages, and I thought, hmm, they go really extreme in that direction, to use your mind instead of your heart.
2
SPEAKER_02
Not only, as well as, right?
2
SPEAKER_02
And yes, those were probably political 5,000 years ago, or whenever those started, but I think today they carry on, not only because of tradition, but because older folks, who are a little bit more grounded, or a lot more grounded, know that young people make dumb moves because of hormones and emotions.
2
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
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SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it s funny.
2
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I actually read something a year or two ago.
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It was kind of like the history of romance, the history of love.
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And what the author said is that this whole concept of romantic love and happily ever after and till death do us part and everything,
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really didn t become a social value until the mid-1800s.
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She said that throughout most of human history, romance was actually seen as something very dangerous and very toxic, and something that parents would consciously steer their teenagers and children away from.
2
SPEAKER_03
One thing she mentioned that kind of blew my mind is she said that Romeo and Juliet was actually written as a satire.
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It was written as a warning
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to the younger generation of like this is what happens when you go crazy falling in love with somebody.
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Everybody dies basically.
2
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Everything gets ruined.
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The families get ruined.
2
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But it s funny that it s been reinterpreted in the last hundred years as this like beautiful romantic piece.
2
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Right, this love story with Leonardo DiCaprio.
2
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And you re just like, oh, look at what they re willing to do for each other.
2
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Meanwhile, when this was written, they re like, look, look what they did to each other.
2
SPEAKER_02
Look at this.
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You want that for yourself?
2
SPEAKER_02
I didn t think so.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, exactly.
2
SPEAKER_02
That s so funny.
2
SPEAKER_02
I didn t know that, and it totally makes sense now.
2
SPEAKER_02
Good.
2
SPEAKER_02
Now I m justified in not liking that movie at all.
2
SPEAKER_02
There you go.
2
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and I think a lot of people think, look, love s gonna solve my relationship problems.
2
SPEAKER_02
You recount a story about your first girlfriend.
2
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Are you comfortable sharing that?
2
SPEAKER_02
It s been a million years, but I think it s really good.
2
SPEAKER_03
Oh, sure.
2
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Talk about biggest learning experience of my life.
2
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I talk about it all the time.
2
SPEAKER_03
First love, first girlfriends, we were together for a few years, we were doing long distance and it was a situation where basically every year that went by, like more stuff went wrong.
2
SPEAKER_03
So I moved to a school on the other side of the country and then something happened and her parents
3
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parents basically didn t want her to have anything to do with me anymore.
3
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Then something else happened and my parents didn t want me to have anything to do with her anymore.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then there was breakups and there was just basically red flags all over the place.
3
SPEAKER_00
She and I, we went through that cycle that a lot of people go through of breaking up, getting back together, breaking up, getting back together.
3
SPEAKER_00
Every time we went through that cycle, the emotions would get more intense.
3
SPEAKER_00
The breakup would hurt more, but then the reunion would feel that much better because there was this sense of fate and destiny of like, oh my God, if we can overcome everything we ve overcome this far, then we re supposed to be together.
3
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This is fate and it s meant to be.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was all just a bunch of bullshit.
3
SPEAKER_00
It was two kids being really stupid basically.
3
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It ended disastrously as it should have.
3
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I think any intelligent person, probably my parents, thought it was going to end.
3
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So yeah, it was a huge learning experience for me.
3
SPEAKER_00
It made me very jaded for a while towards romance and love, but it was as an adult looking back on my silly 19-year-old self, I can definitely see that it was a very important lesson of what
3
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love is and isn t and what a relationship should and should not be.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s kind of showing, it s illustrating the point that love is not worth sacrificing yourself, and it might make you feel a little bit better about your relationship problems, but it doesn t solve any of the relationship problems themselves.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right, and it creates more.
3
SPEAKER_00
I mean, because as soon as you start giving up your own identity to be with somebody, you re just creating a worse relationship.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s one of those things where you re fixing the short-term problem,
3
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by creating this huge romantic sacrifice, but you re just setting yourself up for an even more disastrous failure down the road.
3
SPEAKER_01
What about sacrifice, though?
3
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it seems like it would have a place in love and in relationships, but I think it s a matter of degree.
3
SPEAKER_00
It totally does, and I think it has to do with sacrifices need to be made consciously, and again, unconditionally.
3
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It needs to be, because anytime a relationship enters into this, like, well, I quit my job for you, so now you need to do this for me.
3
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Anytime a relationship kind of enters in that territory, it s really bad news.
3
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It s a really bad,
3
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Tendency and cycle we get into so I I think sacrifices they are necessary, but people need to make them Just understanding like I m gonna give this up Because this relationship is more valuable and then just leave it at that, you know without any sort of again It comes back to expectations of what you get in return, you know, there needs to be no expectation of like I
3
SPEAKER_00
I gave this up so now I deserve to get married and have the family I always dreamed up or I gave this up so now I deserve to get to pick the movie every Friday night.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s none of that.
3
SPEAKER_01
So basically, it s normal for people to occasionally sacrifice needs, wants, and even time, of course, is the usual first thing that comes to mind.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s normal in most relationships, but once you get into, like, life goals and purpose and ambition and dignity and self-respect, you start to wander down that dark alley of destructive relationships.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right, and it sabotages everything.
3
SPEAKER_00
To kind of use a more tangible example, let s say my fiance, for whatever reason, demanded that I stop writing.
3
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Or let s say, for some reason, our relationship enters a scenario where I need to stop writing to make her happier, or something like that.
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And let s say that I m even willing to do that.
3
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It s a huge sacrifice for me.
3
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I m giving up my livelihood and one of my passions.
3
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But I m going to marry her.
3
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So I say like, all right, this is worth it.
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I love her.
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I m going to give up writing forever.
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Even if I do that, if I successfully do that, I ve now compromised a part of my identity.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve basically
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taking a huge part of my life and a huge part of what I find important and meaningful in my life and gotten rid of it.
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So that s going to change me as a person.
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That s going to make me much more miserable and I m going to have a long period of confusion where I m looking for something else to dedicate my time and my energy to.
3
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That affects the relationship and it makes it a worse relationship.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the irony of these sorts of sacrifices is that
3
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The person who demands the sacrifice of their partner is usually the one who gets screwed over the most.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s like, say my fiance demands I give up writing.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, that changes me as a person.
3
SPEAKER_00
It makes me a more miserable partner.
3
SPEAKER_00
It makes me a worse partner for her.
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SPEAKER_00
I m unable to give her the things that I used to give her and be the man that I used to be.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so suddenly, she s like, wakes up one day and she s dating a guy that she s with a guy that isn t the same guy that she met.
3
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It s a broken version of the man that she met.
3
SPEAKER_01
We kind of talk about this in other ways in other episodes of the show, we won t get into too much of it here, but it s kind of like when guys are in relationships and they try to, I ll use the sort of classic example, people email me to complain about, I m not gonna pick on women here, but they ll be in a relationship and she s trying to get him to not do dangerous stuff and not travel so much and spend more time with her instead of his friends, and all these things are valid in a lot of ways, but you know, he gets kind of tamed, right?
3
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Sort of guy complaint midlife crisis stuff like what happened to the old me right there but they both wake up one day and she s like what happened to you you were so interesting and fun and he s like you.
3
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Encourage me to stop doing all those things that made me who I was who you fell in love with and it s kind of a consistent.
3
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process that people change each other inside relationships.
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And so you ve got to kind of swim upstream sometimes.
3
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And obviously, the solution that I would argue is you grow together in similar directions if possible, but it s not always possible.
3
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But I see the I see the parallel there big time, especially if the boundaries become unhealthy.
3
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For example, if someone said, I need you to stop writing,
3
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If something doesn t come to mind about what you would do with yourself, like if someone said, listen, you know, I just can t have you doing this show.
3
SPEAKER_01
That would have to be a deal breaker because what the hell else am I gonna do with my life, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
Like, I love doing this.
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And I don t know why anybody would need me to stop doing that for any healthy reason.
3
SPEAKER_01
So it starts to become very toxic when the boundaries aren t put into place early.
3
SPEAKER_01
You can t do it 10 years later.
3
SPEAKER_01
Then the person sees it as you re resisting the whole relationship instead of, at the time, is probably a minor change or request.
3
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it gets much, much harder the more time that goes on.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the funny thing too, I mean, if you look at, to get to bring the topic back to love and what love is and what it should be is,
3
SPEAKER_00
Part of love is, a lot of people think if I love somebody, I m loving them despite their flaws.
3
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I think to love somebody, you need to love their flaws in a sense.
3
SPEAKER_00
You need to love, yeah, he travels all the time and he s never home, but that represents a part of his personality and a part of his identity that you have to love.
3
SPEAKER_00
My girlfriend drives me crazy sometimes.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s Brazilian, so she s late quite often as a habit.
3
SPEAKER_00
She spends hours upon hours in the bathroom putting on makeup and is really obsessive and neurotic about certain outfits and stuff.
3
SPEAKER_00
It drives me nuts.
3
SPEAKER_00
There are nights where I just openly complain.
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I m like, why are you doing this?
3
SPEAKER_00
Why are you like this?
3
SPEAKER_00
But the thing is, is that
3
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It represents a larger facet of her personality in that she is very conscientious.
3
SPEAKER_00
She s very meticulous about taking care of herself and taking care about me, taking care of me.
3
SPEAKER_00
And she s vain, like she s vain in a good way.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like she s very conscious of her appearance and how she presents herself.
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SPEAKER_00
She s very proud of how she presents herself and I love that about her.
3
SPEAKER_00
So,
3
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All the good things about people, there s usually some sort of negative side effects that shows up if you spend enough time with them.
3
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The best thing about people is also usually one of the worst things about people.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so if you re going to love somebody and be with them for a long time, you have to find flaws that you re willing to appreciate and respect, even if you don t like them.
3
SPEAKER_01
That s actually really good insight, I totally agree with that.
3
SPEAKER_01
It s hard to love somebody s flaws sometimes, especially if they start to drive you crazy, but it is true that without them, you wouldn t have the same person, right?
3
SPEAKER_01
On the sort of flip side of some of these expectations and boundaries and things like that, you talk about the relationship scorecard, and I think this is an interesting concept, because I think people do this, it starts off subconsciously, it might always even be subconscious, but it can create such,
3
SPEAKER_01
insanely intense animosity inside relationships, and when I read that I thought, okay, I don t really do that, but I probably totally do.
4
SPEAKER_01
did that in college, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And I think a lot of people don t outgrow those patterns.
4
SPEAKER_01
And who knows, a lot of people listening right now are in college and they re going, oh my god, I do this.
4
SPEAKER_01
Can you tell us about the scorecard and what it is?
4
SPEAKER_01
Keeping score generally in relationships, we talk about it in networking, is terrible, but I never thought about it in romantic relationships.
4
SPEAKER_00
So keeping a scorecard in the relationship is essentially, most people who do it aren t very conscious of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
People kind of tally up how much they re doing for their partner and how much their partner is doing for them.
4
SPEAKER_00
And what you end up with is a lot of kind of silly conflicts of people yelling stuff like,
4
SPEAKER_00
Well, I cooked lunch for you every day last week and you didn t even bother to do this for me this week.
4
SPEAKER_00
Basically, they have this sense that like everything that each partner in the relationship does for each other needs to be proportional and equal.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s just completely unrealistic for a few reasons.
4
SPEAKER_00
One is just that
4
SPEAKER_00
things change over time.
4
SPEAKER_00
Some people, their lives get busy and their partner s life isn t as busy and some people go through weeks where they re not feeling very good or they re sick or their aunt died or whatever.
4
SPEAKER_00
So there s just a natural variance to life.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s unfair to constantly have this expectation that everything you do for your partner should be reciprocated in some sense, in some form.
4
SPEAKER_00
The other reason it doesn t work is that usually, again, one of the things that makes relationships work really well is that the other person adds value to your life in a way that you re not very aware of or very good at yourself.
4
SPEAKER_00
I could sit here and bitch and complain of like, oh, well, I helped you with that bank mess that you dealt with last week and you never showed any appreciation for that.
4
SPEAKER_00
But it s like my girlfriend does tons of little things for me that I may not even be paying attention to because I m so bad at them myself that I m just unaware that she s helping me out in that way.
4
SPEAKER_00
And then of course it comes back to just the conditionality, like just communicating unconditionally.
4
SPEAKER_00
If everything you do for your boyfriend or girlfriend or spouse is done on the pretense of getting something in return, of deserving something in return, you re not really in a romantic relationship anymore.
4
SPEAKER_00
You re in a business transaction.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s a very like cold and shitty place to be.
4
SPEAKER_01
All right, now back to Mark Manson.
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SPEAKER_01
You know, when I hear this right now, I m thinking of what we call at AOC, we call them covert contracts.
4
SPEAKER_01
And one of the classic examples of this is,
4
SPEAKER_01
what we see when guys are like, look, this girl s great.
4
SPEAKER_01
She s my perfect match.
4
SPEAKER_01
I pick her up from the airport every time she goes out of town.
4
SPEAKER_01
I m always there for her when she complains about her boyfriend.
4
SPEAKER_01
That s sort of the classic example of it.
4
SPEAKER_01
And the answer is, listen, you re not in a friendship.
4
SPEAKER_01
You re not friends with her.
4
SPEAKER_01
This is a covert contract.
4
SPEAKER_01
On your end, your agreement that you have in your head with her that she doesn t know about is,
4
SPEAKER_01
you do all of these things for her, dot, dot, dot, she ll love you romantically.
4
SPEAKER_01
And that s not how it works.
4
SPEAKER_01
And your example shows these covert contracts inside relationships, where, let s say it s like, hey, you know, I bought this house for you, I pay for the car, I buy all the food, you re supposed to cook and clean, and you re supposed to provide sex whenever I want it,
4
SPEAKER_01
you re supposed to raise my children, and you re supposed to give up all of your other life ambitions for me, so let s say she wants to paint or something like that, you re like, no, I m not gonna send you off to do that, why aren t you, and arguments start over things that make no sense to her, because it s not part of the deal you have that s imaginary, that only exists in your head, right, where you re paying for things, and you re doing all these things, and dot, dot, dot, you re expecting something, and that s very toxic to the relationship, because like you said, then you re not in,
4
SPEAKER_01
give-and-take relationship you re in you re you have a deal and that person s in breach except they don t know the terms
4
SPEAKER_00
I really like that term, by the way, the covert contract.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s basically this transaction that you ve invented in your head of like, well, if I take her out this many nights a week, then she ll cook me breakfast and have sex with me.
4
SPEAKER_00
And like you said, the problem is A, she s not aware of it or your partner is not aware of it.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so you end up getting mad
4
SPEAKER_00
and fighting over kind of imaginary conflicts that don t really exist.
4
SPEAKER_00
And B, yeah, it creates this like transactional relationship.
4
SPEAKER_00
Like it s the person in your life that you re supposed to be the most intimate and open with.
4
SPEAKER_00
And if you re constantly kind of creating these situations that have like
4
SPEAKER_00
conditions and stipulations and like, oh, I m only going to cuddle with you if you cook me dinner.
4
SPEAKER_00
You just end up with a relationship that s really screwed up and doesn t make anybody happy because neither side will feel like they re getting their needs met.
4
SPEAKER_01
Excellent.
4
SPEAKER_01
One of the oldest pieces of relationship advice in the book, and I mean the proverbial book, not your book, is that you and your partner should be best friends.
4
SPEAKER_01
And I kind of like that, but I think you added a really amazing spin on it, because you look at it in the positive, of course I should spend time with my partner like I do my best friend, we should communicate openly, we should talk about everything, there should be no boundaries, we should have fun like we do with our best friends, but
4
SPEAKER_01
Your recommendation is brilliant.
4
SPEAKER_01
Let s look at it in the negative.
4
SPEAKER_01
Would you tolerate your current partner s negative behaviors in somebody who was quote-unquote your best friend?
4
SPEAKER_01
And the answer is hell no if you re in a dysfunctional relationship.
4
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it s this test that, you know, when I put this article up, I got dozens and dozens of emails, particularly from women who said that this particular, the friendship test or the best friend test or whatever you want to call it, just open their eyes and freak them out.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s funny actually, Jordan, I get emails from people saying like, Hey, thanks.
4
SPEAKER_00
I just divorced my husband because of you.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re actually real.
4
SPEAKER_00
They re really happy about it.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
But yeah, the example that comes to mind right now is that I have a female friend who was married to a guy who was insanely jealous.
4
SPEAKER_00
I mean, jealous to the point where
4
SPEAKER_00
he would go on business trips with her because he just like couldn t handle the idea of her being in a hotel in another city by herself.
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, like insane, insane jealousy.
4
SPEAKER_00
And it never occurred to her that this was unacceptable behavior.
4
SPEAKER_00
She just, again, she just saw it as an extension of his love.
4
SPEAKER_00
She s like, oh, well, he just, he really loves me.
4
SPEAKER_00
And that s, it s just his thing.
4
SPEAKER_00
You know, it s like, he gets really insecure.
4
SPEAKER_00
I looked at it.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think about situations like that.
4
SPEAKER_00
I m like,
4
SPEAKER_00
Can you imagine if your best friend needed to go on every business trip with you, stay in the same hotel as you, because they were scared that you might make friends with somebody else and become best friends with somebody else?
4
SPEAKER_00
When you put it in that light, it sounds so utterly insane, completely unacceptable.
4
SPEAKER_00
That it s hard to look at, you know, a relationship situation where somebody does that in the same way again.
4
SPEAKER_00
By the way, spoiler alert, she ended up divorcing that guy.
4
SPEAKER_00
Shocking, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_00
Surprise, surprise.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, you can only deal with that for so long before you just become like a shell of a person.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, you re under constant surveillance at that point.
4
SPEAKER_01
Right, it s like being imprisoned.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah right like having one of those little branklets on except for it has eyes and ears to.
4
SPEAKER_01
And yeah it is your husband right and yeah you re significant other it reminds me of that quote if you talk to your friends like you talk to yourself you wouldn t have any friends except it s your partner as well as.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think that s powerful because I think a lot of people right now And I think I have a feeling we re gonna get some emails to like oh my god My current partner is a jackass.
4
SPEAKER_01
I would never tolerate this in a friend I ve gotten rid of friends for the same shit my husband or girlfriend is doing right now What am I doing right now?
4
SPEAKER_01
And it s a really interesting filter and lens to look through but it does require you to say It s a sort of trash the but we re in love excuse going back to the love conquers all type thing a lot of people go well It s different because we have a different kind of love
4
SPEAKER_01
and to that I would say, well, for now.
4
SPEAKER_01
You can t allow things to get worse.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s like, you wouldn t let somebody throw you off a bridge if you, well, no, no, but I ll tie you up with this piece of twine, you ll be fine.
4
SPEAKER_01
No thanks, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And people look at their love like that, like, no, it s gonna be fine because love, and then even worse, they go, well, let s have kids and that ll fix things, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
And people right now, people right now are going, oops, I did that, or they re going, oh, I would never do that, but it s a slippery slope.
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Yeah, it s the, let s have kids, that will fix things or that will change him or that will change her.
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Let s get married, that will change things.
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Things never change.
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It s either there or it s not.
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And yeah, at this point, I mean, the point you and I are in in our life right now is when you see a lot of people making these types of mistakes, the disastrous first marriage or trying to save a bad marriage by having kids or the first divorce, things like that.
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Again, if you apply the friendship test, it s kind of like, well, my best friend and I have been fighting a lot lately, but maybe if we move in together as roommates, we ll stop fighting.
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It s completely irrational.
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It doesn t make any sense when you look at it that way.
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Whenever you apply different filters, right, you can sort of highlight the ridiculousness of the situation by going, well, wait a minute, this is not something I would ever tolerate in X, why am I tolerating it here?
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And then you find yourself, well, X, Y, Z excuse, and it s like, well, evaluate that.
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How strong and how valid is that, really?
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Or is it just something you re telling yourself to rationalize a choice that you made that frankly sucks?
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I think the reason that people are so bad at this is just because breaking up with a significant other is so painful.
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Even breaking up from a bad relationship is extremely painful.
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And again, this comes back to people just being very poor at making logical decisions for ourselves, that we have this feeling of like, well, a breakup is going to hurt so, so much that I can put up with this for a little while longer.
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Maybe he ll change in a month.
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Maybe this will change when the kids come along.
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When the fact is, is that if you, if we had like kind of an objective perspective, like constant nine pain and the relationship was going to last for year after year after year, then it s no question to take that short term.
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hit of the breakup.
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It s worth it in the long run.
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for you personally.
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Yes, you can have different relationship boundaries with friends, acquaintances, family, spouse, et cetera, but at some point, you ve gotta draw a hard line where when people start to encroach on it, it starts to become unhealthy for you, even if it s your own kids.
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And you hear that a lot, it s almost cliche, like, I ve never made any time for myself, I ve never done anything for myself since I ve had kids, and it s understandable, but it doesn t make it healthy.
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Can you speak a little bit to boundaries, especially when it comes to romantic relationships?
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I think this comes back to the toxic definition of love.
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So people who buy into this kind of Disney version of love, this idea that if I love my partner, I should be willing to do absolutely anything for them.
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I should be willing to die for them.
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Like you said, people take that same approach towards loving their kids.
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They re like, well, I have to spend all my time with them and I have to give up all these things for them because I love them.
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It s this idea, people who generally struggle with boundaries, I find the reason they struggle is because they can t get past the idea that if they
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put limits on what they re willing to do or what they re willing to have done to them with their partners or people close to them in their life, they have this feeling that that means that they don t love them.
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I think actually the opposite is true.
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I think love is understanding that my girlfriend is her own person and that she has her own desires and goals.
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I think that s actually a much truer and healthier statement of love, that I shouldn t expect her to give up everything for me, just as she shouldn t expect me to give up everything for her, because if she did expect me to give up everything, give up who I am and what defines me and my dreams and life goals, then she s not loving me.
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What she s loving is she s loving the benefits of having me around.
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She s loving the things that I do for her,
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the time that I spend with her, she doesn t actually love me as a person if she s not willing to draw those limitations.
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So for me, it s a definition issue.
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I think when people kind of get the definition of a healthy form of love right in their own head, the boundaries start to kind of flow as an extension of that.
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I would agree with that, although I will say right now, there s a lot of people in relationships going, where am I with this?
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Is there a way we can kind of maybe take inventory of our boundaries and find out whether or not there are any, or whether or not we re on thin ice here?
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The way I usually describe it, and I have an article about this on my site, appropriately called The Guide to Strong Boundaries.
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The way I describe it is in terms of responsibility.
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So I should care about my partner s emotions and what happens to her, but I am not responsible for her emotions and what happens to her.
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Similarly, I hope she cares about my emotions and what happens to me, but she is not directly responsible.
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Again, this is like a very subtle thing that makes a lot of people uncomfortable because they re like, well, I m in love and I love him and so I should be responsible for making him happy.
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No, you should want to make them happy, but it s not your responsibility.
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If you hold yourself as obligated to make somebody else feel good, like you can t control what happens in somebody else s life.
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All you can do is support the other person and what happens in their life.
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Similarly, the other person, your partner, cannot control what happens in your life.
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They can t control how you feel.
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They can t control how you respond to things.
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All they can do is try their best to support and be there.
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for what you say to them.
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So, you can get into all sorts of nitty-gritty kind of examples, but in my mind, at the end of the day, it comes back to responsibility and this sense of like obligation of like, oh, it s my obligation that my partner be happy all the time.
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And that s just not true.
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It s part of life is being miserable and part of
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Part of what my real obligation is, is to continue loving my partner even though she may be miserable one day.
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It s not to fix her, it s not to change her in any way.
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Right, I love the idea that you can ask yourself, or inside of a conflict, am I choosing to accommodate this person because I love them and because this is part of a functional relationship, or do I feel obligated
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like I have to accommodate them, and vice versa, and perhaps more importantly, because controlling our own behavior is always the way to go, in my opinion, am I asking them to choose to accommodate me, or do I feel like they have to accommodate me because we re in a relationship, or because I m the mother or father of their children?
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There cannot be that sense of obligation, because that s what kills things in the end.
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Would you agree?
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Totally, and again, coming back to the whole everything comes down to the negative, the quality of your boundaries in your relationship, and I would even say the quality of your relationship, is very much predicated on the ability of both partners to say no to one another.
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Boundaries
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get fuzzy and break down when partners aren t able to say no.
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They re not able to stand up for their own needs and their own desires and their own perspectives and they re not able to occasionally reject their partners when they feel it s wrong or when they feel they re being unfair.
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And again, that s a very kind of unconventional take
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I guess on like what the conventional wisdom would be, you know, it s like, oh, I always say yes, always be positive or whatever.
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But I think that saying no in a relationship is actually like one of the most important things that both partners need to be capable of doing.
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Otherwise, you just get in this entangled mess of like, like constantly feeling at fault for anything that goes wrong with either of you.
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And that s not fair to both people.
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Beautiful.
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Mark Manson, is there anything that I haven t asked you that you want to make sure you deliver to the audience?
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No.
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Just go to my website.
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See if you like it.
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That s about it.
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We ll have that linked up in the show notes and everything.
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No worries.
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No worries, brother.
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Thank you so much for your time.
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This has been great, and we appreciate you.
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Thanks for having me, man.
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Really good show, really interesting.
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I love the boundary inventory.
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Thinking of a conflict, asking yourself those tough questions.
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Am I asking them to accommodate me?
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Do I believe they re obligated to accommodate me?
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Am I accommodating them or do I feel like I have to?
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These are relationship questions that if you ask them often enough in the right context, you can save yourself a whole lot of trouble.
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That and love is not enough.
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Really, really interesting points and a great article.
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We ll have that linked up in the show notes for you as well.
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Show feedback and guest suggestions.
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The show s a fanarchy.
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It s run by you.
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That means you get to drive a lot of the guests here.
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If you know someone who s a good fit, let us know.
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And thank Mark on Twitter.
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We ll have that linked in the show notes.
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I m on Twitter as well.
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at The Art of Charm.
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Complaints, compliments, other assorted flattery, always welcome.
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And I post a lot of stuff there that never makes it to the show.
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Because it s silly, ridiculous, or off topic, and sometimes just because it s easier to tweet than it is to broadcast.
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