"Love is Not Enough in Intimate Relationships!" You NEED These 3 Things As Well with Matthew Hussey

0:00Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.

0:12If someone is asking you to change in a relationship, in a committed relationship, and you change for them, is that real love? Doing it for someone else so that they can be happy? Or is it a lack of self-love and saying, actually, that's not something I want to do right now. And I want to accept who I am in this moment, my personality or my habits or my mannerisms or whatever it is that they want to change. And I'm willing to walk away if that doesn't work for you. Is it love if you change for someone else? Look, I think firstly, people alert us to things that we discover we want to change about ourselves all the time.

0:55how many of the things that we realize about ourself we realize because of how that habit that behavior is experienced in relation to other people so enough people in your family tell you that there is something a way that you are that is affecting them and that mirror you know assuming they come to you in healthy ways or that they point things out in a loving or compassionate way but that mirror is a wake-up call for you about a way that you are affecting people how your behavior is hurting people that you know we come we we learn about ourselves in those ways all the time in life so to that extent in some ways it's a loving thing for someone around you to trust you enough or to trust the relationship enough to feel like they can be honest with you.

1:59When I think of the most brittle relationships or what defines a brittle relationship or one where there is, that doesn't have that foundation of safety and trust and love, I think of a relationship where people aren't honest with each other about the things they're unhappy about because they're too afraid that the relationship can't sustain it. I've been in relationships where I was so busy trying to hold on to someone and worried that I wasn't going to be able to hold on to them that I wasn't honest about what I was unhappy with about that person. Because you didn't want to rock the boat or make you upset?

2:29Yeah, I was afraid that I was going to be seen as difficult or high maintenance or that it was going to be one too many things for me to ask that person. And, you know, I didn't value myself enough in the relationship to be honest with someone about how something was affecting me. and and so I think that it's a it's an act of love for someone to even feel safe enough in a relationship to be able to tell us that they may wish to be different or that may is maybe is hurting them I think that how we receive that and what we do about that is also an act of love the question is how fundamental is the thing they're asking us to change and is it possible for us to change it?

3:12Does it force us to just shift away from who we actually are? And that gets into all sorts of interesting territory, right? Because if let's say you're a narcissist and someone comes to you and says like, this pathological lying that you're doing is really affecting me or the fact that you never, you gaslight me or the fact that you never involved me in any major decisions and that you make every decision unilaterally for our lives. Or, you know, the fact that you never consider me or these things need to change could that person argue i wouldn't be loving myself if i made all these changes you know you could take it to that extreme and you'd say well that's a fine argument for the narcissist to make is that you are not accepting me for me this is who i am i wouldn't be loving myself if i change these things for you that's fine but then you don't you no longer deserve this person's company you're not entitled to this person constantly being abused by you or constantly accepting that their reality is distorted by being with you they don't have to put up with it if your definition of loving yourself is that you get to stay all of these abusive ways well their definition of loving themselves might be to get out of the way of you you know i do think that we have to partly we have to say what kind of person do I need to be in order to attract the kind of person I want to be with?

4:39If I want to be with a very kind and generous person, well, what's the level of kindness or generosity on my part that is necessary for me to be able to keep that company? It could be the wrong question to say, is it loving myself to be this for somebody else? It might be that I have to go, what kind of love do I want to attract in my life? Because me loving myself is me giving myself the gift of that kind of love. But what do I need to be or represent? What behavior do I need to model in order to attract that kind of love? That is the kind of love that if I received it would be an act of love for me to receive.

5:20Do you know what I mean? I hope I'm not getting too abstract with that, but it's like - No, it makes sense.

5:33Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of The Daily Motivation, and I hope you have an amazing rest of your day. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to click the link in the description. That will take you to the full episode of our main podcast on The School of Greatness. And if you are loving The Daily Motivation, please follow us over on Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review over on Apple podcast right now. And if you want more exclusive content and ad free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel on Apple podcast right now. And if you want to get even more inspiration from our world class guests and learn how to improve your life and take it to the next level, then make sure to sign up for the greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

6:23Again, have an amazing day and I'll see you tomorrow with another episode of the Daily Motivation Show.