Toxic Relationships: Why We Stay and How to Leave

Hello and welcome to Being Well. I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the show, thanks for joining us today. And if you've listened before, welcome back. Today we're talking about one of the most difficult things a person can do, leaving somebody who isn't good for you.

Most of us have had at least one relationship, whether it was romantic, a friendship, professional, or even inside of our families, that we knew just wasn't good for us. We might have seen the red flags, even made a plan to step back. but then we kept finding ourselves pulled back in. These kinds of relationships are often incredibly confusing for people. There can be a kind of Jekyll and Hyde quality to them.

The other person might seem wonderful one day and cruel the next. They might explain away the worst moments of your relationship so convincingly that you start to doubt your own ability to tell what's actually going on and even when you know that something's off the idea of leaving can activate a lot of fear In this episode, we're going to be talking about why that happens, why smart, capable, kind, thoughtful, psychoeducated people get stuck in these relationships and what you can do about it.

This is going to include topics like trauma bonding, common cycles like idealization and evaluation, and traits to look out for, including what are sometimes known as dark triad traits. to help me do that i'm joined today by clinical psychologist rick hansen so dad how are you doing today i'm good and i'm really looking forward to this topic it's a delicate one and there's a lot of suffering in it, and even guilt, I guess. We feel bad about leaving them, especially if they're clingy.

And that we haven't left them sometimes for people. Yeah, absolutely. This one cuts a lot of different ways for sure. So I'm also really looking forward to this one. Before we get into it, I do want to give people a quick reminder about Rick's Foundations of Wellbeing program. It's Rick's flagship year-long online course. In it, you can focus on growing new inner strengths each week for a whole year.

It was the inspiration for our book together, Resilient. And if you'd like to learn more, head to rickhansen.com slash foundations and use coupon code beingwell25 to receive a 25% off discount. You can also apply for scholarships there. There are a lot of ways to access the program. It's a really great offering from Rick.

I would love to get into it with you in kind of a different spot than normal. We normally start with like a lot of table setting as we were even joking about a little bit before we started recording today. But I would like to kind of start almost in the middle of this. Somebody walks into your office, Dad.

and they say to you something like i know that this other person isn't good for me when i'm away from them in particular i know that they're not good for me i can see that i can even make a plan for leaving them But then I kind of start seeing them again, and I'm back with them, and it's so hard to actually do that, and they have this explanation for why they did what they did, and I just keep on getting sucked back in.

What do you think is going on here? And what would you say to this person? Being real about it, I would feel a lot of heart for them, honestly, from the start, including I was really humbled in my... late 20s when I got involved in kind of half a cult, I call it. And it was a group of people that I knew wasn't good in some ways, but I just couldn't leave. And as you know, I'm...

Fairly autonomous, determined person. Extremely psychoeducated, obviously. Yeah, and I was caught. A lot of resources. I was caught. Yeah. Highly resourced, determined, privileged in lots of ways. Ugh.

I couldn't get out. I've been in a pretty benign version, but also a version of one of these myself. Yeah. Yeah. So heart humbled. And here's a question. I would... ask that person, not necessarily in order, but a question, one question around off the top is, what is it that is, what is the good within you that keeps keeping you entangled in what's bad for you?

Like maybe a belief in them or their ability to change for the better, something like that, empathy. Yeah, I could see that. Yeah, or you, you know, just thinking of you as a really honorable person and a dutiful person. It would draw you back in. And large-hearted would draw you back in. So it's actually helpful.

Yeah, taking responsibility. You know, well, they are what they are, but I'm going to take mega responsibility over here. I'm going to be a learner. I'm going to focus on my side of the street. These are wholesome, virtuous qualities in people. certainly in you and i think they just suck us back in sure yeah that would be one thing and i think it's to begin to differentiate because that's sort of key here because when

I'm away from the person. I know it's not good for me, but when I'm with them, I'm just really sucked in. We need to increase differentiation in real time, live, on the set, on the playing field. And one way into that is to... go internal and feel into and appreciate the good things in you that keep pulling you back in. That would be one thing. A second question I'd have would be, okay, what makes it hard to...

hold on to your truth and to stay in touch with me when you're in the middle of we. And it's normal. It's nothing wrong with you. Nothing to be embarrassed about. It's really normal. And what is it? Just facts.

right? That's keeping you, that's making it hard for you to see clearly when you're around them, when you're in the reality distortion field, you know, that that other person is kind of radiating. And it could be stuff like childhood material about over enmeshment in your family of origin, as a model of attachment relationships.

not enough sense of differentiation from other people. And it may be, again, some of your strengths. And goodness, maybe you're a very open person, very kind of sensitive. empathic and permeable and you care about others and that kind of makes it hard for you to differentiate.

you know in real time with another person so just understanding that better can help you reminding yourself of certain things going in maybe even writing some stuff out if you're talking with them on the phone Going back and forth to that, you know, yellow sticky on the wall. Not my problem. Or, you know, it's okay for me to be me. Or, you know, what's in your best interest? Sam or whatever your name might be, right?

I think you gave a great list already of things that could be in the mix for somebody. Another one that I would put out there that I think is really true for people is often these relationships become very isolating, both because the other person is doing things whether it's deliberately or it's subconsciously, whatever, in some ways it almost doesn't matter, to kind of isolate you from other people, or because there's a lot of shame in the mix.

Because you kind of feel inside of yourself like, oh, man, I feel bad talking about this with other people. I don't want to be the person who keeps on bringing this kind of a topic up to my friend group. My friends have gotten tired of hearing about this because every time that I talk to them, I just talk about how bad fill-in-the-blank person is, right? And they've just told me, hey, we have nothing to add here.

we've already said what we feel like we have to say. And so now I feel increasingly cut off from different forms of support that could exist out there. So that's another one I would kind of lay on top of the pile here. I'm glad you said that because, you know, a disclaimer here. We're not talking about normal relationship issues, right? Disagreements, little tussles. Sure, yeah. We're talking about it. It's kind of like walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, acts like a duck.

Basically, a rule of thumb for me is, do I feel bigger or smaller after an interaction with somebody? Yeah, good relationships can have plenty of conflict in them. To your point, Dad, this is sort of a slightly different focus. When I was setting this up, I wasn't thinking of it as explicitly an episode focused on helping people out with abusive relationships. That's kind of itself a whole other category. There could be stuff in here.

that's helpful for you if that's a situation that unfortunately you find yourself in. And particularly some of the stuff that we talk about today that's about identifying those kinds of relationships could be helpful for you. I'm sort of thinking about this in that range that it's definitely above, oh, we argue sometimes, or we're having a normal range relationship conflict. Does that kind of make sense? Oh, it's great. I think it's a really interesting territory.

And to mess it up further, probably, it could be that relationships sort of have different channels, if you will. And it could be that when you're in the channel where... You're just talking about sports. It's fine. But if you get into the channel where you're talking about politics, it just doesn't feel good. Right? Or maybe... Yeah, this is someone where as long as you keep it on a kind of formal footing at work, it goes okay.

If you allow that boundary to slip and slide and, you know, based on that one night of going out for drinks and getting kind of flirty with each other and then it got weird, you just pull back, you know. So there's a... place here too for recognizing that in certain channels it could feel bad, but in other channels it's still okay to maintain a relationship in that channel. Great. And just to keep on doing our disclaimers of the...

start-ish of the episode here. We're going to use the word relationship a lot like you just did. And this is, of course, a huge problem inside of romantic relationships, maybe the most common place where this becomes a problem for people. But when we say relationship, we also mean

friendships, families, some work environments, things like that. So we're being kind of inclusive here with it. One of the things I definitely wanted to do was a little bit of things to look out for, red flags, that kind of stuff, which can be helpful for people.

Particularly, there's this set of traits that sometimes people refer to as the dark triad that I think are particularly problematic inside of different forms of relationships. First one, everyone's heard of it, narcissism, grandiosity, fragile sense of self. me me me second one what's called machiavellianism and this is about covert forms of manipulation which is going to be a big theme of the episode then the third category

probably the least common, but it kind of depends on how you think about it. This is full-blown psychopathy. or what are sometimes called antisocial personality traits. What this means is a general sense of lack of kindness and care for others, no real remorse. This is somebody who essentially never apologizes.

a kind of sense of callousness maybe in their behavior with other people. And for me, what to look for here is what is this person like under pressure? Anyone can be good on a good day. What are they like on a bad day? particularly with things like narcissism, narcissism is a style of emotional regulation. So the person is hypersensitive to feelings of shame, low self-worth, that kind of stuff.

So they have to chronically look outside of themselves to regulate those feelings. They can't do it on their own. And this is why sometimes people who are in that more narcissistic category find a kind of identified person. that they sort of latch onto as this external object that then functions for them as a source of narcissistic supply so when you guys are agreeing about everything when you're doing everything that they want you to do they can be perfectly lovely

If anything, they can be charming and sound really clever and be very successful out in the world. But on a bad day, that's when everything kind of goes to hell. And that's one of the things that I just think really stands out as a pattern in these kinds of people. What's your... The meter. Okay. The meter. I'm looking for the first word. What would be the first word for the weirdometer? The spook meter. We're in spooky season, Dad. It's almost Halloween. We can do the spook meter.

And your home is super decorated thanks to Elizabeth and maybe some others. Oh, Elizabeth loves spooky season. Big spooky season person, yeah. Yeah, the spook commenter where it's just, and what is that? And so I wonder, like, for me... It's registering that this other person doesn't actually care about me. Yeah, it can just take a long time to figure that out, but I totally agree with you. Yeah, and even the animal feeling where you just...

In your gut, you just, they say the words. Maybe they're charming. You know, you've talked about charisma sometimes as a feature of narcissistic people. But deep down inside, when you walk away, you feel emptied. You feel less. You feel subordinated. You don't feel cherished. You don't feel prized. Here, there's a struggle often around valuation and devaluation as if it's a zero-sum game.

And there are a finite number of, you know, affirmative supplies in the space. So if you get some, that means they get less. So do you feel somehow depleted in your worth? Do you feel subtly, this is a real hallmark for me, subtly that you have to keep proving yourself or impressing them or earning your way back in to good standing with them?

Fuck that shit, if I may be so blunt. I did see that coming. You just hit me with that one, Dad. I love it for you. Yeah. This is a new look. You're not even wearing the black t-shirt today. This is black t-shirt energy. Not black helicopter energy. Black hat energy or whatever it is. Yeah, but anyway, no, I like black. Black's good. Anyway. so point being to me yeah how do you do it like were you just you know this kind of more visceral read where you just go you know

I feel like I'm being used by this person in some way. Yeah, what I can tell you are some things that activate my spook-o-meter. Maybe that's a good place to answer this question from. One of the things that is really, it did not used to. But what has really started to activate my spook meter are when people do a lot of fast forwarding of intimacy. When somebody is in that world of like, wow, we just met, but I feel like I've known you forever. There are going to be moments in life, maybe.

where that's authentically true for a person. You know, Elizabeth has had experiences, particularly with female friends, where she talks to the person for five minutes at a party and she comes up to me and she's like, yeah, I'm going to be friends with that person for like forever and ever. And she's right.

she's often totally right about it yeah and it becomes like this great meaningful relationship for her so some of this is about discernment but this is a big hallmark of these kinds of relationships and the kinds of people that end up becoming a little bit problematic, particularly in romantic relationships. This real acceleration of closeness when...

no foundation for closeness has actually been built. You guys actually barely know each other, but all of a sudden we're in this kind of us against the world mentality. And that's one of the things that can really cut people off from support. in the way that I was talking about toward the beginning of the episode. What do you think about that, Dad? I'm wondering about that one because I think a lot of people...

have this deep desire to find that person where it's like, you know, you lock eyes across the room and it's like we've known each other forever. So me flagging that as something to look out for might be a little counterintuitive for people.

People can have, and I've had certainly experiences like Elizabeth has had, you know, where there's a real strong sense of connect. I kind of think you're a little bit you're getting at. I experienced this a fair amount in the early days of the human potential scene. Or people would be hanging with you at a party, and suddenly they'd be your deepest friend, and then fairly soon they'd be trying to enroll you in their new workshop program.

Yeah, you've moved in together after knowing them for 10 days. You don't really know this person, but things have escalated very quickly. And then all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, I actually don't know this person. And then all this weird stuff starts happening. When it feels like, I just loved your definition, I'd never heard it before, of narcissism as a style of emotional regulation. Yeah. And so when you start to realize, oh, I get it, they're using me.

to regulate their emotions, right? They need to make me impressed with them or kind of secondary to them. They need to make me feeding their narcissistic hungers. Oh, I'm a means to their end. That's the quality, the sense of seduction. A version of this I would not describe as narcissism. I would think of it more as just wounded bird neediness.

Sure, yeah. And I mean this quite compassionately. People get broken wings for external reasons. It's not their fault. And it can just be that one scenario. It's not that they're narcissistic. It's that they've latched on to you and there's a hole in their bucket and you just don't have the resources to fill them. At that point, you need to find a way to disentangle yourself in a way that has more continuity for it or more durability, like at a pace you can manage.

you know, having lunch with them monthly or weekly or something like that. Anyway, but that's kind of almost a different category I'm just thinking about here. But in either case, they're taking, right? That's kind of it. It feels like there's a lack of reciprocity. Another version of it, I don't know what you've experienced with this, with you go out with them and you hang out and you realize when you leave, well, they never asked me a question about myself. It was all them. Totally.

Healthy relationships include normal cycles of give and take, in part because give and take implies that there's a relatively flat power relationship. If I can give to you and you can give to me...

and I can not take from you, but have an ask that you respond to effectively, and you can do the same for me, then we're relatively even in terms of power. Most of the relationships that we're describing... that tend to go really sideways often have a really big power imbalance in them and it's not always that you're the one who's in the one down position kind of like you're talking about dad sometimes you're actually sort of

presented as the more functional member of the relationship for whatever reason. And somebody is just like having these kind of chronic asks of you. And that's what makes this relationship unhealthier when that's really not good for you at this point. But either way, big power imbalance.

this is also something that enables a person to cut somebody else off from that kind of external support and another thing that i mentioned right like if they're in a position to start saying hey you know i really don't like it when you talk to that person

that that friend group over there they say bad things about me you shouldn't why why are you friends with them when they say bad things about me you know it's one thing if the person's just kind of saying that and they've got no no hold on you it's all you in one ear out the other it's fine but

if they have the ability to say, hey, if you do that, this is how I'm going to punish you, then all of a sudden we're really in the danger zone here. And that kind of maybe gets to another thing really quickly here, which to me is the number one spook.

Pretty much every relationship that is in this category has some version of this, which is these cycles of idealization and devaluation. So this is a really common pattern in particularly abusive relationships, but in these more... normal range but still bad relationships as well where there's this frequent cycling this kind of rubber band snap that you can sometimes see in real time where a person goes from being amazing

i love you i love you i love you too awful i hate you i hate you i hate you and again this is one of those things where when they're getting everything they want they can be in the i love you i love you world but the moment that that is challenged we go to i hate you i hate you and this then leads to a placation pattern we try to placate them we try to keep them happy right when they're in a good mood we're good so let's just keep them in a good mood right oh no we're fine

That sounds nice in theory. In practice, it just never works out that way. Sometimes it's because their asks keep on increasing. Sometimes it's because it's like there's a bucket with a hole in the bottom and you can just never fill the bucket. Whatever it is...

this is a form of intermittent reinforcement. It's you're pulling a slot machine handle and you get a different response every time. And we know that this is like one of the most addictive things to our brain. We really struggle with intermittent reinforcement.

And so maybe this is another spook meter thing. Maybe the biggest thing to look out for here, do you feel like you're walking on eggshells all the time? Do you feel like you can actually talk about this with them and feel like they're going to respond to you in a way that is like sane? and responsive and empathic you're making me think about variations on this one being a certain narcissistic framing that they're the superstar

and are permitted to worship at their feet. You're the Robin to their Batman, yeah, totally. Yeah, and then as long as you stay in that role, you're permitted to... hang out in their reflected glory or sort of all right and when you start stepping out of that role including by establishing yourself as a differentiated being on as you put it earlier horizontal power level then they

fight back. They don't want to maintain the script. Go the other way, the one where, in a way you're just talking about, where they come in in a very idealized way. toward you, idealizing. Or it could be a variation of, I'm brilliant and I also recognize your genius, let's say. Okay, that's a clever, tricky one. They recognize my genius. Oh, they're so impressive. They say I'm like them. Oh, okay, good.

And then based on idealizing you, then they communicate essentially because you're so wonderful, because you really understand, because your genius understands my genius, whatever. I need you. You owe me. And then as long as you keep delivering those goods based on that idealization, then they'll keep the music playing. You're right. But if that...

music stops, then you're right, devaluation time. How dare you? How could you? I guess I was so wrong about you. And then you get sucked into trying to prove yourself again. Have you seen ways, I'm just wondering, because you've... worked as a couples and family and individual therapist for forever and ever, 40 years or whatever it was.

You're kind of largely retired from private practice at this point, but you're still doing a little bit of it. I still have my own neurotic mind that I have to work with. We're all practicing all the time. I've got grist for the mill every day for a full-time therapeutic practice. Just dealing with my own mind. Just dealing with my own pathology. I'm my own favorite client or whatever it is. Anyways, my question in this is like,

Have you seen ways that this pattern tends to show up practically for people? Somebody's walking into your office, they're talking about this inside of their relationships, or you're seeing a couple do this.

where you're starting to get a whiff of this kind of thing. Like, what does it really look like? A really common pattern, and it's gendered. And just, I'm not saying this is the only way it shows up. And it's partly also true that it's much more often females than males who will seek out a therapist.

Very often, it'll be a woman. I'm just thinking of several instances. And she'll, among other things, be describing her relationship. And it starts to raise my hackles on her behalf. My spook-o-meter. The spooks are going off for you, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, he said, what do you? Or he doesn't do what? Or he insists that you what?

Or, you know, and I start moving more and more in that way. And part of it for people to understand, I think, is not around blaming yourself, but again, recognizing, okay, what are the factors that keep me hooked? What are the repetition compulsions here from my childhood? Maybe around a way of being helpless and dependent as a mode of relating with other people that kind of make...

have enabled this person to sort of move in to certain spaces in which I was more inert or helpless or not as agentic, not as assertive. And he just sort of moved in and took over. Okay, so what is it about that? What keeps this person involved and what drew this person to that kind of a person in the first place? Again, not blaming the victim out of self-respect and self-understanding.

So I see that. I also see certain situations where the other person can be threatening. And they get pretty inflammatory. And they're very good at making you feel like it's all your fault and turning it back on you. Maybe they're a little more verbally facile, a little more verbally gifted. Maybe they've had a little more personal growth and therapy under their belt.

They've had a meditation retreat, you know, and they just throw it back at you and you walk away going, I guess it must be my fault. I have to grow. I have to let go. And so forth. So that to me also is a clue. If when you keep walking away from interactions, the structure of it is that, okay, it's you, the person who has work to do. We'll be back to the show in just a minute, but first a word from our sponsors.

I love taking photos of my family, where I've been, and even the very cute cat and dog that I'm a pet uncle to. But too often, I take those pictures and I never see them again. They just end up buried on my phone. That's why I was very interested when Skylight reached out to sponsor the show. The Skylight frame is a digital picture frame you can send photos to, and they appear in seconds. The frame has a sleek HD touchscreen. It looks very aesthetic.

and the quick one-minute setup is easy for all ages or tech skill levels to use. With the gift of a skylight frame, you can send photos right to family members' frames from your phone in seconds. If you aren't happy with your frame, you can return it within four months for a full refund, no questions asked. And if your device experiences a covered issue within the first three years, Skylight will replace it free of charge.

Right now, Skylight is offering our listeners $20 off their 10-inch frames by going to myskylight.com slash beingwell. Go to myskylight.com slash beingwell. for $20 off your 10-inch frame. That's M-Y-S-K-Y-L-I-G-H-T dot com slash beingwell. Here's a little holiday hack. When in doubt,

If you don't know what to give someone, give them something warm and fuzzy. I've been turning to our sponsor, Quince, for betting because it's soft, it's built to last, it looks good, and Elizabeth loves it. And it makes a great gift as well. We've been using the Egyptian cotton sheets on our bed and we have really enjoyed them. If you're starting to experience more crisp evenings and chilly mornings, I think you'll really like them. They hit the sweet spot.

They're soft against the skin, they naturally regulate temperature, and hey, they look great too. Just like their apparel, quince bedding is crafted from premium materials, but it's priced at half the cost of similar luxury brands. Give the gift of a retreat this holiday. Quince Bedding makes any bedroom a place you want to linger. Go to quince.com slash beingwell for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns.

It's now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash being well. Free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com slash being well. Every week, our brain goes through a lot. We drown it in dopamine with endless scrolling. We drag it through all of the various work tasks that it was most certainly not built for.

We usually keep it from getting enough rest and recovery time. With all of this happening to our brains, we should give them the care they deserve. One way to do that is through therapy, which we talk about all the time on the show. But it's not always easy to find the right therapist. One place to look is on our sponsor ZocDoc, which can help by providing you with multiple options for therapists in your area who are in-network and have availability.

And we're not just talking about therapist appointments. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare all types of in-network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment. With more than 100,000 high-quality doctors, you can find a provider across every specialty. If I needed to find a doctor, I'd use ZocDoc. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash being.

to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's zocdoc.com slash being. zocdoc.com slash being. Now, back to the show. So a second ago there, Dad, you used a phrase, repetition compulsion. We've talked about these ideas on the podcast in the past, including the episodes that we did on psychoanalysis.

But this kind of gets to something that is a big topic that I wanted to do with you today, which is whether there are some tendencies in the people who tend to get stuck in these kinds of relationships. And you were talking about it even at the very beginning of the episode.

when you mentioned, hey, here's some qualities that this person might have or some things about your personal history that somebody like this could be kind of taking advantage of? I would say a person who was smallified in their family, who was... Made to be the good boy or good girl, you know, with a certain amount of maybe understandable seething anger underneath it all, speaking of myself.

going up in some ways. It could be, you know, someone who, maybe who had a sibling with health issues, and so they had to sort of recede. to the side in the family because there just wasn't the understandable attention or resources for them so you know people who are tend to be excessively deferential

deferential to authority, deferential to expertise, deferential to people who maybe seem a little more intelligent. That can make people pretty vulnerable. Another version of this is... to be around a fair amount of volatility and instability and placating i think that's a really important one normalization of volatility is maybe a way to put it like that did you come from a system where it was just normal

for people to be shouting at each other a lot or for there to be these kinds of blow-ups or for emotional instability to be just a big part of the mix because then you see it in your relationships and you go like oh yeah okay this is what people do And it's like, well, yeah, a lot of people do that, but that doesn't mean it's good for you. That's right. And to see the role of a person in your family system, maybe, who was the appeaser.

Sure, yeah. Were you the one who made everything okay? Yeah, totally. But who's the one who usually makes the first moves to apologize or ask for forgiveness? Or maybe it was like that and you just hated it. So you'll just do anything in your current relationship to not have that happen. And you just, it just really triggers you around your past. You hate it. So you move into that placating, appeasing, freezing kind of way of being.

That's a great list. Really, really good summary. A couple of episodes maybe, or related topics that we've done that could be helpful about this. I think a lot of self-abandonment stuff comes in here. Are you fundamentally allied with yourself?

And I mean, kind of like capital S self, like your big sense of who you are, or do you feel like you're in a relationship where it's all about the self that's over there? And you kind of like you were saying earlier, dad, you're kind of this like plug in unit. that's sort of attached to them. That's a battery kind of powering their light bulb. Some people, you know, that's a role that they want to be in life. They want to be the kind of support system person that can be great. But man.

If you get bigger and stronger and more successful, how do they react? Do they like it when you get bigger and stronger and more successful? Are they cheerleading you getting bigger and stronger and more successful? Or are they freaking out? And again, I think that's another one of those things to just really be paying attention to here. Maybe really quickly, two other sort of red flags that I want to just toss into the mix. First...

really bad responses to disagreement are being challenged. Particularly explosive anger on the one hand, or withdrawal, silent treatment, I'm going to just cut you off. Ice age. Yeah, totally. You're just iced out. So either side of the spectrum in a kind of intense way. Supernova or Ice Age. Deep freeze. Yeah, that's not a good sign. a second one that i would love to talk with you about a little bit because i because this is such a hard one to talk about the fuzz these people hate clarity

We're constantly talking about, well, what I meant by what I said was this, and what did you really mean by that? And what was our agreement? A lot of fighting over semantics. A lot of like, wait, so what really happened there? This is, again, a little difficult to talk about because a normal amount of that can be really healthy inside of a relationship. You want to figure out.

what the other person's thinking and feeling and how they interpreted the situation. And what did they mean by that, actually? Like, these can be useful questions to ask. But man, if you are spending a lot of time debating exactly what happened... And they're spending a lot of time telling you why the bad thing they did is actually not a bad thing. And in fact, it's kind of an example of how you're doing something wrong.

If they're doing a lot of, oh no, what I really meant was, over and over and over again, that's just a pattern to really pay attention to, and particularly that feeling of like you're wandering through a fog. The fuzz is everywhere. It's all around you. Nothing's really ever totally clear. What was our agreement about that thing? This is a big spook-o-meter for me.

It's become kind of a running joke inside of my friend group actually at this point that I talk about the fuzz a lot. Like that's a fuzzy person is something that I'll say. There's just a lot of fuzz around that person over there. And it's this kind of lack of clarity where it's just really tough to pin somebody down.

about like what do they care about what are their values here what are our agreements and they're just kind of fuzzy about it first i was fuzzy about about about what i meant by fuzzy it's a fuzzy word yeah and now i I get it. I think it's really great. And underneath it all, it has to do with what the intent is. And I think you can feel it when someone has a sincere interest in understanding. What bothered you about a particular word you used? Sure, yeah.

Okay. And they really want to understand and they're kind of sorting it out because they just don't get it and they want to get it. Okay. You can feel that. On the other hand, yeah, if I'm just thinking about the fuzz. Not the police, but anyways. I know, I'm immediately going there. I know. Hot fuzz, the whole thing. Yeah, totally. Yeah. At the end of the day, and in the beginning and middle of the day too, what we each as humans want.

and want from each other is usually really quite simple. It's very specific, it's direct, it's heartfelt, it gets to us. We want to feel that we're with someone who wishes us well. We want to feel understood. We want to feel that the other people are reliable, that what they say they will do, they will actually do. Pretty basic stuff.

Sounds like a great list to me. I'm a big fan so far. Okay. Yeah. I'm sure there are more. There are more. Yeah. A lot on the list, but those are good entries. Totally. Yeah. And I think about thought balloons. People have as they cross each other, you know, in their life or with each other. Do you like me? Do you love me? Can I count on you? Will you hurt me? The answers to these questions are like a weighty stone.

They're solid, they're real, they're palpable. They're not that hard. And I think fuzziness is a way to evade clarity about actual answers. to these soulful questions that we have naturally for each other. That would be one thing I see. And a second thing I say is that they're throwing out the word cloud to like an inky squid. you know to evade and escape obfuscation baby and to escape allowing you to communicate a clear request

What cuts through a lot of the fuzz is their story about the past. That's the fuzz. Okay? Bottom line, what's your request of them from now on? To me, that's a very useful way. I find myself with people who are doing fuzz on me and I listen for a little bit. I zero in on what my actual best interests are here for the future and then put it out as a clean request.

And then you see what they do with that one. And if that freaks somebody out, essentially, if they are totally nonresponsive to that, if they are not interested in clarifying what the agreements are, if they're like, why do you need to?

have that like oh i don't know it's you're putting a lot of pressure on me there's some amount of that again this is why this is hard to talk about there's some amount of that that's understandable or reasonable or whatever but that has an expiration date in an adult relationship and like a serious adult relationship with other serious adults right like that stuff that 13 year olds do with each other

And while my favorite recent unifying theory of the world is everyone is 13, if you've been spending some time on Twitter, it's an absolutely hilarious thing. Please look up. Why is everyone 13? Or I think it's 13. It might have been 12, but I think it was 13. Anyways, we don't want to be 13 with each other in our adult relationships, right? We want to act like adults. And guess what?

Adults make agreements and then they keep them most of the time. And if they don't, you're kind of in trouble. You made me think about how much we don't like being pinned down. And I get that. Nobody wants to be the butterfly in the examination thing. Yeah, totally. Right. And still, fundamentally, it's not safe to be with people who are unwilling to be pinned down.

Yeah, who are totally unpinnable. If they're just like a gassy form, you know, whatever, kind of gaseous, whatever cloud-like substance, then that's probably not a great candidate.

for like a deep meaningful relationship it could be a good candidate for for whatever for like a peripheral friendship for somebody to say hi to in the office okay sure but safety issues come up a lot of the time with these people and so you do not want to be spending excess time with them by and large yeah if i could forrest to name one of your probably least favorite activities which is being high up on a cliff

Oh, yeah. Real fear of exposure over here. I raised my hand on that one, totally. Yeah. Okay. You just made me think about my own experiences of being high up on the cliff and those... people who know how rock climbing works, is that one person is anchored, they're the belayer, and then there's the lead climber and so forth. If the lead climber falls, the ultimate...

point of catching is the belayer's anchors. So common practice is three independent sources of protection. So if two fail, you still have a third. Okay. So I was just thinking about being, you know, 50 feet up, 100 feet up and calling down to my belayer. Hey, yo, are you? Yeah, because I'm getting scared, let's say, as the lead climber. Hey, are those anchors solid? And the other person says, well.

what is an anchor anyway? And what do you mean solid? Why do you need to pin me down for that? I'd be freaking out because obviously I need to know that.

The anchors are pinned down in the cracks, and my partner is pinned down with his assurances. And I think there's a lot about life that's like that. So I think we've done... a great job did you swerve away from that metaphor for us did i like traumatize you from the setup oh from from the exposure issue no no no yeah yeah you kind of went away there no i i just i just went away for a moment because i was like oh i gotta transition into another

part of the podcast episode so that that was it was not because you had given me like flashbacks suddenly to dramatic moments in yosemite or whatever it was this podcast is all about you i'm sharing a meaningful story here Okay, okay. We've done a great job of talking about all the stuff that's in the mix here, I think. I'm going to pat us on the back. All right, great. Okay, good. The crux of this for people is now what?

you know a lot of good identification of what goes into this things to look out for that kind of stuff and i think a lot of what we've been talking about so far is kind of the answer to why does that smart, capable, thoughtful, intelligent, psychoeducated, blah, blah, blah person still sometimes find themselves sucked into these kinds of relationships. These relationships are complicated. They're fuzzy.

it's sometimes hard to to see what's what the real truth of something is when you're in kind of the fog of a relationship so okay now let's say you're in one of these what do we do about this i think a big one for people like a place to start is rebuilding that sense of yourself as somebody who matters. For starters, my needs really matter. Rubber banding can really...

make it difficult for a person to be confident about their perceptions of what's going on. Maybe I overreacted. Maybe they didn't mean it. Oh, they'll be better tomorrow, whatever it is. And it can make it kind of hard to reconnect with that sense of self-trust, that feeling that like, hey, no, I am seeing this clearly. Wait a second. Yeah, that actually wasn't good. Oh, no, they can't talk to me that way.

So, and there are some questions that maybe you could ask to start seeing this inside of your relationships a little bit. Do you share stories about this situation and your friends, people who you know really care about you? just raise their eyebrows a lot you know whoa really they like you said they said what huh you gave them another chance yeah wow well we're doing this again really yeah okay yeah

Or do you feel like you're walking on eggshells all the time, like I said earlier? Do they feel kind of receptive to those requests that you make, including requests that involve kind of an agreement, a clear agreement, pinning them down a little bit? Yeah.

can you define boundaries inside of the relationship are there boundaries inside of the relationship have we do we agree on what a boundary is or what a boundary means all of that kind of stuff what do you mean mean yeah what do you exactly right we're doing the whole thing um another big one are my relationships

kind of shrinking or they're getting smaller and smaller. And these are all things that can make it actually in a weird way, harder and harder to trust yourself because they're kind of attacks on your own sense of self-worth. Wow, I'm in this relationship that my other friends don't like and I feel like I can't really trust them and I do feel like I'm just kind of getting smaller and smaller. There's this funny sort of reinforcing quality to it.

That includes a lot of shame. And I think that that shame experience is kind of the elephant in the room. with a lot of these relationships. I'm wondering, Dad, if as I'm just kind of talking about this, if stuff's coming to mind for you, like things a person could do to reinforce that sense of self-trust, to feel a little bigger, a little clearer about what's going on. Well, I'm pausing because I'm...

putting myself into the world of real people in real relationships yeah because some of this is kind of like easy to say from a 10 000 foot view yeah but when you're in it it gets a lot harder totally yeah here you are you're middle-aged you're Maybe you're 10 years in to a relationship. Sure. And maybe you've got kids together. Maybe...

you are tangled up in some working relationship with them. They're an important colleague. Maybe they're even further up the ladder than you are in the company somewhere. And it gets complicated. You know, it can be hard to realize and to pay a price. On any given day, it's not worth it to change the overall structure. You know, on any given day, it seems to make sense to keep the peace.

Yeah, and I think that's a huge hallmark of these relationships. On any day, the cost of leaving is greater than the cost of staying. But when you add it up, wow, you do not like that bank account. Yeah. That's right. That's real. And that has a lot of weight on people. So what do you do about it? Well, one thing I think that's really helpful is to ask yourself if I knew with perfect certainty that the next 12 days.

or 12 weeks, or if the next 12 months were exactly like, more or less, in regard to these key things that are wearing on me now. The last 12 months, if I knew with perfect certainty... that there was not going to be a significant change, what would I do? And often the answer is, I'd be out of here. And then our next question is, okay, what can then reduce your uncertainty?

about the answer to the question, will they change for the better? Because it's okay to look at other people and think to yourself, they do need to change for the better, or I'm going to leave this job, this roommate. this apartment, this town, this relationship. It's just got to change for the better. Know what your walkaway is. Or you might say, well, darn.

even if it continues, net triple net. The kids are still in the home. They're not out of high school. It's not horrible on any given day. And I'm quietly going to make my plan for three years from now. when they finally you know go off to college say for example but no what's your walk away what's your prediction what do you need to do to clarify whether it will get good enough to stick around that i think is really helpful

Another thing that's really helpful is to increase your options elsewhere. Kind of quietly, maybe you're not quite ready to move, but build up friendships outside of this relationship. Inform yourself about things. Increase your qualifications in the job market, if that's kind of in the back of your mind. Make a plan for yourself.

that kind of quietly is building up your reserves. I've known people do this when they're wondering about whether this marriage, let's say, will work, to kind of quietly clarify some things, straighten out your finances. get your own credit cards, stuff like that. So I think those would be two things I would think about in the real world that could be really helpful for people. Yeah, I think those are really practical. To me, I guess I think about it in terms of...

different levels maybe as a way to sort of think about it, where it depends a lot on the relationship. Like the stuff that we're talking about now, which is a little bit more practical, is going to be really situational. So take it with a grain of salt. We're just... thrown ideas out there and hopefully there's something in here that you find helpful there are some relationships that are like this where you really can get some distance from them pretty quickly

You're not that enmeshed. It's not like a deep romantic relationship like you were saying, Dad, that's been going for 10 years. You're three months in. Or it's like a work relationship that's starting to sprawl a little bit, get a little fuzzy. You're like, I don't know about this. Okay, so this is at the kind of mild level. We can be in the world of having strong boundaries that are actually enforceable. This could mean clarifying your expectations.

communicating that we're in the land of something's got to change. In work environments, this could mean doing a lot of writing things down, keeping a detailed paper trail, what are agreements about this project, whatever it is, okay?

And this is mostly for situations that, for starters, non-abusive. Also ones where you feel like there's some actual real chance of change, like interacting about it makes sense because the person is still kind of malleable to you. They haven't entered the world of like, yeah, this just ain't going to change, man.

Or more family environments where you want to stay in contact with them, but you want to kind of X some stuff out of the picture. And that's also maybe more the medium category of this. That's resizing the relationship. You talk about this a lot.

Yeah. Friendships that have outlived their natural lifespan can fall into this category. You've just kind of started to drift away. They really want to keep on sucking you back in. All right, do we get into the world of we're going to carve out, like you said, the politics, dad?

But I'm comfortable talking with this friend from high school about sports or whatever. Then strong, the top level, a lot of what we're going to be talking about, getting out of there. Creating a plan, you're resourcing yourself, and you're bailing.

And that's the word of like how to exit, right? Big point here. You don't owe them anything. You don't owe them. Leaving is a big deal. Leaving is really hard. You've already given your pound of flesh. You've already given your pound of flesh. You've done it. you put the work in you put the time in you had the aspiration for them as a person you wished the best for them you you did it you did your effort and now we're in the world of i gotta look out for me

And inside of relationships like this, these people will do everything they can to move you away from thinking that way. They will try to move you into the world of... you do owe me, you should feel bad for me, you are the bad person here, okay? Sometimes you can be in the place where it makes sense to have like a real focused breakup conversation with them, right? But...

in the relationships that we've been talking about, sometimes the move is you get out of there and then you talk about it with them. Like you do not give them a heads up that this thing is going to happen because every time you do, things go sideways.

or they freak out and it becomes unsafe for you, particularly in situations where there are physical safety risks here, operating from that stance of, hey, I don't owe them, can be completely transformative for people. I know what you think about this, Dad. There's a category of relationships that I wonder what you think about where it's kind of messy in that they're both exploitive and you feel, well, you do want to step back from them.

It's not that they're narcissistically consuming you. Sure, yeah, it's just... For whatever reason. Yeah, totally, no, I get it. Yeah, but you feel some duty toward them. Sure. You know, I've known people who felt a lot of duty to their ex-husband's uncle, for example, something like that. Sure, who's an older person, needs a lot of support. Yeah, absolutely, totally.

um they just they're lonely they want you to come over here's the question i would have for you dad yeah is the ex-husband's uncle verbally abusive Right, exactly. You know, this is a category question. This is like a severity, intensity, all of that question. For me, the kind of you don't owe them world.

is more toward the higher side of the spectrum in terms of the behavior that's happening and the problems associated with it. No, you're totally right about duty to self, duty to other. And I find people... You know, arguably... especially females, in terms of gender socialization, do generalize, tend to load duty to others ahead of duty to self. Yeah, and what I'm just sort of flagging in saying that and being kind of provocative with the intensity that I'm saying it.

is that I think that this is one of the things that keeps people stuck in these sorts of relationships. That feeling of like, oh, well, I still, or oh, they've done this or that for me. And it just... stands out to me over and over again as a quality of him. And look, sometimes, yeah, we do owe people things and we should be conscious of that and thoughtful about it. And it's going to be up to you to make that determination.

Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think there's a place where people do something. There's the old line, you know, if it happens once, shame on you. If it happens twice, shame on me. In other words, and again, not blaming the victim, but if you see that other for who they are, recognize it the first time, I think is Maya, to paraphrase Maya Angelou, I think. Yeah, I think sometimes people, they do stuff and you just blink and you realize, wow.

If you thought you could do that once, you're going to think you can do it again. And I'm just unilaterally going to take a big step back. And I probably won't even tell you I am, but I'm telling you. You know, you just canceled your vote with me right there. So I'm thinking about that. And I'm also thinking about one of the, I'm thinking that we're including here, complicated pre-divorce scenarios.

Sure, yeah. Some of this could be in the mix. Divorce for many people will be the single largest financial transaction of their life, as well as hugely consequential if they're children. or any kind of mutually embedded relationships, like you're both really involved with the same church, something. And it's a big deal. So if it's going to be a big deal, any big deal, get good at it.

Damn. Get good at separating. Get good at what a trial separation is like. You know, get good at the legal process of divorcing. Get good at the financial aspects. Bummer. Get good at how the... talk with the kids about it aspects, you know, get good at understanding the way the legal system is structured, the way that it's...

Tilted against men sometimes in some ways, actually, in family court and other times tilted against women in some ways in family court. You know, read the room. So, you know, that's kind of general. talk more. I speak from some experience. I'm not an attorney. I'm not giving legal advice. I've been down this road many times with people.

uh one quick request here dad could you uh i think your mic is bumping the table semi-regularly when you rattle the table or something's bumping something no it's my percussive elbows oh okay Yeah, if we could be careful about the percussion, about the drum section over there, that would be fantastic. That's right. I'm taking your request because we have a good relationship. You can complain and my complaint department, that's another thing.

You want a clue? The other person never has an open complaint department. They're always gone for lunch, right? No, it's important to be receptive to the complaints of others, including... Including the drum section going on in the background there. Thank you for taking my production note down and turning it to a useful, productive part of the episode. Wow, how great. Back to the show after a quick break.

Every small business starts with an idea, a hobby, a side project, something you make for friends that just suddenly takes off. And if you're a creator like me, the making stuff part, sure, there can be some real challenges in that. but it's the turning it into a business where you start to feel a bit outside of your comfort zone. So that's where Shopify comes in. Shopify's point-of-sale system is basically your business command center. It connects everything.

Your online store, your in-person sales, your inventory, so you're not juggling a dozen apps or spreadsheets. Whether you're running one shop or a thousand, it keeps your business unified, organized, and easy to grow. Shopify helps you keep customers coming back. You can offer flexible options like buy online and pick up in-store, ship to customer, and personalized experiences that make every sale feel seamless. Want more?

Check out at shopify.com slash being well, all lowercase, and learn how to create the best retail experiences without complexity. That's shopify.com slash being well. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast? Smart move. Being financially savvy? Smart move. Another smart move? Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto. Bundling.

Just another way to save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings, and eligibility vary by state. Now, back to the show. So, a couple different ways for people to approach accents of different kinds. Again, it's all situational.

be smart be thoughtful use your own you know understanding of the situation you're going to know a lot better than we will a couple of very common exit strategies the first what i will call the kind of no drama communication here you're keeping it clean You're being very clear. You're being very calm. You say some version of, hey, this isn't working for me. I'm going to need to kind of change this relationship a little bit. There is a communication involved. You do say that to the other person.

It is not a debate. It is not a, I'm thinking about doing this thing. It is a, this is what's happening. This is what I'm going to do. Because I get to decide what I am going to do. It is generally brief, kind of emotionally neutral. You're not talking about what happened. You're not most of the time talking about why you're doing this. You don't feel the need to blame them. You're not freaking out. You're just trying to keep it clean.

and get out of there and this is something you can do when the other person is not very likely to retaliate or escalate or make it super weird you just want to end contact you want to do it as kind of in as sort of morally neutral away as possible, and you're not getting sucked into a big argument about it, if at all possible. What do you do if they beg, plead, blame?

retaliate. Love it. I've had this happen. I've had people come home. They broke up with somebody who still had a key to their apartment, came in and, you know, cut, literally took a big scissors to many of their clothes. Well, I think that doing your due diligence ahead of time can be smart. I also think that, yeah, it's a little tough to do this style of move.

in a more entrenched relationship in a world where they got a key to the house. You know, you probably have more of a conversation. There's going to be more of a complicated exit. If you have something at their apartment that you really care about, maybe...

acquire it before you communicate this to the other like do do your work here don't be a dummy i guess would be my answer to a lot of situations like that if they still you know key your car smash your window fill in the blank it's kind of up to you at that point

where do you want to take it do you want to pursue legal action do you want this to just be like all right man sure okay like how do you want to treat it you know i i guess my answer to that is a lot of like lay the foundation do the groundwork second Thing that I would say is that boundaries are always about the combination of empathy and clarity. This is what's happening. Wow, yeah, I get that that makes you feel bad. Wow, oh yeah.

you know this wasn't intended to make you feel bad this is something i'm doing for me i understand if it's disappointing really sorry to hear that but this is what i've decided to do yeah this is kind of a version of the second one that i'll mention here which is called gray rock sometimes

which I love this name. It's an incredibly great name for a kind of exit strategy. You become boring and uninteresting. You're not escalating. You're putting the lid on top of the fire and you're starving out of oxygen. A lot of the time... People who are this way that we've been talking about throughout the episode are really interested in the emotional payoff from these kinds of relationships.

Whether it's narcissistic supplies, or it's just kind of feeding on your reactions, whatever it is, they like the intensity. They kind of like the chaos of it, right? And the goal is kind of to make them find some other shiny object out there.

So you become very boring, right? This is typically not for active romantic relationships, although there could be a version of this that could work. This is much better with sort of problematic friends or your ex or family members who are just like, fishing for a reaction constantly you can be in the world of like wow yeah so sorry to hear that it's really okay to not respond to the bait i feel bad because they said thing

does not mean that I must say a thing to them now. And I think that's also kind of a version of what you're describing here, Dad. Oh, that's great. And you make me think about third-party situations where they want to... talk with you about a third person that you both know, probably. Or not always, but they're just complaining and they want to get you to be revved up about it. Yeah. And to me, I like this Grey Rock thing where you're not...

hanging up on them, but you're just not feeding it any juice. You're boring. Yeah. You're not asking any questions. You're not really disagreeing or just staying out of the tangle. Yeah, and sometimes that'll make them fish for a reaction by poking the gray rock. Wow, you're being a real gray rock over there. Wow, you're being, why aren't you listening to me? I feel like you're not listening to me.

This is what's sometimes called an extinction burst. The classic example of this is you do an experiment that includes a smart dog, something like that, and every time the dog pushes a button, they get a big stake, right? and then you change the buttons so every time the dog pushes the button they get like a dry chicken carcass

They're not happy. They want the big steak. For the vegetarians among us, but keep going. Maybe that's a dog. All right, man. I don't know. I know, I know. How many rutabagas dogs are considered? Maybe they are. Who's to say? A vegan dog mix that's healthy for them, whatever it is. The point is that when they start getting the chicken carcass, they freak out. They get pissed. They start slamming the button going, give me my steak, okay?

We do that too. People do that too. So when you change a paradigm with somebody else- Are you saying I'm like a chicken cartist when I go inert around someone? Yes. You're trying to become the chicken cartist. You do not want to- Yeah, you don't want to reward the person for clicking the button. You want to make that button very unrewarding for them. But in the short term, it's going to freak them out. It's totally going to freak them out.

They're going to get more intense. They're going to get more weird. A little bit of a subtext here is that it's actually really true that people can get stalked in very creepy ways, even potentially violently. I hate to say it, but we want to include that as something to really think about. Oh, for sure. Yeah. And to stay safe. And be thoughtful. Yeah, protect yourself. Totally. Totally. And to take your safety really seriously. That's right.

When you get freaked out, and look, I want to be clear, law enforcement, far from perfect. There are a million stories of people calling the police every day about this spooky situation and not enough being done.

to to circumvent a bad thing happening and then a bad thing ends up happening it happens all the time still do what you can use the resources that exist talk to the people stay with a friend this is part of why that cutting people off from resources is such a big control strategy and it's such a big part of the problem like see if you can build a network if you are in one of those spooky situations see if you can build a little bit of a network

before you extract yourself right so you've got resources people situations things you can lean on so what's coming to mind for me now dad is like okay let's say somebody's kind of done this They've left the relationship with this kind of person painting a picture. Their 18-month relationship with somebody who kind of got sketchier and sketchier and spookier and spookier. They've broken up. It's very common.

for people to get sucked back in. It's very common for people to return to that X or whatever the situation is. What do you think helps people stay extracted? The attraction of everything. Other than the problematic relationship. Just drawing them in. New friends, new time, new activities.

good friends, good activities, good rhythms in your day, you know, getting back into exercise, walking in the park, sitting on the bench and meditating, whatever, you know. I think that's a real key. For a lot of people, the problem you left... really diminishes in the rearview mirror as you step increasingly into the good life you now have. That's not to be underestimated. That's a really big thing. That would be one. Second, write a letter.

to yourself or a note or two to yourself when you start thinking about calling that other person or communicating with them. We're starting the process that you know will kind of culminate in you getting sucked back in. Write a letter when you're in your right mind to read when you're in your wrong mind. And I'm about to pick up the phone.

That's literally a technique. It's not a bad one. It works for sobriety as well. You want to take a drink or do a line, read that letter you wrote to yourself. Another is to... I have a trusty friend who's a confidant. Often people do have a confidant who... I had a really important mentor who enabled me to walk away from my cult. And part of what he offered was that he didn't...

And I think this is helpful for people. He didn't become a firebrand. Oh my God, I can't believe they treated you like that. He didn't, because then I would have been defensive about this organization I'd been involved with and given my blood and soul. money to. No, he was just very calm and you could feel he was sort of looking at me and his thought balloon was a little, wow, Rick, I know you to be a rational person who's got a lot on the ball going for you.

what are you doing with these people? You know, it was that kind of more calm, he's a Midwestern kind of guy, weight that really landed for me. So that's a word to the wise for the confidants of those who are. you know, enmeshed in these problematic relationships. And that gets to shame a little bit again. Like, right, you know, how do we avoid this process, this extraction process, this staying extraction, extracted process? How do we avoid it activating shame?

And like the defensiveness you're describing, one way to view it is as a kind of like protection against feeling, oh yeah, you're right. Wow, that was so dumb of me. Now I have to defend the thing. So you can see what I'm saying. Oh, totally right. And that's why I think the great point for us. What's appropriate is grief, not shame. Yeah, love that. And also anger at how you have been exploited, ripped off, extracted from.

You know, that's helpful too. Healthy anger about all this, you know, and some grief and a sense of how your own virtues kept you in the game. kept you. So I think that really helps. So having a confidant, that really helps. And gosh, the last thing I'll just offer goes back to our thing about the opposite of self-abandonment is self-allegiance, self-loyalty. You're on your own side.

And to just really be grounded in, no, being kind of clear-eyed, there's no cheese down that tunnel. You know, that duck will never fly like an eagle. It's never going to be better. Being kind of disenchanted about it, I think, can be a big piece of this for people. That feeling of, look, there is no mystery box here. Because I actually know what's in the mystery box.

i know that it is not uh to quote family guy a boat you know it's a something else it's a it's a chicken carcass to continue our our metaphor right like i know what this looks like best predictor of the future is the past yeah What's going to make the next 12 months or 12 weeks or 12 days or 12 hours be better than the last 12 weeks, 12 days, you know, 12 months? And if it's not going to be better, causes and conditions.

move on it's another important thing too it's that in my opinion i'm just kind of ran a little bit man this is your one life it's your one life this is your one day sorry can you get yesterday back no And not to freak out, but it literally is your life. It's that this grain of sand is falling through the hourglass today, right? So if you're in a mediocre relationship,

or a relationship that's aces and spaces, it's got some good qualities, but wow, there's some costs in it. There's some liabilities in it. Guess what? It's crowding out what could be better. And the clock is ticking on what could be better.

that's being crowded out by you know the situation you're currently in it's been great talking with you about this today dad is there anything else that you want to say at the very end here i thought that was a fantastic kind of like fade out into the distance at the end of this episode but i want to give you an opportunity if there's anything else that's just been like kind of like tickling the back of your brain

Well, I find myself wondering about you, and I'm going to be, forgive me, I'm a little, because I've known you. No, you don't say. You're such a sweet person. And I just wonder if there have been ways in which your own kind of sweetness has kept you in certain situations.

past their sell-by date. Yeah, as I alluded to at the beginning of the episode, I definitely had one version of one of these that kind of showed up for me once upon a time. This was a decade ago or something like that. I was a very different person. But essentially, it was a situation where it was somebody who was pretty emotionally volatile and also did a lot of that fast-forwarding of intimacy.

And all of a sudden, you're having these long, two-hour-long conversations while you're driving in the car from point A to point B, and it feels so connected. And then the other side of that is the emotional volatility and instability.

That's really what I got a lot of. And not even necessarily somebody who I would refer to, kind of to your point throughout this episode, Dad, I wouldn't say this person was like a bad person. They were not a narcissist. They were not Machiavellian in the sense of that term that we used today.

they were just somebody who was not well grounded they were not well moored and it was putting me increasingly in weird situations like weird social situations they were not reliable they were not trustworthy And to your point, I think that I felt a real sense, and part of maybe this informs how people think about what I said throughout this episode, I had a real feeling of kind of like, oh, but...

they're not a bad person and oh but I am kind of helping them in these ways and oh but I do I want things to go well for them and and then there was sort of a breaking point where just like there were various untrustworthy behaviors happening that then were just like deal breakers, just bottom line, clear as day deal breakers. And that's what ended up kind of getting me out of it is that you just have a moment where you're like, whoa, I do not want to be

standing off to the side in this room while these two people were screaming at each other or whatever. And it was just very revealing. In part, because hello, I had healthy relationships modeled to me growing up. I knew that people are not really supposed to be screaming at each other in a hallway or whatever it was. And so I could compare that experience to something else and go, wow, this is not the way I want my life to look. And a lot of people...

do not have, very unfortunately, sadly, they do not have that healthy model. And so they just start excusing behavior and excusing and excusing and excusing. And to your point, Dad, they wake up and it's eight years later. And it's like, wow, what happened? You know, but that's life. That's not about feeling shame for what happened. It's about, okay, what do we do from now on? It's like you said that there's grief. There's maybe even some regret in the mix, but.

The healthy aspects of this are the things that help you get on your side. Sometimes that's anger and frustration. Sometimes that's a strong sense of your own values and needs. Sometimes it's a sense of like, wow, yeah, I got sucked into this because I'm a good person and because I do care about this stuff. But now guess what? It's time to go. You know, the clock's running out here.

That's a good place to end. Hey, maybe that's our fade out. Normally it's you we're fading out on, buddy, but maybe we're fading out on you today. I had a great time talking with Rick today about disengaging from the people who are no longer good for us. And I started the episode by asking Rick if you had a client who came into the office to talk with you and they said something like, hey.

I know this person isn't good for me. I keep on trying to extract from this relationship and I just can't do it. Please give me some advice here, Rick. He led by saying... To pay attention to the ways in which your good nature, the good aspects of who you are, are keeping you stuck. And I thought that was just such an interesting thing to lead with. The idea that your empathy...

could be keeping you trapped. Your sense of care and concern, sense of duty to this other person could be keeping you trapped. Your belief in them and their ability to change for the better in the future, that is a huge one for people. That's probably number one. The belief that somewhere down the line, they will finally change and your belief in them will finally be paid off.

But the sand flows through the hourglass, time rolls ever on, and the best predictor of the future is the past. So then at the very end of the conversation, Rick closed with the idea of going, hey. If I knew that the next year we're going to be like the last year with this person, whatever your relationship is with them, if they're a romantic partner, a friend, family member, your job, whatever it is.

If the next year were going to be the same as the last year, what would I do? And approaching things from that mindset can be really clarifying because this is a set of circumstances. Whereas we talked about a little bit later in the episode, there's often a lot of fuzz. There's a lot of vagueness and what did they mean? And they say that they meant this, but I felt that.

and they keep on trying to convince me that all these things that i don't like are actually kind of good for me or actually them looking out for me and they're very controlling but then they just tell me it's because they that they love me so much what do i do and that's why we got into some of the key traits that can be big red flags here uh first various forms of grandiosity or even narcissism

And I'm not necessarily talking here about diagnosable narcissistic personality disorder. People with NPD are actually quite uncommon. I got into a big fight in the YouTube comments the last time that I said that, but hey, it's true. The research that we have consistently suggests that it's like 1% of the population with NPD. But narcissistic traits can be much more common. And you don't need to be a full-blown narcissist.

to be a problematic person to be in a relationship with. Then what's called Machiavellianism, and this is covert forms of manipulation. Any kind of manipulative behavior or gaslighting would fall into here. And then third, various forms of antisocial personality traits this is somebody who just kind of doesn't care about other people very much and the big question here is not what are they like at their best it's what are they like on a bad day

not their worst day just a normal bad day anybody can look good under ideal conditions and problematic people land in relationships and land in relationships even with smart, thoughtful, educated, psycho-educated, caring, concerned people. In part because they have other traits that, hello, suck people in, right? They're charismatic, they've got some sex appeal, there's a fun factor.

Maybe they really know how to make you laugh. Maybe they came up to you at some kind of a social thing. And just really quickly, it felt like, wow, I've known this person forever. And oh, they just look into my eyes and I get lost in it. You know, whatever it is for you. And this is why that fast-forwarding of intimacy can be a big problem. Yes, sometimes in life there are star-crossed lovers. Yes, sometimes you meet somebody and you're just like, oh yeah, this person gets it.

And that can be really real. I've had friendships like that. Elizabeth has had friendships like that. But man, there are a million examples out there of that going real sideways for people. One of the reasons for this is that it can quickly create this kind of us against the world feeling, which then isolates the victim from their support networks. And this can be paired with a kind of cutting off from other forms of support.

Why are you always friends with people who don't like me? Over time, what can happen is that a person's life just gets smaller and smaller and smaller. You can't talk to that person. You can't be friends with that guy. I don't like it when you go to those kinds of places.

I get really worried, you know, you're dancing with somebody who's not me, whatever it is. As long as we're talking about the spook-o-meter here, the things that get me concerned, the big spook for me, you know, outside of... obviously forms of abuse are cycles of idealization and devaluation so this is when somebody really builds you up some of the time and really tears you down some of the time when the person is getting everything that they want

They can be great. Of course they're great. They're getting everything that they want. Everyone can be great when they're getting everything that they want. What happens when they have to compromise? What happens when you make an ask? What happens when you have different values from theirs? All of this leads to a feeling of walking on eggshells. And under extreme conditions, this can even result in something that's called trauma bonding.

We didn't talk about trauma bonding very much during the conversation. It was kind of implicit in some of what we talked about. At its core, trauma bonding is based on that kind of rubber band idealization to devaluation reinforcement loop. that starts to kind of tie together pain with reward. While I felt pain today,

So that probably means that I'll kind of get a reward tomorrow. It also normally includes a big power imbalance. I talked about that a bit during the episode between the victim and the abuser. and also some degree of isolation from healthier attachment figures. Part of the theory behind trauma bonding is that we are so desperate to find somebody, anybody, to attach to that we'll take what we can get.

even if that figure is an abuser. So to quickly recap here, some of the red flags I've named so far are accelerated intimacy, which is also called love bombing, rubber banding from good to bad, and then various control strategies that are disguised as really caring for you. A few other things that I would add to that list. First, intense anger or withdrawal when they're challenged.

Then chronic fuzz. We talked about this a good bit during the conversation. These people hate clarity. They hate a written agreement. They hate being pinned down about what their values are, what their boundaries are, particularly which of your boundaries they will actually respect or what they will actually commit to do in the future.

you know, yes, I agree to that thing over there and I will show up at 9 a.m. And then when they don't, they're like, wow, I'm so sorry. If that happens, if they make an agreement and then they don't follow through. and they authentically apologize, they're probably doing okay. Most of the time, these people hate an authentic apology. There is always an explanation for why things went the way that they did. Or, at the very least,

they just collapse. Oh my God, I'm the most horrible person in the world, that kind of thing. Where there's, again, this kind of draw for support from you. And this was one of the things that Rick highlighted throughout the conversation. Do you feel big and strong with this person, or do you feel small and weak? Do they push you from being big and strong one moment to small and weak the next moment? As you get bigger and stronger...

Do they support you? Do they validate you? Are they on your team? Or do they start trying to kind of pull you back down? Are they receptive to your requests? Are they open to changing the behaviors that you find most problematic? Is there anything that keeps on coming up that makes other people raise their eyebrows all the time? Do they show empathy and care toward other people even when it doesn't benefit them? Are your other relationships just getting smaller and smaller?

these are all things you can look out for then toward the end of the conversation we started talking about ways to exit these kinds of relationships this is hyper situational the big picture stuff that we mentioned is for starters lay a foundation have a plan

Don't have things that you like over at their house if it's a romantic relationship. Change the locks. Whatever it is that you think that you need to do to keep yourself safe and be thoughtful. Then we talked about different strategies that people might have. We talked about... direct kind of no drama communication, if it makes sense, and the relationship that you have. Gray rocking when you just become progressively uninteresting.

Frankly, if this is a real safety situation, then forms of ghosting can be an appropriate response in general. I do not encourage people to do that in their relationships. But if you're dealing with one of these situations, sometimes you need to just leave. Rick also mentioned various forms of third-party communication, which can be appropriate sometimes if it's no longer safe for you to communicate, but you still got to have some kind of contact.

We're in the world of a lawyer, human resources, you know, whatever it is that communicating through a friend, whatever it is that you need to do to maintain your safety. We then close the conversation with Rick giving some examples of what helps a person stay disengaged. And I really appreciated some of his ideas in here. I thought they were quite clever. Writing a letter to yourself right now.

that you read when you're thinking about you know reconnecting with your ex or whatever it is his number one piece of advice was finding anything else to be pulled into a new hobby a new fun activity with friends another friend group entirely. Whatever it is, find other things to occupy your attention. What you'll find is that as the rest of your life gets bigger and more interesting, you're going to have less and less desire to return to this previous relationship.

I hope you found something in here today useful. This is I think a really important conversation. It's one that I'm glad we did an episode on. It's also an incredibly nuanced and individual one. person to person things are going to really vary here so if you are watching on youtube and you want to leave a comment down below

asking us about some aspect of this, sharing your own experience with it, giving some of the learning that you've had through life. This is a place where I think that there are a lot of different right answers and frankly, a lot of different wrong answers depending on the specific situation. And so this podcast format where we're just kind of talking in generalities is going to be helpful in some ways, but might not speak to your specific situation.

If we can all kind of pile in and help each other a little bit, then maybe there's some value there. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify, you can leave a rating and a positive review. That really helps us out. If you'd like to support the show in other ways, you can find us on Patreon, patreon.com slash beingwellpodcast. At the very end here, I want to give you another quick reminder about Rick's Foundations of Wellbeing program.

You can find it at rickhansen.com slash foundations. Use the code beingwell25. That's the number 25 for a 25% off discount on top of whatever. sales and offerings and so on are running right now. It's a really cool program. If you like the podcast, I think that you'll really enjoy it. And until next time, thanks again for listening, and we'll talk to you soon.

Monster Energy. Everybody knows White Monster Zero Ultra. That's the OG. It kicked off this whole Zero Sugar Energy drink thing. But Ultra is a whole lineup now. You've got Strawberry Dreams, Blue Hawaiian, Sunrise, and Vice Guava. And they all bring the monster energy punch. So if you've been living in the white can, branch out. Ultra's got a flavor for every vibe. And every single one is zero sugar. Tap the banner to learn more.