59. If they really loved me they'd....

Ever find yourself saying, 'If they really loved me then they'd.... [insert thing]'

Maybe it's - they'd take out the recycling when I asked.

Or maybe it's - they'd tell me they loved me every morning when we woke up.

Whatever it is, your brain likely has a manual for how the people in your life should show they love and care about you.

And when you don't notice this, you might be creating a lot of unnecessary disconnection.

Mentioned in this episode

• MYRMD group coaching programme - info and waitlist

Transcript

Hey guys! How’s everyone doing? We had such a great session in my group coaching programme this week - we were talking all about people pleasing and how we often are trying to manipulate and control the ways other people think about us, which was something everyone in the group could relate to. And there were some amazing moments of realisations and it’s just so fun watching members of the group create shifts in their way of thinking and feel some power over their own minds. It’s an amazing thing to witness!

And seeking to control our partners and friends is something that is also relevant in today’s episode. Because I’m going to be talking about the very common thing people say, which is, ‘If they really cared about me they’d… DOT DOT DOT.’ Insert thing. Maybe it’s ‘If they really cared about me they’d text me back faster.’ Maybe it’s ‘If they really cared about me they’d do the dishes when I asked.’ Or compliment me more. Or initiate sex more. Or come home on time. Or invite me to work events. Whatever it is.

And if you haven’t listened to my episode on Manuals - that episode will also be useful for you, because it’s the same concept we’re discussing here. And that’s the idea that we all have manuals for how other people should show their love and care for us. Manuals as in expectations, instructions. We have set ideas of how other people should show up to relationships and how they should act. Should being the important word here.

And we have these ideas for how other people SHOULD act, and then low and behold - they don’t act that way. Have you ever noticed that? How terrible people are at following our manuals? And doing things the way we want them to be done? They’re terrible at it. And when people don’t act the way we want them to, we then have tonnes of negative thoughts that create negative feelings, and then we blame them for those feelings.

So in this particular context - what I’m talking about is when we have a manual for how someone else should show that they love us or care about us. And you’ll know you have a manual if you say things like ‘IF they really cared about me, then they’d [insert thing]’. Your brain has decided that this is your set of instructions for how care is shown. For how love should be expressed. So ‘If they really cared about me, they’d call me back when I called them.’ That might be a manual your brain has.

And so what’s happening here is our brains are witnessing their behaviour, maybe they didn’t call us back, or invite us out with their friends, or do the washing up - whatever it is - and it’s making that behaviour mean that they don’t care about us or love us. Or it may be something else, maybe you make it mean they don’t respect you or enjoy spending time with you. Either way, you make it mean something negative that feels very painful to you. And I know we can all relate to this - we all do it. Every single one of us.

I definitely had this with friends. My brain would say - they should text back within a day - and if they didn’t, it would make it mean they didn’t like me or care about me. Yours might be, my partner should initiate sex once a week, or my dad should ask me about my job more. And these expectations don’t tend to be random. We often think these things because it’s the way WE act when we love and care about someone. 

So with my friendship example - I knew that when I like someone I make texting them back a priority. I was always on my phone and so if I liked someone, of course I was going to text them back. Which made it easy for my brain to believe that IF someone else liked me, they would act in the same way that I would. I was assuming their brain worked the exact same way as mine.

But just because your brain works in a certain way, and you act in a certain way when you love and care about someone, doesn’t mean everyone else will. Everyone’s brain’s work totally differently. And what you do when you love and care about someone might not be what they do. And this is really important for us to remember - that our brains are wired and programmed by so many things - our childhoods, past experiences, memories, the people we spend a lot of time around, our biology - all of this impacts the way we naturally think about things. So expecting other people’s brains to operate in the same ways that yours does is kind of crazy! And I say crazy with love, because my brain is crazy too!

I see this a lot with my clients and texting. Whether it’s texting their partners or their friends - there are so many different preferences and ways of operating when it comes to texting. Some people take their phone everywhere and respond instantly, some take their phone everywhere but respond between 3-5 working days, some never really look at their phones, some do but hate having conversations through text, some like to get to work and just focus all day on their job and not be distracted by their phone. We all have totally different preferences and habits with our phones.

Yet time and time again, I see my clients feeling so anxious and insecure because they’ve made their partner not replying for a few hours. And it’s because their brain has made their behaviour mean that they don’t care about them. And when we add this negative meaning to other people’s behaviour, we create so much unnecessary disconnection. Because when we believe they don’t love or care about us - we naturally withdraw from them. Or maybe show up to the relationship in ways that prevent connection and create more disconnection. 

Maybe when your partner doesn’t say ‘I love you’ or compliment you, you then be a little off with them, or don’t go and give them a cuddle and compliment them. Maybe when your friend doesn’t ask you as many questions as you’d have like, you make that mean they don’t care, and so you don’t try and share anything about your life. You withdraw from them. Or maybe you don’t withdraw from them, but your experience of the relationship is just a negative one. 

This is why really separating the facts of their behaviour from what your brain has made it mean is so so important. Because we create so much unnecessary suffering when we believe our primitive brains and don’t question the interpretations they’re giving to us.

And another thing a lot of my clients will say to me - okay, okay so we think differently about things, BUT if they really loved and respected me, they’d do what I asked them to do, wouldn’t they? If they know texting is important to me, or being affectionate, or saying I love you every night is important to me - they should just do it? 

And I want to first of all say - we should totally make all the requests in the world. If you want more affection, or date nights, or text messages - ask for them! We want to communicate the things we’d like to have in our relationships, 100%.  But don’t confuse love and respect for obedience. Just because YOU want something and you enjoy it, doesn’t mean that your partner is going to feel the same way or that it’s going to come naturally to them to do it. 

They may be happy to try and do those things for you, but fail a lot of the time because it doesn’t come naturally to them. And I want you to imagine this in reverse - if you’ve ever been with someone or even friends with someone who wants you to do something differently, and it just doesn’t come naturally to you. How HARD you find doing that thing. Because it isn’t your brain’s default. 

Or they may not want to do those things at all, because it doesn’t feel good to them. Maybe it feels forced and isn’t how they naturally want to show up. But a lot of my clients will have this idea that if someone loves and respects them, they will do whatever they ask. Which I think comes from a lot of the discourse around needs and how your partner should meet your needs. We end up feeling entitled to manage or dictate someone’s behaviour, based on what feels best to us. And we then make their lack of obedience mean they don’t love and respect us.

But your partner or friend is a human being with their own wants and preferences. And them not sharing the same wants as you when it comes to texting or giving compliments, and not being willing to change themselves in a way that feels uncomfortable to them, doesn’t need to be taken as a lack of love or care. And of course - sometimes we’ll make requests and the partner is totally willing to make changes and that’s great. But other times they won’t, and it’s important we challenge what we make that mean.

Imagine your partner had a manual for you, and ways they wanted you to behave that didn’t feel natural and authentic to you - would you feel good about forcing yourself to do them? Do you think doing that would create connection? Because this is the thing - when we’re doing things we don’t really want to do and that don’t feel good to us - we’re doing them from a place of obligation, which only really creates resentment and disconnection. 

Which is kind of crazy, when the whole reason you wanted them to behave in this way was because you wanted to created more love and care between you. We actually want our partners and friends to show up as their authentic selves - and it’s only our belief that they’re doing it wrong, or that they should be different, that creates the problem. It’s our resistance to them being them that creates disconnection. 

So I want you to think about some of the ways you’d finish that sentence - ‘if they really cared about me they’d… what?’ Is it text you more often? Initiate meeting up more? Invite you out with their friends? Be more affectionate? Whatever it is, first get awareness of it - then ask yourself - why am I believing this is true? Whatever the thing is, notice how you’re attaching how much they love and care about you to that thing - and just get curious - is it possible someone can love and care about you AND not behave in this way you’d like? 

Get really curious - what might be going on in their brain when they behave in the way they do? Literally imagine what their thoughts might be when they do or don’t do that thing. And don’t just come up with one option - brainstorm a few. Brainstorm alternative things they could have been thinking that have nothing to do with you not being important to them.

And consider - how might their brain think about this thing in a way that differs to yours? And this question is important. Because right now your making their behaviour mean they don’t love and care about you - but is that really what this is about? Or is it actually that they aren’t very into compliments, or hate texting?

I had a member of my group coaching programme talk about this the other day - she was saying how her partner doesn’t compliment when she puts on makeup or wears a nice outfit - and she made this mean he wasn’t attracted to her. But when we dug into it, she said he’d openly said compliments made him uncomfortable, so he isn’t very used to giving them either.

Which makes total sense. If your brain thinks of compliments as being uncomfortable, it kind of makes sense your default isn’t to offer them out to other people. And that has nothing to do with the level of attraction he feels towards her. So really consider that - how might their brain think differently about this?

And you also want to consider - what evidence is there that they do love and care about you, even though they don’t follow your manual in this area? When we’re believing someone doesn’t love and care about us, our brains will tend to go and look for all the other evidence that supports that theory - completely ignoring all the evidence that suggests they do totally care and love you. So we don’t get to enjoy all the things they do and feel loved. It blocks us from feeling loved because our brains are so committed to proving that they don’t care. So ask yourself that - when I’m believing this means they don’t love and care about me, what evidence am I discounting that suggests the opposite?

And another thing for us to think about when it comes to this is - why are we so obsessed with working out how much other people care about us? Because this is usually the next question. My clients will say, well if everyone acts differently when they care about someone - how are we ever meant to know how much someone really cares?

And of course - we want to be in relationships where we’re treated with love and respect. This isn’t about blinding ourselves from the facts of relationships and actively pursuing relationships with people that treat us badly or who clearly don’t want the kind of relationship we’re wanting to have - of course not! We want to find people that want to have the same things in a relationship that we do and pursue relationships with them. 

But in any relationship - you actually never know how much someone cares about you. How crazy is that? Like you think you do - you think you definitely know how much they care. But how much they care is just the sum of the thoughts they have about you. Whether they have caring thoughts or not. And you actually never know what thoughts are going on in someone else’s brain - ever. Someone can be acting in ways your brain deems to be totally caring, while secretly not caring about you much at all. Someone could not text you for a month or longer - and still feel so much care and love for you whenever they think about you. 

But often what I see is my clients' brains really wanting to decipher and determine how much someone cares about them - because of what they’ve made that mean about themselves. So IF my partner loves and cares about ‘enough’ - then I can believe I’m loveable and worth caring about. IF my friends like me and feel close to me - THEN I can believe I’m a likeable person. We base what we think about ourselves on what they’re thinking, feeling and doing - which of course makes it all feel very high stakes.

So notice if some of that is going on here for you. Are you so obsessed with whether your partner REALLY cares because you're making that mean something about you? And if so - really get curious about that.

Why would their thoughts about you mean something about you as a person? And this is where I like to teach my clients, and group programme members, the concept that we are all neutral circumstances in other people’s lives. And by that I mean - we just exist. And what creates other peoples’ feelings towards us or about us is their own brains - their brain and its thoughts. That’s why some people can like you and feel good about you, others maybe not so much. If you were responsible for creating other people’s thoughts and feelings about you - we’d all have the exact same response to everyone in the world. Which clearly… we do not!

You don’t create how much someone loves and cares about you. You don't create it and you don’t control it. And when your brain is obsessively trying to gauge how much everyone else likes you or cares about you - it’s usually a sign that YOU aren’t really liking or caring about you that much. There’s often some insecurities you have about yourself that you’re trying to either prove or disprove based on how other people act. It’s like your brain is using their behaviour to try to either think negative things or more positive things about yourself. 

So separating out how they act from your worth and value is important here. Working on believing that how much they like you or how they act towards you, actually has NOTHING to do with you and your likeability or enoughness. And everything to do with their unique brain and its unique way of thinking. And you may just find you're able to love and appreciate them AND yourself a hell of a lot more. I have an episode on lovability which will also be useful for you if this resonates - so definitely go and check that out!

Okay guys, that’s all I’ve got for you today - I hope it was helpful! The next round of my group coaching programme - Master Your Relationship Mind Drama - is going to be opening its doors in December. And in order to make sure you don’t miss out, you’re going to want to go and get yourself on the waitlist. So I’m going to drop the link with all the details and the waitlist in the information section of this episode.

And can I ask you to do something for me? Could you go ahead and give the podcast a little rating on whatever platform you’re listening from? This is how I can keep reaching more people and spreading the word of this work. 

Okay guys - have an amazing weekend, and I’ll speak to you all next week - bye!