Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 100: What If You Feel Bad For A Toxic Partner? (Advice for Empaths)

Episode Date: April 1, 2021

Empathy is a powerful emotion.  It can be a tool: allowing you to put yourself in someone's shoes, understand their struggle, and emotionally connect to their suffering. But when it comes to letting go of a toxic relationship, this can also be a danger if we prioritise empathy over our long-term well-being. Join Matt and Steve to chat about leaving toxic partners, deciding on when to compromise in love, and of course, bubble baths... --- Follow Matt @thematthewhussey Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey

well steve we're back to shoot a podcast. It's been a couple of weeks now. It has been a couple of weeks, but we got the big boy back in the room, and here we are, the love life. You're talking about Jameson? I'm talking about you broad boys. I'm sure you're lifting weights weights over in la getting you shaping

yeah yeah yeah yeah summer's coming summer's coming so well it is um what the summer will be you know we'll see in london we're coming fully out of lockdown so we could be in for summer of love in the uk all those all those little london beaches those fine london beaches well hello to everyone on uh facebook where we're we're streaming this live right now on facebook um and you can't see steven my brother, who does the podcast with me, but you'll see him when we cut this together for clips for Instagram and Facebook and whatnot. It'll also be on Apple. You'll be able to listen to the full podcast. If you go to Love Life with

Matthew Hussey, you will see the podcast on Apple or Spotify, but go and subscribe on Apple and leave us a review if you like it. Well, are you rested? Are you well? Are you raring to go? Now, are you referring to, am I still tired after the virtual retreat? Yes, I am because we did, it finally happened, the second virtual retreat. It did happen. How do you feel? I'll be honest, I'm still,

I am still a bit tired. It's been a week and a bit, but here's the problem, Steve. There was all this stuff that was supposed to get done before the virtual retreat that had nothing to do with the virtual retreat and had to be pushed until afterwards and so what in my mind would have been like a sort of a wind down week after a three immense days on that program on stage actually ended up being even busier than the week before so i'm in i'll be honest Steve, I'm in need of a holiday. And, well, and not a plane in sight right now, but you'll get there. You're in Los Angeles, you know. You can go to a beach.

I'll take a few days off in my own house right now. Right, yeah. That would be a nice holiday. That would be nice. Well, let's get to it, because we've had some emails from our wonderful listeners. We had one in, Matthew, from Andrea, who says, hello, Stephen, again.

She says, I am referringthew's statement about the bad experience he had with massage may i ask what type of massage it was erotic or e.g tie to release stiff muscles sorry for my curiosity but i could not resist asking though i agree it much depends on the grip if you want more suave erotic massage then go for a person with a tactile touch if you want someone who gives a great tie or sports massage go for a person with a more firm grip it depends on the end goal well could i just clear something up steve or is she still oh she's still she's still going okay well actually it goes on to some other things about love languages but no no stick on this well I just want to clear this up and say I don't go ever for erotic massages so giving me advice on what to look for when I go for an erotic massage is already

redundant advice to me. Right. Well, I don't think she, she wasn't saying you're going to a parlor to pay for it. I think she might be complaining about bad massages you had. And we don't have to get the details of what the nature of them were. Hey, Steve, I'll be, I'm a gentleman. And if I'd had an erotic massage go wrong, I wouldn't get on a podcast and talk about it.

I think if I remember right, I was talking about a massage where I felt like someone was going to break my back and, and she didn't look like she had the power to do that. But my God, was this woman strong? Oh, right. When I thought, I thought when you had a bad massage, you meant like one, you know, when someone gives you a really weak light massage and it's kind of like nothing. It's like someone just pinching your skin a bit. That's what I consider a bad massage. And I'd rather have someone nearly break my back than have that. The dumbest thing I ever did was book a massage, a heavy sports massage, straight after my marathon. And I thought it was going to be really indulgent for me. And I did it the day after.

Matt, it was the most painful experience of my life. It was absolute agony from start to finish. It was a big Swedish man, a big Danish man, just going hell for leather on my back and legs. And I just felt terrible. I'm glad you remembered his nationality why Denmark right that would have been a time where an erotic massage probably would have come in handy come on don't um well I wanted to going from erotic to the romantic, I wanted to talk about a comment on one of your recent videos

and talk today about responding to toxic behavior. You did a video where you said there are angels and there are devils and there's two different kinds of toxic people who string us along in different ways and the devil kind of might manipulate and use all these tactics the angel might give us some lovely benevolent excuse for their bad behavior and there was a comment that had probably the most likes on that video from hardcore fairy who said empaths really struggle with this as they look beyond the behavior and feel sorry for toxic people eventually we learn that we deserve much better i thought that was interesting because i don't know about you but not even with just toxic people but i've had situations before

where i've let someone go or known I should let someone go and the worst thing about it has been that I can completely empathize with if they did something that was self-sabotaging to the relationship or I feel it's some behavior they can't really control you know my empathy reaches out to them and thinks oh I wish you know I'm I'm you know, my empathy reaches out to them and thinks, oh, I wish, you know, I'm, you know, breaking their heart, but I know that this isn't good, this relationship. And you're a very empathetic person. So is this something you've come across? Yeah. Yeah. I, look when it comes to empathy empathy has to extend in all directions our empathy comes from well a a an awareness you know those who are empathetic have a genuine a touch for what for understanding and feeling what other people are going through so there's

the first step of empathy is just that you have the ability to empathize and what goes hand in hand with empathy is compassion i suppose you know this feeling that you both understand what someone is going through and have compassion for it, which is where the forgiveness and the patience comes from. Any relationship benefits from that kind of empathy. I don't think you can have a successful relationship without that kind of empathy. The basis for a longstanding relationship is continuous forgiveness, is the continuous sense of being able to empathize with why our partner has certain quirks, why they do what they do, and understanding that those things, you know, especially, this is especially difficult when our partner's behaviors

can't be, you know, when you're truly empathetic, you're able sometimes to see that this doesn't come from a bad place. It doesn't come from true bad intentions. It comes from their own neuroses or it comes from the things that they're struggling with, the ways that they may need love, need attention. And so we're able to see past the surface level that other people might look at and A, take personally and B, just have a very short fuse for. Instead, you're able to make space for the other person and the way they are. And that's

a wonderful quality because it's humility too, right? We understand that we aren't coming to the relationship perfect. And so being in the relationship long-term means making space for them as we would hope they would make space for us and our difficult sides. The question becomes, at what point is being understanding of this person hurting half of the people in the relationship? And when does that become masochistic towards that person, i.e. yourself. Because as Jack Kornfield said, your compassion is incomplete if it doesn't extend to yourself. And your job is to take care of, your job is to be compassionate towards two people in this relationship, not just to be compassionate towards one person in the relationship. You also are in the relationship. There's two people in it. So your compassion has to extend in all directions.

Your empathy has to extend in all directions. You can't, you can't have true empathy for your partner and then have zero empathy for yourself. And long-term, not having empathy for yourself will prevent you from bringing great energy to the relationship. You'll wither. You'll become bitter. You'll become resentful. And you also, of course, at some point have to ask yourself, who are you helping? Is it really under the guise of helping them? Because that empathy might, sometimes parents' empathy for their kids stops them from disciplining their kids. Yeah. their kids and then their kids go on to make themselves unhappy because they've had no boundaries, make other people happy because they don't have respect. And so empathy can be a dangerous thing when it's applied in a mutated way. And we have to ask ourselves, who is this

empathy really serving at this point if it allows someone to continue with a negative behavior with no consequences? That's when it becomes dangerous. And the last point I'll add to this is that people need to be very careful that their empathy, which is righteous and noble, isn't a euphemism, doesn't come to be a euphemism for their own fear of losing somebody. That if I spoke up, because here's what we're all unsure of, if I spoke up and truly put my foot down about this behavior, would this person still be around? Or are they only around because I let them get away with murder? And a lot of people are afraid that if they suddenly start putting their foot

down, they might lose something they want to keep. And so empathy now becomes the righteous motive for keeping someone around when in fact it's more driven by fear than by love. As Dale Carnegie said, you know, people are always looking for the righteous noble motive for what they do. They're always, whatever we do in life, you know, we don't say, I, I took that without telling you because I'm selfish and I had a really selfish moment. We say, I took that without telling you because I was worried it would hurt your feelings. Or, you know, like we, we find the most righteous and noble cause for the things that we do. And sometimes empathy is a mislabeling. It's another, it's a way of us. So there's a positive side to it, which I think is beautiful and needed in a

relationship. But we also have to be honest with ourselves when our empathy has become the noble label we've given to something that is darker on the inside. Yeah, that's a great answer. That's why I sometimes get, i don't know if suspicious is the word but when people label themselves as empaths i always think is that being is loaded in with that a sense that you are not good at asserting other kinds of boundaries and you like you say it's the mutation of empathy just to follow up do you think that when uh the comments are hardcore fairy there says that we feel sorry so you know sometimes the empathy is that you feel sorry for this person because you know uh in a way you are saying they're they're they're blowing it here

they're messing up this relationship because of their toxic bad self-sabotaging behaviors when an empath would say i feel sorry for them and i want to stay with them to help them fix this is that fear-based as well not necessarily but you have to be honest with yourself about whether this relationship is really meeting your needs. There are always going to be things in a relationship that we, you know, there's the things that we make, that we make compromises on, you know, our partners great in, in ways that are really important to us, but they do have this, there's a, you know, there's this one part of them that misfires and is, and it can be frustrating, you know, they, they can be overly needy or they can sometimes be

overly worried about things, or they can get overly stressed or they can like this. There are things that our partner has that are not optimal. And, and I do think that it comes down to, can I live with this thing? If it's not genuinely abusive towards me, you know what I mean? If it's not coming from bad intentions and it's not abusive towards me, can I live with this and still feel like I can be, I can operate in a happy way in this relationship? That that's, I think an important question to ask because we are all going to have those things. We're all going to have things that, my God, we're going to need someone to come along and, and be understanding of. We're going to need someone who says, I'm willing to put up with this part of you. Yeah.

Because God help us if we're supposed to work out all of our kinks. Yeah, and we've all got a bit of crazy in there. Like certainly you and I do. Right. So you have to meet someone who's going to make, who's going to have some empathy for your quirks and the things that come out once you really get to know each other. But it's, can you live with that? Can you live with that thing?

And by the way, not, can I live with it for now? Can I live with this if it never changes? Because there's a good chance it won't ever change. It's no good being empathetic about something. Oh, I just really feel that I need to be empathetic about this. If it's something that's genuinely harmful to you in the relationship and it's making it impossible for you to be happy and your empathy is is your way of like holding on for a time when they won't be like this anymore that's dangerous because the chances are they won't that part of them will not change

and most people could look back on a relationship where they say, there's something I always hoped would change, and that person never really changed in that respect. So I think it's more about I can be, by all means, I could be generous with my empathy and say, I'm going to employ empathy here around this thing. That's fine. But, but make sure it's of make sure that's a, that's a challenge you want to take on because it's probably not going to be a short term one. Yeah. Yeah. Be ready for the battle. You're going to fight.

Yep. Be okay with it. Yep. Yep. And to some extent it is about picking our battles empathy wise. It's not your job to, you're, you're not someone's therapist. It's not your job to be like, you know, mother or father empathy about everything that's going on with someone.

If you took that view, then go pick the craziest person on the street and, and start strike up a relationship with them. You know, pick the, pick the person, pick the most neurotic, difficult, dramatic problem causing person you can possibly find and be with that person.

Because if it's just about being empathetic no matter what, then you can see where that goes. It's not about that. It's about finding someone we can live with. Leanne here put, can people change what is the probability? Again, I feel like in some ways that that isn't, that shouldn't be the initial question, right? That shouldn't, it shouldn't be what are the chances? Shall I roll the dice on this? Really, if you're talking about living with a major, some flaw that makes you very unhappy, that's not where you want to roll the dice in the relationship on hoping what's the chances of this changing now the only the caveat I would add is that sometimes and it's possible in our work at times we have actually gone too far in this but sometimes you need to get to know someone and the intentions behind something

more before you make a load of judgments about it because what can be true is that you can make certain assumptions about a person based on something they're doing that, you know, they do this thing that annoys you or that, and you immediately, you can say, could I live with this forever? But, but you haven't taken any time to get behind that thing. Like why, why is it they're very vocal about this thing? Why is this thing a passion for them that grates up against you? Or why do they do that thing a lot? And sometimes getting behind it and what causes it is the answer not only to more understanding and empathy around that thing, but also sometimes it's the answer to liking them more in respect to that thing. Because you can say, oh, that thing they're doing isn't used to great on me, but actually

I've come to realize it comes from a really good place. It comes from a really kind place or that, you know, actually that's an expression of them. And the thing that it's an expression of, I quite admire in them, even if I don't agree all the time with the way that it's an expression of, I quite admire in them, even if I don't agree all the time with the way that it's done. Once you get behind the thing, you can get more attracted to that thing than you did in the first place when you were judging it. And that's how friendships are born a lot of the time, right?

We're not talking here about attraction. Like we're not talking about chemistry. We're talking about compatibility. And a lot of our friendships that we love didn't like this person when I first met them. I've got friends where I'm like, the first night I met them, I made quite a lot of judgments about them. But once I actually got to know them and I started to understand more where they're coming from and why they do those things they do, I started to really love them. And so that's why, though we may be able to, and even justified in judging the chemistry of a situation in the short term, we do, I think, need to be careful of our judgments of people's behavior in the short term. Again, I'm discounting any genuinely disrespectful or abusive behavior, but we are very quick to judge things that if we were to get behind them, we might actually start

liking someone quite a lot. Yeah. Yeah. Very wise. Meanwhile, by the way, we're very quick to judge positively charm and charisma and these things that announce themselves very loudly and energetically and in a compelling way early on but they often end up having either nothing behind them or often a dark side behind them so we you know we we do the same in reverse too we we we judge too quickly some of the things we don't like and we give too much credit too quickly to some of the things we do like yeah initial charm is super powerful that's why great networkers everyone at the party has fun with them and loves them.

They don't really know the intent behind them, but they see the outer behavior. That's why when someone, when we have like a, you know, when someone has like a parent or a friend that they know really well, someone in their life they know incredibly well, but that person is very charming and other people meet that person and they're like oh my god they're so you're so lucky to be friends with that but they're so great and you internally there's a bit of an eye roll you do

right where you're like you know if only you knew but that's the, you know, when you're close to someone like that, you get to see both sides of it. When we're strangers to somebody and we go on a date with somebody who is that person who the first 5% of them is really well polished and comes across really well, it's harder because it's so compelling up front yeah well there you go folks good ep good episode good ep empaths you you got your big old hearts but you gotta you gotta have a big old brain as well sometimes isn't that right? Is that the moral of this story? You've got to use the head as well sometimes. Yeah, you have got to balance. Well, I would say the heart has to be applied in

all directions. You can't just give that big heart to other people. You've got to give it to yourself as well. And if half of the relationship is consistently being hurt and negatively impacted then it's you know you can't call yourself a fully compassionate person whilst you're ignoring 50 of the room yeah i think this was a great episode what steve if people never want to miss an episode what should they do well if you never want to miss this ever again uh you must of course follow us on all platforms on apple spotify stitcher search for the love life podcast with matthew hussey go and subscribe if you're feeling extra generous leave us a lovely review on iTunes to help us get discovered. And that's it. We'll be in your pop-up on your phone every time there's a new

ad and you'll go, Ooh. We'd really appreciate if you'd leave us a review as well. If you like this, if it's helpful, and if you feel like, wow, this is not superficial, this is important stuff that's being talked about here help us spread the word it would mean a lot to us and those reviews they really do help and uh you can email the show at podcast at matthewhussie.com and as you hear we read out some of the emails we're enjoying uh send us your thoughts your questions uh we've had weird habits we've had plenty of those in um lots of people take hot baths with fruit as well as me it seems matt apparently that's not so weird um we i'm and i'm not saying this as a brag we've got enough listeners that we could throw out any really crazy thing that you do and you'd have company

somewhere in the audience well there was a great one from gabrielle larue and she does she sent me a picture of the bath tray just the bath tray with its okay and it had um what did she say she i usually go in with tea, of course. She says, popcorn. So there's a little bowl of popcorn on the picture, she said. A few digestives, baked banana bread, if I'm lucky. A book, notebook, and a series episode to wind down. So, I mean, she's got a full on...

It sounds like she's packing for vacation. How long is she spending in the bath? I mean, a bowl of popcorn. You know I'm a popcorn addict anyway. Popcorn and the bath, that's a game changer. I've never put them two together. They don't mix well. Popcorn and water is not a good combination.

I mean, it is quite amazing that someone is in with me. I mean, I take the cup of tea in, you know, and she's got a smaller tray than I've got, but she's really stuffed a lot on there. Right. Well done, Gabrielle. Thank you. Okay. Well, I guess we'll celebrate more of your wins

next time that you email in. All right. Thank you so much for listening, everyone. That's it from me. Happy bubble baths, everyone. It's all right. I'm not agreeing to that sign off. See you later, everyone. I'm looking for love.