Love Life with Matthew Hussey - 30: The Psychological Bias That Makes You Stay In The Wrong Relationship...

Episode Date: June 13, 2020

Why is it SO hard to leave, even when we know we are with the wrong person?  How can we get the courage to follow what our brain and heart are screaming at us and leave?  It's not easy, and there's a psychological bias that makes it even harder.  In this episode, I share 3 techniques to re-wire your brain so that you finally have the strength to follow your heart and make the right choice. --- Follow Stephen @stephenhhussey Follow Matt @thematthewhussey  Email us your story and comments at [e-mail] Download the FREE guide on "Dating After Heartbreak" at 3SecretsToLove.com

Hello there podcast listeners and welcome back to the Love Life Podcast with your host Stephen Hussey, which is me. Today we are going to forego the usual tag team of Matthew, my brother, and I together. And I'm going to do a solo episode returning to a format that was very popular when I did it the first time and talk you through one of my blog posts on a specific pain point, a specific difficulty that many people face in their romantic relationships which is how do I get the courage to let go and what makes it so difficult to leave a relationship even when it's not a good relationship. So I'm going to talk through the post and just kind of read it through with you and give commentary along the way. The post is titled, The Flawed Psychological Bias That Keeps You With The Wrong Person.

One of the worst things about breaking up isn't just losing someone. It's the terrifying thought, what if I never find someone who makes me feel the same again? What if he or she is totally irreplaceable? He has a master's degree and he's good in bed. He loves to spend time with family and he owns a successful company and he's ambitious. He's a brilliant creative artist and he keeps his apartment tidy, does the dishes, knows how to cook. The problem with finding someone unique is the feeling that we can never find that person again. And the scary part is, on some level, that's true. Yes, the specific person can't be replaced, but we certainly can experience the same intensity of love and even greater fulfillment with someone else. Yet time and time again, I've had people tell me, I don't know if I should end it,

or I don't know if I'm strong enough to let him go. Even when they aren't getting their deepest needs met, be it for love, loyalty, commitment, or even just basic human kindness. The reasons people stay in bad relationships are complex. Bad models from parents, fear of abandonment, a lack of fulfilment in other areas of life, need for attention and validation. These are all factors that can make it difficult to cut loose and face the prospect of being single again. But one big factor that makes it even harder is a psychological bias known as loss aversion.

This is described by Daniel Kahneman, author of Thinking Fast and Slow, as When you initiate a breakup, your brain can't process the rational idea, this will make room for someone who makes me happier and fulfills my needs. Instead, you are gripped by a terror of having made the wrong decision, of having lost a potential love of your life,

of having a gaping emotional wound in your heart where your partner used to be and wondering how you're ever going to heal it. This is all irrational. If your days are filled with anxiety and fear that you're in a relationship with someone who isn't really committed, there is someone out there who won't make you feel so uncertain. If your days are filled with conversations with your girlfriends about how you're not really sure if you're that sexually attracted to him and you don't really feel that passion, there is a guy out there who will stoke those flames of passion and be a decent person as well. Yes, you can have both. Or if you live with the terrible

feeling that you have radically different life plans and values to your partner about family, kids, marriage, loyalty, there is a guy who will be much more 99 if not 100% aligned with you on your desired future. These are all areas where compromises are extremely dangerous, yet people often make them purely because they are scared to let go of what they already have. And we're not talking here about small compromises like, oh, I like to go hiking on Sundays and he likes to stay home and read books and watch movies. We're talking about fundamental areas of your relationship that need to be coherent together if you're going to feel happy and fulfilled. So most people, I believe, get risked the wrong way

round in love. They are very, very liberal and open in giving their heart to someone quickly at the outset, especially when they just suddenly meet someone, the first person they've liked in a while, and they become extremely cautious when it comes to breaking off a bad thing. When they're single, they are not loss averse enough. They're too relaxed about giving out their time, their emotion, their love to someone they know might not be right for them. And when they're in a relationship, they become too loss averse. They completely overestimate how long the pain of a breakup will last

and they underrate their ability to find love again with someone else who will give them what they really need. If we're already in a miserable situation, one that doesn't fulfill our needs and causes us daily anxiety, endless brooding conversations with friends, sleepless nights wondering if things will ever change, then we really only have a great deal to gain by finally letting it go. So if you struggle with this process of letting go of a relationship, whether it's a very bad toxic relationship or just a relationship that's not right for you, here are some easy ways to avoid the bias of loss aversion

so that you don't succumb to that overwhelming fear just to stay in what's comfortable. So number one, bring the gains to the forefront of your mind. That is, bring the gains of letting go of this relationship to the front of your mind so that you don't forget them. And you might need to write them down, you put them on a document on your computer or an email to yourself, whatever you need, but constantly remind yourself of the years of well-being and happiness you would have being in a relationship that really where you feel so aligned with someone on the same values and needs, where you feel full, you feel happy and you don't feel daily stress and anxiety and fear or you don't have daily arguments and frustrations write down all those frustrations and problems that this relationship

is currently causing you and remind yourself of the pain of staying and all the years decades of joy and peace and happiness you could get with the right person because it's very easy to tell ourselves well it's not so it's bad but it's not so bad I could do this for another week another month however long it is but if you then extrapolate to a lifetime of being with the wrong person and compare that to a lifetime being with the right person, that's a huge, huge difference in daily happiness. So bring the gains of letting go of this relationship to the front of your mind. Secondly, use past evidence

to make your decision to let go easier. So remind yourself that many, many, many, many people, including probably yourself, have gone through the worst heartaches, the worst loss, the worst grief, and they still find love again. Remind yourself how bad the supposed loss is in your mind. Remind yourself that these things pass. And when you have a breakup, the most dangerous moment is things get worse before they get better. You know, we call it the dip, but it's like before you actually come back and claw your way back into the light and feel normal and happy again, you go through a dip where you

break up with someone and it starts to feel worse and worse because you notice the absence of that person. It's like a withdrawal of a drug, of not having them around. And suddenly your body reacts to it and you think, I need them back in my life. I feel so much pain right now. I don't know if I can take this. That's where you need to use past evidence. Look at people around you who have gotten over the worst breakups, who thought they couldn't survive it and they did and now they're happy. There's people I know who've broken up in their 20s, their 30s, their 40s, they've had bitter divorces, they thought never again and then they fall in love with someone new and they think thank God I was available at that point when that person came along. Thank God I was out of that

other relationship because I was there available when the right person came along and look how happy I am now. So use that past evidence to ease your decision. Letting go will feel difficult. There is a path back to the light and many, many people have taken it before. Thirdly, we need to make being single incredible the best way to avoid loss aversion is not to see it as such a terrible terrifying loss many many people have some vision where being single is equivalent to i'm gonna be lonely uh what am i gonna do i'm not gonna have someone i'm not gonna have love in my life well if that's the case then we're in danger because we're always going to flock to even a bad relationship because we're going to see that as better than being on our own. But if we see being on our own as possibility, adventure, huge amounts of time to actually pursue things we want to pursue, to sample

different lifestyles, to live our passions unapologetically. These are all enormous, enormous benefits of being single that are completely underrated. And if you're going to have a life partner for the rest of your life, then it stands to reason that your single time is going to end. So you need to enjoy it now and enjoy all the options and possibility you have with that.

Now, that doesn't mean you have to go out dating as, you know, dozens of people. You can do whatever is right for you. But for us not to realize that being single can mean amazing time with people we love, with our friends, with, you know, either dating or family. There's so many connections we can make. There's so many connections we can make there's so many ways to make being single incredible and if we do that then we're in the ultimate position of power because we don't fear losing the wrong person because we think great i'll be single again and live my life and have fun and purpose and passion and i'll eventually meet someone else. Yes, so make being single incredible. And as a final word,

I think it's so important to remove the stigma and the shame of letting go of the wrong relationship. I think there's so many parts of society that want to make you feel like a failure, and that can kind of breed a loss aversion, because you think, if I let go of this person, what are people going to say? Am I going back to zero? Does it look like I messed up the relationship? I think it's so important to reframe that. It's not a step backwards to end the wrong relationship. It's a step forwards. It's progress. You're

learning what you like and dislike. You're learning what you are and aren't compatible with. And it's a step forward. So, you know, I think the true strength is being able to be able to realize when it's time to cut your losses, when to realize, okay, we've had a good go of this and now it's time to let go and start fresh. And that takes real, real strength. It's much easier to just stay in what's comfortable and sit and tread water than it is to get back out there again and find something that's right for you. And that all being said though, we still go into the next thing when you're single, you may have a much clearer idea of what your standards are but you also want to be open to

meeting different kinds of people i think when you get back out there again you don't want to suddenly be ultra dismissive it's important to go with a clean slate and open mind have some strong standards but also be willing to be surprised as well which makes the formulation be open-minded about whom the right person is, but be decisive and cut loose once you know they're the wrong person. Okay, that is it from me for today. And if you are looking to get back out there, maybe you've been through the end of a relationship, or you're just about to end one,

and you're trying to pick yourself up again and figure out where to go next, do download our free guide on dating after heartbreak and start the process of rebuilding, of enjoying being single again. You can go and get that. Download it for free at 3secretstolove.com. So that's just the number three and threesecretstolove.com. Download the free guide, check it out, and you can get started today. And if you have any comments, any stories, any experience you've had with this issue or struggle you're going through right now, email at podcastatmatthewhussey.com. I read every single email. I'd love to hear from you. I'd love to hear if you enjoyed this episode, if you enjoyed this style of episode

where we talk through a specific topic through a blog post. Yeah, podcast.matthewhussey.com. Let me know your thoughts. And that is it. I am out for the day. It's time for me to go get some coffee, get a workout,

and maybe a bit of banana bread, which my younger brother has made. Something tasty like that. All right, I'll see you soon. You enjoy your weekend. Bye-bye.