The Psychology of your 20s - 346. How to avoid settling in your 20s

Episode Date: October 24, 2025

Everyone is secretly searching for the perfect relationship, but what if your relationship is just 'good enough'? What if you feel secure, or fine about the person you're with but secretly want more? In today's episode we break down what it means to settle in your 20s, including:  The pressure to be 'coupled up' during your 20s How milestone anxiety creates unfulfilled relationships  What settling looks and feels like  How to tell if it's just relationships anxiety  3 questions to ask yourself if you're thinking about leaving  Listen now!  ORDER MY BOOK Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast For business: [e-mail]  The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe, on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world. It is so great to have you here back for another episode as we of course break down the psychology of our 20s. Today, we are going to talk about romantic relationships

in our 20s, specifically the question of why do we settle during this decade? Why do we date people? we know we shouldn't be with. Why do we accept less than we deserve? Why do we give people second chances, third chances, and cling on for too long, despite objectively being in one of the best times in our lives of our lives to be single and to be uncoupled and to be seeing kind of, you know, what's out there. Time and time again, I feel like I see people and I hear from people in these. mediocre relationships with, you know, individuals they don't even seem to like, and yet they are unable to leave, all because there is this deep fear that we have of being single forever, or of dying alone, of being alone day to day. And it's honestly a bit of a tragedy. But when we

have more life ahead of us than behind us, it seems almost strange that we continue to have this fear and that it is so powerful and impacting our decision-making so deeply. So I want to discuss it from a psychological standpoint, the pressures we face, the conflicts we have within us, and why we settle in our 20s. I would also kind of hope that this episode might just inspire you to re-examine your relationship at this pivotal point in your life. If someone isn't making your life better, every day isn't making you a better person every day, why stay with them?

when arguably being single in your 20s is a whole lot better for your character development. I want us all to, you know, altogether kind of question why we have been asked to expect so much less from love than we should. And why, especially in our 20s, we've been asked to make compromises. There are so many factors behind this. I know like relationship anxiety plays a big role, but I do believe that there are a lot of people who are secretly very unhappy, and it stems from the inability to see our worth and what we deserve in our 20s. So hopefully, this isn't too much of a wake-up call for any of you. It's more so informative and something to think about, but without further ado, let's talk about why we settle in our 20s.

There is obviously not one way to live our lives during this decade, or one way to pursue love during this decade. I think I just need to acknowledge people have different values and different dreams and different needs in their life. You know, some people want to get married young. Some people, you know, find the one when they're younger. Some people are just happy to be single or just happen to find themselves single. But I will make one thing super clear. A guiding part of my life philosophy, specifically the philosophy I have for my 20s is it is not wrong to want being. grand, wonderful things for yourself. And during these years of your life, you owe it to yourself to chase after those things in every way that you can. That may apply to your passions, to your career,

to your friendships, your big dreams, your dreams to travel to see the world. And it also majorly applies to love. This is such a sacred time in your life. And so settling now when you have the whole world in front of you is honestly, it's a disservice to yourself. And I kind of want to explain why. Firstly, though, we can't really get into that without examining, you know, what does it mean to settle in a relationship? What does it look like? To give you a simple definition, I think it means being in a relationship just for the sake of being in a relationship when your needs, your values, desires, deeper vision for love, is not being met. Now, this can be obvious, like when someone doesn't treat you right, is cruel, is mean, is uninterested, but it can also be

more subtle. It can be someone who does all the things that you'd expect or hoped they would, but who deep down you know doesn't fulfill you, who doesn't improve you, who doesn't excite you, but you stay because it's good enough because they're nice because they're fine maybe because you don't think that you deserve more or you will ever find more the question or the thing I always say to that is like you may never find better but is this even that good anyways you know of course every relationship has its doubts we need to talk about that more every relationship is going to have stress it's going to have problems that people need to work through you will not find a single relationship where people haven't had issues or miscommunications, but settling isn't about not

having arguments. It's about your deeper core value needs, emotional needs, personality and compatibility needs. It's actually quite complex for a word that means choosing less than, but here are some kind of therapist-backed signs that this may be happening in your relationship. number one, you constantly question whether this is all there is, whether this is like the love thing that everyone's been kind of going on about. Number two, you are constantly trying to fix things about them or about the relationship and it never truly works. Number three, they're holding you back from things you really want.

Number four, you find that one of the biggest reasons you can't leave is actually, just because you're scared of being single, not because you actually want to be in the relationship. Number five, your gut instinct keeps telling you something is wrong and has for some time, but you ignore it. The sixth sign that you are settling is you find yourself relying on others to fulfill your emotional needs and not this person. And number seven, you feel indifferent. And this is a huge one. I had a friend of mine say to me the other day at dinner, you know, the opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. I think I've quoted that on the podcast before because it couldn't be more true. If you just don't even care anymore, if you sit there and wish

that they'd break up with you, you are settling. Sometimes, you know, you don't find that you hate them. You just simply don't care. And that's a huge sign to me that the love and the life is gone. The irony is, is that we can mentally tick off everything on this lip. And and you can say, yeah, that's me, that's me, that's me, and yet again, find excuses for why that's maybe not you or why you will stay. What's really happening here is a form of cognitive dissonance. When we know we deserve better, but we still stay, what we do conflicts with what we continue to understand and believe.

You know, we know that we aren't meant to be in this relationship, and yet we stay there, and that creates discomfort. And in that emotional place, we do tend to just linger and feel terrible until we do something. If you've never been in this situation, you know, you may not understand why that is. And even if you have, you may not know exactly why. So let's talk about some explanations. Psychologically, emotionally, socially, why do we settle? The first reason is that the relationship feels.

feels safe or good enough. The worst kind of relationship to leave is the one where when it's really good, it's really good. And when it's bad, it's really bad. Or when it's bad, you just feel nothing. This creates such intense emotional fluctuations that you just don't feel like you can pinpoint the truth. It makes it so much harder to exit the relationship because you're essentially, always anticipating when things might turn to be better. And you're secretly hoping for that. And so because there isn't this all-out sign or declaration that the relationship is bad, you continue to live on the hope of it.

Hope will kill you. Hope kills us in these situations because we keep expecting the time when it's just all going to be good from now on. And we don't want to give up on that potential. on that future that we desperately want so badly. That's the thing about these situations. You want to be in this relationship. You just know it's not working. It also comes down to loss aversion.

This is a psychological phenomenon that describes how we feel the pain of losing something that we had and something that we valued more so than probably anything else and we will do a lot to stop ourselves from, missing out or to stop ourselves from losing something, even if we don't actually typically

see it as very valuable. There is this deep pain that comes from putting in so much time and energy and love and work into a relationship and it failing anyways. You can't say that you didn't try though. You can't say that you did not give it 100%. And that's the thing if work, And love was all it took. Well, then shouldn't it be working? But it's not. You also need other things. You need compatibility. You need communication. You need the spark. Another reason that we settle, especially in our 20s, is FOMO and the timeline trap. We see all these people around us in these relationships. And oh my gosh, don't they look like they're having so much fun? And they've really like found their person and they're so.

so happy and they do everything together and oh my god now they're engaged and now she's engaged and he's engaged and everybody's engaged and everyone's getting married and I'm going to be the last single friend and I'm going to be miserable. There is this intense milestone anxiety that is around every single corner in our 20s really that we are not where we should be. We are and do not have what we have that would potentially make us happy at this stage. And how could our lives begin? How could we move on unless we ticked this thing off our list. And so when you're in a relationship that feels good enough, you're sometimes the comfort of being able to say, oh, okay, I got that ticked off the to-do list, even if it's not very well done, is really all you're asking for. The thing is,

is that, like, to use that to-do list analogy, you can do a terrible job and tick the thing off your list, but you know you did a terrible job, and you know you're still going to have to redo it. And that's the thing with this relationship conundrum you're probably finding yourself in. You've ticked the relationship off your list. To everyone else that might look great. Deep down, you know that you're not happy with the outcome. The fear of being single forever is another thing that comes up time and time again. It really sucks.

Let's just acknowledge it. It really sucks to think that you're going to be alone for the rest of your life. it just does. You know what? There's really nothing I can say to that. Other than that fear is directly correlated to you, perhaps not making great decisions when it comes to who you're dating. The 2023 study found that when they examined why people settled,

the biggest factor was that they were scared of being alone. And this is especially the case if you are quite anxiously attacked. Those with anxious attachment styles find it difficult to let go of unhealthy relationships because their need for belongingness can overpower their need for emotional fulfillment. That's really difficult to be holding these two things that you think should go together and yet you're finding that they sit apart. I want to belong and I want to be loved and I'm in a relationship. surely those things all go hand in hand.

And you're probably finding that maybe they don't. You have to approach being single like you are going to be single for the rest of your life. And that, you know, you are never going to find anyone. And let yourself be in that worst case scenario. Let yourself truly believe it. And then realize that it's actually really not that bad. You know what the happiest group of people are? and I know you've probably heard this time and time again,

it's like single people and especially women over the age of 60. So this whole myth that if you're not in a relationship at 20, you're going to be alone forever is firstly probably not true. And the myth that being alone forever is going to mean that you're miserable is definitely not true. That's something that we really need to like start talking about. Low self-esteem, I think, also pushes us to settle. And I think that's something that comes through

with all of those previous factors we discussed, I think that sometimes you may think that you've tricked this person into falling in love with you and that you could never trick another person, that you are maybe not good enough. And so for someone who's not good enough, they should accept the good enough relationship, right? This is all you ever deserve. This is all you're ever going to find.

If you were to be single again, it's just going to be miserable and no one's going to find you attractive and no one's going to think you're hot, no one's going to think that you're intelligent or worth their time. That's ridiculous. I'll just call it out. I'm talking to the voice in your head right now. It's not true.

It's lying to you. But that lie is what's keeping you in a relationship that actually probably is worsening your self-esteem because you don't feel good about yourself. You're not able to act on what you want from your life. You're not happy. The final reason we settle is that we don't want to disappoint other people. this isn't another really hard one. Maybe your family really loves who you're with.

Maybe they think that he or she is amazing. Maybe they're all your grandparents can talk about. All your aunts and uncles want to hear about. Every one of your friends thinks they're great. Everyone's so happy and thinks you've got this beautiful relationship. Breaking up with them would be admitting that that was a lie. And you think that you might break other people's hearts in the process. They don't care.

They do, but they care in the sense that they want you to be happy. They want you to find and be in the relationship that just makes you feel incredible about yourself. If you were to truly talk to them and tell them about all the stuff that was happening in your relationship, or even if the relationship is good, all the things that you were feeling and how unhappy you were, they would want you to make the choice to leave. You know that. they're not going to be disappointed. But these are some of the reasons why we stay,

why we end up settling when we know deep down that we shouldn't. We're going to take a short break here, but when we return, I want to talk about the cost of this decision in the nicest way possible and where to go from here when you know the relationship isn't right. How do you leave it?

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Open your free, our Heart Radio app. Search Learn the Hardway and listen now. In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckerd found himself at the center of a paternity scandal. The family court hearings that follow revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story. This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.

You doctored this particular test twice in so-ins, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case. I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for. Sunlight's the greatest disinfected. They would uncover a disturbing pattern. Two more men who'd been through the same thing. Greg Lespian and Michael Marantini.

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of settling in our 20s especially. That's the next big question we need to answer. If you're in a good enough relationship, and that is to you better than being single, which I understand why in many ways, you might just be thinking to yourself like, well, why can't I just stay a little bit longer? Like, this isn't that bad.

Why not just, like, enjoy the security of this all for a little while, like while it lasts? Well, if you are scared about losing a good enough relationship, I need you to seriously consider how much else you are losing by staying in that relationship and everything else that you are missing out on. This is a good way to counteract our loss aversion by thinking about all the potential things that we are losing, the opportunity costs that we are losing by staying in this relationship. And that's an economics term to basically reference like if I gave you $5 and you bought an apple,

like essentially there is opportunity in your money and there is opportunity to also buy an orange and also buy a pear and also buy, I don't know, a banana. And you're not just spending the money you're spending or choosing the opportunity to spend your money on a certain thing. So the cost of settling falls across three categories. The identity cost, the obvious opportunity cost or romantic cost, and the experience cost. Let's start with the identity cost. Firstly, you may really struggle to be able to figure out who you are if you stay in a mediocre relationship. You become hide up in this other person. Of course you do. If you have begun to share a life with them, if you've moved in with them, if you've traveled with them, if you've shared friends,

like if you do share friends with them, your relationship can be your epicenter. Everything revolves around it. And everything will continue to revolve around it, especially if you're worried about it ending because even more time and energy that you could be putting to yourself becomes fixated on like not trying to break up with them or like trying to quell your anxiety or make yourself feel better because you don't want to lose the history. You are spending and expending energy that could be better spent on yourself. It is a finite resource. Your 20s are, we already know this, the peak period of your life for identity exploration. Maybe only second to our teenage years, but I even think our 20s are more important because you have more independence

and a bit of money. You are meant to be trying on different versions of who you may want to be, like seeing what fits, seeing what doesn't fit, seeing where you want to live, what you want to try. You know, if you're with the right person, like, they will let you do that. They will allow you to be a separate entity and explore. They will actually probably expand your ability to do that and give you the freedom to discover yourself in a deeply fulfilling way.

but with the wrong person, you experience something that we call identity for closure. This is a phenomenon whereby we basically choose who we are, and unfortunately we choose wrong, too early in life. And then we find ourselves so tied up in commitments and attached to this version of us that we just assume it's who we are because we like being this person. We're just like, oh yeah, this is of course me. I like being in this relationship. I like my identity as a girlfriend, as a husband, as a wife, as a partner, not because you

actually do, but because you haven't looked at any other alternatives. You have foreclosed on the opportunity to explore. I had a friend who this happened to, and thankfully she has exited this relationship, but she started dating her ex when she was 17. By 19, they were living together. by 21, like I remember them planning their wedding. And I remember so much of who she was was this guy's girlfriend. Right after they broke up, because they did eventually.

And it took many, many years. I remember her being like, I couldn't even decide what to eat without him. I didn't have any hobbies that he wasn't involved in. I didn't have any real friends that didn't know us as a couple first. You know, I liked that I was a girlfriend and I liked that I was in a serious relationship because I think for her it made her feel mature. But the thing she said to me was like, I liked that experience, but I realized that I liked that experience more than I liked him.

She had experienced identity foreclosure. 17 was when they got together and because of the nature of their relationship, it was like she was kind of frozen, as she would say in her own words, like frozen at the point they became a couple. What we really want to be experiencing is what we call, identity moratorium. This is when a person is trying out roles or activities or different things in order to kind of trial and error into the most suitable one. And this process hopefully brings us to identity achievement. So this is when we find an identity we really like and our commitment

to that identity is high because we have been able to go through and kind of cross out the things that we don't want to be because we have explored our options. Of course, you know, I feel like I have to make this caveat. We never really stop discovering. That's why you really need a partner at all ages who's going to let you explore on your own. But when this exploratory need is highest, confining yourself can be a lot more threatening. Settling in your 20s, and this may be controversial, but I believe it. It can also mean that you abandon your ability to find yourself through,

the fun of meeting other people. Basically, you should be dating around. And some people don't agree with me and I totally understand why, but I think that being single truly brings so many opportunities to you know, figure out who you are through the lens of meeting other people and like having fun with them and determining what you like about them, what they like about you, what you don't like about them, what they don't like about you. I read this quote from Kristen Bell recently in which she was basically like, I wish I'd had more fun. I wish I'd butterflyed around more in my 20s. And even though I'm in a stable relationship now, I kind of have to agree with her. I had a lot of fun when I was single. Like, I wouldn't say actually fun. I had a lot of experiences. And I wish I'd had maybe a few more.

Some people do just know, but for others, you learn through error. So if you've picked the first person and they're like kind of all right. Not giving yourself the opportunity to get heartbroken and explore may actually be costing you. Not every experience that is painful is bad. Sometimes they do actually teach you important lessons. You know, I always get people who are like, you know, if you're not dating to marry, you're dating to be heartbroken. Heartbreak sucks.

It's not the worst thing in the world. It is fertile ground for growth. and to allow you to redefine what you want out of a future relationship. Maybe this is another helpful reappraisal for those of you or those of us who are scared to leave a good not great relationship. It's never a loss to give something your all and to try with someone and for it to maybe not work out. It's not a loss. Of course we're aiming for true love, but sometimes the next best thing is a lesson. Finally, you lose the everyday opportunity to just be happy.

being in the wrong relationship, like your body feels that. Your mind feels that. You know. You feel sick to your stomach. You feel anxious all the time. You feel stressed, tense. There will be pain in leaving, of course, but that is a temporary pain versus the everyday chronic pain

of being in a place in a relationship that you don't belong. And every day you abandon yourself a little bit more. Every day you fall a little bit more silent. And every day you feel less like yourself, you feel less connected, you feel the resentment and numbness take over is a day you don't get back and is a day that you could have been spent healing. Not to scare you, but you have one precious life. You have to go after what you deserve and want. Even if right now you can't picture it, even if getting there means standing at the start of a marathon line

and being like, I'm going to have to run through this and it's going to be really painful. at least you'll feel human rather than disappointment. At least you'll really know what it feels like to know yourself in the darkest points. So what do we do next? You've made the decision. It's a loaded question to ask, but where do we go from here? I will say, at this point, feels like a good time to just maybe propose a few more questions if you're still kind of uming and aering that might give you a little bit more information.

So before we think next steps, ask yourself these questions. If your best friend was in this relationship, what would you tell them to do? What would you in five years' time be begging you to do right now? If I gave you a guarantee right now that you would find someone else, would you stay with this person? When you picture your ideal relationship, is it the person you're with now who is in the these visions or not? These questions don't have a right or wrong answer. I think that's why they're so important. They're about tapping into your gut instinct. You know. And if maybe you're thinking this, you know, it could just be relationship anxiety, maybe, but relationship anxiety doesn't stick

around and stalk you for months. Relationship anxiety also is not unresponsive to any kind of changes. you know, it goes away when you talk to your friends about it. It goes away when you talk to your partner about it, when you're open about it. You know, we have a whole episode on how to tell the difference between intuition or anxiety that I would really recommend for moments like this. But, you know, sometimes you just have to do it and see if you feel better. So how are we going to try this? How are we going to leave?

Number one, plan what you're going to say. I'm assuming that, you know, there's a lot of love in your relationship. There's just not a lot of compatibility or there's just not a lot of something he's missing, right? But I'm sure you still really care about them. Just plan out exactly your reasons. Talk about it in terms of you and what you need. Don't say like, oh, I think that you deserve better. No, just what do you need?

Don't make promises that you're going to get back together. just make your dot points, maybe write them a letter, plan when you're going to do it, and then plan your next two weeks. Distract, distract, distract as much as you can for that first little chapter. This is when it's going to feel the hardest. I always say the first two weeks after a breakup and then the three month mark is when it's the worst. Those are like the hurdles that you need to get over. It will slowly get better.

Just plan out like what are. exactly you are going to do. Who are you going to see? What courses are you going to start? Get a gym membership. Like literally before you break up with this person, obviously like talk to them before, like and see if you can work stuff out. Like I'm kind of assuming that you've had some hard conversations before this. But if you really know you're going to do this, I need you to write down a timeline of what your next two weeks are going to look like. And I need all you. your evenings to be full. And I need you to know where you're going to be so that you don't just get stuck on the thought and just get back together. Get a project. This is good advice for any time.

But have something that you can pour all of these feelings into, all of your grief, all of your loss. You know, even if you're the one to end things, like it's still going to be hard. Find something that you can channel that into to feel like you're making something from your pain. It doesn't have be creative, set a goal, set a task, set something you want to achieve, that's going to be the thing that you return to that you can just focus on, especially if it's something that brings you into a state of flow or something that you really wanted to like kind of get to in the past. Reflect on the lessons, not just the loss. A lot of time, and I think I've done this in the past, like I've suggested that you write a closure letter. I think it's better actually to tell

the story of your relationship like it's a fable or like it's a very old story that has a lesson or a takeaway at the end. Someone always has to leave first, right? Why did you leave and what did you learn from the relationship? What are you bringing with you for this next chapter? When you apply and when you bring meaning to the pain, it doesn't make it any easier, but it makes it feel more important. And it takes away like the meaninglessness of it. Number five, my friend Gia actually gave was telling me about something that she did when she broke up with her partner which was that she found a single friend to kind of group up with like it's always so much easier to go through something when you're not going through it alone and she was like telling me

about all these beautiful memories that they would have of like every night they would have their hot chocolate and they would like watch videos about how to desent to men and I was like that's that's really nice to have like a buddy um So find a community of people who are going through something similar. And also let yourself indulge in the bad feeling. Like, let yourself be sad. But also remember being sad has no correlation as to whether this person was right for you or not. You can feel devastated.

You can feel heartbroken and still know this wasn't right and was never going to be right. If you want to make your way through that feeling, don't run away from it. Let yourself just like be overwhelmed by it. watch La La Land, watch the notebook, watch the breakup, like get those movies ready, watch sex in the city, like have stuff ready so that you can just feel really, really sad. Have like your breakup album ready. The new Olivia Dean album is like an iconic breakup album. Like I think it would be an amazing companion for a recent split.

Like indulge in the feeling. Let yourself just really be sad. Let me finish by just making something abundantly clear. You are not being greedy or unrealistic if you expect or want an amazing love story for yourself. It is not unrealistic to want someone who makes time stand still, who completes you, who is undoubtedly your soulmate. That's not impossible. That is not asking for too much.

and you know you can call me a romantic but I believe fully that this is out there for everyone 100% I believe it no doubt in my mind but you cannot find that person if you are in a relationship that you settled for and I don't want you to be 50 60 waking up in bed beside someone realizing that the same feelings you have right now have always been there and you should have just listen to them right at the start. So I am sending you a lot of love. I feel like if you're listening to this, well, it's not for no reason. You probably know what you need to do and I know it's going to be really hard, but you are going to get through it. And in six months time, I see you absolutely thriving. Maybe in a year, but it will happen. So like take this information, do with it what you will,

but I'm sending you a lot of love, a lot of luck for this next chapter, whatever. you decide. I hope that you enjoyed this episode, maybe send it to someone that you think could benefit from it or just send it, re-listen to it, send it to yourself. If you are listening to this on Spotify or Apple, you may not know that we are also on YouTube. This episode is currently being filmed and recorded. So I don't know if you want to re-watch it since you've just finished, but if you want to watch other episodes, video episodes, you can go to our YouTube, the psychology of your 20s and follow us along there. You can also follow me on Instagram at that psychology podcast if you want to see

behind the scenes and stuff that we're doing and stuff that we're working on. And if you want to contribute to episodes or suggest an episode, that's the place to do it. But until next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself and don't ever settle. We will talk very, very soon. Hey, what's good, y'all? You're listening to Learn the Hardway with your favorite therapist and host Keer Games. This space is about black men's experiences, having honest conversations that's really not safe to have anywhere, but you're having them with a licensed professional who knows what he's doing. How many men carry a suit or armor.

It signals to the world that you're not to be played with. And just because you have the capability that does not mean that you need to. Listen to learn the hard way on the AHA radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. In 2023, Bachelor star Clayton Eckerd was accused of fathering twins. But the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax. You doctored this particular test twice, Ms. Owens, correct? I doctored the test ones. It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.

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