WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Wherefore Art Thou, Romeo?: Perfectionism

Episode Date: March 4, 2025

Emily and Greg discuss the topic of perfectionism in the relationship process. Does everything have to be perfect before you start dating or get married? How much money do I need in order to succeed in this? These and more are part of the discussion on perfectionism. 

Batman doesn't do ships, as in me. You complete me. I'm George, George McFly. I'm your density. It is not about the nail. No matter when, no matter who, any man has a chance to sweep any woman off her feet. You're listening to Where For Art Thou, Romeo? The show that discusses how to navigate romantic relationships

and how to achieve a meme between the extremes of hookup culture and over-discerned dating. Here's your host, Emily Shudy. Welcome to Wherefore Arthal Romeo, the show where we talk about how to follow your heart without losing your mind. My name is Emily Shuddy and my co-host is licensed to marriage therapist and also my dad, Greg Shuddy. We're all navigating relationships every day, but sometimes the most intimate are also the most challenging. Our goal is to help you get out of your own head when it comes to your or even your friend's relationship questions and concerns. So today we're going to be talking about the topic of does everything need to be perfect? Perfectionism in relationships.

Greg, what are some of your thoughts about how perfect everything needs to be before you get married? Or like just in your relationship. Yeah. Well, I would say first and foremost, wake up from your dream because it's not true. Yeah, I think that that's interesting that you bring that up because I think there's a lot of people that want, you know, to get everything in perfect order before you make those big leaps in life. And I've talked to some people like that. That's, you know, we've got to have enough money and we've got to have, we've got to, you know, date this amount of time perfectly. And some of that's not bad.

But I think sometimes it's got to be so, you know, perfect. So that when we enter into it as if this concept of then we can we can do this marriage thing well. And sometimes I think that the thing that I worry about is that that comes out of a sense of fear of not succeeding in marriage. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that definitely is something I've heard people express that they're just, they want to make sure everything is right before. before they get married, whether that be absolutely positive about the man or absolutely positive about their finances or absolutely positive about what they believe about anything and everything.

Yeah. And I think, you know, there's nothing wrong with really trying to think through some things because, yeah, if you can work through things that are difficult before marriage, it's better than getting married and hoping that everything will just resolve itself and not deal with it because it's going to come up. You're going to battle with it one way or the other. The good thing about before marriage is a lot of times you're more inspired to try and change it for the success of this relationship because you're trying to win each other over. It can still happen in marriage. I mean, me and your mom had that where there were things that we, you know, we dealt with some things, but other things we just, we couldn't foresee or we

just didn't talk about and it came up in marriage. And who, you know, we had to really work through it. And so, yeah, I think we got to be careful with that because this is why, and I think I was talking to you about this before, is that this is why a lot of people are living together before getting married now. And it's not because they don't believe in marriage. It's because they do. They value it. Not everybody, but a lot of people value it and don't want to. not succeed at it.

They don't want to fail at it in a sense. And so they live together trying to figure out, you know, can we just try this on for size and see how it works? The problem with that is, is that actually works against the success of your marriage. Yeah, I know. Because you have this, go ahead. I know that sometimes people have expressed like,

oh, well, I am the child of divorce and I'm afraid that this might happen to me. So I like, I really want to be absolutely sure. I don't want to go through the messy pain that my own family had to go through. So I know that sometimes that's just a concern. And so they want an easier out when they, so by living with each other, I don't want to paint this as everybody's mindset going into this. But it just seems like maybe it's more of like an easy out in the event that things don't work. Yeah, but this is huge today because we're seeing an increase.

and people living together prior to marriage. And a couple things that are, you got to remember with this is that you can't practice permanence. And when I ask people that how do you practice permanence, they're like, well, you can't. Well, that's, yeah, you can't. And so when you live together, basically the mentality is, let's see if this work.

If it doesn't, then we'll just break things off. So in a sense, you're practicing divorce. Yeah. And I've heard that over and over again. And it's like, how do you switch that mentality of, you know, we're living together and I don't have to, well, I don't want to use the whole free milk and a cow kind of thing. But it's one of those where I'm comfortable with it. So why take that next step? And I hear this a lot of times where especially with the women, they've been waiting to get married.

And now the guy is like, let's don't rock the boat. We're just good as it is. And the problem is changing that mentality of we're living together to a, I'm all in. I've committed. And so that can work against us. So I say that in the sense that there's other ways to walk through things and kind of predict what someone would be like with marriage without having to take that step. aren't there some like legal reasons that might be good i mean i know that there are many many good reasons to get married but aren't there some legal reasons that might make it better to be married

than just living together yeah i mean there's there is some of that but uh i would just be careful with that too because i think there's negatives and positives because there's you get taxed more being married than individual and so yeah i hear people well we're just going to live together because I can't afford this and that any other things. So that can get really sticky. Yeah, I think that though you may not even have any sort of say, like say your, your partner dies, I don't think you have any claim to any of their things usually. Yeah.

No. No. That all works against. Which is really hard. Against you. But I think. I think I was just trying to say like just from like maybe a more practical standpoint, it doesn't seem to maybe be.

as good for you if you're trying to like actually become part of the other person's life like you don't have any connection over you're not there's no like joining of lives in that well you know usually when you are living together most of the time it's rare that I hear that people aren't sexually active and again that whole sex outside of marriage can work against the health of the marriage eventually too. Because again, you're building this bonding. And if you keep, you know, building a relationship and then it breaks off and then you go to another relationship and have that sexual union and then that breaks off it, it can create this bonding breaking, bonding, breaking where it makes it harder to really fully enter into. And then if you, that's a whole.

Then if you have kids through that, then again, the same issues, like you're going to have a lot, you're going to have a lot more of like legal battles if things don't work out the way like if you if you are planning for that relationship not to work out it probably won't and then you'll have a lot more heartache as a result of that yeah because i mean we're seeing that a lot today where um people don't stick around and so we have people raising children on their own and that's hard and i'm not saying that as a judgment of people there's things that happen and i get that. But again, that's why it's one of those, back to the original question is, you know, how perfect do you make this before you get married? I don't think there's any way to make it perfect.

Yeah. Because life is always changing. You can have things great and you're doing really well right before marriage and then you get married and things happen. And now we're in a little bit of turmoil. So that's where I often tell people. And John Van App talks about this in the jerk book is, you know, how do people walk through adversity? How do people, are they with little commitments in their life? These are little telltales about the person that you're getting to know. And so it's one of those,

find the person that's really trying to become better. And you yourself be that person that's always trying to become better. And before marriage, the more you can work through things in civil ways and come up with boundaries and come up with a plan. you know, versus it turns out to be this fight and we just kind of bury it under the rug and move on and then we're happy again. I think we don't recognize those red flags enough prior to marriage. So there can be like a good balance of actually taking time because time is really important to get to know someone and make sure there's compatibility. But then also you you have to like like we said, I think last time we chatted, poop or get off the pot. you have to make a decision. This is just a reminder that you're listening to Wherefore Arthel Romeo, where we are discussing the question of perfection.

How perfect does your relationship need to be before you can get married? I'm your host, Emily Shuddy, and my co-host is licensed to marriage therapist. Greg Shudy here on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. As we continue this conversation about perfection in a relationship, we've kind of been talking about maybe just this concern. about various issues that you might have. Or maybe you have a background that's a little rougher, or you've seen friends that have gone through tough, tough relationships or siblings or whatever the case may be. And so you're just, you're worried that all of this might happen to you. Say that you're in a situation where you have a lot of personal problems and your partner has a lot of

personal problems. Is there a point at which those personal problems would be a reason that you need to actually stop dating and just address those issues on your own? Well, I mean, I think the bigger issue is are you talking with each other about this? Again, if it's early on in a relationship, you might want to just stop and really focus on dealing with these issues. But if you've been in a deep relationship. I mean, you can still work on the relationship, but you need to be open and honest with each other and work through these things. Because I think sometimes we just want to hide things away and hope that they don't come back to bite us. But a lot of times they do. And so we've got to be willing to deal with our own demons. We have to be able to deal with some of those works that we have.

And relationships will bring those out. Again, my concern is the people, that always are avoiding the problems. They don't want to deal with the problems. They refuse to see a problem when it's there versus those that say, you know, okay, I grew up in a family where we didn't talk about problems. You know, mom and dad were just like, you know, we're not talking about that. Let's just get back to happy. And so they never really dealt with it. And they always kind of, it was this, you don't talk about the family problems. So then you start dating someone. And some of the. those background issues start to affect your relationship with the person, if you don't deal with those, they will come up in marriage. Family background has a way of creeping back in there, and if you don't deal with it, then you're going to deal with it in marriage and try to work through those things. Again, this is not a perfect formula, but I'm just a big proponent of We all, I love to say, we all are cracked pots, you know. And so we bring brokenness into any relationship.

And the more you want to try and make the other person, you know, look at, look away from your flaws and hope that they don't notice and we can just bury them, you got to realize they're going to come back to bite you in an intimate relationship, especially when you're married and, depending on each other and then you bring kids into the whole mix and kids then really are that pressure cooker you want to before marriage really build a habit of how do we work through issues together can we work through issues together or is it always a fight is it always a one-up is it always a you win and I feel you know I have to apologize because those patterns will play out in your marriage and so many people just want to overlook them or think in marriage it'll fix be fixed so you're not going to get perfect yeah i feel like that's what people are afraid of though i think that there's this there is this fear like that's where the perfection problem becomes

um very prevalent in people's minds because then it's just you don't you do want it to work out but you just maybe you are working through a lot of those issues maybe working through them together, but you just don't think that it's possible to go any further until later on. But you can't deal with something you can't see. And I think this is really important to understand. If we're trying to hide something, if we're trying to bury something, if we deny something that we've gone through in life, and now it starts to rear its ugly head in our marriage,

because I'm yelling at the kids all the time. I'm, you know, deeply depressed because something has triggered something, whatever it might be. If it's out there and I know that this is what I'm dealing with, we can work on it together. But if all I get from you is angry and yelling and pointing blame at me, then guess what? It's a fight between us. I can't work with you because now, you. We're battling each other. But if I know that this is a fear of yours, this is something you're struggling with,

okay, let's work on it together. Let's come up with a way that we're, I mean, I think me and your mom talked about this. She brought depression into our marriage because of how she grew up. And knowing that, you know, I know to work with her on that versus, you know, getting into this, she just keeps trying to hide it. And I'm just like, why are you always saying? sad all the time. Why is everything a big to do? Why are you, whatever? And I think that that's where we have to stop trying to hide. Yeah, I do wonder though, what if what if there is an instance in

which it's not that you're trying to hide, but you still recognize that there are a lot of things you need to work through. And so that's why you feel like you need to wait an extended period of time. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. And I think that there's times when you need to, to take that break because, you know, maybe the past really comes up and hits you hard. You're saying you should take a break. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe take a break.

If you're saying something really big comes up here and it's really affecting me and I haven't really faced this demon in my life. Now, it's different if we're married. You can't just run away. Yeah. I'm not suggesting that. In marriage, we now have to work together. we have to support each other through, you know, going to therapy.

And, but even through that is being honest with each other because I've seen that where one's working in therapy, but they're coming home and still the other person's like, you know, what's going on? It's things getting better. Are you learning anything? What do I need to know? I mean, couldn't I have, like, if the person I'm dating is just a really close friend of mine as well as my significant other who I'm able to try.

just like, I don't know, share my struggles with and I'm able to like start opening up to them. Can't that be helpful to my process of healing from whatever it is that I'm struggling with, even if it is really big? It can be. And I think that's one of the things that we got to realize is that, yes, we have to deal with our own problems. Other people can't necessarily fix it for us. A therapist can guide us.

They can give us tools. And they can help us in different ways to really face it, but we have to face it. But we also have to remember is that we get better by how we learn to deal with these things in and through relationships, whether it's through a friendship or a marriage or. And sometimes people, that's a scary place to be. And I think, again, that's a big, that's a big topic too. But we learn how to work through some of this through our relationship with each other. And a good relationship can be, it's not something that will fix some of that past, but it can be a salve to it and help us to reduce some of the effects of some of these past traumas

and past depression and stuff like that. Yeah. I think maybe what's important for our listeners to hear out of all of this is that being someone that has like come from brokenness doesn't make you someone who is not qualified for a relationship or for marriage. We just find out. Yeah, because then none of us would be. Then none of us would be in relationship because everyone has brokenness. Just like be able to to learn how to communicate about that and learn to heal from it because it is going to be something that you're going to deal with in your relationship. On a little bit of a lighter note, we're going to talk about three of our favorite relationships in literature and movies.

Greg, do you want to give your first one? Well, it's not going to be in literature because I'm not that great of a reader. You all surpass me in that. But sure, the first one I'll give is Kung Fu Panda. No, I'm just kidding. The first one. No, I would say one of my favorite movies is Tangle. the Disney movie just because, you know, there's this adventure together, but there's this innocence, which I think is so neat.

An innocence in her that wins his heart over and a sincerity and an innocent in his, even though he's been hardened by, you know, having to fend for himself, there's still this integrity inside of him that is willing to die for her. her to live and be free. Yeah. And I think that that just speaks of that chivalry that should be in a relationship, especially marriage. Yes, yes. I'm going to say my first one is the relationship between Emma and Mr. Knightley in Jane Austen's Emma. I really appreciate the relationship because Emma is this person who's very spoiled.

And over the course of her of the book, we definitely see her relationship with Mr. Knightley grow. seems to be the only one that she really respects what he has to say. And he seems to also be the only one that will ever correct her when she's gone wrong. I actually really appreciate that because I feel like she grows so much as a person because of her relationship with him. And he also learns to be a little less curmudgeonly, I think. Their relationship does end up being really beautiful. Okay. Second, I would say Princess Bride. Again, it's just something about that chivalry that speaks to me and maybe this is the guy in me you know the guy who's willing to to fight for the relationship um even when his arms and legs don't move um it just yeah i don't know

it's a fun movie um but it's kind of that you know yeah so i'll just i'll leave it at that yeah my second one is anne and gilbert from the anne of green gables series i just love how how much he really pursues her even when she wants nothing to do with him. And then when they're when they're older in some of the later books and they're married and they're going through challenging things, like even to the point of she, they lose a son in the, in the war at that time. Just how how much they rely on each other and work together to just build a beautiful

family, like coming through just a tough beginning to their relationship. So what's your third? I would say the Cosby Show. This is one where I learned a lot about, you know, how I wanted to have a family and be in relationship. And it just always reminded of me and your mom in many ways. So I want to think that we're doing good. They're so funny. I love that. That show's so great. My final one is Percy and Marguerite from the Scarlet Pimpernel. Wonderful book. If you haven't read it, please do. It's one of my favorite book. books. That's actually one I've read. It's such a beautiful story of reconciliation because the majority of the book, you really see this distance between them in their relationship, but then you see them actually, there's just this deep self-sacrifice between them and a lot of growth. So I'd just like to remind you that relationships are a process and they take time and effort. We just want to help you learn how to balance your head and your heart. This is your friendly reminder

to not be discouraged because if you haven't found your Romeo or Juliet, get a truck. If you have a question that you would like us to address, please email them to Eshutti, S-C-H-U-T-T-E at Hillsdale.edu, and we will discuss them in future shows. That's all for Wherefore Art Del Romeo. I'm Emily Schoty. And I'm Greg Shuddy. On Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 at that.