Relationships

There are several things I’ve learned over the years about relationships.  Some of them interesting, some of them questionable, but all of them real.

The first thing to realize is nobody is thinking about you.  Your world revolves around you, and as a flip side to that coin, everyone else’s world revolves around them.  They are thinking about themselves 95% of the time.  They are thinking about their wants, their needs, their situation.  What they ate, what they said, what they want to eat, it’s all about them.

Now perhaps 95% is not quite correct, and I should be a little more generous because there are many selfless people in the world.  Let’s say on average instead of 95% of the time, they are only thinking about themselves 90% of the time.  That leaves a whopping 10% of their time for all the other people in the world.  All the other people, not just you.  Everyone.  Their mom, their dad, their teacher, their boss, that person who cut them off in traffic, the radio host, their cousin, their ex, and you.

This reality can be helpful, and harmful, in a number of ways.

First and foremost is you have to realize you have limited real estate in someone’s mind.  You get 1% of 1% of any thought process people might dedicate to you, so you have to be careful what that real estate looks like.  Did you make a good impression?  Were you a jerk?  Did you do something stupid, funny, or mindless.  People are fundamentally lazy, so the impressions you make help people make up their minds about you.  And once they have made up their minds, it’s hard to change them.

That said you can use that limited real estate to your advantage if you can get people thinking about you more.  The amazing thing about humans is the more familiar something is, the more you’re likely to like it.  Think about that song on the radio you heard for the first time.  It was OK, but nothing great.  Then, after the 50th time you heard it, you love it.  It came to define your generation by being played over and over again.

It’s the same thing for relationships.  If you can stay top of mind with someone, get them thinking about you, then they are more familiar with you, and they will like you more.

This expands into social situations as well.  The more people who are thinking and talking about you, the more your popularity will grow.  Let’s say there’s a guy you like.  If you want him to like you back, you should try to figure out how you get him thinking about you more.  Same thing if there’s a girl in your law class.  How do you stand out and make her think?  I learned this the hard way when I started asking myself why all the jerks got the girls in high school.

I finally figured it out.  It’s a two-part answer.  The first part is because they got people to talk about them, and think about them, so they took up more real estate in people’s minds.  The second secret to their success is they would take action.  They would actually ask the beautiful girl out.  Because all the other guys were shy, and they thought they didn’t have a chance, nobody was actually asking her out.  So with limited options, and the jerk being top of mind, unfortunately the girl would say yes to the jerk.

When I finally put the pieces together, it was almost too late, but fortunately I took action and asked the love of my life out, and she said yes.  The good news is I didn’t even have to be a jerk about it.

In discussions around relationships, I often hear how frustrated one person is with their spouse / partner / girlfriend.  ‘They didn’t do this’, or ‘why do they act like that’, or ‘they keep doing that same thing that drives me crazy.’  I’ve come to learn the hard way that people think of relationships, fair relationships, as divided equally, 50/50.  They think to themselves ‘I did this, so they should do that.’  That’s unfortunately not correct.

Every relationship is made up of two parts, the part your responsible for, and the part they are responsible for.  The hard thing to realize is each person is 100% in control of their own part, and 0% in control of the other person’s part.  So rather than a relationship being 50/50, it’s actually 100/100.

You have the freedom to put any amount of effort you want to into your side of the relationship.  You can put some small effort, say 30% of your 100%, or you can put more, 75% or 100% of your 100%.  But your extra effort doesn’t mean the other person will reciprocate.

But what I’ve found over time, is if people are invested in the relationship, they will start to reciprocate your effort after time if you have zero expectations for that reciprocation.  If you give all you can, people will naturally give back.  But it starts with you.

If your relationship isn’t what you want it to be, simply ask yourself this question: Am I doing 100% of my part of this relationship?  If you still think about it as 50/50, ask yourself am I doing 100% of my 50% of this relationship? 

If you are, then you are doing everything you can. 

You can’t change other people, except by showing them a new and better way.  You can give to them 100% of your effort, love, and compassion, and by doing that you will know that you have done all you can.

Now you have to bear in mind if you’ve only been giving 30% of your part of the relationship, and then you suddenly give 75%, or 100%, it will be met with skepticism.  Your partner will wonder if this is a phase.  If this is something that you read in a book, and are now trying to do.

I know because that happened to me.  I wasn’t giving 100% to my wife, and that was a me issue, not a her issue.  But the secret to success in this is to give the other person time.  There is a natural equilibrium that comes with giving more, and doing more, and what you put out into the universe, or into a relationship, will come back to you.

If they are also only putting in 30%, but now you’re putting in 100%, they will notice.  And maybe, just maybe, if they were also only putting 30% in last week, they will put in 40% next week in response to your 100%.  And maybe they will put in 50% the week after.  It will take time.  Everyone wants a good relationship, and if it’s one worth investing in, you’ll get great returns.

There are some relationships that you’re forced to have.  That you didn’t have any choice in the matter.  The first is your family.  You can’t choose your parents, or your siblings.  They are who they are.  But while you can’t choose, or likely change, anything about them, you can choose what kind of son or daughter you want to be.  You can choose the kind of brother or Uncle you want to be.  You can choose for yourself, and do your part, and let them be them.

The second relationship that is forced on you is who your neighbors are.  They might be close, and all around you in an apartment building.  Or they might be distant, across a field.  But even the richest people in the world have neighbors who are not of their own choosing.  But, like being a good brother or daughter, you can choose to be a good neighbor.  There’s an old saying, ‘we forgive those who trespass against us’.  Being a good neighbor is one of the hardest things to do, but again, you can only do 100% of your 50%.

One important thing I want to bring your attention to is how we treat those closest to us.  For some reason we often treat those who are closest to us, poorly.  For some reason, we treat them worse then we would ever treat a stranger.

We yell, belittle, abuse, or are generally jerks in certain situations.  And yet, we wouldn’t do that to the Starbucks barrista, or the person next to us on the bus.  If we stop for a moment, and thought about someone else yelling at, belittling, or abusing our loved ones they way we have, we’d get angry.  If someone said that terrible thing to my wife, I’d punch them in the head.  So why on earth is it OK for me to say it?  The reality is, it’s just wrong and even more harmful because they actually care what you say and think.

Set yourself a floor.  As a bare minimum we should treat those closest to us better than we would a stranger.  The people closest to us may be in that position by birth, or they may be there by marriage or some other commitment.  Either way, they deserve our love, caring, and respect.  They deserve our best, not our worst.

Yes, they are there to support us in our worst of times, and will do so no matter how poorly we have treated them in the past.  Yes, they are there to lift us up when we are down, as we would lift them up.  But think about it, would you expect a stranger to support you, or lift you up in a time of need?  They might, but the odds are much better it will be someone close to you.  Those close to you will forgive your worst, but that is not something we should ever take for granted.  So treat them right.

One final thought on relationships I’ve learned over time: The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.  If you, or they, don’t give a shit, that’s worse than anger ever could be.