The Biggest Mistake People Make When Dating… [Video]

Transcript provided by YouTube (unedited)

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you could get someone who’s a personal trainer who’s like i’m building my client network right did you have to
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like 500 pictures of women in yoga pants was that was that absolutely necessary for your
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career yeah and by the way for the record dan your career is training people who want to get their bodies in
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shape why are all the photos you’re liking people who clearly already have a trainer
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what we want to talk about in this episode is the phenomenon of men who are in relationships so i
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suppose we can expand that to anyone who’s dating or in a relationship who is still liking photos
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of attractive people who aren’t their partner on social media and we had a question
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steve that came into the inbox this person who will remain anonymous i think
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she requested to be anonymous said i have been in a relationship which
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is relatively new we’re only together four months with a guy and everything is
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going great apart from one thing i keep obsessing over a girl he was
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seeing previous to me he dated this girl for four or five
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months right before we met first he said it was only casual but then at a later date he said it was very
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toxic and he didn’t want to talk about it i didn’t want to know anything about the
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girl because i prefer not to know about exes but then i saw on his instagram he
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had a picture of the two of them with a heart i found that strange because if it wasn’t a relationship why would you post
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that on social media then one night on a night out we met a
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guy he knew and he said oh are you still in love referencing his
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instagram post when i asked him about it he said i’m reading too much into it and deleted the
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picture i said it seems you’re not over this girl and i don’t want to be second best
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he reassured me that i’m not second best and that i make him very happy and that
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all his friends love me and that his friends and family hated the previous girl
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i can’t help obsessing over the girl because it’s like i have these little snippets of information but not enough
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to give me a full picture so i create the story in my head myself
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a few weeks ago i was feeling anxious and he was being off with me and ignoring my texts so i searched her
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instagram and lo and behold he had liked her most recent pick the same day
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this drove me over the edge and i had a massive fight with him over it he claimed he liked it by accident which is
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a complete lie and that it didn’t mean anything we eventually resolved the issue and are
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back on track but i can’t help comparing myself to this girl and i can’t stop
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wondering what went on between them it’s driving me insane i don’t know what
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to do how can i get over this i don’t want my jealousy to ruin the relationship
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because other than that we have a great relationship i want to move on and just forget about
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her but i don’t know how please help
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well thank you for a very honest and vulnerable question stephen what are your thoughts oh man
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that’s that’s a hard situation because it’s like the genie is out of the bottle now
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and she knows about this woman and she knows that obviously
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her boyfriend had some kind of fraught relationship or there was some residual
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feelings so it is one of those things you can’t un you can’t you can’t unsee that well
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before we okay so maybe a nice place to start for this episode
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would be to zoom out a little bit and zoom we’ll let’s zoom back in on
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this woman’s specific situation but just for everyone out there who is
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in this place of is it okay for my partner to like pictures
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of other attractive people on social media while they’re with me
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what do we think about that because that’s just a a very generic widespread issue of our time you
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know your partner that you’re dating now was no doubt following other people
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before you were in a relationship as a single person they would probably be following other attractive people
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liking various posts now you’re in a relationship
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which comes with an assumed degree of loyalty exclusivity
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and respect is it disrespectful is it disloyal
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to like other people’s pictures is this a form of what people call micro
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cheating yeah it’s like as a blanket rule it would obviously everything would be
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easier if you just assumed as a rule i won’t do that like the gain is small from going and
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liking other people’s pictures other attractive people’s pictures and there’s a lot of potential downside so
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just on that basis if you’re being rational you could just say just don’t do that if you’re in a relationship make your life peaceful and
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easier why why create even the possibility of that kind of conflict but
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it becomes like there’s levels aren’t there because it could also you could get into a relationship and
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you already followed some attractive women or men on instagram and then
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you know your partner might be like i don’t like that you follow these sexy people why do you follow them you don’t
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know them it’s some person whose every shot is in a bikini so it’s only you
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know a visual thing and then it’s like you know should you be loyal and
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unfollow them if that makes them uncomfortable it’s like where do you decide
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your boundary is for loyalty right because there are there are a lot of people and we we get the question from
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people i’ve had it on tour before where someone said my partner follows a lot of
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you know bikini models and people instagram influencers who were influencers mostly
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because of their looks right you know my my guy follows a lot of these people am i supposed to be okay with that it makes
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me insecure that my partner follows all of these different people
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yeah so i mean what do you do do you because i can t like
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i can totally see um a couple deciding like we just don’t do that thing we just don’t like other
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people’s instagram photos and someone might equally decide what we for the sake of the relationship we
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don’t have independent uh opposite sex friends that we hang out with one-on-one because we just don’t
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create a situation where someone might feel uncomfortable or jealous
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but i get that but i don’t think everyone has the same rules and that’s kind of
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where the problem is some people are just like that’s not a big deal like i like people’s i like attractive people’s
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pictures what does it matter so what do you do if people if people just don’t see eye to eye at
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all on the same standard for loyalty well that’s that that kind of cuts to the
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crux of the issue doesn’t it we we all have different standards in
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relationships and it’s one of the primary sources of conflict
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it it would be interesting you know you have values
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and then you have standards and they’re not the same thing they intersect
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but they’re not the same thing a value would be loyalty right we both value loyalty
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a standard is what loyalty means to us
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you’re i’ve i’ve had i have a female friend from way back who i remember
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years ago said to me and she’s in a long-term relationship
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she said oh going out and having a kiss with a stranger isn’t cheating
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well like on a night out her version of that was oh that’s not cheating if you go and
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have a snog right with someone on a night out that’s not cheating that doesn’t count it’s
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like there are people who think stuff they do on their bachelor night doesn’t count or on you know now she would never
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i know she would never have said i don’t value loyalty she would have said loyalty is important
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but the point is that she had a different standard for loyalty than i do
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yeah so we’re in a position when we look for
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a relationship or when we assess someone who we’re dating
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we’re in a position of looking not just for synergistic standards sorry we’re
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not just looking for synergistic values but we’re looking to align
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on what the manifestation of that value actually looks like what’s the standard we have
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for that value yeah and that’s where so many people butt heads
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two people value loyalty but they have a completely different idea of what it means
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now that’s why conversations so early in a relationship is important hey guys just wanted to
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10:01
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10:13
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because the first few months of dating is where you talk about those
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things it’s where you know in the case of this person
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he has liked a picture of his ex who she already has an issue with
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and her ignoring that com which she has and obviously she talks about having had a
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big blow up with him over it but ignoring that isn’t the right thing
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yeah also there’s a there’s a way to bring it up that just causes destruction
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but what we want is to be able to bring our partner that and say here’s why
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i struggle with that here’s the problem with that for me
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and here’s how it makes me feel and and it’s not my version of
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of what loyalty is and i do think that
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to get into the weeds a little bit of whether liking somebody else’s
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post is a version of uh
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disloyalty i kind of think okay well there’s you may say
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we have a standard for our relationship where if we were in an airport and we walked past a magazine stand
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and you saw the person on the cover of you know maxim or fhm or whatever and said
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man she’s so hot you might say that’s one degree of disrespect
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yeah is because why would you say that to me yeah but at least in that situation
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you could say you’re interacting with the magazine
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when you like someone’s picture on social media
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you’re you’re not interacting with a magazine you’re interacting with a person yeah and the communication is
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open for it to be two-way someone could see your like and respond to you they
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could dm you there there’s many more open possibilities you have
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whether or not they ever see it is a separate issue but you have put yourself on their radar right when we walk past
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magazines a magazine stand we’re not putting ourselves on someone’s radar but on social media we are
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it’s an it’s maybe a one-way interaction but it’s an interaction and of course in the case of it not being
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a well-known influencer or celebrity in the case of it being an x
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that now becomes something that that can be reciprocated and maybe even
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is even likely to be reciprocated and and at the very least seen and acknowledged yeah it’s a little
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different than liking a billy eilish photo where she might have 30 million
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people right following right and but even that some people may just be like i don’t like you liking sexy billy eilish
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pictures or something you know that everyone might have a level where they’re like i don’t like that either
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she’s not wearing a hoodie in that photo um i but you know that that’s an all
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that’s also an interesting distinction because you could say uh you could say my standard is not that my
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partner never likes a picture of of a someone of my gender
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yeah you could say my problem is if they like something that is quite
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obviously just a post that is about this person’s attractiveness mm-hmm you know if billy
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eilish i love that billy eilish has become [Laughter] if
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billy eilish releases you know a solid new record sure and someone likes it
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or you know billy eilish has just won an award you like it yeah i just love the james bond song it’s come just celebrate it’s
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just cool that she won that award i’m like it also i mean even that you know i mean i i can’t the idea of liking
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something that’s just not even in your world even it just seems like a pointless waste of energy but
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even that it’s about the work sure but if billy just puts up a photo
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of billy in a bikini on the beach that says you know hashtag
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hot girl summer she wouldn’t put that she wouldn’t that billy would never do that
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but if she did and you like that one then that’s a different you could argue
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well now you’re just liking something that’s in that context what are you liking
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except this person’s looks at this point that you know there’s a context to that
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so i think that it even within liking pictures you can argue us about context there are
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some people who are in a a world where i’m sure they argue professionally it’s
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important for them to be able to like other people’s photos you could get someone who’s a personal trainer who’s like i’m building my client network
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right and the more people i engage with the more people follow me
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and see me as a trainer and want my services but that can be hard for the person who’s dating that person who says
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okay you can always claim that this woman in a bikini could be a client one
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day or that she could give you a repost or whatever but it still makes me uncomfortable and then further nuance
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may be required where you go well look i understand that you want to make connections
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on social media but can you maybe be a bit nuanced about what you choose to like
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did you have to like 500 pictures of women in yoga pants was that
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was that absolutely necessary for your career yeah and by the way for the record dan
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your career is training people who want to get their bodies in shape why are all the photos you’re liking people who
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clearly already have a trainer these people clearly are not trying to
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get in shape they’re they are already there so yeah i think that it’s and that’s but
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that’s where intention matters and over time
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we if we truly get to know someone beneath the surface we talk to them
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we get to know their behavior we start to understand more and more about their
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intentionality is this just some way of
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you know justifying constantly liking attractive people’s photos so that i can
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continue to sort of flirt from a distance and have this cheap thrill
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whilst justifying it through my work or connections or whatever else we can
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try to justify it through these days or is it genuinely no this is you know me
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and you know that this is just you know i i’m trying to build something and there are certain things that help me
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build that but you can see the context and and when someone is very open in general
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and when someone you you get the impression that someone’s not hiding things from you that starts to become
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you you you can grow more comfortable over time i think one of the hard things
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about the beginning of a relationship is that we don’t know someone’s intent
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so trust is something that’s built slowly it’s not built quickly you don’t just go into a relationship trusting everything
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you trust is built and accumulated slowly now
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later on there may actually be things we’d be less cool with in the first three months
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then we’re cool within year three right because we in year three we’re like no i know i know this person right
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i know who they are i know where this comes from so now they go to dinner with that friend that in month one i would
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have been like you can’t go to dinner with that person now in year one or year two you’re like this doesn’t feel like
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such a big deal but that’s because i know you yeah you know so i think that our boundaries
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actually what’s what we class as a trespassing
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on our on our boundaries or over our boundaries is
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relative it changes over time as our trust for someone changes what you have
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in this question is a woman who’s saying i was already inflamed
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what i had was a guy who already i felt a little bit insecure about this person he dated
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why well because he said it meant nothing but then he also described it as really toxic so now i’m worried that it
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did mean something because maybe you still have some emotion around this yeah and especially if it
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sounds like it was a dramatic end it feels like oh well he must have felt strongly about her because he’s you know
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saying how toxic and difficult it was exactly so now you have a situation where you go
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oh all the emotion from this hasn’t been released now some people won’t agree with me on this
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but my personal view on this is this idea that you have to be over the last person in order to be with someone else
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i think is kind of um we’re way way way too black and white
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about that well the problem is like you said with this guy she doesn’t know yet if
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this is just the very tail end last burning out of that relationship you
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know yeah what what happened or is it to her she’s like is this a pattern is he the kind of guy who clings on to x’s and
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is gonna always be one foot you know potentially liking an
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old flames pictures it’s hard for her to tell at this stage and she doesn’t know if this is coming from a place of
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desire to be with this person or just residual
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anger over having been mistreated or you know someone we can carry feelings with
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us you know we can we can become parents in life whilst still being angry
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at our own parents we can get into a relationship while still having some residual resentment or
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anger about how someone treated us in a previous relationship just because
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we haven’t worked through everything about our past relationship it doesn’t mean we can’t have another one if that
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were true my god the amount of new relationships that would happen would diminish very very quickly right but
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intention is a different thing if my intention is deep down
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i would love to be back with this person now now you have a bigger problem because
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now it can become a real insecurity for the person that you’re with well what if this what if this ex of
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yours turn around and said that they wanted you again where would that leave me
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now i don’t feel safe so i think that we have to be careful about
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making these blanket statements about well you’re not over your ex
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it’s it’s okay for there to be residual emotion i do think good advice for
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someone who has residual emotion within a new relationship a good advice
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is not to spot like that not to focus on that because what can it do for your current relationship really yeah it’s
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okay to have a conversation about it and to be like yeah you know it hurt me
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then or i struggle with that then or you know yeah you know for a long time maybe even still it makes me a little angry
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from time to time but it has nothing to do with wanting to be with that person i just feel something
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you know it’s okay to be honest about that but my advice for anyone in this that situation is don’t go and live in
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don’t like go live into that emotion don’t go
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adopt it and now get frustrated and get angry and because now it’s like well now you’re just living there
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it’s not that it’s there and it’s just something that you’re processing you’re you’re living there and that’s not
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productive to your new relationship it takes the focus away from your new relationship
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but there is a difference between feelings and intentions
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now the problem is that this guy that she’s dating
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if she said well he said it was casual but then he said it was toxic
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so i’m sensing feelings around this that’s one thing that’s kind of like a moment where she goes okay that’s a
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marker that’s made me a bit feel a bit funny and of course that it seems like
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it wasn’t far behind them meeting and she’s still early on with him so she’s
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understandably not feeling particularly secure right now
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so because the roots of the relationship aren’t deep yeah and that’s something we all we have to be kind to ourselves
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sometimes when we see something early on and it inflames us part of it is that the the roots of this
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relationship we’re in now aren’t deep so this isn’t a tree that’s been growing
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for a while and is really you know plugged into the soil and whatever storm
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comes along this tree is sturdy it’s got a thick trunk no i i am inherently trying to
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nurse and water and grow this very young plant
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so to see what it can become i guess then she the question she would probably want to say to you is
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like well she said he’s a great guy in other respects right they she said they they seem to have something
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you know special but it’s that for her it’s like do i take the risk though on this patch of soil is
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this patch of soil gonna turn out to be poisoned and i shouldn’t risk everything
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on this like how much risk should i take at this stage that’s exactly right
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and what’s now made it worse is that it’s not just
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him saying well it was toxic and maybe i hadn’t been
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fully transparent about how much that affected me at the time
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but she now goes out and she they spump into his friend and his friend says i mean what kind of
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idiot friend says this but his friend says in front of her oh are you still in love
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which is a weird thing for a friend to say in the context of you being out with a new person
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yeah but let’s say the friend has made a clumsy comment but that clumsy comment has further inflamed what she’s already
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worried about now in a sense that’s not his fault
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right not in a sense i mean it kind of it really isn’t his fault his friend has said something
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we’ve all been in a situation where we we’re with someone we really like and we’re around
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their friends and their friend says something clumsy that hurts our feelings yep maybe it
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alludes to an ex of our boyfriend or girlfriend
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it alludes to who they were before it alludes you know there’s some detail
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that you’re like oh that’s stung yeah we’ve all been in that situation it’s not our current
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partner’s fault that someone said a clumsy thing that was about a time before you
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but where it becomes problematic is when she realizes
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oh he’s liked her picture so now
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it wasn’t just something his friend said that stung is something he actually did
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not the hugest deal in the world not he didn’t go and sleep with anyone
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but he did like a picture of someone that he said
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he’s completely done with and what makes it worse is it’s during a
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time where she wasn’t feeling good communication from him so of course that’s salt to the wound
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not only were you not texting me back but you somehow found the energy and the space
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in your mind to like a picture of someone you said means nothing to you at this stage
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then she confronts him about it and he lies he says i hit it by mistake we don’t
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know that’s a lie but it seems pretty close to a lie
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it would be quite the coincidence yeah now now in a sense this is what i think is
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very important are either of those things
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a complete dead end for a future relationship i would argue no
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he lied saying something that we say because it’s kind of
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convenient to say it especially in the first few months isn’t uncommon amongst people
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if they’re in the first couple of months and they’re thinking i just don’t the aggravation of
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being completely honest about this at this stage i’m gonna say something that’s easier
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or we say something as a reflex defensive response and later on we kind of have that pang
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of oh that was a lie and i kind of don’t like lying but i did lie and you know
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many people if they’re honest have been in a situation where they they didn’t tell the truth yeah and they or they
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they obscure the tree if they’re like oh that was ages ago or that oh you know that was correct you know and so
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you know can he be better um likely well not likely he it’s possible
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there is the robert green thing i heard robert greene say no one does something once
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so if anyone if if you ever see someone do something never assume that’s the only time they’ve done it
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right this is something they do this is not a one-off this is a pattern for them if you’re seeing it it’s a pattern
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and um i think that there’s that’s an incredibly profound and useful bit of
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life advice and you could easily say you could be
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you’re within your rights to say if he’s lying now then
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he’s likely a liar he’s someone that will lie to make things easier for him
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and that doesn’t bode well for you later on but
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it’s what’s tough and we’re a little philosophical here but what’s tough to me is that
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just because you lied once it doesn’t mean you’ll always lie
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if that’s true then none of us will ever be better people because we’ve all lied right
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so i i think in a way that both are true much like
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you know my one of my favorite phrases is why can’t both be true anne lamott says all truth is paradox
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you know it’s both true that if someone does something probably that’s not the only time they’ve done it it’s a pattern
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it’s also true that people grow now
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is it a big enough liar to completely end everything on maybe not
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is liking a picture of his ex in month four of seeing you
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a relationship ending situation maybe not
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maybe if you want to just cut and run maybe but the problem is in general that
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and i by the way i want to make something very clear if she decided based on all the things she’s
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intuitively feeling i’m gonna really back away
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i would understand yeah and that’s the thing sometimes it’s it’s like the evidence stacks exactly and
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sometimes you’re like well this is one thing but everything else has been great and trustworthy and so i kind of want to
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separate this into two into two categories of advice
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for her i would completely understand if she said i’m gonna i’m gonna cut and run yeah
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the evidence of what i’m seeing doesn’t look pretty and i feel like there’s pain on the horizon because this person is
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not over this person i’d understand
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the more generic advice i’d give for people in situations where they see something
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that they don’t like is
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you know human beings that idea that we were programmed to
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we we associate right so and we associate for survival if i hear a rustling in the bush
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my brain says get away because it might be a lion and it might just be the wind
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but i still run because i’m like it means lion now i haven’t seen a lion
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i just hear a rustling in the bush but it’s enough to create that association it’s enough to trigger
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danger warning the downside is big if it is a lion the downside is big in in that case yes
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now in a relationship where we’ve experienced something before
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maybe you know if she’s experienced in if in her previous relationship she
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was with someone who kept saying about somebody else oh
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they’re a friend don’t worry about them they’re a friend they’re a friend they’re a friend and then all of a sudden
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he left her for that friend the next time she’s in a relationship
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and she has a little bit of a funny feeling it’s that rustling in the bush
33:13
oh that means lion so now before she even knows she cuts some runs
33:19
and and we’ve all had that or most people have had that experience of
33:24
i should just cut and run because i heard of russell in the bush the problem is the spidey sense goes off
33:31
right but the the tough part is you can you can hear so many rustling bushes at
33:37
any time in any early relationship that you’re always running
33:42
and now it turns into avoidant behavior on our part
33:47
so we sometimes have a tough time figuring out what the midpoint is
33:53
between true intuition and
33:59
this [Music] this false danger
34:05
that is triggered by our trauma the rustling in the bush where there was no lion
34:11
but we ran anyway because now even rustling bush is terrifying
34:16
that’s the interesting part of this to me now someone might say well what’s the answer
34:21
to that whilst i say she would be well within
34:26
her rights to say on the basis of everything i’ve seen i don’t want to take this
34:32
risk she might also take a different approach and say
34:39
i am going to use this as a queue to recalibrate
34:48
how i feel about this situation and what i believe to be the trajectory
34:56
of this situation so i’m now not going to see my
35:02
goal here my intention here is no longer to fall in love as quickly as possible
35:08
because this feels so awesome and this person is awesome and i could feel it all going in the right direction
35:14
no she’s now been presented with something that requires either
35:20
that you run away or that you stay and ignore
35:26
or the third option that you recalibrate because what you can’t do if you stay
35:32
there i think there’s an interesting conundrum we she needs we could argue more data
35:39
right he said no it wasn’t intentional and it doesn’t mean anything and i’m really happy with you
35:47
she now needs more data to see whether his future actions align with that truth
35:56
or whether they show him to be exactly what she was worried about the question is though even if she does
36:03
that that’s a very logical answer we’re emotional people so she’s now going to be in this
36:09
situation saying i need more data but in the meantime her anxiety is going to be flaring up like crazy and
36:16
that’s going to be in have an impact on the relationship itself
36:21
because her anxiety now is going to be a presence in the room yep so how do you manage your anxiety while
36:27
you’re waiting for more information you won’t have such anxiety if you lower
36:35
the stakes of the quote relationship in the first place
36:40
if you make a switch for example from saying you know what if this person i want to
36:48
be with turns out to be someone who’s still in
36:54
love with their ex and hurts me if you make a switch from that to
37:01
i’m assessing whether i want to be with this person i’m information gathering right now
37:08
and watching and seeing if i want to be with this person that takes a lot of the anxiety out of it
37:15
because i’m not making a decision that i want this person and now i’m terrified i’m gonna get hurt and lose them i’m
37:22
deciding whether i want the person in the first place yeah and that means you can still bring your
37:29
charismatic fun self to the situation
37:34
but you are creating a little emotional space a little distance
37:39
and if that person says i’m having a great time with you but i feel like you’re not as into me
37:46
you can say no i’m perfectly into you but i’m just taking things
37:51
slow because you know to be perfectly honest with you that
37:56
concerned me a little bit when you did that i understand that you said it was a mistake but it concerned me a little bit
38:02
and i’m just i’m just protecting myself in this situation and and letting it
38:08
unfold at an organic pace that feels good to me yeah
38:14
that’s what recalibrating is and for anyone out there who’s like should i cut and run or should i stay
38:22
you can always make the decision to gather more information but in the meantime
38:27
recalibrate your expectations of this relationship because if you go forward
38:35
wanting to have the same view of it you did last week but you’ve been given new information
38:41
that concerns you then
38:47
what you’ll have is anxiety that’s produced by the
38:52
the the chasm yeah the conflict between what you’re seeing it as and what you’re
39:00
seeing in the real world what you’re seeing in their behavior that’s what’s going to
39:07
create the anxiety if you remove the image you have of what this could or
39:13
should be and you just say i’m going to assess it for what it is right now
39:21
that gives you freedom do you want to change your life go to this video now immediately right
39:28
now be wildly attracted to someone think someone is incredibly sexy you
39:34
know what’s powerful someone knowing that you think they’re incredibly sexy and attractive and also
39:39
knowing that that has no effect on your behavior

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This post was previously published on YouTube.

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