388 - How to Gain Self-Worth and Stop Comparing Part 2
How to stop comparing
This part of our series focuses on the comparison aspect. We’re discussing a bunch of research on comparison, how it can come up in non-monogamy, and both how to stop comparing yourself to others and how to stop comparing your relationship to others’.
If you’re comparing your relationship to other people’s relationships, start enriching your own instead:
Remember that no one really knows what goes on between two people except them.
Recognize that people’s idea of the perfect relationship may be very different from your own.
Quit comparing your present significant other to past partners, your best friend’s relationship or the prince (or princess) charming you dream of.
Instead:
Remind yourself of the things you love about your partner.
Take responsibility for your own role when things aren’t as sweet as you’d like. You can’t make your partner be different, but changes in your own behavior can and do set something different in motion.
Reach out and touch your partner, regularly and often. Touch says as much, sometimes more, than words.
If you’re having trouble comparing yourself to others, remember:
Be aware of your triggers and avoid them.
Limit your time on social media.
Stop comparing other people’s “outsides” to your own “insides.”
Money doesn’t buy happiness.
Practice gratitude.
Comparison can be used as motivation.
Focus on your strengths.
Celebrate other people.
Remember that insecurities are universal.
Use your past self as a benchmark for comparison.
Try this exercise on exploring your strengths if you’re having trouble focusing on your strengths!
Transcript
This document may contain small transcription errors. If you find one please let us know at info@multiamory.com and we will fix it ASAP.
Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory Podcast, we're continuing our discussion on self-worth and comparison in relationships. This week, we're going to be focusing more on the comparison part. How can it affect our relationships? Not just with romantic relationships, but also with your peers and even with yourself. How does comparing yourself and your relationships to others affect you? Then what can we do about that? What can we do to improve that?
Emily: Oh, again, here I am providing my own personal anecdote of-- This is a tough one for me, comparison for sure. I think I compare myself to not only my friends, my business partners, you too, but also I do find myself comparing to people that are my colleagues and peers in ways that make me feel a little bit better about myself at times. It's like, I'm in a job where it's-- I work at a restaurant. I work at SunCafe and I've been there for years and years and years, but I'm their number one employee, essentially. I can say that pretty confidently. I've been there for 10 years and I know the ropes. I'm always the person that gets to help everyone out when they come and I'm helping training them and stuff like that. I feel confident about that job.
When I see people who are younger than I am coming in, I feel like I'm in more of a leadership position there. I compare myself to where they are and I feel good about myself because I'm like, "No, I know what I'm doing here. I don't have to worry about this job or this thing." That's really interesting though because it's almost as though I'm comparing myself, maybe not negatively, but seeing them in a lesser than situation, perhaps. Whereas in other ways, I see myself as the one who is less than to other people in my life, like my peers.
Dedeker: I'm just amazed to hear that you have any experience of comparing yourself to someone and you compare yourself more favorably than them. I'm like, that's a win. Keep on, keep it on, keep doing it.
Emily: Oh gosh. I feel bad for even saying that. I definitely do at times, and it's not in a mean way, but rather just that, "Oh, I see myself that I am more able, I guess, to understand how this job works or what it's like to take 100 covers in a day and not feel like I'm going to die." Those kinds of things. I guess from that standpoint, I feel good about that type of comparison, but we are going to talk about that upward and downward social comparison, a lot on the show today. I guess I'm curious, does that happen to the two of you because again, it seems like you're just these pillars of strength and never compare yourself or never do anything.
Jase: Gosh.
Emily: Oh my goodness.
Jase: Along those lines.
Jase: Gosh, Emily. Gosh. You've really bought into the lies I guess.
Emily: Yes I have. Maybe it's y'all's fault for feeding me these lies for years.
Dedeker: Most likely.
Jase: Oh gosh.
Dedeker: It's funny to notice the areas where I do compare myself. I think that actively the past few years, I've been really trying to not or at least trying to catch myself, notice when I do and then just divert and just literally do anything else other than keep up with the comparison. I totally tend to, I don't know. I love being better at things than other people.
Jase: Sure.
Dedeker: I'm trying to rein that in and be aware of that, but I don't know. It's just so funny how you notice. I don't know, my brain, I think just goes there by default all the time. It's so fast how quickly it happens, how you can step into a room and just so quickly size up where you think you are in the hierarchy, whether it's the hierarchy of who has the most experience here, who's the most knowledgeable here, who's going to be the best or worse at this skill? Who's the most attractive or least attractive? Our brains can work so quickly to just figure out, "Okay, where do I fit?"
Jase: Comparison's such an interesting thing because I don't think that-- We'll probably get into this a little more through the episode, but that it's not inherently a bad thing. I remember a while back reading about some studies talking about the importance of comparison for development when you're young because it helps you understand where you fit in, in terms of your skill level in different areas.
An example of that in adult life would be, if I'm running some comparisons in my head about, I don't know, maybe writing ability or artistic ability of myself versus peers or other people that I see online or whatever, there's value to that if it's like, "Okay, I have a sense of these people are better than me at this." That might be the person I'd want to hire to do something like that or that I would recommend to a friend who's looking for an artist over me trying to do it and really struggling and having to work really hard to get something good when it's like, I know someone's better than me.
Also, I guess on the other hand, I know this person's not good at this thing compared to me, so I can more confidently say, "Actually I should be the one to do this thing." That's not inherently bad, but when we so easily slip into that idea of then associating that with our worth, that's where we can get ourselves into trouble. I feel like comparison's a really interesting one because it's not inherently bad and actually is a really useful skill, but we have to be careful of how we're doing it and how we're approaching it to not fall into that. I would say that in that exact situation I just described, I can also in the wrong mental state, turn that into something where I'm feeling bad about myself and my lack of artistic ability compared to someone else or something like that.
I think part of it depends on the thing you're comparing about, how much do you associate that with worse? How much is that skill of yours or that ability of yours or that trait of yours tied to what you think makes you good. If it's like, "I'm great because I'm good at sex." Then I compare myself to someone who I think is better at sex than me. It's like, "Now I'm not as desirable. I'm bad." Even if it's this perceived other person, my partner's dating that I don't really know anything about, but I imagine they're better than me. I'm doing this mental comparison based on not a lot of good evidence, then that can lead me down a spiral of feeling depressed and envious and jealous and all that versus another situation where either I have more accurate data or it's less tied with self-worth.
Emily: I think I just-
Dedeker: That's very insightful.
Emily: That is.
Jase: Oh, wow. Thank you.
Emily: I love that.
Jase: I'm really insightful compared to my peers.
Emily: Geez. Yes, you're on that upward social comparison right there already. I think I just am like, I hope that the listeners of this show-- I'm always worried that the listeners of the show aren't like, "Oh, Emily is definitely the weak link here. If she was-
Dedeker: Oh my goodness.
Emily: cast off, it wouldn't really matter. It would be like, just fine." That's the main comparison that I struggle with, I think on being on this podcast that I'm not as accomplished as the two of you in various ways. Therefore I have to pep myself up, give myself a pep talk, and bring myself up in various ways whenever I can.
Dedeker: Em, a few years ago, Jase already came to the conclusion that he's actually the dead weight of Multiamory.
Jase: That was officially stated on the episode. Yes, you're right.
Emily: Well, I think that's just inherently incorrect considering all of the stuff that you do.
Jase: I also feel like I'm constantly telling people about how important your contributions are to this show, Emily. You're wrong.
Emily: I didn't know that.
Jase: Compared to your co-hosts, you're bad at comparing yourself to others.
Emily: Definitely. 100%. I'm very bad at it. For better or for worse, I'm bad at it.
Dedeker: I feel like what happens with comparison, at least I know in my personal experience is often it's just instant shame, really, especially when I'm comparing myself and I find myself lacking in some particular way. We have done a number of episodes on shame and on the shame response. Basically, once that seed gets in there, and then that's a whole host of all kinds of different emotions and maladaptive responses. Everything from withdrawing, freezing or getting angry or lashing out, or just completely losing perspective on who it is that we are, or completely trying to avoid it, or trying to deny it, or whatever. I do think that's often the thing that happens with those negative comparisons.
Emily: I just wanted to point out a shame thing that happened recently with the three of us. It was actually, during the episode on all of the different studies that we did, where I, in the middle of recording, couldn't really understand what I was reading or it was just not coming out the way that I wanted to. I had an extreme shame, triggered reaction during that, that the two of you were witness to where I was frozen. My brain was not really processing it well or something or I was completely unable to continue my thought process or ideas about what I was seeing in front of me. I was really upset with myself. Also, it made me feel I was lashing out at the two of you or especially at Jase at that moment. Then also, I felt like I was going to cry at the same time. It was all of that together, which really sucked.
Dedeker: That can be really intense for sure.
Emily: For sure. I think, that self-esteem/comparing/shame, response can be really, really intense within us if we have moments like this where we're triggered by something, and we can't really move past it very easily.
Dedeker: Then on the flip side of that, you can make a comparison to another person and come to the conclusion that, "Oh, they're beneath me, and I am superior." While that can feel good, that can also lead to feeling contempt. We talked about that fairly recently, in an episode, that if you want a particular issue with your partner, for instance, feel like, "I'm morally superior or ethically superior to them, or I don't know, financially superior, mentally superior," whatever it is that that can really encourage those contempt behaviors where I talk down to you, or I'm really dismissive of you, or I really belittle your viewpoint in your experience in things.
Jase: Also, if we're boosting our own self-esteem or self-worth by comparing ourselves to others that we think are less than us in some area, if something happens in our life, where suddenly we become less than that, we've internalized all of this negativity toward people not doing as well. Such as, I'm going to make myself feel better by looking at other people who are breaking up and being like, "I'm great, because my relationships still going."
When you have a breakup, and I'm speaking from experience, then when you do end up having that breakup, it's much more devastating because you built much of your self-worth, on the fact that you had a relationship that wasn't breaking up. Now that thing which is a totally natural thing and happens to people, you've now associated with people who are worse than you. All of this comes up in all sorts of areas and also ties in with a lot of other stuff like internalized ableism. There's so many pieces that go into that but it is that thing of like, maybe it'll make you feel good right now but it can also really backfire, and potentially damage your relationships like Dedeker was talking about.
Emily: We're going to talk quickly about something called social comparison theory and psychology because I know it's very easy to compare ourselves to others. Even though maybe it's something that we're taught not to do, it happens. Especially in our society, we just tend to compare. I think often our parents teach us to compare to our friends maybe or to other people who are academically doing better than us, they teaching us to be competitive, I think from a young age in a lot of those different ways. Competition can be good, like Jase said.
Jase: All comparison is not bad necessarily.
Emily: No, definitely. I think that can be good. When it gets to a point where we feel shame or that really intrinsic guilt or upset about something, I think that's when it can be a bigger issue. Social comparison theory in psychology, this is from Verywell Mind, an article in Verywell Mind. Social comparison theory was first talked about and proposed in 1954 by this psychologist, named Leon Festinger. I'm assuming he was perhaps--
Jase: Festinger, I think.
Emily: Festinger. I don't know, yes. It's exciting. It's a fun name. It essentially suggests that people have an innate drive to evaluate themselves, often in comparison to others. The social comparison process involves people coming to know themselves by evaluating their own attitudes, abilities, and traits in comparison with others.
Jase: That's what I was talking about, as you're developing your sense of self, part of that is, how am I similar and different to other people? That is this essential, intrinsic thing? That is worth acknowledging that it's right there.
Emily: Sure. Absolutely. Probably something that we do just as kids regardless. We're trying to sort of-
Jase: That you want to understand how you fit in the world.
Emily: -really understand in the world. Exactly. We may have butchered this a bit before, but now we're going to talk about upward and downward social comparison. Upward social comparison takes place when we compare ourselves to those who we believe are better than us. That makes sense. I see--
Jase: You're looking upward.
Emily: Yes, exactly. I see someone who I want to be like or who I wish that I were more like them in a certain way. That is that upward social comparison. We focus on the desire to improve our current status or level of ability. Now downward social comparison takes place when we compare ourself to others who are worse off in some way than us. That may be a perception, that may be reality. We're looking at social downward comparisons are centred on making ourselves feel better about our abilities or traits. We see someone like, "Oh, well, I've done more national commercials than this person," or, "I got an A in psychology," and they got to be-- something like that.
Jase: A lot of our institutions in education are built around this. It's like, "Oh, well, I'm on the Dean's list, because I'm in the 85th percentile," or whatever it is. It's based on this, My value comes specifically, from my comparison to other people, rather than some objective measure or something like that, or grading on a curve as an example of that.
Emily: We do have a couple of studies discussing social comparison. The first is called Social Comparison as a Predictor of Body Dissatisfaction, a Meta-Analytic Review. This included data from 156 studies.
Jase: Wow, that's a lot.
Emily: It showed that social comparison was related to higher levels of body dissatisfaction. The effect for social comparison and body dissatisfaction was stronger for women than men and inversely related to age.
Jase: The younger you are, the more likely you were to do comparison and feel dissatisfied with your body.
Emily: I guess that makes sense.
Jase: It doesn't surprise me I guess.
Emily: Perhaps it's your age, you're like, "Yes, whatever."
Dedeker: Some people, not all people. The anecdotal evidence reached some kind of breaking point of finally not giving any fucks.
Emily: Results confirm theory and research suggesting that comparing oneself unfavorably to another on the basis of appearance may lead to dissatisfaction with one's own appearance. I guess that makes sense as well. That's something that we're often kind of taught to do. That happens so much in social media these days because we see all of these stunningly perfect people or more desirably superior people perhaps, or people that we deem to be socially desirable.
It's hard because we're bombarded with that in our media and especially in social media these days. It makes sense that if we're looking at a bunch of people online or in other ways, then yes, we may compare ourselves disfavorably.
Dedeker: Think about over the years, just the explosion, this exponential increase in how many examples you have to compare yourself to.
Emily: 100%.
Dedeker: Think about going back to ancient history where I'm surrounded by a group of anywhere from 10 to 200 people. Tat's who I'm comparing myself to. Up until we have mass media where, again, more opportunities and more examples to compare myself to, and now with social media where It's an endless scroll.
Jase: It's an infinite scroll.
Dedeker: Infinite scroll. It never stops, which is tough. I think it's tough and it's really overwhelming. Now, here's the tough part. There's evidence to suggest that our brains like this shit. This is just a little factoid pulled from this article, this study titled Brain Mechanisms of Social Comparison and Their Influence on the Reward System. There's this part of your brain called the ventral striatum, is what I'm going to call it or how I'm going to pronounce it.
Emily: All you brainy people out there, sorry.
Dedeker: Sorry to the brain doctors and brain scientists and brain professionals.
Emily: Neuroscientists.
Dedeker: We are not those people. Oh, we should text your dad real quick, Jase.
Emily: I know.
Dedeker: He would probably know. He knows about science stuff.
Jase: I'll call him. "Hey, dad. How do you pronounce the ventral striatum? Striatum?
Dedeker: The ventral striatum. Anyway, it's a part of your brain that reacts to, what are known as both primary rewards and secondary rewards. The example they give for a primary reward is like something that tastes good. I guess the direct sense experience of, "This feels good. I like this." Then secondary rewards, the example they give is like a monetary incentive. It's like the experience of maybe someone putting money in my hand. Maybe it's not inherently pleasant, but I know that that's going to lead to, "Cool. I got $100," or, "I'm going to go spend it on this cool thing," or whatever and that activates the reward center of the brain.
This portion of the brain does seem to play a role in forming the associations between stimulus and reward. Some recent research indicates that social comparison in particular exerts a strong and reliable effect on the ventral striatum. There is almost a little bit of there's something in our nervous system that's like, "No, no, no. This is good. You should do that. It's good to compare."
Emily: Compare yourself. Fascinating.
Jase: I wonder if part of it is that whole thing of intermittent rewards are more addictive than consistent rewards.
Dedeker: Oh yes.
Jase: When you're comparing yourself to others, it's like, "Well, sometimes I'm going to come out good, and sometimes I'm not." Maybe there's an addictive quality to that. "I'm looking for that one where I feel good about myself."
Dedeker: I didn't think about that. I've thought about that a lot with the years past when I used to be much more obsessive with checking an ex's social media. Is that intermittent reward thing of, maybe once out of every 20 times I'll feel better about myself based on what I see going on in their life. The rest of the time I'm not, but your brain is still like, "Any reward is better than no reward, so let's keep checking." I guess that would make sense with the comparison thing.
Emily: That makes a lot of sense. Yikes.
Jase: Yikes indeed.
Dedeker: Yikes, brain. Geez.
Emily: Yikes, brain. Get over yourself.
Jase: It's almost like you didn't really evolve with social media in mind.
Dedeker: It's almost like you didn't think of this through, brain, or evolution. I don't know who I'm mad at even.
Jase:
Emily: I don't think evolution could have predicted what we are going through currently or the capabilities of the internet and social media.
Dedeker: I guess evolution is pretty reactive, huh?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes. That's true. Maybe we'll eventually evolve the ventral striatum that is the part that makes us feel terrible when we do social media and we all just stop.
Emily: There we go.
Dedeker: Well, we're working on that based on the way I feel whenever I go on social media.
Jase: Okay, good.
Dedeker: On the forefront of evolution.
Jase: Love that. Love that. We're really pushing evolution forward. That's great. All right. We're going to take a quick break to talk about some ways that you can support this show if you're enjoying getting this information. We love putting this out there for all of you for free and one of the ways that we do that is through our Patreon and also through our advertisers. If you can take a moment to check out our advertisers and if any seem cool to you, go check them out. Try out our promo codes. It does directly help us and we really appreciate that.
Now we're going to talk about interpersonal comparisons about relationships. Not just comparing yourself to others, but comparing your relationship or how you feel about your partner to other people's relationships or how you perceive other people feel about their partners. To start this off, there's a study called Relationship Social Comparison Interpretations and Dating Relationship Quality Behaviors and Mood.
Emily: That's a bit mouthful. My goodness.
Jase: Just threw a bunch of slightly related words together for that title there. This particular study wanted to look at how people compare themselves, specifically compare their relationships to other people's, and looking at both these, upward comparisons and downward comparisons. They looked at how we can look at these upward comparisons which sometimes can make us feel better, maybe inspired, but most of the time make us feel worse about ourselves.
Then that we use downward comparisons to minimize our negative self-images or reduce some threat to our well-being. That might be an example of "I'm not feeling good in my relationship or I'm worried that it's going to end" or something like that and so I'll look at other people who are worse off and go, "Okay. Maybe I'm all right." Using it as a way to minimize that. I guess according to this study, those downward comparisons aren't always bad. It's not always putting someone down. Maybe it's just trying to calibrate where we are compared to them, but generally, we do that in order to make ourselves feel better.
Both the upward and the downward can have either positive or negative effects for the individual who's doing it. They were looking at how one of the reasons that you can have those opposite outcomes for either one has to do with how we interpret that social comparison. It's not just who we're comparing ourselves to, but then what's the value that we're putting on it. Are we looking at this in terms of hope for the future if we're doing an upward comparison? Or are we looking at that upward comparison and saying, "Oh, well, my relationship is not doing well because I'm not as good as that"?
They also gave the example of, "Hey, I'm struggling with this thing and I'm feeling bad." I do an upward comparison to someone who I think has a good relationship. If I see, "Oh, they also struggle with this sometimes," that can help. That can make me feel better even if I'm like, "They're the goal and I'm not as good as they are." It's like, "Oh, but I have something in common, so there's hope," versus looking at them and going, "Oh, I'll never have that. My relationship must be bad."
Emily: That makes sense.
Jase: Basically, just to summarize some of their findings from this particular study, and I guess it's worth keeping in mind that this is all undergrads. Everyone in this study was undergrads and almost all white. I think 85% white. As always, there's those caveats. Basically, what they found is that overall, as expected, more often when doing a downward comparison, people felt better about themselves than when they did upward comparisons. They also found that in their study, people tended to have more positive than negative interpretations of the comparisons they made. Maybe people seemed to gravitate toward the ones that make them feel better more often than the ones that make them feel bad.
Again, at least amongst their participants.
That negative interpretations, so whichever direction you were looking, if you interpreted it in a more negative way for yourself, were associated with not only lower rates of satisfaction but also less commitment to their partner, less positive affect to their partner. Also more, what they called, exit behavior of that kind of "I'm distancing myself. I may be looking for other options. I'm less," Which is also tied to commitments. Those negative interpretations over time would tend to lead toward the relationship ending as well.
Dedeker: Gosh.
Emily: That's something we've talked about a little bit on this show. Just the idea that I think because we have such a huge array of different dating apps and stuff like that out there, that we are bombarded with all of this choice and the potential for new people to be with or something along those lines. I do wonder how that correlates to this study, just in terms of how often are you looking at a different person and comparing who you're with to maybe somebody on a dating app or somebody else that you see out there that might be single, or something along those lines, and what does that do for you? Is that something that we should be doing? Is all of this choice a good thing or not?
Jase: There is something that I came across before. Dr. Heidi Reeder is the one who I think created this first, but basically a formula for commitment, for a level of commitment. She puts it as, your treasures minus your troubles. That's basically good stuff is positive. These are all the things that are good about my relationship or my job or whatever. This is commitment to anything, minus your troubles. Your troubles are all the complaints you have, all the bad stuff.
Then you add that to your contributions, which is the whole sunk cost thing. It's how much have I already invested in this particular job or relationship or whatever, minus my perception of what other options I have, which she calls your choices.
Dedeker: That's one that's come up in a lot of studies is that, especially if there's a tendency to negatively compare your partner to the other options. It's a death for relationship.
Emily: Totally.
Jase: In the research, they found things like people who spent more time looking at job posting sites were more likely to quit their job because they have more of a perception of there being other options out there. Same with people who look on dating apps while they're in a monogamous relationship are more likely to leave that relationship because it's adding to that perception of having more choices. That alone doesn't do it, but that's part of this equation. It's your treasures minus your troubles added to your contributions minus your choices or your perceived choices. It was pretty interesting stuff, but it definitely seems to track with a lot of these other things that we look at like this.
Emily: Totally.
Dedeker: How does this all play out with non-monogamy? I don't think any no monogamous person has ever compared themselves-
Emily: Oh, never.
Dedeker: -to anyone else. We're all well-adjusted people.
Emily: 100%.
Dedeker: We don't have any research studies to pull from. Do they exist yet? I'm sure some of the existing research on non-monogamy is probably touched on. These things like self worth, and comparison and things like that.
Jase: In the context of jealousy and metamours and stuff.
Dedeker: I don't think we're aware of any study that's just about comparison behaviors or mindsets with non-monogamous folks. We can't speak from that particular standpoint. This is something that a lot of people have talked about. We've talked about it on this show before, a lot of other creators in this space do talk about this.
In particular, we're looking at a blog post from Polyammering by our good friend, a friend of the show, Phi, who wrote this post called Sabotage by Comparison. Phi talks about the fact that, as we said early in the episode, we're conditioned from very early on to compare and also to compete in a lot of different aspects of our existence. Of course, it makes sense that we would measure our own value in the same way in our relationships as well.
In this article, Phi talks about how-- I think I've experienced this. I've also seen a lot of people go through this with non-monogamy, of it can be so easy to compare, "Well, what am I getting from my partner versus what are they giving to my metamour? What is my metamour getting?" I think that when we take this to the extreme, we can see those behaviors around, for instance, I can only feel secure if I know I'm getting more time than any other partner, or I'm getting more sex, or if I'm getting the most special date nights, or if you're spending the most money on me.
As long as I can do the downward comparison with my metamour, then I feel good, and I feel secure, and I feel like my needs are getting met. Phi talks about the fact that it was this journey to refocus on, "No, but what are actually just my needs and the needs of this relationship with my partner, as opposed to comparing it to my metamour's needs, what they're getting or what they're not getting? That's the thing that I need to focus on."
Again, this is something that I'm often having to coach people through as well. I don't know what it is. Maybe it is just our human nature that, I think comparison and trying to get yourself into a place where I'm "winning" in the comparison feels like such low-hanging fruit. It feels so tempting of that's going to be the thing that's going to make me feel secure regardless of this is even a thing that I wanted.
I think that's a thing that I see people in our Patreon group talk about all the time of, "I don't even want to go to this particular LARPing event, but now that my partner's taking their other partner, now I want that." Sometimes that can be valid and sometimes maybe that can highlight to you, "Oh, actually that does sound fun." Or it can just be about, I'm doing a weird comparison dance with my own needs versus what my metamour's needs or wants might be. Have y'all had experiences with that before?
Jase: Absolutely.
Emily: Didn't we do an episode long time ago about, do I actually want this thing? I talked about, do I really want this . Yes, exactly.
Jase: Like, "Everyone's getting Teslas. Gosh. Wait, is that actually what I want? Even if I could afford it, is that what I would spend it on?" That thing of you get caught up in that, "Someone else has it, so I should want that too, and be upset that I don't have it."
Emily: I really like what Phi says here about refocus your energy on what it is you want to feel in your relationship. If you can only feel secure in a relationship when someone else's needs are being ignored or pushed aside, then what you're working with is a type of hierarchy that very quickly becomes toxic and harmful to others. I think that's really good advice.
Jase: It can be hard to have that honesty with yourself of like, "That's what I think-
Emily: "What am I really doing?"
Jase: "-will make me feel secure." Also, it probably won't. I'm just going to be real with you. It also probably won't actually make you feel much better.
Emily: No, it's probably a deeper problem that needs to be worked on there.
Dedeker: I'm also looking at this 2018 article from Poly.Land. I believe it's Page, right?
Emily: Page Turner.
Dedeker: Poly.Land. Yes, Page Turner. Where they talk about how really though, at a fundamental level that when we compare ourselves, it's just about assessing similarity and dissimilarity. It's just about our pattern-seeking brains trying to find the pattern, where does the pattern match and where does it not match? It's like the matching mismatching thing that we've talked about on the show before, but then the problem comes in when we start using that to rank people and we start assigning value to those differences.
I can speak to my personal experience that some of the times when I know I felt the happiest, the most fulfilled, the most equilibrium when having multiple partners has been the times when I do have an awareness of the similarities and dissimilarities, but that's okay. It's like I'm not necessarily ranking like, "Oh clearly this is the far superior relationship, and this is the far inferior relationship, or this partner is just way better than this other one," but I'm also not trying to lump them both into the same category and claim like, "Oh, these two people are just equal."
I know, for me, it was being able to hold those differences but not assign value to them. Also the same for myself and my metamours. The times that I've been able to reach that place of like, "Okay, I can see that this person is the same in this way and we're not the same in this other way, and that's okay. We're both here and unique. The things that make us unique are good. We don't want to be exactly the same and we don't want to be jockeying for some particular ranking," and then that's been really, really helpful.
Versus, of course, times in the past where I've just compared myself either favorably or not favorably all over the place to a metamour, or same thing with partners, honestly. I think something that I've learned about myself is, if it starts creeping in that direction where it becomes clear like, "Oh, I always have a favorable opinion of this one partner and always an unfavorable opinion of another partner," just that I need to examine some stuff, probably both within myself and also within the relationships of, is there something going on that's causing that?
Emily: Page also had a really interesting article called Unhelpful NRE Comparisons, and it discussed how some people compare the NRE they had with their partner at the beginning of their relationship to NRE that their partner is having with someone else in the moment. There was an interesting quote from that. Page is talking about someone else having this experience, and this was their quotation, "I worked for years to get the privileges I got with her. They're basically weeks into this and she's practically wifed up with him. It doesn't seem right to me that he has just given what I had to work to earn."
That's really, really interesting. Page goes on to discuss with this person, like, "Hey, you are a different person and they're a different person than you were when you started your relationship. Your partner may be more open and vulnerable now, and the ability to move faster and more quickly in a relationship may just simply be because there was work that was done to get them to that point." That you have to accept that, that you're not going to have similar experiences necessarily with your metamours, and that's okay and it may move at a faster rate, the feelings may move at a faster rate, and that also is okay. That's difficult especially when NRE tends to be such a really charged emotional thing that happens. It can be disorienting, I think at times, for partners, especially more established partners.
Jase: It's interesting in reading this, an area where this is very well documented and has been studied for a long time, is in siblings, where an older sibling will have to really work to earn some privilege or convince their parents to let them do something or maybe the parents say, "Not until you're 12 then you can do this thing," or, "Not until you're 16," or whatever it is. Then their younger sibling gets it way younger than they did. It's that same thing of like, "What? I had to work so hard to convince them to let us do this or to get to a certain age and they just get it for free at the same time I do." I dealt with this a lot with my younger brother so I can relate to this.
Dedeker: My older sister has complained about that a lot over the years.
Emily: I'm an only child, so whatever.
Jase: What's interesting there is just seeing how this is not something that's unique to metamour experiences. Yet that is a unique application of that, that a lot of people wouldn't even think of of that, "I had to work so hard for this and you just get it for free," that feeling. That is something a lot of us have experienced in our lives already with our siblings. How do we stop this shit? How do we stop comparing?
Emily: Oh boy. Good question.
Dedeker: Everything we talked about though makes it sound like it's impossible. Like our society is like, "Yes-
Emily: It's a challenge.
Dedeker: "-do that." Our parents are like, "Yes, do that." Even our brains are like, "Yes, do that, I love that." Is there any hope?
Jase: That's a great question. It brings me back to what I mentioned before of, there's one is maybe how can we stop ourselves from comparing as much, but then also, is there a way we can be comparing better? That is in a little bit more of an objective way rather than assigning value judgements and ranks and hierarchy to it. First to start out, we're going to go through some tips. This is a summary of some things from a PsychCentral blog post called Stop Comparing, Start Enriching Your Relationship. Basically stop comparing is what we're talking about here. Is this, how do you stop that? In this, it's not to say, "Don't look at other relationships or don't even think about them," but instead reframe it a little bit.
Starting by remembering that nobody really knows what goes on between two people besides them. I would take that even a step further than this author did and say, even those two people in that relationship don't understand the experience of the other one.
Emily: It's true.
Jase: We can't ever really know anyone else's full experience. This is a good reminder, especially when it comes to things like social media, where we just don't know the details of it. We're only getting some impression and then we're filling in all the gaps. We might fill those in with bad things or good things, or whatever, but just to realize that probably the majority of what you think you're comparing to is stuff that you've made up, stuff that you've created to fill in all the gaps of all the stuff you don't know, which is most of the stuff.
Emily: This is good with metamours as well when we're looking at our partners relationship with their partner is-- these are good tips as well.
Jase: Another one is to recognize that someone's idea of a perfect relationship might be very different from yours. Maybe you look at these other people and you think, "Their relationship's so much better than mine," and actually to them maybe it's terrible and worse or vice versa. Or you look at someone else and go, "Gosh, I would never want to fight all the time like them," and they're like, "Oh, yes, all this fighting is so hot. I love it." Whatever it is, they might have a different perspective from you. Again, just reminding yourself that you're not seeing objective truth with anybody else.
Then in this blog, it talks about stopping comparing your present significant other to past partners or your best friend's relationship or some fantasy partner in your head. Again, we would take this step further and say, look, that's also metamours too, or your friend's partners metamours relationship, or whatever it is. There's so many options, but just saying, "Hey, that's not helpful," and instead to focus back on, am I actually not happy with something in this? Maybe that comparison helps me see that, but that comparison isn't the truth. It might just help me get some perspective, or at least help give me things to think about, but ultimately the answer is in, what am I experiencing? What is my relationship with my partner? Not how does it exactly compare to someone else's.
Then to move to start enriching. That's just actually focusing on your own relationships. Reminding yourself of the things you love about your partner, or taking responsibility for your own role when things aren't going as well as you'd like. You can't make your partner into a different person, but you can change your own behavior, or you can be more proactive in your communication with your partner to try to actually institute some changes, or you might have to recognize that hard truth of, I actually am not very happy in this relationship and I'm thinking by comparing to others, I can try to force it to be that and maybe it's not, but getting real about what do I actually have here in this relationship.
Then the last one they have here is just to have more touch with your partner. This is an interesting one. I'm like, "Huh, this is different," because all the others have been pretty mental in terms of how you're thinking about things. This is just, have more physical touch, just more hugs, more handholding, more kissing, I guess, see if that helps. I don't know. I think that's-
Emily: Reach out and touch me. Isn't that Depeche Mode?
Jase: Touch faith.
Dedeker: Reach out and kiss me.
Emily: Oh, it's reach out and touch ?
Jase: Yes, because it's your own personal Jesus.
Emily: Damn, that's your own personal Jesus and I don't think it's about touching your partner, but--
Dedeker: Okay .
Jase: Unless your partner is Jesus.
Emily: Jesus.
Jase: I think it is about that. I think it's about dating Jesus.
Dedeker: We're onto something.
Emily: Wait, was Depeche Mode secretly at Christian band?
Dedeker: Good heavens, no.
Jase: I'm pretty sure that song's sacrilegious as all .
Emily: Oh, okay. I know now.
Dedeker: Marilyn Manson covered it. I don't think it's a secretly Christian song.
Emily: Why? They're talking about reach out and touch faith so-- Okay. I don't know. That would be funny though.
Jase: To be fair, Marilyn Manson has a lot of Bible quotes in his liner notes. It's all from Revelation and stuff like that, but still he's not afraid of a Bible now and again.
Emily: There it is. Now, how to stop comparing yourself to others. This is from a betterup.com blog. It is 10 different ways to stop comparing yourself to others. The first is to be aware of your triggers and avoid them, if you can. That can mean, I don't know, if I end up looking at social media a lot and that is something that's really challenging for me, because I keep comparing myself to all of the models on there or the Instagram influencers, maybe be aware of that and stop it.
Jase: Maybe it's the blocking or unfollowing your exes, like Dedeker was mentioning, that thing of, I know this is a temptation, so I'm just going to make that less tempting by making it not in my feed.
Emily: Exactly. The next one is limit your time on social media. I think that's with both of those things, don't check out your ex's stuff, don't necessarily look at the things that are going to trigger you if it's challenging for you to go on there and you find yourself comparing yourself to others.
Jase: Just in general, just less time on social media. It's been shown time and time again on various studies that people's wellbeing goes down the more time they spend on social media in a whole lot of areas of life. Social media is part of life, it's important we all do it, but just as much as you can limit it because it's really not good for you.
Dedeker: I would take issue with a statement that it's important that we all do it, but we can unpack that on another episode.
Jase: Oh, I said-- that was a, it's important, and we three of us all do it. I'm sorry, but that's good clarification.
Dedeker: Really need your punctuation in there.
Emily: This is an interesting one. Stop comparing other people's outsides to your own insides. Essentially, I think that's like placing a value judgment on someone because their life looks super beautiful and perfect and awesome. This is a good one for me. Then therefore that means that I am unworthy of love or whatever. Essentially, saying that somebody else's outsides mean then my insides are not good. Stop it. .
Jase: Because you know all the shit that goes on on your insides, but all you see is they're shiny photoshopped outside.
Emily: Outside. Yes, exactly. Another good one is money doesn't buy happiness. This is so true. Jeez, as much as I would like to think that if I just had a little bit more money, then maybe I'd be happier, there's people out there who are gajillionaires and they're super, super unhappy. It's just a good thing to remind oneself of.
Dedeker: We have to acknowledge the financial realities of this world of money can buy a certain amount of happiness, I think like you were talking about, Emily, of, if money can buy you, "I don't have to stress about making rent this month," or, "I don't have to stress about an unexpected expense," or, "I can pay for food," then yes, money definitely buys happiness. When we're going beyond that, it is a weird thing. I recently had an experience in the past few weeks. I don't know why this has happened, but I've had more conversations with some friends and other people about money and about income.
I've been in a place for a while where I've been quite happy with the amount of money that I make in the sense that I can pay my rent and I can pay my bills and things like that. Then I had a couple of conversations with people where we were just talking very frankly about the amount of money that we make. When it was clear all these people made more money than me, all of a sudden I felt bad about the amount of money that I made, even though I'm like, "I like my life and I like my relationship to money right now."
That is the funny thing where it almost reminds me of Phi's article about needing to really change the scope of what I'm actually looking at here instead of just making it about comparing directly to other people, but really changing the scope to my life and what I actually need and what actually works for me.
Emily: The next one is practice gratitude. This is a great one. As much as, I don't know, it's become the lunchbox or poster child thing of what we should be doing in order to make ourselves feel better. I do think that it's a good one and I think studies have shown that this is actually a way to help ourselves feel better. Just be grateful for what you have and it is a gift to be here, I think. Even though this world is a nutty place, it is a wonderful place to be and there are a lot of things that we can all be grateful for. That's something to really be aware of. Jase, this is one for you. Comparison can be used as motivation. It can.
Jase: Oh, yes. That's what I keep saying.
Emily: There you go. It's not always a bad thing. It's good to be able to see people that we see things within them that we want to strive for and that maybe they have a career that we would like to have as well or are particularly good at something that we want to get better at. Things along those lines. Don't use comparison as a way to feel shitty about yourself, but rather as a motivating factor. Focus on your strengths. We're about to do an exercise on that momentarily, but that's super important. Remember all of the things that you are good at.
Celebrate other people. That's, again, getting outside of your own head and outside of yourself. Celebrate other people's achievements. Call somebody up and tell them that you're grateful for them and congratulations on something that they just did that was really awesome. That can help you out a lot. Also, remember, I said this before, I think I said this last episode and this episode, but insecurities are universal. We all have them. When they talked about 66% or something of people feeling bad about themselves or having issues with self-worth, truly this is an issue that so many of us face. Hopefully, that can make us feel like we're not so alone in this world.
Finally, Use your past self as a benchmark for comparison. Perhaps there are things that in your 20s or in your teens you weren't that great at and look at yourself now and see how much further along you are, how much better you might be at something, even if that is a small thing, or even if that's, "I'm better at communicating about this certain thing with my partner or with my mom or whomever," and celebrate that and write it down in a journal.
Jase: This comes up a lot in fitness-related stuff too, is don't try to lift more than, or run farther than, or faster than whoever else. Just keep track of yourself and be like, "Can I do just a little bit better this time than I did last time?" It's like, "Oh, maybe I can't, but then maybe next time I'll do better." It's just that you are the only good benchmark to compare yourself to but still be kind to yourself in that. If it's been several years since you lifted a weight, don't think like, "Oh, I'm failing because I'm not lifting as much as I did back then."
Emily: Totally.
Jase: More like do what you can right now and see if maybe next week you can do just a tiny, tiny bit better than you did this week. That's how you can really make big accomplishments. Not suddenly trying to go, "I want to lift as much as that other person at the gym or run as far as this person who posts about all their runs on social media," or whatever it is.
Emily: The final thing that we wanted to talk about quickly was the strengths exploration worksheet. This is something that my therapist gave me that you can Google or look up and do yourself. We do want to include a link in the show notes so that you can maybe check it out on your own. Basically, what it is, the initial part of the body of this worksheet is for you to circle your strengths from a big list of choices. They include things like enthusiasm, kindness, cooperation, humor, confidence, stuff like that. It's just a bunch of different strengths that you have. There are four different open spaces as well that you can add your own if you see something that's not on the list.
Basically, I circled my choices from this big list, and then it explores different ways in which those strengths can be utilized in your life. The first one is your relationships. The second is your profession and the third is your personal fulfillment. It asks, essentially, lists the strengths that you possess that help you in your relationships. Then it goes through that for your profession and your personal fulfillment. Then it says, describe a specific time your strengths were able to help you in a relationship.
I really like that it gets very granular and it makes you think about something very specific that you possess and how that applied and helped you out in your relationships or personal fulfillment or profession in a very specific way. Then it gets you to think outside of the box about how it says, "Describe two new ways you could use your strengths in relationships, or in your profession, or in your personal fulfillment."
That's fun. Just to think outside of the box and try to figure out ways that perhaps you hadn't discussed in your own head or ways that you haven't before used your strengths in a way to help you out in your relationships or in your personal fulfillment or in your profession. It gives you a stepping stone to potentially use those strengths in the future.
Jase: Something I think is really cool about it is that you start by circling the strengths, like you mentioned, Emily, or writing some more in, because then these questions aren't just like, "What's a way you could do better in your relationships?" It's, of things you've already identified as these are my strengths, what are two ways that I could use these in a new way to make my relationships better or to make my profession better or to make my personal fulfillment better?
I think that's so coo because it's setting you up for that, "Oh, look, I've got these resources already. I've already got stuff I'm good at. How could I be leveraging those more instead of focusing on all the things I think I'm bad at?" Which is where a lot of us tend to go by default.
Emily: It's all very positive language, which I really appreciate as well because a lot of those things out there do say things like, "Well, what are some areas of improvement?" This doesn't even really go there. It just is super focusing on, "Let's celebrate all the things that you're good at and that you do well already." I found that I circled more things than I didn't, which was cool.
Dedeker: Aww, Em.
Jase: That's awesome.