475 - Is It Better to Settle in Relationships?
Compromise or hold out for perfection?
In a 2023 survey from American Survey Center, 30% of single Americans say a major reason they are not dating is failure to find a partner who lives up to their expectations.
When it comes to compromising in a relationship, there’s a light side:
If you are holding out for the perfect person or perfect relationship, you will never be in a relationship.
You can meet people where they are.
Don’t try to change people.
Extend grace and understanding for a partner’s flaws, the same way that you want grace and understanding to be extended for your flaws.
The Gottman’s have something called a “good enough” relationship.
Statistics about how some of the healthiest relationships are among people who know that some topics will never be resolved, and they build skill around avoiding those topics.
And a dark side:
Settling for less than, lingering feelings of being unfulfilled, FOMO.
Compromising fundamental aspects of oneself and core values, such as:
Desires for monogamy or non-monogamy.
Sexuality.
Dreams and aspirations.
Swallowing unacceptable behavior from a partner.
Accepting less than what’s deserved, like neglect, an imbalance in labor, etc.
Feeling like you don’t deserve a better relationship, or feeling like this is just as good as relationships get.
Likewise, there’s a light and dark side to refusing to settle in a relationship. The pros of that are:
Holding out for a partner who is a good match, who shares your values, and who treats you well.
Getting the relationship that you want by being willing to say no to the people that don’t offer what you want.
Attracting people who want the same things that you want.
That there could be better conflict resolution skills here, as you may already be comfortable with stating what you want without apology.
Supports and reinforces self-esteem, self-acceptance, and values.
And the cons:
“Grass is greener” mentality.
Intersections with relationship OCD and perfectionism.
No flexibility or understanding, no room for conflict, disappointment, or triggers.
Can be cut off from the possibility of wonderful relationships because standards are so high.
The argument that some people are not in the same position to be uncompromising, due to desirability politics.
The pain of having to turn people down, sometimes people that could still be good matches, just not great matches.
Transcript
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Jase: On this episode of the Multiamory podcast, we're talking about the sound of settling. Is it a good sound or a bad sound? Now really, we're talking about is it okay to settle in relationships? What does it even mean to settle in relationships? What are some realistic expectations you can have for relationships? Should we be uncompromising, or do we need to compromise a little bit? Should we hold out for that perfect relationship, or can waiting for perfect keep us from finding good? We're going to explore all of this looking at both the light side and the shadow side of each of the different stances to give you some things to think about that you can hopefully apply in your own lives.
If you're interested in learning about our communication tools that we reference on the show that can help you to achieve better relationship communication, check out our book Multiamory: Essential Tools for Modern Relationships. It covers our most used communication tools for all types of relationships. You can find links to buy it at multiamory.com/book or wherever fine books are sold.
Dedeker: In doing some of the healing work and processing work from a recent breakup, I realized that all of my mind is a stage, and all of this players.
Emily: This explains so much.
Jase: Okay. All right.
Emily: Okay, I see where you're taking this.
Jase: It's starting off more metaphorical than I expected, okay.
Emily: Yes, but whatever.
Dedeker: This is what I mean by that is, I've identified with my therapist that there's, I want to say 90% of me, when it comes to thinking about this breakup, 90% of me feels very resolute and very good about it, and knows I did the right thing. Then there's 10% of me that objects, that questions that, that doubts that. My therapist said it's almost like a Greek chorus situation where you have the very loud and very present main characters that are the subject of your focus. Then you have the Greek chorus in the background. For anyone who's not a theater nerd like the three of us are, a Greek chorus was I guess this staging device in ancient Greek plays where, yes, you would have your main characters playing out the action, but then there was always this group of people just creeping in the background that had commentary about the action.
Sometimes they would be highlighting contrast to the action, or sometimes they'd be highlighting the emotional background to the action. Sometimes they would be dropping in some foreshadowing about what this might mean. There's always this commentary that's going on, and that felt like that was what was going on inside me, where I had these main parts of myself reminding myself, "Yes, this was the right thing to do. You deserve a partner who treats you well. You deserve a relationship that feels good more often than it feels bad. You shouldn't be making excuses for your partner's bad behavior. It was hard for you to uphold your boundaries here, but that's how you choose yourself, prioritize yourself, and love yourself."
Then the collection of the Greek chorus in the back saying, "Oh, but maybe you shouldn't have been so hard on him. Maybe you should have really given him a break. Maybe you were expecting too much. Maybe your standards were too high. Remember, nobody is perfect all the time, including you." That's been a very disorienting place to be sometimes. Having this sense of mostly certainty, but then some of this self-doubt. I realized that this struggle within myself, I think echoes what I've seen in this more meta level in the relationship advice space.
I think this is a debate that's been going on for a long time. Essentially, should you temper your expectations of a partner or of a relationship? Should you stop holding out for that perfect person that's just excellent and great? Should you maybe compromise a little bit on what you want because love is hard to come by? Sometimes when we have our standards too high, we can be passing perfectly wonderful partnerships by. Or the camp of, no, you shouldn't settle, that's how you end up in all these shitty, deadbeat relationships. You really should hold out for a really wonderful partner, a really wonderful relationship. You shouldn't be settling for less. That debate has been going on for a long time.
Emily: This conundrum is the reason why I stayed in my last relationship for as long as I did.
Dedeker: Yes?
Emily: Yes, because, absolutely, I agree with you that you deserve a relationship that makes you feel more good than bad, and you shouldn't make excuses for bad behavior, or you need to uphold boundaries and deserve a partner that treats you well. I also knew that, on paper, and in terms of my life, and how big of a change my life would go through if I chose to leave that relationship, that was really challenging. There's always the price of admission. There are always things that are going to not be perfect about a relationship. I guess it's just that question, how many of those things are you willing to deal with? Ultimately, is the relationship more of a plus, of a benefit to your life than, I guess a detriment? That's where I would go in terms of asking, is it okay to "settle" or is it okay to let this relationship go because it's firmly in a camp of not serving you?
Jase: I think that this, the fact that there is this debate and that in the relationship advice space, you could find people very adamantly arguing one side or the other of this, goes back to something that I think is even more universal than that when it comes to advice is realizing that we often have very valuable pieces of advice or little aphorisms in the world that basically mean the opposite thing, but that both can be really helpful and valid in certain situations. That's why the way we're exploring this is not saying we've got the answer, but more, depending on your situation, a different side of this might be the one that you need to hear.
I think the simplest example I like to think of for this is, we've heard the phrase, a penny saved is a penny earned. This is about, don't spend frivolously. If you're saving your money, a penny saved is a penny earned. We also have the aphorism, you got to spend money to make money, right? Or various things like that.
Emily: Which one is real? Which one is true?
Jase: Or it's more important to do things with your money than to just hold onto it. You can't take it with you. We have varying aphorisms on either side of this. The point is that, depending on your situation, one of those might be really helpful for you, or one that too much agrees with the way you're leaning toward might just push you further into, "Oh yes, I'm just being really stubborn on this one side." Just something I want to put out there, when it comes to advice and aphorisms is the one that makes you feel just a little bit uncomfortable, not so much where it's like, "This is horrible, that's going to make my life fall apart." Just that little bit, there's something to listen to there. It doesn't mean you have to go completely that direction, but that's telling you, "I should pay attention to something here."
Dedeker: Yes. This whole expectations question, holding out versus settling, is relevant. I found interesting data from a 2023 survey that was conducted by the American Survey Center that not being able to find someone who measures up to somebody's expectations is a common reason that people cite for just not dating. Across the board, 30% of single Americans say that not being able to find someone who meets their expectations is a major reason that they're not dating. Women say this more often than men do. Almost 40% of the surveyed single women, compared to a little less than a quarter of single men, say that an inability to find someone who meets their expectations is one of the major reasons why they're not dating.
This is particularly salient for college-educated women. Almost half of college-educated women say that not being able to find someone who measures up is a major factor. There have been think pieces written about this. There have op-eds written about this, arguing on both sides. Some people, specifically, often this is directed to women, saying, "Women, you got to stop holding out. There's plenty of great men around you. Really lower your expectations and find yourself a husband now." As opposed to some people being like, "No. Why would I do that? Why would I settle?"
This is something that a lot of people deal with, not just people who are non-monogamous, but people who are traditionally dating as well. The way that this episode is going to go is I just want to look at each of these two camps. We're going to look at the camp that argues it's good to compromise here when it comes to seeking a partner. It's good to bring in realistic expectations. We're going to look at the light side of that and also the shadow side of that. Then same thing on the other side. We're going to look at this camp of refusing to settle, of holding out for excellence, and look at the light side and the shadow side of that. Then we'll see if we come to any conclusions at the end of that.
Jase: Amazing. Let's get into it, but we're going to take a quick break to talk about supporting this show. If you appreciate this content, if you find it valuable, if you like sharing it with people, take a moment to check out our sponsors and use our promo codes because that is what helps fund us to keep this show going and coming out for free for everyone in the world every week. Of course, you can join more directly by joining our Patreon at multiamory.com/join. You can become a patron there and get access to various perks like our private Discord server, ad-free episodes, our monthly processing groups over video, and more. Thank you so much for your support. As Dedeker mentioned, we're going to start out by looking at the camp of compromise or maybe rallying behind realism.
Dedeker: Ooh, fun, I like that.
Emily: Good alliteration.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: I'm trying to find some clever terms for this, this team, this side. This is the one saying, "Yes, you're not going to find perfect, so find what's good enough. You can compromise and find something that's going to be okay. This will be fine." I think depending where you fall on this, that might sound horrible to you right now, or that might sound like, yes, that is what I need to do. Let's explore this. Let's start off with the light side.
Dedeker: I will say that something that frustrates me, particularly when I'm working with clients who are actively dating in the dating process, partner-seeking, that the landscape is so fraught right now, and I think so many people are so frazzled and burnt out by dating in general, especially if they've been going through a period of going on lots of dates that sometimes that can perpetuate into this cycle of where you get burnt enough and then you raise your standards high enough where it's like, "Oh, this person communicated in this way that made me uncomfortable. Okay, I'm not going to let in anybody who communicates in that way," or, "Oh, this person talked about sex in this way that I didn't like. Okay, I'm not going to let anyone who talks about sex in that particular way."
That sometimes I see the more disappointment can sometimes nudge people's standards and expectations, maybe higher than they actually should be because they're feeling a little sensitive and they're feeling hurt where people will match with someone on a dating app, and then in two sentences, they're like, "Oh, yes, he talked about his job, and I didn't like that he had that job, so I unmatched with him." Or, "Oh, he asked how I was, but he didn't say anything interesting about my profile, so I unmatched with him." That there can be this weird hypersensitivity to someone who's not meeting expectations.
I can totally get how people don't want to waste their time and things like that, but I do see a lot of throwing the baby out with the bathwater is what I would say. I do think the light side of this is that by not holding out for the perfect person, you open yourself up to a lot more opportunity for connection.
Emily: Who really is perfect out there, truly? You may have the best relationship, and all of your friends envy it, and you two may seem, "perfect for each other," but I am certain that there are still things that drive the two of you up the wall about each other. I'm not talking about the two of you specifically, but I'm talking about anyone out there who may have a seemingly perfect relationship. Just, perfection is not really possible, I think, in a relationship. There's always going to be things that you don't see that people are working on within the relationship. I would hope that a partner would extend grace and understanding for my flaws. If they are willing to do that for me, then I need to be able to do that for them as well.
Dedeker: Yes, I think that's a good point that sometimes you have to shine a light on yourself that you also aren't--
Emily: Perfect.
Dedeker: Maybe you may not be 100% perfect as far as partnership, right? You also are going to do things even early on in a relationship that maybe give someone wrong impression or sets off their red flag meter a little bit. You may know, oh, no, this isn't something that's wrong about me. I'm a good partner. You may want someone to stick with you a little bit longer and get to know you a little bit more before you're flat-out rejected.
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yes. It makes me think of a lyrics from a song by Gregory Alan Isakov-
Dedeker: Oh, my boy.
Jase: -that says if it weren't for second chances, we'd all be alone.
Dedeker: Oh, yes. My boy.
Jase: That hits hard, right?
Emily: Yes.
Jase: Yikes. Yes, I do think there's something to be said for no one is perfect. If someone makes one mistake and then they're cut off, that you would be alone, right? You would have nobody if that's how you were treated. Yes, I think there's something to be said for making some allowances and saying, "Okay, yes, this person might not be perfect, or at least what I think is perfect right now," because I think that's another piece is that you may find that actually, this person is great, but you might have thrown them out over like Dedeker was saying, they had a job that someone else who I didn't like that relationship had that job, too, so I think everyone with that job must be similar.
That must be what attracts them to that line of work or something, so I'm going to throw them out when actually, they might have been great. I think we can sometimes jump to thinking, "Oh, this was the problem," when maybe it's actually just the way they communicated or something else, but that you tied to the that you would always fight about how much they had to work or something. In this new relationship, maybe that's not the case.
Dedeker: Yes. I always remember this particular section from The Ethical Slut, actually. They have this, it's not even a full chapter. It's like a little breakout section, almost like just an essay titled Clean Love. It's very much rooted in this idea of meeting people where they are, not trying to change people, finding a way to love someone as they are right in front of you today in the present in this exact moment, instead of bogging it down with the ways that you feel like they're not perfect necessarily, or the ways that you feel like maybe this relationship is not going to go in the direction that I thought that it was going to go.
It's very aspirational. I do whip out that essay and read it to myself sometimes if I'm feeling frustrated with a partner or feeling disappointed as this reminder that, yes, I can bring myself back into the present moment to really try my hardest to love this person as they are without trying to get fixated on how I wish that they would change, or I wish that I could change them in some way. The Gottmans often mention this idea of the good enough relationship, that they're in this camp when it comes specifically to couples therapy, that we can't expect our partners to be the ones that solve all our childhood trauma. We can't expect that by going to couples therapy that we're always going to be able to tackle these very, very deep incompatibilities or resolve these ongoing issues.
The Gottmans talk about how their standard is, can we at least get you to a relationship where you feel comfortable and happy sitting at a table together and sharing a cup of coffee and talking? Maybe that's good enough. Now, I'm not going to talk about my arguments against that because we have a whole section in the episode to talk about arguments against that. I think, honestly, when we were writing our book, I stumbled across this research study that showed that, statistically, some of the healthiest and happiest relationships are among people who have found that there are some topics in their relationship that they just disagree on.
There's some incompatibilities in their relationship that they just disagree on, and they have built skills around avoiding those topics, which to me, initially, my hackles were up. I was like, "What? Avoiding these topics and not talking about them? What? That's not healthy." It seems like there's something to be said about people who are able to accept, yes, we're not always going to be on the same page, there are certain things that we mismatch on, and we've just learned to live with that and not dive into the mud every single day, locking horns, trying to fix that or resolve that. We've learned to step around that.
I can imagine that maybe in some relationships, avoidance in that way would be really unhealthy, but I think in other relationships that, maybe I call it a skillful avoidance of the problem topics, could really work for people.
Jase: Yes, like that phrase, agree to disagree, I feel like gets thrown around a lot and often in a somewhat sarcastic way at times, or in a passive-aggressive way. There is something there to say, "Here's an area where we just don't agree. We just don't see eye to eye, but it's not so fundamental that it's like I lose all respect for you because we disagree on this thing. It's not so egregious that it's like, I am miserable every day because of the way that this affects our life together, or the way it affects our relationship, or our communication."
As long as it's not those things, there is a certain, "Okay, I think you're wrong, but I can live with that. We can find a way to live with that." That could be from tiny things of just, you like a genre of TV show or music that I just hate. Everyone is like, "Oh, sure, whatever. No big deal. You watch that by yourself. Go watch that with your friends. I just don't want to watch that with you." Cool. Problem solved. I think there are times where we could apply that same thinking to something that might feel a little bigger, as long as it doesn't cross into that threshold of, "This is actively causing me suffering and pain, and things like that."
Emily: So many of us expect that if we find the "perfect partner," that means that they are going to agree with everything that we think, or that their values will be similar enough to us that we just don't have those types of maybe existential conversations, or existential disagreements. I think it is going to come up, and many of us will date people that hold different religious beliefs, or different political beliefs. People find a way to make it work, and it really is possible.
Jase: The keyword there I think is the enough. Like you were saying, Emily, it's like if we're similar enough if our values line up enough. I think that that's what all of this comes back to, is the, what is enough? How much does it have to be to be enough? How do we calibrate that?
Dedeker: Someone introduced this phrase to me. There's something about, you're always going to have a sense of a cost of admission in a relationship, but it should feel like a small price to pay for the benefits and joy that you get from the relationship. There was something about that that really clarified things for me, that you can still feel like there's a price to pay, but it feels small. It feels like you're getting a good deal, and I love a good deal.
Jase: She does. It's true. She loves a good deal.
Emily: You do. You're good at thrifting.
Jase: Now--
Dedeker: Yes, can we shift to talk about the shadow side of this line of thinking?
Jase: I was going to say yes, we probably have some people who've been listening to this and hearing us argue in favor of the light side and have been going, "What about-- Oh." I've honestly been feeling that even as we've been doing it ourselves because-
Emily: We hear you.
Jase: -right, with all of this, no matter what side we're on, you're going to go, "That's not fair that there's this exception on the other side. No, but this can lead to this bad thing." That's the whole point of the episode, is to explore the space. Please, with all of these arguments we're making, don't take that as a one clip out of context by itself and say, "See? Multiamory says this, and this is the truth."
Dedeker: Explore the space like we're on stage.
Emily: Doing right now, oh, yes.
Dedeker: We're rehearsing a big play.
Jase: Ooh, okay. Love it.
Emily: Oh, I love that.
Jase: Now it's time to rehearse the next act, which is the shadow side of compromise.
Dedeker: Sorry. I just want to share. When I was in college, one of my favorite plays I was ever in was a production of The Bacchae that was very much that movement-based. In rehearsal, we did a lot of exploring the space and a lot of contact improv.
Emily: I love that.
Jase: Oh, wow.
Dedeker: It was great, yes.
Emily: Fun. All right, so moving into the shadow side, we may be feeling, if we settle, then we are settling for less than, and we may have lingering feelings of being unfulfilled. We may even have a fear of missing out on a better relationship for us. I do think that there is a point at which if the relationship is not right for you, then these feelings start to creep in. You start to ask yourself, "How much time am I actually going to sink into this relationship? How much of my life and my happiness am I actually going to put into sustaining a relationship that isn't making me feel good?"
Dedeker: This thinking can come up, not just for people who are in a monogamous relationship. This can come up if you're non-monogamous as well. It actually caught me off guard because I've experienced this while in a non-monogamous relationship. I think that we can internalize the sense of, oh, if there's something else that you're longing for in partnership, you can always go date someone who might add that to your life. That could be the case, but also I know I've been in relationships where even though I'm non-monogamous, this particular relationship takes a certain amount of my time and my energy that could be spent on a better relationship-
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: -or with a better partner that, even though technically, I guess I could maybe go date someone to add into that, but maybe it's just not quite enough there.
Jase: Yes, absolutely. The compromising can lead us to feel like, "Okay, I've just got to keep putting effort into maintaining all these different relationships." I think sometimes non-monogamy can even make this worse in some ways where we think, "Oh, but I'm able to get my needs met elsewhere, so I don't have a good reason to leave this relationship, and I shouldn't. I'm failing if I did that." This compromising can come up in this negative way where we end up just spending so much of our energy on these relationships that aren't great for us, and honestly, a lot of the time, not great for the other person either.
Even if we feel like, "Oh, I'm doing a good thing by staying in a relationship, even if I'm not totally happy," I would argue that's really not doing a very nice thing for that other person either. It's really not being nice to either of you. Focusing too much on that sense of, oh, but I need to have a really good reason not to be in this relationship, and if I don't have a good enough reason not to be, then I should compromise and I should be here because that's the right thing to do, I think it can get us into that thinking of responsibility or duty, rather than a joy.
Maybe some people would argue, yes, that is what relationships should be. To bring it back to the Gottmans' good enough relationship, something to put in for context is the Gottmans are coming from a place of, we're dealing with married couples and our whole goal is to keep these people married.
Dedeker: Sure.
Emily: Is that their whole goal? That's an interesting--
Jase: I think it has changed over time.
Emily: Yes, but fairly traditionally based.
Jase: Yes. They've got fairly traditional values. They're older. I think the organization as a whole is slowly catching up to the rest of the world, but from the start, a lot of their research is based around, how do we keep a marriage together? I think a lot of marriage therapy and interventions for married couples are focused around that. We talk about that with research, a lot of research that's measuring how successful is such and such, the thing they measure to tell if it's successful is, did they stay together. I think when you're coming in with that bias, that can lead you to maybe compromising more than you would otherwise, or prioritizing the relationship itself over the wellbeing of either of the people in it.
Emily: Exactly. Just those very fundamental differences in values, like if somebody wants monogamy or non-monogamy, or if, for instance, somebody has a sexuality that is not being expressed or explored because they're only with one gender, for instance, or specific dreams or aspirations that a person may have that they feel held back or tied down to the relationship, and that's not allowing them to pursue those things because they don't want to rock the boat or they don't want to harm the partner or harm their relationship.
Dedeker: Yes, it's like we're starting to encroach in this idea of compromise that seeps into having to give up fundamental aspects of oneself, or one's dreams, or one's core values. Related to that can be feeling this need to swallow unacceptable behavior from a partner because we can feel like maybe this is as good as it gets. Maybe this is as good as what I deserve, or maybe I've worked so hard on this relationship and we're so entangled, and so I'm under an obligation to have to settle here and to have to compromise. I have to accept that my partner emotionally neglects me, or I just have to accept that there's an imbalance in the labor, whether that's emotional, domestic, or relationship maintenance labor.
When I say a shadow side, I think there can be a really, really shadowy side to this. That all of our very well-meaning aphorisms about no one being perfect and not trying to change people and meeting people where they are can be this permission slip for truly accepting a lot less than what you deserve as a human being.
Jase: Not even what you deserve personally based on what you've done, but just as a human being, base level what you deserve. I think a lot of us often settle for less than that in our relationships because of all this complicated stuff we've been talking about, these feelings of guilt or obligation, or maybe I don't deserve better than that.
Emily: Yes, and I'll never get anything better than this.
Jase: That's a good point, yes.
Emily: On paper, at the very least, this person maybe makes a lot of money, or has a good family, or is impressive in other ways, and the two of you are fairly okay together. You're building a life together perhaps, and you've sunk a lot of time and effort into the relationship. Just the prospect of doing that again, leaving a relationship in order to go through that process, potentially again with another person or with multiple other people is daunting. You may worry that it's never going to get better than this. I think it causes a lot of people to stay in relationships longer than they should.
Dedeker: Or if the sex is really good.
Emily: That too.
Jase: No, I've definitely done that one.
Emily: Really?
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Also my 70-year-old uncle shared with me like, "Yes, if the sex is really good, I just have a real hard time knowing if the person is actually right for me or not." Yes, Emily, that was how I reacted too.
Emily: Got it. Okay, there it is.
Dedeker: It was a great conversation to have over breakfast.
Jase: Oh, my gosh.
Emily: I'm sure.
Jase: Amazing. All right, I think it's time for us to go to the next act of this rehearsal of our Greek play. I feel like this metaphor is getting away from me a little bit here.
Dedeker: No, it's perfect. Stick with it.
Jase: Okay, great. As we are moving around the set pieces to set up for our rehearsal for Act 2 here, we're going to take another moment to talk about supporting this show. If you value the content, really, it does go a long way to help us if you become a patron at patreon.com/multiamory. There, of course, you can get some amazing things like our monthly video processing groups, which are a really cool in person-ish way, in real-time with voices and faces, to be able to share what you're going through and get support and maybe work through questions like this about, am I settling, or am I setting too high of a standard?
Helping to find that balance with people in real-time can be really helpful. It's an awesome way to get support. Of course, take a moment, check out our sponsors. If any are interesting to you, if you use our promo codes, that does directly help support our show. Thank you so much. Places everybody for rehearsal for Act 2.
Dedeker: Thank you places.
Emily: Thank you. Thank you places.
Jase: Places. This Act 2 is titled Extreme Excellence, or-- I'm trying to find another alliteration here.
Dedeker: No. This is the thing, this act starts where the lights are down, and as the lights slowly come up, what the audience is hearing is, "I'm holding up for a hero to the end of the night.
Jase: Oh, yes.
Dedeker: He's got to be strong, and he's got to be best, and he's got to be fresh for the fight," so it's the holding out.
Emily: Love it.
Jase: Yes, exactly. Right.
Dedeker: Holding out for a hero is what we'll say,
Jase: You know what?
Emily: Beautiful.
Jase: I'll say, if anyone wants a cool theme song to play along with this part of the episode, if you have a separate music player machine, I'd look up Hildegard von Blingin's version of Holding Out For a Hero. It's all done in Bardcore, Renaissance music style.
Emily: Oh my gosh, love it.
Jase: It's pretty funny.
Emily: That's great.
Dedeker: I don't mean actually holding out for a hero, but holding out for somebody who's a good match with you. Holding out for somebody who shares your values. Holding out for somebody who treats you well. Holding out for somebody who feels like they can meet you as an equal, I think the thing that maybe we would all want in a relationship.
Emily: This is difficult, I think, with a dating app. Now, the three of us have not ever really gone through the whole dating app thing to the degree that maybe some people have. Maybe the two of you do a little bit more.
Jase: Maybe you should watch what you say.
Emily: Oh, okay.
Dedeker: Geez. Conflict, a rising tension.
Emily: I'm just saying that the three of us didn't meet, for instance, on a dating app.
Dedeker: We kind of did, though.
Emily: We did on the website, but not on the app site is what I'm saying.
Dedeker: Are you referring to the dating carousel perhaps?
Emily: Yes, that it's really difficult to get to know somebody and realize, yes, they're an awesome match for me, if you're just swiping right or left and have a couple of sentences about who they are.
Dedeker: Sure.
Emily: Even if you have a couple of paragraphs about who they are, it's still really difficult to know, is this person going to be good for me or not? I think in the current landscape of dating, holding out for a hero-
Dedeker: Till the end of the night.
Emily: -can take a long time.
Dedeker: Yes.
Jase: If we're focusing on the light side of this, I do think if we think about online dating, compared to in-person dating, where you're limited by the people that you meet in your life, by the people that you happen to stand next to in line at the grocery store, or friends of your friends, or people who come to your friend's birthday party, or co-workers, or something like this, you have to meet the person in real life somehow, which is inherently going to be a smaller number of people than you can swipe through in an app. In-person, there's a little bit of a sense of, if this person is somewhere in my sphere, maybe there's some things I already have in common, like a mutual friend or some sort of mutual interests and that's how I met this person.
Versus when we meet online, we don't necessarily have any of that. I could see an argument for, you do have to go through more in online dating because it's a more random pool. Even though you have search filters and there's algorithms and things, but there's still just inherently a bit more of a wider net and more randomness to it. I do think there can be an argument made for, they've got to pass a certain level of, yes, okay this really seems worth me investing more of my time to get to know this person.
Emily: There are a lot of skills that you're going to develop if you are going to choose to wait for the "perfect partner." The skill of saying no, that's something that I haven't been great at in my life, in general, but you probably get really practiced at it because there will be those people that come along that maybe are seemingly correct for you in various ways, but maybe not all the ways that you really want, or that don't line up value-wise in the way that you really are looking for. You can learn to say no to them, and move on to the next person, whoever, or wherever they may be.
Jase: I'd say another good side of this is that saying no doesn't necessarily have to be no to the person as a whole,-
Emily: True.
Jase: -but maybe saying no to a particular way that relationship could look. Doing that earlier on might end up letting you have a nice friendship together where if you'd felt like, "Ooh, I can't do that, I should maybe just settle, I do like this person, so I should try to do this," and then you end up where it goes on for a while. Eventually, you can't keep doing it, you break up, and then there's a lot more pain there, and it's harder to move from there to a friendship. Versus catching that much earlier on and going, "I do like this person, but it's not quite enough for me to want to invest this heavily, but maybe it would be okay to do this."
I bring this up because I have had some good friendships that have come from one or the other of us making that call of, "I'm going to say no early on. This shouldn't be this other thing. It's going to be a different type of relationship," and that's ended up being good. That's ended up being a good friendship that I probably couldn't have had if one or the other of us hadn't made that call.
Dedeker: When you do that, when you're able to make that call earlier on when you're able to say no to the people or the relationships that you don't want, it does create more space for the people and the relationships that you do want to show up. Now, some people look at this through a very woo-woo lens of, you got to attract the people to you-
Emily: Oh yes.
Dedeker: -who want the same things that you want. I don't think there's necessarily anything metaphysical going on here, but I do think that the more practice you get at being able to compassionately and skillfully say no to the not-good options, and the more that you're able to skillfully lay out what it is that you are looking for, and to take ownership of that and be honest about that, the more likely you are to find the people who want those same things.
Jase: Right.
Dedeker: There's a certain amount of that holding out for a hero that if you do hold out, and you're keeping that space open, it's maybe more likely that someone who really aligns with you might have the space to step into your life.
Jase: That, yes, when you do have that person, that you have the space to let them in is maybe how I would put it.
Emily: That's true.
Jase: Not even so much about making energy outside of yourself in a metaphysical way, but just you'll be available. Again, with the non-monogamy example of, if you're still putting a lot of energy and time into maintaining a relationship there, and then someone does come along that's interesting, but you're like, "I've just got so little time and I'm exhausted and I can't do this," because you've been settling. I could see that as a pretty compelling argument.
Dedeker: I've seen the argument made online that people who are very resolute in this way about what they want in partnership, they may be coming to the table with better conflict resolution skills already, that if you're already very comfortable with clearly stating what you want without it being a demand, but also without apologizing for it, that that could be a really good foundation for negotiating a relationship from the beginning.
Emily: I've also seen from somebody within our Patreon group who talks a lot about relationships on her Facebook, how she is choosing to not settle anymore and how much that has really helped her self-esteem and acceptance and values, and know that this is something that she truly knows is right for her. That she's not going to settle for the wrong person in her life anymore. She's only going to be with people who affirm her and who affirm her choices. I think that's really powerful and something that I hope I can do for myself as well.
Dedeker: There's this really wonderful video that's an interview of Eartha Kitt, and as much as I would love to subject every human on the planet to this video, I'm not going to.
Emily: You sent it to me-
Dedeker: I did send it to you.
Emily: -when I was going through my breakup, and I was like, "Yes."
Dedeker: I watch it sometimes, a couple times a year, depending on the year, to have a good reminder. If you want to go watch it, just go to YouTube and search for Eartha Kitt Compromise. She has this long conversation about compromise in relationship. There's this really wonderful line that she drops where she says, "I fall in love with myself, and I want someone to share it with me." I think that really gets to the heart of, again, the light side of this holding out, that I love myself enough, and I love the things that I want enough, that I'm going to wait until there's someone who wants to share that.
Instead of, I'm going to shrink myself, I'm going to bend myself in all these different ways, I'm going to try to make myself more attractive to somebody instead of waiting for someone who's already attracted to who I am and what I bring to the table.
Jase: Now, at this moment in the play, the lights that have been shining from up above dim a little bit and lights down. The footlights come up a little bit more, so everything gets a little bit of a spookier ghost story.
Emily: This is Jase, the director.
Jase: Also, I think some fog machines. Fog machines come on a little bit to give us a little bit of spookier ambiance. Maybe if we're in a high-tech theater, we've got some of those rumbly speakers underneath the seats, so you get a sense of
Emily: Whoa.
Dedeker: Wow, very high-tech for every day.
Jase: It's a high-tech, sort of a new meets old kind of a-
Dedeker: All right.
Emily: I love it.
Jase: -super modern staging of a great play.
Emily: What a director you are.
Jase: Yes. Now, we're going to look at the shadow side of having these high expectations or this camp of excellence and refusing to settle.
Dedeker: I think this sort of thinking can lay the groundwork for some grass-is-greener mentality. You can always have this sense of everybody else is having these great relationships and mine are just so-so, or I can only find people who are just so-so. Always looking outside of yourself as this basis of comparison, and always feeling this sense of, "Oh, just, it's never quite good enough," the relationship is never quite good enough. In a more extreme version, this can intersect with what's known as relationship OCD. This is a relatively new, relatively unstudied spinoff of regular, old-fashioned OCD, but the researchers are starting to identify as a little bit of a thing, of someone who can never fully relax into their relationship.
They're always worried that something is falling apart. This could be like, I guess I would call them maybe over-maintaining a relationship, obsessing a little bit too much about the communication or about ways that the relationship could be better. Again, this obsessive focus that doesn't let you actually enjoy the relationship that you're in because you're always having the sense of, but it could be better, or it could be more perfect.
Emily: Speaking of perfect, perfectionism is something that plagues many of us, it plagues the three of us. I do think that often, if you get in a situation where you maybe are with someone and want them to be better, then you can pick at them, try to make them more perfect, or more, what you deem is going to be better for you or for them, or the relationship in general. That can be really detrimental. Also, just internally, if you have a difficult time finding a partner because you're like, "I have to find the perfect partner, that is what I should be looking for in my life," you're always trying to find the best thing in the world, and it's pretty impossible.
Jase: Yes. I think that this focus on, I need to find someone who lives up to my standards, and that is truly the right relationship for me, the perfect relationship for me, can go a couple different ways. One of them I've seen is it can lead you to then focus on any problems in the relationship is their fault, is because they're not good enough, and can actually lead to a lack of taking responsibility. I know this is going to surprise everybody, but weirdly, one of my favorite quotes from the Bible is--
Dedeker: Whoa, whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.
Jase: Yes. Right?
Emily: Yes, I did not expect that, did not.
Jase: No, no one saw that one coming, is from the Gospels, I forget, I think it's in Matthew, but Jesus talking about, you want to take the speck out of your brother's eye, meanwhile you have a plank in your own eye. First, remove the plank from your own eye so that you can see clearly to remove the speck from theirs. It's just this idea of, it's so easy to criticize outside of yourself and not look internally at what might be going on for yourself. Because it's hard to see that, it can be harder to see ourselves. I think that's one direction that it can go there.
Bible-quoting aside, I just think the point here is that there's clearly something to that truth that's been around for enough thousands of years that would've ended up in that book, but still feel relevant, where we can get focused on, I need someone else to solve all my problems, and so I'm not going to be accountable for them myself.
Emily: Sure.
Dedeker: Some of this intersects with maybe what we see happening in the process of NRE starting to fade. That when we're in that chemical cocktail, new relationship energy, it's very easy to feel like, oh, I found the hero till the end of the night, that they are perfect and they are wonderful. Then once their humanity starts to come through, this feeling of, oh no, oh God, oh no, no, they're not perfect. Oh no, it's all going to fall apart, that sometimes I see people spiral into, "Oh no, it's actually horrible, and I need to go chase the next NRE high with a new person," because clearly, this person wasn't it now that they've shown me that they're an actual human being.
Jase: Right. I think it can lead to this catastrophizing too, of, "Oh, I found this part of them wasn't as perfect as I thought. What else is there going to be? Oh, maybe everything that I thought I liked is a lie." We can go swing really hard the other way.
Dedeker: Oof.
Emily: I've heard these very wild statistics, and who knows if they're real or not, but essentially saying things like the top 50% of women, or maybe it's like even the top 80% or 90% of women on dating apps are only looking at the top 10% of men.
Dedeker: It's a bullshit statistic made up by a very scared and insecure man.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: It's definitely, and it's always talked about by a man for sure, but I do think that a lot of people out there believe that if you are a desirable person in whatever way, then oh, you have so many different options, and it's easier for you to be more choosy. If for some reason, I'm not a desirable person, then I have to settle more often. That is probably a really challenging place to feel like you're in just, again, due to all of the bullshit from our society that is being thrown at us every single day.
Dedeker: Several years ago, and I know this was several years ago because it was at a time where I still felt it was worth my time and energy to get into arguments with strangers on the internet. I don't know how I came across this blog, somehow it got served up to me. It was this very long-running blog of a woman in the UK who, she wrote a lot about relationships, and she wrote a lot about her personal stories, her personal experiences with dating. It seems like she'd been in the dating scene for a long time trying to find a partner. She was laying out this very complicated saga where she was dating a polyamorous guy for the first time. She never experienced that before, and she also didn't have an interest in polyamory. We can all see where this is going to go.
Emily: Oh. Good luck with that.
Dedeker: Yes. That she was going through a lot of pain, it sounds like he wasn't also great at it necessarily. She was not having a really good time. I slid into the comments, a couple other non-monogamous people had also slid into the comments so I felt a little bit backed up, but slid into the comments really to say, "You probably shouldn't be dating this person. The things that you want are great, but this is not a good non-monogamy experience in general, and clearly, it's not going to end the way that you're hoping to because you're just really in a lot of pain."
She responded saying, "Yes, I get what you're saying, but I have been lonely for so long, and I've just been wanting someone who can touch me and be affectionate with me and go on dates with me. I've been missing out on that for so long that this feels like it's the best that I got right now." It was really sad to see that, but I was like, "I get it. If you feel you don't have a ton of options on your plate, you don't have the energy to hold out for someone who is a really good match for you or even a perfect match for you." I can totally get, in this woman's experience, that even though it was so obvious to everyone on the outside, this is not going to work out, the two of you want different things, but when you're in it, that sense that this is what I got, and I would rather lean into that and maybe try to get some of what I need rather than throwing it in the garbage.
Jase: That's, I think, the way you can end up there on the compromising side. Here's a ironic roundabout way you can get there from the high expectations like, they have to meet all my standards way, and that is, you have this concept of, they have to meet all of these things, and every time I have a bad experience, I add another criteria to the list. There's even a movement that there were several blog posts about called haystack dating.
Dedeker: Oh, right. Yes.
Emily: I've never heard of it. What is the--
Dedeker: Burning the haystack, right?
Jase: Yes.
Dedeker: Oh.
Jase: Burning the haystack. The whole idea is you want to find a needle in a haystack, the fastest way is to light the haystack on fire so all the hay burns up, and then you have a needle that's left. That's the thinking.
Dedeker: A burnt, charred needle.
Jase: A charred, just hot needle.
Emily: Okay. Cool.
Dedeker: Then you got to sift through ashes to find a needle.
Jase: Right.
Emily: Good Lord.
Jase: Basically, the whole philosophy there is you have your really high set of standards, and as you're doing online dating, if anyone fails any of the things, even once, you unlike them, block them, they're dead to you forever.
Emily: Good God.
Jase: The idea is that you're quicker to just eliminate everyone so you're not wasting your time and you can find the good ones. That's the thinking. The problem with the whole, having these high standards, having this list thing is that yes, maybe eventually you did burn up that whole haystack and you have that needle, I've seen people where, okay, I finally got the person that checked all the boxes on the list that I made, and I spent a lot of time really making and crafting that list, I finally found that person. Then they're not actually very happy with that person, but they can't find a way to explain that because, objectively, they tick all of the boxes that they said that they wanted.
They can end up back in a compromising type situation, even though they set out to be on the other extreme of, I'm not going to compromise at all, that it can end up holding you to the standard of these things I thought I wanted, rather than being able to find the relationships that were actually good. It's almost like it goes in a circle and you can loop back around if you go too hard on one side.
Dedeker: Sure, yes.
Emily: What do we think about all this? What camp are we in, or is that what we're even looking for here, is the middle path as usual, the best path? I think settling and staying in a relationship personally for me was definitely not the answer. I knew that there was a tipping point at which it wasn't worth it to me to stay anymore, and yet I do think that it was okay that I stayed in it and tried at least for a while. Maybe I tried for too long, the jury is still out on that, but I definitely think that it's okay to at least give it a good college try in the relationship that you're in, especially if there are parts of it that really do work. I guess it is that question of if you're looking for a relationship and if you currently are in one, where does that line get crossed into, you know what? It's time for me to cut and run or it's time for me to decide I'm going to move on from this?
Dedeker: I want to reserve the right to say something completely the opposite in a year or so of what I think right now.
Emily: Okay. Fine.
Dedeker: No. I just want to set up the expectation for myself that here's the deal is, I'm in a place right now where I am not dating or trying to find somebody. I'm still recovering from ending a relationship. I think that when I am ready to start dating, it's probably going to be looking for something very particular. Probably not looking for a super entangled life partnership sort of partner. I do think that my standards and expectations will be a little bit different and also want to hold up for the fact that once I'm actually in it, my feelings about this may change because we're bad at predicting how we're going to feel about things as human beings.
I keep coming back to this sense of the small price to pay. This idea that nobody is perfect. No relationship is going to be perfect. Everybody at some point is going to trigger you, is going to disappoint you, is going to show their humanity in ways that turn you off, but ultimately, for whatever type of joy you're getting from the relationship, it should feel like a commensurate trade-off. It should feel like a small price to pay. It should feel like a good deal. I know good deals, I think.
Emily: Dedeker is the queen of good deals.
Dedeker: I think.
Jase: Yes. I think that's my takeaway every time this topic comes up on the show because I feel like this whole debate is underlying a lot of the different things that we talk about on this show. A lot of the questions that people write into us that some form of this question of what is good enough, what's the enough of good enough? Is it too low? Is it too high? What is it? Or that sense of, what cost is too high? I think that it's really about evaluating that and adjusting that over time. Continuing to adjust your sense of what is the cost that feels like a good deal?
I would say maybe not even think, oh, I want it to be cheap, but I want it to be a good deal. I want to feel like the cost is commensurate. It's like there's a difference between this deal is a little too good to be true, versus this was a good deal. I think what I paid here is worth it. I know we're being very capitalist about this metaphor here, but just the sense of, am I receiving enough back for the energy that I'm putting into this and what I'm giving? I think that that answer may also change for you over time. Like Dedeker said, she wants to reserve the right to change her answer a year from now.
I think that even just day-to-day as our energy levels and our life circumstances change, your answer to what is enough or what is a good deal is going to change a little bit. I guess what I hope that people can take away from this is the sense that this is an ongoing calibration process. That you're not going to just find the one aphorism that's going to work forever all of the time, or the one set of standards that's going to work all of the time for you or for anyone else. That it's always going to be about refining it. I have a really cool but very elaborate ending to our Greek play here.
Dedeker: Oh, I was going to ask.
Emily: Oh, shit. Okay. Here we go.
Jase: We had all these scenes. Maybe we'll think of it like four acts or two acts with two halves. I don't know how we'll go about that part. Then at the end, we have some of the characters and the chorus members who are costumed in a certain way to represent the light and dark sides of each of these, and they spread themselves out on the stage, each saying things in defense of their way of thinking to recap the various points that we've made in various arguments for each of these and against each of the others, things like that. Then we still got some fog going on, whatever.
Emily: Of course.
Jase: Then we have to have a custom-built building for this because what happens next is that-
Emily: Wow.
Jase: -the lights come up in the house and two spotlights shine on two doors.
Dedeker: Whoa.
Jase: Those are the exit doors.
Emily: Oh, shit.
Jase: One of them says the path of holding out for excellence, and then the other one says the value of compromise or whatever it is. The audience has to choose which one that they go through.
Emily: Oh, okay. Wow.
Jase: Here's the catch. Once you go through one of the two exits, there's another set of two doors with the same choice again, and then another one. You've got a few of these.
Emily: Whoa.
Dedeker: Hold on. People sit through an entire play.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: Then they got a lot of different--
Jase: It's sort of a labyrinth to get back out, yes.
Emily: Oh, my God.
Dedeker: Then they have through a very elaborate immersive theater experience that happens after the play.
Jase: Yes.
Emily: This is very-.
Jase: To show them that the story is not finished just when we finish here, but actually, we end up mingling back through each other and making different choices throughout.
Emily: Amazing.
Dedeker: I was hoping for a more dramatic stage picture, and then the curtain comes crashing down, and then, "Encore, encore, wow."
Jase: That's because you're so traditional in the way you think about theater. I'm cutting edge here.
Emily: Oh, whoa.
Dedeker: Ooh, shots fired.
Emily: On that note--