Some of the most popular relationship advice on social media is actually hurting your relationship the most.
Welcome to Penned in Ink, a podcast where we discuss marriage and the power of long-lasting love.
The hardest part of navigating relationship advice on social media is that it sounds right.
Melissa and I have heard much of that advice for years and have even fallen for some of it ourselves.
But in our over 30 years together in marriage and Melissa's decades as a counselor working with real people and real relationships, we have a sense of what actually works in relationships.
So today, we're breaking down five of the biggest lies that social media tells you about relationships and we'll explore what actually works instead to help you build your long-lasting love.
All right, for those of you who are joining us for the first time, I'm Michael, I'm here with my wife, Melissa.
We've been married over 30 years together and our goal with this podcast is to share stories and advice to help you build your own long-lasting relationship.
All right, Melissa, how are you doing today?
I'm good.
I'm excited about this episode.
Yeah, we're recording on a work day, which is a little different for us.
So I personally have been like flying around all day today.
So yeah, this could be interesting today.
I don't know.
We'll see how this goes.
Yep.
Yeah, it'll be good.
It'll be good.
You had a light work day today.
So you've been ready for like hours, I think, on this topic.
So maybe not hours.
Right.
I was done with clients.
I had a light client workload today.
You always— But I've been catching— I am so far behind on a few paperwork things.
You always say that to me.
I know.
Well, I want to say that— I don't want you to think I only worked two hours today.
That's lame.
Her work's not mine.
I worked more than two hours.
I only saw two clients.
So I only had two hours of therapy.
There you go.
All right.
Okay, before we pop into the lie number one, and this is gonna be fun.
We're gonna pop through five big lies.
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Let's get into this.
Lie number one.
Want to take it away?
I will.
I'll start this one off.
Social media relationship advice tells you to never go to bed angry.
This might be the most repeated relationship advice ever, but it's also one of the most harmful.
Yes, it is.
I personally like to go to bed angry.
That's my goal.
It makes you sleep so well.
I know, I know.
All amped up and all angry.
All right.
Why does it— I mean, it sounds good, right?
I mean, resolve conflict before you go to bed.
Right.
Make sure, you know, you're on the same page, everything.
But yes, it sounds good.
That's why.
Okay.
I can fall behind that.
But really, at the end of the day, if you haven't resolved whatever conflict it was during the day, waiting until 8 or 9, 10, 11, whatever at night, you're not at your best.
Who's at their best after a day of work and taking care of the dog and the kids and all of that?
Right.
Not the best time to deal with stuff.
It also puts pressure.
Like a timeline is never a good thing to try to solve something right.
So I have to solve this now.
Now, it's well-intended advice though, right?
The idea is, oh, clean slate.
We're all good.
We wake up in the morning.
Yep.
And I'm always flabbergasted when I have a client.
And this, it happens all the time.
Say, oh, I'm so tired today.
I was up arguing with my spouse until 1, 2 o'clock in the morning.
I'm like, why?
Just put it to bed and yourself to bed.
Let it go for the night.
Reassess the next day.
Yep.
But that's what they've heard.
Yeah.
And you give that advice of, I mean, I think there's the advice we give our kids when they were growing up is nothing good happens after midnight.
So if you're out and seeing friends and stuff, remember nothing good happens that late at night.
I think it's the same with arguments.
No solid argument is going to be solved late at night.
So don't do that.
There's a side question for you.
If you're arguing, do you have the right to kick me out of bed and make me sleep on the couch?
What's your view on that?
We had a discussion about that.
Right?
And I've never been fond of that.
Now, if you choose to get up and go sleep in the other room because you're just like, I need space.
You need space and everything.
I think that's okay.
But who decides who has to sleep where?
I mean, to me, I'd be like, right?
If I said, go sleep on the couch, you might turn to me and say, well, why don't you go sleep on the couch?
Exactly.
And then we would not be solving that conflict before we went to bed.
All right.
So do we have any examples in our relationship of times where we have chosen intentionally not to fix the argument that night?
Any examples of that?
Definitely.
The most recent one that I can think of was on a trip that we had where the travel day hadn't gone well.
We had some things were said and it was just- I said some things, let's be clear on this.
I was trying to be kind.
Yeah.
We have very different travel strategies and my humor or lack thereof or sarcastic was not appreciated.
So yes, I made Melissa very upset on an airplane.
Yeah.
But we looked at each other and we went, you know what?
This is not the time or place.
And I knew I needed time to work through my emotions and talk about it later.
In the middle of a plane, no.
After hours, no.
Not a good idea.
And let's be clear on this.
It's not even just not to work through it, but it's to not let it wreck the rest of our travel day.
So I think one of the strategies that actually works and better than solve everything before you go to bed, don't go to bed angry, is take a pause, set an intentional time to revisit the issue, which is exactly what we did in this case.
Crowded airplane is not the time to have the argument.
And even the rest of the travel day, the driving the car, getting to the hotel, checked in, still not the time to do that.
And a long travel day, get to the hotel room, exhausted.
Absolutely not the time to have that conversation.
So what we did was the next day we were on a hike, much better space, rested, food.
Processed.
Processed.
And then I revisited it.
And I said, okay, clearly I made you mad.
I made you upset.
Let's talk about that.
And we had a much better conversation than we would have had A, on the plane or B, late at night.
Would we have handled that the same way in our 20s?
Oh, I'm probably not.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I think there's some maturity there that comes with knowing there's a time and a place.
We might not have fought on the plane, but we probably would have in the car.
Right.
Right.
We probably still wouldn't have done it in public, but we would have tried to resolve it before the night was done.
Yeah.
So again, we fall in for some of these lies that social media tells you.
All right.
Bring it home.
How do you reframe that?
Right.
That lie number one, never go to bed angry.
It's not about solving it before bed.
It's about solving it well.
Love it.
All right.
So if you fall in for the myth or the lie of never go to bed angry, let us know in the comments.
That brings us to lie number two that social media tells you.
Social media relationship advice tells you your partner should meet all your needs.
If you expect your partner to meet all of your needs, you're setting your relationship up to fail.
I couldn't even get through that one without laughing a little bit.
You did.
I chuckled underneath my breath on there.
I think it's a hundred percent unrealistic to think that any single person is going to meet all of your needs, let alone your partner.
That is way too much stress.
So why do people believe this?
Jerry Maguire, bring it home.
Why do they believe this?
You complete me.
Yeah.
A 90s movie reference that apparently has this whole sort of following behind it that is the you complete me narrative.
That without somebody else that you're not complete, that you need some, and that they can be that person for all of your needs.
It's just- Unrealistic.
Yeah.
Not going to happen.
No.
I think we also fall for this one because we think we see it in our social media feeds.
We see these idyllic relationships.
We see the happy couples and they're doing all of these things together.
And maybe what you're not seeing is the needs that those individuals have outside of their facade on social media.
So this one I really think is subject to the falsities of the highlight reel that you see on social media.
How does it actually break relationships?
What's the, I mean, if you try to get everything from your partner, what's the downside of that?
That's a lot of pressure on somebody.
Unrealistic pressure to be your friend, to be your confident, to be your venting partner, to be, that's a lot of pressure for one person.
And they're probably not going to live up to it.
It's unrealistic.
A lot of pressure makes you dependent on a single source for all of your well-being.
That's a lot of pressure, obviously, as you just said.
But that's also a lot of risk to you in your relationship to get all of your needs, wants, and desires from a single individual.
Yeah.
All right.
Maybe not put all your eggs in the same basket.
Right.
And that can lead to resentment, right?
Why do I always have to be your partner when you want to?
Or on both sides.
Why isn't my partner being everything for me?
Yep.
Now I start thinking negatively about my partner because they're not meeting all of the needs that I have.
Well, of course, they're not meeting all the needs.
That's unrealistic.
So resentment, I would say on both sides of that equation.
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
There's this term called man-keeping.
I think I shared that with you earlier.
It's this term that was made up for the fact that sometimes in relationships, women are expected to be everything for their man's social circle, their financial need, their mental health support, all these sort of things.
And they made this very, I find it very insulting, but yet funny word, which was man-keeping.
It was so condescending, yet so funny.
So yeah, that's an expression of the resentment that comes from that.
Well, what actually works?
What do you need to be doing?
And what do we do?
I'm going to start with what we do, which is we both maintain individual identities.
I have my friends.
I have things that I do.
You know, when's the last time you went to a craft fair with me?
Right?
I've gotten out of those very recently, which is good.
I don't expect those of you.
I have somebody else that likes to do those with me.
You know, I have other people.
So I've kept an identity.
I have one of my best friends is also a counselor.
And so we can talk about work.
And in addition to, that's a need that I don't expect you to fulfill for me.
Yeah, and my social circle is pretty small when it comes to the social aspect, but I have big work circles.
I have two different jobs, basically.
One, the soccer club we run.
And the other is my primary job.
And I've got lots of acquaintances and stuff through that.
So I get my sharing of technical knowledge or sharing of stories or learning new stuff or, you know, lots of different things from that circle.
Plus we've got family that's in the mix too.
I was just going to say that, you know, you talk to your dad almost weekly.
I talk to my mom.
My mom and I are really close.
We talk weekly.
I have a sister that I talk to quite a bit.
I love you, Adam, but we don't talk too overly much.
But I could, but I could if I wanted to, right?
I know he would, if I called, he would pick up and we could talk about anything.
Yeah.
So I think our advice to you would be putting all the pressure on one person is unrealistic.
What actually works is using your partner as your primary.
Like if I have something really important, I'm going to you.
If there's a need.
And I mean, there's certain things that I'm just going to go to you for.
Right.
But not everything.
But you're my primary go-to on that.
Yeah.
And we think that this concept of healthy independence, right?
You have to have aspects of your life where you are independent and full.
And I think this myth of you complete me is a great one.
I'm a much bigger believer in the, you have to be sort of a whole person to be part of a partnership.
And I don't think it's, I don't think it's healthy to be looking for that partnership to complete you.
I think you should work to be complete and then bring that to your partnership.
Yeah.
Thoughts?
Absolutely.
All right.
I'm going to reframe this one for our crowd here.
So the big lie is your partner should meet all of your needs.
The reality is your partner should support your life, not be your entire life.
All right.
Lie number two, I think was a big one.
Some people might actually disagree with that one.
So let's see.
Let us know in the comments if you or someone in your life have fallen for the you complete me fairy tale.
And that brings us to lie number three.
I must put up two fingers.
Lie number three.
I can speak, but I can't do fingers at the same time.
So lie number three, here we go.
Social media relationship advice tells you that you should always put yourself first.
This one sounds empowering, but it quietly destroys relationships.
I can already hear people complaining about this one.
Well, damn right.
I put myself first.
Okay.
How's your relationship?
Just curious.
Great question.
Yeah.
All right.
So I think we fall for this one because rightfully so, we are much more aware of self-care.
Like that is something that 10, 15, 20 years ago, self-care, you know, whatever, or not to be too gender biased on this, but maybe women would be worried about self-care.
Men would not even in the terminology would use.
So we now believe in this self-care.
I fully believe in that.
We're also very big believers in inner circle being your relationship, outer circle being anybody who's not in your relationship.
And we're very clear about setting boundaries with people in your outer circle that are maybe toxic relationships or overstepping or those sorts of things.
So protecting your peace, I think, is the messaging around that, which is just this concept of putting myself first.
All really good.
But when you're in a partnership, it becomes us first for a lot of things.
It doesn't mean you're never first, but it means everything you do should be in the lens of your partnership.
Definitely, definitely that protect your peace thing is a great idea for relationships that are harmful to you.
And you're hoping that's not your relationship with your partner.
Yeah, I joke during rehearsals that hopefully you don't have the toxic in your relationship.
And if you do, that's another whole set of boundaries.
That's not about putting yourself first.
That's about fixing your relationship.
So to your point, you shouldn't have those toxic elements in your relationship.
So you shouldn't need that boundary in your relationship, it's for outside your relationship.
Yeah, I interrupted, go on.
No, that's fine.
It was, yeah, I just, I wasn't sure of that term either.
So I looked it up and it was about keeping toxicity out and making sure that you're protecting yourself, saying no when you need to say no and not just doing what other people want you to do.
And I think that's great.
But to your point, outer circle, inner circle.
And what's the harm?
I mean, the harm of always putting yourself first is that if I always prioritize my needs over your needs in some cases or our shared needs, then I'm not gonna have a good, solid, deep relationship with you because it's me-centric, it's not us-centric, right?
So I think we lose the positive benefits of walking with someone through life if you're always putting yourself first.
We talked about resentment and those other things.
That's gonna build resentment to you too because you're gonna get this, they always put themselves first sort of discussion that's going on.
So let's talk about us because we'd like to share stories about us in this.
How do we go about prioritizing each other's needs?
And what are some times where this has been an issue for us?
Right, when I was pregnant and on bed rest, there probably wasn't a lot of me.
Me time, there was a lot of you time during that.
There was, oh, I still remember.
You made me breakfast and lunch and put it in the fridge so that when I could get up that once an hour for five minutes, I could just grab it.
Did you make your lunch?
I don't know.
You probably just bought something else.
I don't know.
So that was a time and when we first had the girls.
Yeah, so seasons of time in your life where maybe a partner for something like a pregnancy, carrying babies, we had twins by the way.
So Melissa was on bed rest for- Eight weeks.
Eight weeks.
So it was a very Melissa centric time because well, she was raising or growing kids.
So like my needs were much less important during that time.
There's also a few times in our life where we've gone through, our daughters have some health issues.
So we've had some mental health issues along the way of us struggling and dealing with that.
And I think we ebbed and flowed during that.
Sometimes I was doing really well with it and you needed support.
And other times you were doing really well with it and I needed support.
So just identifying when are those times where your partner needs something more than me, even, and maybe especially when you're struggling with something, not going down the spiral of it's all about me because sometimes your partner's struggling equally, or maybe even more, right?
And you just mentioned earlier the daily, even recognizing going- Right, if we've both had, I come out, we go to walk the dog.
I've had a bad day, but I can tell you've had a worse day.
Let's start with you today.
And if we get to me, that's okay.
If we don't get to me, it's quite all right.
But we start with you and I can put my stuff back if- Yeah, so it's a whole concept of just being aware when your partner needs something or is going through something a little bit more.
And it's not to say you're never first, because that's not what we're saying, and that you never should put yourself first, but the lie of always put yourself first, not in a partnership, not gonna work.
Yeah, and that is something because I do find, I preach self-care all the time.
And especially with, I mean, the men, I have a couple of men that do it as well, but mainly with the women where they're doing everything for the family and nothing, I was like, when's the last time- Oh, that one drives me nuts, by the way, when she comes and tells me, I mean, I won't air anybody's dirty laundry in the family and stuff, but we got some disproportionate relationships where the wife is carrying the load and the husband is, from my point of view, not holding his part up.
And that just drives me bonkers, man.
Men, do your part, carry your part in the relationship.
Don't expect your partner to do everything.
Oh my gosh, sorry, I interrupted you.
Well, just something I preach is, nobody's gonna come up to you and say, oh my gosh, you've been doing so much recently.
Why don't you go get a massage?
How often is somebody gonna say that to you?
Other than your therapist, I do say that to them.
I say, when's the last time you did something for you?
And sometimes people have no idea.
It makes sense.
One thing that I think has worked for us when we're talking about self-care and prioritizing inside our relationship is that we're not taking a short-term view on this.
We take a long-term view.
So there might be periods of time where it's disproportionate, but over the long haul, we're both gonna be first plenty of times.
We're both gonna get those needs met.
So I think that's sort of our goal on it.
It's not in the- Definitely.
I don't have to be every time.
Yeah, sometimes it's a bit one-sided.
Yeah.
It's definitely over time.
So what actually works instead is to be balanced in between your self-care and your us-care, your shared care, right?
So sometimes it is about self-care for you, you first.
Other times, it's about making sure the relationship and the partnership is balanced and always positioning yourself as a team, a partnership.
Whatever term you wanna use for that.
But we're in this together.
So shared care is always my priority.
Sometimes we just need to be individual care on there.
Yeah.
All right.
Definitely.
Let me reframe this then.
The lie is you should always put yourself first.
Healthy relationships aren't about me first.
They're about us always in mind.
As I said, leading into this one, this one might be one of the more controversial ones we had.
So let us know in the comments.
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We're more than halfway through.
If you haven't noticed, these lies are getting a little more controversial, a little bigger as we go forward.
Melissa, lay lie number four on us.
And this one might be hard for some people to hear, but social media relationship advice tells you that love is enough to sustain a relationship.
Love is important, definitely, but love alone will not sustain a long-term relationship.
Truth, preach.
Love is not enough.
It's not.
It's a great place to start.
Why do we believe that?
Oh, because we see it in the movies.
We see it on social media.
Oh, I love him so much.
I can get through with all this.
Really.
Romantic songs, you know, everything.
They almost always, you know, you have the occasional, you know, somebody dies at the end, you know, the tearjerkers.
But in general, love, it doesn't matter what they go through.
The love will be enough.
No, love will not always be enough.
Absolutely not.
Now, I think we fall prey to that in early relationships.
I love him so much or I love her so much.
It'll work out.
Yeah.
Great.
That might start your relationship.
Will it sustain your relationship?
Probably not.
What works instead?
Or why?
Actually, no, not what works instead.
Why does that break relationship?
Why is falling for the lie that love is enough?
What happens then?
Because it ignores all the other important pieces of relationship.
We haven't done it yet today, but I'll throw it out there.
We talk about communication every single time.
That's a skill, right?
And that goes beyond the, it's different than love, right?
I don't think we've got a single episode yet without giving the advice that you have to communicate.
I can't help it.
It is so vital.
I just can't.
Maybe we should start a poll or something or a pool to see if how, if I can go an entire episode without saying the word communication.
We'll put a dollar jar on the table.
We'll see how filling gets really quick.
I can't, I can't.
So, it doesn't work because it builds, it skips the hard work of building a relationship, right?
If you just believe that love will endure and that will be enough, then you're gonna miss doing the work that builds a relationship.
Also, I think that it leads to confusion when I love this person so much, why is my relationship failing?
Yeah.
Well, your relationship is failing because love isn't enough to sustain it.
You have to do the work of a relationship and love often allows you to ignore the things that are broken, right?
I love them so much.
I'll overlook X, Y, and Z. Well, X, Y, and Z are undermining your relationship.
So, let's take this to our experience.
When was love not enough for us or how do we address this?
Again, what are you laughing about?
I'm just laughing, you know, it's just, of course, we've been together so long.
Of course, there was stuff, especially in the beginning.
Yeah.
So, Melissa and I started dating in high school and college is when we really started very much dating.
So, obviously, being in love, having fun, being social, being active, that was plenty and that sustained us.
Coming out of college is when we decided, hey, we are committed.
We are building something together.
Up until then, love was plenty.
Love was enough to keep us through a lot of even challenging times and, you know, those young love arguments and discussions and whatever.
But love wasn't enough to build a life against.
So, we very intentionally started having conversations about what is our future?
What are our shared goals?
What's our vision for our family?
We did the hard work of starting to build a relationship once we chose long-term commitment.
Right.
Right?
Does that sound right?
And I think we're still every day choosing that, building that sort of connection in doing the work.
Love is there, but love isn't enough to do that.
We still have to do all the work around it.
All right.
So, what actually works?
And if love is not enough, what actually works?
It takes intentional effort.
And that involves, on the daily, working at being in tune with your partner, working through any challenges.
And so, what it's really about is, it's almost like a math problem.
It's love, plus it's the skills that you have in the relationship.
And it's alignment in the relationship.
You need multiple things to make a strong relationship that's going to stand this test of time.
You just do.
It's not just love.
Perfect.
So, reframe it for us.
Love is not enough.
What is?
The lie.
Love is enough to sustain a relationship, but love is the foundation, but it's not the structure.
Love it.
So, tell us, who out there is trying to keep their relationship alive on love alone?
How's that going for you?
Or have you realized you actually need to do the hard work and you're working to build your long-lasting love now?
Let us know in the comments.
That brings us to our fifth and final lie of the day.
Social media relationship advice tells you there's always someone better out there.
If you believe there's always someone better out there, you will never build something great with anyone.
All right, let's dig into that one.
Infinite selection.
I have a dating app.
It's full of people.
I can swipe and look and go, ooh, look on social media.
There's another person.
There's another person.
Oh, there's another relationship.
Oh, look at the beautiful highlight reel.
How will I ever choose?
Paralysis by analysis.
Thinking there's always something else.
There's always something better.
Ironically, I was listening.
I don't think my phone was actually listening to me because this is someone that I follow.
He was talking today.
He's a relationship guy.
He's been doing this for years and years and years.
And apparently he's been dating the same person for a couple of years.
And his mom was chastising him like, why have you not committed to this relationship?
And he had to have an honest thought with himself.
It's like, cause I'm stuck on the fact of how do I know this is the right person?
What if there's someone better?
And he said, there's always gonna be the question of what is there someone better?
And he realized that if he didn't commit and choose to lean in and build this relationship, he was never gonna build a positive relationship because he was always gonna be stuck in the what if?
What if there's somebody better?
That lie absolutely is crushing people right now.
Definitely.
Yeah.
I just, I get it.
It's a big decision to make.
And the fact that people today are so inundated with so many options, it is.
And so I get wanting to think about it.
But if the relationship you're in is good and you're in love and you're enjoying it and you've worked through some hard stuff, right there is better.
Yeah.
One of the challenges our minds have, and this is a, it's not unique into relationship selection, but one of the problems that phones and devices and everything is, and even internet and looking for information, our minds are always turned on to searching.
They're looking, they're looking, they're looking, they're looking.
Until you turn off the looking part, you're not gonna be present.
You're not gonna be able to build anything.
Believing the lie of I'm always looking, I'm always searching, you will never find.
In this area, you have to say, okay, I'm gonna commit.
I'm gonna be grateful for what I have in this relationship.
Then I'm gonna lean in to see if I can really turn that into something.
I'm not saying that once you decide to lean in, that that's the right choice, but it will never be the right choice if you don't give it the try to lean in and build.
If you always have that searching mindset.
I was thinking about that when you started this one.
I was like, how are you gonna know?
You know, this might be the best, but if you don't put all the effort into it that you can, you'll never know.
The grass is not always greener on the other side.
Exactly, put our lens on it.
When we moved from college to commitment, looking for another was done, right?
So then we had only one option.
It was to do the work and to build our relationship.
And for us, we've been very fortunate that we built those skills.
We've been intentional and we continue to build and make that choice every day.
This is, I am not looking for something else.
So even in times of struggle or times of joy or whatever, there is no other grass.
This, we are building this relationship.
And I think once you do that, that unlocks tons of stuff, right?
Right, yeah.
I was thinking as your list of things that we're not looking anymore.
You know, you can still admire somebody that's pretty.
You can admire somebody that's pretty that you see or that's handsome or it's good looking, but you're not looking, you're just, it's more of an acknowledgement that that person is good looking because you have and you're happy with what you have.
Yeah, and I think it also keeps us from, well, I think that, I'm not gonna put aside the physical attraction one, but when we see friends of ours or we see relationships and we see them killing it or doing well, we don't covet that.
We aspire to that.
We try to build that.
So if we see someone who's killing it in their jobs, I don't go, oh, dang, they're killing it in their jobs.
Maybe I gotta find something.
No, I go, okay, how can I kill it?
How can I move forward in that?
Or if they're taking the really nice vacation, regardless of if they can afford it or not, I don't care.
But if I see that vacation, I'm like, okay, how do I plan and get into it?
So I think, yeah, you're always gonna be having that looking and learning, but it's not a comparison of like, I'm gonna get rid of what I have.
It's like, no, how can I lift what I have to get there?
Yeah, I like the word aspire.
How can I aspire to improve or even just elevate our relationship?
I like that.
Cool, and I would say that once you commit, that's when you really can pressure test it.
And that's when you can actually create value.
I think it's transactional if you're always sort of looking for the next or whatever.
Once you commit, that's when it actually becomes real and it becomes valuable, all right?
So let's reframe this one.
The lie is there's always someone better.
Truth is great relationships aren't found, they're built.
Those are the big five lies that social media tells you.
Now, if those are the lies, what are the beliefs you're actually building a relationship on?
We are gonna close this episode with one of our staples.
We're gonna close it with our Pen to Paper segment.
Each episode, we try to give you something tangible and take away.
In our Pen to Paper segment, we give you a practical challenge or reflection to help you write your own lasting marriage story.
Today, we've talked about the lies social media tells you, but here's the real question.
What beliefs are you actually living out in your relationship?
Because whether or not you've written them down, you are operating from a set of beliefs.
So Melissa, how do they put this challenge into action?
What's the first thing?
Identify which of the five lies that we covered today that you believe or you're currently believing in your relationship.
And just as a quick reminder, those five are never go to bed angry.
Your partner should meet all your needs.
You should always put yourself first.
Love is enough to sustain a relationship and there's always someone better.
Start with those.
Identify which ones or maybe just start with one.
That might be a little bit easier because you can't improve your relationship until you identify what's going on.
Yep.
So once you've identified, you've recognized your lie that you're living.
The next thing is to figure out how is that lie actually showing up in your relationship?
Where are you seeing that lie come to reality?
So if you chose the looking, always looking for someone better, there's always someone better out there.
Do you find yourself comparing your relationship to others around you?
Or don't go to bed angry.
Are you finding yourself that every time you're discussing, you're always pressing your partner, you're wanting those late conversations and you just can't rest until it's done?
Or the one of always putting yourself first.
Has your partner told you something over and over and over again that you've just sort of ignored because now I'm going to self-prioritize first?
Identify where is that lie impacting your relationship?
Where do we go from there?
I've picked one.
I see where it's showing up.
What do I got to do now?
Now comes an important part.
Can you rewrite that belief into something that actually supports a healthy relationship?
For example, if you're living the lie, never go to bed angry.
Can you rewrite that to be, we resolve conflict when we're calm, when we're in a good space?
Simple.
Very simple.
Yeah, so much better than going to bed angry.
But anyway, okay, another lie.
There's always someone better.
Could you rewrite that, reframe that to be great relationships are built through commitment.
I'm going to commit to this relationship and build it.
Great, I've identified a lie that I'm living by.
I see where it's showing up in my relationship.
I've reframed that.
Now can I put it into action?
I've said, don't go to bed angry.
Nope, I'm going to pause.
And I'm like, can you find a time where you are about to lean in in that real argument and go, nope, I'm actually going to pause.
I'm going to set a time to revisit, put it into action.
Or in that comparison, I'm always looking for someone else.
Can you take a moment and go, you know what?
I'm actually grateful for the relationship I'm in.
Can you show a little gratitude in the moment when you find your mind starting to compare?
And here's the bonus challenge.
Are you in a relationship?
Do you have a partner?
Take this exercise to them.
Ask them to do the same thing.
What lies are they believing?
Where do they see it showing up in their relationship?
Can they reframe it?
And can they put a small little action into place that helps them change that behavior?
And if you need help getting started on this, I mentioned earlier that we have a free pen-to-ink community where we give out free guides.
Melissa has created a free guide here to help you start rewriting the relationship beliefs you are living by.
Check the description or show notes to download your guide today.
To close this segment, remember the quality of your relationship isn't just shaped by what you feel.
It's shaped by what you believe and how you act on those beliefs.
That's today's Pen to Paper segment.
All right.
That's a good one.
That brings us to the end of our episode where we took on the five biggest lies that social media tells you about your relationship.
With that, we wanna thank you for joining us today and we invite you to connect with us by joining our free pen-to-ink community.
Here we share free digital guides and occasional updates to help you build your own long lasting love.
Click the link in the description to join today.
Also, remember to share a comment, ask a question, and let us know your thoughts on today's topic.
And if you like this content, give us a like, leave a positive review, and remember to subscribe to get notified of future episodes.
Thanks everyone.
Bye.