There's a trend out there today that's saying the checklist mentality in dating is dying.
That people are no longer looking for superficial things, but instead are looking for connection, shared values, emotional maturity.
That all sounds great, but we would argue the list was actually never the problem.
The problem is where did the items on the list come from and do any of those truly hold up over time?
With more than 30 years of marriage behind us, we learned that that list that we made at 22 wasn't what truly mattered over the decades that we've been together.
Welcome to Penned in Ink, a podcast where we discuss marriage and the power of long lasting love.
Are relationship standards too high or is that just a false flag to a bigger problem?
Today, we will explore where our standards come from, what true non-negotiables look like and how standards evolve and change inside marriage for long lasting relationships.
For those of you joining us for the first time, I'm Michael, here with my wife, Melissa.
We've been married over 30 years.
And on this podcast, we try to give you a view of what a true long lasting love looks like.
All right, recording today on the topic of, did our 22 year old checklist match up to our 52 year old checklist?
Ooh, I like the symmetry there.
Yeah, there you go.
The short answer is no, it does not.
So let's discuss, let's jump into that.
Oh, actually, before we jump into that, please, we noticed that a lot of you are listening, but yet have not subscribed to the channel or are following us.
It's free to you and it will help us greatly.
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All right, that's it for that, we'll move on now.
Let's just start by saying, hey, where do relationship standards come from?
I bet that's it, where do they come from?
In this day and age, social media.
Yeah, not in our day and age, there was no, there's barely computers in our day and age, let alone social media.
And I find that kind of funny, because think about that.
How many of the influencers do you know have been married for 30 plus years?
Yeah, hardly any.
So if you're out there on social media and you're getting all this great marriage advice and all this great long lasting love advice from a 30 year old, no offense, but how long have you been married, little Mr. or Mrs. 30 year old?
Probably not very long.
So you're getting your advice from social media, from people who maybe don't have the knowledge that someone who's been 30 years in would have.
Yeah, absolutely.
And you hear the loudest voices, not necessarily the ones that are the wisest.
Well, they know how to play the algorithm.
What sells on media, what sells in the news is the loudest, most controversial, most extreme, right?
But what doesn't actually get all the buzz and the traction is what truly matters, right?
Because a lot of times what truly matters is boring.
What truly matters is simple.
What truly matters doesn't get your blood boiling.
So social media sets a lot of our standards.
That is bad.
What's another way that our standards get set?
Because there's one other big one where our standards come from.
Our past experiences and especially our past wounds.
So if we've had bad relationships, that will set the standard, right?
Oh, this happened in this relationship.
Oh, that's going on the list.
The next one better not have that.
I won't have somebody that has that on there.
And the list just keeps getting bigger and bigger.
Yeah, so we've picked two great sources for your list.
Social media from people who may or may not know what the heck they're talking about and past relationships that didn't live up to, well, probably anybody's standards.
So past abuse.
So we would argue that if all the places you're getting your list from are those that tend to be the negative side, then your list is probably not calibrated right.
So the problem is not that you have a list, it's that the things on your list probably aren't right.
Yeah.
All right, so let's move on past that.
Let's start talking about how do people today, sorry, I'm pausing here because my dog just walked into the room.
And I'm surprised you guys can't hear her breathing on the thing she's breathing so loud.
So let's just, we'll give you a second.
Go to the puppy cam.
We'll go to the puppy cam.
So you can see our dog who walked in here and she was all huffing and puffing like an old lady.
She is an old lady.
She is an old lady, so that would explain it.
And now she's almost asleep.
So that's how that goes.
All right, so we've established that the list is not the problem.
What's on the list is the problem.
So let's talk about what's on the list.
We've said how people are getting it, but tell me the difference between maybe a standard and the perfect person.
Yeah, the standard is something that is important to you, that you need in a relationship.
And people confuse that with perfection where they're just putting absolutely everything.
And if somebody doesn't, this list is getting very long and because people keep adding to it year after year, relationship after relationship, and pretty soon they're looking for something that doesn't exist, a unicorn.
It's not gonna be there.
They're looking for the perfect and that list instead of being something that helps you set a standard and identify something, it becomes a barrier and keeps you from actually having to evaluate somebody.
So let's dig in and talk about the difference between a 25-year-old, 22, 23, 24-year-old, what might be on a woman's list of...
Well, just the woman's list, it's not of anything, it's what's on the dating list there, the traits list.
And then we'll talk a little bit about what's on the men's list.
So let's start with women.
What are some things that are often, we're not saying everybody, your list might be different, I hope it's different, but here are some of the things you would see.
And we're on our list when we were in our 20s.
And that's what I was gonna say, physical attraction.
If you found somebody that you can talk to, but you're really not attracted to them, and that's really important in your younger years.
Yeah, exactly.
So we would say, oh, of course, I have to have an attraction standard.
But an attraction standard could become a barrier or a false standard if it is too specific and too narrow and too unobtainable.
I mean, I think the one that comes to me is almost every woman you hear on social media wants a six-foot tall, six-figure salary, and I always forget the last one.
Oh, yeah, six-pack abs.
Why six foot?
Okay, it's a round, arbitrary number.
What's wrong with 5'10", like, I don't know.
And then maybe there's some of us aspire to 5'8".
But anyway, just saying that becomes the difference between a standard and maybe Mr. Perfect, right?
Okay, what else is often on a young woman's list?
Ambition and drive.
If you start talking to somebody and you find that they really haven't thought about their future, even though they're in their 20s, are they going somewhere?
And there are some guys, women as well, but guys that maybe don't have even the foggiest idea.
They're just hanging out.
Perfectly good standard, someone with ambitions.
Maybe not so perfectly good, someone who's already accomplished everything they could possibly accomplish in the world, right?
So that's how a standard can become maybe not healthy.
Great, give me another one.
They want somebody that's loyal, that doesn't play games.
They also want somebody with similar lifestyle and values.
Value sounds great, right?
But what they really mean in the younger years is the vibe.
You know, do we like each other?
Do we like the same, you know, very, it's more surface level.
It might be, oh, he likes his family.
He spends time with his mom, that's great.
But maybe it's not the depth of, oh, does he want kids in a family of his own, right?
So like there's different level of values, right?
I know for us, when we were, and a reminder for those of you, I guess it's not a reminder, if you've been with us, you know we actually started dating in high school, really committed in college, got married shortly after college.
I would say we were not talking about the really details of real true shared values until we were like, oh, we're gonna commit.
Then we were really talking about shared values.
But when we were 18, 19, 20 dating, it was good enough of like, do we like sports?
Do we like hiking?
Do we like family?
Do we like, you know, those were all good enough values at that time.
And then I think this one is the one that maybe women wouldn't admit is on their list as much as some of the others, but you know, someone who likes me.
I was pursued, right?
I think we all sort of, wow, like to be liked.
So sometimes early on, it's enough if someone's showing interest.
But does that, is that enough to sustain?
Is that deep enough?
Is that a standard?
Yeah, I don't know.
All right, let's flip it.
Let's talk about men.
I'm not allowed to say this one because apparently I say this one too crass.
So you can say this one.
What is top of the men's list of what they're looking for?
There's the physical attraction is there as well, but it seems to be a bit more specific.
They might like certain body parts.
They might want of a certain size or shape.
And.
Thick wrists.
What are we talking about?
I don't know what we're talking about.
Wrists and bottoms.
How's that?
That is not what my notes say, but okay.
Yeah, physical attraction.
Again, not a problem that physical attraction's on there, but maybe it's a little unrealistic and maybe it's a little superficial.
Maybe there are other things of like, I want someone who's just healthy and fit.
Might be a reasonable one.
Maybe not the, yeah, whatever.
I think we all understand that one.
If you don't, I'm happy to expand in the comments.
Just let me know.
This one is the fun and easy.
You hear men say, oh, I'm looking for a woman with no drama.
I would argue that, okay, that sounds reasonable.
But what most men or many men mean there is, I want someone who doesn't push me or doesn't expect much or is just, you know, will go with the flow in your 20s.
That's great.
But if you are actually gonna accomplish things in your 30s and 40s and 50s, it's really nice to have a partner who, well, I don't know, challenges you and pushes you.
So doing it with no emotional drama would be great.
But I think the way it gets defined here often is, ah, somebody just doesn't nag me and doesn't, no, sometimes you young 22-year-old need to be nagged and pushed.
That's how you accomplish things.
Right.
Got another one.
I mean, I know we've got a few more on our list.
Like the women, loyalty and faithfulness.
People don't typically like to be cheated on.
Yeah.
Men have that on their list.
I would argue they don't always hold themselves to that same standard in their list.
So yeah, I'll leave it at that.
Shared interest is another one.
Just like you had on the other list, right?
Do we have, and I think there's this concept of how many shared interests do we have?
And early on, it might just be enough to do stuff.
We like to go to sporting events.
We like to go hiking.
That might be enough.
How specific you get and is that really a non-negotiable or a need or just a preference?
Who knows?
And the last one we're gonna talk about there is, I think this one's a little bit like, could be misinterpreted, but does she have her own life?
Is she independent?
And I would say when you're early on and you're dating somebody, the idea of, hey, I don't want someone who wants too much of my time, too quick, too heavy right from the start, that's perfectly good.
But over time, you actually don't want a partner who's too independent because then you're not building an us, you're building a you and a them and it gets really weird.
So be careful what you ask for with independence there because you actually don't want 100% independence because where's your partnership gonna come from?
So, all right, so let's talk a little bit about, we're gonna dig deeper on, we just talked about which of those are typically on a 22-year-old's list.
Let me give you a little glimpse of the difference between a superficial one and maybe a deeper one.
Let's introduce the concept of what's truly a non-negotiable and what is just a strong preference.
And we're gonna dig in a little bit later to things we think should be your non-negotiables.
But one here that we wanna address is this concept of self-improvement.
One trend we're actually seeing a lot of, which makes me very happy, is that people are acknowledging that, hey, I might be throwing away this list and I'm looking for these other things, but the person I'm looking for in there might not have accomplished all of these things yet, they're working toward these things.
And that's that concept of, I'm looking for a partner who is focused on self-improvement.
And that might be career self-improvement, that might be better physical health, they're trying to be active and live a healthy lifestyle, it might be emotional health.
And I think, not to put words into 25-year-old women, but I think the idea that a man is aware enough to know that his mental health matters and is actually taking care of his mental health, that's a huge, hey, that's a good trend.
And for me, having that growth mindset is a non-negotiable.
I want someone who's gonna grow.
Yeah, that have the ambition and the drive and can do so, that can learn how, they might not know how to be self-reflective, but they can learn how to be.
Exactly.
So our challenge to you in this section is to just start thinking about your list.
What is on your list right now that you're using to assess potential partners?
And start to think about which one of those are actually non-negotiables versus preferences, or even strong preferences, because a strong preference is not necessarily a non-negotiable.
And we are huge believers in that concept of self-growth.
So what is on your list?
Is it enough if they are just aspiring to that?
But I would even put a caveat on that.
Are they working toward it?
Do they have a plan to achieve it?
All right, time for you to share.
Have you given your list any meaningful review?
If you have, did anything drop off your list that you realized, wait a minute, that was just a preference and not a non-negotiable?
Let us know in the comments.
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That brings us to our reoccurring segment we like to call Inked Moments.
In the Inked Moments section, we like to share a very specific story from our past that's on today's topic that helps illustrate something that we dealt with that was very much this.
Now, we absolutely had lists back in our 20s.
Maybe they weren't formal.
Maybe they were on paper because we didn't have phones, but we had our list.
And the question we asked each other was, hey, was there anything that was on your list that darn near derailed, decoupled this whole thing, stopped it all from happening?
And it turns out there was, and it was on Melissa's list.
So let's have Melissa share what was on her list that almost ended our perfect union before it began.
Our perfect union, I love that.
Yeah, and I've never really thought about how all of this would have never happened if I would have, that would have, I would have stuck to that and that was non-negotiable.
Interesting.
Anyway, on my list, I had been witness to multiple long-term marriages in my life, both sets of grandparents, my parents were married forever.
Still married?
Yes. 50 plus years.
Ones that were still with us, so my parents.
Both sets of my grandparents, they passed away when they were married.
And that's what I've seen.
So on my list was somebody that valued marriage, that knew what that looked like and had seen it before.
Let me tell you my story.
I had not seen successful marriages, but I'd seen many.
My dad had been married, I don't know, three, four, multiple times.
Mom married many times.
Pretty much nobody except maybe my maternal grandmother and grandfather were married long-term.
That was the only one that I actually saw.
So Grandpa Matt, but beyond that, no.
So continue.
And so that gave me pause.
Does Michael know what it takes to go the distance?
And it was there, I don't know if I had brought it up much, but after a small breakup in college, after we'd gotten back together, you made a point of saying, hey, I don't plan on getting married until I know that it's gonna last.
Because I have seen marriages not last, and I don't want that for myself or my partner.
So I will not be making a commitment until I know.
So when he made the commitment, I knew because he had said that at one point.
I almost got disqualified just because my darn parents didn't know how to stay married.
That doesn't sound very fair, but understandable.
So I guess the question would be, if you were now giving advice, which you might have to be doing on this podcast, maybe that advice would be to truly look at those things that you maybe have as non-negotiable.
And is there a way to move that to just a preferred or maybe to get past, is it really, truly a non-negotiable?
Because that standard, well, honestly, it's a little extreme.
Yeah, so really it's more of a preference, not a non-negotiable.
But in your head, it was a non-negotiable until it became a preference.
So evaluate your list.
Yep.
Now let's be honest, at 22, did we really like look at the list and evaluate?
No, we sort of lucked into that.
I did?
What are you talking about?
No, she did not.
We'll talk about later on a couple other things that we sort of lucked in here.
And our advice to you is just because we happened to luck into it, doesn't mean that it's not worth really evaluating and see if you can be more intentional with how you do it.
And that's the guidance we've given to our daughters.
Which again, if you're joining us for the first time, we've got twin daughters that are in their 20s.
One got married a little over a year ago, and the other one is still looking.
Let's leave it at that.
And she does listen, so I'm sure she'll be like, what do you mean I'm looking?
Anyway, all right, let's move on.
Thanks for sharing that story, appreciate it.
Made me look okay.
There's been some other inc moments that I've not looked very good in, so it was okay.
But that one was, because you said the right thing without knowing that that was the standard of mind.
There you go.
Let's take a little trip down this concept of the optimization trap and what nobody's telling you to look for.
Now, what do we mean by the optimization trap?
Dating apps have actually done maybe as much harm as they've done benefit into how you find good partners these days.
And one of the big problems that dating apps have caused is they've shifted our mentality from looking for something that is good for me to looking for the best thing.
And this optimization of, this meets all the things I really need, but is there a better option?
Can I find a better price?
Can I find a different quantity?
Can I find, like, so we're into this mode where instead of looking for something that meets my needs, I'm looking for the best thing that meets my needs.
And I think that is, it moves you from, is this person good for me to is this person the best?
And that's a very different, it goes back to that perfection standard.
And so that's the optimization thing.
So when we say, maybe you need to look for someone who's good enough, everybody goes, what do you mean, good enough?
That sounds like settling.
No, good enough is not settling.
Good enough is admitting to yourself that you're gonna choose a person and you're gonna invest in a relationship with a real person, not some arbitrary standard that nobody can meet.
Yeah, because they can go from being good enough to the best.
Best for you.
The best for you, especially if you're putting in the effort at a time.
But if you're looking for a ready-made best, how does one identify that, who that is?
And we would argue that this isn't a one-time choice when you're talking about long-lasting marriage.
You're always choosing to lean in and choose that person and build that person.
And if you have this mindset in finding your initial partner of optimization and you bring that into your marriage and you're trying to always optimize and look, that's not a recipe for a long-lasting marriage.
At that point, you have to really invest in.
In our last episode, we talk about the myths or the lies that social media tells you.
And one of those lies that social media tells you is there's always someone better.
No, I mean, there's not always someone better.
Sometimes you're with the right person and you just need to do the work of building with that person.
I think this is kind of a little bit of the meat of what we really want people to hear here, which is what are the things that should be on your list that nobody is telling you?
These are the quiet voices on social media.
These are the calm voices of, not to brag, but wisdom or people who have done this, not the loud social media influencer who maybe doesn't have the background.
So what are some things that we think should absolutely be on your list?
Yeah, the ability to repair after conflict, because despite what they try to show you on social media for the people that show you only the positive stuff, is that there's going to be conflict.
Okay, so how do you resolve?
And how do you compromise?
And how do you repair if there's been any, after?
Yeah, so tell me what repair means in that scenario.
What does repair mean?
It's the coming back together after a fight, right?
It is, it is, it's the compromise.
It's the realizing, okay, we're on the same page.
We've come to a decision about what, or we've worked out whatever it was.
Or we hurt each other in this process, because sometimes we hurt feelings or we get out, but if you hold on to that and you never fix it, you never repair it, you never come back to, okay, we're setting that aside, we're moving past that, then you have the tendency to bring it back on future arguments.
And it always sort of becomes this little nagging piece that maybe shows up when it shouldn't show up.
So when we say the ability to repair, it means you get through the fight, and then you come back to a position of, okay, we're good again.
We're not gonna carry all that old baggage as we move forward.
Yeah, and you talk about carrying the baggage.
As a counselor, I tell my clients, you have to let your partner know if they did hurt you, because sometimes you don't know in a conflict if somebody's been hurt, if they're not sharing the information with you.
You have to share that so you can repair.
It's hard to repair something and get past it so it's not being brought up again if you didn't realize that you had said something or done something that really hurt them.
Yeah, I think we'll hit this later with what was on our expectation list in our 20s versus what's in our expectation list in our 50s.
I would say that's a great example, not to jump the gun on that topic, but in our 20s, I didn't have an expectation of you to communicate completely that you'd been wounded or not.
Now I have an expectation that if I've done something, you're going to express that and we're gonna have a discussion about that.
You had a tendency in your 20s to sort of internalize and hold and be quieter on that stuff and maybe stew on it.
Now we have the expectation, no, no, don't let that happen.
And that's something that we learned.
So that's more than a deep dive into the ability to repair.
No, no, it's good.
I wanted to know what repair meant, because not everybody understands that term.
That's a trending topic or a trending word, but I don't know if it means like I wouldn't have known initially what does repair mean.
All right, another one is you want to know how they react in times of struggle or challenge.
And it's hard to pressure test that in your 20s, but look for signs of does this person remain calm and level-headed and how do they respond?
Or when I go to them with a problem that they may or may not understand as a problem, how do they receive that?
Are they there?
Are they a sounding board?
Are they receptive to helping?
Or do they just shrug it off?
Because like over the long term, you become the person that they come to and you want them to be the person you go to.
So how do they do in times are tough, however you define tough, because there's lots of tough that comes.
What else?
Tell uncomfortable truth.
I never tell uncomfortable truth.
Is this the trap?
Do you just do on those?
Do you?
No, is this a trap?
How do I look in these jeans?
Right, does my butt look bad in these pants?
Is that the uncomfortable truth?
No, that's not what we're talking about.
That's a little more, that's a little superficial.
I think it's more of the, hey, I don't like my job.
I'm going to quit and go do this.
Well, the hard truth from your partner might be, no, we have a mortgage and we have this.
Or we have kids.
Right, and we can't afford you to go do your passion project right now.
Maybe that's a hard truth.
Or maybe you have a partner who's struggling at work and they're not accomplishing.
And you're listening to this going, well, I'm seeing where you actually aren't doing a few things that would advance you.
And so maybe you're playing a little bit of the victim card here.
And really, maybe this is on you.
Like there's some hard truths.
Ouch.
Yeah, exactly.
Wait, that wasn't an attack, but did you feel that as an attack?
No, no.
But now that you do, I'm thinking.
I was acting.
Well, when you were building your business, maybe I did commit.
I think I have come down a little hard a couple different times about, hey, I hear what you're saying, but that's not really reality.
Right.
So, not to belabor it, but someone who will tell you the hard truth, wherever that hard truth needs to be heard.
Yeah, I think it's important to, will you continue to choose your partner once that initial infatuation, passion, dies down a little bit?
Once you've been together for a while, things get quieter.
Do you still choose to be with him?
Is this still your person?
Yeah, and I think the trap of a lot of men's list that is so hard on physical attraction is that, let's be honest, physical beauty and time don't always play nice together.
Sometimes we gain weight.
We don't look as young and fit as we did in our 20s.
So, you really have to look beyond the very superficial and like, is this a person that I'm gonna still be attracted to and lean into?
So, yeah, I think that's a good one.
Yeah.
Now, okay, I previewed this earlier.
I didn't realize it was quite so soon, but we lucked into two big traits that we absolutely think should be on your list.
I'll go with the first one.
And I've covered this in one of our very early episodes.
I think the one on initial attraction.
I looked into the fact that Melissa has an incredibly good emotional intelligence.
And what that means is that she's able to, yes, get angry, get mad at stuff, get upset, get annoyed, whatever the thing is.
But she has the ability to come back to a neutral level where we can discuss and plan and go in.
Melissa doesn't live in the extremes emotionally, which is massively productive for our relationship.
If you find someone who runs hot and runs cold, that can be okay.
It's just that they always stay hot or they always stay cold and they can never come back to a sort of a cool, a medium, then you have problems.
So for me, I really was not looking for someone who had an emotional intelligence that was good.
But man, looking back and looking at my friends who have dated a lot of people who don't have that, and they tell me the stories and they tell me the breakup stories.
And it's like, holy shit, like, dang.
I mean, I might give Melissa crap sometimes for some of the emotional stuff that we go through, but whew, lucked out on that front.
So that was my long one.
And so what I want to say to you is you're welcome.
Yeah, exactly.
You're welcome for me being me.
Yeah, I was waiting for you to stop so I could say that.
I was so excited about telling you you were welcome that I have good emotional regulation.
I was saying nice words to you, so you should have let me go and go.
That's a good point.
All right.
Where I looked into, and wouldn't have thought about this at 20, a long-term strategic thinker and planner.
That's what you are.
You had to help me identify what, I spit out the words of how I felt about what you bring to, one of the things that you bring to our relationship, and you helped me say that.
And so what we mean by that is I knew, I've always known that Michael's intelligent and that he had thought about the future, and I had thought about the future too, but I hadn't thought about the future so far out the fact that we started our retirement savings at 21, that was something you brought to me.
And I went, oh yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
And how far in the future you look and are able to implement things now, and I can't think of many goals that we haven't met because you're really good about thinking really far into the future and planning for things, and that wasn't on my 22-year-old list.
Right, and our point to you would be, if you plan on being with someone for 30 or 40 years, it's nice if they don't live in the moment all the time.
It's nice if they can look beyond today.
And I think one of the things that we're very good at is that not just finances, but there's other goals that we've had that we sort of set those targets and we work to them, but we don't fixate them.
We live in the moment, but we plan for the future.
And I think that, yeah, I think that's nice.
It's one of the things I do bring.
I'm pretty good at that stuff.
So.
You're welcome.
Perfect.
There we go.
I was like, where is it going?
Yeah, you're welcome, okay.
All right.
That's exactly what I was looking for, yes.
Nice, all right.
Today, we're bringing back one of our reoccurring segments that we like to call from his perspective, from her perspective, and it's exactly what it sounds like.
We're gonna focus a little bit about a gender view on standards.
So I would argue that both men and women are being told that their standards are too high or they're wrong.
So let's talk about that a little bit.
You'll often hear women talk about how they want a partner who's emotionally present, consistent, makes a genuine effort.
Those things are actually super reasonable.
Like there is nothing unreasonable about that, but often they get the response of, oh, your standards are too high.
You're gonna end up alone, right?
That is not helpful.
And society's not calling those high standards, they're calling them unrealistic.
I think you see that a lot, right?
I do, I agree with that completely.
In my private practice, my therapy practice, I see women talk themselves out of wanting those very basic realistic things because they've been told time and time again that they're not realistic.
They're never gonna find somebody if they have that.
And so they either lower their bar or they overcorrect and build their list into something just so huge that no man, no person is ever gonna get over it.
And they call it a standard.
Yeah, so they prey on their fear of being alone when their standards are actually often very reasonable.
Now, what about men?
What are men told?
Right?
I kind of feel bad for y'all because- Not me, I'm an old man.
I don't have any standards anymore.
It's the young men that have to deal with this one.
Anyway.
Sorry, my standard is set so high that no one can meet my standard.
All right, go on, sorry.
But anyway, men get criticized for having standards that are too shallow to focus on the physical, as we were discussing earlier without using the specific words, to surface level, not going deep enough.
They say their standards just aren't deep enough.
Yeah, so I will 100% back any young man out there who says attraction matters.
It absolutely does.
But if I at 22 had said that's the only thing that matters, or I hadn't gone even further down into that, then I wouldn't have ended up with someone who could say it for the longterm.
So I don't think men are told, should be told that their standard is wrong.
They should just be told that it's not deep enough.
It needs to be expanded.
And the problem is no one's telling them, well, what does expanding it look like?
They're just being told you're wrong with your standard.
So men are being told their standard is too shallow.
Women are being told theirs are too high and unrealistic.
Put those aside.
What's a standard that no one is talking about that both men and women need to be aware of?
It's the standard by which you live.
Are you the kind of partner that somebody would want to choose?
And nobody's thinking about that.
Yeah, I think that's great.
And I would say that no one's thinking about that because it takes self-awareness.
It takes self-reflection.
And so if you find yourself over and over and over again, meeting a partner who's not living up to the standards you've set and everything, well, maybe you need to look at yourself and say, am I actually living up to the standard that I'm setting for other people?
And if I'm not living up to that standard, maybe that's why I keep ending up in relationships where the standard's not being met.
So we would argue that, again, put aside those lists, a standard that everybody needs to have is, are you meeting the standard you're setting for others?
Are you a partner worth picking?
Meaning tough love, right?
Okay, that's our perspective on his perspective, her perspective.
I think that is all been talking about pre-marriage, but let's talk a little bit about how your standards might change a little bit or what's the importance of standards or what's the harm of standards when you come inside a relationship, inside a marriage?
Let's do a little bit of an exercise here.
What was our standard or some of our standards, some of our list items when we were a couple of years into our marriage versus what they are now?
Hey, that's a good question.
I think I still had that.
I wanted to do a lot of things together.
I wanted the weekends to be, because we worked during the week or we were going to school during the week, I wanted our standard, I wanted us to be together for like the entire weekend.
Now, yes, I'd like to spend time with you on the weekend, but I don't have to.
I still feel connected without that because we have other time together and I value that as much.
And it doesn't have to be every moment that we're not at work that we need to be together.
Yeah, I think we're a little more confident and independent now than we maybe were then.
We were, in those early days, we were maybe more codependent, more like the relationship took up a large percentage of our being and who we were.
And that sort of makes sense.
Newlyweds sort of is a term and your first year together and all that sort of stuff.
Now we have fully rounded, well, interests that don't overlap 100%.
So yeah, that's an interesting one.
I would say our communication expectations have changed massively.
I think in our 20s, we communicated what we thought was well, but nowhere near how clearly we communicate now.
If there's an issue or if there's a desire or if there's a change we need to make, we are much more upfront about it.
And I would say our skills for having those conversations are way more developed.
It helps being married to a counselor.
Right, and I've had to work on mine over the years, even as though I'm trained.
Oh, yes, you have.
I'm trained in this, but I have still had to work because it's different in your personal life.
Even though I know what to do, because I'm trained in it, I've been practicing for two decades now, but doing it in your personal life, it's a little bit harder.
Yep, exactly.
And I would say our level of shared values has gotten tremendously deeper.
So I think we sort of knew each other and what our goals and ambitions were and value for family and value for careers and maybe some social causes or political, those sort of things.
And we're not 100% aligned by any stretch on those things, but we have a much better understanding of where we are on all those things than we didn't have in our 20s.
So that's how our standards expectations have sort of changed in those years.
I think the risk that people have is that if you think the person you're marrying is not gonna change over the time you're together, that's a problem because they are gonna change.
So if your standards don't change and you're trying to live by your 20s standards and your 30s and 40s, good luck with that.
It's probably not, your relationship's probably struggling.
Yeah, they don't apply.
At some point, they're just not gonna apply anymore.
Yeah, so if you're wondering why you're feeling a little disconnected, maybe the standards you have for each other need to be refreshed, right?
So maybe be intentional with a refresh on those.
This does bring up sort of one of those questions of like, if you haven't seen standards, how do you sort of know?
And harkening back to the story you shared earlier about me not seeing long-term marriages and everything, I think there is a lot of learning that can be done by seeing negatives, all right?
And not to throw anybody under the bus, but I've said it to him a hundred times, so it's not throwing him under the bus, but I laugh with my dad, I joke with my dad, and I said he was an absolute fantastic role model because I saw what he did and I went the other way.
And I say it with lots of love, but there is lessons to be learned, there are lessons to be learned when you see things that if you're self-aware enough to go, okay, that's not working, and this goes back to the, if you find yourself in the same relationship over and over again and it's not working, are you self-aware enough to go, okay, that's not working, what are the options?
And today there are so many easy ways to find what the others are, what the other options are.
Yeah, very true.
I actually just used that in a therapy session today.
It was about parenting because they didn't have good parenting.
So what does that, how will they know to be, if they're gonna be a good parent?
Should I have kids?
Because I was not given a role model of how to be a good parent.
And we talked about the negative.
So standards don't change, don't end in marriage.
They actually must evolve if you actually want to be together long-term.
Right, let's move to our final segment for the day.
This is our Pen to Paper segment.
In the Pen to Paper segment, we give you a practical challenge or a reflection to help you write your own lasting marriage story.
Today is centered on relationship standards and the need to really pressure test your list rather than tossing it aside entirely.
Melissa has a reflection for you to work on today.
She has created a free guide to help you with this exercise.
You can download that in the links in the description or show notes.
So Melissa, I prompted your guide.
How about you explain what the heck this guide is gonna do?
Take us through our exercise for today.
Are you questioning whether your dating standards are too high?
If so, here's a simple three-step plan to help you decide.
Step one, write down your top three to four must-haves.
Step two, next to each of those, write down where they came from.
If you're not sure, put a question mark.
Step three, any standards that are out of date that might really be preferences or are of an unknown origin, reevaluate.
See if they need to stay on the list or be thrown out.
Awesome, sounds super simple.
Write down my must-haves, see where the heck they came from, social media, past traumas, wherever.
Evaluate, are they actually any good and do they need to stand?
And oh, maybe it was a preference, not a must-have.
All right, as a reminder, there is a link in the description to a little worksheet that'll help you fill out that, go through that.
That's today's Pen to Paper segment.
This brings us to the end of today's episode where we discuss relationship standards and the reality that they are often not too high, but rather optimized for the wrong things.
With that, we wanna thank you for joining us and we invite you to connect with us by joining the free Penned in Ink community.
Here, we share free digital guides and the occasional updates to help you build your own long lasting love.
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Thanks everyone.
Thank you.