but I Don't Because Of You
love, Introspection, and Self-Annihilating Beliefs
Didn’t think I’d ever be giving what some might call ‘relationship advice’ but here we are.
Look, I’m not trying to be one of those bloggers who constantly posts daily insights about how cutting carbs altogether made me into a superhuman olympian, nor am I trying to tell everyone that Hegelian Dialectics is the way to go when analyzing history. And I’m certainly not trying to do self-help, since I still gotta grow a bunch myself. I just post shit when I either get excited about something or want to put thoughts and personal experience into words, especially when that might help someone else in my life (or out in the wider world) with their own perspective on things.
My girlfriend and I have been together for the better half of a decade now. We started years before COVID, lasted through the pandemic, and have since her university graduation begun living together for nearly a year as of my writing this post. So funny enough, in terms of keeping a relationship going, and going strong at that, I have some insight.
That’s really what this whole post will be: Insights. Primarily because so many different people say the boring old spiel that goes like communication is the key to a healthy relationship and if you can learn to communicate then everything will turn out great and blahblahblah…
Vague. Too vague to really help, because of course people say to themselves that they’re communicating, that you should be vulnerable and open, and you should make your partner feel like they’re #1. Like, of course you do. The problem is that many people—
— myself included, by the way. I’m in no way better than you in figuring all this shit out, I just had to work through my own shit and personal experiences and philosophical musings with my girlfriend who is far more in-tune with herself than I was. Which is to say, she’s wiser than me, and she won't deny it —
— Believe that any actions that should be taken to improve the relationship exist in a vacuum. That couldn’t be further from the truth. And many people (guilty as charged) often believe that you can take action externally without looking inward to figure out if your own internal processes and belief systems are fucked. In my opinion, that’s a recipe for disaster.
So without further ado, let’s get into it. I’ve done my best split my own learnings from my relationship and all of the speed-bumps along the way into the five items below. There’s probably more, but these seemed like the ones least common in online discourse, so I figured I’d try my hand at adding to it. Our travel itinerary is as follows:
This Wall Helps As Much As It Harms
What About What I Want?
‘Should’ Is Irrelevant
Manage Through Problems
Self-Annihilating Beliefs
1. This Wall Helps As Much As It Harms
The first involves something that I noticed over time, though not necessarily stemming from the relationship. It came more from just observing my own thought processes and realizing where many of them lead, as well as ahem Reddit.
So the ‘Wall’ that I am referring to is a mental block I had, and I’ve found others had through discussion, within my own mind. This wall, in the best words I can find, is essentially a mental block around certain core beliefs that is fuelled primarily by the Ego. It is a condition that I had which, especially when reinforced, gave me belief systems that they realize later on aren’t really predicated on any legitimate grounds.
Let me give an example: Let’s say I have the belief that I… could get any job I wanted if I actually put real effort in, but I don’t put in that effort because I just don’t feel like it.
You’re probably already seeing the Wall in action. There’s a process that the mind goes through when parsing that entire string of belief, but it just stops at a certain point:
“Why do I not have the job I dream of?”
“Can I get the job I dream of?”
“Yeah, I could if I put more effort into it!” ← Ego, ego, ego.
“Then why am I not putting that effort in now?”
“I just don’t feel like it.”
“Why don’t I feel like it?” ← Incoming Wall
Option 1: “Because I just don’t.” ← Wall: No good reason.
or “It’s not the right time yet.” ← Wall: Delaying indefinitely
or “I need to do A or B or C before it’s the ‘right time’ to do it.” ← Wall: Likely made-up prerequisites
or, or, or…
Option 2: “Because maybe there’s more to getting my dream job than some vague idea of ‘effort’ that I would hypothetically need to put in, and maybe I should explore the real reason behind this belief I have.” ← Wall is starting to crack.
I’m not saying that these walls are necessarily something that is inherently bad, but it is something you should be aware of. I think, especially when it comes to perceptions of myself or yourself that we never evaluate critically, it can be something that comes between people and their partners.
Because here’s the thing: Most of the time, these walls don’t directly impact a relationship with a partner in the way one may think. Instead, in my case, they lowered self-esteem and caused internal conflicts that are never resolved, or worse, beliefs predicated on false assumptions with no proof to back them up. So then people get called Stubborn, or Delusional, or whatever else.
To me, a big part of relationships is keeping the ego in check and practicing humility. Walls like these prevent true introspection and, as I’ve heard from others, prevent true emotional vulnerability. The wall exists to protects the vulnerable from hard truths.
In the example above, the hard truth might be this:
That there isn’t a single, specific ‘thing’ preventing this job-seeking individual from getting that job they dream of. It’s a whole list of ‘things’, and that day they are waiting for when the switch flips in their head and they start chasing that dream job? It doesn’t exist.
People need to start actively working towards the future they want in order to achieve that goal they desire. It won’t simply ‘happen.’
If you have a partner that’s rooting for you, then like in my case, that Wall may be directly impacting your ability to discuss the problem, and that is why it needs to come down. Because without letting them in, you are constantly stoking your own ego with assumptions that keep you safe, but never sated.
2. What About What I Want?
There’s a strange perception of ‘deserving’ things when it comes to relationships. I believe it comes from unspoken needs turning into unspoken demands, and that lack of understanding begins to create distance.
I don’t mean the big stuff either. It can be things as simple as:
Feeling like you deserve your partner's undivided attention when they're spending time with you.
Feeling like you deserve to be complimented and acknowledged when you do good things for your partner.
Feeling like you deserve to be put first in your partner's life, above everything else.
Feeling like you deserve to have your partner anticipate your every need or want without having to communicate them
Ever felt some of these, no matter how small? That nagging feeling that hey, you’re entitled to certain behaviours or actions from your partner, and they’re not understanding that you deserve this and that! So of course, it leads to disappointment and resentment when these expectations aren’t met. Because of course they aren’t; you never gave a fair idea of what those expectations were in the first place.
It took me a while to realize that love is not a given, but something that needs to be actively pursued and nurtured. Actively is the key word, because so much of what makes long-term relationships begin to topple under their own weight is the passivity that comes from needs or desires that were never properly brought up in the open. As a result, a wound starts to fester within the structural foundation upon which a relationship is currently standing on.
And this goes both ways, by the way. It’s unfair for you to feel as though you deserve things from your partner if they weren’t well communicated and, even if they were, are unreasonable expectations. But, it’s equally unfair for your partner to demand things of you.
I think this is the part that isn’t actually explored as much: How do you know if your partner has or hasn’t communicated their expectations adequately when you are too afraid to ask?
Fear. No matter what people might say, fear is the source of this issue. The fear that you cannot ask for what you think you deserve, and not knowing whether what you are expecting is fair compared to other relationships, which leads to a second fear of not knowing if you or your partner are being unreasonable. So, what happens when both of you are unable or unwilling to recognize your grievances, face your demons and actually ask for what you want?
You might get what you wanted, or you might get shut down.
You might laugh, or you might cry.
But what you won’t do is continue to let that wound fester without being addressed. At the very least, you’ll know. And, all goes well, that wound might start healing.
3. ‘Should’ Is Irrelevant
This is the one I am most guilty of, have been guilty of, for years. I like to think that I’ve worked on this and it isn’t so much a problem as it was when I was younger, but I know there’s still a ways to go before I feel like I’ve moved past this conundrum.
So disclaimer: This one has very little to do directly with the relationship and more to do with my partner’s perception of me during the relationship. It has to do with the promises that I’ve made with myself, and the way self-perception impacts how I feel about the relationship. However, in one specific regard that might hit home for some of you, it will impact one partner more than the other.
Something I used to do quite often, without realizing how prevalent it was, is make should statements. Many of them were just about me, but regardless they still impacted far more than that. Some examples are:
I should work out more.
I should eat healthier.
I should work on my hobbies / side projects more.
Simple and innocuous at a glance. But there are two problems with these statements.
The first is that should statements take the onus off of yourself to actually act. Saying that I should do things inherently implies hypothetical positive outcomes and desires without the push to make them tangible. If I say that I should work out more, then that just means I believe it would be good if I were to work out more now, but I am not doing so because to go from should to will requires a lot more effort than I am currently interested in giving.
And listen, these statements on their own aren’t bad. A lot of should eventually could transform into will over time, and pushing yourself to fix a hundred different things at once is a recipe for either anxiety or an impromptu degree in carpentry.
The real problem in relationships as I see it when it comes to these statements is… they’re not the full statements, are they? This may not be the issue for you, it may be your partner thinks or has all but said these things. And whichever it may be, they hurt because they’re so difficult to explicitly disprove. Here goes:
I should work out more…
…but I don’t because of you.I should eat healthier…
…but I don’t because of you.I should work on my hobbies / side projects more…
…but I don’t because of you.
It’s too easy to take a should statement and externalize the reason behind why I can’t turn it into a will statement. If the reason behind why a certain desire or need isn’t being met can be put on a partner without even telling them, or otherwise blamed on someone or something other than myself, then there’s no need to hold myself accountable!
But hey, it’s not this simple of course. People put shoulds on other things like work, family, physical health, mental health, conflicting priorities, whatever.
And all of that isn’t inherently bad. But don’t lie to yourself. Most of the time, if I really wanted to do it, I could have sat my partner down and had that conversation. If working out was really important to me, I could have talked through a way to build a workout routine that worked for myself and my partner.
I say this because this is something that I was guilty of.
For a very long time, I blamed my lack of exercise on my own girlfriend, mostly without even realizing I was doing it. It took several conversations (and my girlfriend verbally knocking my thick head in. Gently, of course) to understand that it was me. The statement of I should work out more… but I don’t because of you was in my head, and the latter half of that sentence was just an excuse I was using because it was so much easier to believe that than the truth:
I didn’t want to rock the boat. I didn’t want to confront my own issues with physical health and the unhealthy ways I saw my own body. And it was easier to keep everything to a should and blame it on someone else than to look inward and realize that it’s me… Hi… I’m the problem it’s me.
Anyway, if this resonates with you, just be aware of these Should statements, especially if you’re trying to pin the reason behind your lack of action on others. My advice? Make a plan, take matters into your own hands, and turn should into will. Yeah, you’ll likely fuck up and take longer than you should (haha). Yeah, you could be initially disappointed with your results and wish you just kept yourself in the comfortable bubble of wishful fantasy.
But eventually, you might even achieve something. Then suddenly you’ll stop wishing you were somewhere else.
4. Manage Through Problems (also, People Aren’t Problems To Solve)
I’m going to make a reference to an animated film that not many know of but one that has stuck with me for a long time, and weirdly enough, came up as a pretty accurate representation of what I wanted to discuss for this point.
The film is Batman: Gotham Knight (stay with me here), and the segment I’m referring to is one in which a young Bruce Wayne travels to India to further his training, and there he meets a woman named Cassandra. She decides to teach him on how to ‘work through pain.’
Honestly the general plot is irrelevant here, but what is interesting is an exchange from which I’ve paraphrased the following:
Cassandra: “So, why are you here, Bruce?”
Bruce: “I’m looking for a way… to deal with my pain.”
Cassandra: “Pain isn’t something you deal with. It’s something you manage.”. . .
Bruce: “And how do I make pain work for me?”
Cassandra: “Pain doesn’t work for you. You work through pain.”
Confused? Let me explain.
The dilemma being presented here is the classic issue that many times I’ve seen the internet try to divide on a gender basis: That men like to directly solve problems, while women seek emotional comfort over solutions, and that this disconnect is what ultimately leads to further issues coming up. My girlfriend first brought my attention to this phenomenon.
I believe there’s a grain of truth in both sides. Specifically, in that one can focus on minimizing problems or otherwise attempting to treat the root of the issue, but that thinking of everything in a Problem vs Solution mindset is severely limiting, if not actively detrimental to actually understanding where the issue lies.
Firstly, I believe people are not made up of problems that need to be solved. Sometimes, there are issues to solve (‘I have a bacterial infection’ → ‘antibiotics’) but more often than not, that which people see as their personal problems are not things that have simple solutions.
For example: My partner complains that they can’t sleep. What might be my first reaction?
Is it to tell them to go to bed earlier, to tell them not to eat too close to their bedtime, to tell them to try improving the air in the room? Likely yes, but now let’s look back up: Did they ask me for advice, or did they just want to hear some empathetic language, so they could feel comfortable knowing that I understand where they are coming from, and perhaps then they want my advice. And then maybe I try some new things, and my partner starts sleeping better. Easy.
Now instead what what if the concern from my girlfriend was “I feel like I don’t have any people to talk to outside of work / you.” What now, eh?
Real relationship conundrums like these aren’t solved, but rather managed. They are slowly but surely worked through by two people (or more!) who realize that understanding the root of a fear or issue requires adopting a more nuanced look at what is happening and where it is coming from. For instance, questions to ask my girlfriend that might come up with this new example may initially include:
“Why don’t you just talk to Friend X or Friend Y?”
“Have you thought about going to this event or that event to meet people?”
Opens her Instagram followers and starts listing all of the friends she has…
But instead, maybe the better way to go about discussing this sentiment involves something more like…
“This seems like something that is upsetting you — is that how you feel?” ← Give her a chance to elaborate her feelings.
“Is this recent? What do you think has caused this?” ← Get an understanding of how she came to this sentiment while acknowledging that it’s different than what you know.
“I do think you sometimes seem feel more lonely, and I think I also…” ← Empathize. Understand things from her perspective and offer up some of yourself too.
Once we’ve talked and done a bit of introspection, then maybe we’ll be on the path to actually working towards figuring out what the partner actually needs. It’s not black-and-white; your partner may need you to let them have a safe space to express themselves and then see where that conversation leads. Attempting to ‘solve’ it with what you believe is a logical approach might result in giving solutions that aren’t truly relevant to the problem at hand.
To try and go immediately from Problem to Solution (if there even is one) is to simplify the situation so much that, should you find yourself in this situation, you have to ask yourself: Are you really looking to ‘solve’ what’s wrong, or just put it out of your mind?
People themselves aren’t problems. They are human beings with their own needs and perspectives.
Problems are rarely solved. They’re managed through conversation, open-mindedness, and the warm embrace of intimate empathy.
5. Self-Annihilating Beliefs
Let’s talk about contradictory beliefs that I’m sure we all hold.
We’ll start with the following belief, which is: I believe that all beliefs are equally valid. We will call this Belief A. On the surface, this belief seems fairly open-minded and tolerant and is often said by people who wish to allow all sorts of non-standard or otherwise fringe beliefs some place in the sun, as every belief deserves a fair shake.
But when taken to its logical extreme, it becomes self-contradictory. If all beliefs are equally valid, then if we bring in Belief B: "I also believe that some beliefs are less valid than others", it must also be considered valid, which contradicts Belief A. That is to say, someone practicing an intolerant belief, such as one that promotes superiority of one culture over another, must also be valid.
As a result, we face a kind of conundrum: Do we now state that this intolerant belief that not all beliefs are equal is itself unequal to all other beliefs, which renders Belief A as invalid, or do we somehow attempt to justify the validity of Belief B, which — well, good luck with that, as you can plainly see how it contradicts Belief A just by putting the two of them side-by-side.
As such, Belief A, all beliefs are equally valid, is an S-AB. To adhere to it would involve either spending eternity wrestling with its paradoxical nature, or to willfully ignore evidence that contradicts the validity of this statement.
We’ll focus on the latter part of that last sentence, because I believe that people are full of Self-Annihilating Beliefs, or S-AB’s. I’ll get to the definition in a bit.
For example, the constant dichotomy of “I am smarter than others around me” vs “Oh I am so dumb.” It’s okay to realize when you know something and when you don’t, but there’s a certain arrogance that comes with positioning oneself above others (I come from an Engineering undergrad, and we all know there’s a fair number of STEM students who place themselves inherently above other non-STEM degrees by default.)
So to phrase this as an S-AB, we could write it as the following, which we will term Belief X.
"I will always naturally be better/smarter/more intelligent than the people around me.”
It’s easy to see the problem with a statement when it’s written out like this, so obviously we’ve already gone past the hardest part, which is actually getting the jumbled thoughts out of the mind and writ to stone. I doubt that the majority of people who have this belief actually think about it in these words, because to get it down so clearly is to start doubting it. And nobody likes doubting themselves on things core to their personality.
I never had something quite so clear-cut as this in my head, at least not for a long time, but in Ontario we have a sort of gifted program that students can get sorted into in middle school, which lasts all the way until the end of high school. Imagine what that does to your head, especially when you’re like 10 years old, to be told hey pal — you’re not one of the regular kids, you’re gifted. The examiners and teachers say that this doesn’t necessarily mean you’re smarter of course, just different, but let’s be honest: It stroked our egos.
We made jokes about it, sure. We made fun of ourselves and said that we were weird, or that we were socially challenged, or that our street smarts were practically non-existent. But underneath all of that, many of us inherently felt that we were better than other people, whether we liked it or not. It’s impossible not to feel that welling of superiority when you’re surrounded by others who can’t help but feel the same.
The problem is that this in itself was an S-AB. Because we no longer had a consistent way to validate it, because we were constantly doing some things worse than others and just brushing it off, and because though we may only have been ‘better’ academically we were using that edge in education to justify our overall feelings of superiority.
So! Let’s bring in Belief Y:
I believe that I am sometimes less intelligent than the people around me.
Suddenly, a defence mechanism affectionately referred to as avoidance comes into effect, and the mind begins to build a wall that prevents it from truly examining the truth behind this belief (hey look I brought it back to my first concept!) Suddenly, the mind realizes that the logic it has been following thus far is incompatible to the beliefs it is trying to uphold. It realizes that in order to maintain sanity, either Belief X must be wrong, or Belief Y. Both cannot be correct.
But here is where the importance of this comes in: Belief X wasn’t just some belief I held among hundreds of others. It was a core belief that formed my sense of self. Whenever others beat me in tests or answered questions in class more eloquently or explained complex concepts to me that I struggled to initially comprehend, I would look at them with vehemence and think I’m not expressing this in the moment, but I am smarter than you. I will always be smarter than you. In this moment I am not, but on the whole, that is what I am. I am Smart.
When a belief so central to your being shatters into pieces upon being examined critically and found incompatible with the truth you can no longer shy away from, it annihilates. That doesn’t mean it gets destroyed entirely, mind you. In Chemistry, Annihilation is defined as a reaction in which a particle and its antiparticle collide and disappear, releasing energy.1
Following this definition, the original S-AB's in question are not destroyed, but rather transformed into something new.
Now that we’ve defined Annihilation, we can finally get to the actual definition of an S-AB:
A Self-Annihilating Beliefs (S-AB) is a core belief or idea that, when taken to its logical extreme, negates itself or becomes self-contradictory. In other words, it is a strongly-held belief that, if applied consistently, would inevitably invalidate its own existence.
- Me
To clarify, though the definition above is my own, this isn’t a real psychological concept, but rather a specific case that I’ve noted in my own experiences that I’ve derived from reading about the Law of Noncontradiction.2
And don’t get me wrong, realizing that I am not simply smarter than others and that placing my self-value on some vague sense of inherent intelligence that couldn’t quantify, was hard. Losing that part of my identity meant acknowledging that I couldn’t rely on it to form my way of life. That, in turn, led to many other things changing, like losing some of the egotistical behaviour that comes with perceiving myself as the smartest person in the room, learning to empathize more with others, and overall give myself more slack when I fucked up.
I think that improved my relationship with my girlfriend, too. Embracing humility is just one benefit, but the greatest change was that I was no longer struggling with some sense of intelligence. Or kicking myself mentally when I didn’t get concepts I thought I should be learning quickly, or ‘losing’ to others that I thought were less intelligent than me. I stopped seeing people as smart or non-smart, but rather as better or worse at specific things than others, like academics or social awareness or self-reflection.
This worldview might seem obvious to many of you, but it took work and pain for me to get to the same place. That Self-Annihilating Belief hurt like hell when it finally broke, but it led to so many new, fresh beliefs, such as:
Some people can be better than others at specific things (and vice versa.)
It’s okay to take longer than others to understand complex concepts, and doing so does not mean you are inherently ‘dumber’ than them.
And following beliefs like this, which are consistent in their specificity (which I’m sure is clear just reading them over again) is a gentler way for a mind to exist. I know I felt more mentally sound and healthier when the self-annihilation of that original belief happened to me, and my girlfriend has noticed my willingness to accept her critiques on my work and myself since.
Because I was no longer seeing things in an inconsistent light, treating myself as less intelligent for needing help and getting advice while trying to maintain an air of superiority. But rather just as a human being, with strengths and weaknesses. And flaws.
And that’s okay.
Thanks for Reading!
I appreciate you taking your time to get to the end of the post! Hopefully I got your brain cells stirring a little.
If you have any feedback or otherwise want to comment your thoughts on my spiel here, please feel free to throw them my way.
Man I love this. I’m not in a relationship right now but this really resonated with where I am in life right now :)