Why 50/50 Relationships Don't Work

What's up everyone, welcome to this week's episode of the Mindset Mastery Code, and today we have got a juicy topic around why 50-50 relationships are BS. We're going to look at why the sum of two halves definitely don't equal a whole when it comes to valuable relationships, when it comes to successful and deeply connected relationships, which, for a lot of you, you are either in, you are either working towards or you would like to find, and as somebody who's been divorced twice and recently out of a pretty incredible but hard testing relationship, there's a lot of realizations that I've had throughout that journey, as well as, obviously working with people in the change game for over 24 years, and how their relationships have affected their own level of self-worth, self-love, self-talk and, ultimately, even the results and the way that they live. So a lot of these things you relate to a lot of them. It might challenge how you are currently looking at it, but for me, I just love the fact that when you can have a shift in perspective, you start to see things from a different angle. You start to view things in a way where your emotions change, the way that you see different outcomes can transform, and ultimately that's my aim for this week's episode and when I look at a successful relationship, one that, for me, if I identify what successful means, it's a relationship that evolves and develops over time. It's the type of relationship where, as you both grow, you end up growing together. And for me, with my first marriage, it was not the fact that she wasn't a great human being, that we didn't have a lot of things in common, we just grew apart. For me, I've always been driven to grow and develop and everything else, and she just wasn't something that we had a shared value in and it wasn't something that we could even really communicate with long-term. And what ended up happening is I continued to grow and she didn't. So I outgrew her, and I know a lot of women and guys that I speak to that often will refer to the fact that they outgrew a relationship, they outgrew their connection, they outgrew the person that they were with, and I don't look at that ever from an egoic point of view. I look at that purely from the fact that if you're somebody that wants more from life, you're somebody that wants to grow and evolve and get better you always are. But if somebody's not willing to do that and they're not willing to challenge themselves, test themselves, form new beliefs, develop their current beliefs. Ultimately, you are going to grow apart because one's heading in one direction, the other one's not really moving at all, it's just staying stuck. And you'll see this in relationships where the connection is so great in the beginning and there's so much interest and passion and desire and everything there, and then things stay the same for a certain period of time until one person wants more. And if both people don't want more, that means one person's going to get left behind. And again, for me, I don't look at that in a judgmental point of view, I look at that as a fact that it's just evolution. It's just how we as human beings are meant to operate, and you're either going to play the same game or you're not, and ultimately that's going to mean whether you're going to continue to choose each other or whether you're going to grow apart. So when I look at two hives not making a whole, why would I want 50% of you and 50% of me equal 100%? It's crazy, but so many people will look at a relationship and think that I've got to give up half of what I want, half of what I like, I need to sacrifice in order to match what the other person needs or wants, and then in some way they're going to have to do the same. So we'll come together and two halves make a whole. No, they don't. They're two halves that just came together to create one half each. That's not a whole right. If you can't be yourself in your entirety and if that version of you cannot constantly develop, cannot constantly grow because you choose it, not because the other person chooses it for you, then ultimately I'm never getting the best version of you. And I've worked with busy mums for a long time and I often see for them as a particular group. They'll often forego who they are. They often don't even do the things that used to ignite them and fulfill them and drive them and just give them a sense of purpose and happiness, because now for them they're a mum and the other half of them doesn't exist anymore. And then they wonder why they feel broken. They feel half of who they are. They feel like they're coming from a place of lack, like something's missing. Well, of course it is. Half of you is missing. Or if you haven't evolved in so long because you've been giving yourself to everything and everyone else, then you are only half of who you used to be, or half of who you could be. Think about that Half of who you could be is not the best you. It's half of your potential, which, at the end of the day, if you told your kids, hey, do you know what? Just give half of your best and never show the world your real. You Like imagine that that would be fucked up. Advice right, but yet you're doing that for yourself every day. You're showing up in your relationship that way. You're even having fights and blaming shit on your partner because they are operating that way. Yet so are you. And whenever I dive into any of these subjects again, I share my scars, my battle wounds. I am by no means a relationship expert, but I am somebody that is always willing to take responsibility and gain awareness around the things that haven't haven't worked, cause that's how I learn, that's how I grow, that's how, ultimately, I hope to find the type of relationship that will fuel me for the rest of my life. And if it's not the rest of your life, it'll fuel me for a portion of my life. And when you're looking at going into a relationship, or if you're currently in a relationship and you feel like there's such an element of sacrifice, all I know from experience is that's going to lead to a gap. It's going to lead to a place where you both feel like you're lacking something Not that you're giving something up, that you're lacking something and at some point you're going to go look for it. It might be in another partner, it might be in another situation, it might be in another industry, it might be in another fucking country. I've been there and done that before, right, and ultimately, I don't wanna be in the type of relationship that's coming from a place of scarcity and lack. I wanna be in the type of relationship where I'm constantly having to grow in order just to keep up with the relationship that I want. I'll say that again keeping up with the relationship that I want. That is going to fuel me, excite me, help me grow and ultimately, if I find a person that shares the same values as that, then we get to choose each other over and over and over again. And if I had to articulate to somebody exactly what I would want in a relationship, it would be that it would be the fact that the two of us get to be ourselves in our entirety. We might not agree on everything. We might not see everything the same way. We might have different perspectives that challenge and test us and force us to heal in different ways because we're gonna trigger things in each other. But we get to do that together. We get to go through that together and on the other side of it all, we get to choose each other and we get to choose each other through every single one of those moments. As time goes on and as a human, women crave security, men crave certainty in relationships and to know that you're constantly choosing the other person or the other person chose you, then you have that. You have that security, you have that certainty, but you also have the excitement of how that feels. I'm not settling for your half, I'm not settling for 50% of you, and that's okay because you sacrifice X, y and Z, because you're a mom or a dad or whatever you need to be. No, I get to choose the best you and the best you chooses me. And you think about when you first meet someone and you can see that they start to identify and see the things in you that you like and they start to choose you over whatever it might be, or they just start to choose you because they wanna spend time with you, they want you, they wanna connect with you. Intimacy all of those things being chosen feels fucking amazing. Yet we forget that we have the choice to do that on an ongoing basis because we've been too caught up, settling for half of what we think we deserve. And a great way to identify this is if your world and their world becomes one world and I've lived through this too many times now, like for me. It's a massive red flag and it's hard because in the beginning you can't really identify it, but over time you'll see it Is that their world becomes yours, their routine becomes your routine, your routine becomes their routine and vice versa. And your worlds become intertwined. And in some ways that's nice if you're sharing aspects of each other's worlds that you like. But when your world, your views, your everything else becomes the same, and if their opinion is different, than it's wrong. If their perspective is not the same as yours, then it's not the right perspective and they need to change what they're doing Now. It's intertwined, it's messy, and you start to lose or give up parts of yourself because you don't want this world to get rocked, you don't want it to get shook up. You don't want things to create drama or anything else. So you slowly start to morph into one world and again in time, parts of you dissipate. Things that you like, your own interests, your own passions. Those things aren't getting fueled. You're not putting energy and time and focus into those things anymore. Their friend group becomes your friend group. If you want to go out with your friend group and not go with her or him, then that's okay. Why would you what it's not okay? Why would you want to spend time with them and not me? Why aren't I included in all of these different things? And a lot of that comes back down to fear. It comes back to a place of scarcity again. Because what if you enjoy time with them more than you enjoy time with me? What if you're going to not like me as much because you like them anymore? What if you're going to meet somebody else because I'm not around and it's all coming from this place of lack and scarcity. It's not coming from this place of choice. I choose you. Lots of things will happen in my life, lots of different things will come into my life, but I choose you. It doesn't mean that you're not going to fuck up. It doesn't mean that you're not going to have emotions and reactions and fights and all the rest of this stuff, but at the end of it, I choose to do life with you and I want all of you, not half. I don't want my world to become your world. I want our two worlds to be able to coexist and we get to introduce each other to different aspects of those worlds. We get to share different things and viewpoints because our worlds are individual. The way that I see things is based on my world, not just our world, and you might think these things are small, but there's a reason why most marriages 75% of marriages now end in divorce 75%. If I told you that you're going to go work for the next 20 years of your life and 75% of you are going to go broke in that time, would you be excited to start whatever industry you were looking to start at if you knew 75% of you are going to end up broke? No, but yeah, these are the statistics. And marriage and people think that this stuff is out of their control and for me even to end my last relationship was like look, if you can't choose me because of past pain and hurt or anything else. You're not willing to choose who I am, who I'm showing up as, who. I am literally standing in front of you because of things in the past that actually have nothing to do with the future. Like nothing. Then, okay, I showed up. I showed up as the best me. You didn't choose me. So guess what? I'm going to choose me and I'm not coming from a place of lack, because I know that I showed up as the best me. Even though I made mistakes, I owned it. There was communication around it, everything was transparent and in the open, so that ultimately, we both had the choice. She didn't choose what I wanted, but I get to now choose what I need for me. When you look at your world becoming their world and you start to see that you're losing yourself and what you need, that's the first sign that you now need to start claiming back the things that are important to you, and I see this in multiple capacities, where sometimes two partners will come together and they'll work in a business. And now what I need from you is based on what I need for the business. It's not based on what you need or the value I see that you can bring to the business. I also see this in the transformation space, where the woman used to have a career or the man used to have a career and now their careers have changed because of kids and lifestyle, or where they want to live or whatever else and now suddenly what they needed, what was a part of them, is now gone. It's now being sacrificed or it's being changed into something where it's both of theirs, rather than yours and mine individually. And when you start to see that, what I just want you to take stock of because I've made this mistake before and I see hundreds and hundreds of hundreds of people make the same mistake Is the fact that you say nothing, you claim nothing, you do nothing, and if you listened to my podcast episode last week where I talked about suffering and silence, this is a huge part of that and that's why I said this was a follow on to that. The fact that you are in a relationship where you are not getting what you want or you're putting up with things that you don't want or don't need that is chipping away at who you are or who you want to be. You're the only one that is responsible for changing that, even if it means you get the fuck out of that relationship, or you give an ultimatum and please understand that every situation everyone's different. This is my perspective, not necessarily the only plan that exists. But if you've never communicated, if you never put your hand up, and then suddenly you expect your partner to know exactly how you're feeling, what you want, and it erupts because you've been suffering in silence for so long that you're like a giant volcano that's about to fucking explode at any moment. When they ask you, why is there no pepper in the cupboard? Yeah, like it'll be this most stupid thing sometimes that will cause the volcano to erupt. But when you haven't communicated for so long, you've been suffering in silence for so long and this stuff has been building up and creating angst and anxiety and frustration and all of those negative emotions, that shit is going to erupt and you're either going to do something really stupid or you're going to say something at a level that you probably don't mean it to, that is going to take them by surprise. Yet my caveat on all of that is that's still better than not saying anything at all. So if you're sitting there and you're talking to your friends or you're talking to yourself or you're thinking about what life is like right now, and you're losing yourself. You don't have what you need, you don't ask for what you want, you don't feel like you can claim what it is that's important to you. It's on you, it's always going to be on you, and you are the one that is doing this to yourself. I'm going to leave you with a final thought around all of this stuff, because this is a topic that obviously can trigger a lot of people, but at the end of the day, it doesn't need to be that complicated. You should have your own interests, your own passions, the way that you want to live, and the best part about that is being able to share that with the person that you care about the most in this world. I'm not doing it because I want to move away from you and get away from you. I'm just doing it because this is the stuff that's important to me. It's what fuels me, drives me, excites me. This is how I want to live my life, but I want to live my life with you, so I get to share all of that with you, and for people to look at that and think that that's them leaving or moving away, it's just coming from a lack of trust. And if you have that lack of trust in your relationship already, what's that connected to? What's connected to your core belief that you're not good enough, you're not loved enough, you're not worthy enough fear of abandonment, fear of rejection, because you need to sort your own shit out. If that's where you are, those are your insecurities, those are your beliefs. Your partner hasn't necessarily fueled those or they're not really justifying those to you. You need to sort your own shit out in order to cope with those better. And it's the same for them. And I see so many people hold themselves back because they're afraid of those things, which then ultimately leads them to be in a relationship where sacrificing is their armor, it's their shield of honor, it's their. I do this because of this, I do this for them, because of that, you do this for me. Because of that I gave up all of this stuff for you and blah, blah, blah. Cool. I am not arguing that. We've both had to put in a certain amount of effort. We both had to show up. We've both had to make choices, but at the end of the day, that was your fucking choice and I also had the same choice to accept that, to do that as well. Nobody made me do that. And so many people stay stuck right here that he did this for me and he did this for me and if I did that to him it would break him. She did that for me and if I say that to her it'll just ruin everything because she won't believe me. And it all comes back to that fear of rejection, fear of not being loved, fear of losing, fear of loss. And then we sit in sacrifice and think that that's the answer to being in a relationship and then you wonder why you constantly feel like you're not able to get what you want from this relationship. Where there's lack, where something is always up, where it feels complicated, where there feels that there's drama or that there's something between you that's sort of pulling you apart. Sacrifice is not. The key Solutions are Coming up with ways where I'm willing to do X, y and Z to choose you to choose this. You're willing to do X, y and Z to choose me to choose this. It's a solution, it's a bridge. It's how our two worlds stay connected and how we can continue to build more bridges over time as we both evolve and grow and our lives develop and move in the directions that we want them to go individually. And then the cool thing is by choosing each other, you can choose how you want your worlds to meet, how those bridges connect, what they look like. What values do we share? How do we want to communicate? How do we want to feel? What do you want to get out of this relationship? What do you need from this relationship? What do we need from each other? Choosing solutions, communication, honesty, transparency, trust and ultimately leading to a massive and huge level of connection and intimacy. Because I'm not going to stay in a relationship where I'm trying to be the best me and I feel like I don't have the level of intimacy that I want. Why the fuck would I sacrifice what I need on an intimate level? Because they're nice, she's nice, she takes good care of me, he loves me, but every single time that you are intimate, you feel like you are lacking something. That is sacrifice, that is not solution. I can love somebody forever, but they're not what I want to choose, and I'm okay with that, and so will you be if you remove the lack of scarcity, if you remove the fears that you have, if you start to choose things that are in line with what you want, because all I can tell you from my perspective is there's going to be aspects of what you want in a relationship that are going to weigh more than others. I know a lot of people where security is just so big for them. If they don't have it, even intimacy over time won't fill the gap, even a level of communication over time won't fill the gap, even though those things are all interconnected. If they don't feel like to have security, whether it be financially, whether it be around family, whether it'll be based on location or their kids or whatever else, that value for them weighs more. For me it's intimacy and connection. Like for me, I can hear somebody say whatever the fuck they want all day long. It's not going to mean anything to me until I see that that's how they show up. Over time, anybody can say anything short term, anybody can do anything for a little while, especially in the beginning, but over time you're going to see somebody's commitment. You're going to see their true colors. You're going to see how they live, the values that they speak. So, as you're listening to all of this and you're thinking about either the relationship you're looking for, the relationship you're in, even reflecting back on past relationships and now understanding why they probably didn't work and why you need to work on you throughout this process so that if you are going to choose somebody else in the future, that you also get chosen, that you also get what you want from it. Because in order to have self-love, in order to live in a way that has integrity that's my authentic self and life that I want it has to come from choice, not sacrifice. It will never, ever work long term, or the one thing that will get sacrificed is you, and you're going to come out the other side when whatever happens, to blow shit up and realize that you just sacrificed however many years that you're never going to get back Ever. But if you can make that choice, then still make it. It's better than sacrificing even more years. Anyway, as always, if you want help nailing your mindset, if you want to work on self-love, self-mastery, to be able to create the level of results that you want in your life, in your relationships, in your body, in your career, whatever it might be for you, reach out to me and I'll tell you more about our mindset mastery program and how you can get access to that, and if there's something, individually, I can do for you, please reach out to me at adamantilovechanginglivescom, or even just send me a message on social media, and if you feel like there's somebody that could benefit from this with their relationship or with where they're at in life, please do me and them a favor and share this with as many of those people as you can, and I look forward to connecting with you in next week's episode.