How to Know When to End a Relationship

Make up or break up? Knowing when to call it quits. If you’ve ever been through a rough patch, you know this is a painful question to answer. Do you stick it out? Do you cut the cord and run? Do you sacrifice more to make it work? Do you demand your partner give up everything and run away to Fiji and live happily ever after? These are the hard questions we answer in this episode. To help us figure this out, I’m going to be roasting viewers’ relationships with their partners. I’m going to go over five real-world examples sent in from you, fans struggling with relationships, and in the process I’m going to share the three questions we must all ask ourselves to figure out if it’s time to break up. So get your hot sauce ready, because shit’s about to get spicy. Maybe even have your partner join you for this one. It could be fun… or it could ruin your marriage. CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction: The Most Painful Question in Any Relationship 00:02:08 Question 1: When Your Partner Won't Take Responsibility 00:03:57 The First Essential Question: Are Both People Putting In Equal Effort? 00:08:40 Question 2: When Personal Growth Disrupts the Relationship 00:10:30 Identity Formation and Growing Apart vs. Growing Together 00:15:34 Question 3: Living Your Partner's Dream Instead of Your Own 00:16:56 What Real Compromise Looks Like: Mitigating Misery, Not Maximizing Happiness 00:22:09 The Second Essential Question: Are Compromises Making Things Better or Worse? 00:23:30 Question 4: The Commitment-Phobe Who Found Someone Perfect 00:25:52 Don't Break Up Over Mirages: The Power of Individual Identity in Relationships 00:29:16 Question 5: Three Breakups in Two Years and the Guilt of Walking Away 00:32:38 Healthy vs. Unhealthy Relationships: Feelings vs. Behaviors 00:35:27 The Third Essential Question: Are You Compromising Hoping They'll Change? 00:37:32 Final Takeaways: The Three Questions That Determine If You Should Stay or Go ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://markmanson.net/breakthrough⁩⁠⁠⁠ ⇨ Get clarity on what actually matters. Try Purpose, Mark's AI mentor app that learns your patterns, challenges your blind spots, and helps you take action. Get started at ⁠⁠⁠⁨https://bit.ly/4w46FMH⁠⁠⁠ FOLLOW MARK Mark's IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/markmanson⁠ Solved IG: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/solvedpodcast/⁠ Twitter: ⁠https://x.com/markmanson⁠ LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/markmanson/⁠ YouTube: ⁠https://www.youtube.com/@IAmMarkManson

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  How do you know it's time to end the relationship? If you've ever been through a rocky period in a relationship, you know that this is the most painful question to answer for yourself. Do you stick it out? Do you cut the cord and run? Do you sacrifice more and more, hoping it will work? Or do you demand that your partner give away everything and run away to Fiji with you to live happily ever after? These are the hard questions that we're going to try to answer today. And to help us out, I'm going to be roasting a fan relationship. I'm going to be going over five real world examples sent in by you guys, fans and listeners who have been struggling with their relationships. And I'm going to share the three questions that I believe we need to all ask ourselves to figure out if it's time to break up, or if we should stick it out longer. So get your hot sauce ready, because this one's going to get a little bit spicy and dramatic.

• 0:45Mark Manson?

  Maybe even have your partner join in for it. It could be fun, or it could ruin your marriage. Either way, there's only one way to find out. The podcast that's saving the world, one fewer fuck at a time. It's the subtle art of not giving a fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson. So in this episode, we are going to confront the perennial question, the question that everybody runs to at some point in their life, which is, should I stay or should I go? See, here at Mark Manson Industries, we receive hundreds, if not thousands, of questions each month. We decided to take buckets of these questions and tournament the themes for podcast episodes. So Drew's going to read off the questions to me.

• 1:29Mark Manson?

  And in each situation, I'm going to give my opinion. Is it going to work out? Or do I think they should break up? And while we're going through this, I'm going to focus in on three fundamental questions that I think every couple needs to ask themselves when they're going through hard times. The answer to these three questions will help you determine whether the relationship is salvageable, or whether it's a total fucking dumpster fire. Without further ado, Drew. Mark Manson Industries.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  I like that.

• 1:59Mark Manson?

  Surprise every day. You didn't even know, did you?

• 2:01Speaker 01

  I didn't even know that's where I was employed.

• 2:03Mark Manson?

  We got a studio lot. We got trailers, the whole nine yards.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  What the fuck? I don't got a trailer.

• 2:12Speaker 01

  All right. So the first question, dear Mark, my marriage is not healthy. It's not one sided either. I know I have issues I need to work on specifically defensiveness when my wife triggers me. My wife is mean when she gets upset and is unapologetic about it. For example, instead of saying you hurt my feelings, she'll say, you hurt my feelings, you jerk. How can you be so dense? You're such an asshole.

• 2:35Mark Manson?

  Okay, we're off to a good start.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  It gets better. If I bring up that her name calling hurt my feelings and she didn't need the attacks, she just says, well, you're being dense with no apology. I've been through multiple personal therapists and several of your courses. We went to couples therapy, but she thought it was a waste of time and money since when I call timeout, she doesn't give it to me. I feel like I should leave. Now, my problem is I keep reading things like Gottman's, your partner is reacting to how you act, or even the Buddhist, you create the world around you. So I wonder, what am I doing to cause my wife to be so abjectly and unapologetically mean to me? This has been going on so long and has been so damaging that my family is worried about me and wants me to get out of the relationship. I've lost

• 3:21Speaker 01

  a couple of jobs and my depression has come back with a vengeance. What do I do?

• 3:26Mark Manson?

  Jeez.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Jobs, family coming in, everything. We got the whole.

• 3:30Mark Manson?

  The whole support network is fucking calling SOS right now, sending up flare signals. And this dude is blaming himself. It's funny, whenever you see like really toxic relationships, there's a very repeatable dynamic that happens over and over. There's always one person who no matter what happens, it's not their fault, it's your fault. And then there's one person who, no matter what happens, it's not your fault, it's my fault. And these people tend to find each other and stick together for quite a while. And so there's just kind of this unidirectional blame. Nothing actually ever gets better because to improve a relationship, you actually need two people fundamentally working on themselves and working on the relationship simultaneously.

• 4:11Mark Manson?

  So the thing that jumps out here, and this dovetails perfectly with the first question I think everybody should ask themselves. Are both people equally aware of the problem and equally putting in effort to fix the problem? If the answer is no, then you're fucked. There's not really anything you can do. And in this situation, it sounds like the wife is taking zero responsibility for her own behavior. And she's turning everything around and blaming it on him. And it sounds like this guy has a propensity to kind of make it about him too. So now, whenever I say this to people, this is where you get the classic like, whoa, but she wasn't always like this. Or maybe she'll change, or you know, she's just going through a hard time or whatever. And there's a lot of excuse making that happens.

• 4:56Mark Manson?

  There's a lot of enabling and justifying. And the fact of the matter is, if somebody doesn't want to change, you can't make them change. And you're crazy to sit around and wait for them to change. And people don't like hearing that, especially in these situations where there's one person in a relationship who's like, I'm gonna fix this, I'm gonna do whatever it takes. And then there's another person who's like, this is all your fault, motherfucker, I'm perfect. You can't force somebody to take a perspective they don't have. You can't force somebody to take actions they don't want to take. You can't force somebody to change behaviors that they don't want to change. And so if you're stuck in this situation, and it sounds like this guy's been stuck in this situation for a long time, repercussions in his professional life, there's repercussions in his family life.

• 5:39Mark Manson?

  Fucking family members are reaching out to him, being like, dude, you should get out of there. I would take that as a, as a pretty telltale sign.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  I will say, I'll give him points for, for taking responsibility for his defensiveness, as he says it. What is the line though, do you think, between taking responsibility here and just being codependent and taking on all of the blame?

• 6:01Mark Manson?

  That's a great question, and it's hard to tell from just an email like this, right? Like, on the one hand, he is taking responsibility for it. On the other hand, the way it was phrased was kind of weird, which is like, I'm also part of the problem because I get defensive when my wife is a bitch. It's like, whoa, wait a second.

• 6:19Mark Manson?

  We all get defensive sometimes and we all get triggered sometimes and we all say things that are disrespectful that we kind of regret. What matters is how we react to those situations. So I'll take my own marriage as an example, right? This actually happened a week or two ago. I was in a crap mood. My wife came into the office. She started to tell me something and I just made like a very sarcastic remark. And it was one of those things where like in my head, it didn't sound that bad. But when it, as soon as it came out of my mouth, I was like, ooh, I'm an asshole. I shouldn't have said that. And she got pretty pissed off at me and she was like, wow, okay. And kind of told me off and stormed out of the office.

• 7:00Mark Manson?

  And sure enough, like an hour went by, I'm like, wow, I should not have said that. I'm such a dick. So later in the day, I went up to her and I apologized. I was like, really sorry. That was uncalled for. I didn't mean it to sound like that, you know, et cetera, et cetera. We all make mistakes in relationships. We all get emotional. We all get triggered. We all say things that we don't mean or that they don't come out right. We're all occasionally disrespectful when we don't mean to be disrespectful. That's just being human. What matters is how you compensate for that afterwards. Do you admit fault? Do you admit mistake? Do you apologize? Do you forgive? If you're able to do all those things, then fine. Like the relationship's going to be great. If one of the two people cannot do those things, then you're going to constantly run

• 7:45Mark Manson?

  into these problems over and over and over again. And if that person who cannot do these things is not aware that they can't do them, which it sounds like the wife is in this case, you can't make somebody apologize for things that they don't think are wrong. My take here is get the fuck out, save yourself. Like you can have a relationship that's a dumpster fire, but if both people in it recognize that there's a dumpster fire and they've got buckets and they're ready to go fetch water, you can make it work. It might be hard. It might take years. You can make it work. If you've only got one person with a bucket and the other one is like pouring gasoline.

• 8:24Mark Manson?

  You're done.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  Okay, well, let's keep this moving, yeah? Dear Mark, how do you determine if you should end a relationship or marriage? My husband and I met in high school. We've now been together for 19 years. We've had our share of marriage struggles, but nothing like what we've been going through over the past two years. My husband is severely ADHD. He's also had a traumatic childhood. He's been doing individual counseling the past three years in an attempt to grow and heal, which has led him to panic attacks and many emotional breakdowns. Last year, he quit his job to take time off work to start training for marathons. I was raised in an emotionally neglectful home. I've done individual counseling to improve my ability to identify and express my emotions. I've also started to discover a lot of codependent behaviors I've been doing our entire marriage,

• 9:09Speaker 01

  and I'm working to set healthy boundaries for myself. I just now feel entirely incompatible with him. I want space and autonomy. He wants closeness and maximum intimacy. I want peace and quiet. He wants continual conversation and stimulation. We've been to couples counseling, which wasn't very helpful. I've got two kids, a beautiful home, shared finances. Part of me says just suck it up, because all relationships have their struggles. What do I do next? Any advice you can give me would be so appreciated, even if it's just shut the fuck up and appreciate that your husband still wants you after all these years.

• 9:42Mark Manson?

  That's probably part of it.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  Don't discount that, yeah.

• 9:45Mark Manson?

  I like this as a counterpoint to the first one, because this is an example of two people in a marriage. They've been together for a long, long time. They're both starting to do a lot of personal work, dig into their baggage, their trauma, their history, and they're making a lot of individual progress. But the result of that individual progress is that it's disrupting the equilibrium within the relationship. Now, this isn't completely unusual, and I have more hope for this relationship than I do for the first one, simply because both individuals are on this path. They're going through a rough spot, but they've already seen that things have changed, and it's very likely that things will continue to change in the near future. You have to be honest.

• 10:28Mark Manson?

  If you're coming from an abusive or neglectful childhood, like each of these people are, and you just spent the first 20 years of your adult life just burying and ignoring that shit. The first few years that you start to come to terms with it is going to be very turbulent. And what I notice with a lot of people is that when they start addressing a lot of their issues after decades of ignoring them, there's kind of a rubber band effect, which is like they've been burying the emotion for so long that it kind of slingshots them in the opposite direction. So they overcompensate, right? Like it's this guy quits his job and starts running marathons all the time. And she goes from being super codependent to wanting to be alone constantly.

• 11:10Mark Manson?

  There's probably a lot of overcompensation that's happening right now as these two people fundamentally discover who they are for the first time. And my guess is, is that a lot of these extremes that they're experiencing at the moment will be moderated over the coming years. Does that mean that they'll necessarily land back in a spot where they're still compatible? Maybe not, but I've also seen a lot of couples that they do land back in a spot where they're compatible. And actually, if they do make it through this period, I think it will be way more powerful to them because they'll actually be coming to each other from a very healthy place with their own individual identities without a bunch of emotional baggage reacting off of each other.

• 11:54Mark Manson?

  Like if they can get to the other side of this, I think there's a much happier and healthier relationship waiting for them. It's just a question of whether they can get there. And so I do think it is worth putting in a few years, struggling, having these conversations very openly with each other, checking in with where each person is. There's reason for optimism here.

• 12:14Speaker 01

  Right, and there's kind of this notion about growing apart versus growing together. And it seems they're in a stage of their relationship where they've grown apart, obviously. What do you think? One thing I think that jumps out to me at this, what do you think that getting together so young? How does that affect that dynamic?

• 12:30Mark Manson?

  So much of the project of your teens and early twenties is identity formation, figuring out who you are, what you value, what's important to you. And a huge part of that project of identity formation is experimentation. It's trying new things, going out in the world, trying new things, challenging yourself, adopting different habits and lifestyles and seeing what fits. What you find is that people who have a lot of codependence, like it sounds like these two do, they never embark on that project. They're too reliant on the relationships in their lives to tell them who they are. So they never develop that individual identity themselves. And I think what happens a lot, you see this a lot with middle aged divorced couples. Couple gets married at 18 or 20 or whatever, stay together for 20, 25 years, divorce at like 45.

• 13:16Mark Manson?

  And then you see each person in the relationship, they start acting like college kids, but they're in their mid 40s. Like they're partying every night, they're traveling all the time, they're like taking MDMA for the first time. Things get fucking weird. And then they do it for like a year or two, and then they stop and they settle down into another relationship and then they move on. And I think ultimately what that is, is they never had that project of identity formation at a young age. They were in a relationship that consumed all of their identity for 20 years. And so when they come out of it, they, they need that experimentation to catch up. What can happen though, and it sounds like this is what's happening with this couple, is that identity formation project can happen within the marriage.

• 13:57Mark Manson?

  It's causes a lot of turbulence, makes it very fucking complicated. But it sounds like this is what's happening with, with these two. The husband quits his career, starts running marathons. Wife is like suddenly withdrawing and wants to be alone all the time. These are very much identity seeking behaviors. On an individual level, they're very normal and healthy and they should be encouraged. At a relational level, it's caused a lot of discord and intention. The goal here would be to abide the discord intention, make compromises, keep in constant communication about each person's project until those projects can kind of complete. Until they both can kind of reach that place where they're like, okay, I feel like I know who I am and I'm happy with who I am.

• 14:41Mark Manson?

  Once they're both at that spot, then hopefully they can come back together and say, okay, this is the new me. Let's see if, if they get along with the new you. And in a lot of cases they will, and in a lot of cases they won't. And That's fine, either way. But I would say if you get divorced, you don't want the divorce to be because of the turbulence and discord of figuring out who you are.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:07Mark Manson?

  You ideally want to figure out who you are and then figure out, can I make the marriage work with this? And then if not, then you break it off. You know, with this couple, I would just encourage them like really put in a few years of good faith effort. You got the kids anyway. There's a decent chance this can turn out okay.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. She mentioned in this too about compatibility, but I think this next question gets to the heart of that. So let's hop into that one. Mark, I had just told my partner this morning how lost I'm feeling. My partner and I recently graduated with our PhDs. Burnt out and needing a break, we decided to work on his dreams and take a one-year sea battle to live and cruise on our sailboat. I tried my best to make it my dream, but I've had three panic attacks since we set sail a few months ago. With no job, separation from friends and community, and no sense of daily purpose, I've felt so lost. He recognizes that I'm in pain, but we don't know what to do and putting a toll on our relationship. We have a few months of the boat sitting in a harbor for repairs as I figure out what to do. Any advice?

• 16:10Mark Manson?

  I sympathize with this question a lot. I think if you have a partner who has a dream, it's a very noble intention to try to live that dream with them. And I respect that. I also think it's very unrealistic to expect that you're always going to enjoy your partner's dream as much as they do. In fact, I think it's probably very rare that you're going to enjoy their dream as much as they do. And in this case, it sounds like his dream is making you fucking miserable. So this is a great question to get into the nuts and bolts of compromise. Like, what is compromise? What's a good compromise? What's a bad compromise? Like, we all, we all hear that we should be compromising in our relationships and compromising with our partners. But like, what the fuck does that actually mean? Compromise isn't about making everyone happy. In fact, compromise

• 16:54Mark Manson?

  means making sure nobody is miserable. This question reminds me a lot of a situation that my, my wife and I had when we first met. So my wife's Brazilian. I met her in Brazil. I was living a nomadic lifestyle. So I was bouncing all over the world. I did internet business. I was blogging. I was living in this country for a few months, in this country for a few months. And I went down to Brazil for three months. And that's when I met my wife and we started dating. I was very clear from the get go of like, I'm in my twenties, I love this lifestyle. You know, you seem great, but I'm not gonna stop. And so she and I came to an initial compromise, which was, she said, if you give me a year, I can save up some money, I can quit my job, I'll take a sabbatical and then we can go travel around the world together.

• 17:37Mark Manson?

  And I was like, that's amazing. Best of both worlds, right? So I stayed in Brazil for about a year. She saved up all the money, quit her job. It was kind of this big momentous occasion. We had a big going away party and said goodbye to her family and everything. She sold all of her shit. And then we both got on a plane to Thailand and we were gonna go spend six months in Asia. And we got there and within two days, I was like opening my laptop and having a great old time, like typing away, getting some work done, and she just sat there and freaked the fuck out. She absolutely had no idea what to do with herself, was completely miserable. And within a few weeks, she told me, she was like, I need to go home. Like, I can't do this. I can't live this way.

• 18:22Mark Manson?

  That was like the one big crisis point in our relationship. We had a very long and emotional conversation about whether we should actually break up or not. Because I was very clear that I don't want to stop living this way. Like, this is the only period in my life that I feel like I'm gonna be able to do this. And if I don't do it, I'm gonna regret not doing it. It makes me very happy. And so we decided to try an experiment, which was like, okay, well, what if we slow down? Because up to that point, I had been kind of doing like a month here and two months there and two weeks here, just bouncing around all over the place. And she said, I really need more stability and I need community.

• 19:03Mark Manson?

  And so we agreed that we would go, we would find a city with a lot of expats and, and find a city with some people that I knew. And we would settle in there for six months. And we agreed that we would, everywhere we went, we would do it for three to six months at a time. And everywhere we went, we would only go if we knew there was a community of people and expats there that we could meet and hang out with and, and spend time with. And it worked. We ended up doing that for about two years. She wasn't completely happy, but... It worked. I wasn't completely happy, but it worked. But I guess the point in that is that I think good compromise is much more about mitigating misery than it is necessarily making everybody happy all the time.

• 19:44Mark Manson?

  And this situation with the C. Batical, it's very clear that this lifestyle makes her miserable. And so the question becomes, is there a compromise here that they can make?

• 19:56Mark Manson?

  That he's still relatively happy, but she's no longer miserable. Maybe that means go to shore every couple of weeks. Maybe that means do one month on, one month off. Maybe that means she flies back home every couple of months and spends a month with her friends and family and then flies back and meets him. Whatever the arrangement, there's gotta be something there. I generally think that logistical arrangements are, tend to be the easiest to compromise on. It's much harder to compromise on things like values or family or priorities. I'm bullish on this couple. They've got PhDs, so they should be smart. They should be talking about this shit. I don't think it's rocket science to figure it out. I think ultimately it's just, they need to take her panic attacks seriously.

• 20:41Mark Manson?

  That's a signal. She's not built for this. She should not be doing it. Find a solution that makes everybody not miserable.

• 20:50Speaker 01

  I think this is becoming more common where they say, oh, I compromise. What's the point of the relationship in the first place then? If you're gonna be compromising and you're always, you know, you're gonna be 70% happy. You're gonna be whatever. Like, what do you say to someone like that? Asking for a friend.

• 21:08Mark Manson?

  Obviously, you don't want to compromise on everything. If you're compromising on everything, yeah, then that's not a sustainable situation. Ideally, you guys should overlap in your values and interests enough that you're only having the compromise occasionally on things.

• 21:24Mark Manson?

  And that you can live with those compromises. You know, the compromising to mitigate misery. I actually think it ends up generating more happiness for both people. Simply because happy relationships make you happy. And that's kind of what I discovered with my wife is I gave up 10 to 20% of my happiness, my lifestyle happiness, but I gained an extra 50% relationship happiness. And relationship happiness is all is like a very powerful happiness. So that ended up being a fucking fantastic deal. I was more than happy to, to, to give that up. I, I do think if you find you're having to compromise 50%, 80%, 100% all the time, then yeah, that stops being a good deal.

• 22:06Mark Manson?

  But which this ties into the second question that I think everybody needs to ask themselves, which is when compromising, are the compromises making the relationship better or worse? Ideally, in a healthy relationship, any compromise either of you makes should have a multiple effect. You give up 10% of something and you get back 40% more relationship happiness. Right? Like my wife's super clean and I'm messy. And one of the compromises I make is I just clean up more than I feel like I should. I clean enough so that she's not miserable. I don't clean enough that she's completely happy. That is so sweet of you, Mark. I know I'm a romantic. What can I say? But it's funny because I think that is the optimal amount of compromise. It's not much for me.

• 22:51Mark Manson?

  I'm only giving up 10, 15 minutes a day. Like we're preventing a lot of misery for her. Whereas if I gave up like an hour a day to clean a bunch of shit, she's probably not that much happier, but I'm definitely a lot less happy. So I don't know. There's like a equilibrium. We could like, do like the supply, demand charts with fucking relationship compromise. Find the marginal cost of how. Exactly. Every minute you spend cleaning.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  How much happiness is that? Okay. That's a hard spot to find, obviously. That's the point you're making is it's

• 23:24Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 23:24Speaker 01

  Tough to figure out in the moment, for sure. And I think this next reader kind of illustrates that as well. I'm 34 and fairly career oriented. I have a tiny family and I'm an only child. I've spent my life on an exciting path, living in various continents around the world. I plan to continue that. During COVID, I started dating a girl who is the complete opposite of me. She comes from a huge family, lots of siblings, works a simple job in the family business, lives for a peaceful daily existence and has never lived outside of her hometown. She doesn't believe in hard work, but believes in living a happy and cozy life. We're now three and a half years together and we want different things. Yet because we are so opposite, we positively influence each other in so many powerful ways. So my question, to break up or not break up?

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Given that our difference in values.

• 24:10Mark Manson?

  Wait a second.

• 24:13Mark Manson?

  This guy, this guy spends five minutes explaining how happy he is and how positive of an influence they are in each other. And then he's like, so should I dump her?

• 24:23Mark Manson?

  Like, what the fuck, dude?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  There's a huge gap between them. So he's kind of seeing that at least. But yeah.

• 24:28Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 24:29Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 24:30Mark Manson?

  Go on, finish it, finish it. Man, she makes me so happy and she's changed me and I change her and it's great. I think we should break up.

• 24:41Mark Manson?

  Anyway, sorry.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Yes, he continues. Given that our difference in values and lifestyle benefits each other, but also makes our future seemingly unworkable without huge compromise. I constantly feel we should end it, but I also feel I will regret it because she's such a wholesome, good and happy human who impacts me in many positive ways.

• 25:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah, okay. First of all, it's funny because this guy seems like quasi-aware. I mean, this is why opposites attract in a lot of cases, right? The more extreme part of our own personalities need a counterbalance to kind of moderate us and mellow us out. In a lot of cases, that's very therapeutic. It makes us more functional human beings. And that's why we, a lot of times we end up in the relationships we end up in. It sounds like this guy has found that. Like, it sounds like he's had a pretty extreme personality and lifestyle and he's found somebody who moderates that, makes him more functional, makes him happy. Yet he's so committed to his ideals and values that he doesn't see a way.

• 25:43Mark Manson?

  That this is gonna last, even though it's lasted three and a half years, even though he's still happy, even though he still loves her very much, even though there's not really a problem other than in his head that he's projecting into the future. Let me just say this, and I say this as a recovered commitment phobe myself, and I say this with pure love. Commitment phobes are constantly imagining reasons for a relationship to end. And in many cases, we're able to convince ourselves that those reasons are real or they're going to be real. One rule I made for myself after completely bombing multiple happy relationships that I was in was I made an agreement with myself that I would never break up with somebody

• 26:26Mark Manson?

  for something that might happen or that hadn't happened yet. That I would only break up with somebody if I was unhappy in the moment. And it was funny because when I got into a relationship with my wife, the first few years, I constantly had these feelings of like, wow, this isn't gonna work. Now she wants to do this and I want to do that and she's this way and I'm that way. Oh, this is, there's no way, there's no way. But I kept reminding myself, you're not gonna break up with her for something that hasn't happened. Like, are you happy today? Yes. Were you happy yesterday? Yes. Do you think you're gonna be happy tomorrow? Yes. Okay, don't fucking break up then. And sure enough, as the years went on, I just never stopped being happy with her. Like, all the things that I imagined might happen, all the horrible, impossible compromises that I

• 27:11Mark Manson?

  thought were gonna have to be made, never had to be made. So I would just tell this guy, if it's good, don't fuck it up. And also, I think there's an important point to be made here too, which is, I think people vastly underestimate the compromise that's possible within a relationship. Like dude, if you wanna continue to live this wild lifestyle and travel all the time and work super hard, you can probably still do that. Like, you can do that within the relationship. There's nothing, just because she's a certain way doesn't mean you have to be that way and vice versa. You can find arrangements and situations that you're both very comfortable and happy and get to experience what you need to be happy. Again, commitment phobes tend to imagine themselves imprisoned.

• 27:56Mark Manson?

  Like, oh, my girlfriend doesn't like traveling, so I'll never travel again. Whatever dude, like, buy a plane ticket. Tell her you'll see her in a week. It's not a problem. If there's like trust and respect in the relationship, it's not a fucking problem.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that you're right. The commitment phobes, they see it as an identity issue at that point, right? They're like, oh, if I get into the relationship with this person, my identity is now tied to theirs in lockstep and there's nothing I can do about it.

• 28:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah, for sure. In a healthy relationship, you each have your own individual identity and respect and honor each other's identities. Honestly, that was one of the things that kept my relationship with my wife alive is like when we were living abroad, every couple of months, I would look at her and I'm like, I, I need to get on a plane. I need to, I need to fly to this place. Do you want to go? And she'd be like, no. And I'd be like, okay, I'm going. And, you know, the first couple of times, it was a little bit awkward and maybe had an argument about it. We realized it's not a big deal. I'd come home happy. She'd be happy because she didn't have to go anywhere. It was fine.

• 28:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so there's just a communication around that, that, that they need, you think?

• 29:01Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 29:02Speaker 01

  This relationship, you think they, they should stick it out and just be more open about what's going on?

• 29:06Mark Manson?

  I think this guy is breaking up over mirages. There's nothing in that question that makes me think this guy can't be fulfilled and happy within this relationship. So yeah, stick with it, bud.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Oh, you're gonna like this one, Mark. I just ended a two-year relationship with my girlfriend. We went through COVID together, death of a dog, family drama. It felt a lot longer than two years, though she did some things that made me question her character and commitment. I both feel a bond and responsibility to be there for her and the relationship ups and downs.

• 29:35Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  We bonded hard through the lockdowns here in NYC.

• 29:39Mark Manson?

  I'm at four red flags. I don't know. I don't know what your score is at home, kids, but I'm at four red flags already.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  I hope you have more behind you. It's not easy to walk away from this. There's an immense feeling of guilt that I feel, and I know I can help alleviate both of our pains if we get back together again.

• 30:01Mark Manson?

  No, no, no, no, no, no.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Third breakup in two years, he says.

• 30:05Mark Manson?

  No. Oh.

• 30:07Speaker 01

  So.

• 30:07Mark Manson?

  Wait, three and two?

• 30:09Speaker 01

  Three and two years. Yeah. So what's the line between resilience and abandonment of a relationship? What are the rules or guidelines for not giving up on someone that you want to change?

• 30:19Mark Manson?

  Abandonment? Is he like leaving her at a train station or something? Like abandonment?

• 30:29Mark Manson?

  What the fuck dude? You are a grown adult, she is a grown adult. You can choose to be together, you can choose not to be together. Nobody's abandoning anybody. What the fuck? Let's go through all the red flags here. There's a lot of, there's a lot of them. Been together two years, feels like a lot longer. This is a nice litmus test, listener. Let me, let me look at camera two. If the statement, we've been together two years, but it feels like a lot longer. If that sounds romantic to you, you might be in a toxic relationship. That is not a good sign. Like experiences that feel a lot longer than they actually are, tend to be that way because they were very unpleasant. Pleasant experiences tend to go by very quickly. When my, my wife and I, we've been together for almost 12 years.

• 31:13Mark Manson?

  We often look at each other, we're like, wow, it feels like we've been together for like four. Whereas I think about like my college girlfriend, we were together for three. That felt like a fucking eternity. Felt like I lived and died like eight lifetimes within the span of me dating her.

• 31:27Mark Manson?

  Which I probably did from a self-esteem point of view. Anyway, yeah. Felt like much longer than two years. That's probably because there's way too much drama and fighting going on. He mentioned he felt responsible for alleviating her pain. Dude, her pain is not your responsibility. It's her responsibility. Three breakups in two years, need I say more? I guess if, if this guy was sitting in front of me, my question would be like, okay. What's gonna make the fourth time the charm? Right? Like, okay, you're getting back. You've tried this. This is gonna be number, round four. What's different this time? What has fundamentally changed in the two years that you guys have, have given this four tries? I'm being hard on this guy, but honestly, we've all been here.

• 32:12Mark Manson?

  I've definitely been here. Absolutely. Like I, I hear this question and I hear 21-year-old Mark, listening to Dashboard Confessional, silently weeping about breaking up with his girlfriend for the fifth time in three years. This is an example of how, when you're in a, an unhealthy relationship, it becomes all about the feelings. This is actually a nice test, to test a healthy versus unhealthy relationship.

• 32:44Mark Manson?

  Unhealthy relationship, it's all about the drama. You made me upset. You said this thing that hurt me. I'm feeling bad today, so I'm gonna take it out on you. Everything's about like, I feel bad, so you need to feel bad. Or you feel bad, so I need to make you feel better. Like, it's all about feelings, all the time. Healthy relationship, it's about behavior. Do you respect me? Do you trust me? Do our values align? Like, that's what a, that's ultimately what a relationship is about. Because a healthy relationship, both people recognize, sometimes you're gonna have good days, sometimes you're gonna have bad. Sometimes you're gonna be in a good mood, sometimes you're gonna be in a bad mood. Sometimes you're gonna get upset with each other and say something hurtful. Sometimes you're gonna be madly in love and feel euphoric. Like, the emotions come and go.

• 33:28Mark Manson?

  But what stays the same and what you have total control over are the behaviors. Are you treating each other with respect? Are you trusting each other? Are you aligned on your values and your worldview? And in this question, I don't hear anything... Well, actually, the only thing he said about her values is that she's not a person of integrity, which, dude, I mean, look, man, I get it. Riding that roller coaster was probably a ton of fun, very exhilarating. You probably felt incredibly alive. I'm sure the sex was great. Don't go back to it. Move on. It's, it's not your job to make everybody feel okay. You gotta find somebody who's gonna treat you with respect, who's gonna appreciate you, and who's gonna be there on a, on a good day or a bad.

• 34:12Mark Manson?

  I hate to bring up that stupid fucking Marilyn Monroe quote. If she doesn't appreciate you on her worst day, she doesn't deserve you on her best.

• 34:22Speaker 01

  Mark Manson, Marilyn Monroe.

• 34:24Mark Manson?

  Yes. So fucking, have some self-respect, bro. You live in New York, for God's sake. There's 8 million fucking women in New York. You have no excuse to go back to this one.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  Okay, but, but there is one point you make in there about, you know, you're not responsible for someone else's happiness. And you've talked about that a lot, in a lot of different places. And I, I totally get that, totally agree with that. The only thing is that it's really, really hard for people to kind of get their head around that. But what do you say to somebody who is like that? Who is like, they are going out and they're trying to make someone feel a certain way, or... Help them or take on their pain, as this this person said.

• 35:01Mark Manson?

  I mean, look, you can make somebody happy in the short term. I can go buy my wife, like, I don't know, a nice gift on the way home today. He'll make her happy. She'll she'll feel really good for a few hours. That's fine. Like, I I think where people get lost is is this idea of like, you can fix somebody. Like, you can take somebody who's chronically unhappy and then teach them or force them to become happy. And you can't. Like, you can influence somebody's emotions in the short run, but you can't fundamentally change how they feel about themselves or or about the world in the long run. Only they can do that. You can't feel responsible for how somebody else feels because you can't control it. This is the third question. First one is, are both people making a good faith effort towards improving the relationship?

• 35:44Mark Manson?

  Second one is, are the compromises making the relationship better or worse? And the third one is, are you only compromising, hoping somebody will change? If the answer is yes to that last one, then you're fucked. Like, this guy, he's in a situation, he's like, okay, things have not worked out multiple times. I I don't totally trust her. I don't think she has high integrity, but she might change. So should I go back to her? If that's the question, this is not going to end well. You see this go both ways, right? A lot of people, they don't love who their partner is. They love who their partner could be. Or they love who their partner used to be. And they stick around for year after year after year,

• 36:25Mark Manson?

  hoping that their partner will either become the person that they hope that they can become, or their partner will revert back to the person that their partner used to be. And you can't do that. You have to love the person in front of you. And you have to compromise with the person in front of you, or be willing to compromise with the person in front of you. You can't compromise yourself, hoping, well, maybe one day they'll figure it out. Because nine times out of 10, either they're not going to figure it out, or they're going to figure it out in such a way that they realize they don't need you anymore. And so they're gonna fucking move on. So it's just, it's a recipe for disaster. And I think this guy should stay far, far away.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  You also can't, I I think the best way to spread happiness, or whatever you want to say, is to just be happy yourself. So if you're Staying in a relationship to make someone else happy, but you're miserable. That is counterproductive, right?

• 37:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, absolutely. I think that's probably a really good principle and takeaway as well is that the best way to make your partner a better person is to be a better person yourself. Right? Lead by example, lead through your actions. Are both people in the relationship making a good faith effort to improve it? Are the compromises being made, making it better or worse? If they're making it worse, then that's a bad sign. And are you only compromising, hoping that your partner will change or be somebody else? If that's the case, you're gonna have a bad time.

• 37:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I hope we didn't ruin too many relationships here.

• 37:50Mark Manson?

  No, man, we're saving relationships, dude. We're like, we're fucking Batman and Robin of relationship saving.

• 37:57Speaker 01

  I'm Batman in that situation, right?

• 37:59Mark Manson?

  Sure, go for it. If, if you guys listening, if you guys want to ask me a question, want us to talk about it on a podcast, go to markmanson.net/newsletter, sign up for the newsletter and then reply to one of those newsletters and we collect these and filter them into buckets and then create episodes out of them. So if you want your question answered on air, sign up for the newsletter, reply to the newsletter, be sure to review the podcast. This is a new podcast, so we need five star reviews. We need the world to know how special and amazing we are. So please go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, whatever you're listening on, give it a five star review, tell everybody how handsome we are and we greatly appreciate that.

• 38:42Mark Manson?

  And finally, I guess, buy my shit or something. I don't know. I don't know. Like, how do people end podcasts? This is so fucking weird.

• 38:55Mark Manson?

  Drew, Drew's just sitting there like, is this over yet?

• 39:01Mark Manson?

  All right, guys, get the fuck out of here.