How to Set (And Keep) Your Boundaries, Solved

This is probably the most comprehensive, no-BS breakdown of boundaries you're going to find anywhere. We cover what boundaries actually are (spoiler: it’s not just telling people to f*ck off), why they matter more than you think, and how your entire life—your relationships, mental health, identity, even career—is quietly shaped by whether or not you have them. By the end of this, you’ll know exactly how to set boundaries, how to enforce them without being a jerk, and how to stop confusing your preferences, rules, and passive-aggressive texts for actual emotional maturity. Plus, we talk about how the internet has totally mangled this concept and what to do instead. If you’ve ever felt burned out, resentful, overwhelmed, or just vaguely annoyed by everyone around you, this is for you. Get your free PDF guide: https://solvedpodcast.com/boundaries CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:01:29 Foundations of Boundaries 00:02:05 The Breakdown: What boundaries actually are (and aren’t) 00:04:42 The Spectrum: Porous, Rigid, Healthy 00:09:06 Boundaries vs. Values, Rules, Preferences, and Requests 00:13:32 What happens when boundaries erode? 00:18:46 The Solution: Boundaries as structure and freedom 00:22:57 Boundaries: Freedom Through Limitation 00:25:09 Creativity with Limitations 00:29:15 Mental Health and Limitations 00:38:53 Example 00:42:54 Boundaries and Maturity 00:45:20 Why Boundaries Matter 00:50:00 The Basis of Boundary Formation: Values 00:58:30 Translating Values into Boundaries 01:04:06 The Application: Living Your Valued Boundaries 01:10:14 Why We Fail to Set and Maintain Boundaries 01:11:11 Developmental Origins 01:22:53 Personality and Individual Differences 01:29:48 Emotional Regulation and Mental Health 01:46:06 Types of Boundaries 01:46:53 Physical Boundaries 01:49:28 Emotional Boundaries 01:51:44 Intellectual Boundaries 01:56:02 Time Boundaries 02:00:03 Digital Boundaries 02:09:01 Financial Boundaries 02:12:42 Family boundaries 02:18:52 Friendship Boundaries 02:23:06 Work Relationship Boundaries 02:28:22 Boundaries around authority 02:30:02 Self Boundaries 02:34:39 How to Set and Maintain Boundaries 03:13:37 Boundaries in Romantic Relationships 03:30:52 Parenting 03:37:04 Research & Frameworks 03:40:44 Western Romance 03:44:48 The 80/20 of Boundaries ⇨ Sign up for my newsletter, Your Next Breakthrough. It will help make you a less awful person: https://go.markmanson.net/cdi1xzha ⇨ 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://go.markmanson.net/217i5ys5 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 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mark Manson?

  I'm Mark Manson, number one New York Times bestselling author, and this is Drew Bernie, my intrepid co-host, lead researcher, and the boundary zen master. And this is Solved, the most over-researched, over-analyzed, ridiculously comprehensive podcast that sometimes tries to be funny. And for the next few hours, we're going to break down everything you need to know about boundaries. The goal of this podcast, the reason it's called Solved, is that if you can get through the whole fucking thing, you should have no problem implementing and maintaining boundaries in your life. So with that, let's cue the music.

• 0:40Mark Manson?

  So just a quick reminder before we get started, these episodes are very large, very comprehensive. So if you want a full episode summary, along with all of our citations and references, as well as practical exercises that you can use to implement boundaries into your life today, you can go to solve podcast.com slash boundaries and download a free PDF guide there.

• 1:05Mark Manson?

  Now, without further ado, Drew, why don't we talk about what the hell are boundaries?

• 1:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11Mark Manson?

  What are we going on about?

• 1:13Speaker 01

  What are boundaries? I think a lot of people think they know what they are, but I'm not so sure about that.

• 1:18Mark Manson?

  I, from my observation, a lot of people don't know what they are.

• 1:21Speaker 01

  Okay, okay.

• 1:22Mark Manson?

  From my personal experience.

• 1:23Speaker 01

  Well, they think they do.

• 1:24Mark Manson?

  They think they do.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think we're going to get through this section here and you're going, we're going to find out, okay, there's, there's a lot of confusion going on here. And so let's, let's just start out, like, what are boundaries?

• 1:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35Speaker 01

  I think I came up with a pretty succinct definition that you can take wherever you go, okay? Boundaries are, they're self-defined.

• 1:42Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:43Speaker 01

  Self-defined limits, okay, that protect core needs and values across the domains of your life.

• 1:49Mark Manson?

  I like that.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  That's a pretty good one, isn't it?

• 1:51Mark Manson?

  I like that.

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:52Mark Manson?

  I should reference, just for the audience, that like, boundaries is actually a very modern term.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:58Mark Manson?

  So, you know, we're going to talk about philosophy and psychology later, but like, Boundaries as a part of our daily vernacular or part of like what we associate with life advice or relationship advice, it's really only emerged in the last 20, 25 years, probably. I believe there was a pretty major self-help book in the 90s written by a pastor called Boundaries. But yeah, I mean, if you go digging into psychology from 60, 70, 80 years ago, like you don't really see any talk about this. This is a very modern concept, although it does have very old philosophical roots, which we'll talk about in a minute.

• 2:38Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, we had to infer a lot of what they were talking about, about boundaries from.

• 2:42Mark Manson?

  But I bring that up just because it's like, it's not unreasonable for you to define it yourself. Because usually what we do is we come in here and we're like, the APA defines this as that, right? Or it's like this philosopher, Aristotle defined this as XYZ. But it's like with boundaries, it's a pretty new thing.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And there's a lot of gray area, as we'll see here. But boundaries can be almost any part of your life, right? There's so many different areas of boundaries that come into play. There's physical boundaries, there's emotional boundaries, there's intellectual, time boundaries, digital boundaries, we're going to get into all of that. That core definition again, self-defined limits that protect core needs and values across domains. Okay, so all those domains I just mentioned.

• 3:23Mark Manson?

  Love it.

• 3:24Speaker 01

  That you can have that, okay? So that's kind of the definition we're going to be working with. You know, you might have a partner that sets a temporal boundary, like a time boundary on you. I need an hour after work before we kind of reconnect, right? Communication boundaries, I need you to tell me directly when you're upset about something rather than hinting at it, right? That's a boundary you could set, an emotional boundary. You might, you might tell somebody, look, I'm not responsible for your happiness, even though I'm like really, I care about that, but I'm at, there's a boundary there. I'm not responsible for your happiness, right? So that's just kind of like a quick and dirty example. The thing is, is that like without kind of naming these limits and without kind of defining these, you can really, you end up drifting kind of on autopilot.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And as we see, you get into a lot of power struggles with people too.

• 4:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:11Speaker 01

  If you don't define what your particular boundaries are in all the areas of your life, really.

• 4:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  There's different kind of flavors of boundaries though, too. And by that, I mean, there's, they kind of exist on a continuum, okay? You have porous boundaries. You can all the way up to rigid boundaries too. And somewhere in the middle is healthy boundaries. Okay, so what are we, what are we talking about here? Porous boundaries, this is when you, for example, you're over disclosing or you have difficulty saying no.

• 4:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  These are people with like really porous boundaries or they're, they're really trying to, you're trying to please a lot of other people a lot of times. And so you get enmeshed with them and you don't have very good boundaries between who you are, what you do, what you do for them, how you show up for them.

• 4:55Mark Manson?

  I would think of it as like, uh, boundaries with way too many exceptions.

• 4:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 4:59Mark Manson?

  Right? So it's like, uh, it's like, I, I expect people to treat me with respect. And then as each person disrespects you, you're like, well, they had a bad day at work or well, you know, I probably deserve that. Or well, you know, you start making excuses for everything.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Right. Now flexibility is important.

• 5:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:17Speaker 01

  But when you're, you know, you're too flexible, that becomes an issue. It's not really a boundary anymore.

• 5:21Mark Manson?

  Right, right.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. On the other end of the spectrum, you have rigid boundaries. People who, you know, they, they're overprotective. They keep everybody at arm's length. Maybe you're inflexible. You shut others out. This can really lead to like a lot of isolation, missed opportunities for intimacy, or you get, just getting to know somebody. Even to the point like, even when you're overwhelmed, you refuse help.

• 5:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  Right? Because you have a boundary like I'm independent. I'm going to do this sort of thing. That can be an issue. That's a rigid boundary.

• 5:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah. We've talked, you know, on the old podcast, we, I think we did a couple of episodes about, um, you know, people ghosting people in their life.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:59Mark Manson?

  In the name of boundaries, right? And I think what you see, kind of a phenomenon that's happened, maybe the last couple of years on TikTok and Instagram, is that there's a lot of life advice aimed towards people with a lack of boundaries. Encouraging them to have overly rigid boundaries, right? So it's like, you see a lot of advice out there of like, Set this boundary and then if the person doesn't respect it, cut them out of your life.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:25Mark Manson?

  And so it's like, oh, if your mom doesn't call you back, well, then fuck her. No one's talking to mom anymore, right? And so you've actually seen there's a like a bit of an epidemic going on of, in that episode, we talked about a bunch of crazy statistics of the amount of young people who are like not speaking to their parents anymore.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Right, strange man, yeah.

• 6:43Mark Manson?

  Or like the people who are ending friendships over like really minor transgressions. And so there is, I think the point here is that there's a way to take this way too far.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:53Mark Manson?

  And with a lot of personal growth advice, when you lack something, the excess of something can look like a solution, even though it's not.

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's especially true in boundaries. I think people will, they'll take it to the extremes. Because when you are somebody who has these like ultra porous boundaries for a long time, the tendency is to react way too far.

• 7:15Mark Manson?

  To overcompensate, yeah.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  To overcompensate the other way.

• 7:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  And that's especially true, I think, in boundaries. Because people, oh, I figure out boundaries. I can assert myself.

• 7:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  And it's like, yeah, you can. And maybe there is like a period where you need to do some overcompensation to realize that you need to come back to, you know, that golden mean.

• 7:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 7:32Speaker 01

  That Aristotle talks about a lot, right?

• 7:34Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  And while he never talked about boundaries, like we said, he does. I would say that that's kind of the goal here, which brings me to the healthy boundaries.

• 7:41Mark Manson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:42Speaker 01

  They're clear, they're flexible, they're clear yet flexible.

• 7:44Mark Manson?

  Mm-hmm.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  You state a boundary, you have an idea that protects a value or a need of yours, right? And yet you adjust it for the context too, right? Like, the one I already kind of said was, you know, with a partner, you're like, I'm not responsible for your happiness, yet I do care about your happiness. That's a flexibility around your boundaries too, right?

• 8:04Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Like, I'm gonna be interested and invested in your happiness, but ultimately, I'm not responsible for it.

• 8:08Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 8:09Speaker 01

  Right? So that's a, that's a one example. Again, they protect your values and they protect your needs. While adjusting to the situation that you're in. The whole episode, we're gonna go through tons and tons of examples of that. Okay, so I won't get too far in the weeds. But I think one thing you were kind of just getting at was I think people confuse boundaries for a lot of other things. Because again, this is kind of a newer concept and there is, there's a lot of different definitions, I think, floating around out there. So I wanted to distinguish it between a few other things before we get going.

• 8:40Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  We've already stated values. We had a whole episode on values too. Okay. So if you haven't watched that one, I think that's a really good one to go.

• 8:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Go listen to or watch before you watch this one or after, whatever.

• 8:52Mark Manson?

  It will definitely inform and help this one quite a bit. Cause I will add too, that if you are, if you have a shitty value that you're trying to protect, you're gonna have a shitty boundary.

• 9:01Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, and we'll definitely get into that. Values though, they are, they're kind of like the, those enduring principles that matter to you. Maybe it's honesty, maybe it's helping others, maybe it's taking care of yourself and your family, whatever that is. They, they're related to boundaries, but they're not the same thing. They're, they're kind of the why behind the boundaries.

• 9:21Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  Right? I don't know, let's say you value health. Uh, that's your value. You set a boundary around, I don't eat this certain type of food or whatever it is.

• 9:29Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Right? Okay, so that's, that's just one example. We have to distinguish between rules as well. This one, I think, is where people get tripped up a lot. A rule is actually an attempt to kind of, it's an attempt to control others. Right? You're setting a rule, you may not do this, or I don't, don't do this around me, that kind of. That's not really a boundary, that's, you're, you're putting up a rule. And you're, you're forcing other people to follow it, right? Whereas a boundary is more internal, it's more, this is what I do. I can't control what other people do.

• 9:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Right?

• 10:00Mark Manson?

  I, I tend to think of boundaries as like if then statements, right? So it's.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  That's a good way to think about it.

• 10:05Mark Manson?

  You know, yeah, like it's, it's. If you get angry with me, this is how I'm gonna respond.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:12Mark Manson?

  Like, if you throw a tantrum and start yelling at me, I'm gonna leave and go home. Like, that you're said, that's, that's a boundary because it's like a clear, if this occurs, this is my action. And you were like, letting the person know what the consequences are gonna be. Whereas a rule would just be like, you're not allowed to get angry and throw a tantrum around.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Right, right, yeah. Again, I think that's where a lot of people get tripped up. They're like, well, I set a boundary by telling this person not to do that.

• 10:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 10:36Speaker 01

  That's not how it works. That's not how boundaries works.

• 10:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah. In fact, you're probably violating their boundary.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. It's, it's, it's bumping up against their own autonomy. And so that's, that's a rule, not a boundary. Okay? Then you have like preferences, lower stakes, obviously, right? Um, negotiable wants, like, I like Italian food. I prefer Italian food or Thai food or whatever. That's a preference stated.

• 10:58Mark Manson?

  Uh, Thai food's a pretty strong boundary in my life.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  As in you don't, or you do?

• 11:03Mark Manson?

  If you don't eat Thai food, I, I want nothing to do with you.

• 11:06Speaker 01

  Okay, well, hey, that's fine, because that's just a boundary that's not.

• 11:09Mark Manson?

  Fuck you.

• 11:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  Otherwise, you have.

• 11:14Mark Manson?

  Sorry, I shouldn't be derailing this this early, but.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  Your preferences, like Thai food, like I prefer Thai food over, like, I don't eat dessert.

• 11:23Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  Right? That's a boundary.

• 11:25Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 11:25Speaker 01

  Or, or, I don't eat dairy because of my health, or, you know, I, whatever it is. That's a boundary versus just stating a preference. I don't think people confuse these as much, but they can, there's subtler examples, I think, more subtle examples that will.

• 11:38Mark Manson?

  I think it gets confusing because some boundaries are self enforced, right? So it's, it's like, I don't, like, I don't drink anymore. Yeah, like, that's a boundary I've set for myself, like that. Um, and again, kind of like the rule thing, it looks like the same thing from the outside, but it's, the experience is different, or like the, I guess, the kind of logical mechanics of it are different internally.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:02Mark Manson?

  Cause honestly, there are many moments where my preference is absolutely to drink, but because I have set a boundary with myself that I am a person who doesn't drink, then, you know, there's significant overlap with a preference, but it's not always the same thing. Similar to like an external boundary being like, uh, there's significant overlap.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  But it is all these subtleties that we get into where you start bumping up against like interpersonal problems and conflicts and all that.

• 12:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  We'll get to that here in just a second. But the last one I want to go over, uh, requests, okay? This is, when you go out and you ask somebody, hey, can you do this, you know, can you, whatever it is?

• 12:35Speaker 01

  Pick me up at the airport. Can you please pick up after yourself?

• 12:37Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 12:38Speaker 01

  Those are requests, right? As opposed to a boundary which isn't requesting, again, it's not requesting anything of anyone else. It's how, it's determining, it's a self determining act of your own behavior.

• 12:51Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 12:52Speaker 01

  Okay. Keep those in mind because I think a lot of times when you're not clear on your boundaries, you're using rules, or you're using preferences, or you're using requests instead of boundaries.

• 13:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  And that's where, like a lot of the, a lot of conflict comes in a lot of our relationships that way.

• 13:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  So what happens then when boundaries start to erode? Or they weren't set up in the first place even too?

• 13:16Mark Manson?

  Mm hmm.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  I think of these as kind of the telltale signs that you're not doing very well at your boundaries.

• 13:21Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  You don't do boundaries good, right?

• 13:23Mark Manson?

  Oh, man, your, your, your midwestern southernness is coming out. Drew, we're, we've worked so hard.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  You don't boundary good. You don't boundary good. And this is, this is, this is.

• 13:35Mark Manson?

  These are the signs. These are the red flags.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Red flags, okay? So, so the first one is like chronic resentment, right? You're resenting the people around you.

• 13:44Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  This is, this is, you don't, you don't set boundaries around your work, or a relationship, or emotions, whatever it is. And you start to resent other people because they're like coming at you, foisting all this upon you, right?

• 13:59Speaker 01

  That really is just a sign that you haven't set a clear boundary around that.

• 14:01Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Okay. Do you have exhaustion and burnout, right? So like you're taking on too much at work and it's like, oh, this kind of scope creep comes and it's like, well, it's not really my job, but it's just this one little thing and I'm gonna take it on. You have exhaustion and burnout through that. So without clear limits on your time, your work, or emotional labor even too, you get overextended and that leads to like exhaustion and burnout.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Then you have overwhelm and time debt, okay? Saying yes to everything, right?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Creates this big backlog of things you have to do obligations that creep up this with you. You said yes to this thing three weeks ago and now here we are and now you have to do it. So now you're in time debt, now you're overwhelmed, now you feel like you're getting pulled in seven different directions.

• 14:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Blurred roles in relationships. So it's like when you have a close bond with someone, a boundary collapse. It feels like you're like enmeshed with that person to the point where you can't even like make decisions on your own. Without consulting them or even thinking about them or some of that's okay, sure. But there's got to be a flexibility to it too.

• 15:08Mark Manson?

  By the way, there's a very interesting statistic that finds that couples that split. Home responsibilities 50 50 across the board are like some of the most miserable couples and the most likely to break up. And I think it's because of this.

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Surprise me.

• 15:23Mark Manson?

  Imagine everything has to be split 50 50 so it's like all the things I'm terrible at. I still have to do half of it, all the things you're terrible at, you still have to do half of it. And, and then we just get pissed off at each other because we're terrible at the things that we're terrible at. Whereas it makes sense to divide and conquer in terms of like each person's skillset or whatever. But anyway, I do think it's this ideal of this kind of idealistic view of equality within a relationship. That like, oh, we should both manage the finances and we should both clean the house and we should both. Drive the kids to school and we should both bring in the same paycheck and we should both. Call, visit each other's parents, the exact same amount like it's just, you're living in fairy tale land.

• 16:08Speaker 01

  Those are rules, those aren't boundaries. All those things you just said, we should do this, we should do like this, we should do that, those are rules.

• 16:15Mark Manson?

  That's true. And then you end up enmeshed, there's no boundary there.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Highly related to this is identity confusion. At some point you just lose who you are.

• 16:22Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Right? Because you're, you're at the whims of the opinions of other people. You look to the outside world for everything from your job to who you date, to your leisure time, whatever it is.

• 16:35Mark Manson?

  I think that what you just said is really applicable to caregivers, right? So I think you see this a lot with stay at home moms, right? So it's like. They're taking care of the kids all day. And then the husband comes home and he's exhausted from work. And so then she's taking care of him. And it's basically like weeks or months, even years go by where she's just giving, giving, giving. And she's never like stopping to think about what she needs or what she wants or what's going to make her happy. And you end up getting this kind of just loss of identity.

• 17:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:10Mark Manson?

  Through constant caregiving. If you're the breadwinner in a family. The professional world kind of forces you to get good at boundaries. Like if you don't get good at boundaries, you're probably not going to climb very high in your career ladder. Simply because you're not going to be reliable or accountable enough. So you have to like learn how to say no to people. You need to learn how to negotiate and all that stuff. Whereas yeah, if you're kind of in more of a caregiver role in your family. You're actually incentivized to not have boundaries. You're incentivized to always be available and always take on the burden of others. And that's just, it's a recipe for burnout, as you said. And a lot of like simmering resentment under the surface.

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what you see like empty nesters, right?

• 17:55Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Like when that happens, they empty nest like now what do I do?

• 17:59Mark Manson?

  The second most common point of divorce.

• 18:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:01Mark Manson?

  Is empty nesters.

• 18:02Speaker 01

  Right. What was the first?

• 18:04Mark Manson?

  Right after the first child.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  Oh, okay. Yeah.

• 18:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 18:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. All right. Okay, so those are kind of our red flags.

• 18:13Speaker 01

  What you see though, like the boundaries, they're not really luxuries, right? They're actually like survival mechanisms that we use because if you don't, that's what ends up happening.

• 18:21Mark Manson?

  You lose yourself.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  You lose yourself. Let's take the opposite side. When you have really good, clear, healthy boundaries, what does that kind of look like, right? Boundaries, well, they're going to reduce conflict. I mean, you probably already see that from what we've mentioned. They're going to reduce conflict in your relationships because people have, their expectations, their clear expectations.

• 18:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 18:39Speaker 01

  When people know, even if they don't like a boundary, if they know you have it and you're going to stick to it. They're probably gonna at least respect it, right?

• 18:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  To some degree.

• 18:48Mark Manson?

  And this is very paradoxical, because I feel like a lot of people don't set boundaries because they're afraid of the conflict.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 18:54Mark Manson?

  Right? They don't wanna say that they don't like something, or that they don't wanna do something, because they're like, "Well, I don't wanna upset them," or like, "Fight about it," whereas, it's actually the opposite. When you state that you don't wanna do it, like, maybe you have a little argument then, but you're preventing like, 20 arguments in the future.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I had this, uh, this actually happened to me recently. Somebody treated me in a way I didn't really like, and I was like, "Ah, I don't wanna, I'm not gonna rock the boat." And then I came back later, and I was like, "Look, hey..."

• 19:19Mark Manson?

  Go fuck yourself.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, no. I took the time. I actually did this. I was proud of myself for doing this. I was like, "I'm gonna take time, like, I'm upset, so I'm gonna hold off, and I'm gonna come back to them."

• 19:29Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  And I'm gonna state like, "Hey, the way you treated me, like, you can be frustrated with me." This is what I said. I left the autonomy. It was definitely a boundary. It wasn't a rule. It was like, "I never said, 'Don't talk to me like that ever again.'" I said, "I understand if you're gonna get upset and frustrated with me. I just, I would prefer you do it in a different way next time. Find a kinder way to express that to me, and then we can talk about it." And it was uncomfortable.

• 19:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  Uncomfortable, but, like, it actually led to a better, like, understanding with each other.

• 19:58Mark Manson?

  It's stuff like that that generates respect for other people.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:01Mark Manson?

  And I think, what you see, another red flag, I would say, is if you feel constantly disrespected by others.

• 20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:09Mark Manson?

  It's...

• 20:10Speaker 01

  That'll lead to the resentment, too, yeah.

• 20:12Mark Manson?

  Right. Like, if you're not being respected by others, it's because you're not standing for anything, and you're not standing up for anything. And paradoxically, it's by standing up for something and being willing to have conflict about it, that people start to actually respect you. They're like, "Oh, okay. Like, Drew's got his thing about that. Like, I'm gonna, I'm not gonna bother him."

• 20:30Speaker 01

  Right. The next one. Boundaries help you regulate your emotions, too.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  And now this is, we go back to the emotions episode we did too. If you can kind of like run the simulation in your head, this is what boundaries kind of do. It's that if then statement, right? If this happens, then I'm going to act like this. This gives you kind of a template for emotional regulation in the moment. When these kinds of things happen, if you're clear about your boundaries, when somebody has a boundary violation, they come at you. You have a template right there that you can be like, okay, this is, this is how I'm going to do it. And that helps you, you're still going to get emotional in the moment, I'm sure. But you're like, okay, no, this is how I react. And so I'm drawing the boundary there.

• 21:09Mark Manson?

  Got like a little mini plan.

• 21:10Speaker 01

  It's a little mini, it's a little mini script for you to follow. So that's, boundaries really help with that. And then last, putting limits on yourself or putting limits on your relationships too. That actually has a freeing aspect to it. So when you say no to something, you're also saying yes to something else, right? And vice versa as well. You're saying yes to say, well, your values really, whether that's like health or rest, whether that's focus. You're saying, no, I'm not going to do that because I am doing this other thing over here. That is, it's freeing you up to live more in alignment with the way you want to live by setting up the boundary, by limiting yourself, by putting yourself in this box even too. A good, healthy boundary is going to help you do that. Those are kind of the foundations of boundaries.

• 21:55Speaker 01

  That's kind of, kind of set the tone. So when we're going forward here, this is, when we're talking about different aspects of boundaries. So we go back to that definition, there's self limits, right? That help you maintain your needs and your values across all the domains of your life.

• 22:13Mark Manson?

  I guess we will get into later, kind of what the, the tactical components of a boundary is like, you know, the, what a good statement looks like, what, what the if then should look like.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:26Mark Manson?

  And then the enforcement of that as well.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 22:28Mark Manson?

  We'll, we'll come back to that in the latter half of the episode.

• 22:33Mark Manson?

  All right, so now that we have like a basic understanding of what boundaries are, what it feels like to not have them, what some of the repercussions of not having them are in our lives, I want to take a minute and go very deep on why this matters. Like, why are boundaries so important? Why do they seem to have such an outsized effect on our mental well-being, the quality of our relationships, the success in our careers? And it turns out that they, like, when you dig into the philosophy and psychology of it, they are very significant. I would dare say underrated in a lot of ways. I would say philosophically underrated. I think they're probably Instagram overrated,

• 23:14Mark Manson?

  but just in terms of how core they are to our identity and our general psychological well-being, they're definitely underrated. Yeah, I would say the cartoon version of them are overrated. Yes, yes, absolutely. So I want to start out by talking about creativity. So there's kind of a cliche in the arts that it's actually limitation that breeds innovation, that it's only when you put constraints on somebody that you get the best work out of them. And this is very counterintuitive, especially for most artists. Most artists and creatives, I include myself in this, you know, we just, our natural disposition is to tell everybody to fuck off

• 23:59Mark Manson?

  and just let me make whatever I want to make. And that's great to a certain extent. Like, you do want some of that energy going on. But if I'm being honest, like, when I look at, say, my relationship with my editor or my relationship with, you know, with you guys on my team, like, a lot of the benefit is that you guys set guardrails for me, right? That's at least half my job is to corral you. Just keep me in fucking line. Push you in the corner, box you in, yeah. Say, "No, Mark!" Yeah, yeah, I get it, though, yeah. No, no more booga booga parties. So creativity, and it turns out you see this all across the arts, right?

• 24:42Mark Manson?

  So I dug up a couple of interesting examples here. Johann Sebastian Bach, who in the music world is often considered the GOAT in a lot of ways. I've heard of him, yeah. Yeah, I think non-musicians don't realize like how like, okay, it's just this guy is miles above anybody else. But he produced over 1,100 works in his life. I think if you averaged out how many pieces of music he composed throughout his life, it ended up being like around one every five or six days. Like, it's just an absolute prodigious output, especially back in a period that like,

• 25:24Mark Manson?

  Western music wasn't completely developed yet, and it wasn't standardized and formalized. And a lot of that was due to Bach's work. Like, he had tons of musical innovations. He redefined, created and redefined genres. But what's fascinating about him is that everything was, existed within a formulaic framework, right? So everything would be composed by a set of rules. And somehow, by limiting himself to a set of rules or a certain system or framework, it would define the parameters by which he could innovate, right? If you don't have those framework and rules, then the innovation is just kind of non-existent.

• 26:04Mark Manson?

  Conversely, if you look at, say, modern music, contemporary music, and I mean modern classical music, so atonal, no melody, lots of weird sounds, like John Cage-type shit, you know, wind blowing, weird chimes, there's, your brain has nothing to latch on to. And so there's no, in a way, because everything is free and new.

• 26:32Mark Manson?

  In untethered, there is no innovation. Because like, for something to be innovative, it needs to be defined against something else that's like, expected, right? And so if there's nothing that's expected, there's no innovation. So this phenomenon of gaining from limitation, or gaining from constraint, you see it in the business world all the time. So there was a hugely popular business book, maybe 10 years ago, called The One Thing. And can you guess what the advice was? Focus on one thing? Focus on one fucking thing, yes. If you just focus on the most important thing, everything else will kind of take care of itself. But sure enough, you see this, you know, all across multiple businesses. There's tons of case studies and different examples of businesses that branched out

• 27:15Mark Manson?

  way too far, started trying to be, create products in every vertical, and just ended up generating a bunch of crap and failing as a result. Interestingly, like, for example, when Steve Jobs came back to Apple the second time, when he was rehired, I think Apple had something like 34 lines of computers that they put out. It was tons of products, yeah. Tons. And they were all poorly differentiated, like, half of them were designed to fit like, some specific enterprise customer that they were trying to woo away from IBM. And what was the first thing that Steve Jobs did when he came in? He like, he cut like, 90% of those products down to, I think it was four. Yeah. Within the first couple of years.

• 27:59Mark Manson?

  You also see this happen within your personal life, within your relationships, right? When you try to be liked by everybody, you're loved by none. That's the cliche. When you try to get along all the time, when you try to be pleasant all the time, when you try to say the right thing that everybody's gonna like all the time, what happens? You become forgettable. There's no interesting opinions, there's no unique personality, there's no like, personal take. Because there's nothing to hate about you, there's also nothing to love about you. And so what we see consistently is the more that you kind of narrowly define yourself... Within your social life and know what you stand for, know what you care about, know what you like to do.

• 28:42Mark Manson?

  Sure, most of the people you meet, you may not connect with or resonate with, but the ones that you do, it's a very strong impactful, meaningful connection. So these are just a few examples of things that gain from constraints or gain from limitation. And it turns out that our, our mental health and our psychological well-being also gains from constraint and self-limitation. It's very paradoxical, but there is a, there is a logical explanation for this. See, we often assume that freedom means removing our limitations. Having access to whatever we want, being able to indulge in any impulse or any desire, or hang out with anybody, or meet anybody, or go anywhere, anytime we want.

• 29:23Mark Manson?

  And sure, there's like a part of our brain that that's very exciting and sexy and appealing, but what we don't realize is that there is a very silent and subtle cost that comes with that. And that is if you set no boundaries for yourself, that is if you set no prioritization, no decision of I'm this type of person and not that type of person, then pretty much all of your decisions are going to be dictated by impulse and desire. And what do we call somebody whose whole life is dictated by impulse and desire? We call them a selfish piece of shit. It doesn't, it doesn't turn out very well, Drew. I don't recommend dictating your life by, by impulse and desire.

• 30:05Mark Manson?

  Now, interestingly, there's, there's a very powerful philosophical basis for this idea. So Immanuel Kant, who's my philosophical homeboy, I have a, Kant had issues, but like, man, I have such a soft spot for him. I'm a, I'm a fanboy. He wrote something extremely powerful, and it was very powerful and impactful on me as well, which is he believed very strongly that freedom is only exercised when you choose limitations for yourself. So the only, put it another way, like the only freedom we really have in our lives is choosing what

• 30:39Mark Manson?

  Boundaries we set up for ourselves. Choosing who we're not gonna be. Choosing which impulses we're not going to indulge. Choosing which paths in life we're not gonna take. Choosing the people we're not gonna hang out with. Basically, putting those limitations on ourselves because what that does is it frees us up to what remains. It frees us to focus and go deep and get extremely good at the few things that we do care about. And he argued that that's where true freedom was found. And even though he was writing all this stuff hundreds of years before the advent of modern psychology, we know today that there is a very real psychological basis for this idea.

• 31:23Mark Manson?

  So in my second book, I wrote that there's two brains, the thinking brain and the feeling brain. And the feeling brain is at the core of all of our impulses and wants and desires and yearnings and cravings. And the thinking brain is basically the logical reasoning brain that stops and analyzes and thinks, you know, is that really a good idea? You know, maybe, uh, maybe we shouldn't smoke crack this weekend and we should, uh, I don't know, go do a sauna and, uh, meditate for a while. And most of us spend most of our lives, uh, in this kind of constant tension between the two brains, resisting the cravings and desires and trying to lean on, uh, our higher reason and understanding to make good decisions.

• 32:06Mark Manson?

  Now, I think our default assumption is that freedom is the freedom to indulge the feeling brain, to indulge whatever impulses we have or whatever cravings we want to fulfill or whatever desires, uh, we want. Kant argued that true freedom resided within the thinking brain, that it was, uh, living up to the standards that we defined for ourselves, embodying the person that we wished ourselves to be. Now, to do those things, your thinking brain has to decide which impulses are okay to indulge, which cravings are okay to pursue, and which ones are not. And to do that, you have to set limitations around yourself.

• 32:47Mark Manson?

  You have to decide, okay, these sets of impulses and desires are okay because these match the, the person that I want to become or the, the best version of myself that I can live up to and embody. And these other impulses and desires, uh- I can't, I have to set a boundary. I can't indulge them. I can't pursue them blindly. And for Kant, this was not like a question of just getting rid of anxiety or stress or whatever. Like Kant, this was actually the fundamental basis of morality itself. Kant's moral system was really based on the idea that reason and rationality is the most scarce and unique thing in the known universe.

• 33:28Mark Manson?

  And so, everything else should be downstream of protecting and maximizing that reason and rationality. And so, to Kant, indulging your cravings or succumbing to your impulses and compromising that the person you want to become, you weren't just hurting yourself, you were actually committing a moral infraction on the universe.

• 33:51Speaker 01

  He was hardcore. He was real hardcore.

• 33:53Mark Manson?

  Kant did not fuck around. So it's from Kant that we get this idea that self-limitation is at the root of self-definition, and self-definition is just necessary for the moral order. Freud would take this baton and run with it. So, in Freud's framework, Freud kind of divided the human mind up into the three parts. You had the id, which is the kind of animalistic impulses and desires. You had the superego, which was the social conscience, the feelings of guilt and obligation to society, the concerns about reputation, and like, what are people gonna think about me? And then you had the ego.

• 34:32Mark Manson?

  And in Freud's framework, the ego emerged as a negotiation between the id and the superego. Essentially, the negotiation between the feeling brain and the thinking brain. Like, okay, I want to do all these fun, sexy, exciting things, but I also don't want to be a horrible person and piss everybody off and cause a bunch of problems for myself. So, I need to find a balance in here. I need to create rules, guidelines, or boundaries for myself of like, what kind of person I'm gonna be in each situation, what are the things that I'm gonna prioritize and care about, who are the people that I'm gonna associate with, and how am I gonna treat them? And essentially, how am I gonna view myself?

• 35:16Mark Manson?

  Now, it's funny because that last part, how am I gonna view myself? That's, I think, if you grabbed a random person off the street and asked them to define what an ego is, they would say that it's a view of yourself. And if you ask them what a big ego is, or a strong ego is, they would say that it's somebody who's very full of themselves, who overestimates their own capabilities, or how important they are. Now ironically, this is just one of those things that's kind of gotten bastardized throughout history, is that what we colloquially define as a big ego, Freud would have defined as a weak ego. See, for Freud, if you are constantly overestimating yourself, if you are not setting

• 35:59Mark Manson?

  limitations around yourself, if you think you are, should, and are capable of doing everything and deserve everything, that is not the result of a strong ego, that is a result of a weak ego. That is a result of somebody who has not clearly defined themselves, and who is not aware of the compromises that must be made between their impulses and desires, and their social obligations, and their higher rationality. So if Kant saw self-definition and self-limitation as kind of the root of the moral universe, Freud came along and really defined it as kind of the core of the psychological universe. Like, this is the root of mental health, is like, somebody who has a well-defined and

• 36:40Mark Manson?

  properly-sized ego in relation to the other aspects of their consciousness. And for Freud, anybody who suffered intensely from mental health issues, it was largely because either their ego was poorly defined, or underdeveloped, or it was defined in the wrong way. Earlier, you talked about internal boundaries, boundaries as a form of self-definition. You know, if I decide I'm an author, and I write books for a living, that...

• 37:13Mark Manson?

  Definition of self in a way is a boundary. Like I am defining which actions and behaviors are appropriate for myself and which actions and behaviors are not appropriate for myself. If I decide to define myself as a husband to my wife, I'm creating a boundary. I am deciding that I'm not going to do certain things or have sex with certain people and that I have certain social and familial obligations to my wife. Right? So self-definition is a form of boundary setting and it is the form of boundary setting with ourselves. The boundary setting that happens with others is a side effect or kind of the reverse side of the coin

• 37:58Mark Manson?

  of that self-definition. And what we'll find throughout this episode, we've already alluded to it a little bit, but what we'll continue to find throughout this episode is that generally speaking, people who are poor at defining boundaries for others are proportionally bad at defining boundaries for themselves. Like if you really know yourself and you know who you are and you know what you want out of life, that's going to be reflected in your ability to set boundaries with others. The more you fail to set boundaries with others, the more you're going to fail to set those boundaries with yourself and vice versa.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Give me an example of that.

• 38:31Mark Manson?

  So let's say that I don't know how I feel about recreational drug use.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 38:38Mark Manson?

  I've never really thought about it. I don't really have any strong opinions about it. I have certain people in my life who are big fans of it and other people who are not. But I like both those people and I want both those people to like me. And let's say I go to a party this weekend and everybody's, I don't know, like taking a bunch of mushrooms or MDMA or something. And somebody sticks out their hand and hands it to me. I'm probably going to have no boundaries in that situation. I'm probably going to take it just because I don't know how I feel about this situation. And so I'm just like, well, this is what's in front of me. And this is exactly what Kant meant by. A lack of boundaries is a lack of freedom. A lack of self-limitation is a lack of freedom. If I don't have the knowledge of myself to know that like,

• 39:21Mark Manson?

  I don't do drugs and I don't, I definitely don't do them recreationally. I only do them professionally.

• 39:30Mark Manson?

  Then I'm not gonna know, I'm not gonna have the freedom in that moment to say no.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  And define who you are.

• 39:36Mark Manson?

  And define who I am and know what I want and all those other things. Whereas if I've decided, which I have in my own life, I've decided, if I've done enough drugs to know, I don't really wanna do this anymore. I know especially that if I'm out on a Friday night and somebody puts a bunch of drugs in front of me, that that's just not something I do. I have that self-definition, I have that boundary within myself, and I've enforced it repeatedly, so I've built up that, that mountain of evidence of like, this is who I am. Now, when somebody sticks out their hand and offers me something to take, it's gonna be an easy no.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:13Mark Manson?

  It's like, I'm not gonna think about it, I'm not gonna worry about it, I'm not gonna be like, oh, well, what if this person gets mad at me? Like, it's just, it's a clearly, it's a clearly defined boundary within myself, which means it's an easy boundary to define with others.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  Okay. Yeah, and then you can apply that to it. All areas of life, like your marriage, or your work, or whatever.

• 40:33Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 40:33Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 40:33Mark Manson?

  Anything. I'll give you another example. So, it's funny. I don't know how many bachelor parties you've been on.

• 40:40Speaker 01

  A few, yeah.

• 40:41Mark Manson?

  I would, I would argue there's two types of bachelor parties. And the first type is like, kind of the cliche, guys' guy type, like, oh, ball and chains, better get it in while you can, bro. Ball and chain is coming, you know, and all that stuff. I've only been on a couple bachelor parties like that. And it's funny because like, every single one of them, like, dude, you're gonna end up, you're gonna be divorced in like, three years. Because if, if that's your mentality going into marriage, that this is a, a, you are having to subvert your own desires and like, you're about to do something that doesn't match your self-definition. Like, if you see marriage as, as a sacrifice, that you are having to like, give up a part of your identity or your life, yeah, it's not good.

• 41:25Mark Manson?

  Because like, what most bachelor parties are like, including my own, is all the single buddies are like, having a great time, and then like, The dude who's getting married is like just sitting there texting his fiance being like, "I kinda wanna go home." Yeah, yeah, right. And, and like, those are the guys that, that stick it out, right? Because they've already defined a boundary within themselves of like, "I'm committed to this person." Like, "This, this is, this is my partner for the rest of my life." Right. They've already decided that internally. They've already set that boundary with themselves. Therefore, it's like not even the thought to set it externally. Right. Whereas like the guys who haven't really set that boundary with themselves, they're like, "Well, I guess I'm getting married because that's what I'm supposed to do,

• 42:09Mark Manson?

  but I still wanna go bang all these other chicks." Right. They're the ones who are like, "Oh, man, like, last days of freedom. We better have fun with my boys while I still can," you know? And then- Or they don't even understand why somebody wouldn't think that way, right? Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. And, and so then those are the guys that end up- Yeah. Right, okay. Cheating and paying alimony for the rest of their life. Right. I also think this is why ultimately, boundaries, in many ways, are not only indicative of a person's identity, but they're also indicative of a person's maturity. You could even argue that boundaries are the lagging indicator of how mature somebody is. Let me explain why. So if identity formation is a process of setting boundaries within yourself,

• 42:52Mark Manson?

  when you look at young children, you know, like, the difference between, say, a child and an adolescent and an adult is the child is gonna have like no sense of identity, no self-definition, and no self-limitation, which tracks. An adolescent is gonna have some self-definition, some self-limitation, but it's gonna be chaotic, it's gonna be inconsistent. They're like, it's very experimental. Like, they're, they're kinda testing a bunch of different things and seeing which boundaries work for them and which ones don't. Also tracks. And then an adult should have a clear idea of who they are, what they want, what they care about, what they're committed to, and their actions should follow suit, right? If you think about like what an immature adult- Looks like, how they behave.

• 43:37Mark Manson?

  They probably have no strong or clear opinions. They're probably very impulsive. They probably indulge their urges. They probably don't follow through on their commitments. They probably lack self-discipline. They're probably often like disrespectful or rude towards others. They probably don't communicate their feelings very well. They probably don't empathize with other people's feelings very well. Like, all of these things are, we associate them with immaturity, but at their core, they are rooted in a lack of boundary definition. Like, they, it stems from a lack of understanding and commitment to, "This is the type of person I want to be.

• 44:21Mark Manson?

  This is the boundary I'm going to enforce on myself. And therefore, these are the boundaries, my expectations that I'm going to have going into the relationships with others."

• 44:28Speaker 01

  Got it, yeah.

• 44:30Mark Manson?

  Whereas a mature person, right? It's like, you know exactly where you stand with them. You know exactly what they care about, what they like, what they dislike. You can empathize with them because you know what they care about. They probably communicate well. They're probably disciplined and accountable. They probably, like, they're probably reliable.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  They don't tolerate bullshit.

• 44:49Mark Manson?

  They don't tolerate bullshit. You know, and all of those things are downstream of boundaries. Having good boundaries.

• 44:58Mark Manson?

  Let's talk about the basis of boundary formation. Like, how do you know how to define yourself? How do you know what's worth committing to? Or what's worth sticking up for? Or what's worth saying no to, right? Ultimately, it comes back to values. So, there was actually a very famous Harvard Business School professor named Clayton Christensen. And wrote a bunch of very famous business books. Like, extremely well-regarded in the business world. And he was diagnosed with cancer in 2010. Now, facing mortality, he did something very admirable, which is he decided to teach to the end. And in one of his last lectures, he got up in front of all of his students and he said, "You know, instead of talking about business strategy, I just want to ask you all a simple question.

• 45:42Mark Manson?

  How are you going to measure your life?"

• 45:46Mark Manson?

  Because he said that throughout his life, you know, he had met so many powerful CEOs and presidents and board members and billionaires and all these like incredibly successful and impressive people. And he said, the majority of them were neurotic, depressed, divorced, had estranged children, horrible relationships, addictions, like all sorts of issues and problems. They'd climb the career ladder all the way to the top, but on a personal and emotional basis, they were, they were just total messes. Now, the insight that he pulled from this is that while they had boundaries, like obviously you have to have

• 46:28Mark Manson?

  strong boundaries if you're gonna work like 80 hours, 100 hours a week, if you're gonna become CEO, if you're gonna, you know, climb the corporate ladder all the way to the top. Those boundaries weren't actually connected to the most important things in their lives. Like, they would say that family mattered more than anything else, but they would work through the weekend. Or they would say that integrity was super important to them, but then they would get caught for billions of dollars in tax fraud. Like, it just, there was like example after example after example of people saying that they valued one thing, but their behavior was clearly demonstrating something else. And we talked about this when we did the values episode a while back, which is that it's, it's often not our, our

• 47:09Mark Manson?

  words or our thoughts that demonstrate what we actually care about. Like, it's actually very easy for us to lie to ourselves about what we care about. It's our actions that actually demonstrate what we care about. You know, I can tell you that I value family until I'm blue in the face, but if I'm like here at the studio until 11 o'clock at night and I'm not going home, that tells you something. Right. So Christensen shared a, a practice that he had come up with. And he said that for every major life decision that he came up against, he would filter the, the decision through three separate questions. First one was, is this gonna help me become the person I want to be? Very Kantian. Number two was, will this strengthen the relationships that matter to me?

• 47:52Mark Manson?

  Number three was, will this create value beyond myself? Now, these decision filters, he ran everything through them. So like when McKinsey came to him and offered him like a massive consultancy, it was going to require him to miss tons of weekends and time with his kids. And so he passed up on it because ultimately, he felt like being around for his daughter's childhood was more important than, you know, making a couple of million dollars. So obviously, the cancer progressed. Who needs another couple of million dollars when you're like a famous Harvard Business Professor anyway?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  And you have cancer too.

• 48:29Mark Manson?

  And you have cancer. I mean, like, how many of your daughter's soccer games are you really willing to miss?

• 48:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:34Mark Manson?

  So I think that's just that that's like a very nice example or anecdote of what we're talking about. Now, I think, again, just a reminder to the listener, if you're unclear what values are, how to figure out what your values are, how to decide you prioritize your values, I highly, highly recommend going back and listening to our values episode. It's over four hours long. It's super thorough. It's actually probably like maybe our most popular episode that we've ever done.

• 49:05Speaker 01

  It's up there, yeah.

• 49:06Mark Manson?

  It's hugely illuminating for people. The first and most crucial mistake that people make when they are setting boundaries around their values is that they set the boundaries reactively. That is, they wait until the drama's already happened.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Right, something happens.

• 49:22Mark Manson?

  They wait until they're already burnt out. They wait until they already are pissed off at their boss or their coworker or their sister or whatever. Then they decide to set the boundary. And this is dangerous because there's a very high likelihood that you're going to overcompensate. Because you're emotional in that moment, you're probably not going to see the situation clearly and you're probably going to overestimate either how rigid the boundary needs to be, like how uncompromising you need to be, or you're just going to be misaligned. Like, you're just gonna, in that moment, when you're really upset about something, you're probably going to read the situation incorrectly.

• 49:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely miss the forest for the trees a lot of times. Something terrible happens and you get so hyper fixated on that one thing.

• 50:06Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 50:06Speaker 01

  And then that becomes the thing you set a boundary around when actually you need to step back.

• 50:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah, and really, I think in these situations, it's like time that tells. Because this is the funny thing, it's like bad boundaries, I think they just, they don't have longevity. Like, they start to look ridiculous after a certain amount of time. So like I like there's somebody in my life that I know who had some drama around the holidays with with their parents. And you know, it was it was a fight. It was like a argument with with their mother and and it it got a little bit dramatic and a little bit heated or whatever. But this person is, you know, an avid consumer of Instagram life advice. And so they decided to cut off their mother and basically not talk to him anymore.

• 50:49Mark Manson?

  And it was funny because at the at the time, this person like felt very empowered and they were like, I'm sick of it. I'm not going to stand for this anymore. I deserve respect and I don't have to listen to these things and blah, blah, blah, blah. Here's my boundary. And here's my boundary. I'm never talking to her again. And and as the months went on, it just started to feel a little bit silly and and and then about a year later by like, you know, after the next holiday season, from the outside, it just looked absolutely ridiculous. And I think it's everybody involved just kind of reached the point where like, this is absurd. Like, why are we doing this? Right. And and then sure enough, they started talking to their mother again and then everything's fine.

• 51:32Mark Manson?

  And I think this gets into actually like probably the most important point around this, which is that effective boundaries are designed to protect your values. They're not designed to protect your feelings. I think most people who don't know what they're doing with boundaries, they set boundaries to protect their feelings. They're like, you made me feel bad not talking to you. That's the reactivity, right? Yeah, it's like, that's not what you're trying to protect here. In fact, if you're trying to protect your feelings, you're actually just allowing yourself to indulge more into the feeling brain, to become more impulsive, to become more desire driven, right? You're not living up to your higher self. So it's not about feelings.

• 52:14Mark Manson?

  It's about the values. And again, in the values episode, one of the things we talked about constantly is that The one of the ways that you know what your values are is you know what you're willing to suffer for, right? Like, if I value my kids, it means that I'm willing to suffer for them. That's how I know that I value them. If I said I valued my kids, but like, I spent no time with them, I had like a fleet of a dozen nannies, and I refused to get up in the middle of the night, would you say that I actually value my kids? No, I'd be a fucking selfish, deadbeat dad. You know, so it's, you see this everywhere. And, and it's ultimately, the way you know that you actually value, care about something, is that you're willing to sacrifice for it.

• 52:59Mark Manson?

  And if you're not willing to sacrifice for it, then you're not really protecting a value. You're protecting indulgence. And this is where it gets crucially important with relationships. This is where you get that paradoxical effect, where the more you're willing to fight about something, the less likely you are to fight about it. Because people see that you really fucking care. And they're like, oh, okay, don't mess with Drew about that thing.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  There's stakes.

• 53:25Mark Manson?

  Yes, there's stakes involved. And it's just, people know. And, like, I don't want to get into geopolitics, but there's probably some analogy here of like, the willingness to go to war is what prevents war.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  I like that framing, that there, boundaries that protect your values, not your feelings. The example I brought up earlier, that happened to me recently, initially I wanted, I was very reactive. I like, somebody, the way they treated me, that somebody said something, there was like, they got upset, cursed at me, I didn't like that, it felt bad, and I wanted to react. And I did to some extent. And when I first came to them, I was like, hey, that makes me feel this way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And they were kind of, they were pushing back a little bit on me. And they're like, it's not about your feelings here, you know?

• 54:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  And I was like, fuck you, yes it is. My feelings are hurt.

• 54:15Speaker 01

  And then it took some time, okay, let me get away from this. And what it came down to was, I value this relationship

• 54:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:22Speaker 01

  more than I value my feelings right now. And so can we talk about that?

• 54:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  That's what opened up that, this whole situation that you're talking about. It's like, I'm gonna fight over that.

• 54:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  I'll fight over that, not about my feelings, which come and go and all of that.

• 54:34Mark Manson?

  It's funny, the feelings thing, I think in relationships, the feelings thing is funny, because it's not about the feelings itself. It's, they're like a proxy for respect.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah.

• 54:44Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 54:44Speaker 01

  And that's what I, yeah.

• 54:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 54:46Speaker 01

  That's the conclusion I came to, yeah.

• 54:47Mark Manson?

  It's one of those things, it reminds me of the line from The Big Lebowski. It's like, you're not wrong, Walter, you're just an asshole.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 54:54Mark Manson?

  Like, I run into that quite a bit, you know, in my marriage, where it's like, and both my wife and I do it to each other, where it's like, we'll be right, but we're just kind of being a dick about it.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:05Mark Manson?

  And, and the issue isn't like, it's like, okay, you're right. I should take out the trash, but like, can you just say please?

• 55:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:14Mark Manson?

  Like, you just ask nicely? You know, I'm happy to do it, but like, just ask nicely.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:19Mark Manson?

  You know, and it's, the language is a signal for a respect of each other's values. There's a lot of subtlety on the relationship side of this. I mean, there's subtlety too with setting boundaries for yourself, but like, all in all, I think it's way more straightforward than navigating boundaries with other people. You know, and I think there's a reason why probably two thirds of this episode is gonna be about relationship-related boundaries, just because there is so much nuance and detail and like, different factors that go into it. Obviously, this point ties into like, you know, my main point in the subtle not giving a fuck, which is that like, it's easy to want the benefit of something, but like, what are you willing to suffer for? What's the cost that you enjoy?

• 56:04Mark Manson?

  What's the thing that you like? You kind of secretly, the pain that you kind of secretly like having? When I give live talks, like, one of the things I always say to the audience is I say like, I believe that every person is a masochist about one thing in their life. The question is like, what are you a masochist about? Like, what's the pain that you kind of secretly like? Hmm, yeah, daddy, hit me again.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yeah?

• 56:30Mark Manson?

  Yeah. You like that?

• 56:37Mark Manson?

  Promotion for your live shows. Yes, I'm available for children's parties.

• 56:46Mark Manson?

  I mean, every meaningful pursuit does have an inherent component of suffering. So, you know, defining your values is a way of defining what you're willing to suffer for. I think this is also important because, you know, behavioral economics, if you look at like all the famous work of Kahneman, Tversky and others, you see consistently that we have a tendency to overestimate the joy that the benefits of a sacrifice is going to bring us and we underestimate the costs of the sacrifice itself. And so our brains are just kind of naturally wired to distort the way we perceive any sort of cost or sacrifice. We always assume that the benefits are going to be way better than they are.

• 57:28Mark Manson?

  So I just think that thinking in terms of like, what is the pain that I'm willing to sustain? What is the pain that I actually kind of like having is a way to hack that flaw in our own psychology. All right, so let's talk about like, let's say you know what you care about, you know what your values are, you know, what does this actually look like? So I'm going to run through a handful of examples of, you know, kind of translating personal value into both internal boundary, something that I defined for myself, and then an external boundary, something that I defined for the world. So another useful test to kind of figure out what you value or what you care about is the deathbed test. So think about yourself on your deathbed, ask yourself like, what would you regret not

• 58:13Mark Manson?

  doing? What would you regret doing? What did you spend too much time on? This is kind of the memento mori practice from Stoicism that we've talked about quite a bit. You know, if I was to die in a year, like, what would I change about my life? Is there anything that's been left unsaid? Is there anything that I have been too afraid to do that I wish I would have done? Those are all very useful exercises. And then, of course, there's the energy audit. What challenges energize you versus what challenges drain you? I think this is a question that's not discussed enough. I think we tend to assume that every challenge just drains us and sucks. But the truth is, is that some challenges are very invigorating and exciting. And we become more alive and we rise to the occasion.

• 58:58Mark Manson?

  So I think it's useful to think in those terms. Another way that I've often framed this to myself is like, what is something that sucks that feels kind of easy to me, but seems very, very difficult to other people? Like, I remember when I first started blogging, I was writing these super long articles. And I just thought that that's what every blogger did. You know, it was like a 3,000-word article every three days. And it wasn't until I went to my first blogging conference and everybody I met was just like, dude, how do you write so much? How do you post so often? And I was like, I don't know. It never occurred to me.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Just sit down and do it.

• 59:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah, you just fucking write. You just like, you just put the words in your head onto a paper. And like, then you hit publish. Like, it never occurred to me that that was a difficult thing. I actually had to go meet a lot of other bloggers and writers to realize that they were like, just getting a single post out each week was like a huge struggle for them. And so that was, that was actually an indicator to me of like, oh, maybe I should be a writer. All right, so we thought through, what are the things that we care about? What are the challenges that enliven us? What does this look like in terms of boundaries? Well, values without boundaries, it's just wishful thinking. Whereas boundaries with values actually make the values real. They like manifest the values in your life. Can we use that word, Drew?

• 1:00:16Speaker 01

  We can. I'll allow it.

• 1:00:17Mark Manson?

  You'll allow it?

• 1:00:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, in that context.

• 1:00:20Mark Manson?

  In that context, okay. No, the woo-woo police have not been alerted.

• 1:00:24Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:00:25Mark Manson?

  So a few simple examples, like, let's say I value my health, right? An internal boundary I might set for myself is that... I don't stay out past midnight, except for extremely special occasions. That's actually a real boundary I have for myself.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:00:43Mark Manson?

  I'm in bed by midnight these days, unless it's like a birthday or a holiday or something.

• 1:00:47Speaker 01

  Note the flexibility in there.

• 1:00:49Mark Manson?

  Yes, yes. The external boundary around that would be like, let's say I get invited to, I don't know, a party or a concert or whatever, and it starts at 11:00 PM. The boundary is, I say no. And if I'm worried about hurting that person's feelings, or upsetting somebody, or whatever, just send them a quick explanation, be like, hey, man, I'm an early bird, I really like my sleep, I don't really party much, would love to get together for coffee sometime.

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:01:16Mark Manson?

  Shoot that text off. So just to make sure that they know it's not about them, I've got this boundary in my life, I'm adhering to it. Another example is, let's say, a top value of mine is family. Well, an internal boundary that I can set is that as soon as I walk in the door and I get home, no work allowed. Not on my phone at dinner, not taking calls from my boss, not checking email in bed. It's like, when I'm at home, it's family time, no exceptions. Now, an external boundary, you know, to enforce that, would be to tell my coworkers, hey, when I go home, I don't answer emails.

• 1:01:58Mark Manson?

  Or, yeah, if you message me at 9:00 PM, you're not going to get a response until I wake up. Like, period. So the first step is defining the personal value. The second step is to operationalize the value in the form of a boundary, but defining it for yourself, but also defining it for others. And by the way, like, this is a super useful exercise, to like, actually write these things out. Like, write out these things, these definitions for yourself, like, I don't work at home, or I don't stay out past 12:00 PM. That way, when you are put in the situation with other people, you already know what to say. You're like... Hey, I don't do this, or this isn't my thing, or that's not a priority for me.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think, you know, in the, in the values episode, we talked about how values, and you've mentioned this too here, values are acted out, they're, they're just the way you behave. That's really where they come in. We didn't get into as much of like the real, like boundaries are kind of the, they're the verbs and the values are the nouns, right? And the boundaries are the ones that give your values some weight, actually. We didn't get as much into that in the values episode, but I think that's an important point you're making right now.

• 1:03:05Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:03:05Speaker 01

  Is that, you know, translating values into real life, real life values that manifest in your life, that's through the boundaries that you set.

• 1:03:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah. So, once you've done that, step three, and this is like, this is almost just like a check, which is make, make sure that they're flexible, affirm, right? Like, you don't want to be a zealot, you don't want to be like, I will never, ever go to bed past 10:00 PM ever again. Like, that's just, that's insanity. And by the way, you can't control things, so like, it's probably gonna happen at some point anyway. You also don't want to be wishy washy about it, though. You don't want to be like, oh, I need to sleep more. I'm gonna go to bed early. Like, if you don't define what early is, you don't define what the cutoff is, you don't define what the circumstances that you do it or you don't do it are, you're not gonna adhere to it. It's very similar to goals and that, like, you know, it's like, if you don't,

• 1:03:59Mark Manson?

  if you don't define what your goal is, or if you don't decide how you're gonna measure your goal, like, you're, you're just not, not gonna hit it. It's the same with boundaries. If there's not a clear definition around it, and if, and if the exceptions are not also clearly defined,

• 1:04:13Mark Manson?

  then you're just gonna be back in that wishy washy, ambiguous state.

• 1:04:17Speaker 01

  It seems like, you know, every episode we do, we find, it's like, oh, there's gotta be a balance and stuff like that. And I used to think that that was a really kind of like a cop out answer for a lot of things. But if you think about it, finding that balance is actually really, really hard.

• 1:04:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:29Speaker 01

  That's like actually the most difficult thing. Taking it to an extreme, having very porous boundaries is easy. Having very rigid boundaries is very easy. Finding that balance where you do have that situational flexibility, that's actually really hard.

• 1:04:40Mark Manson?

  It is.

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  Um, and so, there's like, there's a practice to it that you have to kind of engage in over and over again, that, um, I think it only comes with practice.

• 1:04:48Mark Manson?

  There's a self-correction that happens, you know, and it's like, you're probably gonna miss the mark the first time you try it. And then, you know, you're gonna realize like, oh, I was really too rigid, or like, oh, I need to tighten things up. I don't, I can't really be trusted in these situations. So it's, it does come back to the Aristotelian golden mean.

• 1:05:10Speaker 01

  The golden mean, right.

• 1:05:11Mark Manson?

  Right? Like, you never hit the perfect balance. You're just always adjusting and readjusting and readjusting.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah, so just want to have, like, it's not, it's not actually a cop out answer. We're like, oh, you just need to find balance. I mean, people use it as a cop out a lot of times, but it's like, okay, what does that actually look like?

• 1:05:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  That's the hard part.

• 1:05:27Mark Manson?

  It's probably a useful reminder as well at this point, too, that like, boundaries are super important. They are, they matter a lot, but they're not gospel. Like, this shit is not being chiseled into stone tablets and being brought down from a mountain.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:42Mark Manson?

  By God. Like, this is stuff, it's, you're creating it for yourself, like, you're human.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  It's very personal, yeah.

• 1:05:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's very personal, and also, the boundaries that you set today may not be appropriate for you two or three years from now, right? Like, your life's gonna change, your values are gonna change, your situation's gonna change, your relationships are gonna change. So again, there's just like a constant adjustment that has to be made. Otherwise, you end up becoming too rigid.

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:07Mark Manson?

  So just round, I'm just gonna round this, this section out with a few more examples. You know, again, the, the value is the why, and the boundary is the how, right? So, you know, in my relationships, I value authenticity. Authenticity is the why behind my relationships. You know, my friendships and my, my good family, like, the people I make time for, it's, why do I make time, time for them? Because I feel very, they feel very authentic, it feels very, like, the, the connection is very honest and pure. The how is the boundary, right? Which is, I decide for myself first that I'm gonna be authentic in my relationships. I'm not gonna hide who I am, I'm not gonna be, pretend to be somebody I'm not. I'm not going to people please or placate.

• 1:06:53Mark Manson?

  If somebody doesn't like me, that I'm just gonna allow that to happen. And then, of course, the practice is holding to that boundary, right? So if I'm out with a friend and I find out that he's kind of been bullshitting me or lied to me about something, I don't let it go. I don't, I don't pretend it didn't happen. You know, I say like, what the fuck, dude, like? Why'd you say that? You know, and hash it out with them. Another example, uh, let's say in work, I, I value excellence over volume of output. I would operationalize that internally by saying my value is that I take on fewer projects. So I can do them extremely well. That means that I don't take on any projects that I think is going to sacrifice the quality of my work.

• 1:07:36Mark Manson?

  And then in practice externally, that means being able to look coworkers or my boss in the face and being like, hey, I don't have the bandwidth for that. You know, unless you want me to compromise on something. And finally, in personal development, uh, let's say I have a value of, um, being open to, to try anything, right? I set a boundary within myself of like not judging or criticizing something unless I've like given it a fair shake or given it a fair try. And then externally, um, that means that if somebody is talking to me about some whacked out spirit crystal or, uh, you know, yoga retreat that involves, um, a bunch of like naked gurus humping me, I don't necessarily discount it at first glance.

• 1:08:21Mark Manson?

  I like, I withhold my skepticism. That's a sign of maturity, Mark.

• 1:08:29Mark Manson?

  How far I've come. Yeah, look at you. How far I've come. So ultimately, I mean, this is kind of the philosophical and psychological underpinning of boundaries. This is why they matter so much. This is how they function in the depths of our minds. You know, they really are our values manifested through our actions. Uh, and you know, as you and I like, we, we bang the values drum every fucking chance we get. First episode for a reason. Yes. It's foundational. Exactly. So it's in that sense, boundaries are also foundational. Like it's, you can spend all the time in the world staring at your navel, figuring out what you care about or what matters to you.

• 1:09:12Mark Manson?

  But if you're not actually out there living it and you're not enforcing those values in your own life, then like, what the fuck does it matter?

• 1:09:25Speaker 01

  We've talked a little bit about what boundaries are, where they come from, why they're so important.

• 1:09:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:31Speaker 01

  We've mentioned some of the difficulties too, but now I kind of want to get into the nitty gritty of like, why we so often fail to set and kind of maintain these boundaries? People think it's like, oh, it's your weakness, or you have no self-discipline. And maybe that's part of it, sure.

• 1:09:46Mark Manson?

  I'm a coward.

• 1:09:47Speaker 01

  Or you're a coward. Yes, maybe that's it. And sure, maybe those are like surface level explanations for it, but actually it's, when I dug into this, it's a little bit deeper than that.

• 1:09:56Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  There are really kind of, I found three areas anyway, that kind of explain some of this. There's developmental reasons.

• 1:10:02Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:10:03Speaker 01

  For a lack of boundaries. There are kind of personality and individual differences that we have. So we'll talk about some of the personality factors. And then there's just like emotion regulation and emotional skills that all factor into this. So I'm going to go through each one of those. Okay?

• 1:10:18Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  We'll start with the developmental stuff. Now, if you think about it, the first boundary you ever had wasn't really like a rule-based boundary. It was a relationship. It was probably with your caregivers that you had. And for a lot of people, that didn't really go so well.

• 1:10:33Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  And then you carry that forward into your adult life.

• 1:10:36Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's this idea in developmental psychology is called developmental fusion. Okay, so when you're really young, like zero to maybe one and a half, two years old, somewhere in there, you really don't have an identity. You've already mentioned this actually. You really don't have an identity separate from your parents or your caregivers, whatever's going on, the people around you. You're just kind of this.

• 1:10:58Mark Manson?

  Well, you have no abstract sense of self.

• 1:10:59Speaker 01

  No abstract sense of self.

• 1:11:00Mark Manson?

  You're just.

• 1:11:00Speaker 01

  No theory of mind.

• 1:11:01Mark Manson?

  Pure sensation.

• 1:11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're just pure consciousness, basically, right? At that point. That's called developmental fusion. It's very normal. It's, that's how we all start out. But at a certain point, you have to start doing what they call individuation. Okay, there was this famous psychologist back in the seventies, Margaret Mahler, and she came up with this idea of individuation. And this is where you, like the terrible twos come around, you know, if you know any parents have a two or three year old. They're starting to assert their independence. They find out how to say no and what it means and the power of no, right? You start to realize like, oh, I'm a separate. Being I'm a separate entity from all the other things around me. I have feelings that are my own that not everybody else is experiencing that same thing at the same time as I am.

• 1:11:45Speaker 01

  I have desires and opinions that are outside of everybody else's as well. There's there starts to be a sense of independence and individuation during that period. And that's very normal, too. However, if that gets disrupted, then you don't go through that full individuation process. And you don't develop a sense of self that's separate from others. You don't develop that first boundary.

• 1:12:08Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Right? And you can carry that all the way. That that will show up later in your life as well. Donald Winnicott, back in the in the 60s and 70s, he called this the good enough mother. And you could say the good enough caregiver. Right? It's this is a secure caregiver who they let there's enough autonomy. They give them enough autonomy. They give the child enough autonomy, but at the same time, they put those constraints around that we talked about. Again, that kind of balance that we find. Okay. Healthy caregiving really isn't about like rescuing the child. It's from every discomfort.

• 1:12:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  It's really about teaching them that they can survive those discomforts. And that's where individuation starts. It's kind of like, okay, something bad happens. You're feeling this, but not everybody else is feeling it. And you have to you have to deal with it.

• 1:12:50Mark Manson?

  Can I say something? This is this is a connection I just made right now, listening to you talk. Coming back to that question of like, what are you willing to suffer for?

• 1:12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:01Mark Manson?

  You need to suffer from things to know what's worth suffering for.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:13:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Like, you can't figure out what you value in life until you've suffered a certain amount of hardship or pain or struggle. And so if you have parents that are constantly protecting you from all hardship and struggle.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:17Mark Manson?

  Then you no value formation happens in the first place.

• 1:13:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:20Mark Manson?

  No identity formation happens in the first place. I just made that connection.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, that's absolutely true. Just being able to to face and handle those types of like tough situations when you're younger and you carry that skill on with you. That's a huge part of individuation.

• 1:13:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Like you're talking about. And so it's a huge part of like establishing yourself. And then you're saying, yes, I can deal with this and I choose to deal with this, too. So that's a big part of individuation, for sure. Another area, though, that that came up with this is you've heard of schema therapy.

• 1:13:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, so schema therapy was originally developed by Jeffrey Young. I think it was Jeffrey Young back in the 60s, 70s. And there's been a lot of work done since then. And they found that like childhood traumas and unmet emotional needs during that critical period during those early years like that, that can lead to what they call early maladaptive schemas. EMS is what they call them, not to get too jargony here. Schemas are kind of like, they're mind maps, kind of, or maps of the world, maps of life that you have, and then you develop these from an early age. How to interact with other people, how to interact with the world. That's a schema.

• 1:14:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:23Speaker 01

  If you go through some sort of childhood trauma, or even just consistently don't get your needs met during those early critical periods when you're very, very, you're very dependent on your caregivers, then you can develop some of these more maladaptive schemas.

• 1:14:38Mark Manson?

  So basically like inaccurate schemas.

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Inaccurate schemas.

• 1:14:41Mark Manson?

  To the world.

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  Right. Now, they serve an adaptive function, it's called maladaptive. They serve an adaptive function early on, but later on, as you get older, they're no longer adaptive.

• 1:14:51Mark Manson?

  So an example of that would be like, say, somebody grew up in a traumatic household and they grow up believing that everybody is threatening.

• 1:14:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:58Mark Manson?

  Like, every person is threatening, you have to protect yourself at all times, like that, that would be a maladaptive schema.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Right. And then you would probably develop very rigid boundaries around that, keeping people at arm's length, putting up walls, not letting people in, not accepting help.

• 1:15:09Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:15:10Speaker 01

  The other side is if you have, yeah, like helicopter parents or somebody who's always taking care of everything for you, then you, then you come up with very porous boundaries, and probably you project that on other people, you start wanting to just help them all the time and forget your own values and boundaries and all of that.

• 1:15:29Mark Manson?

  Or you become Eric Cartman, who believes you're entitled to everything.

• 1:15:34Speaker 01

  That is Cartman's MO, isn't it?

• 1:15:36Mark Manson?

  It is. I mean, it's funny, when you were describing a helicopter parent who gives you everything, I just immediately thought of Cartman, and I'm like, yeah, he's a fucking demon, because he just, he's like, he's the most spoiled, entitled, little prick. And, but I mean, it's funny, because that narcissism is also a lack of boundaries. It's also a weak ego, right? It's like believing that everything is yours, it should be yours, you deserve everything. You're entitled to everything. That is a lack of boundaries.

• 1:16:05Speaker 01

  Right, right. All of this kind of points in the direction, though, of like developing your attachment system, which this comes up a lot in our episodes too, but attachment, just real briefly, you can have a secure attachment or an insecure attachment. Securely attached people, they navigate relationships well, that boundaries for them aren't like threatening.

• 1:16:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:27Speaker 01

  Nor are they, nor are they completely non-negotiable too. They're like, oh, this is a boundary, but let me, like, we can negotiate this, right?

• 1:16:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:36Mark Manson?

  Sorry, I just got really excited. I was like thinking about attachment theory through the lens of boundaries, right?

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  It's wild, right?

• 1:16:41Mark Manson?

  It is like, you know.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  There's so many lenses you can put attachment theory through.

• 1:16:45Mark Manson?

  Like an anxious attachment person is like somebody who like has extremely porous boundaries. And then an avoidant is probably somebody who has too rigid of boundaries.

• 1:16:53Speaker 01

  Absolutely. You just want to do the rest of this section?

• 1:16:57Mark Manson?

  I'm sorry, Drew, I'm getting excited.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  No, that's exactly where I was going with it.

• 1:17:00Mark Manson?

  I'm getting nerd excited over this.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Maybe I'm just too predictable. I don't know.

• 1:17:04Mark Manson?

  Maybe we've been working together too.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  It does, though. It does. It all kind of leads to that, though. Through all of this, through the early unmet needs that you have, or even traumas that you have, the schemas that you develop from that, the parenting style you are subjected to, it leads up to this attachment style that, and that has a huge influence on the way you set and maintain your boundaries. So a secure person, again, they're going to see boundaries as a useful tool. They don't see them as threatening. They don't use them to threaten other people either. They don't use them as a wall to keep people out. They don't, they don't use them as, you know, carrots and sticks to get people to come closer to them or not. Whereas insecure attachments, if you're anxious, like you said, you're going to have

• 1:17:51Speaker 01

  more porous boundaries. If you're more avoidant, you're probably going to be more rigid in your boundaries.

• 1:17:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  So that's kind of the developmental, that's a real quick survey of the developmental side of how, you know, if you are a person who has issues with boundaries, maybe take a look at some of the, take a look at some of that. Therapy is good for this kind of stuff too, because a lot of times you don't realize what you went through and how it has now affecting the way you set up boundaries in your life, or just really navigate relationships in general too.

• 1:18:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah. We're going to get to this a little bit later when we talk a bit more about romantic relationships, but you know, boundaries is one of those things that it's It's kind of, there's like a social contagion of it. Like, the best way to learn boundaries is to be around somebody who has good boundaries. And feel what it feels like to be friends with somebody with good boundaries, or be like a partner of somebody with good boundaries. Like, it's not that it rubs off on you, but like, you, by experiencing what a good boundary feels like, you start to get a sense of like, oh, this is how I should be behaving. And I think just on a very practical and like, obvious level, if you have parents who are terrible at boundaries, you're never gonna learn that. Just because you're never gonna experience it with them,

• 1:19:05Mark Manson?

  they're gonna constantly be, you know, holding you responsible for their feelings and intermingling in your life, and messing with things, and meshing themselves with different things that you're doing. And so like, if that's where you come from, you're just gonna assume that that's, that's normal, and everybody should behave that way.

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  A nuance I would put on that is, yes, being around healthy boundaries is the best way to learn them and to exercise them, sure. I think at first, though, those first few times you are, like, say you are, I'll give you a very personal example in my case.

• 1:19:37Mark Manson?

  Let's go.

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, for the longest time, I like, I've just, my avoidance, I was avoidantly attached. Put up the walls, keep people out, arms length, like, all of that. Then, when I got into some relationships that were more secure, I was like, what, this is what? It felt weird. It felt weird, because it was, I was in the cla- usually in the classic, kind of like, I was the avoidant with an anxious, the chasy and chaser, you know? And then when I got into, with, if I was in a relationship with somebody who was more secure, I was like, oh, what, like, does she like me? Or is this, this boring, you know? So I think you really gotta watch out a little bit for that. The self-awareness has to kick in at some point, being like, oh, okay, this is,

• 1:20:22Speaker 01

  it's okay that there's not some weird, toxic dynamic going on, right?

• 1:20:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:27Speaker 01

  So, so, again, yes, it is, that's the best way to learn boundaries and secure attachment, and all of that is to be in one of those relationships with someone, or a friendship, or whatever it is. You do gotta, like, have the self-awareness, though, to know that, when you're, when you're going down the wrong side of it.

• 1:20:43Mark Manson?

  It's funny, I've personally found, as somebody who was like, very insecure when he was younger, When I think back to when I was insecure, like somebody saying no to me felt like death.

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:20:53Mark Manson?

  It was brutal. I took it super personally. I would like ruminate for days of like, whoa, what's wrong with me? Why doesn't she want to hang out with me? As I've gotten older and gotten more secure, now when I meet people who are really good at saying no, like, I love them. Like, if I'm hanging out with a new person or a new friend and they're able to like very gracefully decline things or reject people for things or reject me, like, say no to me for certain things, I'm just like, this person's awesome. I want to be friends with this person. Like, it's just such a rare skill and an admirable, it's a green flag, essentially.

• 1:21:34Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I have a real good friend of mine who's like that, who's just very much like, we'll tell you no, and not apologize, you know, not be like, not dance around it.

• 1:21:44Mark Manson?

  And not make you feel bad.

• 1:21:45Speaker 01

  And not make you feel bad about it. He's like, nah, I'm not doing this and this is why. I'm good with it. And at first, it was a little bit like, okay, you don't want to hang out? You don't want to, you know, any of that? And now I just get it. And I really respect him for it because then when he does want to come and join, then you know it's real. Yeah. Another benefit of boundaries right there. Yeah. Okay, so that's the developmental side. The next area I want to get into is just like personality traits, right? There's individual differences, obviously, within personality. If you take like the big five, let's say the big five personality traits, somebody who's highly agreeable tends to have more porous boundaries, right? They tend to want to please other people more, go with the flow, not really assert themselves. This isn't, I mean, that's not,

• 1:22:30Speaker 01

  I feel like whenever I bring up agreeableness, like, especially, I think in like the culture in the United States or whatever, it seems like you're a big pushover, but it's just people who like, they're more, they want to be more communal, they're more compassionate. And they want other people to enjoy themselves around them too. And so, don't like, don't think I'm trashing you if you're, you know, just because you're agreeable. But it, it can very quickly go in, if you're high in agreeableness, uh, it can very quickly go down to like some porous boundaries or nonexistent boundaries whatsoever. You contrast that with like highly conscientious people. If you're highly conscientious and you're low in agreeableness, even maybe disagreeable, you're probably gonna have very, very rigid boundaries.

• 1:23:09Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:23:09Speaker 01

  Just to, to maintain that structure in your life. Cause conscientious people, they, they, they find a lot of control and structure and organization.

• 1:23:17Mark Manson?

  Just to define a couple of terms for people listening who aren't familiar with the big five. You know, agreeableness is generally people who are prone to seek out positive feelings in their relationship. So they, they like good vibes, they like good energy, they like to make people happy. Um, they like to feel good all the time. Um, and coincidentally, a person extremely high in agreeableness is probably somebody who's going to tiptoe around something uncomfortable, not wanna bring up a, a potential conflict, you know, uh, won't say anything controversial and so on. Conscientiousness is generally people who like things to be very organized, rigid, structured, um, and, uh, like well-maintained. So an extremely high conscientious person, uh, would make a great tax accountant.

• 1:24:01Mark Manson?

  They keep their spaces super tidy and clean. They love organization, they love order, they love systems. Um, so yeah, what you're describing is somebody very high in conscientiousness, which means basically they have extremely high standards for the environment around them, uh, and, and other people around them. And then low agreeableness, which means that they are, will totally call you out if you are pissing them off. Um, yeah, those people can have very rigid boundaries.

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Right. Uh, and then let's get into like another dimension, uh, neurotic individual. So neurotic, uh, the, the dimension of neuroses is your tendency towards negative emotion.

• 1:24:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:37Speaker 01

  Right? Uh, so if you're high in neuroticism, you tend to like have bigger.

• 1:24:44Speaker 01

  Negative emotions, you, you, they're more, they're more intense for you, generally speaking. Whereas if you're low in neuroticism, you have more towards maybe positive affect, but at least not negative affect.

• 1:24:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Speaker 01

  Okay. Neurotic people actually can be, have very rigid boundaries as well, because there again, they're trying to

• 1:25:01Mark Manson?

  Protect themselves.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Protect themselves.

• 1:25:03Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:25:03Speaker 01

  It's usually what it is. There's a, it's a, it's a survival mechanism almost for them.

• 1:25:07Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  Okay. Extroversion, introversion. So if you're extroverted more so than introverted, extroverted people tend to have a little bit more porous boundaries, a little looser.

• 1:25:16Mark Manson?

  Doesn't surprise me.

• 1:25:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, because they want to connect with people. That's how they, they get a lot of, they get a lot of satisfaction out of their relationships in their lives. And, and with connecting people, they're energized by it even.

• 1:25:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  And so they might go out of their way and kind of loosen up their boundaries or forego them completely if it means that they get to connect with someone. Or, you know, the drugs example you were saying too, like people, people, extroverted people who are high in openness, which is the next one. I tend to do a lot more drugs.

• 1:25:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  No judgment here.

• 1:25:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  It's just, that's, that's a fact, right? Which brings me to openness. So openness to new experience, that's another dimension of the big five. If you're open to a new experience, you're open to new experience.

• 1:25:56Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  Right? You, you like novelty, you're high in this.

• 1:25:58Mark Manson?

  I'm off the charts.

• 1:26:00Speaker 01

  You're off the charts on openness, for sure. And those, they tend to have flexible, more exploratory boundaries, which has more, more porous as well.

• 1:26:11Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:26:12Speaker 01

  And so from the outside, if you're not as high in that, it sometimes look like, it can sometimes look like a little bit of a a lack of compass to, to other people, which there's maybe a kernel of truth to that.

• 1:26:25Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I think so. I mean, have been extremely high in openness, it just means that you are able to, you're curious about a lot of things and you're open to a lot of different perspectives and, and so I, I can, this is something I run into in my own relationships where I think it's very easy for me to see the other person's perspective. And so I, I kind of become very malleable.

• 1:26:46Speaker 01

  Right. You change your mind a lot.

• 1:26:48Mark Manson?

  Like, oh, oh, well, that's how you feel. Okay. Yeah. We'll do it your way.

• 1:26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:53Mark Manson?

  I think at a certain point that can start to backfire if you're not careful.

• 1:26:56Speaker 01

  If you're, if you're overly suggestible in that, if you're, if you're open and highly suggestible.

• 1:27:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:01Speaker 01

  Then yeah, yeah. You're going to have a problem. Defining boundaries because you're open to so many things, you're like, oh, let's, let's explore this, right?

• 1:27:10Mark Manson?

  It comes back to the Kantian thing of like, you know, if there's no self limitation, then there's no identity, there's no order.

• 1:27:17Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:27:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Speaker 01

  Now, you know, you can, obviously, there's all sorts of configurations of personalities. You can be high in conscientiousness and high in agreeableness, which I feel like I am. And so there's probably some mitigating factors there. I'm somewhere in the middle on openness, so I don't know how that really goes for me. Neuroticism, I'm pretty neurotic, I would say. Yeah, I have periods where I can be very neurotic, yeah.

• 1:27:40Mark Manson?

  I'm off the charts in openness and I'm like, super, super low neuroticism. Which means that I'm like, pretty much happy in every situation, which is problematic.

• 1:27:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it can be, seriously, it can be, yeah, yeah.

• 1:27:54Mark Manson?

  Like, it's funny because my wife is actually very, she's extremely high conscientiousness and probably decently high in neuroticism. And it's like, honestly, she protects me from myself. Like, I could live in a sleeping bag and under an underpass and probably like, be okay. And that's unreasonable.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 1:28:17Mark Manson?

  So we should, we should do an episode on personality sometime.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  I think we should. It's fascinating, really, it's a whole fascinating field that's been, yeah.

• 1:28:24Mark Manson?

  It is, and it is, I think, most people are surprised to hear that it is the most reliable and replicated

• 1:28:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:31Mark Manson?

  segment of psychology.

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  There's a few people who are like, eh, I don't know about it, but it's a small minority. Yeah, but yeah, you can replicate it over and over. It's very, very applicable to, it's very, very practical.

• 1:28:41Mark Manson?

  It's very predictive.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  Right, right, if you know like, your personality types, you can plan a lot of your, your life around it even too, it's, yeah, it's actually very, very useful.

• 1:28:49Mark Manson?

  Your relationships, your careers, yeah, for sure.

• 1:28:51Speaker 01

  And in this case, your boundaries even too.

• 1:28:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  Right? Okay, so you got the developmental side, you have the personality slash individual differences side, all of these kind of overlap too, by the way, obviously. The next one is kind of like the emotion regulation, mental health, which is obviously influenced a lot by development and a lot by personality as well. Neuroscience, they've found, FMRI studies have found that

• 1:29:14Speaker 01

  Your brain actually distinguishes between what they call empathetic concern and personal distress. Okay. What happens with people who seem to have these more porous boundaries is those kind of get switched, not switched, but there's a lot of crosstalk. Or each one of them is kind of firing, mostly like kind of 50/50. There's not a whole lot of distinguishing neural activity between those two regions when you find this. And this kind of gets into like the emotional contagion type stuff.

• 1:29:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:44Speaker 01

  You might be very susceptible to others, the other, the emotions around you because you're a highly empathetic person.

• 1:29:50Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  Which, you know, there's, I'm not gonna say there's nothing wrong with that because there can be, what I'm gonna get to is there can be something wrong with that. But just to start out, like if you're, if you are susceptible to that emotional contagion around you, that, almost by definition, you don't have very healthy or strong boundaries.

• 1:30:09Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  Around any of that.

• 1:30:11Mark Manson?

  This comes back, this is like a golden mean thing, right?

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Again.

• 1:30:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Once again, you don't want to be completely indifferent to people's emotions around you because then you're just a psychopath. But at the same time, you don't want your entire well-being dictated by the emotions of the people around you because then you're just purely codependent and have no identity or center of yourself. So it's like being influenced by others, but not being dictated by others.

• 1:30:39Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:30:40Mark Manson?

  Is the formula.

• 1:30:41Speaker 01

  And the way some people formulate that is rather than emphasizing empathy so much is to emphasize compassion more.

• 1:30:47Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  Because compassion is, is more of a, yes, I see your, your plight, your pain, whatever. But I can also, there's an individuation there, right? There's a, that's yours and this is mine and yes, I can have compassion for that. But I'm not completely absorbing your, all of your emotions in that moment and letting you hijack my, my emotional system, my empathy that way.

• 1:31:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  And so. That's that's one kind of school of thought is that actually compassion is way, way more useful in these types of situations.

• 1:31:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:19Speaker 01

  And you can still set boundaries when you have compassion for someone.

• 1:31:23Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:31:23Speaker 01

  Right?

• 1:31:24Mark Manson?

  There's a, for listeners, there's a great book about this called Against Empathy.

• 1:31:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:28Mark Manson?

  By Paul Bloom.

• 1:31:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:29Mark Manson?

  From Yale.

• 1:31:30Speaker 01

  Love Paul Bloom.

• 1:31:30Mark Manson?

  Yale University.

• 1:31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:32Mark Manson?

  Super fascinating book, very convincing argument, makes this distinction with a lot of research. And it's, it's, it's a very, I found it convincing.

• 1:31:41Speaker 01

  Empathy is one of those emotions, maybe we mentioned this in the emotions episode, but empathy is one of those emotions that doesn't scale very well.

• 1:31:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Speaker 01

  It's good in a one-on-one situation to a certain degree.

• 1:31:55Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  I would still argue compassion even in that situation is better, but it doesn't scale very well because now you have the emotions of, you know, and we see, we see this in like a.

• 1:32:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah, this group or that group or.

• 1:32:05Speaker 01

  Mass communications too can hijack your empathy very easily.

• 1:32:08Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  So, yeah.

• 1:32:09Mark Manson?

  The tribalism and all that stuff.

• 1:32:11Speaker 01

  Right. So you have like that's emotional contagion and whether or not you're able to navigate that well, convert it to compassion, sure. The other one though is, is what I'm calling the stress boundary trap. Okay, so stress can kind of make us almost desperate for boundaries. And then it kind of steals the energy we need to hold them in a way. The stress is a boundary trap and is why overwhelm can spread. For example, when people feel, say you're overwhelmed at work. Like you're, you, you don't have a very good work-life balance.

• 1:32:48Mark Manson?

  You have no idea what that's like.

• 1:32:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Pretend like you do, right? Say you want to keep those worlds separate. Say you want to keep your work-life and your home-life separate.

• 1:32:58Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  Which a lot of people do.

• 1:33:00Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:33:00Speaker 01

  And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. The stress.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  Though can make that that separation almost impossible. Because in order for you, like you're having stress at work. And in order for you to not have stress at work, you bring it home with you. You try to mitigate it that way. You try to fix the stress and fix the work stress at home. That creates more stress at home.

• 1:33:19Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:33:19Speaker 01

  You get in this vicious, vicious cycle, right? It creates this, this kind of frustrating, very frustrating cycle where the more stressed you are, like the wider the gap becomes between the boundaries you want and the boundaries that you have actually become.

• 1:33:34Mark Manson?

  This makes a lot of sense because it's, you know, coming back to the thinking brain, feeling brain.

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:33:39Mark Manson?

  You know, boundaries are, the self-definition aspect of boundaries is dictated by the thinking brain. And, you know, the, the prefrontal cortex, which is the thinking brain, is just so energy intensive. Like, there's, there's just tons of studies and data and we know very well that the more tired you are, the more stressed you are, the more exhausted you are. Like, it's the worse your executive functioning, the worse your, your thinking brain is at dictating to the, to your feeling brain, like what should be done and when it should be done. So it makes sense that boundaries would fall under that umbrella of things that you just start failing to do when you're stressed or exhausted.

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they, they'll dissolve under stress a lot of times too. And usually it's, you're defaulting, again, finding the balance.

• 1:34:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:21Speaker 01

  Is what the hardest part is. And so you default to the easy.

• 1:34:24Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:34:24Speaker 01

  Whichever is the easiest, which is usually a very porous or a very rigid boundary.

• 1:34:28Mark Manson?

  Oh, well, that, okay, that last part's interesting because I was just thinking about, I mean, as someone who has been working way too much the last few months and is like regularly coming home exhausted.

• 1:34:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, think about that for a second.

• 1:34:41Mark Manson?

  And, and letting boundary, like, kind of failing at some boundaries. You know, I was just thinking about that, but it's interesting what you said there because in my case, what I find is that, you know, I come home, I'm exhausted, I'm tired. I just start letting stuff go. I'm just like, you know. Deal with it tomorrow, or like, I'll tell her tomorrow, or, you know, like, I don't want to fight right now, so fuck it, who cares, you know? And it's, it's, and that includes, again, a lot of the, the boundaries and expectations I set for myself, like, I, I find it harder to follow through on a lot of the behaviors and expectations that I, I hold myself to, and.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  So, okay, I'm having, I have this problem too.

• 1:35:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:24Speaker 01

  Okay, so, do you set a boundary around that then, and say, past a certain time, I have no boundaries and I just let it all go? Is, is that a boundary? Um, is that a, is that a container you can create, I guess, for those, uh, for like, a stress outlet, I guess, or?

• 1:35:39Mark Manson?

  I mean, honestly, at this point in my life and my career, I just start to, I've, I think I've developed a lot more awareness around this. I think these days, I'm much more sensitive to it and aware of it, and, um, I guess, the, the meta-boundary I've set for myself is that if I ever reach the point where I'm too stressed or overwhelmed to maintain the boundaries throughout my life, then you have to take the foot off the gas.

• 1:36:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:05Mark Manson?

  You gotta take a day off, you gotta take an afternoon off, you gotta sleep in a couple days, it's, and, I mean, I've actually, coincidentally, I've actually been doing that the last few weeks.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:14Mark Manson?

  It's like, I've been basically behind on work for two or three weeks straight now, and a lot of that is just because I hit a point last month where I was like, okay, if I keep going at this pace, I'm gonna be a wreck, and by the end of the year, so, let's just fall behind.

• 1:36:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:31Mark Manson?

  And take the Saturday off, hang out with the wife on Friday night, maybe sleep in, uh, and play some video games instead of working, you know, before I come to the studio, uh, giving myself that time, just to know, just, just because at this point, I've burnt myself out enough times to know, like, like, this is the longevity play.

• 1:36:54Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:36:54Mark Manson?

  You know, it's better to be inefficient in the short term and alive in the long term than it is to, you know, just be maximally efficient in the short run.

• 1:37:03Speaker 01

  Okay, so you, you are, you're, you're protecting your boundaries with another boundary, almost?

• 1:37:07Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:37:07Speaker 01

  So, with some of those boundaries would be like, health stuff, I'm imagining?

• 1:37:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  Um, uh, time with your wife?

• 1:37:12Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 1:37:13Speaker 01

  That kind of stuff?

• 1:37:13Mark Manson?

  Those are like, the first two things to go.

• 1:37:15Speaker 01

  The first two, yeah.

• 1:37:15Mark Manson?

  And sleep is another one.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, yeah, yeah.

• 1:37:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  I know all about that.

• 1:37:21Speaker 01

  I, yeah, that's one area I could do better on, uh, boundaries is, uh, sleep and health stuff, for sure. Cause mine, that's the usually first thing to go for me too.

• 1:37:29Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:29Speaker 01

  Is the health stuff. So, yeah.

• 1:37:30Mark Manson?

  When I'm in a mode like this, where I'm like, okay, I'm working like 60, 70 hours a week, I, I hold myself to the, the baseline standard. So it's like, okay, I know I'm not gonna get stronger this year. I know I'm not gonna get faster, or like run further or whatever. But if I can just maintain my current fitness and my current level of health, that's a win.

• 1:37:53Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:37:53Mark Manson?

  Right? If I can just not let things go, I've won.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 1:37:58Mark Manson?

  And I kinda see that, I kinda treat every, every area of my life, you know, it's like, if I, if I just don't lose sleep, I've won. I don't need to be like the most rested and recovered person on the planet, but as long as I'm not, you know, waking up exhausted every morning, like that's a win.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  Once again, I'll point out the flexibility in that. And this is gonna be a recurring theme, based on the situation. This is what people think that boundaries are like, these rigid, like, oh, I got these boundaries and I got these strong, healthy boundaries and they don't move and I'm an immovable force. No, not at all. There's actually a very adaptive and flexible nature to healthy boundaries that you have. And in your case, like this is like, okay, I have this baseline and usually I wanna hit this.

• 1:38:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:37Speaker 01

  But I'm okay with this.

• 1:38:38Mark Manson?

  Kinda zooming out for a second.

• 1:38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:40Mark Manson?

  I mean, at this point, you know, we did, we did an episode on emotions and I guess kinda one of the surprise conclusions in that episode was possibly the biggest factor for emotional regulation and emotional, uh, stability is flexibility.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:55Mark Manson?

  Is adaptability.

• 1:38:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:57Mark Manson?

  Similarly, we did an episode on resilience. Biggest finding there is that actually resilience is not about being hardcore, immovable, uncompromising. It's the opposite. Resilience is actually about like becoming an incredibly flexible, adaptable person under a lot of different contexts and a lot of different stresses. And it's funny that we're kinda finding the same thing here, that it's like, having really solid boundaries and like, by the nature of solid boundaries, I, I would say the two things that are downstream of really good, strong boundaries is, uh, strong relationships and strong self-discipline. We come back to this flexibility, adaptability. Like it just understanding yourself, understanding the context, understanding like, okay, when is it worth?

• 1:39:43Mark Manson?

  Letting this go and because I'll do that too like I'll be like let's say there's a book launch like that month of the book launch everything's out the window.

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:39:54Mark Manson?

  Everything is out the window. Like it's just and I know for that period of time like I'll even to the point where I'll even have a date on my calendar. It's like, okay, the tour ends on the 19th. On the 20th, I'm becoming a normal person again. My wife and I even talk about it in those terms like like when I have conversations with her about commitments or like crazy busy periods in my career, I'll give her a date. I'll be like, I'll be a normal person again on the 23rd and like and that sets her expectation.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:40:22Mark Manson?

  Which is a boundary, right? You know, so it's like, okay.

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  And reduces conflict in your relationships.

• 1:40:27Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  And all the things we've already talked about.

• 1:40:28Mark Manson?

  Exactly, because now now it's like if we if I'm being a dick on the 21st, like she's not going to hold it against me. She's like, okay, he's under a lot of stress. He's doing the book tour, but like when I'm a normal person again, like the old expectations come back.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  Right. Spoiler alert, but that's one of the biggest things I took away from this was just that the the degree to which you can be flexible in your boundaries. Yeah, it's kind of like that Carl Sagan quote, you know, be open minded but not so open minded, your brains fall out. It's like have have strong boundaries but not so strong that you you can't move, you know, basically. You put yourself in a box or don't have any boundaries at all.

• 1:41:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Balance is hard.

• 1:41:05Mark Manson?

  At what point are we just going to change the name of this podcast to Aristotle was right?

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  It could be a spin off. That could be a spin off.

• 1:41:15Mark Manson?

  Like you could summarize like 30 hours of podcasts, you know, with those four words.

• 1:41:20Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:41:21Mark Manson?

  Three words.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Okay, so the last part of the emotional thing I want to bring up though, too, I mentioned this at the top here was the mental health aspect, though. So if you do have, you know, there's clinical extremes, especially in the cluster, what they call the cluster B.

• 1:41:35Mark Manson?

  Oh, those are fun.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so you got like.

• 1:41:38Mark Manson?

  Bipolar borderline.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  Borderline bipolar narcissistic antisocial histrionic, all the fun personality disorders. We talked about personality already.

• 1:41:45Mark Manson?

  Collect them all.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  If, but these like, some of these are almost defined by lack of boundary. You know, like a borderline is they're, they have difficulty in relationships precisely because of the, they almost don't even see boundaries in relationships, right? This probably goes back to a lot of individuation.

• 1:42:05Mark Manson?

  It's the failed individuation.

• 1:42:06Speaker 01

  It's failed individuation.

• 1:42:07Mark Manson?

  Which I believe a lot of borderline, I, I could be wrong about this. It's been a long time since I read about this, but like, uh, I believe a lot of the cluster B stuff is like directly related to early childhood.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:42:18Mark Manson?

  Stuff, yeah.

• 1:42:19Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, yeah. It usually goes back to, yeah, two, three, four years old, whatever, all the way up to like eight or nine. The hard thing about a lot of these though too, is that these are the people who don't seek help.

• 1:42:29Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  Right, uh, because if you're, if you're borderline, it's everybody else's fault. It's not your fault. History on a kind of same thing narcissist, same antisocial, you just don't even give a shit, right?

• 1:42:38Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  So there's that. Maybe if you have somebody like this in your life though too, just know that it's just like the boundaries are not going to be there.

• 1:42:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I mean, what, what I, so I, I've known of a few bipolar people and, um, you know, it, what's interesting with, with a number of them is that it kind of comes and goes, like they kind of.

• 1:42:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, that's part of the.

• 1:42:59Mark Manson?

  They go, they go.

• 1:43:00Speaker 01

  Prognosis, yeah.

• 1:43:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah, they go through episodes, right? And so it's, it's almost like, uh, you know, it's almost like weathering a storm when they're in an, in an episode. And you just kind of almost, sometimes it makes me wonder if like, this is where, you know, like medieval people thought that people were possessed by demons. Like it, it makes me want, like, when you start understanding cluster B personality disorders, like it starts to make sense.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:22Mark Manson?

  You're like, it's all like this person almost becomes an entirely different person. And then they come back and they're like pleasant and loving and, you know, it, so it's just, it's super interesting.

• 1:43:32Speaker 01

  A lot of that is based around boundaries because again, you kind of like, you build an identity based on your boundaries, based on what you choose, uh, to participate in, to not participate in, to believe in, to not believe in.

• 1:43:43Mark Manson?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  So, yeah, yeah, like when they're in those episodes, say a manic episode or something like that from a, a bipolar person, there's just a, a dissolution of the boundaries around what they typically do or want to do at least. And so, yeah, I think that's where you get that. You get that whole other identity side of it because their boundaries are gone, they're boundaryless.

• 1:44:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:02Speaker 01

  Or they have completely different boundaries around weird things too.

• 1:44:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  You see that a lot too. So yeah.

• 1:44:07Mark Manson?

  It is.

• 1:44:08Speaker 01

  Okay, so those, those are the, the kind of three big areas of why we fail sometimes to create healthy boundaries. You have your developmental, um, the developmental aspects of it, the personality, individual differences, and then kind of emotion regulation. Obviously, all of those, there's a lot of overlap and interlinking and all of those things. But hopefully, if you're somebody who does have, struggle with boundaries, maybe you got something out of that. Maybe you can pinpoint, I don't know, something in your childhood or whatever. Not to get too navel gazy, but

• 1:44:36Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:44:36Speaker 01

  there, there's these three big areas that might be contributing to that.

• 1:44:40Mark Manson?

  I think people tend to overestimate the value of knowing where a dysfunction came from, but there is value in knowing where a dysfunction came from.

• 1:44:49Speaker 01

  Good point. Good point. A lot of times we stop right there. And that's not where you stop.

• 1:44:52Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:44:52Speaker 01

  Okay. It is, I, yeah, I, I, this was, I heard this again recently. It's like, people, when they do get a diagnosis or something like that, a lot of times it just kind of like, they feel a sense of release and they, relief.

• 1:45:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  And they think that's it.

• 1:45:05Mark Manson?

  Like, cool, not my fault.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  Right, right. But hey, we're only halfway through the episode here, if that. So, yeah, keep listening.

• 1:45:11Mark Manson?

  It's, it's, yeah, figuring out where it came from is just

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  That's just a start.

• 1:45:14Mark Manson?

  Not even half the work.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  That's just the start.

• 1:45:20Speaker 01

  Okay, so now, let's get into like, the different types of boundaries that we have. There's, I think a lot of us think that, oh, you, you just have boundaries in your close relationships, and maybe work and home boundaries, and that's kind of where they should be. But it's actually, boundaries kind of permeate all little nooks and crannies of our lives. And I think the key thing we need to think about, though, is that, as we're going through these, they're very, very context dependent.

• 1:45:42Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:45:42Speaker 01

  Right? Boundaries aren't, there's not like a hard and fast rule on all these, but it shifts a lot with context.

• 1:45:47Mark Manson?

  There's no universal boundary.

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  There's no universal

• 1:45:49Mark Manson?

  Applies to everybody all the time.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  They're very personal.

• 1:45:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  Uh, and they can change very quickly based on, uh, context, based on culture, based on all these different factors that we're going to go over.

• 1:45:57Mark Manson?

  Gotcha. Okay.

• 1:45:58Speaker 01

  All right, cool. So let's just dive right into some of these. Uh, the first one, and maybe, maybe the most obvious in a lot of ways is like, physical boundaries that we have, right? So, you know.

• 1:46:08Mark Manson?

  You stay on your side of the table.

• 1:46:10Speaker 01

  You stay over there, I stay over here. Don't touch me.

• 1:46:15Speaker 01

  I just, but I mean, like, seriously, like, it's kind of like the, the, the most, one of the most fundamental boundaries, right? Is to be able to draw boundaries around when you can, when your personal space can be invaded, I guess, is one way to think about it, or at least occupied by someone else, if not full on, like, when you're touched or anything like that, right? Now, there's this whole field called proximics that this guy Edward Hall, he wrote, he wrote a whole book on it.

• 1:46:40Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Uh, and basically found, his big insight was what he calls social distance. So like, when you're interacting with someone, how, how comfortable are you at what distance?

• 1:46:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Uh, and how comfortable you are at that distance.

• 1:46:51Mark Manson?

  Like, personal space.

• 1:46:52Speaker 01

  Personal space, when you're having a conversation or any sort of interaction with somebody.

• 1:46:56Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:46:56Speaker 01

  Uh, that relationship that you have with them, it's a closer relationship, are you more comfortable and it's closer that, all of that kind of stuff? So, one of his insights was that's very culturally dependent. So like, for example, like in Latin America, uh, people generally are more comfortable, uh, interacting with each other at a closer distance.

• 1:47:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  Whereas like, places like the United States, or especially Germany, it's, there's more, uh, distance, people are a little more comfortable at a further distance.

• 1:47:21Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 1:47:22Speaker 01

  And then you see, like, people get together, uh, from different cultures, and this can be kind of funny sometimes, right?

• 1:47:27Mark Manson?

  Awkward, yeah.

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  One example I thought of, though, for this too, that I've, I've seen over the years, and I kind of wanted to get your take on this. There's some parents, and I never understood this, but they're like, you go over to their house, or like, maybe it's a family gathering or something like that, and they're like, go hug your uncle, or go hug your cousin, or go hug, like, something like that. I always thought that was just weird. Like, I think as a, you should be taught as a kid, physical boundaries, like, that should be the first kind of boundary you learn. It's like, you have complete autonomy over when you're touched and how other people touch you and everything like that.

• 1:47:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:59Speaker 01

  I always just, have you ever seen that, though? Like, somebody gets upset that, that, oh, your kid didn't hug me, or something like that?

• 1:48:06Mark Manson?

  No, well, so I remember when I was a kid.

• 1:48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:08Mark Manson?

  Cause my parents used to do that.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:10Mark Manson?

  Like, with my grandparents, they'd be like, oh, go give your grandmother a kiss.

• 1:48:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, sure.

• 1:48:14Mark Manson?

  I would be like, no, it's gross.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:17Mark Manson?

  But, I mean, yeah, I never really thought about it.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  I don't, I think I remember, like, a Reddit, am I the asshole, or something like that, you know, where somebody came and they were like, yeah, so, like, one of my wife's friends was over and she was like, wanted to hug for my kid, my kid didn't want to, and we got in a big fight about it. I'm like, why do people, I don't get that at all. It's a foundational boundary, though. Let's just, let's just put that out there. Yeah. Then we have like emotional boundaries, which I think is a lot. I think the goal of a lot of therapy is getting people to see how you're letting other people's emotions kind of invade your emotional space.

• 1:48:51Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:48:52Speaker 01

  To begin with, you, you're trying to take on everybody else's emotions and kind of, you're not everybody's therapist.

• 1:48:59Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:48:59Speaker 01

  Right? And even if you were, like even therapists have boundaries around.

• 1:49:02Mark Manson?

  Boundaries around patients. Exactly.

• 1:49:04Speaker 01

  Office hours, they have all of that kind of stuff. So even if you are somebody who's very helpful and wants to help people with their emotional problems, like you still have to draw a boundary around where that stops and ends. We talked about the empathy versus compassion thing, too.

• 1:49:18Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  I think that's really important to, to know the difference there as well.

• 1:49:21Mark Manson?

  I, I think it's interesting, too, because I think in a lot of cases, poor physical boundaries compete the gateway into poor emotional boundaries. Right? So like you can have good emotional boundaries, but if you're not enforcing your physical boundaries, like if your people or friends are coming over and living in your place without permission and using your stuff and your family is constantly like showing up and bothering you and demanding your time. Or, or to use a therapist example, like, you know, therapists generally have a rule, like they don't hang out with their patients outside of therapy. And that's for a very specific reason of like intermingling relationships. You know, if your therapist is like hanging out with you at the grocery store, that can

• 1:50:02Mark Manson?

  complicate the, the patient clinician relationship that they've, they've built with you.

• 1:50:08Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. In the therapy world, there's a small but vocal group of people saying, oh, we shouldn't, no, that shouldn't be the thing. We should be able to be friends with our clients and stuff like that.

• 1:50:16Mark Manson?

  It should totally be the thing.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  I do not understand that one at all.

• 1:50:19Mark Manson?

  Should totally be the thing. And any therapist who doesn't think, thinks they should be able to be friends with their, their patients.

• 1:50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah. To me, you know, it's like, it's like teachers, right? Like I had a good friend who was a PhD student and he. He had a huge crush on one of his undergrads and she had a big crush on him. And basically, he told her, he was like, "Look, you need to wait till I get my PhD." Like, it's that simple.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:44Mark Manson?

  Because I'm an authority in your department and like, this is problematic and, you know, as soon as one or both of us graduates, cool, we can date. But until that moment, like, this can't happen.

• 1:50:56Speaker 01

  Right, yeah. Another one I don't think a lot of us think about are intellectual boundaries.

• 1:51:00Mark Manson?

  Hmm.

• 1:51:01Speaker 01

  Okay? Not every debate deserves your energy. Okay? Let's just say that, there's a boundary right there. Uh, but even the ones that do, really do, should have like a healthy respect for boundaries. Right? Um, I think it was John Stuart Mill, uh, who argued back in the 1850s even too, that the, the free exchange of ideas really does require a respect for boundaries. Now, what does that look like?

• 1:51:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:25Speaker 01

  Uh, basically, just look at what's going on right now and do, do the opposite.

• 1:51:28Mark Manson?

  Do the opposite.

• 1:51:29Speaker 01

  That's what I would say. Yes, it's a, a respect for someone else's point of view. But it's like, what, you could set boundaries around what topics am I going to discuss? And with who? Okay? Um, how you're willing to discuss them? Like, what's the tone we're gonna use?

• 1:51:43Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  What kind of, uh, topics, uh, that we're gonna get into? Or types of evidence we'll, we'll accept?

• 1:51:50Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 1:51:51Speaker 01

  Right? Uh, how long? Where are you gonna do this? And what context you're going to do this with people? Um, and why you're discussing it? Like, what's the goal? I think that's a, that's a good boundary to set. Like, if I'm gonna have a debate or discussion with somebody about something we might disagree with, what's actually the goal here?

• 1:52:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:07Speaker 01

  Am I trying to change your mind? Or am I just trying to understand?

• 1:52:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  Somebody else's point of view?

• 1:52:11Mark Manson?

  Well, I think that the, the golden mean framework of porous and rigid.

• 1:52:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:15Mark Manson?

  Works really, really well with intellectual ideas, right? It's like, people with porous intellectual boundaries will probably just believe whatever the...

• 1:52:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:25Mark Manson?

  They'll be like Joe Rogan. It's like, whoever's sitting in front of them, they just start believing whatever they're saying. Whereas, somebody with a very extremely rigid, uh, intellectual boundaries will, will just double down and not be convinced about anything. Like, they, they will... They're basically a ideological extremist.

• 1:52:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:52:43Mark Manson?

  You just can't get through to them.

• 1:52:44Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:52:44Mark Manson?

  No matter what. So the idea is to hold the line, like, don't be easily influenceable. But if you are presented with a better idea, or better evidence, or a different perspective, you should be able to be flexible enough to be able to, like, shift boundaries. What's interesting, too, you see this a lot with codependent relationships. So they're generally in a codependent relationship. There's like one person who's always needs to be saved. And then there's another person who's always doing the saving. And the person who's always doing the saving, what you see happen a lot is they start adopting the ideas and beliefs and values of the person they're trying to save. Let me, let me ask you this. Have you ever had a friend who starts dating somebody and within a year, like, changes

• 1:53:28Mark Manson?

  the way they dress, changes the music they listen to, changes the places they like to go, is like suddenly developed a deep interest in like 18th century English literature, you know, because his like fucking new girlfriend is a lit major? Like, it's stuff like that.

• 1:53:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53:46Mark Manson?

  And you see it quite a bit. Like, people's tastes will change, their interests will change, their political beliefs will change, based on the, like, based on a romantic relationship with very poor boundaries.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:53:57Mark Manson?

  It's like the intellectual boundaries follow suit. They just help reinforce the dynamic, right? Like, if you're in a codependent relationship, you, the thing that you are deathly afraid of at all times is, is conflict, and, and your partner being unhappy. And so what's a better way to keep your partner happy than just believing all the same shit your partner believes?

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  Right. Yes, I have had. I've seen that happen a few times. A few in particular I'm thinking of right now. And it's, it's kind of wild from the outside when you see it happen. You're like, what the fuck?

• 1:54:29Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:54:29Speaker 01

  Is going on here? And, and yeah, I think you're right. I think it's, it's like an identity merging type of thing that goes on, like, whereas when you have good boundaries around these, it's like, I can, I can challenge your claims and your opinions without challenging your identity.

• 1:54:44Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:54:45Speaker 01

  And, and not feeling, and you not feeling like I am too at the same time. So that's when, like, you do have these good boundaries set up. That's what it should feel like, anyway.

• 1:54:52Mark Manson?

  And, and again, I think-

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Very hard to do.

• 1:54:54Mark Manson?

  Yes. And again, I do think it is probably downstream from emotional boundaries, because I think part of disagreeing with somebody you care about is being okay with discomfort together.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:05Mark Manson?

  And to be okay with discomfort together, like, you both need to have-

• 1:55:10Mark Manson?

  Like a strong identity and a good sense of boundaries.

• 1:55:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely, definitely. Next one. Time boundaries. I think a lot of us probably do think about this a little bit more. But I think it's pretty obvious. If you don't prioritize your schedule, somebody else is going to do it for you.

• 1:55:24Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:55:25Speaker 01

  That's gonna happen.

• 1:55:27Mark Manson?

  I saw, I saw a fat simile of that on Twitter recently. I think Shane Parrish posted it, but he was, he was like, if you don't decide what's on your calendar, other people will decide for you.

• 1:55:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Exactly. Exactly. I, the thing is, is that especially, you know, like in, in the States and North America in general, like, busyness is just, there's kind of a status attached to it. And so you're kind of almost incentivized to not have boundaries around your time and not, and whatever, if it's separating work from your home life or whatever it is, or even just at work, and we'll get into that a little bit more too. But there's just like, kind of this pressure to not have boundaries around your time. And if anything, this is one of the most important boundaries, I would say, because what else do you have but time at the end of the day? Right? Like, it's like, like, setting up your own schedule. This is why I like time boxing too.

• 1:56:19Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 1:56:19Speaker 01

  Is because it's like, literally, there's a boundary in my, in my little planner around this time, and it's a protected time. And it's, this is where I am, I, I put a boundary on, I'm not doing anything but this thing for this amount of time. And you'd be surprised at just how like that, just that little mental box that I draw in my mind and literally on paper, really does like reinforce a boundary around. Okay. Not, not scrolling, I'm not screwing around, I'm not taking calls, I'm not doing whatever.

• 1:56:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And I, I also feel like poor time boundaries are probably also downstream of these other boundaries, right? Like, so if you don't know,

• 1:56:57Speaker 01

  Emotions especially.

• 1:56:58Mark Manson?

  If you don't know how to say no to your partner, then you're gonna agree to do a bunch of things you don't want to do. If you are afraid to disagree with your boss, then you're gonna take on a bunch of projects you don't want to take on. If you are desperate for your friends to like you and think you're cool, you're gonna like do a bunch of things that you don't really want to do. So time is, feels like it's the casualty of all the other failed boundaries in a lot of ways.

• 1:57:21Speaker 01

  How good do you think you are at this, drawing time boundaries? I feel like I wax and wane a little bit. I can get a solid, like, few hours of a good boundary in a day, I feel like.

• 1:57:32Mark Manson?

  On the one hand, I feel like this is one of the ones I'm weakest at.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:37Mark Manson?

  On the other hand, I I'm doing so many things and like have so many responsibilities that I try to be a little bit

• 1:57:46Mark Manson?

  like kind to myself.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:49Mark Manson?

  It is hard. It is like very, very hard to to balance all the stuff that I want to do. But yeah, I do think this is, I have a tendency to just get excited about new things very easily.

• 1:58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:03Mark Manson?

  And so I tend to say yes to more stuff, but it's funny because it's not like it's there's not not a desperation for people to like me, or it's not this like, oh, I'm afraid to tell my friends no or anything. It's it's more just like it's it's that openness to experience, right? Like I just there's

• 1:58:19Speaker 01

  I want to do everything.

• 1:58:19Mark Manson?

  I want to do everything. I want to hang out with everyone. I want to try everything.

• 1:58:22Speaker 01

  Spoke it all in.

• 1:58:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I want every like every opportunity that comes up like that sounds great.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:27Mark Manson?

  So it is, for me, it's been very, very hard to to manage, to protect my time.

• 1:58:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the paradox there is too that like when you want to do everything, you end up doing nothing.

• 1:58:39Mark Manson?

  Nothing or nothing well, at least. Yeah. I think the other paradox of this too is that I think time boundary issues are probably more of a luxury problem because they suggest that you already do have relationships that you care about. You already do have a career that you really care about. You do have a lot of obligations and a lot of responsibilities in your life. So it's weird. It's I think the more, probably the more successful and the more you have going on for yourself, the more time boundaries become an issue. Whereas if you don't have any relationships, don't have friendships, don't have a job, like this is probably less pertinent, I would guess.

• 1:59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, somewhat related to that one, especially in our modern culture is digital boundaries.

• 1:59:21Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  Okay. Again, we kind of mistake constant availability for connection and what.

• 1:59:28Mark Manson?

  Are you listening Zuckerberg? It's time for your digital boundary lesson.

• 1:59:34Speaker 01

  Okay, we'll get into that. We'll get into that. Yeah, you'll be being connected though 24/7 doesn't actually make you more connected.

• 1:59:41Mark Manson?

  No.

• 1:59:42Speaker 01

  To people. It really makes you just more of a consumer.

• 1:59:45Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  Is what it does. This is one I've kind of made a little bit of a point. I used to be really good about like responding to texts like right away and stuff like that. And I've made a conscious, well, I don't know how conscious it was at first at least, but at a certain point I just stopped responding right away. I would, I would always respond, but I would always give it like a few hours or something like that. If it's in the middle of my workday and I get text messages and stuff, I, I tend, I'll be like, okay, not, not respond an hour. I don't have the phone on me or, or whatever it is. I am also, I pride myself on how terrible I am at responding to emails. People, I think most people know, don't email him because he's just, he's probably, you're not going to get a response very, very soon. And I can, I have the luxury of doing that. I know some people don't like their jobs depend on that a lot more than, than mine do probably.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  But like, just these like random emails I'll get sometimes, uh, and not, not that I'm like trying to be snooty about it or whatever. I'm just protecting my time there.

• 2:00:39Mark Manson?

  10 or 15 years ago, I took a lot of pride in, in being the guy who responded to every email and responded to every text. It was like super reliable and you always heard back from. And yeah, now it's, it feels the opposite. It feels, it feels like you're, you're being, you're being irresponsible if you respond to everything.

• 2:00:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:00:58Mark Manson?

  And, and yeah, the, the digital bound, boundary thing is, is interesting because I think it, it exists on a few. I mean, you, you could almost lump the digital and the time.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:08Mark Manson?

  Boundaries into, to an attention boundary.

• 2:01:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:10Mark Manson?

  Of like, what are you spending your attention on? So like, there's that aspect of it is, is like, are you just getting sucked down rabbit holes on YouTube or social media or whatever. Uh, but then there's also an aspect of it of, of yeah, availability. Like how reachable are you? Uh, cause yeah, it's pre-internet. I guess the closest thing you could, you could relate it to in terms of boundaries is like. Showing up, knocking on somebody's door at their house, like unannounced, right? Like, that was probably the closest thing that we had pre-internet to, like, managing, being reachable to others.

• 2:01:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:01:49Mark Manson?

  But like, now you're literally reachable to people all the time, 24/7, 365. The other aspect of this is giving out phone numbers. I've gotten very stingy with who I give my number to.

• 2:02:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:02Mark Manson?

  And part of it is this, like, it's just, it's being reachable all the time and, and suddenly you're just getting tons of texts from a bunch of people you barely know or met one time, or like getting invited to like, I don't know, asked to do things. And so, yeah, I, I've gotten very stingy about phone numbers.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  I think that another one, though, too, is like, just using your phone in general.

• 2:02:27Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:28Speaker 01

  Like, I think we, that ship has sailed and we just blew through that boundary where it was like, I think there's more now, this was a thing I saw the other day, and I haven't seen it as much in a while, but I think more and more people are, like, they're okay with playing a video or some sort of audio.

• 2:02:44Mark Manson?

  Oh, God.

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  Out in public somewhere.

• 2:02:46Mark Manson?

  Oh, God.

• 2:02:46Speaker 01

  Has this happened more to you?

• 2:02:48Mark Manson?

  Dude.

• 2:02:48Speaker 01

  I haven't seen it as much.

• 2:02:49Mark Manson?

  Please.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  I've been on a lot of planes and they always say, hey, if you're gonna be like, watch a video, put your headphones on. I can't believe they even have to say that, but.

• 2:02:56Mark Manson?

  I posted, I posted on Twitter about this like a year ago.

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:58Mark Manson?

  I was like, what is wrong with people? Like, who, people are like, listening to music with, with no headphones.

• 2:03:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:05Mark Manson?

  Like, in the middle of a restaurant.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:06Mark Manson?

  Or having a FaceTime, like shouting, shouting into a FaceTime call.

• 2:03:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:11Mark Manson?

  Uh, in line at the airport with no headphones.

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:14Mark Manson?

  It just, I don't know when it became okay to do this.

• 2:03:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:19Mark Manson?

  Like, the noise pollution that people produce. Uh, and it's funny, I posted a big thing about it and like dozens of people got upset. They were like, I, yeah. I'm like. Guys, guys, you can get $10 headphones at 7-Eleven. Like, there's no excuse for this.

• 2:03:37Speaker 01

  I saw the other day, it was from Jason Parkin, the writer, and I don't know if you know him, but he's got these really great videos that he puts out, and he kind of addressed this a little bit. And he thinks one of the things was the shift to two things, video has just become more like, it wasn't just calls anymore, but like FaceTime and all of that. And then also, Apple creating the AirPods. 10, 15 years ago, it was, you have your headphones, you plug them in if you're out in public. And it was actually a great way to like, there's your boundaries right there, right? And it's not anymore. And he said, it's just these minor shifts that kind of shift the culture along with it, right? So you have, like, if you have these Bluetooth headphones, well, you lose them a lot, for one.

• 2:04:20Speaker 01

  So it's like almost a subscription model for Apple, you know, you lose them or they get stolen. Or they run out of battery, and so you don't have that option. And then just, again, the shift to video is just, I think it's more, yeah, now you have people being like, well, I should be able to, I don't know, what is the, what were they saying when they were pissed off? They were like, I should be able to do this, I should be able to invade your ear and eye space.

• 2:04:45Mark Manson?

  I don't know, they were like, some of them were like, not all of us can afford fancy AirPods. Or like, Mike, well, you can afford the phone, so this is not, this should not be hard.

• 2:04:57Speaker 01

  And there's plenty of Bluetooth headsets that are like 10 bucks now.

• 2:04:59Mark Manson?

  Exactly. So this is, this was a huge problem in New York, as you can imagine, especially on like the subway and, you know, all sorts of different public spaces. Shout out to Peter Shankman, an old friend of mine, I haven't seen in a long time. But he told a hilarious story where he got so fed up of it in New York that he went to one of these electronics stores and bought like, 30 of these cheap $15, you know, USB headphone sets. And then he just, every time he left the house, he had one or two of them in his pocket. And, uh, and so every time he, somebody was on the train with like a loud FaceTime call or like watching a YouTube video or something, he'd just walk up and he'd just hand them the headphones and be like, I got this for you.

• 2:05:42Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 2:05:44Mark Manson?

  And I was just like, man, you're the best.

• 2:05:45Speaker 01

  That is, yeah, that's the hero we need.

• 2:05:47Mark Manson?

  You are doing God's work, sir.

• 2:05:48Speaker 01

  The hero we don't deserve, the one that we absolutely need. Yeah. Even just pulling out your phone, like if you're at a restaurant or you're with your family somewhere, that used to be very rude.

• 2:05:59Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  So you've, you've, you've prioritized, you've, you've deprioritized the people around you for your device or whatever interaction you're having on there. Usually it's just social media scrolling or something inane like that.

• 2:06:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  And I, I don't know, I, I, there has to be some sort of better cultural norm that we can implement here.

• 2:06:20Mark Manson?

  Yeah. For the record, I, I just, whoever that video you mentioned, I, I, I disagree. I don't think it's the video or the AirPods. Like just simply because you're seeing a lot more low level, I call it antisocial behavior in general.

• 2:06:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:36Mark Manson?

  For the first many years that I went to New York, you know, the, the idea of hopping the turnstile was just like, nobody really thought about it. Now that I go to New York, it's like, nobody pays.

• 2:06:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:45Mark Manson?

  It's like, they're literally like, half the people are like jumping through the turnstile or like opening the door for each other. And it's just, there just seems to be this kind of like casual antisocial, like Drew, we sound like old men right now, but shaking our fist at the cloud. But back in my day, people had some fucking respect for their public spaces.

• 2:07:06Speaker 01

  They stayed off our lawns.

• 2:07:07Mark Manson?

  They didn't make noise, they didn't hop the turnstile, they didn't like shout, like make a scene in the middle of the restaurant or like now you've got people getting up and shouting on planes at stewardesses and stuff like, I don't know when this started, but it's maybe this is, it's probably another podcast, but it is, it is relevant in terms of boundaries, in terms of like just public social spaces. Like there are social expectations of how to behave in public, how to treat strangers, how like, how to do things that are, don't make you a selfish asshole. And, um, and it is interesting that, that we definitely, at least in the US, we definitely see that breaking down to a certain extent.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I wonder if part of it too, some of it is, we don't use shame effectively. Like, like, we talked in the, in the shame episode about the kind of the, the social glue that shame can provide.

• 2:07:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:08:00Speaker 01

  We don't, like, I think that's become a little bit taboo. Oh, you shouldn't shame people for.

• 2:08:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Oh, don't make them feel bad.

• 2:08:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, don't make you feel bad. Well, you're making everybody else feel bad.

• 2:08:08Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, fuck you.

• 2:08:10Speaker 01

  Okay, okay, let's stop, let's stop shaking our fist at the wind here, Mark. Okay. Uh, next one, financial boundaries. So.

• 2:08:18Mark Manson?

  This is a big one.

• 2:08:19Speaker 01

  This is.

• 2:08:20Mark Manson?

  Underrated, underrated.

• 2:08:21Speaker 01

  This one flies under the radar for sure.

• 2:08:22Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:08:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's just like, you can't afford to be generous with money you don't have, right? Okay, so this ties into like the familial stuff and all that, you know? If you do run into some money or you start making good money and there's this expectation put on you that you're supposed to help other people out. And sure, you, you should help other people out, but you have to have some boundaries around that as well, too. You probably have some experience with this, I'm sure that.

• 2:08:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I mean, money, money is tricky. I, the, the best advice I could give around this is just have those explicit difficult conversations with people and set expectations. I think there, with money, people tend to make a lot of assumptions about what is deserved and what's not deserved and who, what should be shared and what shouldn't be shared. And, uh, what I've discovered over the years is just that, like, people have very different relationships with money itself, right? So it's like, being generous to one person could really strengthen that relationship. And then trying to be generous with another person could actually offend that person. So you have to be very explicit about it and just say like, hey,

• 2:09:30Mark Manson?

  here's my assumptions, here's what I want to do. And this goes for everything, I mean, in a romantic relationship, this is, this is like one of the most important conversations you have to have at some point. Even, you know, across conversations, uh, when it comes to helping out family members or paying for friends, you know, even like, I've even tried to buy friends dinner before and they get mad at me and like, it's like, all right, dude, like, fuck, sure, here's the check. Like, you know, so it is.

• 2:10:01Mark Manson?

  People come to money with a wide range of beliefs and most of those beliefs are held very strongly. So you just want to be above the board with everything.

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think, like you said with the romantic relationship part two, I think getting good, strong boundaries around your finances, obviously because finances are one of the leading causes of divorce.

• 2:10:24Mark Manson?

  It is the leading.

• 2:10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. And so I think what that is is a lack of boundaries, a lack of explicit boundaries, like you were talking about in relationships.

• 2:10:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And I think it's people often get romance involved here too, right? So we kind of talked about the codependency. You know, another classic trait of a codependent person is like.

• 2:10:45Speaker 01

  Spend all their money on them, yeah.

• 2:10:48Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Like they'll be happy if I just, you know, spend this or buy them that or take them here. I also, you know, we're definitely not experts on this, you know, Ramit Sethi, friend of the pod, has a great podcast that is solely about this, about couples and figuring out how to manage their money together. But it's.

• 2:11:09Speaker 01

  It's fascinating to watch.

• 2:11:10Mark Manson?

  It's a super fascinating podcast, simply because like, yeah, people have such widely different assumptions about money. And then you also see people try to create boundaries that just don't make sense, right? So it's, you know, some couples, they'll be like, okay, we're going to go 50 50 on everything. But then one person in the relationship literally spends everything and the other one saves everything. And it's so like, you just have to be realistic about what each of you want, what each of you owe, you know, what the expectations are going to be, what the obligations are going to be. It's hard. It's not, it's like one of the least sexy and romantic conversations, but I think for the longevity of any relationship, it's also probably one of the most important.

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, hundred percent. We are going to get into family boundaries.

• 2:11:59Mark Manson?

  Oh, fun.

• 2:12:00Speaker 01

  This is a fun one. Yeah. And I think this is where a lot of like, this one's hard.

• 2:12:03Mark Manson?

  Both directly and indirectly, right? So it's like the family, the lack, the poor family boundaries mess you up because it's just, I think it's the most painful boundaries, boundary issues that you can have.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:12:15Mark Manson?

  But they also mess you up because it's like if you're bound, if your family has poor boundaries, then you're probably going to grow up having poor boundaries in other areas of your life. Because it's like your family is where you learn your boundaries. So if they're terrible at it. Then you're probably suffering in a lot of different places.

• 2:12:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Family systems therapy, you know, started kind of back in the seventies and the kind of that's where internal family systems therapy kind of came from too. But the the original formulation of this was from Salvador Minuchin back in the seventies. And what he would do is he would bring families in for a therapy session, you know, you have this dysfunctional family and try to figure out what's going on. And he would use these kind of principles of boundaries to kind of figure out the dynamics of what was going on. So he would, he would sit the family down, he would just let them sit wherever they'd sit, and he would take a note of like, okay, where did some, where did someone sit in relation to someone else?

• 2:13:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:05Speaker 01

  Is there like a coalition in the family? Like maybe a daughter and a mother, or a daughter and a son, or something like that, are, form this coalition against somebody else. And so he would scramble that up, and he would move people around the room, and then he would insert himself between people and see how the dynamic changed. And he could kind of make a map of all of this, right?

• 2:13:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:23Speaker 01

  And it was all boundaries based. It was, you know, where are you drawing these boundaries? And how are those boundaries either helping or hurting the family system here?

• 2:13:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:31Speaker 01

  Which I thought was really, really interesting, too. I think, um, one of the earliest experiences I had with this was one time, I don't, I'm pretty sure what happened was I got into a fight with somebody. I didn't get in a lot of fights when I was a kid, but I got in a few fights.

• 2:13:44Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:13:44Speaker 01

  And, um,

• 2:13:45Mark Manson?

  Tough guy. I get it.

• 2:13:46Speaker 01

  No, I mean, I was, I was trying to prove something. That's what I was trying to do. Usually get my ass kicked, too.

• 2:13:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  But I remember I came, I got in trouble, come home, you know, my dad comes home and he talks to me. And he drew, he drew a boundary really, really early on, which I really appreciated now, not really at the time. And I was trying to make my case for what happened. Of course, he listened to me and he said, well, look, I really want to be your friend and I want to support you, but I have to be your dad first.

• 2:14:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:13Speaker 01

  And to me, that was like, okay, that's a, that's a boundary that he drew.

• 2:14:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:17Speaker 01

  Where he was like, this is, We have to keep these things separate and here's why. And it's because I need, I want the best for you.

• 2:14:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:24Speaker 01

  Right. And I thought that was just, I was like, like, looking back on that, I was like, that was a good move, Dad. That was, he had, he had to be my dad first. And I knew from then on.

• 2:14:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:32Speaker 01

  That like, okay, I can depend on him as my dad, not like my buddy.

• 2:14:36Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:14:36Speaker 01

  Right. And he's gonna do the right thing for me.

• 2:14:39Mark Manson?

  I'm, I'm gonna touch a little bit on parenting boundaries later.

• 2:14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:43Mark Manson?

  But yeah, that's huge. That's actually, and very mature of your father.

• 2:14:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:47Mark Manson?

  Um, yeah, a good move on his part, because I think one of the most common issues going on today is that parents think that being a good parent is being their child's best friend.

• 2:14:57Speaker 01

  Being your buddy. Yeah. Yeah. Doing, doing cool, fun things with you and everything, which is part of it. I get it.

• 2:15:01Mark Manson?

  Sure.

• 2:15:01Speaker 01

  But first, you have to be their parent.

• 2:15:03Mark Manson?

  Yes. And it's, again, well, I'll get into it later, but yeah, that's, that's a huge issue.

• 2:15:08Speaker 01

  All right.

• 2:15:09Mark Manson?

  So what, what would you say is like the defining characteristic of family boundaries? Because obviously, family boundaries are very different than any other boundary we have in our lives. Like, what is, hmm, what, what is the core struggle? I, my intuition is just that, like, I think generally speaking, people and families feel a lot more entitled to each other's time, attention.

• 2:15:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 2:15:35Mark Manson?

  Emotion.

• 2:15:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:36Mark Manson?

  And money.

• 2:15:37Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:15:38Mark Manson?

  Um, much more so than, say, a friendship and definitely way more than like a friend or a stranger or a coworker.

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. A lot of that's culturally dependent too.

• 2:15:46Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:15:46Speaker 01

  There's a lot of cultural pressure in some, some societies that will accentuate that a lot more than others.

• 2:15:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:15:53Mark Manson?

  And I guess there's, it is, like, family is really the one that it's, it's hard, you can justify that, right? Like, it's.

• 2:16:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:01Mark Manson?

  I got, I don't know how many times your mother's gotten mad at you and said, I used to change your diapers and, but my mom definitely reminds me probably once every few years. When I'm, when I'm being a, a little twat, she's like, you know, I used to change your diapers once upon a time. You, you might owe me a thing or two.

• 2:16:20Speaker 01

  Don't be a twat, Mark.

• 2:16:21Mark Manson?

  Don't be a twat.

• 2:16:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:24Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah, no, that's, that's a really good one. I, I think there is that core struggle, like you're saying, is between like the individual and the family unit, just like there is between the individual and the society, right? But there's, that's a lot more immediate and I'm a lot more pressing for a lot of people because it is more visceral. It's like, yeah, that's your family, family type. I do get like that a lot. Um, the older I get, the more I, I feel like I do have like some sort of obligation to, to family. Um, whereas when I was younger, I was like, I'm, I'm doing this on my own and I'm out here and my family is actually pretty cool with that. The older I get though, the more I feel like I have a little bit of an obligation to it. That said, I, I realized too, that there has to be boundaries.

• 2:17:00Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:17:01Speaker 01

  There has to be some sort of, okay, where, how, how far does my obligation go in this? And I think you gotta get real specific about that, especially as you get older, your parents get older, things that, you know, you're gonna have to start taking care of them at some point.

• 2:17:14Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:15Speaker 01

  Like you need to get explicit about that with everybody involved. If you have siblings or other family members that.

• 2:17:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Well, the sibling thing's really interesting too, because I mean, it's, it's, I mean, you're, you're, we, we, we won't get into details, but you're kind of going through this right now. Like you, your parents are having health problems and, and you have siblings. And so I imagine there's a ton of conversations around like, okay, what are you gonna do? What am I gonna do? What is she gonna do? You know, like how often am I coming back? What are, who's paying for what? You know, that sort of stuff.

• 2:17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know there is a lot of that going on and, um, it's, it's just, it's one of those two where you're, you know, like we talked about in the friendship episode, drop the scorecard. That's not helping anybody. So it's like, who can do what? Who, who's good at this? Who's good at that? It might not look even from the outside, but, um, as long as you have kind of those, those expectations and those boundaries set up around it.

• 2:18:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:02Speaker 01

  It's, it's a lot easier for everybody to get on board with it.

• 2:18:05Mark Manson?

  Right, right.

• 2:18:05Speaker 01

  So, yeah. Another big relationship category we can get into is friends. Okay? And like we talked about in the friendship episode, I, I think this one's, um, boundaries are sometimes a little bit trickier with friends because there aren't, there aren't those societal rules. There aren't those expectations.

• 2:18:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  Uh, there's like more explicit expectations that you have with friends and so, and everybody has a different idea of what friendship should mean, right? So you can just get into all sorts of hairy situations if you don't have like good boundaries around your friends. I have a whole, I came up with a whole laundry list of like. Boundary violations.

• 2:18:40Mark Manson?

  Give us a few.

• 2:18:40Speaker 01

  Let's give you a few. Okay. Uh, emotional over reliance.

• 2:18:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:44Speaker 01

  Okay. So you have a friend who's like, I'm going through something. I need you to drop everything.

• 2:18:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:49Speaker 01

  Help me out.

• 2:18:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:51Speaker 01

  Availability creep. Same type of thing.

• 2:18:53Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:53Speaker 01

  I expect you to text me back right away. Uh, like I said, I've gotten better about setting the expectation. It could be a few hours or a day even.

• 2:19:02Speaker 01

  Favors and unpaid labor. Oh, hey, I'm moving this weekend. It's only going to take, you know, a half a day.

• 2:19:08Mark Manson?

  16 hours.

• 2:19:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. There you are. You're, you're one slipped disc and a, you know, a, a, a whole Saturday out of your entire schedule later. And, you know, we're taking, you know, rides. I expect you to take me to the airport or whatever it is. That kind of stuff. Money tangles. We've talked about the financial thing. With friends, that's a little bit harder. It's, it's, it's hard when you see a friend going through like hard times. One, you don't want to insult them and be like, here, I'll help you out. And the other is like, I need to, should I help them out?

• 2:19:36Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:36Speaker 01

  Um, or if they ask for help.

• 2:19:40Speaker 01

  Are you a bad friend if you don't help, you know? Like, so having boundaries around that kind of stuff. Gossip triangles. I think that's why, like, there needs to be more of a boundary around that for.

• 2:19:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:50Speaker 01

  You know, a, a lot of, uh, friendship circles anyway. Uh, possessiveness and exclusivity. I had, it was really strange. I have a friend of mine, um, who had a, what she considered was her best friend, got super possessive of her at this one.

• 2:20:05Mark Manson?

  I've seen that before.

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  That is wild.

• 2:20:08Mark Manson?

  Like jealous friendship jealousy.

• 2:20:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:20:10Mark Manson?

  And like, uh, I, I've definitely seen that before. I would add to that too competitiveness. I've seen that a lot, especially with like male friendships where like, they'll, they'll get extremely competitive with one another and it'll get taken to such an extreme that you actually, you, you, you'll actually start kind of rooting for your friend's failure. Because you're, you're measuring yourself by them so much. Like you're so, you have so much of your self-esteem invested in like not being one upped by your buddy. And, uh, so you see that too in a lot of immature friendships. You know, I think family relationships or like romantic relationships, you know, they can obviously be too porous, too open, too few boundaries, and they can also be too rigid.

• 2:20:51Mark Manson?

  With friendships, I feel like most of the issues come from just to like being too porous. Because if you're too rigid in a friendship, you just become more casual friends.

• 2:21:00Speaker 01

  Right, you're not gonna be close friends anyway. You get too enmeshed with them is more usually the bigger risk, yeah.

• 2:21:05Mark Manson?

  So I think like if you're rigid with your friendships, you're probably not gonna have drama. Whereas if you're rigid with your family, there's probably gonna be a ton of drama.

• 2:21:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:12Mark Manson?

  But like with friendships, it's just not gonna be much drama. You're probably just gonna be very casual friends. You just meet up to like play golf or play poker or something. Where you see friendships get into troubles, they get way too porous. And it's just the expectations become too high.

• 2:21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:25Mark Manson?

  You see this with people who are like, you know, friends that are like inseparable, right? It's funny, because when I, I remember when I was young, whenever I came across people who were like inseparable besties, like spent every day together, went everywhere together, did everything together, vacation together. When I was young, I thought that was really cool.

• 2:21:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted that too.

• 2:21:44Mark Manson?

  I know.

• 2:21:45Speaker 01

  I'm so jealous.

• 2:21:46Mark Manson?

  Yeah, now that, now if I come across somebody, I'm like, whoa, big red flag.

• 2:21:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:51Mark Manson?

  Big red flag.

• 2:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think a lot of it is that like failure to individuate, like we talked about before, right? You're not, you don't have an identity separate from that other person. This can happen in a friendship.

• 2:22:04Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:05Speaker 01

  And yeah, the risk is, is that you still see it like you're that little kid and you're like, oh, that's so amazing. And I, and I would love to have that myself. And in some ways, sure, that's, it's great you have somebody to lean on like that. But there has to be some sort of like separation there, yeah. How about work relationships, Mark, professional relationships?

• 2:22:26Speaker 01

  What kind of boundaries, I guess what kind of boundaries should we draw around those? Because those can bleed in, especially I think with our generation, your work friend. You have your work friends.

• 2:22:34Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:35Speaker 01

  Right? And sure, that's, that's fine, and I think that's a great place to meet friends and be friends with people. There has to be some boundaries around that. Maybe dating at work too, you gotta be, the boundaries around that.

• 2:22:46Mark Manson?

  You know what's funny? I've actually heard that there are a number of like Fortune 500, like large Fortune 500 companies that actually have policies to try to get their employees to date each other.

• 2:22:59Speaker 01

  When did that start?

• 2:23:01Mark Manson?

  It's been going on for a while.

• 2:23:03Speaker 01

  Oh, really?

• 2:23:03Mark Manson?

  But it's kind of a hush hush thing. Like, I had a really good friend who worked at like a very massive, like,

• 2:23:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:09Mark Manson?

  one of the biggest companies in the world. And he was like, yeah, dude, they like, they have singles events for people at the company. And they like, it's not explicit. Like, they're not like, hey, why don't you and you like, go off, you know, in the back room together?

• 2:23:22Speaker 01

  They get their asses to the ceiling.

• 2:23:23Mark Manson?

  But it's like, they have, they have events, they like, host events for all the young, single employees. They like, they have mixers, they have activities, they like, will intentionally kind of move people on the teams together.

• 2:23:36Speaker 01

  I'm okay with that.

• 2:23:37Mark Manson?

  Which I get.

• 2:23:38Speaker 01

  I'm okay with that.

• 2:23:39Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:39Speaker 01

  Like, like, obviously, management, keep it in your pants, but.

• 2:23:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, I don't, I don't necessarily have a problem with it either. I mean, this friend told me, he said that, like, I think the idea is that it's, it's actually a retention strategy for the company. Because it's like, if two people in a couple are both at the same company, then each one's much less likely to leave.

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  The goddamn capitalists.

• 2:24:00Mark Manson?

  Just ruin everything. Just kill the romance and everything.

• 2:24:03Speaker 01

  I do, I seriously am kind of, I'm for this.

• 2:24:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah. But there, there, like, there's some Ivy League schools that do the same thing.

• 2:24:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:10Mark Manson?

  So like Princeton, I think is very aggressive in trying to encourage.

• 2:24:14Speaker 01

  I've heard this too, yeah.

• 2:24:15Mark Manson?

  Students and alum to date each other and marry each other.

• 2:24:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:19Mark Manson?

  You know, to breed like, uh, elite little Princetonlings.

• 2:24:25Mark Manson?

  And populate their, uh.

• 2:24:27Speaker 01

  Their universe, yeah.

• 2:24:29Mark Manson?

  Exactly. Back to like, the actual conversation, which is, uh, workplace boundaries. I think there's kind of, there's two, there's kind of two segments of workplace boundaries. One is kind of the time, attention piece, right? It's like, not overcommitting yourself, learning to say no to your boss or your coworkers. You know, not checking emails at 10:00 PM.

• 2:24:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:53Mark Manson?

  On a Tuesday night, like, there's, there's that aspect of it. There's kind of like, the time protection and the work-life balance boundaries. And then I would say there's, there's like, the personal relationship boundaries. You know, I think a lot of people's kind of default policy is, is to be super rigid, right? Like, don't mix work and play. I don't know. Again, I think it's like, what probably gets you in trouble here is just like, super porous boundaries. Like, just trying to make your.

• 2:25:18Mark Manson?

  Your coworkers, like your entire social life or whatever, like it's probably not super healthy, but I think it's good to have friends at work. Like honestly, it's I think it's actually probably one of the best things is to have friends at work.

• 2:25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:30Mark Manson?

  Not just for you, but also for the company. Like it's good for people to like working together. So.

• 2:25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, you're spending so much time there, you may as well.

• 2:25:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:40Speaker 01

  Like somebody that actually that's one of the biggest predictors of job satisfaction is having a good friend at work.

• 2:25:46Mark Manson?

  Yes. And it's also biggest predictor of people who stay.

• 2:25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:50Mark Manson?

  Is if they've made a friend at work.

• 2:25:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. If they don't really even like their job, they're like, well, I don't want to let these people down. And that's a, that's a good thing.

• 2:25:56Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  And I'm not just for the company or whatever. It's actually a good thing for you to be, because it's like it's outside of yourself to some degree.

• 2:26:03Mark Manson?

  I mean, what's better than going and hanging out, like working with your friends for eight hours a day?

• 2:26:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:07Mark Manson?

  That's.

• 2:26:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's great.

• 2:26:08Mark Manson?

  That's actually kind of the ideal. So.

• 2:26:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. An interesting thing I came up with was in convents, nuns will, the stricter ones, there's more old school, it's not so much anymore, but they would actually discourage friendships. Like, like, like you should not be having a friendship because it interferes with your relationship with God.

• 2:26:28Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:26:29Speaker 01

  Right? That, that kind of thing. But then they said, if anything, there's other, other comments too, that would say, if anything, you should seek out the people that you're not attracted to and in the friendship type of way, anyway. Right? Like they would, they would have them try to go befriend somebody who you're just like, I would not.

• 2:26:45Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:46Speaker 01

  Jell with that person at all. As, as like an act of God in a type of way, which I thought was really interesting. So they had very strict boundaries between the relationships within the organization that way.

• 2:26:56Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 2:26:57Speaker 01

  But then they also, some of them also were like, well, but if you want to do it this way, and it's more of a, it's, it's like you're, it's like, like I said, it's like an act of God, or you're, you're acting out God's will and including other people into it. So I thought it was kind of interesting.

• 2:27:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah. How to make friends like a nun, folks.

• 2:27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:13Mark Manson?

  You heard it here first. I do think there is another kind of boundary that's very important around.

• 2:27:22Mark Manson?

  I guess I would call it like an authority or uh I don't know, there's probably a word for this that we should have sat down and thought of, but but didn't. But you know, thinking about like a doctor, a lawyer, a therapist, like somebody who has expertise and has some a very large influence on your life, but who's not a friend, who's not a family member, you know, they're they're paid essentially. I do think that there's very important boundaries around this. You know, we we kind of, we talked earlier about, you know, therapists not being friends with their patients. It's probably, you know, it's probably good that like your your lawyer's

• 2:28:05Mark Manson?

  not investing in your competitive competitors, like your, you know, your tax accountant is not, you know, trying to convince you to, I don't know, donate to his charity. Like, there's just all sorts of conflicts of interest that can happen among these sorts of like mentorship roles or professional roles. I don't know, I would throw that in there. And because I do run across this quite a bit is like, I mean, I've made this mistake too. Like, I've hired people because I like them or because they're a friend. And it ended up being a total fucking disaster. It was just like, wait a second. It's when you're like crossing incentives and

• 2:28:46Mark Manson?

  interests, you can put yourself in like a very complicated situation. So.

• 2:28:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that particular example, I think illustrates an interesting point about, you know, boundaries that cross. So like if you have a friend, you're like, oh, since they're a friend, and I have this set of boundaries with them, and I bring them into another situation, you have to have a completely different set of boundaries. And those can conflict with each other, right?

• 2:29:10Mark Manson?

  That's a perfect way of putting it. A perfect way of putting it.

• 2:29:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah, yeah, boundaries everywhere, man. Boundaries all the way down. Okay, let's get into this last relationship. Self.

• 2:29:20Mark Manson?

  Self.

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  Really, what the, the boundaries you keep with yourself. We might not think about this in the same terms. We don't think about this in the same terms.

• 2:29:28Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:29:28Speaker 01

  We do with other people, but this gets into just kind of like, you know, how, how do you treat yourself? First of all, like there's like self-talk.

• 2:29:35Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:29:36Speaker 01

  Even too can be, you can have boundaries around that. If you, if you've ever meditated and you know, like how, what? There's actually a very clear boundary around that that you can set. So if you do have a lot of negative self-talk.

• 2:29:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:48Speaker 01

  How do you, how do you manage that? What are the kind of boundaries you set around that? Even just like taking care of yourself too. Like what, what do you do for self-care? What do you, what are the boundaries? All these other boundaries we've already discussed in different areas of your life. How do you implement those for yourself?

• 2:30:02Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:04Speaker 01

  Commitments that you make, saying no to different things. And then the internal discipline part of it too. Exercise, eating.

• 2:30:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:11Speaker 01

  All of that kind of stuff. Those are all boundaries that we have to navigate and negotiate with ourselves.

• 2:30:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:16Speaker 01

  That I don't think we give a whole lot of thought to. There's just kind of on autopilot a lot of times.

• 2:30:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah. I see this in terms of like making agreements that I make with myself. And, and I was just sitting here thinking about like, okay, what the fuck does that mean?

• 2:30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:30Mark Manson?

  I think making an agreement with myself is essentially like the two sides of my brain making an agreement. The thinking brain and the feeling brain coming together. Cause when I think about, when I think about like a successful agreement I've made with myself. So for instance, you mentioned self-talk. Like there are certain things that I just literally will not say to myself. It's just off limits.

• 2:30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:48Mark Manson?

  You just don't say that because nothing good comes out of it.

• 2:30:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:51Mark Manson?

  And both of my brains are on board with that. The thinking brain is on board with that because the thinking brain is like, hey, we're trying to be like healthy and productive and efficient. And the feeling brain is on board because the feeling brain doesn't want to feel bad.

• 2:31:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:05Mark Manson?

  So that's not an issue. But when I think about other agreements I've tried to make with myself, like, you know, I don't know. I'm going to get up at 5:00 AM and run four miles every single morning. That might work for like a day or two. But if the, if one of the two brains isn't on board, like it doesn't happen. And so I, I, I think it's, this is kind of where you get into alignment in terms of like.

• 2:31:32Mark Manson?

  What feels right to you and also like what you you rationally know is right for you and trying to get those things to line up. And I think that's where really where behavioral change happens. You can study and read until you're blue in the face, but like until you feel like doing something different, you're not going to do anything different. So it's the real struggle of behavioral change is like getting, finding a way to feel like making the change or feel like implementing the boundary into your life, not just thinking about it all the time.

• 2:32:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. How are boundaries used in order to get those things to to mesh up? Do you start with the boundary kind of on the thinking side and that kind of sets the parameters and then the feeling brain comes on? I don't know if that would work or not.

• 2:32:17Mark Manson?

  Yeah, no, I think it's like the the boundary is is set. It is set by the thinking brain, right? It's like you rationally kind of decide what type of person you want to be. The problem is getting the feeling brain to come along with it, which usually means having to deal with messy emotions, impulses, cravings, health stuff, you know, stuff like that.

• 2:32:40Speaker 01

  I think, you know, the big the big takeaway from all of this that I get anyway is that it doesn't matter which domain, which category, which relationship it is that you're setting a boundary with, it's really got to have kind of like three parts to it. You've got to be clear.

• 2:32:55Mark Manson?

  Yep.

• 2:32:56Speaker 01

  Especially when you're dealing with other people, but even when you're dealing with yourself, it's got to be a clear boundary. Like what is what is actually the boundary? And it can't just be like, you know, I eat healthy. It's like, I don't eat dessert. That's a boundary that I have with myself. Flexibility too.

• 2:33:12Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:13Speaker 01

  We've, this is again, that thing keeps coming up.

• 2:33:16Mark Manson?

  Yeah, carve out the exceptions, define the exceptions, make sure they're clear as well.

• 2:33:20Speaker 01

  And those are also clear, that's right.

• 2:33:21Mark Manson?

  I will eat dessert at a three star Michelin restaurant.

• 2:33:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Once every six months, right? Or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah. Alignment too. And we've already mentioned this as well, the aligning with your values and the person that you want to be, especially those self boundaries, I think too, that's really important.

• 2:33:35Mark Manson?

  But be clear on the value you're protecting, not the feeling you're protecting.

• 2:33:39Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly. Because otherwise you're just reacting, right? We talked about before. So those, that's kind of the big takeaway from that, those three areas. Any any boundary you want to set in your life in any category, I think you got to have those three things.

• 2:33:55Mark Manson?

  So that concludes the theory portion of the episode. Now, we're going to get into the nitty gritty. What do boundaries actually look like? How do you set them? How do you maintain them? What happens if they're not maintained? All that good, fun, juicy stuff. These are all the practical takeaways. The exercises, the things that you can use, take home with you, try out with your family and friends, and see how your mileage varies. Just a reminder to everybody listening, we do have a free companion PDF for this episode. It goes over everything that we're talking about, has all of the recommendations, exercises, and citations. You can go to solvedpodcast.com/boundaries to check that out. It's free.

• 2:34:38Mark Manson?

  All right, moving on, we're going to talk about how to actually set and maintain boundaries. Because, as we alluded to earlier, if you don't set boundaries, the other people in your life will, and you're probably not going to like their version. So, how do we actually do this? Well, based on all of our reading and research, we narrowed this down to six steps, essentially. These are six steps that you go through, not just with each individual relationship, but with each individual boundary within a relationship. Obviously, some boundaries are going to be much easier, more natural than others. Some boundaries are going to be very hard, and you're going to fuck them up over and over again. And, well, yeah, that's part of life.

• 2:35:22Mark Manson?

  So, without further ado, step one is just simply awareness. Like, understanding where is the ambiguity in your life? Where is the area that is not being enforced? Where your individual self is not being properly defined? That there is not a divide between you and the people around you? And that that divide is not being properly enforced or maintained?

• 2:35:48Mark Manson?

  So the awareness piece for a lot of people is actually the hardest piece, especially if you grew up in an environment that didn't have boundaries, if your family is absolutely fucking terrible at boundaries. It can be, actually be very hard to know where you need a boundary in your life. We talked earlier about some indicators, some red flags, so to speak. Again, I would categorize, you know, to me, there are probably two or three big red flags that are leading indicators of where there needs to be a boundary in your life, but there's not. The first one is resentment. Like where, where are the areas, is there a repeated area in your life that you just find yourself getting annoyed with people, feeling disrespected by people,

• 2:36:32Mark Manson?

  feeling like your needs or wishes aren't being considered? Like, what is it? What are you constantly griping about or complaining about or muttering under your breath about? Blaming others for? Blaming other people about? That is probably a very strong indicator of a place that a boundary needs to be implemented. Let's say you work in finance and your boss is like calling you at 10:00 PM on a Monday night and you're trying to put your kids to bed and you're, you know, trying to relax with your, with your partner and your workplace just keeps bothering you at all hours of the week. And you're pissed about it. Like, that's an indicator of like, hey, some, some sort of boundary needs to be implemented here. Some sort of agreement or expectation needs to be set.

• 2:37:16Mark Manson?

  Indicator number two, I would just say is ambiguity. Like situations where things feel messy and unclear. You know, we talked earlier about finances. I've met so many couples that the finances get enmeshed and they've never really talked about it. And it becomes extremely difficult for them because they're both like, on the one hand, they're like, I'm happy to pay for things. Like, I want to contribute to the relationship. I'm happy to pay for my partner. But if you ask them specifically what, how much, what's the budget, who's in charge of what? Is it merged bank accounts? Is it separate bank accounts? Like, none of these things have been discussed.

• 2:37:56Mark Manson?

  And so I guess another way to put this is that a good intention is not a boundary. Like, a boundary that you can't enforce with any clarity, it's just a suggestion. And generally speaking, people treat suggestions like a suggestion. Eventually, they start ignoring it.

• 2:38:14Speaker 01

  Right. That's just not a boundary.

• 2:38:16Mark Manson?

  Yes, it's not. It's goodwill is nice, but it doesn't really get you very far in the real world. So in a situation like that, while the intentions may be explicit, while it may be two people in a couple are like, "We do want to share finances," or "We want to share responsibilities." Maybe they live together and they want to share rent, or they want to share expenses or utilities or whatever. There needs to be a very explicit conversation of like, okay, who contributes what? Are we basing it on how much we make? Are we basing it on, are we going 50/50 on everything? Are we basing it on how much credit card debt you have versus me?

• 2:38:56Mark Manson?

  Like, there's all sorts of factors that need to be considered when going into decisions like this. And then the third big indicator, I would say, is an area of your life that you feel compulsive or out of control. So something that you keep doing and you're like, "Why do I keep doing that?" And this could be anything from drinking too much, to going to events that you don't enjoy going to, to maintaining a friendship with a person that you don't actually like hanging out with, going home for the holidays with the family that drives you crazy. Like, whatever it is in your life that you're like, "Why do I keep doing this?"

• 2:39:34Speaker 01

  Emotional reactions, impulsive emotional reactions.

• 2:39:37Mark Manson?

  Yeah, like, it's just, that's probably an indicator that there needs to be a boundary there. Like, you need to define what you're willing to accept and tolerate, and what you're not willing to accept and tolerate. Otherwise, you're just going to keep doing it.

• 2:39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:39:49Mark Manson?

  Essentially.

• 2:39:50Speaker 01

  Where do you think, do you think energy drains would fit in there somewhere in one of those three? I think that's one too, like if you're constantly doing things that just drain you.

• 2:40:00Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:40:00Speaker 01

  And not in a good way, like sometimes there's a good way to do that, but other times there's not.

• 2:40:04Mark Manson?

  I think energy drain can be a bad thing. I wouldn't necessarily say it's definitely a boundary issue just because you can be drained doing things that you're happy to be doing.

• 2:40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay.

• 2:40:16Mark Manson?

  And that you've explicitly defined, you know? Like, let's say you and your partner have decided to have a newborn, like have a kid, right? That's draining as fuck.

• 2:40:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 2:40:26Mark Manson?

  So I would say if you're finding your energy draining and you don't know why, then that's probably an indication of like, there's a boundary leak somewhere and the energy is getting out.

• 2:40:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:40:39Mark Manson?

  So step number two, once you've identified what you need a boundary around, step number two is stating it clearly. And by clearly, it's, it needs to be observable or quantifiable in some way. You can't just say like, "I want to be healthy," or "I want to spend more time with friends." What does that mean? Or tell your spouse like, "I don't want to argue anymore." Like, what does that mean, actually? Like, about what? How often? Under what circumstances? Is every argument off limits? Or is it just like certain stupid topics that we keep arguing about? You really need to get granular about what the boundary actually is.

• 2:41:24Mark Manson?

  We've got a little bit of a formula here, which is, this comes from Nonviolent Communication from Marshall Rosenberg, which is, by the way, a great resource for communicating any sort of difficult conversation in a relationship. Nonviolent communication is just full of useful tools, phrasings, framing of ideas to state your needs and get your needs met with somebody in your life without pissing everybody off. This formula comes from NVC, and it basically says, "When I feel X emotion in Y situation, I need Z action." So, simple example, when I feel distracted because my phone is buzzing during dinner.

• 2:42:11Mark Manson?

  I've decided to turn off my phone at the dinner table. This is a boundary. No, no phone at the dinner table. Right. You could do another one, which is like, you know, when I feel ignored or uncared for, when my partner doesn't clean up after themselves, we set rules and expectations of who's in charge of cleaning the kitchen on which days or after which meals. So you basically, you identify the situation that is triggering you or upsetting you. You identify the exact occurrences or, or actions that happen that bother you. And then you set expectations or negotiate, you know, some sort of

• 2:42:56Mark Manson?

  behavior with somebody else to, to mitigate that, prevent it from happening in the first place. The important thing about boundaries is that they are stated assertively, but not aggressively. So there's a very subtle difference.

• 2:43:12Mark Manson?

  The way I would describe this is like, you know, stating something passively is stating it in a way that you take no ownership or autonomy over it. So it'd be something like, you know, Drew, it'd be really nice if like, when we recorded podcasts, the AC was turned on. You know, it'd just be nice if I wasn't hot all the time. Like, it's such a passive, it's almost like it's making it your problem. That'd be nice. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I'm taking zero ownership of it. And so the, the effect of that is that I am subcommunicating that it's actually your problem and your fault that I'm hot. Which is not the way you want to go about this. That's not effective at all.

• 2:43:55Mark Manson?

  Whereas I would say doing it aggressively is demanding something and also blaming, taking no ownership over it. So if I was to state, state it aggressively, it would be something like, you know, Drew, every time we record these podcasts, I'm hot as fuck. And it'd be great if you got your shit together and turned on the AC once in a while. Like, it's disrespectful, it's condescending, it's demeaning, and I'm taking no ownership of it whatsoever. So an assertive way of saying it would be, hey Drew, every time we're shooting these podcasts, I get really hot. How about we agree to turn on the AC when we take breaks in between shoots? How does that sound to you?

• 2:44:39Mark Manson?

  Right? It's like, I'm owning it. I'm suggesting a solution. I'm telling you exactly, I feel this way in this situation. How about we do this?

• 2:44:48Speaker 01

  I'm bringing you in as part of the boundary too.

• 2:44:50Mark Manson?

  Right. It's a collaboration where and you and it opens, it, it makes it clear that you don't have to agree to it. You could be like, well, I'm cold all the time.

• 2:45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:01Mark Manson?

  And then that, okay, so now we change the conversation. We'll get to negotiating a little bit later.

• 2:45:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:45:07Mark Manson?

  So that's an example of, I guess, passive, doing it passively. I would even call it passive aggressiveness, aggressiveness. You want assertiveness. You want to own it. Be like, hey, this is my feeling. This is what I don't like. And this is how I would like to see it changed. How do you feel about that?

• 2:45:23Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:45:23Mark Manson?

  So that's step number two. We've got awareness, communication.

• 2:45:26Speaker 01

  I think, I think in the communication part too, I think the important part is to realize too, that a lot of people just don't know that they're violating your boundaries.

• 2:45:36Mark Manson?

  Correct.

• 2:45:36Speaker 01

  And that's what the communication is really all about. Obviously.

• 2:45:39Mark Manson?

  I would say a majority of the time.

• 2:45:40Speaker 01

  But most of the time, they don't even like, so you have all this resentment building up. Like we're talking about one of the red flags and people, they don't even know it because you haven't set the boundary. It's not clear. They don't know that you're upset about it.

• 2:45:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:50Speaker 01

  So being able to do that, like you said, assertively too, and clearly, and, and bringing them in on it and not making them feel like they're, you're attacking them or they're attacking you either way.

• 2:46:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:46:02Speaker 01

  I think that's a huge thing. It's just, people just don't even realize they're crossing your boundary lines.

• 2:46:05Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And this is the pattern you see in so many relations. I mean, this has happened a dozen times in my, my marriage. All right. It's like, there's something that's pissing me off or pissing her off. But it's like, it's low enough on the scale of annoyance that you just don't, you let it go. You don't say anything. But then it keeps happening over and over and over again. And it builds and it builds and that resentment builds and the ambiguity builds of like, well, is, is he supposed to do this? Or am I supposed to do this? Am I supposed to tell him? And then all of a sudden, like one day, you get pissed off at each other and the other person's like, whoa, where did this come from?

• 2:46:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46:43Mark Manson?

  Like, how the hell am I supposed to know that like? You want the plates in this drawer, not that drawer. Like, you never said anything, right? And so it just comes back to stating assertively with respect. It's funny, because I think people who are terrified of conflict, they're mostly worried about the topic. When actually, I think most conflict can be avoided tactically. A large percentage of interpersonal conflict emerges, not because something was communicated, it's how it was communicated.

• 2:47:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, yeah.

• 2:47:12Mark Manson?

  It's like you're being a dick about it, or you're being judgmental about it, or you're being condescending about it, or you're not taking any responsibility for it, or accountability, whatever.

• 2:47:21Speaker 01

  That's my problem, most of the time. It's how I'm communicating. No, seriously, it's how I'm communicating my need, or whatever it is. Like, almost everybody can understand what need you have. But if you're communicating in an either aggressive way, or a really whiny way, or whatever it is. Yeah, expecting someone else to respond in kind, you know? Yeah.

• 2:47:42Mark Manson?

  I want to, I actually want to hammer home on this point again, because this also ties into the philosophical stuff we were talking about, which is the thing that is gonna make, like, when you approach somebody with a boundary, or a request, or something you want them to change, I would say the majority of like, whether it lands or not, is, again, the way you present it. But it really has to do with agency, and it has to do with ownership, right? So, and this is the big thing that nonviolent communication teaches. It says that like, your feelings are your responsibility, right? So, if you're doing something that's pissing me off, and I come to you, and I'm like, you're pissing me off. Like, immediately, you're gonna get defensive. And you're gonna be like, I didn't do anything. Fuck you, you know? Whereas if I come to you and be like, you know, Drew,

• 2:48:26Mark Manson?

  you've been doing this thing lately, and it, like, when you do it, I feel really irritated. Suddenly, I'm like, I'm giving you your agency, right? Like, you're allowed to do whatever you want. I'm maintaining my own agency, which is like, hey, when this thing happens, this is the emotion that I feel. And then I say, and when I feel that irritation, it's hard, it's hard to do a podcast well together. Right. And it's now I'm like framing the problem as something that we can both help solve. It's just a repackaging of the same experience, but it is so much more effective than just being like, dude, stop being a dick. You're pissing me off. Right. Like it just, it completely changes the tenor of everything.

• 2:49:07Mark Manson?

  But the reason that matters is because remember, boundaries originate in self-definition. And when, when you come to somebody and you're like, stop doing that thing. You can't do that anymore because it makes me mad. You are, you're violating their autonomy. You're, you are impeding on their, their ability to define themselves, to choose how they are acting in the world. And if you are removing your own agency, you're also doing that to yourself. So it's like a very subtle and philosophical thing, but I do think it is like super interesting that,

• 2:49:42Mark Manson?

  like the whole notion of respect, I think is very much tied up in the respect of our own autonomy and the respect of other people's autonomy.

• 2:49:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. That goes back to the like distinguishing boundaries between rules and other, that's a rule.

• 2:49:56Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:49:57Speaker 01

  You can't do this.

• 2:49:58Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:49:58Speaker 01

  That's not a boundary.

• 2:49:59Mark Manson?

  Right. Whereas a boundary is like, hey, when you do that, I feel this way. And so I'm just not going to hang out with you. Yeah.

• 2:50:05Speaker 01

  Right. You've infringed on their autonomy at that point. Yeah.

• 2:50:07Mark Manson?

  Step three is consistency. This is basically, I mean,

• 2:50:12Speaker 01

  One of the hardest steps.

• 2:50:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's, I think it's almost like a law of the universe that any boundary that's defined is going to be tested.

• 2:50:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:21Mark Manson?

  This is true with children.

• 2:50:22Speaker 01

  Almost by definition. Yeah.

• 2:50:23Mark Manson?

  It's true with friendships. It's true with family. It's just human nature. Anytime we are presented with a boundary, our first inclination is like, hmm, let me put my toe over that line and see what happens.

• 2:50:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:50:35Mark Manson?

  Right. It's just, we can't help ourselves.

• 2:50:37Speaker 01

  Sounds fun to me sometimes. You know what I mean? Like, oh, I'm going to test this boundary. Yeah.

• 2:50:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah. So it is important that the boundaries are actually enforced.

• 2:50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:50:47Mark Manson?

  Right. So like, let's say I tell a friend like, hey dude, if you're going to start doing FaceTime calls in public without headphones, I'm just going to go home.

• 2:50:59Mark Manson?

  And then he pulls out his phone and starts doing a FaceTime call in public without headphones. And I stick around.

• 2:51:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:05Mark Manson?

  How much is that boundary worth? We're fucking nothing, right? It's unless you follow, unless your actions follow through on, on the statement of the expectation of the boundary. It's not worth anything.

• 2:51:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, real boundaries have stakes.

• 2:51:17Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 2:51:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:51:18Mark Manson?

  And you have to follow through on them.

• 2:51:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:20Mark Manson?

  I think this is crucially important with parenting. Any, anybody who has a kid knows that if you're inconsistent in enforcement, the kid, like the respect goes out the window.

• 2:51:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:33Mark Manson?

  Right?

• 2:51:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:34Mark Manson?

  It's, it's.

• 2:51:35Speaker 01

  That's their job is to test boundaries, right?

• 2:51:36Mark Manson?

  It is.

• 2:51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:37Mark Manson?

  It is. I mean, a child is, again, they are, A, they're learning about the world and then B, they're learning about themselves. So they're, they're trying to push the boundaries of their own capabilities and their own self-definition. And it's your job as a parent to give them that freedom, but also put guardrails around them to make sure that they don't, you know, push themselves into a dangerous territory.

• 2:52:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:52:05Mark Manson?

  And, and if you don't reinforce those guardrails, guess what? They're just gonna drive straight through. The hugely important part about consistency, like this is the step where trust comes from, right? Like.

• 2:52:17Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 2:52:18Mark Manson?

  Like, if you think about what is trust in a relationship, it is, it is a confidence that you are going to do what you say you're going to do. It's confidence that you are going to be consistent in your actions and in your words. And so if you are regularly saying things and then you don't actually do them, I'm not really gonna trust you. Like, think about it this way, like if you have a friend who is regularly like talking shit, saying, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, and then never does anything, never actually takes action on anything. And then let's say you're in a problem or a crisis, like how likely are you to call that person?

• 2:52:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:52:57Mark Manson?

  Not very.

• 2:52:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't trust you, so I'm not gonna call, yeah.

• 2:53:01Mark Manson?

  Like, like dude, if you can't even do things for yourself, like how am I gonna rely on you to, to do something for me, right? So it's, the consistency piece is huge. Again, often unpleasant, but it is funny because it is, when you hold the line on the boundary, even though it might upset people, even though it might annoy people, or they might get offended, or it might cause a fight.

• 2:53:25Mark Manson?

  It causes them to respect you and it causes them to trust you.

• 2:53:29Speaker 01

  This is, this is what I was saying earlier about when my dad told me, I gotta be your dad first and, and not your friend.

• 2:53:33Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:34Speaker 01

  After that, I felt like, oh, I can, I can trust him when I know I'm in a bind or something like that.

• 2:53:38Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 2:53:38Speaker 01

  I can go to him and he, I know he's gonna do the right thing.

• 2:53:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:41Speaker 01

  For me in that situation. He's not gonna do the thing I want to do. He's gonna do the right thing for me.

• 2:53:45Mark Manson?

  A hundred percent.

• 2:53:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:46Mark Manson?

  Boundaries often don't work the first, the first try.

• 2:53:50Mark Manson?

  They have to be enforced multiple times to like kick in. So like, I'll give you the example, like I, the facetious example about the friend on FaceTime, right? Let's say I'm hanging out with a friend. He pulls out, he starts doing a FaceTime call and I'm like, dude, fuck this shit. I'm out of here. And I actually go home. And 20 minutes later, he like calls me, he's like, oh my God, you're such a dick. I can't believe you actually did that, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, I told you. I told you. Well, guess what? Next time we're hanging out, he gets a FaceTime call. You think he's gonna take it?

• 2:54:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:54:20Mark Manson?

  Probably not.

• 2:54:22Mark Manson?

  Cause he knows what's gonna happen. I think a lot of people, you know, they think to themselves, well, I set a boundary, but it wasn't respected. Well, it's, yeah, you have to, it's gonna be tested a couple of times first and then, then it starts to get enforced. So step four is related to all this. It's anticipating pushback. So people who don't have a lot of boundaries in their lives, don't like it when you come along and try to insert one. Like there's a, there is a, there's a tendency to, uh, you know, basically the only people who, who really respect boundaries are people who have plenty of their own. And they're, they're not gonna be the ones that test it. The ones who like really struggle to set boundaries for themselves or adhere to boundaries than others are,

• 2:55:04Mark Manson?

  they're gonna try to wiggle their ways out of it. So this can come up in the form of guilt tripping, getting mad at you, picking a fight, um, ghosting you, basically manipulative behavior. Like there, there, it's.

• 2:55:20Mark Manson?

  And we're gonna get in the relationship section, we're gonna get into kinda like why this happens, but for somebody with a lack of boundaries, or who doesn't have boundaries in their life, it actually feels easier for them to try to manipulate you into letting go of a boundary than it is to actually adhere to it, in many cases.

• 2:55:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:40Mark Manson?

  That sounds fucked up, but it's gonna happen. Step five is adaptation. So, no boundary is perfect. You could set an expectation in your relationship to behave a certain way, five years go by, you know, maybe you get married, maybe somebody's parent dies, maybe you move to another country, like, situations change, people change, conditions change, so, boundaries should be flexible and adaptable. There might come a day where you're like, you know what, maybe I do keep hanging out with somebody who takes a FaceTime call. No, that's not true. I will never hang out with that person.

• 2:56:18Speaker 01

  That's a hard boundary for you.

• 2:56:19Mark Manson?

  That is a rule. That is, that is not a boundary. The other aspect of this is that you are often very likely not gonna set the correct boundary the first time.

• 2:56:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:28Mark Manson?

  Right? You might overshoot it, you might be too rigid, too porous, like, you're, like anything in life, you're probably not gonna get it on the first shot, you're gonna have to come back and revise it a couple times.

• 2:56:41Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, there's a process of discovery, and a lot of that comes from the testing of the boundaries like we were talking about, and then you figure out, oh, okay, that's not quite the right boundary, let me adjust here.

• 2:56:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah, people might have some anxiety of like, whoa, if I go back on the boundary, then people aren't gonna respect me. It's like, no, actually, if you just communicate to people, you're like, hey, you know, I used to be like this, but like, you know, I don't think that was really fair to the people in my life, so I've like adjusted to here. People respect that. You just, again, communication. Just be explicit, be like, this is what I need now, I thought it was this, that didn't work, so now I'm doing it this way.

• 2:57:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the uncertainty that, that if you don't, if you don't provide some sort of clarity around it, then, yeah, whether that clarity changes or not, beside the point.

• 2:57:21Mark Manson?

  Yeah, we also talked about exceptions. Again, I think a lot of it is just being clear and defining the exceptions explicitly, right?

• 2:57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's part of the boundary.

• 2:57:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so yeah, it's like, uh, okay, my boundary is I don't take late night calls after 10pm, but, I don't know, let's say your mother's in the hospital and sick, and the doctors are calling, like, she's gonna be... In the ER overnight, like, obviously, you want to keep your phone on and you want to take calls in that situation. So it is just adapting to the situation around you and knowing what is realistic and practical. And then finally, number six, and this is going to be a huge one for a lot of people listening to this, guilt management. Yeah.

• 2:58:06Mark Manson?

  Guilt management. So what tends to happen if you are a person who historically has had very few boundaries, and you are surrounded by people who have very few boundaries, two things are going to happen. One is, when you set a boundary, the people around you are not going to like it. They're going to bitch at you, they're going to complain, they're going to guilt trip you, they're going to try to pick a fight with you, they're going to test you. The second thing that's going to happen is you're going to feel really guilty about it. And there's a reason for this, because you are essentially cutting them off from a source of validation and self-esteem that used to be available to them. We're about

• 2:58:50Mark Manson?

  to talk a lot more about enmeshed relationships or toxic relationships, but if you really look at like what a toxic relationship is, it's essentially two people who are becoming emotionally reliant on each other to meet their needs and fulfill their self-esteem. And it's not a healthy thing, and you can almost think of it as like, almost in literal terms, becoming addicted to each other, right? Like, you are now, the same way an alcoholic is, becomes dependent on the alcohol to feel normal and functional, the codependent person relies on the validation and affection and attention from another person to simply feel

• 2:59:32Mark Manson?

  normal and be able to be functional. So when you cut somebody off, you're essentially cutting them off of their supply, of their emotional addiction. And

• 2:59:42Mark Manson?

  If you've ever been around an attic that just got cut off, like it's not pretty. Like, people don't take it well. They're not, they're not very understanding about it.

• 2:59:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:59:51Mark Manson?

  So, there's gonna be a lot of guilt. There might be some shame. You might lose a few relationships. But it's important to remember that boundaries are the ultimate act of love. Right? It's boundaries, it's not just for your own health and safety, it's for the other person's as well. Like, they are never going to learn to stand on their own two feet psychologically and emotionally, as long as they're dependent on you and, and vice versa. And so, the longer you wait to establish those boundaries, the more you just prevent each of you from developing appropriately.

• 3:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, there's, I think we'll talk about this a little bit more too, shortly, but there's an identity aspect to it there too, right? Like, you're talking about, like, encode dependent relationships, let's say, or whatever. You cut somebody off by setting a boundary. They're so enmeshed with you too, that they have to find this new identity now.

• 3:00:41Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:00:42Speaker 01

  Right?

• 3:00:42Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:42Speaker 01

  They have to come up, so it's not just that, oh, you're, you're, you're cutting off their, their supply of validating feelings, or whatever it is, is that like, they feel, like a part of them is being extracted.

• 3:00:52Mark Manson?

  Yes. Yes.

• 3:00:54Speaker 01

  So, so, that's kind of where that, it's, it's a fear response, a lot of times, from people. And then, and then you feel guilty about it. So, knowing that.

• 3:01:03Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:04Speaker 01

  That kind of sits the stage.

• 3:01:05Mark Manson?

  I mean, it, it's kind of, it, this is one of those situations where, you know, I'm just kind of imagining, like, cheesy rom-coms, you know, but, but it's like, when, people in toxic relationships, when they, they do split apart, or when, or when they feel like they're splitting apart, they resist it, because they will say things like, "I need you."

• 3:01:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:01:25Mark Manson?

  And, and they literally feel that. Like, that is actually what they feel. They're like, "I am not, I am nothing without you. I, I can't function without you." Overall, that's a very unhealthy place to be, but like, once you are, if you can imagine being in that place, and I've been there before, I, I imagine you've been there before, literally, anything else feels worth it to keep that person.

• 3:01:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01:47Mark Manson?

  Right? Like, you, you, at that point, when, once you feel like you need another human being to simply function and feel normal about yourself. You are able and willing to justify almost any behavior to keep that person in your life, which gets pretty fucked up. If you like, that can take you to a dark place if you let it.

• 3:02:05Speaker 01

  I remember a friend of mine, they're going through a rough patch in their relationship and they said, yeah, they came to me and they said, they said the words you said earlier, I'm addicted to you.

• 3:02:13Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:02:13Speaker 01

  Is what they said. They came out and said they were aware enough to say that, or to know that I'm actually addicted to whatever this is, even though it was a terrible relationship.

• 3:02:21Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:02:22Speaker 01

  But they, they realized it and didn't know what to do with it. I'm addicted to you. I need you because you are my little supply of whatever validation I'm getting or whatever it is. Yeah.

• 3:02:30Mark Manson?

  At some point, we will definitely do an episode on codependence.

• 3:02:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:02:33Mark Manson?

  It is such an important topic and I think it's, it's funny because on the one hand, I feel it's under discussed. On the other hand, when I get on Instagram or I just

• 3:02:44Speaker 01

  All year, yeah.

• 3:02:44Mark Manson?

  It's, it's based like 80% of self-help advice is just helping codependent people stop being codependent. Like that's, that is basically what this entire industry is.

• 3:02:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:02:54Mark Manson?

  It's rarely explicitly labeled in that way.

• 3:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:02:57Mark Manson?

  It's, um, it's, I'd say the vast majority of it is, is treating the symptoms, right? It's like codependent people tend to have very low self-esteem. So a lot of it's just trying to boost their self-esteem. Codependent people tend to feel guilty all the time or be incredibly concerned with what, what other people think about them. So it's, you know, a lot of the content is geared towards that.

• 3:03:20Speaker 01

  A lot of fixing the symptoms and not the cause. Yeah.

• 3:03:22Mark Manson?

  Exactly. I'm going to kind of dissect the anatomy of a toxic relationship. And then in the next section, but before we move on, I want to make a couple, just touch on a couple more things. Boundaries are hard. They don't come naturally. They require a lot of thought. They often involve difficult, uncomfortable conversations. So they are not, they're not going to come easy. And like anything in life that's good for you, that doesn't come easy or naturally, it's ideal to try to build habits and rituals around them so that you don't have to repeatedly choose these things over and over again. So for example, you can build routines into your life that automatically enforce a lot of these boundaries, right? So it's like, there's

• 3:04:06Mark Manson?

  a setting in your phone to automatically go into do not disturb, say at 7:00 PM every night. Or, um, you know, scheduling, you know, one thing my wife and I have done in the past is like, we will pre-schedule date nights like months in advance and Just because once it's on the calendar, we know that it will get done. Other stuff gets planned around it. Whereas if we don't put it on the calendar, like, I mean, as you know, it just, it gets pushed off.

• 3:04:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:04:33Mark Manson?

  Week after week.

• 3:04:34Speaker 01

  A little psychological switch again. It's like, it's important enough, we're gonna put it on the calendar. And even just that small act, yeah.

• 3:04:39Mark Manson?

  Absolutely.

• 3:04:40Speaker 01

  Creates a pretty strong boundary.

• 3:04:41Mark Manson?

  A lot of people, they do, um, it's so funny. This is so nerdy, but I also think it's probably a healthy thing. A lot of people do, they, they create, uh, relationship dashboards. So, so like, in like Notion or, or other stuff, like even spreadsheets, like, and they will, um, either like every quarter or every month, they will sit down for an hour and like, go through their dashboard and they'll look at their finances, they'll look at their, like how they're feeling emotionally, they'll look at their social life, they'll look at their work life, and they'll kind of like, discuss each category and be like, what can we be doing better on? How can I support you?

• 3:05:20Mark Manson?

  It's funny, on the one hand, like, I feel so torn about that because there's like 50% of me hears that and I'm like, nerd.

• 3:05:27Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, right.

• 3:05:29Mark Manson?

  You fucking nerd. But then the other half of like, I guess the, the relationship coach, uh, and, uh, psychology part of, part of me is like, wow, that's so healthy.

• 3:05:37Speaker 01

  Look at how incredibly intentional that is, right? And that, I mean, you're so intentional about your job, you're so intentional about other parts of your life, your finances, whatever it is, why not be that intentional with the most important relationships in your life?

• 3:05:51Mark Manson?

  It.

• 3:05:51Speaker 01

  I, I get it. It's probably over the top, or it seems over the top to a lot of people.

• 3:05:55Mark Manson?

  It makes sense. I mean, no, what you just said makes 100% of sense. Like, especially considering that like, your, your primary relationship, like your, your, your romantic partnership is arguably the most significant fact, like variable in your entire psychological well-being.

• 3:06:11Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 3:06:12Mark Manson?

  Like, it's, it's. A good marriage or long-term relationship improves every other aspect of your life. And a bad one harms every other aspect of your life. So it makes sense to put that much care into it. I think, and I'm actually gonna get to this in a little bit. It just violate, there's like this romantic notion in the culture that like, sure, something like a spreadsheet or a relationship spreadsheet or dashboard just like kind of violates that romance.

• 3:06:39Speaker 01

  If that's the case, come up with a different habit. You can make a habit out of it, though. Maybe it's just a check-in, maybe it's just a weekly check-in, whatever it is. But yeah, there's intentionality behind it. I think that's a good thing.

• 3:06:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah, we'll get to that in a minute. So anyway, yeah, create the routine, create the habit. Basically, find the ritual or the habit that will make a lot of these boundaries solve themselves. Another point that I wanted to touch on here.

• 3:07:06Mark Manson?

  And I don't know, maybe this doesn't even need to be worth touching on. But like, almost everything we're talking about here involves like, hey, I'm upset, I have a problem, and so I'm coming to you and I'm trying to establish a boundary. Whereas like, we're not talking a whole lot about like respecting other people's boundaries. Right? It's, it's, that in many ways can be harder for a lot of people. Like noticing when somebody likes or dislikes something, when they have a certain expectation around something, and then just not living up to it. I don't know if like, I don't have like a whole list of like practical actionable advice around this. But I do think it is, especially as we move into the romantic relationship section, and I'm gonna talk a little bit, a little bit more about parenting as well.

• 3:07:50Mark Manson?

  A huge part of this is simply respecting the autonomy of the other person and acting accordingly. Right? So it's like, even if you don't understand it, if that person lays out an expectation or a boundary.

• 3:08:05Mark Manson?

  If you want to have a good relationship with that person, then you should probably follow it. And if you don't want to follow it, then you probably shouldn't have a relationship with that person. Like, it's just kinda...

• 3:08:14Mark Manson?

  Like, I think a lot of people... Being on the receiving end, a lot of us don't want to accept that.

• 3:08:18Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, no. And then a lot of us just wind up taking FaceTime calls in public. That's what it is. It's like, you're not respecting other people's boundaries.

• 3:08:27Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 3:08:28Speaker 01

  And it's not even... It's not, "Well, I didn't know the boundary." It's like, "Come on."

• 3:08:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah. It's... For sure. And of course, then we end up being the ones who test it.

• 3:08:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:08:37Mark Manson?

  We're like, "Well, does he really mean that?" "I don't know." "I'm gonna do it anyway. Let's just see what happens." You know? And then it gets reinforced, and then you're like, "Oh, okay. I guess this is a thing now." And... But I guess I just want to raise the point that it's not just about setting boundaries. It's also respecting other people's boundaries. Even... And this is where it gets really important and also really hard. Even if that person has not explicitly said it themselves.

• 3:09:06Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 3:09:07Mark Manson?

  Because there are some boundaries that like, it's impossible to know unless the other person says something, right? So like, the first three years my wife and I lived together, she hated the way I put away my dirty clothes. Like, it drove her crazy. It took her three years to say something. So obviously, like, I have no idea. I've been like, I've been throwing my dirty clothes in the same hamper, the same way since I was a child. So like, there's no way for me to know that that's a thing until she says something. But there are other things that, once you under... And I guess this is why I keep hitting on the autonomy thing, the self-definition thing. When you understand that, there are certain things that people shouldn't have to say. Let's say you're suffering emotionally very intensely, and I suddenly feel this urge of like,

• 3:09:52Mark Manson?

  "You know, I could kinda swoop in and like, make Drew's life a lot better. Like, I can fix some things for him and take care of this problem for him," or whatever. You have to resist that urge, because it's not your job. It's not... That's not your place. And if you really want to do it... Then you need to talk to them about it first. You can't just do it and be like, I'm gonna be the savior. I'm actually reading a great book right now around this. Liz Gilbert, who I'm a huge fan of. For those people listening who don't know, she wrote, she's most famous for writing Eat, Pray, Love, but she's also written, written a number of other fantastic books. Her new book is a memoir and it's about a very, very intense relationship.

• 3:10:36Mark Manson?

  Well, it's about her history of codependency. And, and then it's about a very intense romantic relationship she had with a woman who, who was dying of stage four cancer. And it's funny because as soon as the, the woman she was seeing was diagnosed, it's like, everything she had ever learned about romance and relationships and codependence and everything like went out the window. Cause it's like, well, she has only got a few months left to live. So like, let's go for it. And then of course she ended up living for years and it like turned into a nightmare. It's, it's a fascinating book and it's, not only is it beautifully written, but it's also like her level of self-awareness

• 3:11:17Mark Manson?

  and like understanding why she keeps behaving worse and worse and worse. Like you can see just the boundaries like melting away as she like continues to justify like, well, it's just this one time, or it's just this one, or you know what, like, let me pay for this thing. Cause she's gonna die soon anyway. So like, let me just go for it. And it's just all the boundaries melt away and you, you, you really see this horror story of what happens when you, when you take all of the chains off.

• 3:11:46Speaker 01

  Contrast that with the Harvard professor, what was his name?

• 3:11:49Mark Manson?

  Clay Christensen.

• 3:11:50Speaker 01

  Clay Christensen, yeah, contrast that. He was like, no, I'm gonna put up more boundaries now.

• 3:11:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:54Speaker 01

  And, and was completely happy with that.

• 3:11:57Mark Manson?

  Which makes sense, right? Because I think, let's say you are diagnosed with terminal cancer or, or a loved one is like, I think the, the instinct is to like, let everything go.

• 3:12:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 3:12:08Mark Manson?

  And just go for it. But it's like, no, you, you, the opposite is actually makes more sense because you have so little time that you need to make every single day count as much as possible.

• 3:12:19Speaker 01

  You have to protect the most important things.

• 3:12:21Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not, not give them, give all the space that for all the important things to rush in. No, it's, you have to define those important things and define the container for them.

• 3:12:33Mark Manson?

  So this is actually a perfect transition into a discussion of boundaries in romantic relationships and basically the anatomy of a toxic relationship. How does a toxic relationship happen? How does it form and then how does it perpetuate? Because boundaries is really at the core of all of these dynamics. We've already talked about quite a bit, but my goal here is to actually like really lay out a framework for people to understand this is why you get into a toxic relationship. This is what makes it toxic. This is what it feels like. This is why these certain dynamics happen. And then of course, this is how you get out of it ideally. So as we talked about earlier in the show, every single one of us, when we're children,

• 3:13:14Mark Manson?

  as we're developing psychologically, as we're maturing, in many ways, that maturation process is the process of developing an ego or developing an identity of understanding who is Drew Bernie? What does he like to do? What is he good at? What is he bad at? Who are his friends? Who are his enemies? What does he want to do with his life? These are all such core questions that we all start asking ourselves at a pretty young age and it takes us most of our young lives to answer them clearly. And that answering process is, it's very long, it's very difficult, it requires a lot of experimentation.

• 3:13:57Mark Manson?

  That experimentation requires a lot of failure, a lot of embarrassment, a decent amount of rejection. And so it's not fun. It's like, it's just a very unfun process. Very messy, yeah. And for that reason, a lot of people avoid the process. They check out, they numb themselves, they distract themselves. A lot of other people also grow up in environments that don't foster that process. So maybe they're in an abusive environment that they're just constantly on survival mode. So they're not able to experiment or try different things out. Maybe they're coddled and overprotected by their parents. So they're not allowed to have different experiences or ask these questions of themselves.

• 3:14:42Mark Manson?

  Maybe their parents are super demanding and they're like, this is who you are. This is who you're gonna be. And so there's just no, there's no room for them to develop this individual identity. So what happens as, as those of us who come into adulthood with a un-individuated identity, basically a lack of a conception of ourself. We are still very emotionally dependent on others to feel validated, to feel worthy and, and normal. And this is, again, this is a pretty normal experience. I think it's, everybody experiences this to a certain extent as an adolescent.

• 3:15:22Mark Manson?

  And, and then if you've had a rough upbringing or a rough childhood in some way, you, you'll experience it well into young adulthood as well. It's, it's one way of looking at it as simply as just, it's insecurity. Yeah. Right? It's like you're very needy or you're very status driven or you're very emotional and dramatic. You know, whatever it is, like you latch on to the people around you to help you feel like an individual, to feel like somebody who is, who is clearly defined. When these insecure people come across secure people, the secure people are like, ew. Yeah. Ick. You're so needy. Oh my God. You're so insecure. Like you need to be validated fucking constantly.

• 3:16:07Mark Manson?

  Dude, stop texting me. What the fuck? So insecure people, by definition, kind of scare a lot of the secure people away. What they do is they attract other insecure people who also need to emotionally rely upon somebody else to feel whole, fulfilled, validated, like they have some self-esteem. And so what you get, and this is not only romantic relationships, but this can also be through friendships. You get two people that come together. They suddenly, they, they, they press all each other's buttons in the right way. They validate each other all in the right way. They basically become extremely emotionally dependent on one another.

• 3:16:51Mark Manson?

  And if you think about it, if you are emotionally dependent on another human being to feel normal, feel good, feel good about yourself, then it makes sense that you want to remove as many boundaries as possible between you, yourself and that person, right? You don't want it to be hard for them to come see you. You don't want it to be difficult to get along. You don't want to argue about where you're gonna go for dinner. You, you want to make it as like clean and seamless as possible. So it's like, yeah, move on in. Fusion is what you're going for, right? Exactly. It's like, yeah, yeah, I am into that band. Oh, yeah, I totally love that movie. Okay, sure, yeah, no, your friends are great.

• 3:17:34Mark Manson?

  Like it just, you start melding into the same person. It's kind of a sad irony that this, this enmeshing that happens, as it's often called, this, this, this de-individuation that happens. It is motivated by a desperate attempt to get closer to each other, to remove any, any boundaries, to remove any distance between the two of you. But the problem is, is that no matter what you do, you are now emotionally dependent on a person that you cannot control. And so the closer you get to them, the more you remove boundaries, the more dependent you become upon them, the more desperate you are to control them, to make sure like, oh shit, she didn't call me back tonight.

• 3:18:17Mark Manson?

  Oh my God, like something as simple as somebody, as the, the person not returning a call to a secure person, it like to an insecure, an enmeshed person, it like, you spiral out of control. It's an identity crisis. It is, it's literally an identity crisis. It's like, I don't know what to do. I don't know who I am. My world is falling apart, right? And then it like, it turns out that, you know, they fell asleep in a movie theater or something and forgot to call you back. What happens as a result? You get lots of drama, lots and lots of drama. And with the drama, you get lots of manipulation. Because again, if I'm emotionally dependent on a person to feel healthy and normal, and I don't control that person,

• 3:19:01Mark Manson?

  well, what's the next best thing?

• 3:19:05Mark Manson?

  Manipulating them. This is where you get into guilt trips. You get into the scorecard, right? It's like, hey, last week I did this for you and I paid for that. And this is how you repay me, right? Uh, it's jealousy, you know? Demanding like, I don't want you to talk to her anymore.

• 3:19:26Speaker 01

  Demanding time and attention and yeah.

• 3:19:27Mark Manson?

  Right, right. It's, it's, that's, that's disrespectful to me. You know, control can be aggressive and overt. It can be, you know, rage. It can be screaming. It can be making demands. It can be setting rules. And it can also be subtle and covert, right? It can be, you know, creating drama is a form of control, right? Like if my life is always a mess and my partner is always consoling me and telling me it's gonna be okay. And, and, and supporting me and, and intervening to try to save me. That's also a, a form of control. Neediness can be a form of control.

• 3:20:08Mark Manson?

  If I'm always desperately anxious and lonely and oh my God, I'm like, I hate being alone. And I hate it when you go out of town. I, it's so, I'm so miserable without you here. That's a form of control.

• 3:20:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, demanding affection, demanding attention again. Yeah.

• 3:20:23Mark Manson?

  Yeah. And so what ends up happening in these relationships is they tend to fall into a handful of patterns. 10 years ago, I, I grouped them into three patterns, but honestly, like there's, and all, all three patterns are kind of similar. And, and, and honestly, they're, these are not exhaustive. Like there's plenty of other patterns too. But the ones that, the three, the three groups that I identified back when I was a dating relationship coach is the victim savior, right? So one person in the relationship is always getting screwed over, is always being hurt, is never being respected. And then the other person in the relationship is constantly showing up, taking care of them. So being a, being the hero, the knight on shining armor, all that.

• 3:21:08Mark Manson?

  The second one is the breaker and the fixer. So the breaker is somebody who's just.

• 3:21:14Mark Manson?

  Always finding problems. This is wrong, that's wrong, you didn't do this right. Oh my god, I can't believe you make us live in this apartment. This is disgusting. You know, it's just like, everything is, nothing is ever good enough. And then the fixer is like, oh, I'm gonna make it good enough for you. And then the third pattern is the runner and the chaser. Right? The runner is always like finding reasons like, you know, I don't know, like it's it's a little too much and like, I got things to do and, you know, they're probably cheating on you and going on a lot of business trips. And then the chaser is like, well, if I can just love him a little bit more, maybe they'll come back.

• 3:21:51Speaker 01

  Show them.

• 3:21:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah, maybe, maybe if I can just, you know, when, when he comes back to town, I'm just gonna like, I'm gonna throw him the best birthday party and then he'll never wanna leave again. And then of course, three days later, he leaves again. And the funny thing about all three of these dynamics is that no matter which role you play in each dynamic, you get to feel needed all the time.

• 3:22:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, right? Yeah, there's a sick perverse fucked up like two-way street going on there. And each one of those, yeah.

• 3:22:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so it's like.

• 3:22:20Speaker 01

  Speaking from experience.

• 3:22:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah, right? Just from, you know, friends tell me that this is what it feels like. Right? So it's like when you're the victim, obviously it doesn't feel good to be a victim. But when you're all, when you're in a relationship dynamic like this and you, and you discover that anytime you feel victimized, your partner shows up and gives you a lot of attention and affection. Well, guess what? You're probably gonna find more reasons to be a victim.

• 3:22:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22:47Mark Manson?

  If you're the breaker, right, in a relationship and you, you discover that anytime you're unhappy, your partner is showing up and trying to make you happy. Guess what? You're gonna find more reasons to be unhappy. Right? It just, each, each role in the relationship reinforces itself. And then if you're the rescuer or the fixer. Man, you get to feel needed all the time. You're like, man, I'm making this person's life so much better. I'm this person's hero. I'm, I'm the best. I'm so admirable. Oh, my God, I'm like the best boyfriend or girlfriend ever. You get to feel great about yourself.

• 3:23:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23:24Mark Manson?

  Cause there's always another fire to put out.

• 3:23:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you don't have to think about your own shit. Cause you're constantly thinking about their shit.

• 3:23:29Mark Manson?

  That is a great point too, right? And again, it kind of comes back to, it's like, it's a form of avoiding, you know, dealing with your own insecurities, developing your own identity, deciding who you are for yourself on your own terms. I almost visualize this as like, you know, imagine a couple in a house and there's like one person in the relationship is just walking into each room and like setting something on fire. And then the other person in the relationship is like sprinting into the room with a fire hose and like putting it out. And then by the time they put it out, the partner has gone to the next room and set another fire. And he's like, oh shit. And he like runs in with the fire hose. And you just kind of repeat that over and over. The emotional intensity of these dynamics is extremely powerful. Extremely powerful.

• 3:24:14Mark Manson?

  Like it's when the highs are so high.

• 3:24:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:24:18Mark Manson?

  Like it's just, you, you are almost drunk on love. And then the lows are so low. Like you just, it's, it's scorched earth. It's just a bleak, abysmal existence when things are bad. And you kind of ride this roller coaster up and down and up and down. Now, the reason boundaries never get set in these relationships is because it interrupts that dynamic, right? Like, let's say I'm a savior and I'm dating a victim. And my, my partner calls me and she's like, you won't believe what happened to me today. It's so unfair. Like people are so mean to me, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Now imagine if I was like, well, you know, that's, you kind of have to take responsibility for yourself. It's at a certain point, you know?

• 3:25:01Mark Manson?

  Maybe deal with it, you're like, deal with it yourself. Go tell them how you feel. Like, that just interrupts the entire toxic cycle, right? Because now she's that, now I'm victimizing her, right? Like, now I'm part of the problem. And now my love supply gets cut off. And my, my addiction can't be fed anymore. So, there's like incredible incentive for the, for each person in the dynamic to can keep the dynamic going and not erect any sort of boundary to interfere with it.

• 3:25:28Speaker 01

  The chaser-chasey situation, if you're the chasey and you're the one's kind of like, eh, I don't know about this, and the person is always kind of chasing you. As soon as they cut that out, the other person says, I'm gonna put a boundary down, I'm gonna stop chasing you.

• 3:25:41Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:41Speaker 01

  That also throws that cycle off too, right? Because then the other person's like, wait, I was getting this validation that I didn't even have to work for, really.

• 3:25:48Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:25:48Speaker 01

  And now I don't get it anymore. And now that throws them off too. So again, it's that sick two-way street that's going on here.

• 3:25:53Mark Manson?

  Back when I used to, used to coach, I talked to so many people in these sorts of relationships. And essentially, if I was to boil down hours and hours of calls and consultations into like a couple of sentences, really what it came down to was this, is I would tell them, you have to set a boundary. And when you set that boundary, one of two things is gonna happen. Either it's gonna heal the relationship, right? Because it's like, let's say, you're the chaser and you're dating a runner. And then one day you tell the runner, you're like, I'm not chasing you anymore. Now the runner has two decisions. Either they can come back and stop running, or they can run away forever. Right.

• 3:26:38Mark Manson?

  And it's like that with all of the dynamics, right? It's if you tell the breaker, like, I'm not fixing your shit anymore, you need to deal with it yourself. Either they start fixing their own shit, or they leave you and go find another fixer.

• 3:26:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:26:51Mark Manson?

  And, and so, what I would tell all these people is I'm like, one of two things is gonna happen. Either the relationship's gonna heal, or it's gonna end. And in both cases, you're better off. So you might as well do it.

• 3:27:04Speaker 01

  People don't wanna hear that though, do they?

• 3:27:06Mark Manson?

  No, they don't.

• 3:27:06Speaker 01

  How receptive were people to that, I guess? I mean, I'm sure it ran the gamut, but generally speaking, because I think what a lot of people want is like, no, no, no, tell me how to keep them from running.

• 3:27:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:16Speaker 01

  That's just, just tell me how to keep them from running.

• 3:27:18Mark Manson?

  Exactly.

• 3:27:18Speaker 01

  That's all I want. Just give me that hack, the tip, the tip, the tactic, the whatever.

• 3:27:21Mark Manson?

  Make them stop running. Yeah, that's basically what they want.

• 3:27:23Speaker 01

  But no, no, no, no, you get two choices here.

• 3:27:25Mark Manson?

  Well, I, so here's, here's the funny thing about this dynamic too, is that it's like any drug, you need a larger dose to get the same high. Each cycle. So, you know, when, when a couple first starts, you know, maybe their breaker fixer dynamic makes them feel really loved on a pretty meager situation. But you run that play for two, three, four years, and it gets pretty extreme. Like to get that same high, that same level of romance, that same intensity,

• 3:28:00Mark Manson?

  things get very messy and dramatic. This is why toxic relationships are ultimately like not sustainable in the long run, because it's, they burn themselves out. My answer to you is that the clients that I worked with, who were like toward, towards the end of that cycle were like, dude, I've been doing this for five years. Like, I can't fucking do this anymore. They were way more receptive than, you know. Yeah, then people like six months in are like, well, just tell me how to get them to stop running away from me. And I'm like, yeah, no, it doesn't work that way. It's not that simple. Yeah. You know, I've written quite a bit before about how people tend to mistake drama for intimacy.

• 3:28:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:28:39Mark Manson?

  And I think it's just because of the intensity of the emotions. And, but the truth is, is that intimacy and drama are like, not related at all.

• 3:28:48Speaker 01

  Polar opposites almost, yeah.

• 3:28:49Mark Manson?

  Yeah, it's, like, real intimacy, I would describe more as like peaceful and calm. You know, it's, it's intimacy is when you can. Like if you can sit quietly on a couch with somebody doing different things and still feel loved.

• 3:29:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and close, yeah.

• 3:29:08Mark Manson?

  That's intimacy.

• 3:29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:29:10Mark Manson?

  You know, if you need to like literally set the house on fire to feel close to one another, like that's not intimacy. That you are in a drama spiral, you're in a sick like codependent.

• 3:29:20Speaker 01

  And it sounds silly and obvious, but so many people get wrapped up in that.

• 3:29:24Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:29:24Speaker 01

  And you see it all the time too. And even even people will say like, oh, look how much they care, right?

• 3:29:28Mark Manson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:29:30Speaker 01

  Like treats me like shit because he cares so much.

• 3:29:31Mark Manson?

  Exactly, because he cares. I mean, you you hear this all the time too with like jealousy.

• 3:29:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:29:35Mark Manson?

  It's like, it's like, well, he's just that jealous because he loves me. And I was like, no, I'm pretty sure that's not it. I'm pretty sure he's just really insecure and controlling.

• 3:29:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and he's that validation back from you.

• 3:29:47Mark Manson?

  Yeah, exactly. I want to touch on a little bit, not as much, the dynamic with parenting around this as well. We've we've mentioned parenting in passing a couple of times. You know, this same toxic cycle can happen with a parent or a child. And a parent who lacks boundaries is not individuated, has not health, like, fully developmentally matured, psychologically speaking. In a lot of cases, they will decide to enmesh themselves with one of their kids. And that becomes their supply of validation and self-esteem. This also does not turn out very well.

• 3:30:30Mark Manson?

  It's not as, it's not always as dramatic. There's, you know, it's not as explosive as a toxic romantic relationship. But what ends up happening is that because the parent is emotionally dependent on a certain child's affection or performance or validation or becoming a certain person, that child never properly individuates themselves. And there's like plenty of like famous child celebrity examples of this. If you think about somebody like a Like a Michael Jackson, or basically anybody. I remember, so there's like a really famous jazz guitarist named Joe Pass. He was incredible, but he was active in like the 60s, 70s and 80s.

• 3:31:13Mark Manson?

  Incredible, incredible guitar player. I studied him a bunch in music school. But he had like a very sad, personal story, which is essentially that like, his dad just decided, like, when he was like six, like, "You're gonna be the best guitar player in the world," and basically like locked him in a room and made him practice for 12 hours a day. And would beat the shit out of him if he didn't. And it's, it's that sort of thing, like you are, you're emotionally preventing the child from exploring the world, to a certain extent, from running those experiments, seeing what works for them, what works for their personality, seeing what fails for them, experiencing the rejection and the failure.

• 3:31:57Mark Manson?

  They basically, they never developed that, that personal identity. And on top of that, what you tend to see with these, these children is that they are emotionally unavailable, well into adulthood. They're basically emotionally unavailable either until A, they set a boundary with that parent, or B, the parent dies. And like, I hate to say it, but I, I've met and know a number of adult men in particular, because I think, I think mothers probably do this more often. I, I've known a number of adult males, they're well into adulthood, and they're still completely un-individuated, and still enmeshed with their mother. And basically,

• 3:32:41Mark Manson?

  have never had a long, a long-term relationship, have never settled down with a woman, have never had healthy boundaries in any of their relationships. And it's pretty clear to me from the outside that it's just like, "Yeah, this dude's still enmeshed with his mother." And he's like, until she passes away, or he like sets a boundary, becomes aware of it and sets a boundary, like, he's never gonna have a healthy romantic relationship.

• 3:33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. What happened with, was it Joe Pass you said?

• 3:33:06Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah? Why, do you know his story? How did that play out?

• 3:33:09Mark Manson?

  Uh, he became a world famous guitar player.

• 3:33:11Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. But like, was he, was he like emotionally stunted all through that? That's all he did, you know? Cause you hear about that sometimes.

• 3:33:18Mark Manson?

  I'm sure he was, you know, maybe, maybe he wasn't. I mean, Michael Jackson's probably a much better example there. But I mean, there, there's a lot of examples of stuff like that. Tiger Woods's story is super interesting. There's a documentary about him that's fascinating. Like, there's also like, there's part of me is just, it's, when I hear stories like this, I'm like, okay, it's, it's fucking nuts. This parent is insane and irresponsible and arguably like very immoral. But at the same time, like Tiger Woods's father decided that Tiger was gonna be the best golfer in the world before he was born.

• 3:33:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:33:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah. Like, I don't know, that's another podcast. But, uh, but yeah, I mean, it, you look at, obviously Tiger had very, a very public failing marriage, sex addiction, all sorts of stuff. You can see the pattern that happens. And, and I would say too, that this doesn't necessarily require an enmeshment of the parent with the child. This can simply, this can be a result of, of both abuse and negligence, right? It's like you, the child is, never feels enough safety or security to explore and to take risks and to try things for themselves.

• 3:34:37Mark Manson?

  Or the, the parent overprotects the child and never, um, you know, never exposes them to any sort of failure or setback or whatever. And we talked earlier about, you know, your, your dad being wise enough to, to tell you, like, I'm not your friend. One of the more troubling things that, that you, you see happening more recently is that parents, particularly like wealthy, educated parents, like have started defining good parenting as like being their child's best friend. And the problem with that is, is that as children grow up, they need, again, limitation is what creates freedom. They need like defined structure.

• 3:35:18Mark Manson?

  Like the child is not aware enough or experienced enough to know what sort of structure or framework that they need for themselves. It's the parent's job to say like, look, Here's, here's the guardrails. You know, go experience life within these two guardrails and then slowly as the child gets older, like slowly expand those guardrails. If you're trying to be your child's best friend, like you're not setting guardrails. You're basically just trying to make them feel good all the time. Yeah. And as we said earlier, good boundaries don't protect feelings, they protect values. So if you want to instill good values in your child, then you have to be willing to let them feel bad sometimes. But if you want to be their best friend, then you're just going to be trying to make them feel good all the time. Yeah. All right.

• 3:36:01Mark Manson?

  A couple shout outs to some research and frameworks around this. You know, a lot of what I just described is attachment theory. Yeah. You know, which comes from Bowlby and other researchers. We'll do a full episode on attachment theory at some point, I'm pretty sure. Yeah. In the next year, it's just like, it's too foundational to human experience in general. I think it's also interesting to mention John Gottman here. We haven't actually talked about him a whole lot, but you know, John Gottman's the preeminent relationship researcher in the world, him and his wife Julie. And he has this thing called the four horsemen of, of the marriage apocalypse, which is basically like, he analyzed thousands and thousands of married couples and recorded

• 3:36:45Mark Manson?

  them having fights and arguments. He then tracked which ones stayed together and which ones got divorced. And he tried to find patterns in their communication styles and basically over the course of like 10, 20 years, what he, the conclusion he came to is that there are four forms of communication that deteriorate intimacy and, and trust within a, within a relationship. And it's interesting because, uh, so the, the four, the four factors are criticism, contempt, defensiveness and stonewalling. And I was looking at this and I was like, you know, criticism and contempt are porous boundaries. It's basically a lack of respect for, for the other person's boundaries, right? It's like if you, if you say something like, hey, I need, um, I need alone time and I'm

• 3:37:30Mark Manson?

  like, well, you're stupid for that. Right. Like, why would you need that? Uh, I show contempt or I critique you, I'm not respecting your boundary, I'm disregarding it. The other two, defensiveness and stonewalling is, is I think being too rigid, right? It's like if, if my partner is criticizing me, I'm like, I don't care. Not listening to this. I'm not changing. I'm not doing anything. Right? So it's interesting. You could look at it and kind of see it as like a lack of boundary flexibility. Harriet Lerner has a book called The Dance of Intimacy. She basically just talks about how autonomy and closeness are actually in tension and like they kind of play off one another. Esther Perel has a similar thing around this where

• 3:38:12Mark Manson?

  she talks about how like, you know, eroticism demands separateness. Like she calls it as like how the same way fire needs air to grow. In a lot of cases, like you need distance and separation from your partner to to maintain or rekindle the intimacy and the the excitement, the romance. So again, that enmeshment, when you when you remove all boundaries between two people, you remove all surprises and you basically

• 3:38:42Speaker 01

  Familiarity breeds contempt, right?

• 3:38:44Mark Manson?

  Exactly. It's by getting away from each other and becoming your own person that you like reattract each other to each other. It's funny because my wife and I, you know, we were digital nomads together. So we traveled everywhere together. And then I forget what happened. There was like a situation where I think she couldn't get a visa or something. And and so I just decided to do the trip by myself. And at first she was like, pretty bummed out, kind of pissed. And she was like, all right, well, fine. I'm gonna go do this trip by myself. And I was like, all right. And and then we came back and we were like, it was such a good thing for the relationship. Like it was so healthy. And that's actually something that we've tried to maintain throughout throughout our 15 years together, which is like, every year or two, one or like, I'd say pretty much every year, one

• 3:39:29Mark Manson?

  of us does a trip by ourselves and for ourselves too. Like not, not like a business thing or whatever. It's like, she'll go somewhere with her girlfriends, or I'll, you know, go on a surf trip or something. You know, the last thing I'm going to talk about is

• 3:39:46Mark Manson?

  The concept of Western romance, I really do think that romance idealizes enmeshed, unindividuated, toxic relationships.

• 3:39:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, you would be against the world, right?

• 3:39:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah, exactly. It was like, oh, Smith, we're gonna be together forever.

• 3:40:02Speaker 01

  Screw everyone else.

• 3:40:04Mark Manson?

  You know what's really funny? Like, I, you know, I never loved romantic movies, but.

• 3:40:09Speaker 01

  Oh, come on, Mark.

• 3:40:11Mark Manson?

  No, no, no. I never loved them. I mean, those, but it was funny, because I remember, you know, once I, you know, I spent, as you know, I spent first four or five years of my career as a dating relationship coach. So I read all these books on relationships and intimacy and sex and love and all this stuff. And then it was funny that, because I, towards the very end, I think I met my wife like right before I kind of pivoted into self-help in general. And it was funny, so I went through this whole period of just like really studying and understanding relationships and intimacy. And then I started dating my wife, and she loves rom-coms. And so we would start watching rom-coms together, and I was unbearable, because every movie,

• 3:40:56Mark Manson?

  I would like pause and start explaining like why each character's behavior was problematic. I was like, no, no, no, she shouldn't have that expectation on him, because she's violating his right to autonomy. And she has also not communicated her values clearly. And by the way, he needs to set a boundary around his time, because this is not good that he keeps coming to her apartment and sleeping there without permission. Like, that's just setting a bad precedent. And of course, she would look at me and be like, shut the fuck up.

• 3:41:19Speaker 01

  Right. Just let me enjoy this movie, please.

• 3:41:21Mark Manson?

  She's like, they're cute. Stop it.

• 3:41:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you go back and you watch a lot of those rom-coms, especially from like the 90s, you will see a lot of problematic behavior in them. And not just because like times have changed or whatever, it's just, I think there's just more of an awareness.

• 3:41:34Mark Manson?

  Even at the time, yeah, totally. Yeah, it's, it is interesting. And if you go back even further, it gets even.

• 3:41:41Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:41:42Mark Manson?

  I watched, I watched a Hitchcock movie, maybe like five or six years ago, called Vertigo. I think it was, I think it was called Vertigo. And it was basically a love story, but it was so fucked up. Oh, or another one, Streetcar Named Desire with Marlon Brando. It's like literally an abusive relationship.

• 3:42:01Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 3:42:02Mark Manson?

  Like, he's like literally psychologically and physically abusing her until she starts loving him. And it was like, it's a, like, in the 50s, this was considered a romance.

• 3:42:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I think you and I, this has been a long time, you probably don't even remember this, but I, you and I are both Gabriel Garcia Marquez fans.

• 3:42:18Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:42:19Speaker 01

  And I was like, hands down, Love in the Time of Calor, and you were like, no. No, no, no. So you ruined that one for me, too.

• 3:42:26Mark Manson?

  Yeah, so that one's funny because I read that in high school.

• 3:42:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42:30Mark Manson?

  And I thought it was the most romantic thing I had ever read.

• 3:42:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's beautiful, right? Obviously.

• 3:42:36Mark Manson?

  It's gorgeous. And on the surf, on paper.

• 3:42:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42:39Mark Manson?

  It is so incredibly beautiful and romantic, right? It's like this guy who like literally waits his entire.

• 3:42:45Speaker 01

  Entire life, yeah.

• 3:42:45Mark Manson?

  To be with a woman. But if you go back and read it as an adult.

• 3:42:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:42:51Mark Manson?

  Yeah. With a little bit of knowledge about this stuff, it is creepy.

• 3:42:55Speaker 01

  It's full of terrible people, yeah.

• 3:42:57Mark Manson?

  Oh, my God.

• 3:42:58Speaker 01

  Was that his, was that his goal, too? Did he just be like, these are awful people and I'm gonna wrap it up in a love story?

• 3:43:03Mark Manson?

  I think so.

• 3:43:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:04Mark Manson?

  I think so. I think he's, I think that's why it's, it's Love in the Time of Calor, right? It's like, it's a, it's like a plague.

• 3:43:10Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:43:11Mark Manson?

  Right? It's like, everybody sees this as romance, but like, actually, it's really sick. And this guy is, basically stalks a woman for his entire life and is obsessed with her and wears her down until she has no autonomy anymore. And is so desperate in her old age that she's like, sure, why not?

• 3:43:33Mark Manson?

  Sorry, audience, if you, if you were planning to read, it's actually a great book.

• 3:43:37Speaker 01

  It's a great book.

• 3:43:38Mark Manson?

  It's worth reading, but, uh, yeah, sorry to shit all over it.

• 3:43:46Mark Manson?

  We're rounding out the episode. That means it is time for another session of 80/20. It's the 80 and 20 of boundaries, Drew. What is the 20% of the advice here that probably generates 80% of the result? What would you say?

• 3:44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we've mentioned it a few times. I think the very first step, getting clear with what you are lacking boundaries, the areas you're lacking boundaries in your life, anyway. Right? The resentments are the real big one. Those red flags we went through, go through those. Figure those out. Where in your life are, could you really stand to use some boundaries, right?

• 3:44:20Mark Manson?

  I would go with really finding and defining a simple no. Like, I think boundaries is one of these things that people probably have a tendency to overcomplicate and amplify in their minds, right? It's like, oh, I've got, my partner and I were having all these fights, or, you know, things at work are crazy, and it's such a mess, and I'm really gonna like, put my foot down and do all these things. You know, it might be as simple as just kinda asking yourself, like, what is one simple thing that is occurring right now that you just don't want to occur anymore? It could be something as simple as like, phones at the dinner table, or, hey, man, at 6 o'clock, I'm going home. Like, no ifs, ands, or buts. Like, just pick a simple no, because I think two things happen.

• 3:45:03Mark Manson?

  One is, often, resolving the small problem is an 80/20 situation, where it's like, you think you're only solving the smallest of like, five different issues, but actually, by solving that one small issue, you remove like, 80% of your resentment. Or, it like, gives you momentum to kinda move into the other things. You're like, okay, now that I've like, blocked off my time, uh, let's talk about some of the things that you said to me, that I'm like, not a huge fan of, right? And it like, kinda opens the door to having other conversations.

• 3:45:35Speaker 01

  Do you think, too, that the, like, a gateway into this is, would it be better to maybe start with some of those self-boundaries than others? Test them out on yourself first? Or do you think it's better to practice external boundaries with other people first? I think that, because I went back and forth on this. I think the self-boundaries, you can cheat them a little more easier, you can bullshit yourself more, whereas like, there's more stakes when you're kinda setting them up with other people.

• 3:45:59Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I'm kinda struggling with this, because I think there's like, different risk-reward profiles with both. Like, I do feel like interpersonal boundaries are like, higher stakes but higher reward.

• 3:46:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:46:10Mark Manson?

  Self boundaries, they're easier to set, but they're also easier to fuck up.

• 3:46:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:46:14Mark Manson?

  I will say this, though, like my, I'm leaning towards setting boundaries with yourself. Because I think it gives you clarity on what you want. And then like, once you've set a boundary with yourself, it's much easier to go to somebody else.

• 3:46:28Speaker 01

  Good point.

• 3:46:28Mark Manson?

  And explain it to them, right?

• 3:46:29Speaker 01

  Good point.

• 3:46:30Mark Manson?

  Like if I have decided for myself that I'm not going to drink alcohol anymore. And I've decided that on my own, without anybody's, you know, influence or conversation going on. Then when I am in a social situation, it makes it that much easier to.

• 3:46:45Speaker 01

  Ah, okay.

• 3:46:46Mark Manson?

  To like decide or decline or whatever.

• 3:46:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:46:49Mark Manson?

  And then I guess the other thing too is just like, if you feel guilt around boundaries and assuming that's not a shitty boundary and you're not overreacting.

• 3:46:59Mark Manson?

  You, like, that guilt is a sign that that boundary needed to be in place. It's, it's, one of the things that I've, I've written a few times and has like gone viral on social media a couple of times is, is, you know, I, I said that like, if, if you set a boundary and, and people get upset that you set it, that's kind of evidence that it needed to be set in the first place. Like, generally speaking, people who are very respectful of your time and space and autonomy are like not going to get super upset. If you tell them like, hey, this doesn't work for me. Worst case scenario, they're like, oh, okay, I guess I'm just going to see you less or whatever. But it's, it's the people who are, are in it for the wrong reasons.

• 3:47:39Mark Manson?

  Who are going to get like really up in arms and defensive and guilt trip you and tell you you're being selfish and all this stuff.

• 3:47:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. I would say too, another kind of high impact one is, you know, we went through all the different kinds of categories of boundaries. I would say that starting with your own time.

• 3:47:58Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:58Speaker 01

  Like, starting with a time boundary somewhere in your life, where it's like, okay, this part of my life is a mess or I need to get this, whether it's work or, you know, even your leisure time or whatever it is, is actually like going in and setting a, a very concrete boundary around some block of time.

• 3:48:11Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:12Speaker 01

  You actually have control over and, and trying to stick with that too.

• 3:48:15Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:16Speaker 01

  So that's kind of a self boundary, but it's also an external boundary at the same time. So it gives you some practice around that. I don't like for me is like the boundary around like bedtimes and then like keeping phones out of the, the bedtime boundary has got to be a little bit stronger for me. That's one I need to work on.

• 3:48:32Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:33Speaker 01

  And I think that's a pretty, that's a good way to get into this anyway.

• 3:48:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah, I agree with that. I think. Yeah, time, time is probably the easiest one because it is like purely rational.

• 3:48:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:48:43Mark Manson?

  Like, there's not any, a whole lot emotional involved in it. And then it has a nice downstream effect of like, once you've established it for yourself, you get to go to some, get to go to other people and you're like, oh, no, no, I have this rule. I go to bed at 9:00 PM. Sorry, I can't come to the thing.

• 3:48:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:48:55Mark Manson?

  You know, and then you don't feel guilty about it or upset or whatever.

• 3:48:58Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah. And you, I mean, it's cliche at this point where you hear like CEOs and people saying, I protect my mornings or protect this block of time or whatever it is. And there's a big reason for that. It's because they realize that's a huge leverage point in their life.

• 3:49:10Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:49:10Speaker 01

  And I think you can do the same as just a normal person, too.

• 3:49:13Mark Manson?

  All right. What are the hidden costs of boundaries?

• 3:49:16Speaker 01

  Oh. We've, I mean, we've been sprinkling these in all throughout, I think. You probably should have picked up on some of these. I do want to bring to light a little story, though.

• 3:49:26Mark Manson?

  Okay.

• 3:49:26Speaker 01

  Um, you all probably remember back in the 2020 Olympics is occurred in 2021 because of the, uh, the pandemic and Simone Biles.

• 3:49:36Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:49:36Speaker 01

  Right? Uh, she, uh, she, she withdrew herself, uh, from some of the events in the Olympics.

• 3:49:43Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:49:43Speaker 01

  During that year and there is for

• 3:49:46Mark Manson?

  Mental health.

• 3:49:46Speaker 01

  For mental health reasons, really, is what it was. There was a safety aspect to it. She was, um, uh, she says she was getting the twisty. She was losing orientation in some of her, uh, in some of her flips, whatever they do in gymnastics. I don't know what they call them, but, um, and so she was a little bit concerned, but she realized what it was. It was a mental health underlying cause to all of that. So she withdrew herself and there was a big uproar about it.

• 3:50:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:50:09Speaker 01

  Right? If you, you remember this. Um, she caught a lot of shit for that.

• 3:50:13Mark Manson?

  She did.

• 3:50:14Speaker 01

  She got a lot of shit for that. There was a lot of people supportive of her, too.

• 3:50:17Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:50:17Speaker 01

  At the same time, she caught a lot of shit for that.

• 3:50:19Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:50:19Speaker 01

  She put down a boundary saying, hey, my mental health at this point is more important than, than the gold or the, than competing in the Olympics. Sure. In interviews later, what I just found really interesting was she read a book.

• 3:50:31Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:50:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. She read a book that helped her.

• 3:50:34Mark Manson?

  I was wondering if you

• 3:50:35Speaker 01

  Set this boundary. Yeah. I wanted to embarrass you just a little bit here. Mark, what is it like to ruin the Olympics?

• 3:50:43Speaker 01

  She read a book called The Subtle Hour of Not Giving a Fuck. This is what she told a reporter. She and, and I guess like her teammates saw her reading it and stuff like that. And they're like, wow, you really just don't even give a fuck anymore, do you? And she's like, look, I'm protecting my mental health now.

• 3:50:54Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:50:54Speaker 01

  And, uh, and then, yeah, Mark won the Olympics.

• 3:50:57Mark Manson?

  I, I remember when that came out and, and I was like super excited and proud. I was like, oh my God, Simone Biles read my book. It was like doing this, this like very courageous thing. And then everybody started shitting on her and dogpiling on her and like hated her and said she like, wasn't patriotic and didn't care about her country and had no pride and all this stuff. And I was like, oh, ooh, uh, quietly tiptoe away.

• 3:51:21Speaker 01

  The Homer Simpson going back in the bushes. Yeah.

• 3:51:24Mark Manson?

  Exactly, exactly. Shout out to Simone Biles if she's listening.

• 3:51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:29Mark Manson?

  No, it's super cool. And it is, that is a, that's a perfect example of

• 3:51:34Speaker 01

  Perfect example.

• 3:51:34Mark Manson?

  Hidden cost of boundaries. It's like a lot of people, a lot of people just are not going to understand or appreciate like what, what you need.

• 3:51:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:42Mark Manson?

  And I guess this is where like the Instagram cliches get it right. Where it's like, if they don't get it, if they don't appreciate it, if they don't respect it, then like, fuck off.

• 3:51:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:51:51Mark Manson?

  And there is a certain element of that. There like you have to know what's, what's right for yourself and you have to enforce it. And one way to look at boundaries is, is they're like filtering mechanisms for the people in your life. Right? When you set good boundaries that protect your values, they will automatically filter the right people in and out of your life that match those values and help you live up to those values. And sure, a side effect of that is that you lose some people and you know, some friendships fall away or there might be some fights and drama. There might be tension in the family. It's probably worth touching on just briefly, but like, you know, with friendships, acquaintances, coworkers, whatnot, like if there's a big conflict around a boundary.

• 3:52:35Mark Manson?

  Nine times out of 10, you just lose that friend. Or you just stop associating with that person. And that sucks, but it's fine. Where it gets really difficult is with family. And generally speaking, when in a family, if a boundary is not being respected, it becomes, it becomes more a question of exposure and management. Right? It's like you have to set boundaries within the relationship or the familial relationship of like, okay, this is how much time I'm willing to spend with my parents. These are the topics I'm willing to talk about and the topics I'm not willing to talk about. These are the activities I'm willing to do and the activities I'm not willing to do. And anybody who has kind of a strained relationship with people in their family, like that's a process that you have to go through at some point.

• 3:53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that's the relational conflict is really that that will come up.

• 3:53:22Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:53:23Speaker 01

  When you, when you create new boundaries, that's going to come up. The relational side with this mobile story too, you have the social backlash. Most of us won't have to go through that thankfully, but it can feel just as intense too. When you're going through those relationships that are coming back at you. You're like, you're putting this boundary down like we talked about with the, if you're in a codependent relationship or something like that, it's like you're taking a leg out from under them and they're going to get pissed off. Yeah. And defensive about it as a, they're afraid, they're scared. And you have to, you have to prepare for that and knowing that ahead of time, I think helps a lot.

• 3:53:51Mark Manson?

  There can be a workplace backlash, especially within certain industries. I mean, it's funny because on the one hand, you can look at this and be like, that's so shitty. Right? Like, like, let's say you work on Wall Street. If you're trying to tell your boss on Wall Street, like, hey, don't text me after 7pm. Like, he's probably going to laugh at your face. Yeah. And in shortly before firing. So it's, there's certain industries where it's like, look, man, if you're not, if you're not available at 10pm on a Tuesday night, like you're in the wrong place. You shouldn't be working here.

• 3:54:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:54:20Mark Manson?

  And

• 3:54:21Speaker 01

  Hopefully you're getting paid for that. Hopefully you're at least getting some.

• 3:54:24Mark Manson?

  There's a reason you're making that much money.

• 3:54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:54:26Mark Manson?

  And it's one thing to like, yes, draw a line in the sand, say, this is when I'm not available or whatever. But like, if the company comes back to you and they're like, hey, man, this doesn't work for us.

• 3:54:37Mark Manson?

  Then you might be at the wrong company or you might be in the wrong industry. And like, that's, that's a factor here too. Like you can't just, you can't have everything.

• 3:54:46Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, or you, you might not advance in that company.

• 3:54:48Mark Manson?

  Yes.

• 3:54:49Speaker 01

  The way you thought you might at some point.

• 3:54:50Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:54:51Speaker 01

  And you need to accept that or.

• 3:54:52Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:54:53Speaker 01

  Or move on.

• 3:54:54Mark Manson?

  And again, this comes back to, to the values piece, right? Like if you are somebody who highly values your leisure time and work-life balance and mental health, what the fuck are you doing in an investment bank?

• 3:55:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:55:04Mark Manson?

  Like that is.

• 3:55:04Speaker 01

  Get aligned.

• 3:55:06Mark Manson?

  Get aligned. What are you doing?

• 3:55:08Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 3:55:09Mark Manson?

  Yeah. On the surface, it's like, wow, that's really shitty. It's not fair and all, but like if you zoom out, you're like, no, that's not the right fit for you. And actually the boundary, it comes back to what I said. It's like one of two things is going to happen. Either it's going to heal or it's going to, or it's going to go, go away. And in this case, going away is often the best, the best outcome.

• 3:55:28Speaker 01

  For sure. Um, you also have like the cultural conflicts that might come up. We didn't really get into individualist versus collectivist cultures.

• 3:55:35Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 3:55:35Speaker 01

  But that's one way to look at the cultural conflicts that might come up. I think especially, I, I think one of the reasons, we mentioned this at the top of the show, you know, that, um, boundaries have kind of become a thing just within the last 50, 60 years. And it's come from kind of self-help culture and therapy culture more so in the Western individualist cultures.

• 3:55:56Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:55:57Speaker 01

  And those are, that's seen as a good thing. Um, in more collectivist cultures, you might find that putting up a personal boundary, that's kind of, I mean, wow, that's a little bit rude.

• 3:56:07Mark Manson?

  Right.

• 3:56:07Speaker 01

  If not all out against your own.

• 3:56:09Mark Manson?

  Offensive.

• 3:56:10Speaker 01

  Offensive, yeah, it's, it's, it's an offensive act.

• 3:56:11Mark Manson?

  Especially with like family.

• 3:56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So again, you know, we went through all those different categories and everything like that. Each time you're going through one of these, you have to like, you have to plan for that blowback at some point.

• 3:56:24Mark Manson?

  And contextualize. In the US or Germany, like it may be totally fine and appropriate to, to ask your mother to not call you every single day, but if you're in like India, like it might be completely inappropriate.

• 3:56:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:56:38Mark Manson?

  To ask your mother to not call you every day. So just be aware of.

• 3:56:41Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:56:41Mark Manson?

  Where you are. I think one way of looking at all this too, is just like, it is the cost of freedom. It is the cost of being independent, being your own person.

• 3:56:53Mark Manson?

  Being defining yourself, like it's easy for us to come on a podcast like this or to throw stuff on social media being like, yeah, be yourself, stand up for yourself, be your own person. Like all that stuff sounds nice, but this is actually where the rubber meets the road. Being yourself, having personal freedom, having personal autonomy, it requires having difficult conversations, being willing to disappoint other people, being willing to be disliked by other people, being willing to let certain things in your life go, being willing to make hard decisions. Like that, this is what it takes. Again, it comes back to the Kantian freedom versus, I guess I'll call it the childish freedom, right? The childish freedom is all

• 3:57:36Mark Manson?

  the candy in the candy store anytime I want it. Nobody's, no, there's no mom, mommy and daddy are never going to tell me no. I can have what I want when I want it. And there's no repercussions or consequences. Kantian freedom is like, no, you get to define your own limitations because you have to have limitations at some point. And either you define them for yourself or the world's going to define them for you. So you might as well start defining them for yourself. And as you define them, that's going to come with trade offs and costs.

• 3:58:04Speaker 01

  What you, what you let into your life is just as much, just as important as what you keep out, right? When it comes to defining who you are, your autonomy, your freedom, your, your identity, it's just as much of what you keep out.

• 3:58:17Mark Manson?

  So any big personal takeaways for you on this episode?

• 3:58:21Speaker 01

  Well, um, the point I kept hammering all the way through this was the flexibility. Like I, I think I, I think I kind of knew this to some extent, like, oh yeah, um, you know, rigid boundaries are just as bad as like no boundaries to some extent. But the contextual flexibility to me, that was kind of a like, oh, okay. It's, um, it gives you a little bit of freedom itself, right? Like it gives you a little bit of, um, okay, I'm going to set this boundary and it's okay if you're going to change it a little bit, or it's okay if there's exceptions for it. It's okay if you communicate that flexibility to other people too. Like, um, that was a big one for me, I think. What do you got, Mark? Let's go with you.

• 3:59:00Mark Manson?

  You know, it's funny, I, I, the relationships, I mean, I've been writing,

• 3:59:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:59:04Mark Manson?

  Literally writing about this relationship stuff for like my entire adult life. So, you know, none of that stuff was new. I've known for a long time that I had bad boundaries in my relationships. Pretty much through most of my twenties, I think I like finally started getting decent at them in maybe my late twenties. I guess I never really, it's such a simple thing, but like this, the, the self-imposed boundaries, like the, the boundaries with yourself and with your relationship with yourself. I think prepping for this episode made me realize like how bad I was at that. Like I was a very indulgent person for a long time. I was the kid in the candy store who's like, no, mommy's not gonna tell me no. I do what I want.

• 3:59:43Speaker 01

  I can have it all.

• 3:59:44Mark Manson?

  Yeah, exactly. And I guess like, I, I think I, I kinda got clarity on that, that like how, how childish and unrealistic that is in my personal relationships. Like, at a pretty good time, you know, as somebody who I think grew up without any strong role models with boundaries. I think I figured it out pretty well by like a relatively young age.

• 4:00:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:00:06Mark Manson?

  And I'm like very proud of that, but yeah, it took, it probably took me another 10 years to really get a handle on setting boundaries with myself. Like respecting my own time, respecting my own health, respecting my own energy. And not just like mindlessly indulging or, you know, compulsively doing things.

• 4:00:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, okay, that, I'll, I'll tack on to that. I guess too, the other big one, which you mentioned early on, is that actually like that freedom comes through the limitation. It comes from the boundaries.

• 4:00:40Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:00:41Speaker 01

  Um, and that's like, whenever I look back and even now, the things I struggle with right now, it's like, I wish I had more time in this area. I wish I had more freedom or I wish I had more, um, yeah, like freedom to, to do the things I wanna do. And it's usually because I have a lack of boundary somewhere else in my life, like especially around my own time, especially around my own personal boundaries with myself.

• 4:01:01Mark Manson?

  Yeah.

• 4:01:01Speaker 01

  Um, I, I tend to have pretty good external boundaries with other people. It's the ones with myself that I struggle with more and that's really where like that freedom and autonomy comes from, I think. Yeah. Protecting your time, uh, doing what you're saying, the health stuff too, the, the, like I was saying about the sleep. You know, I don't have very good boundaries around my sleep hygiene and my sleep routines and.

• 4:01:21Mark Manson?

  It's interesting, cause I feel like people are, they tend to be. Very good at one or not the other. Like they do, they appear to be different skills. Like I have a few people in my life who are extremely regimented with themselves, like have great boundaries with themselves, total messes in relationships. Like just a complete clusterfuck. Yeah. The two influence each other, but they are, they're different muscles. Yeah, yeah. For sure. Yeah. Anything else? Any other words of wisdom? I think. Want to leave the world with? I think that's it. Boundaries, boundaries good. Boundaries good. For like three weeks of research and. My brain's mush right now. Five hours of recording. My brain's mush right now.

• 4:02:06Mark Manson?

  Summarize this, boundaries good. Boundaries good. Uh, me true, boundaries good, duh. Big supporter of boundaries. Go back to Nebraska. Yeah. Oh my God. All right. That's it for another episode, everybody. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave a rating or review, subscribe, follow the show wherever you're listening to it. It helps us out a ton. It helps us get the word out. We will see you again in a couple of weeks. Good. That's a wrap.