I found a thread on Reddit that was five questions to ask yourself if you're unsure about your relationship. If someone told you you're a lot like your partner, would this be a compliment to you? Are you truly fulfilled, or just less lonely? Are you able to be unapologetically yourself, or do you feel the need to show up differently to please your partner? Are you in love with who your partner is right now as a whole, or are you only in love with their good side, their potential, or the idea of them? And would you want your future or imagined child to date someone like your partner? And this thread was just filled with people having existential crisis, and it seemed to me to be a collection of people who had managed to believe that continuing to Manana Manana, the short-term postponement of the discomfort of the decision that they wanted to have around their partner, was somehow the noble thing thing to do or the good thing to do or The Virtuous thing to do or the thing that ultimately

would result in the best outcome, even though they knew that if they spread it out long enough and then it's just hidden, we just shove it under the rug. So yeah, that list of five questions, I think, well, in most relationships, you can break up or you can have a thousand fights, you know, and if you have a thousand fights, then you don't have to fight, you make peace that way, you know, because you're different than your partner, so there's things to work out there, and you might think about that as a compromise, but it's not, it's that you're different than your partner, and you have to find a game that you both want to play, that's not a compromise, that's a solution. It's like you bring your skills to the table, and I bring my skills to the table, and then we figure out some game we can play where we're both optimally utilized, and it's a better game than we could play alone. That's not a compromise. Well, but getting to that's very difficult, and people

bring all sorts of baggage to a relationship, and you have to. It's just like disciplining children, really. It's the same thing. Your children are, you note, your children are annoying. You can note that oh, there I'm being annoyed by my child. Okay, so what questions do you ask? Am I a tyrannical son of a who's touchy? Well, that's why you need your wife, 'cause you can go ask her my kids are annoying me, am I a tyrannical son of a who's touchy? And she said yeah, you probably need something to eat, or you're a bit of a prick that way. And you got to listen, because maybe it's you, or maybe she says yeah, that goddamn child's been getting on my case too. And then you ask each other, are we mutually tyrants? It's like no, that kid's annoying. Okay, do we want him to be annoying? Well, if you love your child, then the answer that would be no, because if he's annoying you, he's going to annoy

other people he's going to annoy his potential friends. He's going to annoy other adults. He's going to go through the world being annoying, and everyone's going to frown at him. That's not helpful. So then you could just fix it, and you're that's going to going to cause some short-term upset. You know you're maybe you have a like a 13-month-old child who's very extroverted and disagreeable who like rules the roost, and every time the mother goes more than a foot away from her, she has a squawk fit because she's learned to control. Maybe the mother, you know, is still tied up with infant care and can't put down a boundary, and so now you have to do something about this emerging monster of a 14-month-old child. And one of the things you do is every time the child is bossy, first of all, you note it, and you note that you're not very fond of yourself for being tyrannized by a 14-month-old. That's a bit of a status.

hit like it should be, so you have to notice. I'm annoyed by this child, then I should do something about it. Well, it's going to cause short-term emotional distress. The same thing occurs when you're dealing with your partner. It's like you're annoying me, okay, now maybe that's me. So, I should bloody well, maybe we should have a talk about that. You're annoying me, convince me that it's me, and I should listen, because maybe it's me. And if I'm annoyed about you, and I shouldn't be, I should fix that. But maybe it's you, so let's find out exactly what's going on, you know, and that'll usually man, that's that'll, there's just constant thrust and counter thrust in a discussion like that, and usually, you know, the conversation will circle around whatever the hell the issue is till you get to the bottom of it. And God only knows where that is, but then maybe you can sort it out, you know, and if you sort out enough of those things, you live.

in peace, and that's something worth attaining, you know, and I've thought forever in my marriage, there's nothing, there's nothing too small to fight about. Now, you know, I put in some rules that I used to have with my clients too. It's like if someone bugs you, you should note that, and you shouldn't do anything about it. Probably if they bug you twice the same way, then you think, Oh, okay, that's twice, but probably still you shouldn't do anything about it, but if they bug you three times, then you can say, Here's what you just did, and they'll say, Well, no, I didn't do that, and then you say, Yeah, you did, and you did exactly the same thing in this other situation, and you did exactly the same thing in this other situation, so don't be telling me you didn't do it 'cause you did it three times, and I watched. Okay, now they come up with reasons they did it, and maybe some of them have to do with what a stupid son of a you are, and you

should listen, because maybe they're right. But that's at least the beginnings of the process by which you unravel the problems you want to figure out. Well, we don't want to do this. This isn't the way we want to treat each other. We want to get to a place where we want to get to a place where our whole life is like the best moments of the best dates we ever had. That's a good goal, and that's attainable. You got to work, man. There's a scene in Genesis. God throws Adam and Eve out of paradise because of their pride, their sin of pride. They each have their own particular version of that sin, Eve's sin and Adam's, but they get thrown out of paradise anyways for pride. And God puts cherubs at the gates of paradise, and the cherubs, they're kind of these monstrous angels, terrifying figures, and they hold swords that are on fire that turn every which way and burn. And you might say

well, what does that mean? It means that a sword is something that cuts away, right? A sharp blade. And fire is something that burns. And a sword that burns, burns and cuts away. And a sword that burns and turns every which way is a burning sword from which nothing can escape. Okay, now you want to walk into Paradise. Everything that isn't worthy in you has to be burned and cut away, right? Well, that's what that conflict is in a relationship, you know? It's like that's not suitable for Paradise. What does it have to do? It has to be cast into the outer Darkness where there will be gnashing of teeth, right? It has to be cut away and destroyed, and everything that isn't worthy has to go. Well, the Michelangelo effect is all about you and your partner becoming the idealized version of each other, right? You are going to do for me the things that I want within your parameters of control. That you want to be the best partner for me, and I want to do the same.

for you, we're both going to communicate to each other, and we're going to stand our ground where we have boundaries, and we're going to continue to compromise. That's what love should do, yeah, that's what love should do. Like, if you love someone, if it's genuine love, you see their hidden soul. That's a good way of thinking about it. You get a glimpse of the light that they could reveal to the world if they revealed it. That's what you see. And then to act in love is to encourage that to come forward and to discourage anything that gets in its way. That's why I love the Michelangelo effect. I'd heard of and I've been using it. Okay, so why the Michelangelo effect? This is why Michelangelo sees this huge massive UNH block. I see, I see. And inside of that, he is able to see David M. And over time, slowly, he will chip away, and he will chip away, and he will chip away. So you see something that isn't there. That's

inside of the thing which is rough and UNH and uncivilized and undomesticated and rambunctious and and sometimes terrible and you were able to from that yeah that's actually part of the D Ching. The uncarved block so a child is an uncarved Block in in in The dowst View and and you remove everything that's excess until what's perfect remains right and that's see the the logos in the Old and New Testament. The logos that creates the world is the judging faculty that what would you say that separates the wheat from the chaff right and it's not it's compassion in a sense because if you're compassionate towards someone you want what's best for them all things considered but that compassion in the highest sense can't exist without judgment because the judgment is this part of you isn't worthy to continue and certainly that's what you're doing with your children when you see them misbehaving you think no that's no not

that not that something more sophisticated. Even with my little granddaughter the other day, she's very, very playful. And she's a very nice little girl. She's very playful and very fun and funny and not neurotic. And so she's a pleasure to be around. But she hasn't seen me for a while. And so she was poking me, getting me to chase her around and poking me. And she'd come up and give me a whack, you know. And at one point, she whacked me too hard. And she knew it. And I said, that's not fun, that's not acceptable. And then she stopped. But she was playing with that edge, trying to find out where fun is. And you know, can how hard can I hit Grandpa? She doesn't bloody well know. She kind of knows, but she needs to know exactly. Well, I can't let her get away with it, because then she's not fun to play with. She has to learn to come and give her Grandpa a whack and exactly the way that elicits a

playful response, and that isn't annoying. And so, there's a very, you know, you might think, Well, it's pretty harsh judgment to lay on a 5-year-old. It's like, No, it's not. I would like her to be the most fun kid to play with that she could be, right? And so, I'm not going to pretend that it's okay when it's not. Not setting that boundary is almost like a curse. It is a curse. Yeah, there you go. Well, then how's she going to play with other kids if she doesn't know that they're not going to be as forgiving as Grandpa? Definitely not. In other news, this episode is brought to you by Manscaped. If you are a gentleman who is still using an old face shaver from three Christmases ago to trim your gentleman's area, what are you doing? Join us here in the modern world. There are purpose-built tools for the job, and the brand new Lawnmower 5.0 Ultra is the

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very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that clip with Jordan, you will love the over 3-hour long podcast episode, which is available right here. Go on, give it a tap.

Jordan Peterson - How To Know When To End A Relationship

Bonjour I'm Chris, Host of the Modern Wisdom Podcast. Understanding the world is hard, this channel should help.