Relationships are hard. Maybe the hardest of all human experiences, in fact, as they require us to confront all of the messiness of ourselves and another equally-messy-but-in-different-ways person. None of us escapes this messiness, at least not if we’re living truthfully.
When we’re in the thick of relational stress – perhaps caught in cycles that we worry might not end – we can find ourselves grasping on to anything that sounds like wisdom. It makes perfect sense that we want there to be a truth that gives shape or direction to our experience.
Enter the internet. It’s right there at our fingertips, promising us a simple tool or truth that will help escape the complexity of our situation. The proliferation of therapist-influencers over the last decade means that there is no shortage of pop-psychology to be had. In fact, you can find almost any narrative you already hold reflected back in some 30-second reel out there.
And that’s the thing about much of the relationship advice that you’ll find. Even if it feels new or different, if it clicks for us, it may because it already fits into our preconceived notions and worldviews. But the advice hits on some familiar neural pathway isn’t going to lead us to new and more growthful relational lives.
What I want to do today is to break down some of the most prolific advice on relationships that we see circulating. In the same way that these pieces of advice are not wholly true, they are not wholly false, either. So let’s deconstruct each one a bit and see what we find.
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If he wanted to, he would.
I’ll admit that I personally gravitated to this maxim when it first took social media by storm a few years ago. It’s so easy! It suggests that we don’t actually have to look any deeper than someone’s behavior to understand their intention. For those of us who find ourselves so deeply lost in trying to analyze others’ motivations, it can feel like a relief to drop the rope and take them at face value.
What’s missing here is the very important reality that there can be huge gaps between desire, intention, motivation, and action. For example, if we think about shifts we’ve wanted to make in our lives over time, we can easily observe that there are stages of change, often described as pre-contemplation (I don’t even know I need to change), contemplation (I’m thinking about it), preparation (I want to do it but I need to get ready), action (I’m doing it!), and maintenance (I can do it consistently).
This advice conflates action with motivation, and I think that can be dangerous. So many things can get in the way of action that aren’t accounted for in a reductionistic reading. We can be stymied by a lack of understanding the problem (we get pretty myopic as humans), neurodivergence (executive functioning challenges may make it hard to do the thing, even when we really want to do the thing), or competing priorities.
The risk of this advice is that some of us read this as “if I were worthy enough, he would.”
Rating: D+
What we can take: For the over-thinkers among us, the wisdom of this advice might be in the idea that we don’t have to exhaust ourselves analyzing another person’s intention if their behavior doesn’t work for us. If the behavior (or lack thereof) isn’t aligned with our values or what feels acceptable in our lives, we don’t have to give allowances. We just shouldn’t assume it’s a function of their desire.
You just need to spill the tea. It will feel good to vent.
One of the slipperiest slopes I see in working with people in relationship distress is when they are primarily turning to people other than their partner to process the relationship. It can feel good – and seem important – to talk about how hard things are, but venting to a third party can actually make things worse.
In fact, researchers at Ohio State recently analyzed 154 studies which were made up of our 10,000 participants from all ages, cultures, and circumstances, and learned that venting doesn’t reduce anger and actually tends to exacerbate it and decrease psychological well-being.
Honestly, this happens even with an under-trained therapist, a topic I’ll be writing more about soon. What happens when we vent, even with a well-meaning person, is that we get into ruminative spirals that just reinforce the same narrative we already have. We aren’t widening the lens, we are narrowing it. Plus, we may be violating trust and undermining intimacy with our primary partner.
Rating: C+
What we can take: Working through our thoughts and feelings about our relational stress can be really important and helpful if it’s done in ways that are facilitative, not ruminative or amplifying. We need ways to examine our responses from different angles, and that may be through (good) therapy, getting out of our head and into movement, or guided movement.
Protect your peace at all costs.
I hate to tell you this, but relationships and peace don’t tend to hang in the same circles. Being in relationships – whether romantic, familial, or community – means encountering a good amount of inconvenience. Relationships aren’t inherently complex and require us to move outside of the stagnation of ourselves. They require us to adjust, to adapt, to tolerate, to strive. None of those actions are particularly peaceful.
Where this advice can support us is in recognizing when a particular relationship is grinding down on our peace so hard that we can no longer find it. Because while relationships require work, that work shouldn’t feel like constantly coming up against something; it should feel that the work is happening in synchrony. That could be a kind of peace – a kind of humming energy that’s moving us forward.
And if our nervous systems are so jacked up by a relationship that we can’t get regulated in any other part of our lives, it’s definitely worth considering our next step.
Rating: C
What we can take: Our primary relationship in particular should be a place of both our deepest work and our deepest rest. There will be seasons in which one may be more present than the other, but recognize that the need for both in wider landscape of our partnership.
If it’s not a full-body yes, it’s a no.
I actually love the encouragement to look to our bodies for signals of our desire and a readiness. Again, for those of us who live more in our heads, checking in with our physical sensations as guideposts can be a really important practice.
What this advice lacks is the acknowledgement that we are comprised of a multitude of parts. Each of these parts of us carries pieces of our history, memories, and feelings, and each may have a different reaction to a new experience or relationship.
Checking in with each of our own parts is helpful to understand the range of feelings we might be having toward something. It’s rare that every part is going to be aligned. Taking the time to hear from each of the feelings – like the part that feels excited, the one that feels apprehensive, the one that feels guilty – can help get them all on board. But sometimes we have to do things even if certain parts of us aren’t yet there, because we know deep down that this action serves our next stage of growth.
Rating: C+
What we can take: Use your body as data. It’s true it’s often better than the mind at giving us information to explore. But don’t stop there. And remember that some of our biggest leaps at humans come from taking action before we feel totally confident or ready.
We all seek out our unfinished business.
This concept suggests that we tend to find ourselves with a partner who represents the work that we need to continue to do on ourselves – work that has often been shaped by our earliest attachments. Of the maxims I’m sharing today, this is the one I actually feel has the most truth and potential utility for us.
We can understand this tendency as a function of us being pulled toward the patterns of attachment and relating that feel most familiar. If we felt unacknowledged in our earliest caregiving experiences, we might end up in a relationship where we continue to experience our needs or gifts as invisible, for example. This can be confusing, because often the beginning of a relationship doesn’t feel like this at all. It feels more like, “Finally! I’m seen!” And then things start to shift over time.
What’s important to add to this advice is the hopefulness that with repair, healing work, and commitment, we can build consciousness of these patterns and then new patterns. Sometimes that’s through work we do independently that results in finding relationships that reflect our evolving development, and sometimes that’s through work we do with our partner, developing a more mature bond.
Rating: A-
What we can take: Exploring how our current relational patterns – our own part of the dance and the dance itself – reflects our earliest attachment experiences can be an incredibly valuable place to start making changes in a relationship.
You can’t love someone until you love yourself.
This one is hardly new and has existed as a truism long before it overlaid TikTok dances. So does that mean it holds weight? It’s tough.
Proponents of this idea would suggest that loving someone fully means doing so from a place of wholeness. They might say that anything short of that is actually codependency, which can masquerade as love but actually means that we are needing someone to serve our own emotional deficits. That’s different than offering love as a gift, untainted by expectation or burden.
What I think may be more true is that we are always striving to love ourselves and we are always striving to love others. I don’t think that we achieve an unwavering state of love for self, but rather it’s a practice of self-compassion that we have to commit to each and every day, particularly in a world that pulls us toward self-admonishment. If we can commit to this practice for ourselves, we can practice the same toward others.
I also believe we can learn to love ourselves through relationship itself. Indeed, we ideally have our own goodness and lovability reflected through our earliest relationship with a caregiver. But if that didn’t happen or got disrupted, we have the chance to do that mirroring and integration process in another relationship. Our brains are malleable and growth-oriented, in that way.
Rating: B
What we can take: Be cautious to not confuse loving someone for needing them to fit our emotional patterning. If loving ourselves is hard, we will need to commit to a regular practice of self-compassion to be able to give of ourselves from a place for greater groundedness. Plus, it feels good to be loved by someone who practices it with themselves as well.
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What feels clear to me as I reflect on these words of advice is that they are well-intentioned, but incomplete. If I could offer a general principle when digesting any kind of advice, viral or otherwise, it would be to take a breath and ask if there’s anything that could be missing. Our brains love simplicity, but the reality is that love and life are fully of nuance and paradox.
I’ll leave you with a sort of alternative to the truisms, though this feels truer than true to me. It comes from my beloved Anne Lammott. She writes:
“Love is our only hope. It is not always the easiest choice, but it is always the right one, the noble path, the way home to safety, no matter how bleak the future looks.”
Rating: A+
