Forget the Titles; Improve Your Relationships

Today's episode is about something you may not realize is affecting your relationships... all the pressure you put on certain roles/titles/labels they have in your life. 

Do you have unspoken and unacknowledged expectations that go along with someone being your "mom", "dad", "husband", "wife", "best friend", "sister", "boss", etc? Those subconscious expectations could be affecting how you feel about your relationship with them!

I hope this is helpful for you and your relationships. As always, if you liked this episode, please share it with a friend or loved one!

Love you, thank you!

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Transcript

Speaker 0:41

Hello, welcome to another episode of the podcast. I'm so glad that you're here. Today, I'm really excited about this topic because I feel like the last several episodes I've been really heavy on the personal development, and the last episode was actually a little bit more physical because it was more about sleep and how to get better, proper sleep, just some of the things that you can do to help yourself do that. But prior to that, I've been really personal development heavy, personal growth heavy. And something that I'm really passionate about is relationships and having positive relationships, and really feeling good about the relationships that you're in, whether that's with a significant other, a spouse, a partner, or something that's non-romantic like a coworker relationship or a relationship with a family member, a mom, a dad, a sibling, an aunt even, or a grandma, or an in-law, or whoever it may be. I feel really passionate about relationships and how we can set boundaries in them. We can help ourselves think through them a little bit differently. And today, I am talking about specifically a mindset shift when it comes to the labels that we put on relationships or the, I guess, titles, or roles that we have people play in our heads. And I think that this is a really valuable thing to think about. It helps me to take less pressure or put less pressure on the people in my life that maybe I am putting pressure on that I don't even realize. And then it also helps me to rethink the way that my... or the role that I play in other people's lives and reduce the pressure that I feel in those roles potentially. So, I'm gonna get into this here in a second. This is a funny podcast episode because I know a lot of my listeners are family members or people who play a title or role in my life. If you're watching on YouTube right now, I used the air quotes, like title or role, quote unquote, in my life. And so obviously there are people listening to this that this would apply to, but I'm more so speaking generally. This topic came to my mind because I was talking to my therapist a little bit just about the idea, not even anything specific in my life, but I have so many friends becoming parents and becoming moms and dads, and I'm like, "That just seems so intense to me. That just seems... I... That would... That to me would be so much pressure." That's so... Like, there's so much that you could do wrong. Obviously, there's a lot of things that you can do right, and children are resilient, and There are a lot of things that don't even affect them and that you do well, and I'm not putting any parents down or anything, just this is my own feelings, clearly, because I was talking about it in therapy. But about that concept and just how, wow, that is a lot. But she was like, "You know, that's just a title. The mom or dad or grandma or whatever, that's just a title. If you just remove the title from it and look at that person as a human being, things are a lot different." Because When we look at people as human beings, we give them a lot more grace. You know, the person in the grocery store that you pass by that seems like they're having a bad day or whatever, you're not worried about all the ways that they've disappointed you or the ways that they failed you or anything like that. You're simply just like, "That's just another person in the grocery store." You barely even register sometimes. Whereas we are so sensitive and hot button, I would say, about some of the people in our lives that we, quote unquote, "think should be playing a certain role", and that can make those relationships very strained. So just taking the pressure off of them is so helpful, and I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this getting into the meat of the episode. But the analogy that I... It's not even really analogy 'cause it applies here, but something that I think about is, you know, whenever people say DTR, like define the relationship. Whenever you're in a romantic relationship and you're kind of just now dating, you haven't become boyfriend/girlfriend or girlfriend/girlfriend, boyfriend/boyfriend, whatever it is, you haven't made it official, you haven't defined the relationship yet. There is a lot of building pressure and tension around that, and a lot of the time it's just on one side. Sometimes it's on both sides. But a lot of the time it's one person is really overthinking it and, "Oh, are we exclusive? Should I ask him or her to be my boyfriend or girlfriend? Should I ask if we should stop seeing other people? Should I ask if..." Y- whatever. It's just a lot of pressure, and that's just an example of how we, we know, right? We know this is a thing in that specific scenario of dating. We know that this is a thing that when we do it, it does apply pressure, and that can be good in some ways. I- I'm not saying that you shouldn't go and be exclusive with someone or define the relationship or anything like that. But as soon as you approach that and you decide, "Oh, we're both boyfriend/girlfriend" or whatever it is, that comes with something specific, right? It comes with expectations. You probably expect your boyfriend or your girlfriend to behave a specific way. Same way with your husband or your wife or your partner or your mom or your dad. You have these expectations that you have for them, and those can be really hard for them to meet, especially because some of them are just totally subconscious. Think about this especially with moms and their children because, mostly just because a lot of my friends are becoming moms. But when you think about your relationship with your mom, if you have a relationship with your mom, do you have expectations, subconscious expectations that you maybe haven't even ever really voiced aloud or put your finger on, you haven't really thought clearly about? But when you think about it now, I'm telling you, think about it now, what expectations do you have of your mom? And does she even know that those expectations exist? And the follow-up question is, are those expectations fair? For example, I think a lot of people think, "My mom's my mom, she should just know what to say," or, "My mom's my mom, she should be more patient. She should have learned by now to be more patient with me. She's the mom, I'm the child." Which I do think there's something to be said for children and, parentification and putting too much of the parenting on the child, and that's a whole other podcast episode. Go listen to some child development podcast episodes if you wanna talk about that. So there definitely can be some resentment if you feel like your parent has not parented you or you've been parenting your parent. Of course, there are unresolved feelings there. I'm specifically just talking about when you think about moms in general, mothers in general, do you have expectations? Oh, moms should always be patient, moms should have this maternal instinct to comfort their children Moms should help me heal wounds. They shouldn't give me wounds. They shouldn't disappoint us. They should always say the right things And I do feel really bad, my mom is probably listening to this right now but I do feel really bad for moms who obviously are going to fall short in parenting and in mothering and could do most things right, but of course, everybody gets impatient sometimes or everybody disappoints us sometimes, But now that I have friends who are becoming moms, I'm-- I just keep thinking that they're just doing the best they can, right? They are young women who are figuring this out for the first time, the same way that their children probably someday will be doing this and figuring it out for the first time. And if we just remove that title of mom and just think of the person as a person going through life. We're all going through life for the very first time. This is the first time I've ever been 30, almost 31 in life, and there are gonna be new obstacles in this next year of life. And this last year of life, there have been different things that I haven't experienced before, and we're all just going through this for the first time. And sometimes we just don't give that grace to people in our lives who have those heavy titles. And I don't mean heavy just in a negative sense, because heavy often means like very close or a heavy title could be someone who we lean on a lot for support, or is a go-to for us, or is just really important to us. There's a lot of love and care and respect there. But on the flip side of things, we have major expectations for them. We have a lot more expectations for our mom than we do the guy in the grocery store, right? And so those are some of the things that come with moms. I feel like dads are similar, where dads kind of the stereotypical expectations that we have of them is that they'll figure things out. They will solve the problem. You know, if you have a problem in your house or with money or, I don't know. There are some specific things that are more affiliated with, I guess, the male role model or parent in our lives. So if you have a relationship with your dad, then You might think things like, "He should know what to do. He should be providing," or, he should be strong right now. He should always be strong." You may just have some of those expectations without even realizing them. So take a second and think about what, what types of things, when I think about my parents, or think about when you complain about your parents, what are the things that you complain about the most, and what are those unsaid, unspoken expectations? And from there, you can decide, one, are those expectations fair? Because if they're not fair, there's no point in voicing them. If they are fair expectations, or like I said at the beginning of this episode, boundaries more so, those are things that you can share and you can vocalize to your parents. Those are things that you could say, "Hey, Mom, I really specifically don't like it when you say this type of thing." Or, "Hey, Dad, whenever I'm speaking about this problem or whatever, I would really like it if you help with this." You can always, of course, in your relationships, you can always guide the people to what your expectations are as long as they're fair. Because the thing is, they don't know. They're not mind readers until you tell them. And well, they're not mind readers when you tell them to be mind readers. I'm saying they're not mind readers. They don't know your expectations until you tell them. I'm sure you got that, but I kind of fumbled it. So This could be applied to any relationship. Another one that I was thinking a lot about is in a boss-subordinate relationship. So say that you have a manager, and there are all these thoughts that we have when it comes to someone that's above us. Because more than likely, they're making more money than us, or more than likely, they have a better title than us. They've been promoted, and we haven't. Whatever the case may be. But they're above us, and they are giving us jobs to do, or they are giving us feedback, sometimes we unfairly, in my opinion, put a lot of pressure on those people and have expectations for something that's, like, further than their job description, I would say. Because we're thinking so much more about, "Oh, well, they're making more money than me. They should be doing this. They should be doing that. They should be doing this." Or if they don't communicate something very well. I've had managers that I love that I was like, "They did not communicate that very well." But in my opinion, this is one that I actually don't have a hard time with. I think it's just because I really don't mind authority. I'm maybe not unique in that, but I just am a person that I don't mind taking orders. I don't really care to be the one giving orders. I don't mind being a follower of a leader. I just... That just does not bother me. And I don't really question authority. It's, it's good in some ways and bad in others, but I don't really question authority, so I don't have issues with this. But I have noticed with peers or even with other people in my life who speak of their managers, that it can be really, really hard whenever you feel like an authority figure is not doing a good job, and you're thinking so much about, "Well, why are they above me? Why are they getting paid f- more than me, and they're not even doing a good job?" Or if they don't communicate something properly or as well as you may have, it can be really easy to dwell on the fact that their title is above yours. Now, if you just removed the thought of that title, just give yourself a mindset shift and think, "Okay, they're just another employee at this company. Let's just pretend I don't know that their pay grade is probably above mine. Let's just pretend that they're another peer of mine," it-- Does that change the way that you think about them? Does that change y- how you view them? Because sometimes you may just be putting pressure on them when honestly, especially in a work setting, they're probably already getting the pressure from someone above them, right? The reason that they're putting pressure on you is because someone's putting pressure on them, and it just... it's a chain effect. But I think that whenever we kind of remove that title, remove that role or position from the way that we think about them and the way that we think that they, quote-unquote, "should be doing things," it can really improve our relationship with them and help us to ease off of them a bit. Even if your professional relationship doesn't change that much, the way that you think about the relationship may, and that may reduce your own personal internal stress because you're not sitting there thinking all day long about how this person gets to tell you what to do, and they aren't even doing it well or doing it right or as well as you would, and they're above you and making more money than you. Just don't... It, it... When you remove all of that, it just, it opens the door to have a more positive, pleasant, easy relationship. And don't we all just want easy relationships? Like, none of us wanna be sitting in drama all the time. None of us wanna be worrying about the next conversation that we're gonna have with someone. It just... That is just no way to live life. It's stressful. We don't need that, right? So just take the pressure off Now here's what I'm not saying. I'm not saying to excuse bad behavior or ignore boundaries, not have boundaries. I'm not saying to accept being mistreated, anything like that. What I'm saying is first think through the, unspoken expectations that you have for people based off of their title specifically. And I talked about mom, dad, boss, those are the biggest ones. Spouse is a big one too. Are there things that you expect from your husband? I know that there are things like this, but expect from your husband without ever having really told him those things. I remember a specific thing, this was like one of the only things I remember from premarital counseling. I-- We like kind of rushed through premarital counseling 'cause we got engaged and got married four months later, so it was a really quick engagement and I don't even think that was the proper amount of time to have premarital counseling. So I think we only did like four weeks out of the 12-week program. I don't know. There was a questionnaire, though. This is the point. There was a questionnaire, and we were supposed to fill it out separately, and it had different household duties on it. And we marked, "Is this a husband, wife, or both responsibility?" And for the majority of them, we put both because we both clean the household. Well, at the time we didn't know 'cause we weren't roommates. We didn't live together before we were married. But regardless, we put, like, what we expect the husband, the wife, or both to take care of. And for the majority of them, we were like, "We both can take care of the dishes. We both can take care of vacuuming. We both can take care of feeding the dog," or whatever it may be. And when-- but then one of them was taking out the trash. And I remember Jared had put both, and I had put husband. And our pastor was like, "Oh, why? W- so what's the difference here? Why do you think that?" And I was like, "I don't know. I guess my dad just always took out the trash, so I just figure, like, the guy should always do it. That's like a gross job. The woman shouldn't do it." And then Jared was like, "Well, what's-- how is that any different than, like, the dishes or anything else? Uh, those jobs are gross too, and you said both for those." And I was like, "Oh, I guess that's a good point." I always think about it now because I actually feel like I take out the trash more often than Jared. He pretty much always takes the bins out to the curb on trash day, but I feel like I just am obsessive about the kitchen and keeping it clean. And so if the trash is getting full, I just immediately take it out. And so it's funny just how it's, like, reversed now. But I always think about that and think about how we-- if we hadn't talked about those expectations, that might have been an expectation that I had that I was kinda silently simmering about whenever the trash got full and being like The guy is supposed to do this. Why isn't he doing this? And being really frustrated about it without ever really talking about it. And that's a very minor example, but there could be lots of things like after you get home from work, are there things that you do or don't want your spouse to do? Are there things that you could tell them to do? And instead of thinking, "He's my husband, he should know that when I get home from work I want a hug and a kiss." Or some people are the opposite, "When I get home from work, I want nobody to talk to me. He should know that." Like, instead of thinking that, remember that that person's not a mind reader, and also this is their first time on earth, too. And also this is their first time being your husband or your wife or whoever they are in your life. This is their first time doing it, too. This is all our first times on this rotation of the Earth. It's just we're all here for the first time, so if we just give each other a little bit more grace and stop dwelling as much on the fact that, "Well, she's my wife, she should know," or, "He's my husband, he should know." I just think that it would help us to feel more satisfied in our relationships and have more ease and comfort and less stress in our relationships And the thing is, when we do this for other people, when we kind of remove the stress or the responsibility and expectations from that title or role that they have, it can help us do this for ourselves too. Because, right, like there are times when I think, "Oh, I'm not being a very good sister because I'm not doing X, Y, Z for my sisters." And a lot of the times those are just expectations that I'm putting on myself that they're not even putting on me necessarily. Maybe they are, but they haven't told me. But expectations that I'm putting on myself that, "Oh, this is what you should do to be a good sister." And it's like, maybe I could just view my sisters as other people that I care about, and instead of putting all that pressure of, "Oh, a sister should be doing this," then I can just move through the world as though they're just another person and give myself grace when it comes to things I think I should or shouldn't be doing. And same for any other role or title in life. I'm not a mom, but a lot of you are that listen to this podcast, and when you think about, "Oh, I'm a mom. I'm really failing as a mom," maybe just take that pressure off of being a mom. You're just a human being. You're just a human being this is your first time here on Earth. There's billions of us. We are all figuring this out for the first time. Just release that pressure of that title. "Oh, I'm a mom and I'm failing my children," or, "Oh, I'm a sister and I'm not doing as good of a job as I expected," or, "I'm a wife and I'm not caring for my husband like I wish I would." Like, just remove that title. Yes, being those things is important, and it means a lot. It's meaningful for sure, but when you just take a second to release the pressure and expectations of those things, then you can move through life with grace for yourself and for others, and you can still have those positive relationships and those titles, but it releases a burden, I guess, is how I would put it. So I hope that this is helpful. Thank you for listening. I love you