Latest / YINWorldWide / Why You Keep Attracting People Below Your Standards
Transcript
- Liv Yin: This is yin, and these are conversations about discipline, direction, and identity, and how they quietly shape who you become. Everybody walks into love as the judge. We evaluate, we measure, we keep a quiet list of what's missing, what's off, what we're tolerating. However, what we almost never do. Is turn that same attention around. If you're in a relationship right now, you've probably asked a question a hundred times. Is this the right person? Are we building something real? Would I choose this again? If you're not in one yet, you've asked a different version. Where are they? Why haven't I found them? What do I want? Different questions, however, the same mistake. Both of them are pointed outward. Both of them make you the one doing the choosing. And neither one of them asks the harder question. You've spent years wondering if they're enough. However, today we're asking if you're enough. Are you the partner your partner deserves? Are you the partner the person you want would choose? You don't get the partner you want. You get the partner you are. The version of you that shows up every day is the version they're either building with or carrying. There is no neutral. You're either pulling them forward or pulling them off their line. That's what this episode is about. Not how you find the right person, not how you fix the wrong one. The standard that starts before selection, before commitment is. Before any of it, the standard you hold for yourself, answer that one honestly, and the rest of this episode writes itself. Every relationship settles to the lower of the two standards in the room. Not the higher, the lower. Because when one person pulls less, the other one has to pull harder to keep things moving. And nobody can carry that weight forever. Eventually, the stronger one gets tired. They stop pulling as hard. And the whole thing drops to whatever speed the lower one was already moving at. That's how relationships quietly erode. Somebody stopped holding their line. The other one picked up the slack. Then picked up a little bit more, then a little more. And one day they looked up. And realized they'd been carrying the relationship for a year and they were exhausted. And the person next to them didn't even know. So before you ask about a partner, current or future, you have to ask about the standard you're actually holding. Not the one you talk about, the one your week proves. Look at the last seven days honestly. What did you build? What did you finish? What did you walk away from when it got hard? What did you put your phone down for? And what did you pick up your phone to avoid? If a stranger watched you for a week, what would they think about who you're becoming? That's what you're bringing into a relationship. Not what you want to bring, not what you'll bring once things settle, but right now. And here's the part that's going to land however it lands. If your life right now doesn't reflect the standards you want in a partner, you're not looking for a partner. You're looking for a rescuer, someone whose discipline fills in the gaps, someone whose ambition will drag you along, someone whose clarity will lend you direction because you haven't built your own. If that's what you're looking for, this isn't the podcast for that. Not because I don't care. But because a rescuer won't help you, they'll show you, carry you for a season, and leave when they realize they're building alone. And you'll call it heartbreak. But it was the cost of outsourcing a standard you were supposed to be holding for yourself. The people who build real relationships, the ones that compound, aren't being rescued. They're meeting someone at their altitude. Two people already climbing who decide to climb together. You can't meet anyone at an altitude you haven't reached. So the work isn't finding them. The work is being the person who can meet them when they show up. Or if you're already in something, being the person your partner is still climbing with, not the one they're starting to carry. That's the standard. And it starts with you because it has nowhere else to start. Every relationship will ask you to change. Some of what it asks for is fair, where you live, how you spend a Saturday, whose family you sit with at Thanksgiving, how you split the grocery list, the calendar, the quiet hours. That's compromise. That's what it looks like when two lives fit together instead of past each other. You give some, they give some. Nobody loses anything they need. That's not what this part is about. This part is about the other thing, the thing most people don't have a word for. And that's how they lose themselves without noticing. And it's called erosion. You see, erosion is what happens when the thing you're giving up isn't logistics. It's you, the standard you held, the pace you moved at. The discipline that made you who you are, the work you were doing on yourself before the relationship existed. And slowly, without a conversation, without a fight, without anybody meaning for it to happen, you stop. You stop training. You stop building. You stop finishing what you started. You stop reaching for the version of yourself you were reaching for before. And you tell yourself, it's because you're happy. It's because you're settled. It's because love changed your priorities. It didn't. You changed your priorities to keep peace. That's the difference. Compromise costs you convenience. Erosion costs you identity. And here's the part you have to hear clearly. If your relationship requires you to be smaller for it to work, it isn't working. It's surviving on your shrinking. Every standard you've quietly dropped is. Every goal you've quietly shelved, every piece of yourself you've quietly filed down to keep things smooth. That's not partnership. That's a trade, and you are losing. Love is not supposed to cost you yourself. If it does, it isn't love. It's a trade you're losing and calling romance. For the listener already in something, this is the audit. Don't think about what your partner has done. Think about what you have stopped doing since the relationship began, what you used to wake up early for. If the list is long, the relationship didn't take those things from you, but it gave you the environment where setting them down felt acceptable. And setting them down quietly for long enough is how people disappear inside their own lives without anybody noticing, including themselves. For the listener who isn't in one yet, you will be tested on this. The right person will ask you to compromise. The wrong person will ask you to erode. And it won't come with a warning. It'll come in small tasks, then another one, then a pattern. You will not recognize it if you haven't already decided alone what you will not put down for anyone. You have to draw a line before someone is standing on it. Because the standard you hold for yourself is something you carry into relationship and protect. It's something the relationship will press against every day, sometimes gently, sometimes not. And the only way it survives the pressure is if you decide long before the pressure comes that you will not erode. The real work of a relationship is not loving somebody. Loving somebody is the easy part. The real work is staying yourself while you do it. do it. Everything we've talked about today has a cost. Holding your standard costs you relationships, not all of them, but the wrong ones. And the wrong ones don't announce themselves as wrong. They feel like the right ones, which means the cost is real, and you'll pay it without knowing in the moment that what you're losing was never yours to keep. You will leave people you loved. You will watch people walk away Because you wouldn't get smaller. You will sit through seasons alone that feel longer than they should, stretches where the easy thing would be to lower the bar just a little and let somebody in who almost fits. And you will have moments where you wonder if you're being too rigid, too proud, too much. You'll have people around you, people who love you who will help you wonder because watching you hold a line. makes them think about the ones they dropped. And that's uncomfortable for everybody but you. That's the cost. I'm not going to pretend it isn't. But here's what I want you to hear clearly. The cost of holding your standard is paid in seasons, months, sometimes a year or two. Stretches that allow you to work on yourself. Stretches of being alone. Stretches of saying no when you wanted to say yes. The cost of dropping standard is paid in decades. It's paid in 40 years you spend next to someone you wouldn't choose today. It's paid in the version of yourself you quietly retire to keep the peace. It's paid in waking up at 50 next to a life that technically works, and knowing without being able to say it out loud that you left yourself somewhere back in your 30s and never went back to find out who you would have become. That's the real cost. And it's the one almost nobody names. So when you compare the two honestly, a season alone against a life you didn't live, the math is not close. The work is not waiting. The work is continuing. Keep building, keep finishing things, keep holding the line on what you said you wanted for yourself. The right person is not going to arrive for the shrunk version of you, anyways. They're not looking for somebody who made themselves easy to find. They're looking for somebody who became impossible to miss. And if you're already with somebody, the work is the same. Stop eroding. Pick up what you put down. Start finishing things again. Not to punish them, not to test them, to come back to who you are and then watch what happens. Because a relationship where one person starts standing up straight. Will truly show the colors of that relationship. Both of those are answers. Both of those move you forward. You open this episode wondering if you were enough. You are not enough. And neither am I. And neither is anybody worth being with. That's the point. Enough isn't a place you arrive, it's a direction you're moving in, and the right partner. Isn't the person who decided you were enough. It's the person moving in the same direction at roughly the same pace who looks over one day and realizes you've been walking next to them the whole time. So keep going. Keep moving. This is Yin. If this resonated, share it with someone who needs to hear it. Not everyone, just someone who's ready. You can find Yin Worldwide Podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. And if you want to go deeper, visit our website at liveyin.com. That's www.li-v-e-y-in- dot com. Subscribe if you're committed to the work. If not, that's fine too. This isn't for everyone. Remember, move with intention.