Latest / Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell / When You Realise You Can’t Force the Fit in a Relationship

Transcript

When You Realise You Can’t Force the Fit in a Relationship · Reflect Reclaim & Liberate - with Sallyanne Hartnell

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the podcast.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: All about the moment you realize you can't force the fit.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: That quiet moment you stop trying to be enough for someone else and choose yourself.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's a moment in many relationships where you pause and think, am I ever going to be enough?
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Am I ever going to be enough for them?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's a question that isn't always about insecurity or unworthiness or not enoughness.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's about exhaustion.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Exhaustion from trying, exhaustion from hoping, hoping you'll be met, exhaustion from bending, reshaping, or editing yourself to make the relationship more workable, from twisting and morphing yourself into a version of you that fits this person and this relationship.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you once did and perhaps you no longer do.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: You've asked, you've given, you've hoped, you've done the work, and still something isn't quite right, isn't quite working.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: And then quietly the truth begins to settle in.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: It's not actually that you're not enough.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, it's really nothing to do with you.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's that moment you realize you can't.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can't ever, you can't ever force the fit.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: No amount of trying, no amount, or no matter how much love there is, no matter how much patience or compromise can make someone fit into your life or you into theirs if you're not meant to, or if it's no longer working.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: No amount of effort on your part, no amount of change or growth or shifting or morphing to change you to fit into theirs or to fit a relationship that doesn't hold the shape or the space that you need it to.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's one of the hardest realizations because there can still be care and kindness and love, right?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: So it's one of the hardest realizations, but also one of the most liberating.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: It can be incredibly painful, but it can also be a release because once you accept it, once you acknowledge that you won't ever be enough to fit this relationship, that you can't force the fit if it's not there.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: The only question left is, will I choose myself?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was reminded of this.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, this podcast episode is sort of born out of listening to a conversation between Wreath Witherspoon and Melinda French Gates on a podcast that French Gates started called Moments That Make Up, Make Us.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: She started and made that for her 60th birthday, and it's a series of conversations about Moments That Make Us.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: And this was about how Witherspoon sees women as the heroes of their own stories.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And in that conversation, Reese said something that actually made me go back and listen a few times over.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: She was talking about a scene in the movie Legally Blonde.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: And if you haven't seen it, go back and watch it.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's iconic.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, she was talking about a scene in Legally Blonde where her character, Elle Steele, who's recently been dumped by the guy, says, she looks at him and she says, I'm never going to be good enough for you, am I?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a question I think that many of us have asked, either out loud or to ourselves internally at some point.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't always come from a place of insecurity or a need to be chosen.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, as I said earlier, it comes from exhaustion, from trying and asking and hoping and waiting to be met, from twisting and morphing yourself into someone who fits the relationship.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: You know, you try to be more understanding, more patient, more accommodating, more loving, or you try to be less less emotional, less demanding, whatever it is, you edit yourself, you reshape yourself, you try to become the version of you that might finally fit and make this relationship work.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: And then one day something hits you.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: You can't.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can't ever force the fit.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: And in that conversation, Ray said something else that also felt really true.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: She said that we've all had that moment where you're sitting across from a romantic partner and you're thinking, I'm not the girl.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not the girl for you, I'm not the person for you.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: And you might equally be thinking in that moment, I'm not the person for you, but you are not the person for me.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: We don't fit.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: But going back to Rhys, she said, I'm not the girl, I'm not the girl for you.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes in that same moment, that other thought is rising too.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: You are not the person for me.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: And this is not because either of you is inherently bad or wrong or doing something wrong, it's because you don't fit.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: We don't fit.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not the person for them, and maybe they're not the person for me.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes two people just don't fit.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you never did, maybe you once did and no longer do.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, of course, that's because one of you has changed, one of you has grown or expanded beyond what this relationship has capacity to hold.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's because you've both changed, maybe it's because your eyes have been open to things that you didn't see or acknowledge earlier.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's simply about capacity.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: One of you doesn't have the capacity at this time, in this season of life, to meet the other.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: But trying to make yourself forcing yourself to fit somewhere you don't belong is one of the most exhausting things you can do.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I see this moment or this realization, this process a lot in the work I do with my one-on-one clients, wherever they're at, whether they're questioning a relationship, navigating separation and divorce, or unraveling and unpacking and recreating life afterwards.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: For many of them, this realization arrives quietly, sort of like an unfolding, a slow realization.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes after years, years of trying, years of negotiating with themselves or with their partner, years of hoping that if they loved harder, tried harder, bent a little further, did more work, the therapy, the inner child work, all the things, something would finally click.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: And then one day they wake up, they realize it's not clicking, and maybe it never has, or maybe it hasn't for a really long time, and they are exhausted from trying.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that realization can be incredibly acutely painful, but it's also release, it's clarifying, it's liberating because once you realize you can't force the fit, there is really only one thing left to do, right?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: As Wither Spoon said in that conversation with Melinda French Gates, you take a deep breath, you acknowledge to the reality, you maybe wipe your tears, tend to your broken heart, you pull yourself up a little taller, and you choose.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: In that conversation, Reese described that moment almost like this in a dialogue.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, Oh, okay, I have to be my own self.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, now I'm gonna be my own self.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Bye.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And when she said that, Melinda French Gates responded with something equally powerful.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: She said, and I'm enough, enough for me.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that line really struck, it really stayed with me.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm enough for me, because so much of relationship pain comes from measuring ourselves against someone else's standards, someone else's expectations, someone else's story, right?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Am I enough for them?
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: Am I all the things they want and they need?
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Am I pretty enough, calm enough, supportive enough, interesting enough, successful enough, low maintenance enough, whatever enough, right?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And when someone leaves or pulls away or can't meet us in the way we want and need, it's very easy to turn that into a story, a commentary, or a judgment about our own worthiness.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the real turning point, that real crash point growth moment, isn't convincing someone else that you're enough or proving to yourself you're enough for someone else.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: The turning point is deciding, as Melinda Frenchgate said, I'm enough for me.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: Choosing yourself, and I've said this I feel like a hundred times across the across the podcast, across many episodes, choosing yourself isn't always really loud and overt.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's often a really quiet, private moment, and that moment where you realize I can't keep doing this, whatever this is.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: I can't keep doing the work to hold this relationship together, doing the work for two of us, holding it all for both of us.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: I can't keep minimizing or abandoning myself to stay in this version of the relationship.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: I can't keep shrinking myself, quieting myself, dumb dimming myself to make this work.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I can't keep twisting myself into shapes that just aren't me.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so you choose.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: You choose honesty, you choose self-respect, you choose the opposite of self-abandonment, you choose radical self-responsibility, ownership, agency, and you choose the version of your life where you get to be fully yourself, even if that choice comes with grief and pain and heartbreak, even if it comes with uncertainty and fear and new real challenges, even if it means letting go of something you once desperately wanted to work, the thing you thought was forever, something that was comfortable in its knownness, in its familiarity.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes this realization leads you to a reflection that shows you what can be healed.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, in fact, almost always, when you get brutally and beautifully honest with yourself, it shows you what needs to change, and sometimes it shows you yes, what needs to end.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes you repair, sometimes you redefine, and sometimes you choose an ending, and sometimes you leave.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: But choosing yourself in this context is a realignment, it's the moment where you start living from your own center, or when you recalibrate and re-center yourself in your own life, including within that relationship.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're in a moment in your life where you're asking yourself that question, or a version of that question, am I ever going to be good enough for them?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: Am I ever going to be good enough for this relationship?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe there's actually another question waiting underneath it and a more powerful one, a truer one.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: Am I willing to be fully myself?
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: And can I believe, even just a little bit, that I am enough for me?
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes the bravest and the hardest, but also most liberating moment in a relationship isn't actually convincing someone to choose you.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: It isn't actually convincing yourself to morph change to stay.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's choosing yourself.
• 11:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's the moment you realise you can and you need to choose yourself.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: The moment you realize you can't force the fit, that no amount of trying, giving, or bending will ever be enough on its own to make someone else meet you fully.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's the moment you stop trying to be enough for them and start choosing yourself.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because the real question isn't, Am I enough for them?
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's can I believe I'm enough for me?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: So if you are feeling exhausted by asking that question or a version of that question on loop, there is a link in the show notes to download your free copy of my choose you guide.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_00: It steps you through a process I use with my one-to-one clients.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's also a link to sign up to my mailing list, episodic, not spammy.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's where I announce different new ways of working with me, and I go a little deeper in some of on some of these topics.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage you, if this has resonated with you, to jump on, do one or both of those and explore how you can choose you, how you can start choosing yourself, how you can start believing, even just a little bit.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm enough.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: I am enough for me.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: As always, thanks for being here.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you know someone who might be helped or supported to listen to this episode, please, please share it with them.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: Bye for now.