Are You Giving YOU Up for Them?

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[00:00:00] Have you ever given up you or parts of you to be in a relationship? Welcome to Tools to Create a Better Life with myself, Glenyce Hughes. Thank you so much for being here. I am so incredibly grateful for each and every one of you. 

 

[00:00:16] We are at a new sit. Still in Calgary, Alberta, but a new sit. We’ve got two brand new kitties. Oh my gosh, they are so sweet. You will probably not see them on video. They’re not those sorts of kitties. They like to relax a lot. Yeah. Unlike the other ones where we were just at. I think they both made it in the video at certain times. 

 

[00:00:38] All right, let’s talk about giving up you in relationship. Now, I have done this so much. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. With Hubby and even before Hubby. Hubby and I have been together 30 years, so I don’t have a lot of romantic relationships really to speak of or even that I remember much of. 

 

But in any relationship we can be giving ourselves up. [It] could be a friendship. It could be a work relationship. It could be boss-employer. There’s all sorts of ways that we give ourselves up. 

 

[00:01:10] This was actually inspired by a question that my friend Juliet, a famous author in New Zealand, had asked on one of my radio shows. She just said [about] being concerned about giving her creativeness up to be in a relationship.

 

[00:01:27] What we wanna look at with that is that the fact that you’re watching this or listening to this. If you’re listening via podcast and you’re considering this, you’re wondering about this, you’re in the question of this, to me, you’re already [a] million miles ahead of probably where you’ve been in the past.

 

[00:01:48] Again, if I look at my own life, if I look at people that I dated prior to Hubby, and there were a couple, I did. I gave myself up entirely. Now, even if I go beyond that and I go to friendship, I did that. I did that all the time. 

 

[00:02:05] There was always this energy of, “I’ll be whatever they need me to be so they like me,” which sounds really pathetic but that’s really where I operated from for a lot of time and I’m grateful that I’ve changed that in a lot of ways. Is it perfect now? No. Are there still times that I’m aware of doing it? Yes. 

 

[00:02:24] The cool thing with awareness is once I have the awareness, I can actually change it. But thinking back to all those years ago, I couldn’t change it because I didn’t even know what I was doing. I just thought that it was the right thing to do. I thought that’s how you were a friend. You just gave up all of you for whatever they needed. Some people like those sorts of friends, but most of us – not so fun to be around. 

 

[00:02:51] The first thing with that is you wanna look at that for yourself. Do you have a habit of doing it? One of my sisters uses the phrase “toxic traits.” Is it one of your toxic traits? If it is, just acknowledge it. Be like, “You know what? I do that.” 

 

Or maybe it’s just in certain situations. Maybe it’s just certain people. Maybe it’s not everybody. Maybe it’s just, you know, if it’s a male person — a male person, hmm? — a male that you wanna be in relationship with or a female that you wanna be in relationship with or a type of personality or something. You just wanna start being aware of it because, again, once you’re aware of it, you can start to change it and you can get curious about that.

 

[00:03:35] If it’s always in, let’s say, romantic relationships for you — let’s say you don’t do it in friendships, it’s just romantic relationships, then okay, great. Start paying attention to that. Start paying attention. 

 

If you’re dating, maybe you’re doing the — trying to think of a Tinder, I was gonna say Twitter — Tinder or something like that, then start being really aggressively present when you’re on those apps, you’re out on a date, or you’re talking with somebody. 

 

[00:04:00] Be so aggressively present that you recognize when you’re starting to go into that place of giving you up. It’s not about going to the opposite side of, “No, it’s gotta be my way. They don’t value me if it’s not my way.” It’s not that either. 

 

[00:04:16] This is one thing I’ve seen with myself over the years. Once I started to become aware that that’s what I did and it wasn’t actually kind to me or even the other person is then it was like the other way. It was like, “I don’t wanna be their friend because we had to go to the movie they liked and it’s all about them.” No. What if you just include you? 

 

[00:04:39] Let’s say you’re going on a date with somebody and they’re saying, “I’d really like to try this new restaurant that’s out. Would you like to go there?” Maybe it’s not your preference of food. You could look at that and say, “Hey, you know what? I don’t actually prefer that food. Could we go here, or is there somewhere else that we both would enjoy?” Rather than be like, “No, I don’t like that place and I’m not going there.” 

 

It’s just a different way of being a person with somebody. How about that? [It’s] so that you can really start to voice what actually works for you, what actually you would like, and allow that to be part of the conversation.

 

[00:05:20] Again, like I said, there’s gonna be some people who really appreciate and really wanna be your friend when you give you up for them. Yeah. That may start weeding some relationships out. 

 

I don’t mean we’re gonna do exclusion and say, “I never wanna be with them or anything,” but you might start, in a sense, losing friends or not having as many connections from certain people. What if you see that more as like an invitation or a celebration? If they just want you to be what they need you to be, do you really wanna be there? 

 

[00:06:01] I’m thinking specifically about one gal. We were in psychiatric nursing together in, I believe it was Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. We were doing a little stint there in our training. She had a young son — that sounds so funny now. But I would often babysit so she could go out all night and party. 

 

I would babysit for her, you know? I just think of that now and it’s like, “Really? What?” I mean, I do enjoy kids, but probably when I was — I would’ve been 18, 19 at the time. Hmm. Interesting. 

 

[00:06:39] I think of that and it actually was okay when that friendship ended because it wasn’t actually a friendship. Now, you couldn’t have convinced me that of the time. At the time, “She was a very good friend,” I would’ve said, but not the type of friend. When I get clear on what I would like, who I would like in my life, and the energies I would like in my life in living, I probably don’t wanna hang out with her a lot. 

 

We haven’t talked. I don’t actually even remember her first name. It’s been so long. So, that. 

 

[00:07:12] We wanna recognize that by being us, by choosing and voicing what works for us and being willing to bring us to the table in certain conversations and situations, then there’s going to be people who aren’t interested and that’s okay. 

 

[00:07:29] There’s lots of quotes out there about being, you know, having quality over quantity in every sense of the way. What if that includes friends? What if that includes relationships? And then really look at it.

 

[00:07:43] Again, if this is one of your toxic traits — it’s such a funny, funny phrase. If this is something you choose, then you might wanna look at what is that’s going on that you would give up you for somebody else? 

 

What was going on in my world that I would spend all night with a child instead of going and partying with friends? Yeah. It was really this desperation for her to like me. 

 

[00:08:08] The thing that I do remember in that relationship was that I really had her on a pedestal. She was older than me probably by 5 or 10 years. I don’t remember exactly. She just had a lot of her, from my judgment, a lot of her shit together, a lot of her life figured out, very confident – a lot of things that at that age, for me, I didn’t feel and I didn’t have. And so I really looked up to her and had her on that pedestal. 

 

[00:08:44] When I look back across my life, that’s been one of the biggest things. The moment I put somebody on a pedestal, that’s when I will often give me up, which I would say is probably quite common for most people. If that happens to be something for you, it’s something for us to look at when we do that. When we put somebody on a pedestal, what are we actually doing? 

 

[00:09:08] The other thing with that that you want to be aware of, and I only became aware of this probably in the past five or six years, is that anytime we put somebody on a pedestal, in order to empower ourselves, we have to knock them off.

 

Right? I know. We then have to find a way to make them wrong. We then have to find a way to fight with them maybe, to walk away in a huff, or there’s gotta be some sort of drama-trauma where we kick them off. 

 

[00:09:43] And so, really pay attention when you put people on pedestals if that’s a thing for you, because you’re gonna create way more drama-trauma in your life than you actually require.

 

[00:09:56] Let’s go back to that situation for me. If I didn’t put her on a pedestal, I could still be inspired by her. That’s a different energy. But putting on her pedestal made her greater than me, bigger than me, everything more than me, which meant I gave myself up for her, to be like her, to hang out with her, for her to like me ’cause of all the stuff I’d attached to that rather than looking at her as the inspiration [and] going, “Wow, I’d love to be that confident. Wow, I’d love to have that part of my life figured out” or whatever it was and utilize that as an inspiration because then I could still be me, right? 

 

[00:10:32] She’s still on the same level with me. I could still be me to be with her. I could still be me to be inspired by her. Even if she didn’t like me, I could still be inspired by her. But when I put her on a pedestal, all of that went away, except that she was everything and I was nothing. 

 

[00:10:48] This was me doing that, okay? I’m not saying she walked around saying, “You should put me on a pedestal.” It was nothing like that. She certainly loved that I did. It certainly worked in her favor that I did that. So, recognizing that we don’t put people on pedestals. 

 

[00:11:06] There was a quote I heard probably, I don’t know, 20 years ago, and it’s just always stuck with me in terms of how we compare our insides with somebody else’s outsides. 

 

I could look at her life as an outsider and say, “Oh, she’s got it figured out. She’s so confident, she’s so this, she’s so that.” But inside, there was a probably hugely different story going on inside. She probably didn’t ever feel confident. She probably felt like her life was a mess. She probably, you know, all those things. But I’m looking from only one angle. 

 

[00:11:41] If you are giving yourself up, there’s chances are you’ve put them on a pedestal and you wanna look at that. Maybe that’s a thing you do, and that’s something you want to, again, become so aggressively present. 

 

[00:11:52] If you meet a new friend, if you start dating, where are you putting them? Are you making them everyone at the table? Or do you have a seat at the table? In what way does that [or] which of those works actually for you? A couple, you know, just some ideas with that. 

 

[00:12:15] Also, recognize that there’s this whole idea of creationship, meaning can you and that other person, doesn’t matter what sort of a relationship it is, can you and them create more together or apart?

 

This is an ongoing question. This isn’t something that you decide on day one and it’s always and forever like that. It’s just something to be aware of. It doesn’t mean if you recognize one day that you create more apart than you do together that you need to leave them or end the relationship. 

 

[00:12:52] It’s just something to be aware of because there’s such a place of possibility with that so that you can recognize that it’s not about pedestals. It’s not about everybody having a 50/50 part at the table. It’s really about how much more can you create if you’re together or if you’re not together.

 

Neither of those are right or wrong. This is, I would say, where a lot of people run into problems is because they’ve decided one is better. Creating more together is better than creating more apart. Is it? No, it’s just two different ways. It’s just a different way of looking at relationship.

 

[00:13:41] In this reality, a lot of times relationship is about how many years you’re together, and that the longer you’re together, the better. We celebrate how many years people are together, but you don’t often hear about a celebration of a divorce. Why the heck not? Why shouldn’t we have parties to celebrate when people choose that they’re better apart than they are together? It’s just a different way of being with it. 

[00:14:07] I would love to be working with you one-to-one, my sweet friends. Check out the link above or below, they are still on special. Have a great week and I look forward to chatting again next week.

 

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