What People Really Fall in Love With… | Rewind

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People don't fall in love with features, they fall in love with a package. I'm going to repeat that. People don't fall in love with features, they fall in love with a package. we put out this question. Is there someone who your partner or someone you're dating has in their life who is attractive and who makes you feel insecure or anxious or jealous? Which doesn't mean there's anything untoward going on. It just means that maybe they have a co-worker that they go to work and see every day. Maybe it's an ex. that they don't even speak to anymore, but you happen to have seen pictures of their ex on Instagram and that shit made you jealous. Or it may be, or it made you insecure, or it may be a friend that they have where it's completely platonic, but that friend happens to be very attractive and you find yourself comparing yourself to him or her. Are you in a situation where that is ridding you of your peace, where comparison with someone else is ridding you of your piece. 72% of our audience said yes, and I hate that feeling. So 72%, the vast majority of people said that there was someone in their partner's life, or I think we can say this is not just about having a long term partner, but in early dating, there's someone who is making me feel anxious. Let's talk about this. I want to talk about how comparison rids us of our peace and what we can do about it. What are your thoughts on this, Steve?

I mean, comparison definitely does rid you of your peace in all areas of life. And the thing is, what I've realized is it doesn't matter how successful or how much you improve yourself, comparison is always possible. I think there's a myth people have where they think if I maxed out all the stats enough and I was really happy with my looks, my money, my career, my success, everything else, then I wouldn't feel that anymore. And I've seen that that just isn't the case. People get what they thought they wanted yesterday, and then you can still compare. There's always people who have a bit more of something. you would like, which is why I think reducing yourself to top Trump stats, basing your confidence on stats like my looks, like my height, my money, my job, my friends, that's the killer to me, is when your self-esteem is wrapped up in your stats. It has to be looking at you as a complete person. if you're reducing people to these numbers, to these characteristics, you're always gonna find ways to make yourself miserable, to torture yourself.

I 100 agree with that. Here's how I think about comparison and. And how I think we could get off of this comparing ourselves with other people that gives us fear about our partner leaving us for somebody else. Here's how we can deal with that fear. People don't fall in love with features. They fall in love with a package. I'm going to repeat that. People don't fall in love with features. They fall in love with a package. You are not a feature. You are a package. You are not how tall you are. You are not how clever you are. You are not how funny you are. you are at a party. You are not how great your eyes are or how perfect your body is. And there will always be someone who beats you on any one of those things. Always. You will never be the best looking person in every room. You'll never be the funniest person at every dinner party.

Yeah.

You'll never be the richest person in every room. You'll never be have the best body in every room.

You could have spent a year getting into the shape of your life, and you'll still see someone who's got their shirt off on Instagram and you go, oh man, I don't look like that. Or you'll feel amazing in your body.

Or you'll be the person that is comparing yourself to someone who's really, really funny and you're not that funny.

Right.

You don't even have to be funny to feel insecure around someone who's even funnier. you could be someone who's just not that funny. And you go, oh my God, my partner is gonna fall for this person because they're super funny. Well, guess what? They're funnier than you. They're funnier than you. Or if you're a dude, guess what? That guy is taller than you. It just is. But that doesn't mean that the person you're with is leaving you for the person who's taller or the person who's funnier or the person who has more beautiful eyes. It doesn't mean any of those things. what it means is that person is more of that thing than you are. But that's a feature. You're a package. You are everything that you come as to your partner. Yeah. You're your personality, your looks, your ambition, your outlook on life, your history, all those little quirky things that they love about you, those idiosyncrasies that they notice about you that other people don't even know about. You're the conversations you have in the morning. you're the conversations you have at bedtime, you're the person who stepped up when they were having trouble with their mother, their father, their brother, their sister, you're the person who was there for them when they were sick that day, you're the person who supported them in that job promotion, you're the person who has been kind to them over time, you're the person who's got history with them, person who's got a story with them, you are all of these things. So when you see that, that picture of their ex or that colleague on Instagram when you go to that party and they introduce you to their friends who you worry is, oh my God, super sexy. That person isn't everything you are to your partner or the person you're dating. Now, look, if the person that you're dating decides that the package this person, this other person represents is something they want more than the package you present, then the person you're with wasn't for you anyway. That was never your person. You can't hold on to something that isn't right for you. So if they decide that somebody else, the package somebody else represents is more for them, then they should go be with that person. You can't protect yourself from that. But you don't have to worry that you're going to lose someone to a feature. And if you do lose someone to a feature, then the person you're with had no depth. The person you're with didn't actually wasn't ever looking for a real relationship. They're looking for a feature. And someone who's looking for a feature will always pay the price for looking for a feature. Absolutely. Someone who's looking for the best looking person in the room is gonna pay the price for that. Someone who's looking for the person with the biggest bank account or looking for the person who just seems to be the most accomplished person in the room, they're always gonna suffer. That's their torture that they're gonna go through in life because they're gonna pay the price for that. But someone who's looking for a real relationship, isn't gonna, you're not gonna lose them to a feature. You can only lose them to a package. And if you do lose them to a package, that wasn't the right person for you anyway.

I always think it's a really telling sign if someone says, oh, their new girlfriend isn't as good looking as their last girlfriend. And I always think that says something about how you see that person's value, whereas you're not seeing all the ways that their previous girlfriend might have been a total nightmare. They might have caused all kinds of drama, frustration, resentment problems, but you're going, oh, but his old girlfriend was more attractive. But it's like you are not seeing what they're seeing, which is they're seeing, like you say, a whole package. They're seeing everything that comes with that person. And if you are looking at people as like, that person was richer, that person was better looking, It's kind of a tell as to how reductive you're being about people, about judging them. And there's this concept in Greek philosophy called amor fati, which I think about in this case where it's called love your fate, as in like there's an idea like love your ups and downs and the difficult times and the good times. And if you can kind of fall in love with your full story, It's like a stoic principle in that you don't curse yourself when certain things are difficult all the time or when you have shortcomings. You can kind of assimilate them all and love your fate. And I think there's something in that with not comparing yourself with other people. You need to love the things you've overcome, the difficult things you've had. You've done all these, you've got all this rich character, things that people haven't seen. battles you've won, internal battles. And the more you love them, the less you worry about where you're stacking up on superficial features.

Well, that's extraordinarily beautiful and a wonderful point and can be extended to say the right person for you is going to be the one who falls in love with your story. That's going to be the right person. the person who doesn't fall in love with your story and all your ups and downs is the wrong person for you by definition. Thanks for listening, everyone. I hope you enjoyed the episode. I would love you to consider coming to the virtual retreat in June. It's from the second to the fourth. We do three days of immersion coaching together with me live, and it is one of the most powerful ways I know. to start a fresh chapter in your life. It gives you amazing tools, amazing insight, and a blueprint for how to change things going forward. Come to mhvirtualretreat.com to learn more.