Why the "Good Enough" Relationship Beats the "Perfect Partner"
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 14.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 March 2024
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Fairy tales and Hollywood rom coms have taught us to expect perfection from a soul mate, but sex and relationships therapist Todd Baratz says we need to be more comfortable with the idea that a "good enough" partner will do.
Todd once bought into this perfection myth - wanting a boyfriend to meet all his needs without even being told. These expectations helped end the relationship. Now Todd (author of How to Love Someone Without Losing Your Mind) says we need to accept that our loved ones will be just as flawed and human as we are.
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| 0:00.0 | I'm |
| 0:02.0 | excited to announce season four of my podcast Mobituaries. |
| 0:06.0 | I've got a whole new bunch of stories to share with you |
| 0:10.0 | about the most fascinating people and things who are no longer with us. |
| 0:14.4 | From famous figures who died on the very same day |
| 0:18.8 | to the things I wish would die, like buffets, all that and much more. |
| 0:25.0 | Listen to Mobituaries with MoRaca, wherever you get your podcasts. Pushkin. Todd Barrett's knew exactly how his boyfriend should be treating him. |
| 0:47.0 | The right standards were very clear. |
| 0:49.0 | They'd been set out in all the fairy tales and Hollywood Romcoms that he'd grown up with. |
| 0:53.3 | I had certain expectations for how he should be treating me. |
| 0:56.7 | I was thinking, well, he should just be asking me how my day was. |
| 0:59.2 | He should just be doing these things. |
| 1:00.8 | And reality is that it's a much more complicated dynamic than that. |
| 1:04.3 | Many of us share this kind of naive view of relationships. We expect near perfection |
| 1:09.6 | from our romantic partners and assume that accepting anything less would be settling. |
| 1:14.2 | We want a soulmate who understands us, a rock who supports us in all we do, a therapist who heals |
| 1:19.7 | us when we're hurt, and a lover who fulfills all our desires and makes us feel incredibly |
| 1:24.4 | attractive. |
| 1:25.4 | These rules is less they're infiltrating the relationships from date one to year ten. |
| 1:30.9 | These are things that we've internalized and they become indistinguishable |
| 1:33.6 | from our voice compared to our culture's voice. They just feel like absolute truths. |
| 1:38.0 | The eventual collapse of Todd's 10-year relationship was a wake-up call. |
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