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We Teach Other People How to Treat Us
If you are actively looking for love, trying to meet someone and brave enough to date, chances are you have encountered behavior that has left you confused, anxious, or just hurt.
Maybe you met someone you were attracted to, and they seemed to be attracted to you too. But their behavior changed at some point, and now you feel like your efforts are being taken for granted.
Maybe you’re dating someone in the early stages whose communication is inconsistent, leaving you constantly questioning if they like you as much as you originally thought they did.
Or maybe you’re dealing with someone who disappears and then reaches out again as if nothing happened.
Whatever the case, one thing is for sure: we teach other people how to treat us.
We do this through our ability to send a strong message about our worth through our words and actions, by educating people on our needs, and by being unafraid to be assertive in the right ways when the situation calls for it.
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Here is a summary of the transcript from YouTube, slightly edited with AI.
Why Is This So Hard to Do?
Let’s start with why this is so hard to do in the first place.
We want love so badly. You might relate to the feeling of being behind. That feeling of all your friends and family pairing off. That feeling of thinking, “I don’t know if this is ever going to happen for me.”
And yet it feels like the most important thing in the world.
When we’re coming from this place—this place of scarcity about it happening—we attach hard to any hope we get from someone who likes us.
And when we do that, it makes us liable to reward the wrong behavior. Someone can disappear, be inconsistent, or treat us poorly, and the only thing we really care about is holding on to them.
That makes us a target for the wrong types of people.
As long as we prioritize finding someone over our own well-being, we run the risk of never actually learning from our mistakes.
Instead of meeting someone, seeing behaviors we don’t like, and saying to ourselves, “I’ve seen this before. I’m not going to let this happen again,” we think, “It’s another chance. I have to take it.”
So you end up meeting the same person over and over again—just with a different name.
Showing Up in Ways That Make Us Proud
One way to solve this is to stop showing up in our love lives obsessed with whether we can get someone or how to get someone.
Instead, start showing up in ways that make you proud.
Saying no where appropriate. Standing up for yourself where appropriate. Taking risks even though you know you might get hurt—but being proud of yourself for taking the risk in the first place.
When we start making ourselves proud, we begin liking ourselves more. We develop more respect for ourselves.
And when that happens, we don’t even want to put ourselves around people who don’t treat us well. We start thinking, “This person doesn’t deserve to be around someone I’m proud of.”
So what are some other things we can do if we want to start getting the right treatment in dating?
1. Recognize the Wrong Behavior as the Wrong Behavior
I knew someone who was dating a man who suddenly ghosted her. It really hurt her, and it took her a while to get over it.
Weeks later, out of nowhere, he showed up at her doorstep at 6 a.m.
Instead of looking at that and saying, “Get off my porch,” she said, “Come in,” and started dating him again.
And then he did it again.
The problem was that she didn’t see him showing up at her door at 6 a.m. after ghosting her as a massive red flag. She chose to see it as a romantic gesture.
Many of us who keep ending up with the wrong people could stand to be a little less romantic and a little more discerning.
When someone suddenly comes back to us and says, “I miss you,” it feels romantic.
But it would be much more meaningful if someone came back and said, “I’d love to meet up for a coffee and talk about the way I behaved.”
We routinely confuse what feels romantic with what signifies a good teammate.
It’s not about who woos us and seduces us. It’s about who shows up for us.
Romance is often performative. It’s intense and showy. But someone being there for us—that’s grounded. It feels safe. There is consistency to it.
So number one: recognize the wrong behavior as the wrong behavior.
2. Standards Can Create Attraction
Remember that having standards for the way you’re treated isn’t just a way of protecting yourself. Standards can actually create attraction.
We get so preoccupied with the idea of standards being a defensive act—a way of protecting ourselves—that we don’t realize the extent to which standards can also be an offensive act.
Simply having a standard can change how attracted someone is to you. It can change how hard someone tries.
In other words, standards aren’t just playing defense. They’re playing offense. They’re a tool that can create more attraction.
You should feel empowered about being someone who has standards.
The Better Question to Ask
We often become obsessed with whether someone likes us. That’s natural. Most of us have a people-pleasing streak—we want to be liked.
But “Do they like me?” is often not the right question.
The better question is: “Do they respect me?”
Standards don’t create compatibility. You can have standards and still realize you’re not right for each other.
But standards do create respect.
Here’s the catch: when we do something that earns us respect, it can initially make someone like us less—or at least annoy them.
It can create friction.
When that friction happens, it can feel like someone doesn’t like us. But if we’re willing to choose being respected over being liked, we’ll eventually realize that respect leads to admiration.
And admiration leads to someone wanting to be liked by you.
It flips the script.
It’s also worth saying that there is no relationship on earth where you won’t have to speak your standards—not once, but over and over again.
3. People Take Their Cues From Us
To some extent, people get away with what they can.
People take their cues from us.
We can either be the person who goes through life expecting the bare minimum—training people to give us the bare minimum—or the person who goes through life expecting people’s best and training situations to give us their best.
Think about your friends.
Don’t you have the friend you can be a little late for—or even very late for—and it doesn’t really matter? And then the friend you absolutely cannot be late for?
What’s the difference?
The difference is the cues they give you about how much punctuality matters to them.
So it’s not just a matter of good people and bad people in dating. It’s also about the cues we give people about what we accept.
4. Standards Don’t Have to Mean Conflict
Sometimes people hear me talk about standards and become a more aggressive version of themselves when standing up for what they want.
But standards don’t have to mean confrontation all the time.
They don’t mean you suddenly take yourself and life too seriously. You don’t need to pick people up on every little thing and say, “We need to have a conversation.”
Standards can be delivered with warmth. They can be delivered with kindness. They can even be delivered with a sense of humor.
You might say, “I have a great time with you. Hanging out with you is the best. I just don’t get the impression that you’re that serious right now or that you’re being very intentional in your dating life.”
Or imagine someone trying to take you home on the first or second date and that feels too fast for you.
You don’t have to say, “You don’t really think you could take me home on the first date, do you?”
You could say, “As gorgeous as you are, I just don’t move that fast.”
The Bliss Point
This is what I call the bliss point of standards and communication.
The food industry has a term called the “bliss point.” It refers to the perfect ratio of salty and sweet that makes you keep wanting more of something—think Nutella or kettle corn.
You never quite feel satisfied because that balance keeps you coming back.
There’s a similar balance in communication.
There’s an optimal ratio of “salty” and “sweet” that can make someone keep wanting more of you if you know how to communicate in that way.
Standards: A Language All Its Own
Standards are a language. And it’s a language we all need to learn.
You will need it over and over again in life.
You are only one text or one date away from needing to know how to communicate your value in the right way.
Thank you so much for watching this video. Leave a comment and let me know what you thought, and I’ll see you next time.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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