198. How to Feel Confident in Your Relationship
Whether you’ve been with your significant other a few months, a few years, or even a few decades, you may have doubts and insecurities.
Do they love you as much as you love them?
Are they the right choice?
Is this relationship built to last?
If you want to shift those lingering uncertainties into confidence and enjoy your relationship more, this week’s episode is just the thing.
We’ll talk about why you don’t feel confident in your relationship. Where do all those insecurities come from anyways?
And no matter why the doubt is there, we’ll talk about how you can build a sense of confidence in your relationship.
And of course, we’ll also touch on when to invest in building confidence and when it makes more sense to make other kinds of changes.
Want customized support creating your wildly delicious life? Let’s hop on a free consultation call.
I’ll help you understand the blockers you’re facing and how to handle them moving forward. And I’ll share how a three-month 1:1 coaching package could supercharge your progress as well as your satisfaction.
WHAT YOU’LL LEARN FROM THIS EPISODE:
Why you don’t feel confident in your relationship.
Where confidence in your relationship actually comes from.
How to build a sense of confidence in your relationship.
When to invest in building confidence (and when not to).
LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE:
FEATURED ON THE SHOW:
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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:
This week we’re talking about how to feel confident in your relationship.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I hope you’re having a glorious day. I’m having a great day. I’m working a half day and then getting in the car with my bestie and my girlfriend and we’re driving to the coast to stay the night and then get up tomorrow and do a hike that is supposed to be really beautiful. And I’m really excited about it.
I hope you also have something wonderful and interesting going on in your day, whether it’s as big of an adventure as a little overnight trip or even an international destination, or as small of an adventure as an amazing cup of coffee.
All right, we have talked so much on this podcast about work because it was originally a podcast that was about career only. And I am so excited to now get to talk to you about all the things. And I noticed that a lot of people find the podcast by looking for how to feel confident at work, and I love that. And I know that a lot of people have had some really positive impacts from listening to previous episodes that speak to that.
And I wanted to talk about relationships because honestly, in my own life, one of the things that coaching has made the biggest, most profound difference for is my relationship with my significant other, Alex. So obviously coaching has also made a huge impact in my work life, but I’ve talked a lot about that and I think I haven’t talked as much about the truly profound and impactful changes that have happened in my relationship.
The relationship I’m in now is the longest relationship I’ve ever been in. We just crossed the seven year mark from our first date. And it’s also the most successful. Alex and I have navigated so many difficult things and so much conflict and so many patterns, both like my own old patterns and her own old patterns.
And we’re still navigating lots of that. We still go to couples therapy maybe like once a quarter. I still get coaching about the relationship sometimes. But I will say the relationship is such a success story for me of what coaching is able to make possible and what it has already done in my own life.
And so I wanted to share that with you because I know that for a lot of people, the relationship with a significant other is either something they really want, but they haven’t been able to figure out yet, I’ve coached people like that before.
Actually, one of my clients, we coached for about six months about work. And then after that, she was like, okay, I want to like a long-term partner, I’ve never had one. And we coached about that, I think maybe for another six months. And she got a boyfriend in that time. And then all this stuff came up, right? Like all the patterns came up, all the difficulties came up and we coached about all of them real time while she navigated that relationship. And just a few weeks ago, she got engaged to that person and we’re so happy for her.
And I will just take a moment to say, I think getting married is totally neutral. If it’s not for you, I have absolutely no judgment about that. I think our culture places way too much of an emphasis on marriage and being the one. But I also think it’s really, really cool and fantastic when people have a goal that they bring to coaching and then we achieve that goal and then they graduate from coaching with me and then they go on to progress in that goal.
So it’s both a thing of like, we can celebrate anything about you. It doesn’t have to be these traditional goals, like getting married, having a baby. But sometimes that is what people want and I am fucking here to support people in getting what they want. And especially in navigating all of the internal bullshit that comes up when we’re on the path to getting what we want, like all the things that would have slowed us down or stopped us before coaching.
That’s my favorite to coach on and to help my clients walk through. So if you want help walking through something like that, I can help you with that. And if you’re already in a relationship, but maybe it doesn’t feel as fun as it did in the beginning, maybe you’re not feeling as in love, maybe it’s not feeling as sexy, we’re going to be talking about that a lot.
Today we’re going to talk about how to feel confident in your relationship, but I would love to do more relationship content. So if there are things you want to know specifically, please email in Kori@KoriLinn.com or come over to Instagram at Kori Linn and send me a DM and be like, “You know what I really want to hear a podcast about?” And then tell me because this podcast is for you.
It’s to help you solve your problems and help you get what you want and help you create a life that’s magically delightful to you, whatever that is. And I want all of the content to be informed by what you want to hear about and what you want to succeed at.
Okay, let’s dig in. Whether you’ve been with your significant other for a few months, a few years, even a few decades, you may have doubts and insecurities. You may have them from time to time, you may have them kind of low level humming all of the time.
And it might go something like this. Like, does your partner love you as much as you love them? Is your partner a good choice? Are they the right choice? Is this relationship built to last? Like what if you get married and then five years in, you don’t like this person anymore? Like what then?
And if you want to shift those lingering uncertainties into confidence and enjoy your relationship more, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And to give you a little bit of a table of contents, the things that we’re going to dig into are, one, why you don’t feel confident in your relationship. Two, where confidence in your relationship actually comes from. Three, how to build a sense of confidence in your relationship. And four, when to invest in building that confidence and when not to, because confidence isn’t always the answer. Sometimes other changes and things need to be made or happen.
Okay, so let’s dig in. Why don’t you feel confident in your relationship? So a lot of people here are like, well, I don’t feel confident in my relationship because of whatever my significant other is doing. Like, I don’t like it when they do this. I don’t like it when they say this. They don’t text me back fast enough. They don’t call me. They don’t remember the things I say.
All of those things are real and they may be things you actually want to address with your partner. But when it comes to your feelings and whether you feel confident or not, a lot of that is an inside job. And what I mean by that is a lot of that’s going to be framed through the lens of your thoughts and perspectives about yourself, about the other person and about being in a relationship.
I talk sometimes about how thoughts have useful information in them, right? Like if we’re worried and we want to stop worrying, we might first write the worries down and pull out the useful content and then see which of that useful content we actually want to address. But we don’t want to just keep worrying all of the time probably. It’s not very helpful. It’s not very enjoyable.
So we’re going to do a similar thing with confidence in our relationship. Get a piece of paper and write down, why don’t I feel confident in my relationship? And then dump out all of your thoughts. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to find out is it thoughts like, I can’t trust them to love me enough. Everyone abandons me. They probably don’t like me.
Or is it thoughts like, I don’t think we’re a good fit. We don’t seem to be compatible. Like I’m really struggling to get along with them. Those are very different kinds of insecurity. Those are very different kinds of doubt. Those are very different kinds of non-confidence, basically.
And so what we want to do first is we want to mine your current feelings to see what they’re telling us about you, about your beliefs, about the other person and about the relationship.
To give you an example from my own relationship in the beginning, I remember telling a friend that Alex wouldn’t text me back during the day, right? Because she was at work. I was also at work, I worked in corporate IT at this time. But I checked my phone a lot and so sometimes I would feel insecure. I would feel doubt. I would feel not confident because of the amount of hours in between hearing from her.
So that is a great example because the neutral information there, the fact is it maybe took her 10 hours to reply back to a text message because she didn’t reply during the day. And then my brain could take that and either make that mean she doesn’t like me. I’m not important enough. She doesn’t care. Or my brain could be like, she’s busy. She’s at work.
So that’s an example where the factual information, there was nothing disrespectful happening. It was not something that actually affronted my values. I just wasn’t getting a level of reassurance. And so in that lack of the level of reassurance that my brain decided it wanted, I was kind of telling scary stories about like, well, maybe she doesn’t like me. Maybe this is dangerous. I should bail out, blah, blah, blah.
So that’s a great example because my friend was like, don’t overthink it. She has a job. She works hard. She likes you. Look at the other data. She makes plans with you. She texts you back after work hours. My friend was basically like, don’t get it twisted, chill the fuck out, which was great advice, right? Because I took that advice and then my relationship with Alex progressed. We’ve navigated tons of challenges and we’re in an extremely happy relationship of a little bit over seven years now.
At this point, we have a very secure relationship and I feel very connected to her. And I feel very confident both in the relationship and hers and mine ability to show up to the relationship, our ability to navigate conflict. And some of that is because of the things that have happened. Some of that is because of the facts. Like I’ve seen us navigate conflict well before.
But a lot of it is also because of the perspectives that I choose to have about the relationship. I choose to believe that I’m safe here. I choose to believe that she loves me. I choose to believe that this is a good place to be. And then I get to enjoy the benefits of that perspective.
Now, as we talk about all the time, basically every episode, this is not an invitation to gaslight yourself. When you look at why you don’t feel confident in your relationship, it’s going to be a very specific thing, right? It’s going to be your specific thoughts.
And when you dig into those, you’re going to find out like, is this an insecurity thing where I want to feel confident in this relationship and I’m just struggling to build that sense of secureness? Or is there a problem here? Is there an incompatibility here that I actually don’t want to feel confident in or I’m struggling to feel confident, but that’s not going to solve the actual problem.
Now, if you’ve decided you do want to invest in building confidence, and we’ll get a little bit more into when to invest or not a bit later, but let’s just say you’ve decided you do want to invest. How do you even do that and where does it come from?
So some of it is going to come from the data, you know, the real data about the relationship. Like the data I talked about with Alex. The data I’ve observed about how she shows up to the relationship, how she cares for me, how I care for her. Some of it is going to come from that, but that alone will not make you feel confident in your relationship.
What you also have to do is you have to think thoughts and choose perspectives that cultivate that sense of confidence that you want. And what that means is market to yourself. Sell it to yourself.
Now, this is where we want to be careful because anytime we’re selling something to ourselves, we’ve got to make sure we’re selling something that is aligned and makes sense. Otherwise we can get into gaslighting ourselves and putting ourselves into problematic situations, because humans are very convincing, right? And we can be very persuasive.
And I know personally, there have been things I’ve tried to talk myself into in the past where it actually wasn’t a good fit for me, but for some reason I thought I should want it. Either because of social conditioning or something else at play I thought like, I should like this. I have to like this. That should be what I’m doing. You know?
And sometimes that happens at a conscious level. A lot of times it happens at an unconscious level. Like in a lot of ways, I’m like, oh, when I thought I was straight, was I selling myself that idea or just making an assumption about myself based on what we’re culturally taught is the norm?
So let’s review. When we don’t feel confident in a relationship, it is going to come down to perspectives, what we’re thinking about the relationship. But those perspectives are going to be informed by facts. How are we showing up? How’s the other person showing up? Like how’s the relationship doing in its own way?
Where confidence is going to come from is going to be from your thoughts. It’s going to be from your perspectives. It’s going to be from the narrative that you choose to live inside of about your relationship. And that means you’ve got to have some awareness of, like, what are your default thoughts about your relationship, but also about all relationships.
What are your default thoughts about your partner? Are they things that are going to instill confidence or are they like, “Ugh, this person,” right? How to build a sense of confidence in your relationship, which is going to be like, you’re going to figure out if you actually want to. But then how you do that is you choose perspectives that cultivate that sense of confidence.
And then when to invest in building the confidence and when not to, I think that’s really like, are things generally working? Do I like this person? Do I want to stay in this relationship? Why or why not? Like, do I feel like this person treats me with kindness? Do I feel like this person treats me with respect?
Even if there are things you have to talk through or requests you want to make, that’s very normal and a confident, happy, successful relationship. But when people say relationships are work, it’s like, which kind of work is your relationship? And is it work or is it like grueling, intense, all consuming work? Because yes, a long-term happy, sustainable relationship that you feel confident in, it’s going to require effort, but it should not feel like walking across hot coals, right? Or like crawling across a desert.
And sometimes when we say or we believe the idea that relationships are work, then we sign ourselves up for kind of like an extraordinary amount of work and kind of like that self gaslighting, that bending over backwards, trying to make it happen.
So I think when it comes to feeling confident in your relationship, the number one thing is, is this actually where you want to invest in confidence? Because I kind of want for you to be able to feel confident in the relationship or out of the relationship. And then you can actually ultimately really be like, and do I want to build it in this relationship too? Or am I in this relationship because I don’t feel confident on my own? Am I in this relationship because being single feels bad? Am I in this relationship because that’s what successful people do.
If you’re kind of in the relationship to prove something and you don’t really want to be there, then I would argue like, let’s not build confidence in it. So ultimately it’s really about building confidence in yourself, which is kind of always true, right? If we’re feeling more confident at work, we’re building our confidence in ourselves and our capacity to handle things and our capacity to negotiate and ask for what we want and set boundaries and build relationships and do excellent work. And it’s the same in a relationship.
But let’s just say that you’re in a relationship where like you have some squabbles, you have some fights that are kind of recurring. Alex and I had one of those for years, right? That doesn’t actually mean your relationship is doomed. Like all relationships have some incompatibilities. But you love this person and you want to feel more confident, you want to feel more grounded in the relationship.
Then it’s really going to come down to the perspectives you choose. And that’s also where you’re going to find out like, what things did you bring into the relationship? And maybe what things did your partner bring into the relationship? What are the beliefs you brought in about what it means to love someone? What are the beliefs you brought in about what it means to matter, what it means to be valued?
And then a lot of times what we are doing in coaching is breaking down old beliefs that are blocking us from getting what we want and then cultivating new beliefs, right? So for instance, with Alex and her not texting me back during the day, I got to decide, is this a deal breaker? I decided, no, it’s not. And so then it’s like choosing she respects and cares about me and it’s a fine way to act to not respond during a work day because people are busy.
If she didn’t respond to me outside of work hours, then I might’ve come and said like, hey, let’s talk about our communication or something like that. Or I might’ve decided it wasn’t a good fit. But it’s like, can we frame what’s happening within a lens of something we can feel confident about?
And if there is some kind of situation that you’re like, I don’t really want to feel confident about this, but I want to feel confident about the relationship, it’s then like, can we build confidence in our ability to navigate that situation with our partner?
Can we build confidence in our belief that it’s worth it to tell the truth and to learn to tell the truth skillfully and with kindness? Because that’s also how we come closer together and build a relationship with more compatibility and that people aren’t necessarily supposed to have just instant, just add water compatibility because we have different socialization. We came from different families of origin. We have different internal beliefs and narratives about what it means to love and be loved.
There is so much that happens in relationships specifically where there are all these cultural assumptions. And a lot of the cultural assumptions we might choose anyways, like we live in a culture that has the cultural assumption of heteronormativity. So I used to exist in that and then I exited that and came to queerness. But we also live in a culture that has a normalization of monogamy. I’ve tried polyamory a little bit, and now I’m in a monogamous relationship.
So just because I understand that culture has this normalization of monogamy doesn’t mean I have to reject that. Just bringing that up to my awareness though, allows me to be like, is that what I want here? Is that working? Is that going to help me build a relationship that feels good to me? And is that what I want to build confidence in?
So for me, I’m in a monogamous relationship. That’s what we’ve decided. We like that. We chose that on purpose. Whereas a lot of people, again, choose things by default. And then if that’s what I want, then it’s about building confidence in that. Building confidence in monogamy could look like choosing to believe that a person can be monogamous and be happy with that. And that we can be successful at that.
And focusing on that versus focusing on my own fears or insecurities around like, well, what if she’s not, or what if something bad happens? Or can humans do that?
So basically feeling confident, I think, is selling yourself on your ability to do the thing you want to do and to handle the bumps along the way. I think a lot of people think confidence is about being excellent or being perfect or always getting it right. And first of all, it can’t be about those things because none of us are always excellent. None of us are perfect and none of us are always getting it right.
And if that’s what your confidence is built on, your confidence is going to be brittle and it’s going to crack and break and fall apart when something goes poorly. So that’s not the kind of confidence we want to build, right?
So instead, I would invite you to think about building a confidence that’s flexible and adaptable and elastic. It doesn’t require you to be an exact way. It doesn’t require your partner to be an exact way. It doesn’t require the relationship to be an exact way. It’s about you believing in your ability to handle whatever arises, to advocate for yourself and to co-create with this other person, a place that feels really good to be.
And if those are things that you’re like, oh fuck, I think maybe I need some extra help advocating for myself. Or like, I think I need some extra help focusing on my ability to handle things because my brain always goes to catastrophizing and thinking I’m going to be destroyed if something bad goes wrong. That’s the kind of stuff we work on in coaching.
I work so often with people on bringing them into the ability to be with what’s good in their life and plan for what could be amazing while also yes, using the useful content to prepare for things that could go wrong. We want to be able to handle what goes wrong without being totally taken over by it and without it allowing to take over the times in our life when things are going well.
And then I also work so often with clients on things like self-advocacy. And I think that can be so important in your ability to feel confident in your relationship, because if you don’t have the skills to advocate for yourself in that relationship, it’s going to be really hard to feel good about being there and to feel like, yes, I can get what I want here. Because if you can’t ask for and negotiate for and explain what you want, it’s going to be pretty hard to get it, right? It’d be like calling the pizza place and being like, send a pizza, but I can’t tell you which one. It’d be really hard for them to give you the right one.
So those are the kinds of things we work on in coaching. And if you have a relationship and you want to feel more confident and build up your skill set in there, I would love to coach you on that. And if you don’t have a relationship yet, but you want to get yourself set up for one, or want to have some coaching support while you go find a person and build that relationship up, like my other client that I mentioned earlier, I would love to support you in that.
So that is how to feel confident in relationships, when to do it. And to circle back on like, when you might not want to invest in building confidence, I think that’s like when there is a serious incompatibility, that’s going to need to be addressed. Or if you’re in danger. If you feel like the other person is treating you with disrespect or violating your boundaries. Or if someone’s cheated on you, maybe that’s something you want to come back from and you want to reestablish confidence in the relationship. Maybe it’s not.
Confidence is something that we prize culturally, but it’s not always the answer. Sometimes it’s actually important to not have confidence in something and say things like, I don’t think that’s going to work for me. So I don’t want confidence to be this cure-all that you just try to pour on any situation so you can feel good about yourself.
Sometimes we want to feel like a relationship isn’t worthy of our confidence. Not that the other person’s not worthy, I think all humans are worthy of love and belonging just for existing, but not everything is a good fit for your confidence. And when you get into thought work and coaching and seeing how powerful your thoughts are, with great power comes great responsibility as the saying goes.
And then it’s very important for you to choose where you want to apply and where you want to sell yourself on things. Because what we don’t want to have happen is you selling yourself on something that’s ultimately best case, a bad fit, worst case, an abusive situation or a dangerous one.
So we’ve talked about why you don’t feel confident, where confidence actually comes from, how to build a sense of confidence, when to invest in building that sense of confidence. And if you want more support with this, I would love to help you with that.
All right, y’all, that’s what I have for you today. Have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
The Satisfied AF podcast is the place to learn how to create a life and career that’s wildly delicious. Want a steamier sex life? We’ve got you. Want a more satisfying career? We’ll cover that too. And you can be sure we’ll spend lots of time talking about how to build connected, fun relationships that can handle life’s ups and downs. No matter what goals you’re working on, this show will help you create a one of a kind life that is just right for you. Join me, life and career coach Kori Linn and each week I’ll give you lots of practical tips, tools, and proven strategies to help you create all the satisfaction your heart desires.
Hello, hello, hello. Happy Wednesday. I hope you’re having a glorious day. I’m having a great day. I’m working a half day and then getting in the car with my bestie and my girlfriend and we’re driving to the coast to stay the night and then get up tomorrow and do a hike that is supposed to be really beautiful. And I’m really excited about it.
I hope you also have something wonderful and interesting going on in your day, whether it’s as big of an adventure as a little overnight trip or even an international destination, or as small of an adventure as an amazing cup of coffee.
All right, we have talked so much on this podcast about work because it was originally a podcast that was about career only. And I am so excited to now get to talk to you about all the things. And I noticed that a lot of people find the podcast by looking for how to feel confident at work, and I love that. And I know that a lot of people have had some really positive impacts from listening to previous episodes that speak to that.
And I wanted to talk about relationships because honestly, in my own life, one of the things that coaching has made the biggest, most profound difference for is my relationship with my significant other, Alex. So obviously coaching has also made a huge impact in my work life, but I’ve talked a lot about that and I think I haven’t talked as much about the truly profound and impactful changes that have happened in my relationship.
The relationship I’m in now is the longest relationship I’ve ever been in. We just crossed the seven year mark from our first date. And it’s also the most successful. Alex and I have navigated so many difficult things and so much conflict and so many patterns, both like my own old patterns and her own old patterns.
And we’re still navigating lots of that. We still go to couples therapy maybe like once a quarter. I still get coaching about the relationship sometimes. But I will say the relationship is such a success story for me of what coaching is able to make possible and what it has already done in my own life.
And so I wanted to share that with you because I know that for a lot of people, the relationship with a significant other is either something they really want, but they haven’t been able to figure out yet, I’ve coached people like that before.
Actually, one of my clients, we coached for about six months about work. And then after that, she was like, okay, I want to like a long-term partner, I’ve never had one. And we coached about that, I think maybe for another six months. And she got a boyfriend in that time. And then all this stuff came up, right? Like all the patterns came up, all the difficulties came up and we coached about all of them real time while she navigated that relationship. And just a few weeks ago, she got engaged to that person and we’re so happy for her.
And I will just take a moment to say, I think getting married is totally neutral. If it’s not for you, I have absolutely no judgment about that. I think our culture places way too much of an emphasis on marriage and being the one. But I also think it’s really, really cool and fantastic when people have a goal that they bring to coaching and then we achieve that goal and then they graduate from coaching with me and then they go on to progress in that goal.
So it’s both a thing of like, we can celebrate anything about you. It doesn’t have to be these traditional goals, like getting married, having a baby. But sometimes that is what people want and I am fucking here to support people in getting what they want. And especially in navigating all of the internal bullshit that comes up when we’re on the path to getting what we want, like all the things that would have slowed us down or stopped us before coaching.
That’s my favorite to coach on and to help my clients walk through. So if you want help walking through something like that, I can help you with that. And if you’re already in a relationship, but maybe it doesn’t feel as fun as it did in the beginning, maybe you’re not feeling as in love, maybe it’s not feeling as sexy, we’re going to be talking about that a lot.
Today we’re going to talk about how to feel confident in your relationship, but I would love to do more relationship content. So if there are things you want to know specifically, please email in Kori@KoriLinn.com or come over to Instagram at Kori Linn and send me a DM and be like, “You know what I really want to hear a podcast about?” And then tell me because this podcast is for you.
It’s to help you solve your problems and help you get what you want and help you create a life that’s magically delightful to you, whatever that is. And I want all of the content to be informed by what you want to hear about and what you want to succeed at.
Okay, let’s dig in. Whether you’ve been with your significant other for a few months, a few years, even a few decades, you may have doubts and insecurities. You may have them from time to time, you may have them kind of low level humming all of the time.
And it might go something like this. Like, does your partner love you as much as you love them? Is your partner a good choice? Are they the right choice? Is this relationship built to last? Like what if you get married and then five years in, you don’t like this person anymore? Like what then?
And if you want to shift those lingering uncertainties into confidence and enjoy your relationship more, that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And to give you a little bit of a table of contents, the things that we’re going to dig into are, one, why you don’t feel confident in your relationship. Two, where confidence in your relationship actually comes from. Three, how to build a sense of confidence in your relationship. And four, when to invest in building that confidence and when not to, because confidence isn’t always the answer. Sometimes other changes and things need to be made or happen.
Okay, so let’s dig in. Why don’t you feel confident in your relationship? So a lot of people here are like, well, I don’t feel confident in my relationship because of whatever my significant other is doing. Like, I don’t like it when they do this. I don’t like it when they say this. They don’t text me back fast enough. They don’t call me. They don’t remember the things I say.
All of those things are real and they may be things you actually want to address with your partner. But when it comes to your feelings and whether you feel confident or not, a lot of that is an inside job. And what I mean by that is a lot of that’s going to be framed through the lens of your thoughts and perspectives about yourself, about the other person and about being in a relationship.
I talk sometimes about how thoughts have useful information in them, right? Like if we’re worried and we want to stop worrying, we might first write the worries down and pull out the useful content and then see which of that useful content we actually want to address. But we don’t want to just keep worrying all of the time probably. It’s not very helpful. It’s not very enjoyable.
So we’re going to do a similar thing with confidence in our relationship. Get a piece of paper and write down, why don’t I feel confident in my relationship? And then dump out all of your thoughts. And what you’re going to do is you’re going to find out is it thoughts like, I can’t trust them to love me enough. Everyone abandons me. They probably don’t like me.
Or is it thoughts like, I don’t think we’re a good fit. We don’t seem to be compatible. Like I’m really struggling to get along with them. Those are very different kinds of insecurity. Those are very different kinds of doubt. Those are very different kinds of non-confidence, basically.
And so what we want to do first is we want to mine your current feelings to see what they’re telling us about you, about your beliefs, about the other person and about the relationship.
To give you an example from my own relationship in the beginning, I remember telling a friend that Alex wouldn’t text me back during the day, right? Because she was at work. I was also at work, I worked in corporate IT at this time. But I checked my phone a lot and so sometimes I would feel insecure. I would feel doubt. I would feel not confident because of the amount of hours in between hearing from her.
So that is a great example because the neutral information there, the fact is it maybe took her 10 hours to reply back to a text message because she didn’t reply during the day. And then my brain could take that and either make that mean she doesn’t like me. I’m not important enough. She doesn’t care. Or my brain could be like, she’s busy. She’s at work.
So that’s an example where the factual information, there was nothing disrespectful happening. It was not something that actually affronted my values. I just wasn’t getting a level of reassurance. And so in that lack of the level of reassurance that my brain decided it wanted, I was kind of telling scary stories about like, well, maybe she doesn’t like me. Maybe this is dangerous. I should bail out, blah, blah, blah.
So that’s a great example because my friend was like, don’t overthink it. She has a job. She works hard. She likes you. Look at the other data. She makes plans with you. She texts you back after work hours. My friend was basically like, don’t get it twisted, chill the fuck out, which was great advice, right? Because I took that advice and then my relationship with Alex progressed. We’ve navigated tons of challenges and we’re in an extremely happy relationship of a little bit over seven years now.
At this point, we have a very secure relationship and I feel very connected to her. And I feel very confident both in the relationship and hers and mine ability to show up to the relationship, our ability to navigate conflict. And some of that is because of the things that have happened. Some of that is because of the facts. Like I’ve seen us navigate conflict well before.
But a lot of it is also because of the perspectives that I choose to have about the relationship. I choose to believe that I’m safe here. I choose to believe that she loves me. I choose to believe that this is a good place to be. And then I get to enjoy the benefits of that perspective.
Now, as we talk about all the time, basically every episode, this is not an invitation to gaslight yourself. When you look at why you don’t feel confident in your relationship, it’s going to be a very specific thing, right? It’s going to be your specific thoughts.
And when you dig into those, you’re going to find out like, is this an insecurity thing where I want to feel confident in this relationship and I’m just struggling to build that sense of secureness? Or is there a problem here? Is there an incompatibility here that I actually don’t want to feel confident in or I’m struggling to feel confident, but that’s not going to solve the actual problem.
Now, if you’ve decided you do want to invest in building confidence, and we’ll get a little bit more into when to invest or not a bit later, but let’s just say you’ve decided you do want to invest. How do you even do that and where does it come from?
So some of it is going to come from the data, you know, the real data about the relationship. Like the data I talked about with Alex. The data I’ve observed about how she shows up to the relationship, how she cares for me, how I care for her. Some of it is going to come from that, but that alone will not make you feel confident in your relationship.
What you also have to do is you have to think thoughts and choose perspectives that cultivate that sense of confidence that you want. And what that means is market to yourself. Sell it to yourself.
Now, this is where we want to be careful because anytime we’re selling something to ourselves, we’ve got to make sure we’re selling something that is aligned and makes sense. Otherwise we can get into gaslighting ourselves and putting ourselves into problematic situations, because humans are very convincing, right? And we can be very persuasive.
And I know personally, there have been things I’ve tried to talk myself into in the past where it actually wasn’t a good fit for me, but for some reason I thought I should want it. Either because of social conditioning or something else at play I thought like, I should like this. I have to like this. That should be what I’m doing. You know?
And sometimes that happens at a conscious level. A lot of times it happens at an unconscious level. Like in a lot of ways, I’m like, oh, when I thought I was straight, was I selling myself that idea or just making an assumption about myself based on what we’re culturally taught is the norm?
So let’s review. When we don’t feel confident in a relationship, it is going to come down to perspectives, what we’re thinking about the relationship. But those perspectives are going to be informed by facts. How are we showing up? How’s the other person showing up? Like how’s the relationship doing in its own way?
Where confidence is going to come from is going to be from your thoughts. It’s going to be from your perspectives. It’s going to be from the narrative that you choose to live inside of about your relationship. And that means you’ve got to have some awareness of, like, what are your default thoughts about your relationship, but also about all relationships.
What are your default thoughts about your partner? Are they things that are going to instill confidence or are they like, “Ugh, this person,” right? How to build a sense of confidence in your relationship, which is going to be like, you’re going to figure out if you actually want to. But then how you do that is you choose perspectives that cultivate that sense of confidence.
And then when to invest in building the confidence and when not to, I think that’s really like, are things generally working? Do I like this person? Do I want to stay in this relationship? Why or why not? Like, do I feel like this person treats me with kindness? Do I feel like this person treats me with respect?
Even if there are things you have to talk through or requests you want to make, that’s very normal and a confident, happy, successful relationship. But when people say relationships are work, it’s like, which kind of work is your relationship? And is it work or is it like grueling, intense, all consuming work? Because yes, a long-term happy, sustainable relationship that you feel confident in, it’s going to require effort, but it should not feel like walking across hot coals, right? Or like crawling across a desert.
And sometimes when we say or we believe the idea that relationships are work, then we sign ourselves up for kind of like an extraordinary amount of work and kind of like that self gaslighting, that bending over backwards, trying to make it happen.
So I think when it comes to feeling confident in your relationship, the number one thing is, is this actually where you want to invest in confidence? Because I kind of want for you to be able to feel confident in the relationship or out of the relationship. And then you can actually ultimately really be like, and do I want to build it in this relationship too? Or am I in this relationship because I don’t feel confident on my own? Am I in this relationship because being single feels bad? Am I in this relationship because that’s what successful people do.
If you’re kind of in the relationship to prove something and you don’t really want to be there, then I would argue like, let’s not build confidence in it. So ultimately it’s really about building confidence in yourself, which is kind of always true, right? If we’re feeling more confident at work, we’re building our confidence in ourselves and our capacity to handle things and our capacity to negotiate and ask for what we want and set boundaries and build relationships and do excellent work. And it’s the same in a relationship.
But let’s just say that you’re in a relationship where like you have some squabbles, you have some fights that are kind of recurring. Alex and I had one of those for years, right? That doesn’t actually mean your relationship is doomed. Like all relationships have some incompatibilities. But you love this person and you want to feel more confident, you want to feel more grounded in the relationship.
Then it’s really going to come down to the perspectives you choose. And that’s also where you’re going to find out like, what things did you bring into the relationship? And maybe what things did your partner bring into the relationship? What are the beliefs you brought in about what it means to love someone? What are the beliefs you brought in about what it means to matter, what it means to be valued?
And then a lot of times what we are doing in coaching is breaking down old beliefs that are blocking us from getting what we want and then cultivating new beliefs, right? So for instance, with Alex and her not texting me back during the day, I got to decide, is this a deal breaker? I decided, no, it’s not. And so then it’s like choosing she respects and cares about me and it’s a fine way to act to not respond during a work day because people are busy.
If she didn’t respond to me outside of work hours, then I might’ve come and said like, hey, let’s talk about our communication or something like that. Or I might’ve decided it wasn’t a good fit. But it’s like, can we frame what’s happening within a lens of something we can feel confident about?
And if there is some kind of situation that you’re like, I don’t really want to feel confident about this, but I want to feel confident about the relationship, it’s then like, can we build confidence in our ability to navigate that situation with our partner?
Can we build confidence in our belief that it’s worth it to tell the truth and to learn to tell the truth skillfully and with kindness? Because that’s also how we come closer together and build a relationship with more compatibility and that people aren’t necessarily supposed to have just instant, just add water compatibility because we have different socialization. We came from different families of origin. We have different internal beliefs and narratives about what it means to love and be loved.
There is so much that happens in relationships specifically where there are all these cultural assumptions. And a lot of the cultural assumptions we might choose anyways, like we live in a culture that has the cultural assumption of heteronormativity. So I used to exist in that and then I exited that and came to queerness. But we also live in a culture that has a normalization of monogamy. I’ve tried polyamory a little bit, and now I’m in a monogamous relationship.
So just because I understand that culture has this normalization of monogamy doesn’t mean I have to reject that. Just bringing that up to my awareness though, allows me to be like, is that what I want here? Is that working? Is that going to help me build a relationship that feels good to me? And is that what I want to build confidence in?
So for me, I’m in a monogamous relationship. That’s what we’ve decided. We like that. We chose that on purpose. Whereas a lot of people, again, choose things by default. And then if that’s what I want, then it’s about building confidence in that. Building confidence in monogamy could look like choosing to believe that a person can be monogamous and be happy with that. And that we can be successful at that.
And focusing on that versus focusing on my own fears or insecurities around like, well, what if she’s not, or what if something bad happens? Or can humans do that?
So basically feeling confident, I think, is selling yourself on your ability to do the thing you want to do and to handle the bumps along the way. I think a lot of people think confidence is about being excellent or being perfect or always getting it right. And first of all, it can’t be about those things because none of us are always excellent. None of us are perfect and none of us are always getting it right.
And if that’s what your confidence is built on, your confidence is going to be brittle and it’s going to crack and break and fall apart when something goes poorly. So that’s not the kind of confidence we want to build, right?
So instead, I would invite you to think about building a confidence that’s flexible and adaptable and elastic. It doesn’t require you to be an exact way. It doesn’t require your partner to be an exact way. It doesn’t require the relationship to be an exact way. It’s about you believing in your ability to handle whatever arises, to advocate for yourself and to co-create with this other person, a place that feels really good to be.
And if those are things that you’re like, oh fuck, I think maybe I need some extra help advocating for myself. Or like, I think I need some extra help focusing on my ability to handle things because my brain always goes to catastrophizing and thinking I’m going to be destroyed if something bad goes wrong. That’s the kind of stuff we work on in coaching.
I work so often with people on bringing them into the ability to be with what’s good in their life and plan for what could be amazing while also yes, using the useful content to prepare for things that could go wrong. We want to be able to handle what goes wrong without being totally taken over by it and without it allowing to take over the times in our life when things are going well.
And then I also work so often with clients on things like self-advocacy. And I think that can be so important in your ability to feel confident in your relationship, because if you don’t have the skills to advocate for yourself in that relationship, it’s going to be really hard to feel good about being there and to feel like, yes, I can get what I want here. Because if you can’t ask for and negotiate for and explain what you want, it’s going to be pretty hard to get it, right? It’d be like calling the pizza place and being like, send a pizza, but I can’t tell you which one. It’d be really hard for them to give you the right one.
So those are the kinds of things we work on in coaching. And if you have a relationship and you want to feel more confident and build up your skill set in there, I would love to coach you on that. And if you don’t have a relationship yet, but you want to get yourself set up for one, or want to have some coaching support while you go find a person and build that relationship up, like my other client that I mentioned earlier, I would love to support you in that.
So that is how to feel confident in relationships, when to do it. And to circle back on like, when you might not want to invest in building confidence, I think that’s like when there is a serious incompatibility, that’s going to need to be addressed. Or if you’re in danger. If you feel like the other person is treating you with disrespect or violating your boundaries. Or if someone’s cheated on you, maybe that’s something you want to come back from and you want to reestablish confidence in the relationship. Maybe it’s not.
Confidence is something that we prize culturally, but it’s not always the answer. Sometimes it’s actually important to not have confidence in something and say things like, I don’t think that’s going to work for me. So I don’t want confidence to be this cure-all that you just try to pour on any situation so you can feel good about yourself.
Sometimes we want to feel like a relationship isn’t worthy of our confidence. Not that the other person’s not worthy, I think all humans are worthy of love and belonging just for existing, but not everything is a good fit for your confidence. And when you get into thought work and coaching and seeing how powerful your thoughts are, with great power comes great responsibility as the saying goes.
And then it’s very important for you to choose where you want to apply and where you want to sell yourself on things. Because what we don’t want to have happen is you selling yourself on something that’s ultimately best case, a bad fit, worst case, an abusive situation or a dangerous one.
So we’ve talked about why you don’t feel confident, where confidence actually comes from, how to build a sense of confidence, when to invest in building that sense of confidence. And if you want more support with this, I would love to help you with that.
All right, y’all, that’s what I have for you today. Have a lovely week and I will talk to you next time. Bye.
Thank you for joining me for this week’s episode of Satisfied AF. If you are ready to create a wildly delicious life and have way more fun than you ever thought possible, visit www.korilinn.com to see how I can help. See you next week.
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