Why You Don’t Feel Loved By People Who Think They Love You  | (#110) Beyond Success: Psychology & Philosophy for Achievers, with David Tian, Ph.D.

Welcome to the Beyond Success Podcast: Psychology and Philosophy for Achievers on the Bigger Questions Behind What You’re Building, and I’m your host, David Tian.

Imagine that you’ve built something successful, and you now have several good options. Perhaps you’ve sold a company, or perhaps you’re still building a business or contributing to a business and you now have more freedom to decide what to actually take on.

Now imagine in this transitional phase, an opportunity presents itself to you and it’s an opportunity that makes sense on paper. You know this industry. The people and team that you would put together for this are capable and you’ve worked with them before, and you could make a substantial contribution to this. Now, you haven’t decided fully whether you want to go all in on this new opportunity, but other people have already begun talking about your involvement in it as if it’s a done deal, like you’ve already chosen to do this. [00:55.6]

A former colleague calls you up and tells you about how excited he is that you’re going to be involved with this. Your friends are happy to hear about this opportunity that they expect that you will just take. They just assume that you will. People who know your reputation just assume that this would be the obvious next step for you. Your extended family talks and acts as if this is just the obvious next thing for you to devote the next five to 10 years of your life to.

You are interested in this new opportunity, but you’re also considering perhaps a different use of the next five to 10 years of your life. Maybe it’s another kind of project and maybe it’s a passion project that doesn’t obviously lead to more money or more of the type of opportunities that other people value. Maybe it’s building a serious relationship or marriage, or building a family, or maybe it’s continuing to build while making different commitments about your time in a way that’s not as intensive as this new opportunity would require and is not as intensive as the previous 10 years of your life. [01:59.0]

So, when you’re in these conversations, you keep the conversation pleasant, and you leave your doubts hidden, unspoken. Gradually, other people make plans for you and for themselves around an answer that you actually haven’t given. In this scenario, you have the money and the independence to choose, but you feel that expressing a preference that’s different from their expectations feels like letting them down.

You know that their expectations for you come from a genuine place of caring about you and a genuine place of admiration and affection for you, but that does not establish that their preferred future for you is the one that you should live.

In this episode, I’m going to reveal to you how to recognize when apparent agreement actually conceals an important difference that’s hidden. I’m going to show you how to exercise your freedom to choose without requiring everyone else’s approval of your decision. [02:57.6]

You’ll also discover how to build relationships in which your True Self can be truly known beyond your performance or your usefulness, or your reputation or the old roles that you’re used to occupying in those relationships, and how to become someone that others can challenge honestly so that your judgment benefits from what they actually see.

Being able to encourage disagreement so that you have true harmony is so important, because it will dictate whom you can love, whom you will trust, and what success makes possible for your life, the fulfillment and happiness that can come from it. You can have a lot of freedom while continuing to make choices according to expectations that you haven’t actually accepted and maybe haven’t examined. True self-confidence requires the self-trust to make wise decisions that you have deemed to be the right ones, even though other people might be disappointed. [03:57.7]

In this episode, I’m going to be directly attacking this myth that having fewer disagreements means that you have a stronger relationship. It obviously doesn’t. People could agree with you simply because they are too afraid to express a different view, because to them it feels too risky or costly. You might think you have the freedom to choose, while actually being held back and restricted, because you or they are avoiding the conversation that you need to have in order to actually use that freedom.

The first important thing to notice that most people miss is that success actually makes disagreement harder for others to voice to you and it makes agreement harder for you to interpret. As you become more successful, other people have something riding on your answer, some further agenda. As your influence grows, your decisions end up affecting more people.

An employee may depend more on your assessment. An advisor may depend more on remaining your advisor. A friend might hope to join your next venture or to make some money off your bets in the market. A relative may have expectations about how you will use your time or money. [05:11.2]

Their self-interest doesn’t actually make them dishonest or manipulative, but their personal interests do affect what they say, what they emphasize, and what they leave out. Your success also influences what other people feel free to say.

You may sincerely ask for objections or counterarguments, but then the conversation seems to end with apparent agreement and you leave thinking all their objections have been answered, but the other person leaves thinking it wasn’t worth raising, because, from their perspective, you interrupted, became irritated, or argued a little bit too much for their comfort, and then they withdrew the concern and have decided they will never raise an objection again because it was too much trouble. This, of course, isn’t just what occurs in the professional sphere. In the personal realm, this is just as prevalent. [06:01.7]

A friend might stop questioning how often you keep canceling plans or someone that you’re dating might avoid discussing with you what a serious relationship would require. Especially when you get more successful, other people might accommodate your preferences without voicing or revealing theirs, so you never discover what they really want. You can be surrounded by capable, affectionate people, it seems, and still lack access to important information, important truths about your life.

So, there are two responsibilities that are required for true freedom. You need the freedom to express a different judgment, a contrary point of view, and other people need to have that freedom when it comes to you. If disagreement gets too expensive, then the agreement that you do get actually ends up telling you very little. [06:52.0]

Now we’re going to turn to what may be a surprising source for some: Confucius. Okay, so in Confucianism, harmony is a really important concept. Around 2,500 years ago, in the Analects 13.23, Confucius distinguishes between harmony or he from sameness or agreement or tong.

Okay, so paraphrasing here of my own translation: “A person of good judgment can relate well to others without simply agreeing with them. Agreement alone doesn’t establish a good relationship.” This principle challenges the idea that respect requires conformity or obedience, or sameness.

Music is a really great illustration of this, and in fact, in the early classics over 2,500 years ago, there was a classic of music, because that was how fundamental it was. It was seen as part of the nature of the universe, the tones of the musical scale, and the tones that are dissonant or consonant and the way in which music moves us emotionally.

Now, I could easily devote an entire series to how music is a metaphor for life, but I’m just going to pull out a very basic illustration of this. Harmony and disharmony, or consonance and dissonance in music, comes from how the different notes relate to each other. [08:11.3]

The ideal is sort of like in jazz, my favorite style of music. It’s when musicians listen to each other and respond to each other. Playing whatever you like without listening or attending to what anyone else is playing generally won’t produce harmony, but requiring everyone to play the same notes also fails to produce harmony.

Harmony in music comes from different notes that fit well with each other, and as you get more sophisticated in your musical taste, notes that might otherwise sound dissonant if played in a particular way or combined in a particular way end up sounding even more beautiful to the ear than basic harmonies, again, jazz and blues being a great example of that. [09:00.8]

Let’s apply this metaphor or analogy to life outside of music. Imagine two founders who could share a purpose, but disagree about how to do the expansion or how to scale, or imagine two intimate partners who care about their future together, but disagree about where to live, or imagine family members who remain committed to one another, but hold, let’s say, different religious beliefs.

A shared commitment to each other doesn’t eliminate our differences between one another. In fact, the more differences we have, the more potential harmony and the beauty of that harmony we could experience, and the more commitment would be required. Until you have a difference, you won’t know how much harmony you could produce and you won’t know how much each of you are committed to one another. It’s the differences that test the strength of the bonds, and it’s the differences that express and allow to grow the strength of the bonds. True harmony in a relationship, therefore, requires important differences to be freely expressed and open for discussion. [10:07.4]

Now, obviously, at some point, the group has to arrive at a decision. Companies and households need to make decisions, and a fair hearing doesn’t give every person a veto and create a stalemate so that no decision ends up being implemented and you just stay stuck. But cooperation actually becomes less trustworthy when people conceal their true objections just to be accepted by the group.

You don’t know how strong or authentic or genuine a relationship is until an important difference can exist without either party having to hide it. You can’t have an authentic relationship if one or both of you are being inauthentic with each other. [10:51.8]

Now, Confucianism and the Analects and Confucius go even deeper than this. They have a concept called remonstrance, remonstrating. Their belief is that loyalty requires correction when there’s a genuine, honest disagreement. Their belief was that remonstrating with the ruler means urging the ruler to reconsider a mistaken course, even if it could be risky for the advisor.

This isn’t just obviously for the political context. Analects 4.18 also discusses this in terms of our duty to correct our parents gently when we believe they’re going down the wrong road or making wrong decisions. A modern corollary of this might be an advisor to a family office. Now, imagine a principal of the family office, the actual rich person, appointing an incapable relative to an important role. Now, the advisor can see that that appointment will end up harming the institution or the family, or the office. [11:52.0]

Supporting the decision of this principal will preserve access for the advisor and keep the relationship pleasant, and objecting, saying what he really believes, arguing for it might really piss off that principal, the person who actually controls the appointment and the advisor’s job, and this is what economists call the agency problem. So, the advisor can protect his job by being silent about what he really thinks, but as a result, he deprives the principal of his judgment—the very thing that the principal is hiring the advisor to do.

The same is true when it comes to therapy. Studies have shown that therapists can keep a client longer by being gentle and not disagreeing, not pushing too hard, as they might say. Yes, you will keep the money coming in, therapists, but this is at the cost in the long run of honest feedback that the client could probably really benefit from.

So, if you find your therapist constantly supporting you and agreeing with you, this may be why, because he or she wants to keep your checks coming in each week. Again, we have the agency problem, which is a conflict of interest between the parties. [13:05.6]

Sometimes, the real problem isn’t more effort or more motivation. It’s knowing the right direction. A lot of people listening to this podcast are capable and driven. Things still look fine on paper, but life still feels strangely flat. When that happens, more advice usually isn’t the answer. Clarity is.

I’ve put together a short assessment that takes about two minutes. It’s simply a way to see which area deserves your attention most right now, whether that’s relationships, decision-making, or how pressure is being handled day to day. Based on your responses, you’ll be sent a short set of master classes related to that area.

If that sounds useful, you can find it at DTPhD.com/quiz. That’s “dtphd.com/quiz.”

Now let’s look at this from the perspective of the family system. Take the example of the black sheep. Imagine a family that repeatedly excuses one of the family members’ bad behavior or cruel behavior, and this is what they’re used to doing, so they enable this cruel behavior by this domineering or dominant authority figure in the family. [14:12.0]

Everyone else in the family knows exactly which subjects would provoke him. The relatives tolerate insults from him and then warn the newcomers to be careful around him because that’s just the way he is, so they enable his toxic behavior. Then, finally, one person objects, puts his foot down, stands at the gate, and says, “Thus far and no further.”

Then what happens, generally, in the family? What happens is the family often will begin discussing that person, the one who stood up and objected, that person’s problems, his timing, his tone, his difficult personality. They turn on him. That’s the black sheep. It makes it easier to deal with their toxic family cycle by turning on the new black sheep. Right? So, the actual toxic behavior ends up receiving a lot less attention than and the discomfort of even just discussing it or challenging it. [15:04.0]

So, what happened here? The black sheep’s objection made this existing problem more visible. It surfaced this and shown a light on it, so in this family, speaking up ends up being attacked as causing conflict unnecessarily, because from the other family members’ perspective, they have been managing this through enabling, through accommodation, and unwittingly allowing or enabling the toxic or harmful or abusive behavior to continue. Even more pernicious is that some relatives might privately agree with a black sheep, but refuse to stand up for him and refuse to share the cost of challenging it.

Now, obviously, just being the black sheep doesn’t establish that you are in the right. Your objection might be mistaken, or it might be mixed with lots of biased agenda or with resentment, or projection or transference. So, obviously, the claims or the allegations need to be examined for their substance. But the bigger point remains—you can’t invite someone to protect you from your own mistakes or from your blind spots and then require them to always agree with you. [16:11.4]

Now, this becomes even more tricky when it comes to the false self. Okay, what do I mean by that? I’m using the term here in a kind of rough, approximate sense, but it’s important here because it often is what’s at play for successful people. You may actually enjoy building businesses or solving problems and taking responsibility and taking on obligations. Those abilities have been a central part of your life and are a major part of you, but other people can begin treating those parts of you, as if they were all of you, and that’s all you are.

You may unconsciously be feeding this impression of you, because there’s a sphere of uncertainty or disappointment if you express any other parts of you. So, I’m using the term “false self” here to denote the version of you that you keep presenting to others because you believe that your acceptance depends on concealing something important about yourself that isn’t in line with that version of you. [17:08.8]

For example, in public, your persona or the false self might challenge investors and competitors, and challenge conventional wisdom, and it seems like you do it without difficulty naturally. But admitting uncertainty or admitting struggling with uncertainty to a friend ends up feeling a lot harder for you, right?

You might find it difficult to tell someone that you’re dating that you want a family, but that you don’t know how to make room for one in your professional life, or you may conceal to others that this prestigious opportunity actually doesn’t really appeal to you, even though everyone believes that you should take it and wants you to take it.

Unfortunately, here’s the true cost to real love and connection—people can admire you sincerely while actually knowing very little about what you really fear or what you really hope for, or what you really value beyond the surface achievements. [18:05.2]

If you repeatedly present only the capable, accomplished version, then the people that you care about don’t get an opportunity to know the rest of you and don’t get an opportunity to connect with or love the rest of you, and over time, it becomes even more pernicious, because, then, if you’re smart, you know that their affection for you is hard to trust because you’ve concealed essential or central parts of you, and the doubt should always be there, “Would they still treat me this way or love me or connect with me if they found out the truth, or if they knew about these other parts of me that I’ve been keeping hidden?” You keep wondering, “Would they still choose the relationship if they really knew?”

Think about the example of someone whose sexuality they conceal because they’re afraid of disapproval from their family members or their peers, or for someone who goes through the motions to appease the religious family that they were born into, when, in fact, they no longer subscribe to their family’s religion and maybe even finds parts of it abhorrent. [19:10.8]

If you keep the peace in this way by being inauthentic to yourself, in the long run, you end up dying inside. You keep compromising yourself to the point where you can no longer trust yourself. Important choices or options end up becoming unavailable to you, and you might even block them out so that you’re not even aware of them over time because someone else would object.

Or you stop pursuing relationships that are important to you or possibilities you really care about just to keep someone else happy. You become less able to distinguish your own preferences from the answers that other people expect of you, and you get really good at predicting what those expectations are or knowing what they are.

What ends up happening over time is that your own resentment towards these people grows and festers, and this ends up costing you years of your life that you cannot recover. If you avoid conflict in order to keep the outer peace, you end up starting a war inside yourself. [20:10.5]

That last line is a paraphrase of a quote I heard somewhere, but I haven’t been able to find the real source of it, but it’s one I agree with. If you avoid conflict in order to keep the peace, you end up starting a war inside yourself.

Now, as an important caveat, this does not mean that you should emotionally vomit to everyone or force your oversharing onto everyone. You should be deliberate about your own privacy, okay? So, privacy obviously can be very sensible. Nobody owes anyone unrestricted disclosure. It’s important to distinguish choosing what to share from believing that you must and have to remain permanently unknown in those ways that are true to you in order to stay accepted. [20:50.0]

Now let’s go even deeper for a few minutes here. J. S. Mill, the author of the great Utilitarianism, in his treatise on liberty, J. S. Mill argues that hearing opposing views actually benefits listeners. Objections can expose errors. Objections can contain part of the truth that we would have otherwise not have taken into account. Answering objections may deepen our own reasons for holding a correct belief and help us see other aspects of that belief in ways that we would not have appreciated before.

Unchallenged beliefs end up being weak beliefs and could very well be false beliefs, because you have not had them challenged. This is an important part of intellectual power, right? Your confidence intellectually comes from being able to examine serious objections to your original points of view. Okay, it also includes being able to follow an argument when its conclusion might threaten your own approval or your own status. Just being able to parrot accepted views does not mean that you are able to judge those views. [21:52.1]

Again, let’s bring this back to the example of the advisors to a family office and the principal of the family office. The principal says he welcomes and invites disagreement and other points of view, but then punishes, unknowingly or unconsciously, getting this feedback, or maybe more commonly, resists taking into account the objections or the counterarguments of the advisors.

Over time, the advisors will wise up and they’ll stop giving you direct feedback like this. It’ll be much more costly for you to get the feedback either from your advisors or, if they don’t do it, from reality. Smart people can predict what the authority wants to hear, and if they don’t feel the freedom to speak freely, that authority then has to live with what it no longer gets to hear.

So, true self-confidence means you can withstand disapproval without immediately retreating or attacking. You can discover an error without losing faith in your capacity to judge in the future. You can maintain a conviction without needing everyone else to confirm your point of view. [23:01.6]

True confidence makes examination possible, because disagreement no longer threatens your identity or what you think you are. Similarly, emotional strength means that guilt and fear and defensiveness may still arise, and you will detect it and notice it, and you can attend to those feelings in you without letting them overwhelm you and settle the decision, without acting out of them or acting from them. You can feel them without them dictating your behavior.

You can disappoint someone else that you care about while still remaining caring, because you’ve decided that that decision is the right one. You can hear an unwelcome truth without lashing out or punishing the person who brings it to you. That is emotional strength. [23:49.0]

Okay, so let’s return to the original case that we started with. You are at a transitional point where you have a new opportunity and everyone around you assumes that you are going to pursue and take up this new opportunity. You may actually choose to do so after examining the reasons, but you should also feel the freedom to decline it because, after some soul searching, you decide that another commitment deserves the next five to 10 years of your life. Either choice should be open to your own scrutiny, but that should emerge from your own judgment, rather than a fear or pressure of avoiding disappointing someone else.

To recap the main points, agreement becomes unreliable when disagreement carries excessive costs. You can’t know who to trust or to trust what they say when it hurts them too much or it’s too risky for them to speak up, and 2,500 years ago, Confucius showed that harmony actually requires differences to remain.

Even more, Confucius and Confucians show that remonstrating with the ruler or with the authority is actually a sign of how loyal that tie is—and, remember, remonstrance means giving bad news, telling the ruler that they are making a mistake. [25:06.0]

The false self limits how fully people can know and love one another. If out of fear of showing all of you, you express only a part of you for a long period of time, this actually kills authenticity. So, you can’t have an authentic relationship if you’re actually being inauthentic. J.S. Mill explains why convictions require examination and objection. These principles apply both when you challenge someone else and when someone else challenges you.

Now, if you don’t take this to heart, you can end up committing another five to 10 years or the rest of your life to opportunities you never fully chose, which leads to a life that was never fulfilling and that you never fully chose. People can admire your success from the outside while remaining completely unaware of the true you and of the life that you really want. [25:59.7]

You can have a relationship that can continue without the needed conversation that would let it, allow it, make it genuinely intimate and authentic. Others may stop challenging you in ways that could really help you, and that leaves your own judgment isolated and weakened, and the consequences of this compound. Your achievement can increase your options, while the expectations of others continue to cut you off until you are going down a narrow alley that you never wanted to go down.

However, if you apply what we’ve covered here, you can experience love beyond mere admiration and beyond mere usefulness or performance. You can build true connection without continually having to manage your image or persona. Your self-confidence can finally survive honest disagreement, maybe vociferous disagreement, and you and your business or whatever you’re building will be better off for it, and you will gain emotional and intellectual power and strength. [26:59.1]

That fear of disapproval will no longer settle your choices. You can examine arguments even when the conclusions are painful or inconvenient to you, and the people around you can contribute to you through what they actually see, rather than holding back and hiding their true views.

So, take the time to ask yourself this. What important choices are you postponing out of fear that expressing it would disappoint someone? And who around you can tell you something that you don’t want to hear, but remains someone that you value?

Harmony actually requires disagreement, because a life that you actually choose, a judgment that you can truly trust, and a love in which you are fully known, all require room for inviting the truth. [27:47.3]

Thanks so much for listening. If this has helped you in any way, please share it with anyone else that you think could benefit from it. If you liked it, hit a like or leave a good rating on whatever platform you’re listening to this on. If you have any feedback whatsoever, I’d love to get it. Leave a comment or send me a message. Love to get your feedback.

I look forward to welcoming you to the next episode. Again, thank you so much. David Tian, signing out. [28:05.1]