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One of the quietest forms of suffering is the belief that if you could just say the right thing, act the right way, and make the right choices, everyone would eventually approve of you.
Most people never say this out loud. Instead, they replay conversations, worry about how they came across, and take criticism as evidence that they’ve somehow failed.
Underlying all of it is the same assumption:
“If I do everything correctly, people should like me.”
For most of my life, I thought relationship problems were fairly straightforward.
Someone did something annoying. I got annoyed. Someone said something hurtful. I got hurt. Someone acted selfishly. I got angry.
Case closed.
The solution seemed obvious: if everyone else would stop doing irritating things, life would be much easier.
There’s a strange irony about modern life.
Human beings have never been more connected.
You can send a message across the planet in a second. You can see what your high school classmates ate for breakfast. You can watch a stranger’s wedding in Brazil, a political protest in France, and a guy teaching woodworking in Montana before lunch.
Nobody prepares you for the fact that some of the most painful breakups in your life won’t be romantic.
They’ll be friendships.
There won’t be a dramatic fight. No screaming match. No cheating scandal. No final conversation where someone says, “I think we should see other people.”
One day you just realize you haven’t talked to them in six months.
A hundred thousand years ago, your ancestors had a problem.
They needed to survive long enough to reproduce.
Nature solved this problem with a simple system: reward behaviors that increase survival and reproduction. Find food? Reward. Build relationships? Reward. Have sex? Massive reward.
Your brain evolved to push you toward things that mattered.
Then humanity got really good at technology.
The most important moments in parenting are usually not the happy ones.
Anybody can love a kid when they’re adorable. When they’re laughing in the backseat. When they draw you a crooked picture of a dinosaur and tell you it’s you. When they run into your arms at the end of the day like you’re the center of the universe.
That part is easy.
The real parenting happens when they’re difficult.
If you wanted to raise a child who grows up confident, emotionally stable, and capable of handling life, there are some pretty obvious things you’d probably do.
You’d encourage them. You’d let them fail sometimes. You’d listen when they talk. You’d make them feel safe without making them soft.
So naturally, if you want to raise a child to be deeply insecure, you do the opposite.
There’s a weird moment that happens right before an uncomfortable conversation.
Your chest tightens. Your brain starts manufacturing excuses at lightning speed.
This isn’t the right time.
Maybe I’m overreacting.
Maybe it’ll work itself out.
And then you don’t say the thing.
There’s a strange little trick human beings do when they don’t want to feel uncomfortable:
We turn our choices into obligations.
We say things like:
No, you didn’t.
Most people think rock bottom is a single catastrophic moment. A divorce. A firing. A relapse. A bankruptcy. A phone call at 2 a.m. that changes your life forever.
But most of the time, the abyss arrives quietly.
It looks like waking up exhausted every day.
It looks like slowly becoming someone you don’t recognize.
It looks like drinking too much, doomscrolling until 1 a.m., avoiding your bank account, and promising yourself you’ll “get it together next week” for six straight months.
