what is up everybody this is Chris from the rewired soul where we talk about the
problem but focus on the solution if you're new to my channel my channel is
all about mental health so if your end of that makes you subscribe and ring
that notification bell and as you probably know something that can affect
our mental health greatly is relationships more specifically awful
relationships like have you ever stayed in a relationship way way way too long I
know I have alright and in this video we're gonna discuss why we do that and
hopefully discover some solutions to get us out of a bad relationship or help
prevent us from getting in a bad relationship and being stuck in the
future real quick forgot to tell you if you
didn't know I have a new channel I'm uploading a lot more over there all the
infos on the new channel but anyways check the description check the pin
comment down below go subscribe to the new channel there's already like four or
five videos up there all right please so the first thing that we need to come to
terms with is that although we'd like to tout ourselves as like oh we're humans
we're at the top of the food chain we're such rational people and all this other
stuff like although we can make smart decisions like for the most part were
irrational and we don't even know it okay and one of the leading dudes who
like was the forefront of behavioral economics and discovering how irrational
we are was this dude he is a Nobel Prize winner his name's Daniel Kahneman and I
just think like a great example of human rationality is this pen experiment he
did and what he discovered is say a person is out of store and they're gonna
buy a pen okay they're gonna buy a pen for sixteen
dollars all right then they find out you drive down the road ten minutes and you
can get the same pen for one dollar saving fifteen bucks right most people
would do that but you know what what most people wouldn't do let's say they
were buying an expensive piece of clothing or or let's say a TV I think in
the experiment he said like an expensive jacket but let's say TV okay so let's
say you're on a store TV 500 bucks you find out that 10 minutes
down the road you can get that same TV for 485 dollars most people wouldn't do
that they've just be like yeah whatever it's only 15 bucks I'll get this TV that
makes no rational sense because we're talking about the exact same 15 dollar
savings and the exact same 10-minute drive all right people are irrational
okay so let's start talking about irrationality in relationships so for a
long time behaviorism was like the thing in
psychology some of you who have taken psychology classes you've probably heard
of like Ivan Pavlov he was that crazy dude who like tortured dogs he found out
that when you pay a ringing a bell with food you know they start to salivate and
everything like that well eventually this new psychologist
came around his name was BF Skinner and he really like took behaviorism and just
gave us some rocket fuel okay and basically with his his different
experiments and everything like that he found that like I was just people but
even animals we are driven by rewards all right we want things that give us
pleasure we want to get away from things that give us pain okay makes sense like
I'm a recovering drug addict I want a drugs made me feel good you know what I
made may be your comfort is you know food or sex or TV or shopping or
whatever it is it can explain a lot of the bad habits that we do all right and
basically he found out that there's a trigger a behavior and then a reward
when we do that cycle it starts to groove in our neural pathways and it
makes that habit even stronger and stronger and stronger
so let's say every time you get stressed you eat a pint of ice cream you feel
better trigger behavior reward so the next time
you get stressed your brain is like oh okay ice cream made me feel better I'll
do that again and then you turn out looking like me okay
well anyways this other psychologist ended up coming around his name was Leon
Festinger okay and he's like okay behaviorism is
cool and all but it doesn't exactly explain all of human behavior but
if people are driven by rewards and think say things that make them feel
good like why do people pursue things that make them feel bad and I think a
great example is they did a study on fraternity Bros okay and basically what
they found was is the the harsher that the initiation process was for frat
brothers the more they liked that fraternity
alright so if they were getting like you know you know like beaten with a paddle
or they had like run around and take it and be all embarrassed or whatever like
they said that they liked their fraternity more than other frat brothers
who had a less harsh initiation process okay so based on behaviorism that makes
absolutely no sense right like why would you like something more based on the
pain that you went through and that's when Leon Festinger came up with
something called dissonance theory so some of you have heard of cognitive
dissonance so we have these two conflicting ideas or beliefs and
basically this causes a little chaos in our brains and we try to figure out a
way to justify it so when you look at the fraternity brothers are like okay
you know this must be a good thing or why would I go through that hell so
circle that back to relationships think about that for a second why do we stay
in terrible awful hopeless relationships for so long okay think about that think
about all the fights you've been through think about you know like people used to
date me when I was a drug addict and watching me you know struggle and try to
get sober and relapse and all these other things maybe you've just been
through you know just like those crazy family dinners where you know people are
fighting and everything like based on dissonance theory we are justifying
staying in that relationship because of all the hell we've been through in that
relationship so we use that as a justification to stay in that
relationship like can you relate to that right can you relate to sitting in that
relationship and being like well I've been through all this hard stuff so this
this must not be a bad thing right this is worth it you know in some instances I
know this happened to me before and maybe it's happened to you where the
the harder or relationship is the more we feel like we love that person and
this is another form of cognitive dissonance right like why else would we
do it why else would we go through all this if we didn't just absolutely love
this person and because of this we get stuck in that
relationship so the second thing I want to talk about in here is something
called the sunk cost fallacy alright so economics like I remember I
took an economics and my class of my you know one semester in college I was like
this is lame right but what fascinates me is behavioral economics so economics
they came up with this thing called sunk sunk cost fallacy right people just
throwing good money at bad money like keep investing keep investing keep
investing and it's not working out and basically the idea is well I've already
put this much in so I need to keep putting money into it
all right think about the old beat-up car that you got and throughout the
years you've paid for all these different repairs it just keeps breaking
down I used to see this all the time all the time when I worked in the car
service industry people spent so much money fixing up a car that they kept
fixing it and I'm like yo just get rid of that car all right but this is the
sunk cost fallacy I've already put so much money into it so I need to keep
putting money into it another example of a sunk cost fallacy is with war right
this happened during the Vietnam War a George W Bush he did this with sending
the soldiers over to Iraq what these presidents will say is you know we need
to stay in this war or else all the soldiers we lost would
be in vain right like think about that for us
like when we're talking about like the money aspect of it right like you're
never gonna get the money you already spent back that's just not how this
thing works so when it comes to war you're not going to get soldiers lives
back by throwing more soldiers into it who are potentially going to die now
think about that with your relationships right
think about this sunk cost fallacy we we look at it as like time right I've
already put so much time into this so now I need to put more time into this
like the biggest thing I hear from people who go through a breakup is this
all right I bet you've said it before I can't believe I wasted so much time
right and part of the reason we wave so much time and we stay in these
relationships so damn long is because of that sunk cost fallacy all right so
what's the solution what is the damn solution basically the
first step is just self-awareness its self-awareness if you're in one of these
relationships right now just look at it like now you know look i rung that Bell
you can't unknow right yet right like you know you can at least sit there and
look at it and say oh okay if you're single right now what I did
before getting in a relationship with my beautiful girlfriend Tristan is I
started recognize these things even though I didn't know like the
psychological terms I started recognizing the fact that I am
somebody who stays in terrible relationships way too long so when I was
dating if I saw a certain amount of red flags I'm like nope I pump those brakes
I pump those brakes I'm like I'm not getting caught up in this right because
I'm the type of person where once I start investing in a bad relationship I
keep sinking costs into that relationship alright but anyways if you
have a friend who does this or is currently doing this just just slide
this video over their way and maybe they'll get some clarity all right but
anyways you guys asked me to do this over on my Instagram so if you're not
following me over there go follow me on Instagram and Twitter after rewire its
soul and if you like this video please give it a thumbs up if you're new make
sure you subscribe and ring that notification about and a huge huge thank
you to everybody out there supporting the channel over on patreon as well as
everybody who supports the channel by buying my mental health books at the
rewired soul comm and the mental health merch in the rewired soul shop alright
thanks again for watching I'll see you next time