How The Partner You Choose Reveals Your Self-Worth - Quinlan Walther - #1110

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
How much does the partner that someone chooses reveal about their level of self-worth, do you think?

**Quinlan Walther** (0:06)
I like this, starting with a strong one.
Well, I want to add a little bit of context to that. How does the partner that someone chooses reveal how much they love themselves, how they see themselves? It can tell a lot, but I think more importantly, is the way that they feel about someone's judgment of that. So the way that I frame it is, if someone told you that they could tell how much you love yourself by the partner that you've chosen, how would you feel about that? It's kind of like if I say, oh, is that a new shirt?
And you're a little insecure about it, like what does it make me, do I look a little heavy? Do I look a little, can my muscles look small? There's an insecurity there versus, thank you, it is a new shirt. Doesn't it look great? This color, the new cut, right? You're secure in it. So when someone says, I can tell how much you love yourself by the partner that you've chosen, there's a bit of intuition in that, in your reaction to that.

**Chris Williamson** (1:00)
It's an interesting prompt to give somebody and the sense of, oh, or, ah.

**Quinlan Walther** (1:06)
Yes, and I always try, I frame it up that way intentionally because it's not about someone actually passing a judgment on you. It's your interpretation of that judgment, right?

**Chris Williamson** (1:16)
It's like a Rorschach test for your own partner.

**Quinlan Walther** (1:18)
Yes, it's like, I am not what I think I am. I am not what you think I am. I am what you think I am.

**Chris Williamson** (1:25)
Yeah, we did it. We did it.
It's interesting though, right? Like the idea that if you feel like you're being mistreated, and you believe that the love that you are prepared to accept is a reflection of your level of self-worth, that probably tells you everything that you need to know about your relationship. Yes.

**Quinlan Walther** (1:48)
Well, does it feel like a compliment or does it feel like an insult? Does it make you proud of the love that you've accepted and the treatment that you've tolerated? Or does it really hit that sensitive part of you? It's like, I've been treated like shit for years.
Or simply, this has really just never felt right. It feels mediocre. Maybe it's not a reflection that you totally hate yourself. It's more just like, that doesn't really live up to the way that I know love could feel. Someone who really loved themselves, probably would have gone and found something that really lines rather than just settling for what was there. There's a lot in there, but it requires the introspection to really get into the meat of it, into the context.

**Chris Williamson** (2:31)
Where does self-trust come from?

**Quinlan Walther** (2:36)
Self-trust will be my greatest obsession for the foreseeable future.
Self-trust is essentially building a relationship with yourself that allows you to know who you are, like who you are and build a life that actually feels like yours. That's like, we should summarize it, that's the brief synopsis.
Self-trust to me is ultimately what you have to build in order to find fulfillment, sustainable fulfillment in this life. The way that I see it, the majority of our issues, emotional anyway, issues come from uncertainty. What's going to happen to me? What are people going to think of me? What am I going to think of myself? What happens if this uncontrollable thing plays out? How am I going to handle it? More importantly, how am I going to feel if this person breaks up with me? If I don't get this job, if someone that I love dies, right? Most of it is how am I going to feel on the other end of that? And there's no way to outrun that uncertainty. There's no means of control or no ability, no strategy that was going to apply to all of those situations, except for trusting that you will be there in every single one of those situations. You'll be on the other end of that supporting yourself. The way that I kind of break it down, there's four Cs of self-trust. Number one is curiosity. So do you know what you're feeling? Do you know why you're feeling that way? Do you know what you want in this situation, in the next situation in life in general? Do you know what you don't want?
How much space do you give yourself to really ask yourself the hard questions or the fun questions and learn the answers? The next one is capacity. How good are you at being emotionally flexible? When discomfort arises, do you trust yourself to stay in the disappointment, in the sadness, to support yourself through that? When things go really well, do you trust yourself to not totally self-zabotage and fuck it all up? Screw it all up.