When the Rules Only Apply to You: The Imbalanced Relationship [Ep: 794]

0:01 You're in a good place now you are listening to Perspectives with Ashley Burgess. Welcome back live to the Liver your True Life Perspective show now called The Ashley Burgess Show. I'm glad to have you here today, and today we're going to be talking about recognizing the imbalanced uneven relationship. Many of us are in an imbalanced uneven relationship. And the real definition that I think is important to think about when we think about these types of relationships is it's when you're in a relationship and one person is held to a higher standard than the other person, and the other person creates rules and regulations that only apply to that other person and not to themselves. And so I think this podcast is going to be very revealing as to an imbalanced relationship and really the observations to really recognize when you are in one, because it can be kind of challenging.

1:04 Am I in an imbalanced relationship? Or is this a balanced relationship? Because it is a give and take situation, right, We do have to give, we do need to take, we do need to sacrifice to some degree in these relationships. So sometimes maybe it can be a little confusing. And so today's show is dedicated to anybody that's feeling a bit confused, a bit used, a bit resentment, as well as just overall, like, hey, I want to make sure that this relationship is healthy, and if it's not, I need to figure out what I need to do. And so, first and foremost, in an imbalanced relationship, there are rules that someone makes up. And it's interesting because those rules in the beginning seem that everything's good and okay, Well, I guess I can live within these confines in these constructs of this relationship. But over time, and it takes a while because many of us have dealt with love bombing and this person maybe kind of coming from a victim reality where we assume that what they're saying to us is genuine and true. And also sometimes these relationships start with a lot of affection and a lot of attention, which can also present itself as confusing as well.

2:13 So we're going to talk about that too. So let's deep dive though into the concept of how the rules don't apply to that other person. So maybe there's various rules, and we're going to talk about those types of rules in the show right now, just to get you an idea about what those types of rules might be. Now, the first rule that comes to mind that seems to be applied in relationships is the other person suggesting that they don't trust the other person, or they question the other person's whereabouts, or they question what the other person is doing, and so they begin to question that other person so much. They don't actually come out and say, oh, hey, I'm going to need evidence.

3:00 To prove where you were or where you are. I want you to send me pictures or texts or whatever. They don't come out and say that. It's not like they come out and say that and say, oh, yeah, this is what I want. But they literally push the other person in the relationship to feel as though they have to present evidence every time they leave the house, every time they leave the apartment. And so I see that a lot of people go through this painstaking situation in life where all of a sudden, what used to be just day to day routine, you know, going into the office, you know, going to meetings, you know, maybe having to go to a launch meeting, doing various things becomes almost you know, a situation when it comes to your phone, it's like, oh, I got to take a picture of this Oh look I'm at the office, or oh look, I'm at the luncheon with these fifty people constantly taking photos. Maybe you're having to take your parent or your mom or dad to a doctor's appointment because they can't take themselves. I'm gonna take a photo of that.

4:01 I'm going to take a photo at the hospital. You know. Maybe you're stuck in traffic and the person that you're in a relationship with is going off about how you're not home on time or where are you or you must be up to something, and so you take a picture of all the cars. Many of you have, you know, live photo options on your phone where the person can see the time and date stamp to make sure that this is really what's happening. Maybe you have to provide receipts for where you are. Maybe you were getting your oil change and it took a couple hours, way longer than you thought, and you have to present a receipt to that person, you know, that type of thing, and then maybe they might still, you know, balk at the receipt. I don't know if I believe this. And all the while as you're presenting your case to defend yourself to prove the fact that you're not doing whatever they're thinking you're doing. Right, you're presenting this and you're in defensive mode throughout this process. The funny not so funny part about this, right is that the other person is presenting no evidence of where they are. They don't have to provide any evidence or background information of what they even did that day. And if you're in an imbalanced relationship, you're experienced this exact situation where you have to You feel as though because you've been beaten up to present this evidence and so you basically trained yourself. They didn't say, oh, you have to take a picture or you have to provide this, but you start providing this, and it gets smaller and smaller. Right, Your freedom becomes lesser and less

5:32 But the interesting part is the other person even if you finally turn around, because many of you haven't even turned it around. You haven't even what have you been doing today? Where did you go today, did you go out today? What have you been doing? And eventually you have to turn it around and start asking the questions that that other person is asking of you, because what they've done is they've created you to be so defensive that they don't even have to fill in the blanks, spend more time defending yourself. They don't have to say anything, so you have no idea of their whereabouts that day. You have no idea what they've been doing, who they've been hanging out with, what's going on? Okay, And they've created it that way to keep you on your toes, to keep you stressed out, so that guess what, you don't ask the question, and the only way that you can get, you know, some sort of liberty and autonomy is to flip the script. And I'm not saying that you have to be tyrannical about it in the situation, but it's like, Hey, you.

6:35 Ask me all the time where I'm at. I'm going to start asking you where you are, and now it's time for you to prove to me what you're doing. Because it's interesting how I can't get in touch with you during the day or I'll call you and you don't answer. But if you know, but if I don't answer, it's a serious problem. If you don't answer, it's okay. And I find that to be very interesting. The next component that I want to talk about is a lot of times these folks will know your friends and your family. They'll know your friends and family. They will have met your friends, met your family. You know, they'll know basically your circle, but you don't seem to know anything about their circle who they spend time with.

7:23 You know what, you know, who are the people in their life, and they might talk about those people those names, but you've never met those people with those names. You hear a lot about it, but you've never actually met them. And that's a really interesting place to be at too, because you're putting more time and effort into the relationship, introducing them to people and connecting with people, but. They're not doing that for you. And that's interesting because one I feel like that person is obviously they either have these friends or they don't. Either these friends are you know, the George Glasses of the Brady bunch, or they are one foot out and they're wondering if this relationship is going to continue, and they don't want to introduce you or you know, there's other things going on that they don't want you to know, and so they're keeping everybody at bay because otherwise they know that they have to triangulate a situation that they don't want to maybe there's somebody in their circle that's a lot closer to them than you're supposed to know.

8:21 And if you get into that group, you're going to start figuring out some of this stuff. So as long as they keep you in the dark, they don't have to worry about that, they don't have to triangulate. They can just keep their world separate. But it's interesting how they want to meet each one of your friends. And a lot of times once they meet your friends, they got a problem with each and every one of them. You know, Oh, your friend, I don't like him. He seems like a jerker. You know. Oh she's so uppity and she's you know, she's got this attitude and ego, and I just don't like her. They got something wrong with everyone, Okay, And then they'll talk bad about each person. And in the beginning of the relationship, a lot of times you kind of go okay, or you might even believe them, or you accept whatever they're saying. But later on, when you kind of come out of that love bomb fog, you go, wait a second, why do you have a problem with all my friends?

9:08 Oh? I get it now, I've separated myself from all of my friends because of you, right, And so that's another thing that they like to do too. In an imbalanced relationship is it's really about all about getting all your attention. They can give you crumbs and minimal attention, but they need you to be basically front and center to their play, their show, being on stage, they are constantly there. They want your attention. They don't want anybody to get that attention. But they can turn their gaze at any moment, anytime and spend time with whoever they want to. Another aspect that I find in these types of imbalanced on even relationships is that that person over time will say, you know what, I think that we shouldn't hang out with people of the opposite sex.

9:57 I don't. I don't find it. I don't find it good, you know, and this, you know, you know, I don't find it right if you were to hang out so you know, let's say like it's the woman talking to them me and I don't think it's right if you hang out with women, you know, or vice versa. And it's interesting. I've had many clients talk to me about that and they said, you know, hey, at first I was okay with it, but then I realized you know, I was doing this, but I had no idea of what he or she was doing. And eventually I realized that this, again was in balance and the fact that I had gotten to a point where I felt like I couldn't even spend time with people that were co workers, you know, you know, people that work with me, and if I did, it was in a very open social circle with every single person there at the office. But that begins that begins to be interesting too, because you start regulating who you can spend time with so that you don't have a blow up, because otherwise many of you have realized that if you do, for example, have like a business dinner or something, and your your text back and forth and they're like, oh, so, how are the guys doing. Well, there's all these people here, and we had some of the women from the os.

11:03 It's it's came on, it's gonna be a problem. And again it's a double standard. You know. A good example of this double standard is and I had a client recently tell me about this, if they don't so their significant others says, you know, if you don't pick up the phone within the first couple of rings, we have a problem. Okay. But the other side of the coin is, you know, my client will call them and they never pick up, they never answer the phone, they never pick up. They'll text, they won't even respond for hours. You see what I'm saying. That's a double standard because if the opposite was happening, and my client was doing that to them, it would be World War three. And you many of you know.

11:43 Exactly what I'm talking about, Like that barrage of text messages one after the other after they're almost like they have a robot hand, Like you're like, what is this? This is ai? You know, I mean, like, are you like, what is this an auto dialer? What are you doing to be able to quickly, so quickly text me a baron oz of things basically telling me what a piece of crap I am right in so many words, and how I've done this horrible stuff to you when you know, I I literally am in the gym, or I'm in the bathroom, okay, so, or I took a nap for God's sakes, whatever it is. You know, this has started World War three. But again it's a double standard, you know, And I find that it's all about control, right, So for many of us. We don't realize that these people are trying to control us on every level, trying to control our.

12:30 Life at every level. And it's sad because many of them do it quite well. They're very good at trying to control our life. They're very good at trying to whittle down our world, trying to confine us, trying to make us where we only speak to certain people, where we only you know, spend time with certain people, to the point where we only really have them, that they are our end all, be all, and then they can treat us however they want now, because that's all we have have. And I think a lot of times we get into this nonsense in the belief system that if I just stop this one thing that's obviously irritating them very badly or making them very uncomfortable, or their fear of abandonment is really being awakened by this.

13:18 You know, if I take that off the table, you know they're gonna get better. But the thing is is that it doesn't stop there. You take that off the table, they're gonna request another thing. You take that off the table, they're gonna request you to take something else off the table, and eventually there you are all alone by yourself because they probably also found problems with your family dynamic. They don't like your family. Maybe they don't like your dad or your mother, you know, and so they don't want to see them either. And then they make it hard for you to go see your family too, because, oh, where are you going. You're gonna well prove that you're gonna go see your family. Okay, really, let me see some pictures. Okay, really, you know, And so then that becomes a problem too, and over time, you begin to lose connection with everybody that really matters in your life.

14:04 You know. Another aspect of this imbalanced, uneven relationship is that, you know, they request or demand that you don't speak to anybody that you've ever dated before, any of your exes. They don't want you to talk to them. They don't want you to be on social media with them, they don't want any of that. But the interesting part is it does not apply to them. I guarantee ninety five percent of the time. I'm not saying every single time, ninety five percent of the time. Someone that demands that out of you if you go into friends and stuff like that on their Instagram, or you go into that on Facebook, that is not the case for them. Their exes are part of their Facebook, their ex'es are part of their social media. They've probably even been in communication with their exes on textor call okay. And so they do that to basically disarm you, and you know, basically encrust you in the situation where there is nobody else, so all the crap that they do to you, you just kind of have to deal with because that's all you got.

15:06 You got this person, and that's what you have left. And they make it that way so that you, you know, don't step out of line, you know, so that you question, so that you are insecure. And then you're like, oh my gosh, and then they beat you down right about how bad you are making you wonder will anybody ever want to be with me? You know? And then and then when things do get really really really unhealthy in an imbalanced relationship, they're basically breaking you down on a daily basis and telling you about how they're the only one that would ever accept you and they're the only one that will deal with you, you know. And so it's really it's really a sad state of affairs. But you can see how the slippery slope begins in a in a relationship that's imbalanced and uneven. Because that person's holding all the cards. They do this quite well.

15:55 This is a mode of operande. This isn't their first rodeo. Okay, it's not like, oh, this is the first time they've done this. This is their programming. This is the manipulation game. Okay, we're being manipulated on huge levels outside of our relationships, right, But this is a microcosm of the manipulation. This is a microcosm of the lies and the deceit. This is the microcosm of the things that we fall for. This is the microcosm of the stuff that we deal with that we don't need to be dealing with in our lives, but we choose to deal with it out of our fears, right out of our fear. And you know, another thing that I find interesting is that the other person in this imbalanced relationship, and visualize this, they continue to pull the carpet out from underneath your feet. They continue to pull the carpet underneath from underneath your feet. And it's interesting because you're supposed to just grin and Barrett, Okay, grin and Barrett. And what I mean by that is they're constantly making changes to your relationship without asking for me or without getting your acceptance. They just do it all the time. So things that you were supposed to do that's changed. Scheduling is changed. You know, y'all were gonna go to dinner. No, they're gonna have a full on argument. They're gonna change. Oh, this was gonna happen.

17:15 They're gonna change, Oh, you need to go do something for your family dynamic. The next day they're gonna throw a fit. That's gonna change. It's constantly moving things around. Now, if you were to do that to them, you would give them probably, you know, an aneurysm, definitely a migraine. But they would also definitely not be participating. And so it's almost like everything changes, like the way that they want to do things, or the way they want to handle a situation or how they want to interact with you. All those things change, and you're just supposed to go with the flow. You know, you sack your feelings away, sack your thoughts away, because guess what, they don't care, and they're gonna keep changing things. And so if you're in a relationship where you're like, wow, like things keep changing, like their feelings is augmentation. All these things keep changing, and it's kind of messing with me. You might want to kind of take a look look at that and see that for what it really is, because I think that could be very helpful for you to understand your situation a lot more clearly and understanding how they keep moving things around and and and there's not a lot there's a lack of care, there's a lack of empathy for what you're going through. They don't even really think about that, right I don't think about that at all.

18:21 And that's one of the biggest parts about an imbalanced relationship is the empathy part. The problem part is that there's not empathy. There's not care about you and where you stand. It's about where they are. It's a self centered, manipulative strategy used to control you. And so when you're in these types of relationships, and I know that you have a lot more thoughts or examples as to what you're going through right now in your life right now, and in the relationship you're in right now. And if you're in one of these relationships right now, I'm sending you as much love and encourage to begin to stand up for yourself. And if you do need help and you'd like to work with me, this is what I do best is help people stand up for themselves, to see the manipulation, to see the isolation, and to overcome it.

19:07 Because this isolation that you're feeling is overwhelming, and many of you turn to drugs, alcohol, just you know, just trying to escape, you know, work addiction to get out of it. But you don't have to do that, Okay. Check out my website. Go to Ashleyburgs dot com, Ashley B. E ERGEs dot com, click on coaching sessions and set up a session with me and we can work together to overcome this and life will get better. Your situation will get better, and you will be more at peace and happy, more than you have been in a very long time. So, if you think about the situation, it is a complete double standard. It's a complete double standard, gaslighting, manipulating you, playing this role of the victim. Now, they always play the role of the victim to some degree, even if they act like a jackass or still playing the role of the victim. Oh, I can't do this because of or this happened to me, and so this is changing my life because of, Oh, I can't get a job because of oh, I can't do this because of It's never about them. It's always about someone else that has created a problem for them, and then you're supposed to feel sorry for them. And if you actually look back to the beginning of the relationship, you'll realize that the victim reality was much there.

20:18 You just didn't see it. You didn't see it. You know, you have all this empathy and care, and many of us have codependit tendencies where we want to give and give to other people and an effort to take care of them. But a lot of that is for what is because that's where we see our value. That's how we see our value. We don't see our value separate on our own. We feel like we have to give in order to have value. And that's something that's been trained on us as a child and something that we need to recognize because that's not true. That's a manipulation. Too. Many of us were raising family dynamics where we felt as though we had to take care of others. You know, maybe we had an alcoholic mom or dad, or we had all these different types of issues and or we had a you know, a narcissistic or malignant narcisstic parent, are somebody else with cluster b dynamic where we basically cater to them to try to get their love and affection and hoping that we could get that. And here we are trying to get that in this relationship as well, and upcoming shows we'll talk about the trauma bonds as well, because a trauma bond, you know, unfortunately is mistaken, you know, for a relationship.

21:24 It's mistaken for love. And we really need to look at that because we don't want to mistake something for love, especially when it's something that can really hurt us. And so think about that. What are some of the double standards that you're dealing with, you know, think about those things, you know, analyze those things. Is it right? Would it be right if you turn the tables around and you demanded this of them? Would they accept that? Would they change their ways? Would they go along with this? I don't think so. And so that's what I'm asking you to do today is to get enough gumption, enough fire. You know a lot of people call it by in the belly enough fire, to kind of flip the script a little bit and see how they respond. Some of them are gonna get very angry with you. Some of them are gonna try to, you know, shut you down.

22:11 You gotta be prepared for that, right That's that's that's a that's a high manipulation tactic. Is you start asking me questions. Now I'm gonna get really bullish. Now I'm gonna get very loud. Maybe I might start yelling, maybe I might start throwing some stuff. You know, you gotta be careful because they're gonna try to shut you up. Some of them are gonna get quiet, give you the silent treatment because they have no answers because you're asking them real questions, and they're gonna start to sweat others of them, you know, you know, you never know, but I do know one thing is that they're not used to having their programming put back on them. And you start seeing kind of like things kind of falling off, the chinks in the armor, You start seeing the mask coming off because you start realizing that this is a manipulative tactic.

22:56 Uh. And the more manipulative they are, the more angry they'll get, the more they'll accuse you of they might even start repeating themselves over and over again, and that's something that you got to be aware of too. And so we have to see the change. We have to flip the script and then see it for a period of time to realize what they're really doing. And then there's a next step to that and we'll talk about that in another show as well. So begin to write down some of these double standards. Put that into writing so you actually see the fact that this is a double standard, look at it, analyze it, and then start seeing what if I flip the script then I demanded them to do this, how would they treat me? How would this relationship work? Is that even part of my thought process has that even thought of something that I would even do.

23:39 Really wants you to think about that, because once we start analyzing it from the other perspective, we're able to see things clearly. If you haven't already, check out my YouTube channel, go to Coach Life Coach Ashley Burgess Life Coach Ashley Burgess on YouTube. We have about two hundred thousand, almost two hundred thousand followers subscribers on YouTube and and you know, working to build that community. It's all information you know and it's there, and it's to help anyone that's dealing with problematic toxic relationships as well as things of overcoming things, but also analyzing and understanding where they're coming from and understanding yourself. These videos are created to help you understand what you're in, what you're involved in, and to understand who you are and to get the best out of your life and to have the most knowledge that you can have so that you can be powerful in all of your relationships, including the relationship with yourself. Also, don't forget. You can go on the website Ashleyburgess dot com.

24:35 You can learn more about me. You can contact me on the contact page and you can also set up a session directly there where we can meet one on one and start working on these issues. If you're in an imbalance on even relationship or whatever else that you're working in, that we can really make your life stronger and better. And I hope that you've liked this show. I hope that it's connected with you and the content has touched you. Please share with your family and friends and I'll have another show next week same time I'm coming out. So if you have any ideas on some shows, definitely reached out on the contact page on the website and let me know and I'll reach right back out to you. And the show was, you know, livery true life perspectives. It's still liter true life perspectives, but now it's the Ashley Burgess Show, so the litertrue life Perspectives, The Ashley Burgess.

25:16 Show will be back this time. Well you know what, I'll be back this time. You know it in three shakes,