Welcome to the Unfuck Your Relationships podcast, the show
where we are no longer just unfucking your love life, we are
unfucking your entire life. Because around here, we raise
standards, we break patterns, we do the shadow work, we upgrade
yourself concept, your boundaries, your confidence,
your relationships, your health, your money, all of it.
There is no fluff here. There's no pretending, there's
no performing. Just radical, sometimes brutal
honesty, truth telling, and the kind of big sister best friend
energy that calls you the fuck forward.
So if you are ready to stop settling for the bare minimum
and you are finally ready to become the woman that you are so
proud to wake up as in the morning, you are in the right
place. So let's unfuck your life one
episode at a time. All right, now let's get into
today's episode. Hello, my loves.
Welcome back to the Unfuck Your Relationships podcast.
I'm your host, Michelle Panning, and this is episode 243.
So today we're going to be talking about something that I
know is going to hit so many of you so fucking hard.
And I say that with so much love.
As you guys know, today we're going to be talking about the
difference between high standards and high walls.
And specifically we're going to get into why some of you have
been confusing the two for years.
And I get it right? You are proud of your standards.
You should be like, you absolutely should be, right?
You did the work, you read the books, you went to therapy, you
healed from that guy who emotionally wrecked you, and you
came out the other side knowing your worth.
And now you have standards, real ones.
You know what you want, you know what you won't tolerate, and you
are not settling good. That's the goal.
So then let me ask you this. Why has it been however many
months or let's be honest, fucking years, and every man
you've dated has had something wrong with him?
Why does every potential relationship get to a certain
point and then you find a reason to exit right?
Why do the men who actually show up, who are, who are actually
consistent, who are actually available, feel boring or
suffocating or just not right? I'm going to tell you why, OK?
Because for some of you, and I really, really need you to
really hear this, what you're calling standards is not
discernment. It's a defense mechanism.
And until you can tell the difference, you're going to keep
doing this loop. OK, so today we're going to
break it the fuck open. So let me paint you a picture,
right? You go on a date and it's
actually pretty good, right? They're attractive, He's got his
life together. He was kind.
He texted you the next day. And then you find it, right?
You find it. Maybe it was something small
that he said. Maybe it was the way that he
laughed. Maybe it was that he was a
little too eager. And that gave you the ick.
And just like that, you're out, right?
And you tell your friend, Oh no, I don't know.
Like, it was nice, he was nice, but he just wasn't it.
And she nods, because she's used to hearing this by now.
Or maybe you did date someone and you actually let them in a
little, right? Things were good for a few
weeks, and then something shifted.
Not in him, just in you, right? You started pulling back.
You get busy, you stop being as warm, and eventually it fizzled
and you told yourself it wasn't meant to be.
Or maybe you've just been single for so fucking long that at this
point it almost feels like a personality trait.
Yeah, you're the one in your friend group who has the most
insight about relationships and the least relationship
experience in the last few years, right?
Again. You've read every book you can
explain attachment theory to anyone, you just can't seem to
apply it to yourself. Sound familiar?
Because I see this all the time and I wanna be so clear.
I'm not saying that you should settle.
I'm not saying lower your standards.
What I'm asking is, I'm asking you to get super honest about
whether what you have are actually standards or whether
you have built a fucking fortress and started calling it
self respect, right? Here's the thing about
standards. Real standards.
Standards that are rooted in self worth.
They actually make you more open, not less, right?
When you genuinely know your value, you don't need to screen
everyone out before they get close.
You trust yourself to handle it If something doesn't workout,
right? That doesn't mean that you don't
have discernment. It just means that you're not
palming everybody off before they even get a chance to get to
know you, right? You're not terrified of getting
it wrong. You're not auditioning every
person from the first date like a fucking forensic accountant
looking for evidence to close the file, right?
But standards rooted in fear, Those work in the opposite
direction. OK, so standards rigid and self
worth bring you closer. Whereas standard is rooted in
fear work in the opposite direction.
So the more you are getting hurt, the higher and higher the
bar gets. And the bar isn't really even
about him anymore. It's about keeping you safe,
right? The bar exists so that no one
qualifies. Because if no one qualifies, no
one gets in. And if no one gets in, you can't
get hurt. Your nervous system is very,
very, very clever, right? It learned a long time ago from
a relationship, from a childhood, from whatever, that
letting people in inevitably leads to pain.
And so it built a protection system.
And that protection system is incredibly intelligent and
sophisticated, right? It doesn't just make you push
people away clumsily of like, Oh no, I'm avoiding.
I need to push this person away. No, it's very convincing.
It makes you find reasons intellectual, articulate,
compelling, very convincing reasons, right.
He wasn't emotionally intelligent enough.
He wasn't ambitious enough. The energy wasn't right, the
timing was off. And those reasons might actually
be true sometimes, absolutely, but often it's just your nervous
system doing its job. That's the part of you that
decided it would rather be alone and and it's opinion safe than
open and at risk and vulnerable essentially.
Right. So I want to talk specifically
to the woman who healed hurt their anxious attachment, right?
Because there's a pattern that I see that almost nobody talks
about, right? You were anxious, you chased
unavailable people. You over functioned in
relationships. You gave too much and asked for
too little. And then you did the work.
And then you stopped doing that. You got your power back, you got
your standards, great. But then you overcorrected,
right? Without even realizing it.
Because the antidote to I give too much becomes I give nothing
until he earns it. The antidote to I chaste becomes
I don't pursue, I don't initiate, I don't show too much
interest. The antidote to I was too
available became I am never available, right?
So actually what happened is you swapped anxious attachment for
avoidant attachment and you called it healing.
And I get it, right? I I genuinely get it.
This was me, right? I had anxious attachment and
then I overcorrected and became very, very avoidant.
Right when you spent years being the person who closed the
distance, being a little withholding finally feels like
power, right? Not chasing finally feels like
self respect. And some of it, some of it was
for me and some of it might be for you, but some of it wasn't
right. Some of it was actually just
fear. So if we get into the shadow
here, because this is where it starts to get really, really
interesting, right? The part of you that finds a
flaw in every man that's a protector, it's a part of you
that got assigned a job a long time ago and it's incredibly
good at its job, right? It's like it will find something
wrong with every single partner every single time, because that
is exactly what it was built to do.
Now, the shadow piece here is this.
What you're rejecting in other people is a projection of what
you haven't integrated in yourself, right?
That man who's too needy is a mirror for the neediness you've
suppressed and judged in yourself.
The man who's too available triggers something in you
because somewhere deep down you believe that your own needs and
desires are too much, so someone openly having and expressing
theirs feels suffocating or pathetic, right?
The man who feels boring is boring to the part of you that's
still addicted to the anxiety of unavailability.
Because if you spent years equating intensity with love, a
calm, consistent man isn't going to feel like love.
It's just not right. He's going to be like, nothing's
happening, but nothing is happening because there's no
fucking drama. And the absence of drama is not
the absence of love, It's actually the presence of safety.
And safety is uncomfortable when your nervous system was
calibrated for chaos. So the shadow question that I
want you to sit with is, what are you actually looking for
when you're screening people out?
Are you screening for genuine compatibility, which is a good
thing for you to do? Or are you screening for reasons
to stay closed? Because we do that all the time,
right? Oh, no, our value doesn't align.
No, you're just looking for anything that doesn't align so
that you can be like, oh, he's not the one for me.
So here's what this looks like in real life.
You go on three great dates with someone like genuinely great.
You're laughing, the conversation flows.
He's attentive, he's clearly interested, and then he says
something. Yeah, maybe it's a slightly
awkward joke, Maybe he mentions his ex once, maybe he was 5
minutes late to date #3 and something in you goes cold.
If anyone is watching Married at First Sight Australia, this is
Mel, right? Day one, her husband is late to
the altar because he forgot the rings.
You know, is that great on Luke's part?
No, obviously not. But he apologized, took
accountability and was ready to move forward with Mel.
But she held on to that the entire way through, right?
So something in you goes cold and you just don't, you don't
consciously decide to end it. You just start to lose interest,
right? Suddenly you're not that excited
when he texts, you start replying slower and you feel
vaguely like suffocated even though nothing suffocating has
happened. That is your wall going up, not
your standards kicking in. Or it can look like this.
OK, your checklist keeps growing, right?
When he first started doing the work, maybe you had five things
that you needed in a partner. Now you have 50 and they keep
getting more specific, right? He has to be emotionally
available but not too emotionally expressive.
He has to be, you know, ambitious but not a workaholic.
He has to be confident but not arrogant.
He has to pursue you but not come on too strong.
You have created a man and a template so fucking narrow that
he would have to be a completely bespoke human being to qualify,
right? That is not standards.
Those are walls. That's a get out of jail free
card. That's an escape.
If you're listening to this thinking, why does it sound like
she's literally in my head, then it is time that you joined the
connected woman. This is the work that completely
rewires how you show up in your love life.
If you're in a relationship, this is how you stop repeating
the same patterns over and over again.
You stop lashing out, you stop shutting down, and you turn
things around to the point where your partner actually falls in
love with you all over over again.
And if you're single, this is how you stop choosing the same
person in a different body and actually attract someone who is
emotionally available, ready, is obsessed with you, and can meet
you from the very beginning. This is the end of I know
better, but I don't do better. This is the point where these
patterns are stopped for good. If you know you're ready for
this work, you know what to do. The link will be in the
description. Join the connected woman today.
Let's get back to the episode. And then there's the woman who
has literally not been in a relationship for years.
And maybe you've done more personal development than most
fucking therapists, right? You can identify your attachment
wounds in real time, but you haven't let anyone in for years.
And every time someone asks why, you'll tell them, oh, I just
haven't met the right person yet.
Baby, baby, the common denominator is not the men.
Can we see this? Right.
OK, so here's where I need you to stay with me because this is
the part that can sting a little bit.
If you are consistently not meeting men or women or whoever,
if you are consistently not meeting men who are right for
you, that is information. It's not a bad luck.
It's not a drought. It's a pattern, and patterns
live in you, not out there in the dating pool.
Nobody is going to, you know, come climb Rapunzel's fucking
castle. No one's going to scale your
walls. That's not romantic.
A healthy, secure person is not going to spend months trying to
prove themselves to someone who has already decided they'll
fail. Right.
A healthy, secure man is not going to spend months trying to
prove himself to someone who's already decided he'll fail.
He's going to eventually walk away, and then you'll tell
yourself it just wasn't right. And then he'll always wonder why
he felt like he was never enough no matter what he did.
Discernment, real discernment, comes from an open heart.
It's the ability to get to know someone, let them get to know
you, be present in the process, and from that place of actually
knowing them, decide if you're compatible.
That's very different from closing the file before you've
even read the first page. Right?
And I want to say something else.
Being available, emotionally available, open, warm, all the
things is not the same as having no standards.
Yeah, it's not the same as settling.
You can be open and discerning. You can be warm and have
boundaries. Those are not opposites.
A truly secure woman is both. Yeah.
She's not selective from a place of, you know, fear.
That's the difference. So who do you need to become?
You need to become the woman who trusts herself in the process,
not just the woman who protects herself from the process.
Makes sense because right now, if this is your pattern, you
have built an entire identity around not getting hurt.
And that identity has its own momentum, right?
It has a voice. It sounds like discernment.
It sounds like self respect. It sounds like I know what I
want. But underneath all of this is a
woman who has genuinely terrified of letting someone see
her and not choose her. So the shift is from I protect
myself from love to I trust myself in love.
Not because every relationship will work out, it won't, but
because you know you'll be OK if it doesn't.
That is what secure attachment actually feels like.
Not a fortress, right, but a woman who is open, boundaried,
and unafraid of her own vulnerability.
Secure attachment isn't a fortress or a flood.
It's not I let everybody in and it's not nobody gets in.
It's a door with a lock that you choose when to open, and you can
only learn to use that lock correctly if you stop
barricading their door entirely. OK, so here's what I want you to
actually do with this 1st. The next time that you find a
reason to exit something that's going well, I want you to pause
and ask yourself, is this a standard or a wall?
A standard is rooted in genuine incompatibility.
A wall is rooted in fear. Your body knows the difference.
OK? A standard feels clear.
It feels grounded, whereas a wall feels like relief, right?
But the kind of relief that you feel when you've avoided
something scary. OK, Second, do a body check.
So when you clocked that quote UN quote deal breaker, where did
you feel it? Did you feel it in your gut or
in your chest, in your values or in your anxiety, right?
This isn't about overriding your instincts.
It's actually about getting honest about which instinct is
actually speaking. Third, I want you to journal on
this. What would I have to feel if I
actually let someone in? Don't answer that quickly.
Sit with it. Because the answer to that
question is probably the exact thing your walls are protecting
you from feeling. And that thing, whatever it is,
is where the real work is, right?
And finally, I want you to clock it.
Name the avoidant protector. When did she first show up?
What is she protecting, and what has she cost you by doing her
job so fucking well, right? Don't shame her, thank her, and
then let her know you've got this now.
So if you heard yourself in this episode, if you recognize the
patterns, the protector, that checklist that keeps growing,
the exits that feel like standards, then I want to talk
to you about The Connected Woman.
The Connected Woman is my shadow work program specifically for
women who are stuck in anxious or avoidant cycles and are ready
to break that dance for good. Not just understand it
intellectually, but actually break it right.
We go into shadow work, we work with the parts, we rebuild
yourself concept from the inside out.
We do the nervous system work and we get you to the place
where you are genuinely available for a relationship,
not as a strategy to get one, but because that's who you've
become. This isn't about doing healing
work just to be chosen. It's about becoming a woman who
chooses herself so fully that the right relationship becomes a
natural consequence. OK, so the link will be in the
description. Go check it out.
If it speaks to you, it is meant for you.
So all right, guys, thank you for hanging with me today.
I love you and I will see you next week.
All right, my love, let what landed today actually land.
Because this podcast is not just here to inspire you.
It is here to change you, your standards, your patterns, your
life. And if you are done living on
autopilot, you're done shrinking.
You're done repeating the same fucking shit over and over.
Let this be your reminder. You are built for more.
Unfucking your life is a choice you make every single day.
And if you want to go deeper, come hang out with me on
Instagram at Michelle Panning because that is where I share
all of the raw stuff, the real time shifts that I'm having in
my life and everything that I am doing to raise my own standards
to in life and in love. I love you.
I believe in your next level. Go and fuck your life, babe.