S2 Episode 4: Advocate for Yourself Because No One Else Will
Episode Summary
Advocacy and self-preservation go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other. Yet, females are often discouraged from developing and honing their advocacy skills at an early age. This needs to stop. Advocacy is beneficial for individuals and couples alike. It is a skill set that can literally save your life!
It is healthy to be able to identify your wants and needs to others, especially in a romantic relationship. Your partner is not a mind-reader. The only way they can respect your boundaries and fulfill your desires is if they are aware of what these are.
People who can advocate on their own behalf will be able to advocate for others, especially in times of stress. You must get comfortable making your voice heard and respected. You owe it to yourself and to any person who may be dependent on you, such as a child, an elderly family member or even your partner. Moreover, the more you practice advocacy, the better you get at establishing boundaries without offending others. Finding your voice empowers you to build healthy relationships.
At the end of each episode, Marlee and Lis vent about commonly experienced issues in romantic relationships. In this episode, the ladies discuss long-distance relationships and the impact they have on your happiness.
Show Notes
In relationships, you have to look out for your own self-interests. No one can look out for you better than you can. Men are typically taught this from a young age, whereas women are sometimes conditioned to people please because putting your needs first is “rude.” It’s time to throw that out the door.
The moment you depend on another person to put your self-interests first, you will lose. Even if the person loves you, they will still put their interests first most of the time. If you can advocate for yourself, you can express what you need from your partner.
A person who is very good at advocating for others typically knows how to advocate for themselves. If you ever come to a moment where you need to advocate for your partner or your children, it will come from a place of knowing how important it is to express your needs too. Advocacy isn’t just setting boundaries and communicating them, it’s understanding what really matters to you.
Every day you should practice advocating for yourself, especially if it doesn’t come naturally to you. You have needs, wants, and desires. That’s okay, and you are allowed to express it. When two people in a relationship can advocate for themselves and each other, they become a powerful unit.
In this episode, the vent session topic is: When people waste time on long-distance relationships that were doomed to fail. Words are nothing without action, and with distance between you most actions are near impossible. It stops people from being present and moving forward in their lives. It wastes time and energy for both people, and they rarely work out in the end.
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Tired of toxic, boring, or dead-end relationships? Feeling lonely or clueless when it comes to love? Need a fresh perspective? Well, you found it. This is Romancipation, a podcast that challenges conventional ideas about sex, love, dating and mating. Hosts Marlee and Lis offer candid and provocative advice about what it takes to find the partner you deserve.
It's time to rethink your approach to your love life. Take charge and get Romancipated.
Marlee:
On this episode, we're going to discuss Advocate for Yourself Because No One Else Will.
Lis:
That's a good topic.
Marlee:
It is a good topic. That's why we're talking about it. Okay, so super duper important to be able to advocate for yourself.
Why? Easy. You are the one who has to watch out for your own self-interests. Again, this concept that we keep talking about. Self-preservation. No one else is going to look out for you better than you will for yourself, Lis. You have to trust me on this. You need to advocate for yourself. Males tend to be taught early on how to advocate for what they want while females, any natural instinct that they have, it tends to be…
…quieted or crushed.
Lis:
People pleaser right here.
Marlee:
Yeah, exactly. Because it's seen as like rude or inappropriate or you know, unladylike. Forget it. Throw that out the door, erase it. All of our listeners, forget this. You must advocate for yourself. The moment you depend on another person to put your self-interests first.
You will lose. It will not happen. People will always put their own interests first, and even in a relationship, even if the person loves you, they will still put their own interests first most of the time. So it is so important for you to advocate. I can't stress that enough. If you can advocate for yourself,
You know what you need or what you want from a partner. If you can advocate for yourself, you can say, I need this. I need you to communicate with me. I need you to acknowledge my cooking skills. I need you to actually go down on me! Cause you know I need that.
Lis:
You need it.
Marlee:
You've got to be able to advocate.
It is crucial. And here's the deal. If you lack the skills for self-advocacy, you will never be able to properly advocate for another person, whether it's your child, if you end up having a child, a parent who's ill, a friend, even your romantic partner, maybe something happens. If you cannot advocate for yourself, trust me, you cannot advocate for another person.
There's a lot of people who think, oh no, listen, I'm great at making demands if I needed to take care of somebody else. I call bullshit. A person who's really good at advocating, knows how to advocate for themselves.
Lis:
No, I think that's a really good point. And actually, advocacy is such a big topic and that's why I said this was a good one at the beginning because I'm a people pleaser and I know this about myself, advocacy does not and has not always come easy to me, and it wasn't until later in life that I truly understood what it meant.
And also, I had been through so many relationships, but even jobs where I didn't feel I could advocate for myself without being a bitch. I take that very seriously and now that I do have children, and a husband. You made a great point. Like until I had children and until I was married, and in the relationship that I'm in now, I was not good at advocating for myself and asking for the things that I wanted and what I needed in a relationship, which is why probably a lot of them failed, because of me.
Not all of it, but you look back on it and things weren't being met, but it wasn't always the other person's fault. They can't read minds.
Marlee:
That's right.
Lis:
They didn't know what I was thinking, you know?
Marlee:
Yes.
Lis:
I mean, unless they're really good, but like nobody knows what you're thinking.
Marlee:
You hit on though a really, I think, important topic, and that is we are so often made to feel like we are a bitch or we are pushy, or we are being inappropriate by advocating for ourselves, whether it's in a job, whether it's in a relationship within the family, and we really do ourselves a big disservice.
So again, I'm going to romancipate you, Lis, and I'm going to romancipate our listeners. You must advocate for yourself, and one of the reasons you must advocate for yourself, is because that is how you set appropriate boundaries. That is how you make it clear to everybody around you what your standards are, what you're comfortable with, what behaviors you will accept.
That is all about part of the advocacy that you are doing for yourself. Part of advocacy is not only setting those boundaries and communicating them, I had mentioned this earlier, it's really understanding. What it is that you actually want.
Lis:
Yeah. No.
Marlee:
I think it gives you clarity.
Lis:
Yep.
Marlee:
When you have to advocate for something, it lets you understand, okay, this is what's really important.
This is what really matters to me, and that is what I want everybody to be able to do every day. People should practice advocating for themselves because like you said, it doesn't come naturally for a lot of people. Or if it did, that natural urge was kind of suppressed or repressed.
Lis:
It was crushed.
Marlee:
You have to bring it back.
You have to advocate for yourself. It can be in little ways, it can be in big ways, but you have to make sure that all of the people around you understand. That you have needs, you have wants, you have desires, and that's okay. And you're allowed to express it. In the same way, they should be able to express what they want.
They should be able to advocate for themselves as well. When two people in a relationship can advocate not only on their own behalves, but on the behalf of each other or as a couple, you become an incredibly powerful unit.
Lis:
Yeah, I'm sitting here like a bobblehead, because I'm nodding and I'm like, yeah.
Marlee:
Now I feel like now I feel like I'm a psychologist, which I'm not. What I will say to you though is I am an attorney. It is one of the first things that you are taught in law school is the power of advocacy, and I think that it should be taught in all schools because it is such an important life skill.
Lis:
Wouldn’t that is so great.
You think about all the things that you've learned along the way, how useful those tools would have been for you and listen, you are a great advocate for yourself. I've always felt that way about you.
Marlee:
Oh, thank you.
Lis:
And it is something that I admire and I feel like those tools are so useful for our youth and as we grow up and just really learning, not only for men, because obviously men, like you said, they learn it from an earlier age and just kind of own it.
But for girls and women and like coming into jobs and relationships and really understanding how to know what you need.
Marlee:
Yes.
Lis:
And also it's how to ask for it and how to not even ask for it, but like how to set your position and your boundary to say, this is kind of what I expect. This isn't negotiable.
Marlee:
That’s right. I'm going to tell you…
I have been punished in my past for advocating for myself. Absolutely. I've received a lot of push back throughout my life, in romantic relationships, in professional settings, in a lot of situations. But I have one thing, maybe becaue I'm like a pushy bitch. I don't know, but I stand my ground like I don't back down.
And it has served me well because the times where I have known that what I was standing up for was myself, my needs, whether they be emotional, whether they be physical, whether they be financial, whatever it is. When I stood up for myself, even when I got that pushback, I felt great. And I knew in my heart and in my mind that I was doing the right thing.
And I also have to tell you, when people did push back, I could smell the fear.
Lis:
Oh yeah.
Marlee:
I could smell it.
Lis:
Yep.
Marlee:
I could tell that I had thrown them off their game. They didn't expect it, and the reason they became so defensive or aggressive is because they knew they didn't have any strength in their position.
And by learning to advocate for myself and holding my ground and knowing that I am being reasonable. And that it's my right and it's my duty to myself. There have been many, many situations, particularly in the romantic realm, whether it's been with my husband, whether it's been with my children, not romantically, or when I was in other relationships where I absolutely needed to do it for my own mental health.
Lis:
Yep.
Marlee:
I needed to. So the way I want to wrap this up, with advocacy and the importance of it, is this is yet another tool in your Romancipation arsenal. Advocacy and Romancipation, they go hand in hand. Your ability to actually take control of your romantic life, of your romantic relationships, of being able to assert your wants, your needs.
That's where this tool of advocacy comes in. But read up on it. There's a lot of great resources online. Just read up about basically learning how to advocate for yourself, how to negotiate. These are really important life skills and they absolutely can save a relationship.
Lis:
Yeah, and I think they take practice.
Marlee:
They do. They take practice. But again, self-preservation, it not only helps you, it can help your relationship.
Lis:
Absolutely.
Marlee:
So look into it.
It's venting time with Marlee and Lis.
Marlee:
It's that time when Lis and I get to vent our frustrations over commonly experienced issues in romantic relationships. Today's topic, When People Waste Time on Long-Distance Relationships that were Doomed to Fail.
Lis:
Yeah, those, those long-distance relationships.
Marlee:
Yeah. Okay, so I have very particular thoughts about this, but you know what, I would like to hear what you have to say first.
Lis:
All right. Listen. I have to say I have been in long distance relationships before, and while I feel like I might not be in the minority on this, I think that they're almost next to impossible to make work.
But that being said, I'm going to vent on it a little bit. There is time and effort, which must be sacrificed to make a long-distance relationship successful. Let's be honest, most people are too busy, unavailable and selfish to provide that kind of time. Words are nothing without action. And I know we've talked about this before.
Marlee:
Yes, yes, yes.
Lis:
But with distance between you, any and almost all action are next to impossible.
Marlee:
Right?
Lis:
Because you can't show, right. It's all words.
Marlee:
Great point.
Lis:
Separation anxiety is a real thing, and anyone that has experienced that at some point in their life knows that trust issues can become more common when you're not near somebody and know what's really going on in their life.
As time goes by, people's preferences change and evolve, and if you can't change together, you might as well stay separate.
Marlee:
Yeah. Right.
Lis:
This one, instead of being with friends and my family who are actually around you, you're spending all of your time in a virtual world trying to make your partner feel like you're together, and you're basically missing out on your entire life because you're putting on a mask to pretend that this is actually what happiness is and you get lonely.
Any relationship that makes you feel miserable, helpless, and eventually hopeless, which is a long-distance relationship, does not lead to a good or healthy relationship. Something shouldn't make you feel miserable or unhappy in a point in time of your life when you're supposed to be feeling amazing.
Marlee:
I agree.
And I think that there will definitely be people who do disagree with us.
Lis:
Of course.
Marlee:
I think there'll be quite a few people…
Lis:
…listen, some people have probably very successful long-distance relationships…I am not saying it cannot work. It is just really hard.
Marlee:
And again, it's just really part of Romancipation is you, do you.
Lis:
Yeah.
Marlee:
It's what works for you. I'm just speaking and I think you are in generalities. I mean, and certainly from our own experiences.
Lis:
Absolutely. Yep.
Marlee:
So mine touch on a lot of what you said. I said it happens often because people are afraid of being alone. It stops people from moving forward. It does not give either person what they need or want.
Usually in the relationship, one person is leading the other person on until they find something better in-person in the new location they're at.
Lis:
Ooh. Yes.
Marlee:
I think it wastes valuable time and energy for both people in the long-distance relationship. I think long distance relationships rarely work out in the end because for a relationship to be successful, there needs to be physical daily interaction.
I think that it makes people very difficult to hang out with as friends when they're in a long-distance relationship because they're always on the phone with their long-distance partner.
Lis:
That's right. It’s virtual.
Marlee:
And so I think it ends up being destructive to your in-person relationships.
Lis:
That's right.
Marlee:
Which you mentioned.
Lis:
Yep.
Marlee:
I think you end up missing out on cool experiences because you're committed to an idea instead of a person. So you end up saying no to things that are actually happening in real time in front of you.
Lis:
In real life.
Marlee:
In real life, yes. People want to feel like they're involved in relationship just for the label sometimes when in fact it isn't a relationship.
Lis:
Ohooo.
Marlee:
And I do think it's often a sign of a person that has difficulty ending a relationship that they know has no future, and instead of breaking up when they should, they kind of let it naturally fizzle out. And because they just don't want the confrontation or the guilt of breaking up. And I think that that's not fair because the person that actually really wants the relationship to continue…
…is being misled and giving a false sense of hope, right. That this is actually going to work out in the long term.
Lis:
Yep.
Marlee:
And if anything, break up with them. Move on. And guess what? They don't have to pine over you in the same way because you're physically not there.
Lis:
Right.
Marlee:
To like hook up again. It is ripping the Band-Aid off.
Quickly.
Lis:
Yeah.
Marlee:
Versus that slow, painful, you know, when it's like attached to your little hairs.
Lis:
That's the worst.
Marlee:
And you're like, OW, OW, OW, OW! Lis and I want to thank you so much for joining us this week. To view the complete show notes and a recap of today's podcast, or to learn more about us visit. www.romancipation.com. Before you go, make sure you subscribe to the podcast so you can receive notifications of new episodes right when they're released.
Also, make sure to follow us on Instagram and Facebook. If you're enjoying the podcast, please let us know by leaving a five-star review on Apple or a five-star rating on Spotify reviews. Let Apple know that great listeners like you enjoy our show and that helps us expand our audience. Thanks again and stay Romancipated.