 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 you're into that, make sure 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. All right? And in this video, we're going to 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 info is on the new channel. But anyways, check the description, check the pinned comment down below. Go subscribe to the new channel. There's already like four or five videos up there. All right, peace. 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, we're a rational 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 is Daniel Kahneman. And I just think like a great example of human irrationality is this pen experiment he did. And what he discovered is say a person is out of store and they're going to buy a pen. Okay. They're going to buy a pen for $16. All right. Then they find out you drive down the road 10 minutes and you can get that same pen for $1 saving 15 bucks. Right. Most people would do that. But you know what most people wouldn't do? Let's say they were buying an expensive piece of clothing 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 out of store. TV is 500 bucks. You find out that 10 minutes down the road, you can get that same TV for $485. Most people wouldn't do that. They'd just be like, 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 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 pair ringing a bell with food, you know, they start to salvate and everything like that. Well, eventually this new psychologist came around. His name was BF scanner and he really like took behaviorism and just gave it some rocket fuel. Okay. And basically with his different experiments and everything like that, he found that like, not 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 wanted drugs. Made me feel good. You know what I mean? Maybe 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 of 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's like, Oh, okay, ice cream made me feel better. I'll do that again. And then you turn out looking like me. All right. 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 because if people are driven by rewards and 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 harsher that the initiation process was for frat brothers, the more they liked that fraternity. All right. So if they were getting like, you know, you know, like beaten with a paddle or they had to like run around naked 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 when 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, they're 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 a 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. All right? So economics, like, I remember I took an economics in my class in 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 the sunk cost fallacy is with war, right? This happened during the Vietnam War. 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? Think about that for a second. When we're talking about the money aspect of it, like you're never going to 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 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 waste so much time when 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. It's self-awareness. If you're in one of these relationships right now, just look at it. Like, now you know. I rung that bell. You can't unring it, 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 to 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 pumped those brakes. I pumped 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 cost into that relationship. All right? But anyways, if you have a friend who does this or is currently doing this, 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 at the rewiredsoul. And if you liked this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you're new, make sure you subscribe and ring that notification bell 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 rewiredsoul.com and the mental health merch in the rewiredsoul shop. All right? Thanks again for watching. I'll see you next time.