How often do you think “I can do that, but my partner can’t”, or “When I do it, it doesn’t mean anything” or “I can control myself but I don’t trust my partner”? These hypocritical thought errors are extremely common among grumpy girlfriends and are a huge obstacle to trust. Let me share with you a simple girlfriend hack that I encourage you to use from now on.

If something is true for you, then it can also be true for your partner.

It’s not more complicated than that.

I hear clients tell me all the time that “I know it isn’t wrong because I can do that thing and it means nothing… but I can’t seem to think the same way about my partner!” So this way of thinking might already be a part of your self-awareness repertoire. But I don’t want you to underestimate its power.

If you can have colleagues without wanting to have sex with them, your partner can have female colleagues without wanting to have sex with them.

If you can have friends without secretly wishing they were your partner, your partner can have female friends without secretly wishing they were their partner.

If you can go on a girls’ trip, party, and have a great time without wanting to be unfaithful, your partner can go on a trip, party, and have a great time without wanting to be unfaithful.

I use this hack all the time

It’s my main source of peace of mind when my brain wants to start worrying about things. In the beginning, it was difficult to accept the truth of these statements. My brain would come up with a lot of “yes but’s”. But I did not let that take over. I continued to not only expect the same of my partner that I expected of myself but I also started to respect him more.

Constantly thinking that I was committed to the relationship but he isn’t, or I can control myself but he can’t, or I can find people physically attractive and not make it mean anything but he can’t… that is basically saying he’s either a child or an animal who just can’t make his own choices.

It’s quite rude and disrespectful to think that something can be true for you but couldn’t possibly be true for your partner. Your partner is an adult human being who is very capable of making their own choices, having friends and colleagues, being professional, being kind to others, and enjoying other people’s company. All without wanting to have sex with them.

So whenever my brain starts worrying about something, I find a similar scenario in my life where I did a thing or had a friend or worked with someone and there was 0% weirdness going on. And then I commit to believing that if it can be true for me then it can also be true for my partner. Period.

Make strange behavior strange again

A key part of making this hypocrite-check actually work is by allowing strange or bad behavior to actually be strange and bad. What I mean by that is that when you expect trash behavior from your partner, you carry around an attitude of “it’s expected, it’s normal, of course, they wouldn’t be able to have female colleagues without fucking them.”

I want you to go back to when being in a relationship and coming on to or having sex with female colleagues is actually really strange behavior. I also want you to see it from the female colleague’s perspective. They might be thinking “Here’s this person I work with who is in a relationship and they’re coming on to me, what the hell are they doing?” I mean, how would you feel if a male colleague all of sudden wanted to have sex with you?

Or you can look at the example of your partner cheating on you with a female friend. Like… that’s strange behavior! It’s not normal! Let it be really fucking weird. Because if we can go back to believing that this kind of behavior is odd, not expected, and weird, then we don’t have to worry about it as much.

YES, it might still happen.

Strange things happen all the time because humans do strange things. But it’s not your job to be prepared for or prevent your partner from making odd, stupid, weird choices while they are in a relationship with you. That is their responsibility.

If your partner were to drive drunk, commit tax fraud, or rob a bank, you wouldn’t be like “oh yeah, that’s totally expected, I should have seen it coming.” No. You’d be thinking “That’s such WEIRD BEHAVIOR. I would never have done that, therefore I did not expect my partner to either.”

I know you know that what’s true for you can also be true for them. But I don’t want you to let yourself off the hook on that one. I don’t want you to dismiss it with a bunch of “but’s.” Be disciplined with your own brain. Decide that if you can be faithful and committed to the relationship, so can your partner. And if they make a weird choice, then that is unexpected, strange behavior.

When you work with me inside my signature 8-week coaching program, I help you put hacks like this into practice. Sometimes, we need to really drill down and question the underlying beliefs and clean those up, before these surface-level tools really stick.

So if you’re ready to make big changes and finally become the kind of girlfriend you want to be, click here to read more and apply for coaching today!