Selfishness saturates, permeates, and consumes our world. Not just in America, but America and its obsession with relationships and self is what is destroying our relationships from the inside out. I am the most selfish person that I know and I have really been struck by my own selfishness and how it can actually lead to destruction within relationships. Here are five things that we do and say that are inexcusably selfish.

#1

We expect people to handle us at our worst (otherwise, they don't deserve us at our best, you've heard it too), but then when our significant other, parent, friend, or sibling messes up, has a bad day, or snaps at us, all of a sudden those rules don't apply anymore.

I am so ashamedly guilty of this. We hold our friends to a standard to which we don't hold ourselves. If someone treats us poorly one day, we question the existence of their heart, whether they care about us and adopt this new mentality: removing anyone who hurts us, often called "toxic" people, from our lives altogether.

If I hurt my boyfriend, I don't want him to expel me from his life, I want to know how I hurt him, what I said, and how I can improve. I would expect him to be patient and gracious with me and to give me a second chance. But if the roles are reversed, I am not quick to pour patience and grace on him. When we approach our relationships selfishly, we are hypocrites. When we make our relationships about us, we miss the point.

#2 "I love you."

This phrase is used more frequently in the American culture than in many other countries. The Chinese students at college taught me how to say "I love you" in Chinese, but then said it was super weird to actually hear it because people don't often verbalize their love for another person in China. I came across one research paper written by two Harvard students. In the introduction, they cite a separate interview where a Finnish female tango dancer states, "Yeah—we don’t use ‘I love you’ so much as you do. You love almost everybody (laughs). When a Finnish guy or man says ‘I love you,’ he really means it."

I don't think there is anything wrong with saying "I love you" as often as we do in American culture, but I think we're misinterpreting that incredible sentence.

When we say "I love you" in the American culture, what we're really saying is "you love me." Why? Because we say "I love you" when someone does something kind for us, when our significant other whispers sweet nothings to us, or when someone makes us laugh. We love the way that other people make us feel.

We forget that in that sentence you is the object. Not I. It's not about us, it's about the other person. "I" is only included because we are using our words to take our affections and attention and cast 100% of them onto the other person. We need to stop making claims like "I love you" when what we're really saying is "you love me." "I love you" should be said all the time as we give up the need for everything to be about us and lavish our attention onto another person. If it's used right, it should be used always. We need to take ourselves out of the picture for once.

#3

We tell ourselves we deserve something that, quite frankly, we don't deserve. Everyone needs a break every once in awhile, and for those in full-time blue or white collar jobs and those moms or dads with collars colored in baby-spit-up, you have to be able to recharge sometimes. Regardless, if we are all sacrificing ourselves daily for other people, those workers with colored collars of all kinds will get their break. They will be seen by us, who are no longer looking to themselves, but to everyone around us. We will volunteer to watch their kids or give them a day off (if that's in our power) or to buy their dinner.

Selflessness fights for justice, but for others' justice, not for our own. Even in Christian circles we have this need to fight for justice. That we are supposed to "seek justice". And we are, it's Biblical (Micah 6:8). But we're meant to seek justice for others, not for ourselves, if we truly want to be like Jesus. If Jesus was seeking to be treated justly Himself, He wouldn't have hung on a cross. If we are all fighting for others to be treated justly, we will be treated justly ourselves, but that should never be our motivation.

If we all move to a place of selflessness as our permanent residence, then no one will ever be left to fend for themselves. None of us will feel the need to say "I'm just going to do what makes me happy". In fact, if we revert to that mentality because of people who have ignored us or made us feel invisible, we are only furthering the problem. We are now the self-absorbed-"I'm just going to take care of myself then"-people who are ignoring and making others feel invisible.

These are the type of pictures that we see and believe if we are selfish: avoiding selfish people is what selfish people do. It is possible to not let someone hurt you because of their selfishness and still maintain a selfless attitude yourself and a friendship with that individual. Friendship is about giving, not about getting. Do not keep calm if you see a quote like this with a one-sided view of relationships.

#4

Isolating yourself due to "toxic" people makes you toxic. People use the word "toxic" far too often. It's a loaded word, it's derogatory, and it's selfish. Yes, you must realize when people's friendships with you are self-centered and when you are abused or neglected. And you have to change your relationships if that happens. But we need to be careful that in the midst of that, we are not also toxic. We need to watch for our own selfishness which ruins so many relationships, as you can see by the people who have neglected you. Don't be that person to someone else.

Moreover, toxicity is something that we label people who disagree with us. We use it if we have a different worldview than someone else, which I will never understand, because in the next breath we demand for an embrace of diversity. But do we really mean it? We have discussed cutting off people who hurt you, but what about cutting off people you disagree with? We isolate ourselves from "toxic" people who have different worldviews than us because we are self-absorbed within our own worldview. Isolation in this case is selfishness.

#5

Our inability to listen is one of the most prideful habits we have and it erodes our relationships over time, forming in them an irreversible imprint. There are times where someone is talking to me, and all of a sudden I become completely aware that they are talking and I am not listening. I hear them, loud and clear, and I know what they're saying, and I could probably repeat most of it back to them, but I'm not really listening.

Psychology Today gives seven steps to becoming a better listener. The step that stood out to me, which brings together much of what has been discussed in this article, is #4: "Conspicuously decide whether to add input." We don't have to comment or respond just for the sake of conversation. The Scientific American suggests four additional steps, one of which being: "Know when to tap out." If you, like me, realize that you are not actually listening to what someone is saying due to your own exhaustion or stress, be humble enough to tell that individual that you are sorry, and that you want to hear their thoughts completely at another time. But don't forget the second part of that confession. Good listeners truly care and will actually come back to hear the rest of the story.

Selfish listening is comparing: hearing about someone's day and thinking about how it relates to your day in 274,893 different ways. Selfish listening is frustration: expecting someone to hear you all the way through, without interruptions and giving you their full attention, but then not doing the same for someone else when it just feels like they are rambling nonstop. Selfish listening is jealousy: jealous that someone else is getting attention for something that you've also experienced. Selfish listening is self-validation: wanting to jump in and talk about how your dog died, too. Selfish listening is not really listening. Selfless listening is paying attention to anything but yourself for a period of time.

Selfishness practically comprises our culture and in order to have impactful, thriving relationships, we need to give up our need to have attention and develop a need to give attention to others.