In Episode 10 of The Donald Hart Show, I’m talking about standards—the kind people claim they have, the kind they secretly expect from others, and the kind they abandon the moment things get inconvenient.
First, a quick public service announcement: don’t mess with Detroit. I made a joke, posted it online, and the reaction reminded me that some cities don’t just laugh and keep scrolling. Point taken. Respect to Detroit. Moving on.
Because the real heart of this episode is a relationship situation that opens up one of the most toxic debates in modern dating: Is it ever okay to go through your partner’s phone? I react to a long-term marriage scenario where the wife finds messages between her husband and a former coworker—messages that aren’t “caught in the act,” but definitely aren’t innocent either. And the moment she confronts him, he hits her with the classic defense: “You betrayed me by going through my phone.”
So what’s the real betrayal? The phone check… or the behavior that made the phone check feel necessary?
Here’s my take: if you’re at the point where you need to investigate your partner, the relationship is already in trouble. Not because cheating is acceptable—cheating is never acceptable—but because “detective mode” is not love. It’s anxiety with a password. Once you’re searching for proof, you’re not building trust anymore—you’re collecting evidence. And if you need evidence, you might already have your answer.
That’s where the episode turns into something bigger than the phone. Because the phone argument is really about standards and double standards—the rules people pretend don’t exist while still living by them every day. Everybody says they want “fair,” but most people don’t want fair. They want benefit. They want a standard for you, and flexibility for themselves. They want privacy when it protects them and transparency when it protects you. They want boundaries, but only the kind that don’t inconvenience them.
And once you see that clearly, it explains why so many relationships end up stuck in the same loop: one person is trying to enforce a standard, the other person is trying to debate the standard into being optional.
From there, I talk about something that might sound like a tangent—fitness, lifting, weight, discipline—but it’s actually the same topic in a different form. Because discipline is just standards in action. It’s not what you believe. It’s what you consistently do. I get into the mindset of lifting heavy, the mental side of it, and how easy it is to slip when you get comfortable—whether that’s in the gym or in life. And then I connect it back to relationships: what happens when people stop honoring the “contract” they started with? What happens when the effort disappears but the expectations stay the same?
That’s when I ask the uncomfortable questions people love dodging:
Do standards change after marriage?
Is “letting yourself go” inevitable—or is it a choice?
Where’s the line between normal change and straight-up neglect?
Because a lot of people want the benefits of commitment without the responsibility of maintenance. And that’s not just about looks—it's about effort, consistency, and respect. You can’t ask someone to keep choosing you while you slowly stop choosing yourself.
This episode is for anybody who’s tired of the fake arguments and wants the real conversation: If you have standards, live them. If you don’t, stop acting surprised when your relationship turns into chaos.
Drop a comment: Is checking your partner’s phone ever justified, or is that the moment you should just leave?
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Jan 6 202614 min