Who Deserves your love by KC Davis

Fernanda: Hi everyone, welcome back. I am happy to be back with this podcast after taking a two-week hiatus.

As some of you may know if you follow me on social media, I've been away visiting my dad in Brazil. I got back earlier this week and I'm back to my normal routine, so I'm happy to be bringing you this solo episode today. I hope you get some value from what I'm about to share with you.

Sometimes a book can find you at just the right moment when you're wrestling with something that you can't quite name. That's what happened when I picked up Who Deserves Your Love? by KC Davis.

It didn't just give me advice; it gave me language. Language for the messy middle of love—the part where connection meets self-respect, where boundaries and compassion can actually coexist.

Today's episode, we're diving into this book and how it completely reframed the way I think about relationships: romantic, platonic, and everything in between. We'll talk about why this isn't a "cut people off and protect your peace" kind of book, the difference between mistreatment and abuse, and what it really means to love people without losing yourself.

So grab a coffee or tea, or whatever feels like comfort, and let's talk about what truly deserves your love.

Why this book hit home for me this year: I've listened to a lot of books about boundaries, relationships, and breaking free from codependency and people-pleasing, but none of them were as nuanced as this book. I'm someone who grew up with very few boundaries, and I've been learning to set them as an adult for the last nine years or so.

I'm always open to learning more, and that's why I pick up these kinds of books. KC Davis put words to things that I had been feeling, but couldn't articulate.

The book's premise is that it's not about ending relationships; it's about redefining healthy connection. The book has three parts: how to work on your relationships, how to make decisions about relationships, and how to use boundaries to have better relationships.

This book is for any type of relationship, not just romantic. One thing that really stood out to me is that this book has concrete, practical exercises that you can use to help you decide whether a relationship is right for you.

One of the big takeaways is the power of dual truths—the power that two things can be true. She explores the concept of holding multiple truths: you can love someone and need boundaries.

She separates relationship harm into three categories: screw-ups, mistreatment, and abuse. And she explains the difference between them very clearly.

I'm going to be using visuals from her website here, so all of these visuals are credit to KC Davis, and I'm going to put links in the show notes for those interested in seeing her website, her visual content, and her tools, or to purchase the book. She also has a really good TikTok video about this where she explains screw-ups versus mistreatment versus abuse, and I'll link that as well.

In relationships, it's inevitable there will be screw-ups—something your partner or friend does that hurts you. Usually those can be resolved with an apology and a commitment to do better next time.

Then there's mistreatment, which is a pattern of repeated hurtful behavior and a refusal to address that behavior.

And then there's abuse. Abuse is mistreatment plus elements of coercion, degradation, control, or intimidation.

Here's an example: if a person says something insensitive that offends you, it could be a screw-up if it's addressed in a healthy way—if you bring it up and the person apologizes and makes an effort to correct that behavior.

If the person continues to say those insensitive things without a willingness to correct, or even after you've asked them to stop, that's mistreatment. But if the person continues the behavior with malicious intentions to hurt you, that's abuse. If this is a concept of interest to you, I highly recommend that you pick up this book and follow KC Davis's content.

Another tool that she offers in this book, which I thought was super helpful, is the Relationship Decision Tree. It's a practical tool for deciding whether to stay, to strengthen, or to step back from a relationship.

She created a decision tree with questions like, "Is this person willing to work towards collaborative solutions that mitigate pain?" and, "Does staying in this relationship violate my values?" She explains each step clearly and provides examples of how you can use the tree.

She invites readers to make a list of values, and if the reader doesn't have a list yet, she offers hers as a starting point. The ones she offers are: care and protection of minor children; care and protection of physical and psychological safety; autonomy; and not implicating someone in a crime without consent.

She goes deeper into the psychological safety aspect, explaining that psychological safety doesn't mean comfort or that there is never any harm or hurt. It specifically refers to a lack of malicious torment or behaviors that threaten your psychological safety.

She also explains how and why conflict can occur in relationships where both people are genuinely trying their best, and how to manage that. I found this section quite enlightening.

I love how she takes a very nuanced approach to navigating relationship problems. If you listen to pop psychology, which I often do, there is a lot of binary advice like either stay or leave, cut them out of your life, or never look back.

It's not that simple. Relationships are complex because people are complex.

There's intentionality behind what has been going on, there are interpretations of the other person's behavior, and there's what triggers us. She has a really good section explaining two couples: how they were triggering each other, how the behavior of one person caused the other to pull back, and how one person's behavior caused the other to interpret the message that they weren't worthy of being loved.

Then she has a section about conditional love where she says we can love without conditions, but relationships should have conditions. This can be a little bit hard to interpret: you can love someone deeply and still require certain things from that relationship, like respect, kindness, and not overstepping boundaries.

You can have compassion for someone's struggles while also protecting your own space. The book emphasizes that vulnerability, trauma, and personal history can be both the cause and the solution to relationship struggles if we can recognize those in ourselves and the other person.

This perspective brings freedom and responsibility. As I navigate my own relationships—whether with Frank, with a friend, or with my family of origin—I can think about how each of us has our own traumas and how those traumas can trigger us to behave in certain ways.

As I become more aware of these things, I can be stronger in these relationships and stronger at protecting myself, having self-respect. With Filled Cups, part of my vision is helping people build meaningful connections that fill their emotional cups, but that also means respectful, kind, and sustainable connections where both people are genuine and honest.

KC Davis has a large section of the book dedicated to boundaries as bridges. In a world that often treats boundaries like walls, we can use them as tools for creating more balanced, meaningful connections.

I'm not a boundary expert; I've just been learning. When I started learning about boundaries, I struggled because they sometimes seemed rigid, or I was afraid of alienating the other person or severing a connection because I was afraid of setting them incorrectly.

This is where KC Davis uses a very nuanced approach to boundaries. She goes deep into what is my responsibility versus what is the other person's responsibility, and what is my responsibility to the other person and what isn't.

She offers quite a few examples of healthy boundaries, including the language of a healthy boundary versus the language of control. KC makes a really important distinction: boundaries control your own behavior, while control tactics aim to manage someone else's.

A boundary isn't, "You need to text me back within an hour"—that's trying to control someone else. A boundary is, "If you're consistently unavailable when I need support, I'll invest more energy in friendships where I feel prioritized."

She also talks about what our responsibility is to others, and I hadn't heard that approach in any of the other books about boundaries I've read before. After reading this book, I feel I'm going to approach boundaries with more confidence and ease.

She also talks about conscious co-healing: the concept that you can heal within the relationship rather than outside of it, and that vulnerability and honesty can transform even difficult connections.

For example, with Frank, I've gone through a transformation over the last two or three years where I used to be quicker to judge and criticize. Those were childhood patterns repeating themselves because I simply wasn't aware of them.

Once I found IFS—which I'm probably going to do an episode on in the future, as it's my favorite thing—and discovered the power of self-compassion, I understood the origins of that critical behavior and started acknowledging it with Frank.

When we get into a disagreement, I tell him, "I can feel my critical nature coming out, but I don't want to do that. Here's how I'm feeling right now, but I don't want you to feel like I'm just trying to criticize you." It's hard to navigate and verbalize, but I do believe in this concept of co-healing in a relationship, and I've been able to have some of those moments with Frank by being open and vulnerable about what was going on inside.

A final reflection is that the main takeaway of this book is that love is a practice and not a prize. I encourage you, if you're struggling with relationship trouble, to reflect on your own relationship decision tree and look up KC Davis's website and book.

If this conversation resonated with you, I would love to hear your thoughts. Have you read Who Deserves Your Love? and if so, what part stuck with you?

You can message me through Filled Cups on Instagram, YouTube, or Spotify. If this episode stirred something within you—maybe a relationship you're rethinking or a boundary you're ready to set—remember that learning who deserves your love isn't selfish; it's sacred work.

Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, keep filling your own cup first so you can pour into your relationships from a place of fullness and not exhaustion.