Latest / Learned the Hard Way with Kier Gaines / EP 9: The Invisible Load Nobody Talks About ft. Noémie Gaines

Transcript

EP 9: The Invisible Load Nobody Talks About ft. Noémie Gaines · Learned the Hard Way with Kier Gaines

• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Learn the hard Way. My name is k Jeds.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: We talk about purpose, we talk about pressure, and we
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: talk about what it actually takes become a full comprehensive man. Hey,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: what's up, y'all? Welcome back to another episode of Learning
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the hard Way. I am your color, damn keep that
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: a I am your host cure games. I'm a husband,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: I'm a therapist. I'm a homeowner, I'm a business owner.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: I'm a father too, and I'm playing injured right now, y'all.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I went to I've been in the gym. I've been
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: lefting heavy and squatting, beat my own pr feeling good,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: feeling strong, legs, getting big, my buoy of the thigh
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: shorts that I'm gonna be waiting for the some of
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: my legs exploding off from the joints, feeling feeling good
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: about myself, getting the gym put on to fifty, we
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: squatting to fifty, feel good, to eighty five, feel good,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: and I'm like, all right, that's enough. Let's just back
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: it down. Do one thirty five. Let's do it for reps.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: Squatting one thirty five for twenty reps, and on Rep
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: nineteen my back goes skim it and uh, I throw
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: that joint out.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I don't know what's going on, but it's hard to stand,
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: it's hard to walk. I cannot bend over in tie
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: my shoes. I can't put on my socks. And I
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: got a shock, reminded that I am forty years old.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: And that's the lesson that I had to learn the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: hard way. So today, my standing nurse aka my guests
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: aka to this day, the best person that I know,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: AKA the person that I married, AKA person not put
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: not one, but two babies in watch them both come out.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Wow, ridiculous.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: My guest today, he is none other than my wife,
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: knowe me yan is Welcome to the park and no
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: and clap it up for y'all.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: Thank you for having me.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Of course, of course, I you know, knowing me is
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: not just my wife, but she is, I mean, my
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: partner in crime, always calling my copilot. She is a
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: former lawyer, intellectual property in trademark. She's a former educator,
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: she's a professional copywriter. She's so many things, and she's
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: so brilliant. And I was thinking about today's episode and
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: I wanted I wanted to base it off a thread
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: that I made that got a lot of traction. I
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: got to write here so I can read it out
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: loud to the people. All right, people, I made a
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: thread and it said I carry a massive mental load
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: in my marriage, A lot of it my wife cannot see,
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: and it's sometimes un a way. She asks, she validates,
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: she offers support, She doesn't compete with me for the
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: biggest struggle, just shows understanding that we both have unique
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: and complicated challenges within our family system. I'm so thankful
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: for her maturity and the tunement. She's an incredible partner.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: And the reason that I put that is because if
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: you are anywhere on the internet, you have seen these ridiculous,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: flat and narrow gender wars where men and women are
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: putting out narratives about the other side, or narratives of
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: putting out bad faith conversations, or just overall ideas about
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: relationships that sometimes have a lot of truth to them,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: sometimes are wildly exaggerated, but a lot of times don't
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: offer us the context to really talk about how to
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: be better and do better within our relationships. Just people
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: complaining on max volume all the time. No Amy is
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: noimen I talk about this shit all the time, like
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: all the time, and she's very brilliant. She has really
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: good perspective, and I wanted to invite her on so
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: that we can kind of talk about this thing together.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: I really appreciate the act. Appreciate it. I'm excited to
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: have this conversation, real talk.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: Do I do I act like that off camera? Do
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: I give your accolades off camera?
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah? All the time?
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, just in case. I am I the baddie? Are
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: you the baddy? Yeah? That's of course right, I'm your
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: first batty, I'm your first batty. All right, free, come on, man,
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: it's a serious conversation today. I'm ready to go games.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Put your game face on. So you and I talk
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: a lot about the dangers of like social media echo chambers,
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: how social media will kick back to you the very
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: thing that you already think, feel, and believed, and it
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: kind of solidifies your thoughts and your viewpoints to the
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: point where if you hear anything that opposes those thoughts
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: of viewpoints, you think that that person's a damn liar
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: or they're making it up. And sometimes the reflexive thing
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: that they want to do is just to deny it.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Do you see that in your time all the time,
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: all the time.
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: I think, you know, it's a good and a bad
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: thing that we're able to kind of curate the kind
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: of content that we want to see on a regular basis.
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: But I think the problem with that is sometimes it
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: further perpetuates some vis that we don't really have enough
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: back and forth about. So if you're constantly hearing things
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: that are, you know, on your point, projecting your point,
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: you just find yourself in. You don't always see an
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: alternative opinion.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: You don't always see an alternative opinion as facts, and
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: you don't accept it when it's right at your doorstep.
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because it's not real. It's not real, it's not
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: what's consistent to you. It's not your reality. So yeah,
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: that's difficult to do.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: And I've been guilty of doing that. I throw myself
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: across the hot coals. I've been guilty of doing that
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: because I remember earlier in US, DATA used to say,
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: you used to talk about just your experience with many
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: men will do X, y Z, And my response will
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: be like, man, no, we don't. Don't, no man alive
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: do anything like that. And I had to grow to
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: realize that, hey, hey brother, you don't date men. You
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: don't know shit.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: You know, y'all homies' lives. You only know what they
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: tell you. You don't know how it is on the
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: other side.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And yeah, and I found I learned that the hard
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: way too.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: As did I.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you think your homeie Ice cold Mac and he
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: baby Baby pleasing to somebody's DMS because he knows you'll
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: never know. So we really want to drill down on
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: this today. We want to talk about that visible load.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: We want to talk about these topics that you hear
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: on social media all the time, but you don't get
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: a thorough like. Nobody's sorting these joints out. Nobody's picking
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: out the whites from the color clothes and sorting it
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: out really well. And we want to do that today.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: We want to talk about invisible load, invisible labor. We
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: want to talk about the struggle Olympics. People have constant
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: comparison in your relationship and marriage that is not helpful
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: and uh yeah, y'all gonna be with us through that.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: So but that's it. Let's go. Can I tell you
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: something I think and you can either agree or.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Disagree with me one word agree or disagree?
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, no, it's not one word. It's a whole thought.
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: I think people are absolutely terrible at picking partners agree.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Why are you agreed? Though?
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Because we don't always we're fed this vision of what
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: partnership is supposed to look like that doesn't actually apply
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: in the real world. Like conceptually yes, but like for real,
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: for real, nah, Like that's not that's not it, that's
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: not it. And I think that that's the reason why.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: But the truth of the matter is, like we don't
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: always know what to look for.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: That's that's the exact thing. We don't know what to
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: look for. And the thing that attracts us to somebody
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: is not really the substantive thing that we need to
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: make the relationship work for years and years, years at
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: a time. And I think the most I just did
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: a speech at a university and I said, the most
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: messed up thing is the fact that y'all are made
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: to make a decision for your life at eighteen years old.
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: What do you want to major? Y'all got to make
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: this decision at a moment when you're at your most
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: immature state in that decision making process, Like, it's unfortunate
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: that the thing that attracts you to somebody ain't really
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: the thing that's gonna make your relationship work. And the
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: thing on the other side is if there's a person
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: who is perfect for you, I mean, even if they're
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: not perfect for you now, they have the capacity to
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: grow into the perfect person for you. They may be
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: wrapped in a race, a skin tone of face or
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: body shape, a skin texture, a hair texture that you
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: do not like and you're not attracted to.
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think we have enough examples of what
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: partnership can look like. We have examples of what partnership
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: shouldn't look like. Yeah, what you shouldn't stand for, you know,
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: in a relationship. But like, I think that might be
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: the issue. The people that are talking the most aren't
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: the people that are living in Yeah, so we're not
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: getting the best guidance moving forward.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: And from counseling couples, I realize that a lot of
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: people just are not in healthy relationships. And I think
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: we think sometimes because a marriage is last or a
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: relationship has last for a certain period of time, that
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it's healthy and functionals like, Nah, that's just sometimes it's
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: two people who are withstanding a lot of punches to
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: the face, they're just in a long standing, unhealthy but
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: marginally functional relationship and that don't really work for nobody.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: So Michelle Obama has this clip and it's just all
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: about what matters most when choosing a partner and committing
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: to a long term relationship. I'm a player for the
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: people and then me, and you don't want to talk
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: about it for a little bit.
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: One of the things I say to people as they're
• 9:53
  Speaker 3: thinking about picking a mate, you got to think about
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: like a partner is a member of your basketball team.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: It's like if you were picking players to play on
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: a team, you wouldn't just pick a shooter.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Everybody has to be able to do it all.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: Each person in a couple has to be able and
• 10:14
  Speaker 3: willing to do it all. So you don't want to
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: marry a man who's like, I don't cook. It's like, well,
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: what happens if I can't cook? You know, you just
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: don't do laundry. Life is so unpredictable and complicated. And
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: then add in kids. Right, if you've married to a
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: man that doesn't do house chores and you've had given
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: birth and you've had a cesarean and you can't be
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: on you on your feet or heaven forbid, you have
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: a difficult pregnancy and you come home and he can't
• 10:48
  Speaker 3: do anything.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: He's never been grocery shopping.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: You know, Or if you're the woman and you can't
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: balance the checkbook because you've left that to him.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Life is too complicated for two partners.
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: Not to be real equals in it, you know, because
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: you just don't know what's gonna come.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: Ye, cooking, cooking. Life is too complicated for you not
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: to be real equals because you just don't know what's
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: going to come. That's big facts, man, And I think
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: that really highlights some of the things I see couples
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: struggling with and counseling, but also just talking to the homies,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: talking to random people at events and people who are
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: in my DM's talking about their partners. It's this expectation
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: like I fulfill a certain number of roles, and you
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: fulfill a certain number of roles, and you do this
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: and I do that, and we do our individual things
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and we make it work.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: No, that's not how this works.
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: What I just threw out my back? Do you? Last night?
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: I felt so bad because I was supposed to give
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: my youngest daughter a bath and I couldn't, and the
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: on amy was already tired. I said, I'm so sad.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: I messed up my back. Now you gotta give Sydney
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: your bath, you know, she said, heape, it's fine, like,
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: don't trick, don't trick. But I think she got a
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: good analogy with the basketball team, somebody picking up, Like
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: basketball teams have different role players, and sometimes you got
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: to do a little bit more than a role. Sometimes
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: you got to pick up where somebody else's leaves off. Sometimes,
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: if you are to score and you gotta shoot from
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: the three, sometimes you just got it. You're gonna have
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: to get in the paint, dog, You're gonna have to
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: make some layups, You're gonna have to get your body checked,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: all of that. I think that sometimes folks come in
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: and you tell me if you feel different. Folks come
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: in with the idea of especially gender roles, like a
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: woman is supposed to be the nurturer and the man
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: is supposed to be the I don't know, enforcer, and
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: in our relationship sometimes it's the opposite. Sometimes Mommy get
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: on your ass and Daddy got to be like, hey,
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: she right, but come in, let me love up on you.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: She right, though, Like, how do you see that?
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think I have a very I wouldn't
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: say different experience because I can't really compare it to everybody.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: But I saw partnership in my life growing up. I
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: didn't really see gendered kind of roles in my life
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: growing up. So for context, my parents came here from
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: Haitius immigrants, and I think when you come into a
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: country where you don't know anyone, you don't necessarily have
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: that foundation. Here, everybody got to do something. Everybody got
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: to work, everybody got to fill in the gaps. Once
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: you have kids, once there's commutes, once there's like sports,
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: once there's other families. It's not just about what my
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: expectation was coming in. It's like what needs to happen
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: in order for us to move forward as a family.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: So if my mom was cooking, my dad was always cleaning.
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: If my dad was washing clothes, my mom was folding clothes.
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: You know, they they did a lot of communicating and
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: looking at the relationship as a partnership because the goal
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: was for our family to be okay. So if anybody
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: had to do something, they were just going to do it.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: So that's what I grew up seeing, and that was
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: my expectation in a relationship. My expectation was never that
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: I was gonna do everything. My expectation is we're gonna
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: go half on this life so that we can take
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: our family, our relationship, whatever, to whatever level that we
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: wanted to go into. But I think about those people
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: that didn't necessarily have those examples from right, the ones
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: who had Mom did everything, you know what I mean,
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: or Dad wasn't you know, the stereotypical kind of instances
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: where Mom kind of did everything, was kind of like
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: the emotional center of the household, and Dad was the provider.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe he wasn't as involved emotionally. But like
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: I think everybody has to consider what are they getting
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: from the examples of relationships around them in the media,
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: what they actually see. I think that informs what one
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: what you want in a relationship, how you present yourself
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: in a relationship, and also how you view the partnership
• 14:57
  Speaker 2: as a whole. And I think like, at least for me,
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I always look at it from a place of what
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: can I offer versus what do I need from them?
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Because I've done everything by myself.
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: But that's now you pardon oh. I think that because
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: we get asked a lot like, how do y'all make
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: your relationship work? Or what's the thing that was the
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: secret sauce? How did you know? Noami and I are
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: two very independent people. We never needed each other.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, we do relationship right.
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: We never needed each other. So it put us in
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: a place where we had the opportunity to be in
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: a situation where we both wanted each other. We both
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: came into this relationship fully independent. Everyone knew how to cook,
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: clean and take care of themselves and pay your own
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: bills and not expect anyone to take that off of you.
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: I think we both walked into this joint whether nobody
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: is here to save us. We're both adult type things.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Your job is not to fix anything that's broken inside
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: of me. My job is not to make you happy.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Your job is not to
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: raise me. Your job is not to raise me. My
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: job is not to call on you, you know. And I
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: think even when I hear couples talk about these things
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: on podcasts or whatever, they frame and preference everything with
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: well as a man as a woman, it's like, yeah,
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: but even in counseling, you'll be surprised there aren't a
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: lot of differences between the issues that women have and
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: the issues that men have, depression between men and women.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: Of course, the lived experience is going to change how
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: you treat folks. But depression in a lot of ways
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: is depression. Anxiety in a lot of ways is anxiety.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: Of course, there's gonna be different factors. And you know
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: that's not saying all ice cream is ice cream, Like, yeah,
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: this pistachio on this chocolate, but at the end of
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: the day, they both ice cream. I don't know if
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: that was the best example. That probably wasn't the best one.
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: I thought I cooked with that until it came out
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: that didn't land the way I wanted to question.
• 17:00
  Speaker 2: So selfish isn't hitting as hard to me as like entitlement,
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Like I think sometimes people come into relationships feeling like
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: they're entitled to a certain kind of love, attention, respect,
• 17:12
  Speaker 2: and yes, however, comma that also comes with a self awareness.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: First thing that comes to mind is like my mindset
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: when I met you. Okay, I came from a serious
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: relationship that didn't work out, and I did feel like
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: at first I felt like I was entitled to respect,
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: entitled to love, entitled to you know, somebody being faithful
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: in all of those things. But I think upon meeting you,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: where you were like, well, I'm also entitled to attention.
• 17:44
  Speaker 2: Like we both kind of came in very not raw,
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: rob but just very sure of what we were willing
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: to compromise in a relationship. And in the beginning it
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: was pretty much nothing, would.
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: You agree, Yeah, it was pretty much a stake.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was just like, hey, like we hear, what's
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: to happen. But I think being with you, especially in
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: those first couple of months, it made me start to
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: think about, well, what did I contribute in these particular
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: situations in my relationships where things weren't you know, where
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: I wasn't necessarily living right or I wasn't necessarily being
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: as understanding and as open and as vulnerable. And I
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: think sometimes, yes, we come into these relationships where we
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: feel like we're entitled to certain things because of what
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: we've been through, but we don't always recognize how much
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: it takes to also create that space for somebody else. Yeah,
• 18:35
  Speaker 2: And I think that was like the biggest hurdle that
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: I think you and I faced, because there were things
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: that you had to jump through in order for me
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: to feel secure as well, but we don't always think
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: about that. We don't always think about what it takes
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: for that other person to rise to the level or
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: to the expectation that you want. And it has to
• 18:53
  Speaker 2: be reciprocal. I feel like that is the key word
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: that we're always missing in the relationship, is the.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Recipiable piece curprosity of it all. And I think you
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: said it earlier, maybe we were talking about it last night,
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: or maybe we said it early in the part, but
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: it's I think it's easy. Just the time that we
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: live in now, where a lot of the buzzwords and
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: like soft life and walk away from the things that
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: don't serve you and you deserve. It's very self centered.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: We just live in a self center time. Look at
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: our government, like, look at the messages, everything, everything is
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: all about self self, self self. And I think time,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: just time and society and circumstances pushed humans here. I
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: don't think it's all the way a terrible thing, but
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: it is blend into our concept of relationships. And I
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: hear people walk in with a lot of what they
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: won't accept, but not as much of what they won't sacrifice.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: And I think on the other side of that it's
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: people who are afraid. I think people are afraid. I
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: think people have been through a lot and they're afraid
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: that if they've been and say well, I'm willing to
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: accept this, that the damn will break, and now all
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: of a sudden they're completely being taken advantage of by
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: another person. I think if a person says well, I'm
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: willing to ben you know, willing to kind of not
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: look the other way, but I'm willing to accept your
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: faults here, they're afraid that the damn may break. And
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: now that person just becomes completely comfortable and complacent and
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: doesn't want to change anymore. And it's just like this
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: very extreme perspective of I don't want to get hurt
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: by this thing. So I'm going to deny everything in
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: this category, and I'm going to I'm going to ask
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: you to do all these things and be all these
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: things for me. But all I need to do is
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: bring myself to the table because I am enough. I
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: am at the table. Yeah, And that's just that. I
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: think that's a very immature way. It's self protective. I
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: get it. I'm not saying this right or wrong. I'm
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: saying this a way to protect yourself. But what you're
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: doing is you're setting yourself up to be blindsided when
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: you say I need somebody to be emotionally supportive for me.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: I've seen this so many times. People come in to counseling.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: I need my partner to be more open, I need
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: you to be more emotionally expressive, and then that partner
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: becomes emotionally expressive and that person who asks for it
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: cannot handle it. They don't know what to do. They
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: don't know how to in turn support that person. They
• 21:05
  Speaker 1: don't know how to kind of sit back on their
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: thoughts so they don't say something harmful or inflammatory. They
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: just they know how to play. They our offense. Actually
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: they know how to score, but they don't know how
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: to kind of like sit back and wait to see
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: what happens and react to that thing. And I see
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: it all the time.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: But it's so difficult, right because it's not like these
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: feelings and these reactions come from nothing. They come from something.
• 21:32
  Speaker 2: And I think the missing part is like what about me?
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: What about me? But there's like me and and we
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: don't get enough examples of that. And part I think
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: that at least on social media, the way that I've
• 21:45
  Speaker 2: seen it with women and especially the women that are
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: allowed about you know, what their expectations are and what
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: they're not going to be standing for. It comes from
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: being put last before.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Absolutely.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: It comes from being you know, in relationships where they
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: weren't necessary, not necessarily catered to, but respected. So it
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: comes from a place. And yes, I definitely see that
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: we can jump a little bit too far, a little
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: bit too close to the sun. So humans do you
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: know exactly? However, like we just now have gotten the
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: language to talk about how we feel and how things
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: affect us. But I just don't think we have that
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: piece about well now, how do we look inside and
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: try to figure out, well, what is it about me
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: that's attracting this What is it about me where this
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: area isn't safe for me to be vulnerable or my
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: partner to be vulnerable. Like, there's so much more to it,
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: and I think we've gotten so far with the language.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: There's just so much more to go.
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: The maturity and the introspection hasn't had an opportunity to
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: catch up with.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: The language exactly.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And even when you say safe place, I hate it
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: all the time people are asking, like, yo, I need
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: my partner to be a safe place. You would be surprised,
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: or maybe you wouldn't out there, maybe you guess exactly
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: what this is, but you'd be surprised. How many people
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: don't know how to be a safe place for anybody.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: And people believe that you're a safe space just by
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: virtue of saying that you are in wanting to be
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: a safe space for that other person. And sometimes those
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: very same self protective mechanisms that I talked about, they
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: end up hurting other people, like some of the most
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: harmful people that you know, the meanness, the rudest, the
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: most angry, the most rigid. That is, it's coming across
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: to you. It's angry, rude, rigid, all those things. But
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: to them, they're being self protective. They're being self protective.
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: They are protecting themselves from being hurt again.
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: So how do you think, Well, let me speak, let
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: me ask you personally, what does safety look like for you?
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: I would yeah, I would assume that you you saved
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: our relationship, right, yeah?
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: Hell yeah?
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: What what did that look like? Did you come into the
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: relationship knowing that you felt.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: Out No, and you haven't always been a safe person
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: for me? That's valid you haven't always been a safe
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: person for me. I know I haven't, I think, and
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: I haven't always been a safe person for you. It's
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: how to cheer, but I'm gonna keep it. Fifty cent
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: a buck might be too much for the folk right now.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: But how how am I going to be a safe
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: place for a person that I don't fully know yet?
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: I didn't. It's not a generic, ready made like you know,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: you're just whipping up and serving to somebody that's exactly
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: what they need. You gotta understand that person, what they've
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: been through, and what their needs are on an intimate level.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: So a safe space for me is me having a
• 24:25
  Speaker 1: freedom to disagree with you and you not feeling like
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: I'm attacking your character. I remember we was in Home Goods.
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: I kid, who were we at? We were buying a couch.
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: We're buying a couch and you were looking at all
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the poofs and you were like, Babe, look at the
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: couch right here. And I looked at that. I don't
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: like it, and you got you got mad at me,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: and I was like, babe, can I be honest with you?
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: You said yeah, I said, I feel like I don't
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: have room to disagree with you without you taking personally
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: and you look me right in my face. He said,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: you know what, you're right? I said, I have.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: I vaguemember man.
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: We talked about so much else. Remember that, No, I do.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: I do remember the emotion. I remember that.
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because you put so much work into figuring out
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: what couchs look good for our family and our living room.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: We were moving, we were buying this house. It was
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: a lot going on. We had two young kids, and
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: I'm like, damn, I can't disagree with you. And what
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: I could have done is what a lot of people
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: do in relationships. Realize that pattern and then just stop
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: agree disagreeing with you, like, you know what, Since you're
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: doing all that, I'm just not going to disagree with
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: you no more. Yeah you like it? I love it, babe. Yeah,
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: let's do it. Yeah. And then resentment builds over time,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and ten years down the road, I don't even know
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: how to connect with you genuinely anymore. So I put
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: it out there. I feel like I can't disagree with
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: you without you being mad. And then you intern said,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: you know what, You're right. You got the right to disagree.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: It ain't even that deep. That's safety.
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: And do you remember the conversation after that, He don't know,
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: and this isn't nothing. This is a perfect way to explain,
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: like the whole example. The reason why I responded that
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: way is because I realized how frustrated I was because
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: we were looking for a couch with a certain type
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: of measurement that fit a certain spot and I had
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: been doing all of this research and I finally found
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: a couch, and then when you said it, I'm like, oh,
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: my research go down to damn dreams. And he don't
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: even give the damn about this damn couch, but he
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: cared about this now, and I just remember that was
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: my emotion. But then I'm like, yo, this is your
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: house too, you know, like fine, like fine, then you're
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: gonna help me find the couch that fits that works.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: And that was the end of that.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: This is your house too is exactly what I mean
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: by being a safe place, because you could have stuck
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: to the I deserve to have all of this work
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: that I did looked at And let's go through just
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: the talking points of social media, the invisible work that
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: you did to pick out the couch, talking about how
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: you know women always have to do free labor, talking
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: about how I wasn't in on that process at all,
• 26:53
  Speaker 1: but I came in the last minute wanted to change anything.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: There's an argument there about power dynamics. You can make
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: that entire interaction whatever you want by the rules of
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: social media. But we didn't live in social media. We
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: lived in a relationship between me and you in the
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: middle of home goods or wherever the hell we were. Well,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: we get this joint right, you're creating barrel. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: we're getting off the path. But that's that's what safety
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: means to me. And just to go further until Michelle
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Obama's point in just about selfishness and entitlement, I think
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: it took both of us to walk off of the
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: ledge of this is what I deserve, this is what
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: I think, and kind of my opinion needs to be
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: the one that's on the top. You know how when
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: you little kids, you're playing bubblegum bubble gum in the dish,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: and it's everybody putting their hands on top of each other. Like,
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: in my mind, a healthy relationship is one where you
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: don't feel like you need to have your hand on
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: top in order for your hand to be relevant real talk. Though.
• 27:49
  Speaker 1: Do you feel differently, It's cool if you do. I
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: just want to know where your mind.
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: At feel I feel very similarly. I think that the
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: issue that I had early on in a relationship was
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: trying not to rock the boat.
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: You know.
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: I think that I don't know, I feel like you
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: were a little bit more vocal about things, not like nah,
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: I don't like that.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I paid for it though you did.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: You did, and like there were definitely moments where I
• 28:19
  Speaker 2: shut down. But I think, like going back to that
• 28:20
  Speaker 2: this is your house too. That's always the running kind
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: of narrative in my head on both ends. So it's
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: like this is this is your house too, but this
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: is my business too, these are my kids too, this
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: is our life too. And I think that I know,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: for me, I constantly have to remind myself that because
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: you know I, like you said, we've both been super independent,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: Like I'm grown at the end of the day, Like
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: there's there's a whole life that I live outside of here.
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: There are logistics that I have to deal with, there
• 28:50
  Speaker 2: are answers that I have to, questions that I have
• 28:52
  Speaker 2: to answer, things that I have to do, and partnership
• 28:56
  Speaker 2: kind of requires you to have the time, the energy,
• 29:00
  Speaker 2: in the space to sit and be like, hey, I
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: have to stop what I'm doing because I share this
• 29:04
  Speaker 2: life with this person and I have to consider them,
• 29:07
  Speaker 2: and that's annoying as hell.
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: So that leads me to a question or just a
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: thought rather about how I struggles are different.
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: Oh, they're so different.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: They're so different.
• 29:17
  Speaker 2: They're even more different now than.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: They've ever been there. And it's just the time stamp
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: this joint. We are seven years married, almost known each
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: other for years. So is that twelve twelve twelve years
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: my longest relationship, my longest relationship. That's crazy, it don't.
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: It feels like it, but it don't.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it feels like it feels like three separate relationships.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: It feels like babies. Oh man, one child, no four,
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: two children. And now we're business co founders of an organization.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: Damn man, listen my.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: Bad, go back to you a question, baby.
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: It ain't for everybody, you know what I but, but
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: we we work well together. So the way that our
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: labor is different. Because on I'm gonna keep using social
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: media because that's what we all tap into to know
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: what everyone else is thinking on social media, I find
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: that both men and women do a very good job
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: of talking about their struggles from their identity. And by
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: the way, all the issues that we're talking about know,
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: Ami and I, this is all a very heteronormative conversation.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: They're gonna be couples who don't identify with that at all.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: But there are a lot of similarities in partner relationships,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Like everybody is dealing with something. It might not be this,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: but it's something. So I encourage y'all to listen and
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: find the similarities or the differences where they may inform
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: some more healthy conversations in your relationship. But yeah, so
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: on social media, you know, men and women do a
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: good job of saying, you know, this is the burden
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: that I carry as a man, the burden that I
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: carry as a woman. And men and women also do
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: a really good job of doubt invalidating the other side.
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: I've seen men say things like, man, the invisible load,
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: that's just that's bullshit. That's just women complaining about life
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: because they expect to be pretty princesses. And I'm always
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: like shit saying the same thing, like if that many
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: people are saying the same thing I think we got
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: to pay attention to that. Oh, it's heavy on my joint.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: And then women on the other side. How hard is
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: it to be a man? What? What issues do men
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: struggle with? Whatever issues men struggle with, men are the
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: reason for that, even patriarchy. I'm a black man, like
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: my fathers didn't create that system. I also got to
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: be aware that I do benefit from it one thousand percent.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: But like men have so much powers, Like yeah, individual life,
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: I don't always feel very powerful. What do fathers deal
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: with a lot? You know a lot?
• 31:57
  Speaker 2: Hell about it? About what fathers do with your struggle
• 32:01
  Speaker 2: as a father, as a founder, as god own episode man,
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: let's touch on it and the reason why I'm asking
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: for context y'all. We literally had this conversation last night,
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: like before we even kind of reviewed everything that. But
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: I think that, I mean, I shared some things with
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: you as well. I think that like when we think
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: about emotional labor or invisible labor, rather the invisible labor
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: of fatherhood, parenting, whatever. Last yeah, I think that it's
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: very It's very I think that was the best thing
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: that we could have done in our relationship, especially having
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: that having those conversations consistently, because I don't know what
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: you'd be struggling with. Some of the things that you'd
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: be struggling with wouldn't necessarily be a struggle for me,
• 32:46
  Speaker 2: Like organizing. I love to organize. You gotta organize something.
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: It's gonna throw your whole day off.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna be cooked.
• 32:53
  Speaker 2: One. And I don't like pivoting, like I have a
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: way of a way of doing things. And one but
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: something is off, I'm done. Don't ask me to do
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: nothing anymore. So this is where he thrives.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, captain chaos baby, put me in the game, coach.
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: He loves it. He loves it. But I think that,
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: you know, let's talk a little bit about what those
• 33:13
  Speaker 2: struggles are, because I think people can relate. People don't
• 33:15
  Speaker 2: hear it. That's the problem. People don't hear it.
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: All right, So clarifying question the struggles as it relates to,
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: like my struggles in this relationship separate than yours or
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: just generally as a husband, father, I.
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: Think, separate than mine's like the things that I may not.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: See man keeping my The biggest struggle for me is
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: keeping keeping my eyes on the money. Keeping my eyes
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: on the money, No Amy came to me one time.
• 33:40
  Speaker 1: It's like, y'all, I'm doing so much, like it's crazy.
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: I feel like I got thirty five different jobs with
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: thirty two different hats. I'm always thinking, I'm always doing logistics.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: And I said, I feel you. I feel you. I'm
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: always and not I feel you in a way that's like, oh,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: look at what I have to deal with. That's what
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: you're worried about. No, I would that could have been
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: I would never want to do what she does.
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: That could have been your I think that's a lot
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: of people's reality. That's what they hear in get respons to.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: And to me that it's valid when you have the response,
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: but it's also something that deserves some introspection because there
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: is there is a tinge of immaturity on that response. Instead,
• 34:15
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to relate. I'm like, yeah, I feel you.
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the money, like I'm always paying attention
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: to how much money's coming in, how much money's leaving out.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: We got employees we gotta pay, we got expenditures. We
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: just had water leaking out the damp sealing the other
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: we I'm pretty sure that's gonna be twelve thousand dollars.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: It's always and then the way our system is set up,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: I'm the primary breadwinner. Like it's we both work on
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: the company, but I gotta be the one that deliver
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: the speech or host the podcast or do all of
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: these things. It's my face that you see. No Amy
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: does the operations, and you don't see that, but it's
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: just as important as anything else. But bringing in this money, man,
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: I don't want her to feel like she gotta go
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: without so many things. Yeah, walk on eggshells when it
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: comes to money. Oh I don't think I can buy this.
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: I don't want her to feel like she's in a
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: financial prison in this relationship. So there is a thin
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: line between wanting you to be comfortable and do what
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: you want. Like your hair, you wear nice, nice weaves,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: and shit, man, THEMS is not cheap. You know what
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: I'm saying than that, I don't even know what that means.
• 35:21
  Speaker 1: I just know it's not cheap. When we go on vacation,
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: the girls gotta get braids, all three of them gotta
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: get braids. And no Amy's not come like I was
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: sitting in the back of a terrifying uber. She don't
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: have that luxury. So oh, I fall asleep in the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: uber one thousand percent and dared you to do something
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: that's not her reality. She's probably gonna get the nice
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: joint that's gonna cost more money. Everything costs more money
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: when it's multiple heads on one account. And I don't
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: want to be the one a babe, you can't eat
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: this this week, or if you go to the restaurant,
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: make sure you get the water. I don't want to
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: be that person. But also when the money runs out,
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: everybody gonna look to meat and be like, hey, bro,
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: what we're gonna do. And if I don't have an answer,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: if I don't set away money for summer camp, and
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: if I don't set away money so the girls can
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: do cheerleading, and trying to pay attention to who's getting
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: paid what and when, and all the money's just moving
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: crazy all the time. It's a constant source of anxiety,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: especially considering the way that I grew up. I grew
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: up without money, and now that I got some change
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: in my pocket, I'm terrified to lose it. And I'm terrified.
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: It was a point in my life when I said
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I'd rather be dead and go back to being broke.
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: The way I was when I grew up. Reality check,
• 36:34
  Speaker 1: that's not gonna happen that way, But my brain does
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: not always know that understanding accept that as the truth.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: So that's watching the money is one thing, It's just one,
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: but it is a huge stressor for me. And even
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: in my conversations with the homies, all of them are
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: going through the same thing. Me and you spend money
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: two completely different ways. So, yeah, that's my thing. What's
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: your thing?
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like invisible load as soon as
• 37:00
  Speaker 2: I hear that. I think of the planning, the nurturing,
• 37:03
  Speaker 2: the logistics, being the human calendar, like having to know
• 37:07
  Speaker 2: exactly where everybody is, what they gotta do, where they
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: gotta be. And I think the struggle with that is
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: it's not a loud thing.
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not as obvious, no, and you.
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: Only know that it's not working when things go awry.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: And I think for me the struggle is like even
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: with the kids, sometimes they just expect that dinner's gonna
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: be ready, and your favorite snack is going to be
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: in the pantry and you're gonna have exactly what you
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: want to eat for breakfast in the morning. Who did that?
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: Do y'all think this is magic, you know what I mean?
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Or like you know, with you you travel a lot,
• 37:43
  Speaker 2: You're doing a lot of speaking engagements. I have to
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: keep an eye on the calendar and make sure, Okay,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: Emory has a recital this day, we have a cheer competition.
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: That day, it's parent teacher conference. This day, he's gonna
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: be in New York. He gotta be in Virginia. Then
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: he gotta be in LA. You just hop on the
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: flight and you just go wherever you gotta go. I'm
• 38:00
  Speaker 2: the one behind the scenes doing all of those logistics.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: You might be paying for summer camp, but I'm over
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: here trying to figure out what that summer camp is
• 38:06
  Speaker 2: cheaper than this one, and maybe we can do a vacation.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: And I think for me, the struggle isn't the doing,
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: it's the did anybody come and check on mommy? Did
• 38:17
  Speaker 2: anybody check to see if Mommy's favorite snack is in
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: the pantry? Granted, could that be my responsibility, Yeah, but
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: I'm worried thinking about it. You know, like even with
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: our employees, our employees get paid to do the work
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: that we pay them for here, and I don't necessarily
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: get the same kind of paycheck that y'all think we get. Nah,
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: we're funny. We're still investing in the company, you know.
• 38:38
  Speaker 2: So it's it's the combination of not always being seen
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: doing the work, hence the invisible labor, and then still
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: trying to find the time to do the things that
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: I want to do that I personally feel like I
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: do a good job at. Like I'm outside, I'm hanging
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: out with my sorority sisters, I'm hanging out with my friends.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: Like I definitely make time to to pour into myself,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: but it takes a lot of work to do that,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: and I don't know that that's always recognized just in general,
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: not just you and the kids, but like people just
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: see my kids hair be done, they smell good, my
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: husband is working, and it seems like everything is okay.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: There is there is a machine behind this, and I'm
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: the machine.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and even and to add on to that, just
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: to put some layers on this conversation, sometimes there's an
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: assumption that because the work isn't as appreciated as it
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: should be, that the onus of all of that appreciation
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: falls on me. Can you speak to that, because you're
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: very vocal about how I do show appreciation to you,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: but also that's not enough.
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: No, it's not. And we talked about this yesterday. Basically
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: I vented about everything that I just said. I went
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: on a tangent.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, she let her, she let it chop.
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: I let it all out last night, and then while
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: my back was.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Falling off the bone, I'm much the tenderest.
• 39:57
  Speaker 2: I'm over here and he's like, well, babe, well what
• 40:00
  Speaker 2: can I do? Like, it's not it's not a you problem.
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: It's just to think about it. It's as simple as
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: going to your partner saying, hey, I noticed that you're
• 40:09
  Speaker 2: doing X, Y and Z. Maybe you should go take
• 40:12
  Speaker 2: us by day, or maybe we should go to the movies,
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: or maybe we can you know whatever. I think that
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: acknowledgment goes a very very long way, and I think
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: we get so caught up in you know, the pomps,
• 40:23
  Speaker 2: in the circumstance and what is it you know, I'm
• 40:27
  Speaker 2: shotam immigrant. I don't always know what the words be.
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: But sometimes it's not just these grand gestures. It's just
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: little points, little touch points and acknowledgment and going back
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: to the concept of the meat and yet what about
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: meat had Like it's it's more It's so much bigger
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: than just what you do and what you don't do,
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: and how you appreciated and how you're not appreciated. It's
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: how do we plug into this like entire system, especially
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: if you have kids, especially if you guys own a
• 40:58
  Speaker 2: company together, acus you're intermingling money like it's it's always more,
• 41:03
  Speaker 2: it's always.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: And the needs of the many always out o way
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: the needs of the few. One thing that you do
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: that I really appreciate is you say, like, I'll offer
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: to take something off of you, and instead of saying, yeah,
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: just do it, and knowing that won't help you, you like, babe,
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: you can't do that, But that ain't gonna help me
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: right now. And what that does is it stops me
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: from putting full time energy and effort toward a solution
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: that ain't gonna make a hill of beans.
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Man. Can we talk about that for a second, Yeah,
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: for sure. I see this is what I see on
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: social media. On one side, you know, let's just just
• 41:37
  Speaker 2: stereotypes women complaining about X, Y and Z saying I
• 41:41
  Speaker 2: did I did all of this, and it's like it's
• 41:44
  Speaker 2: thank you, but it actually didn't do what you thought
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: it was gonna do. So now both people feel unappreciated.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: One person feels appreciated because they put forth a lot
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: of effort to solving a problem that maybe they didn't
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: get clarity on whether or not that was the best
• 41:58
  Speaker 2: course of action. And then on the other hand, you
• 42:00
  Speaker 2: might have someone that may not be expressing what the
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: issue is or afraid to say like, hey, but nah,
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: that's not gonna work.
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: Or a person who thinks that's going to be the
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: solution realize it's halfway through that it's not. And now
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: you just got two people who are dissatisfied. Let's add
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: another layer to that cake. On top of that, there
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: is a resounding message from women that says, don't ask me,
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: just do it. So okay, So you got something that
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: needs to be done, something that's not being seen, an
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: action that's being taken because it needs to be done,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: but that action is missing the mark. But if you ask,
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: it's adding more label on to the person. This is
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: it's like an entire circulation of just ineffective communication.
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: And is that what it is? Communication?
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Because the issue, I think it's action, communication, expectations, and
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: just comparing the social media sphere to your individual life.
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: The things that exists on an institutional level don't always
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: exist on a social level. The things that exist in
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: the world, power dynamics that exist in the world don't
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: always exist in a relationship the same way. And like
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: the thing you said earlier about what people are used
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: to seeing in relationships, I was raised by a single
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: mom who was barely employed. My grandmother was employed all
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: the time, and I didn't meet my father until I
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: was twenty six, and we did not have a good meeting.
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: So I didn't grow up seeing any of those relationship
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: dynamics and not using myself as the normal. Accept the fact,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: and I'll acknowledge that I am an outlier, but that
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: didn't prohibit me from realizing what I had to do
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: as an individual in order to make a relationship work.
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: How did you get there?
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: I think being a solution oriented person and a person
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: that realizes that once you decide to have a baby
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: and bring somebody else in and y'all become one, it's
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: not about you anymore. It's about you as it pertains
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: to the team. It's the team. What works best for
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: the team. Everything that works best for you as an individual, man,
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: that shit ain't gonna work for the family, and guess what,
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: Everything that works best for the family is not gonna
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: work best for you as an individual. We live in
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: the suburbs right now in this house. I hate living
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: in the suburbs. I hate it. But our kids are thriving.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: The school our kids go to, I hate how much
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: work it takes to keep them there, But our kids
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: are thriving. The needs of the many outweigh the needs
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: of the few, and I think that is such a
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: hard concept for people to wrap their minds around. Now
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: back to the thing that you was talking about, befolk, Oh.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: Real quick, But so just to your point, how do
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: you avoid being a martyr in your relationship?
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Then if that's the case, by speaking up early and often.
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: But it has to be a safe place for you
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: to speak up, like there's no answer that doesn't also
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: come with another answer, just like the whole invisible labor thing.
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: And you're talking about systems and everything. We got a
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: family calendar, a shared family calendar where everybody knows what
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: everybody is doing all the time. That helps a lot.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: We also have conversation and touch points all the time. Babe,
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: you gotta do this this weekend, let's talk about logistics,
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: are you trying to do this? Do you want to
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: do this? When people talk communication, they think they're just
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: talking about feelings. Now it's also logistics. A relationship or
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: a family is a business, and a business does not
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: survive when the people and employees aren't talking to each
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: other all the time about everything and every which way,
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: and when something's going wrong. I think there's this inclination
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: to hold it in or sometimes which is also a
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: lack of maturity, not calling you out, just calling you
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: in real quick, lack of maturity saying, oh you did this,
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: What I'm going to withhold. I'm going to withhold my
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: love until you understand. And now you're taking the action
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: that that person doesn't even understand is a protest. And
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: when they don't acknowledge it, you getting more upset. And
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: guess what now they're protesting and y'all too, is just
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: and you can't see me right now, but my arms
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: are folding, and we back to back. What I'm not
• 45:51
  Speaker 1: going to until you do what I'm not going to
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: until you do, and nothing gets done, you will end
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: up hurting each other in between that, so hurting yourself
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: and hurting yourself in the process so for me, it's
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: about keeping my mind on the team and also not
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: getting clear in the plate. So it's not resentment if
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: I feel this way. Babe, Hey, can we talk about
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: this real quick.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: You're really good at that.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: But you're really good at listening to what I say
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: and not taking it personally. It's not it's not an
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: attack against you.
• 46:21
  Speaker 2: I know I didn't do it. I can do that,
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: and if.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: I did, I'm sorry that God damn god, God damn it. Games.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: That's it right there. If I did it, I am
• 46:31
  Speaker 1: so sorry. But there's a layer on top of that.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: You can't be the person that says I told you.
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: So every time a person you know what I'm saying,
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: is it safe to say I'm sorry around you? Because
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: I can say I'm sorry you be like but you
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: always do.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: That, and you that word you always and never.
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: Of course, but you over exaggerate to make sure that
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: your point gets home. You just over you, over you,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: over bringing your point home. It's like killing an ant
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: with a sledgehammer when a shoe would do. Hey, it
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: was good, y'all, real quick, let's take a break from
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: the episode because I want to shout y'all out on
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Apple podcasts. Y'all have been leaving reviews and they've been dope,
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: you're showing me out, So i'ma shout you out what
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: we're talking about. The first one is from Janine McKnight
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: and she says amazing. She gave us five stars and
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: says absolutely love the podcast. Ker Gaines creates a space
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: for honest conversations, growth, and real understanding without judgment. His
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: insight and perspective are powerful and refreshing. Every episode leaves
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: you with something valuable to think about. Thank you, Janine,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: and I appreciate you, and I appreciate y'all out there.
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: Please continue to leave reviews on both Apple and Spotify
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: and we'll shout you out right back to the episode.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: I think it's easy for us to talk about what
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: we do well now because we're in this space. But
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: let's move back a little bit. Let's put it in reverse,
• 47:55
  Speaker 1: and let's talk about how we weren't those things for
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: each other just because it's somebody out there, because people
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: want their love to work, like not everybody is out
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: there decentering relationships and saying that I don't I don't
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: want to be partner with anybody that's not everyone's reality.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: If it is your reality and it's your authentic reality, man,
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: go forward, go forward. But if it's not, you need
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: you need some help. And a lot of couples out
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: there struggling and they're in the place now that we
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: were once in. So let's talk a little bit about
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: how ooh, let's do it like this instead of me
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: talking about how you weren't a safe space? Can I
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: guess how I wasn't yeah, or or like what my
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: problem was earlier?
• 48:40
  Speaker 2: Let me let you cook because I feel like I
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: feel like I'm going to disagree, but I want to
• 48:45
  Speaker 2: know what you think.
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: Where do I start?
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: I can I ask you a question, Yeah, where were
• 48:52
  Speaker 2: you like kind of emotionally when we met, because I
• 48:55
  Speaker 2: think that's going to really inform people, like how we
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: kind of got to where we were, because I think
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: that's really important.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Emotionally, it's hard to say. I was still very muscle
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: playing the field, meeting a lot of women. I was outside.
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: I was I was profoundly outside, and I think, to
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: keep it for real, I think I was at a
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: point when I was starting to get like disconnected from sex.
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I just didn't associate it with emotion. I was just
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: at that time, just having fun. I was having a
• 49:29
  Speaker 1: good time, and there's nothing wrong with that. No, as
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: long as you ain't hurting nobody, it's nothing wrong with that.
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: It's even if you're a woman. I don't I don't
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: do the purity shit. Man, have a good time. I
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: think emotionally, I was in a place where I wanted
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: more for my life, but I didn't know what that meant.
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: I didn't ever see myself being married or having a kid.
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: It's not something I ever desired. I didn't have a
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: desire for long term partnership. I didn't really believe in it.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: I was one of those humans aren't meant to be
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: monogamous type people.
• 50:00
  Speaker 2: Just hear some of the things that this man used
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: to say. We first, man, Lord, I felt like relationships
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: would tie me down.
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: I don't think I understood romantic love. I had been
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: in a few longish term relationships, but they weren't They
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: were very wide, but they weren't very deep, you know
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: what I'm saying. That's where I was. So you came
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: along in a time where I wasn't ready for you
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: at all. I was not ready for you, and even
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: when we first met, I didn't really know what to
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: do with you. You asked me, oh God, knowing me
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: be like.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: I'm scared, Like you know, there's such and such girl,
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: like she don't know.
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: Suspicious y'all ever do anything. I'd be like, no, lion, lion, lion,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: messing up credibility in a relationship for no reason because
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I didn't know in my past if you told any
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: woman that she's she's gonna kill you or not believe you,
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: or just make something out of it that it wasn't.
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: I was trying to figure out why that.
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: Was why and instead of just saying yeah, we we
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: whatever back in the day, which wouldn't have probably wouldn't
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: even been an issue. I didn't know you well enough
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: to know that I didn't tell.
• 51:12
  Speaker 2: The truth, and you didn't know me well enough. Yeah, man,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: please tell me all the business. I want to know
• 51:16
  Speaker 2: all the things.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, now, I tell you everything. I even got
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: the double by, like, yeah, I don't know if I
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: told you the truth about her back in the day,
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: but definitely one thousand percent. And you're like, Okay, so
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I know she's not tripping. She just wants to be informed.
• 51:27
  Speaker 1: I think me not being honest with that it's set
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: a bad tone in our relationship for how trustworthy I
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: was in your mind, and it took. It took, and unfortunately,
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: like when we got pregnant that even still you trusted me,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: but you didn't know to what degree you could trust me,
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: Like I didn't consistently show up in a way that
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: gave you the Okay, all right, I know that I
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: can rely on you. And I had to spend our
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: entire pregnancy like all right, this this we were in
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: it for real. I gotta show you that I'm trustworthy.
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: You can depend on me. I got you. But that's
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: not something you say. That's something you exercise time and
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: time and time and time and time and time again
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: over a long period of time. So that you used
• 52:10
  Speaker 1: to get on me for not checking up on you
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: as much.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: I mean you were like, you ain't cold if I.
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: Ate all day, I'm like, what the hell you needn't
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: need to call and see if you need all Yeah,
• 52:20
  Speaker 1: like what you're going to starve? But but now that
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: I know you better, I know it's not really about
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: did you eat? It's just making sure because I think
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: you even mentioned it just now in this episode. It's
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: about the intent of understanding and checking up on making
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: sure that I'm okay. Yeah, just make sure I'm okay.
• 52:37
  Speaker 1: So those are the things I'm sure's I'm sure you
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: got a laundry list type a July Leo.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: I don't. I don't. It's been so long too, Like it's.
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: It's kind of it's a different relationship.
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: It's a totally different relationship. But I'm really glad that
• 52:51
  Speaker 2: you acknowledged that.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, talked about it.
• 52:54
  Speaker 2: I never talked about.
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: Shout out the breaking news on the pod.
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: No. I think that's a that's just a really really
• 53:00
  Speaker 2: good point because it's making me think about like we
• 53:03
  Speaker 2: was acting like that from the beginning, Like why did
• 53:05
  Speaker 2: I say, like what happened? But you know what, I
• 53:07
  Speaker 2: think it was like you. I'm trying to be careful
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: with the way that I say this because my man
• 53:14
  Speaker 2: ain't no pump, you know what I mean, like about
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: his business. But you would approach me in a way
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: where I knew that you wanted more, even though you
• 53:25
  Speaker 2: said you didn't want a relationship. You said you didn't
• 53:28
  Speaker 2: want things, you said you couldn't see future with you
• 53:31
  Speaker 2: know anybody. I just didn't fully believe that is your action.
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: What were.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: The action is the actions like Kier and I used
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: to get into like just stupid petty arguments. We're like, fine,
• 53:42
  Speaker 2: we're not gonna talk no more, and like we wouldn't
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: talk for maybe like twelve hours. He would never go
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: twenty four hours without coming back and be like, you
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: know what, my bad, let's.
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: Talk about it.
• 53:51
  Speaker 2: Which is a first for me because I ain't know
• 53:54
  Speaker 2: you before that.
• 53:54
  Speaker 1: I was misster Gucci man. That was my standard miss
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: one next fifteen one coming.
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, there wasn't like that with me.
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: You only know me with you though they don't know
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: the savage me. I you know what you love boy me.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: We're gonna get into my story later, but I think
• 54:11
  Speaker 2: that that was the turning point for me because you know,
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: I'll go into how I entered the relationship a little
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: bit later because I don't want to step away from
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: your point. But you softened up around me, You opened
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: up around me, and I understood why you didn't necessarily
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: want those things. I understood why those things weren't necessarily
• 54:35
  Speaker 2: appealing to you. One because you didn't see it. And
• 54:38
  Speaker 2: like you said before, the relationships that you were in
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: weren't like deep. I feel like you and I had
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: a really deep friendship before anything, you know, and that
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: was something new to me as well, Like I never
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: really entered I don't. I hate to call it a situationship,
• 54:53
  Speaker 2: but that's really what it was. Like I entered this
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: situationship with you where it wasn't just romance to sexual
• 55:01
  Speaker 2: you know whatever.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: It was cool, like, yeah, we enjoy hanging out with We.
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: Met while I was in law school and this man
• 55:07
  Speaker 2: was helping me study for the bar. You know, I
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: was a teacher and he was helping me with lesson
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: plans with my kids, like I was going through things
• 55:14
  Speaker 2: at work and he was Like it felt like a
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: genuine friendship and that was something that I've never experienced
• 55:20
  Speaker 2: in a relationship. So that was worth me kind of
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: seeing where things went. And what really hit it off
• 55:27
  Speaker 2: was when we got pregnant. When we got pregnant with Emery,
• 55:30
  Speaker 2: that was completely unexpected, and the way that you kind
• 55:33
  Speaker 2: of stepped up to the plate after the initial shot,
• 55:35
  Speaker 2: because let's just be right, it was a lot going
• 55:38
  Speaker 2: on after that initial shock. The way that you supported
• 55:42
  Speaker 2: me and the way that you looked at us as
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: a unit, like we're gonna raise this baby together. And
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: we want her to be, you know, confident, We want
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: her to be secure like you really kind of set
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: a different foundation that I was used to, and that
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: was enough for me to see where it went. Because
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: even if our relationship didn't work out, I knew that
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: you would be an amazing co parent and an amazing father.
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: Man. My thing is the second you are about to
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: bring life into the world, it is no longer singularly
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: about you. And my mom was like that, that's why
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: I got live that.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: No, you showed it.
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: Wait a minute, I never heard it out loud that
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: way before. And we hear these situations all the time.
• 56:26
  Speaker 1: All right, we want to have to extend the time
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: on the pod. We got more, we got more things
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: to talk about it than I thought. So let's establish,
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: first off, how old we were at the time when
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: when we met. When we first met, this was twelve
• 56:39
  Speaker 1: years ago. So I was thirty two.
• 56:42
  Speaker 2: No, you weren't when we met.
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: Thirty Oh, I was twenty. I was twenty eight.
• 56:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think I'm twenty five. I was. I
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: was twenty five.
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, you were twenty five and I was twenty eight.
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: And when we got pregnant with Emery, that was twenty sixteen, one.
• 56:58
  Speaker 2: Twenty sixteen, twenty seventeen, and I was I think I
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: turned twenty eight, so I was.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: Two years older. I was thirty, all right. So we
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: have a twenty eight year old and a thirty year
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: old and you know, this is a situationship that was
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: not on again off again. But it wasn't super steady,
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: It wasn't on again off again. We weren't exclusive, and
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: it wasn't serious. We were open. Yeah, maybe that's the
• 57:25
  Speaker 2: best way to I don't know the new terms nowadays people,
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: I think that means.
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: Something different than it meant when we was around.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: But no, in the beginning, it was open.
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we were very It was just like it was
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: just a fun thing.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: We were having fun.
• 57:39
  Speaker 1: We're having a good time. It was having fun.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: But then we got pregnant, and then we got exclusive.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Then we got exclusive.
• 57:46
  Speaker 2: We became exclusive about a year and a half and
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: then I said I had that argument in the street, yeah.
• 57:52
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, what are we And one of my
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: homies walked up. He started filming. I'm like, bro, what
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: are you doing? We arguing in the street, Like because
• 58:01
  Speaker 1: like the nineties movie, Oh my god. And then then
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: we got together and then and then and then I
• 58:11
  Speaker 1: come alongst the later. I was like, I don't want
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: to do this no more. And I went over the
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: house to break up with you and it didn't work.
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: And then I feel like, why didn't it work? We
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: have a good enough argument, and I was like, what
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: are you even talking about?
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to leave.
• 58:25
  Speaker 2: You were like no, no, it was just like, well, like,
• 58:28
  Speaker 2: what's the problem.
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: I think, yeah, I think it was. It was just irritation,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: but it was irritation that could be resolved. I think
• 58:35
  Speaker 1: I realized that we had better resolution yea capabilities, And
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: I thought.
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: When I walked through there, I think I think you
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: came and looking for argument.
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I wanted to be mad, and you were, well,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: you was You wanted to be civil and I'm like, no, stop,
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: I want to flip tables over. You want to have
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: a coom bay yall circle. And then we got pregnant.
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: So yo, they sound like the nineties movie I Hate
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: You Jody.
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's pretty much what happened.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: So there's an argument. There's somebody out there who would
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: say that a person, a young man or young woman
• 59:09
  Speaker 1: who puts themselves in that predicament is doing the wrong thing.
• 59:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it don't work out like that in real life.
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, would you say that we might be outliers here?
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. I heard a lot of people have
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: these situations. But how would you categorize like a young
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: person in today's age of twenty eight to thirty year
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: old that are in that situation? Do you think that
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: they're fing up? Do you think that they are, you know,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: just being not kids because you're an adult? Yeah, you know,
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: what would you put that?
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think the answer is a little bit
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: deeper than what it seems. I think context here matters, right, Like,
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: if I'm coming into this situation with you wanting a relationship,
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: wanting something serious, and these were the events that planned out,
• 59:57
  Speaker 2: I think that's absolutely nuts. You know. I think with us,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 2: what's different, or at least with me specifically, what's different
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: is that I didn't come in looking for a relationship.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 2: I literally came in on can we curse on the BI?
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 2: I came in on some independent type shit like I
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: had just left the relationship every guy that I had
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: been with with like just ain't shit, Like it was
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: just a bad situation. So I didn't come in thinking
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 2: that anybody was gonna be my night? What is it
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: my night? I never I never entered this in that way.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 2: I literally entered our relationship like he's cute and I'm
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: not looking for nothing serious. He seems cool, we have
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: great relationships. He's not pressuring me like I've always been
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: in relationships where men pressured me into something serious, like
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: they looked at me. I want you. I want to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: be in this relationship, been with, had done that, and
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 2: they sell this vision of what your life with them
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: is gonna look like, and then you enter the relationship
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: and it's not it. It's like, why did you say
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 2: it was going to be all? It?
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: Tell? Probably oldest checking out.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 2: You really didn't have to do any of this, And
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: I feel like with you, you came in like, oh
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: you cool it out, let's kick it. Oh I really
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: love what you're doing. How can I support you? Let's
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: have this conversation. Oh you in law school, that's dope.
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: Let me go up to the law school and bring
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: you some food. Like it wasn't the expectation, like you weren't.
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 2: I do believe in courting and all of those things,
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: as long as both parties are on the same page.
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And to that point, I feel like my experience
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: of relationships was, Oh, this guy is nice enough, he's
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: smart enough, he looks good enough. I have fun around him.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: I am locking this down today. And a lot of
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: women that our data hit the accelerated and expected a
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: relationship where we were still getting to know each other
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: for real, and you did. But you didn't do that though,
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: that's my point. You were just like, all right, let's
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: continue to hang and see where it goes. I mean,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: you did until you didn't. But I don't feel like
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: you that was a year and a half and I'm like,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: it wasn't. It wasn't three weeks and two dates in.
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: I don't feel like you unfairly accelerated anything. What I
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 1: would say to anybody in that predicament is it is
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: what it is. It is what it is. I don't
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: think I could unfairly judge anyone for getting pregnant. People
• 1:02:14
  Speaker 1: always say, oh, it's you, you you you're good to
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: lay down, but you don't want to stand up, Like yeah,
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: the qualifications to be intimate with somebody are far different
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 1: than the qualifications to be a life partner with somebody,
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 1: it is very easy to have forty five minutes of
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: fun than it is to have forty years of partnership.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: Those are two completely different things. Oh you laughing because
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: I said forty five minutes. It's a scale. Some people
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: is way less. Some people listen tad or it's just average.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: But right.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: Now it's gone. Nah, what was it?
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: It was not necessarily advice, But like I'm thinking, I'm
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 2: trying to understand what made this so different, because I
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: don't know that we've ever had this conversation in this way.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: But I will also say that just me coming from
• 1:03:12
  Speaker 2: what I was coming from before meeting you, I was
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: in a place where, like, ain't nobody gonna throw me
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: off of where I'm sitting right now, Like I've worked
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 2: hard to get to this place where I'm at least
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: self aware of self aware as I thought I was
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 2: at the point, you know what I mean, and just
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: in a really good space with who I was as
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 2: a woman, and you were just an extra fun thing
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: not to do. I hate the way that that founds, But.
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: That's crazy.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: No, he doesn't. First of all, Second of all, there's
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: nothing Me and my daddy got a really good relationship
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: and he knows his daughter, so it's fine. But I
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 2: think that I think it's okay as long as you
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: know what you're doing and know why you're doing it
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 2: and being honest with yourself. Like there were definitely people
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 2: that I've dated before and I was like, yeah, I
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: definitely want to be in a relationship with them, or
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 2: I can see us kind of being together, and you
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: enter that situation a little bit differently. But I think
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: that with us, it was just a good time, And
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: I think that's what was so different about It was
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: a good time. It was a fun person. You were
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 2: a good friend, and I saw you but beyond who
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: you can be for me, I just saw you as
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 2: a good person as a whole, and I wanted to
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 2: be in your life because of that.
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: We got to bring you back because I think that's
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: a whole another that's a whole nother conversation to itself,
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 1: seeing the other person as a whole person. But if
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: I was to offer any advice, it would be you
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: know you all have you all don't it might not work,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: And because it doesn't work, it doesn't mean that you
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: can accept the fact that it might not work. You
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: don't necessarily have to hate the other person. And that's
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: coming from a place of privilege. I clearly married the
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: mother of my children, but I got a lot homies.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: That's not the thing. That's not the case for And
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 1: the reason that them and their co partner don't get
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: along is because they sometimes they knew it wasn't gonna work,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: and they try to force it, and they try to
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: force it over a long period of time, in that
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: time that they could have spent like amicably saying hey,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: let's just get off this ride together, like we I
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 1: don't know if it's gonna work. Either one person was
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: holding on while the other person was running away. Both
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: people were running away, both people were holding on, were
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: hurting each other. It's just that space between all right,
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: this is what it is. And I don't want to
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: do this anymore. It's just a lot of damage that's
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: done and it's irreparable. And now you're raising a kid
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: and two separate households, two separate set of rules, and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: two separate set of values, and you all aren't on
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: the same page. And it's just it's a lot, man,
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: it's a lot. So I always lean into a if
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: it's not gonna work, realize it early and make a
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: move on it.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: But how do you recognize it?
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: That's a whole other episode, like when it's if you
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: all cannot find a reasonable allusion to the problems that
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: you have without one person saying effort, just do what
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: you want to do. If you don't feel respected in
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: that relationship at all, if you don't feel listened to,
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 1: if you feel dehumanized and minimized. I think those are
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: great indicators that your relationship may not work and you
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: might want to try to repair it. You can go
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 1: see pastoral counseling. Please make sure that past is qualified.
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: You can go see a social worker, you can go
• 1:06:23
  Speaker 1: see a relationship counselor you can go I'll stop there
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 1: because everything else isn't as you know, but talk to
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: people you know and trust, try to find a mediator.
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 1: If you all can't find a way to agree, and
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: you all can't find a way to be amicable together,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: it's probably not going to work. And that's okay. If
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 1: you can realize it's not going to work and make
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 1: moves towards being good co parents and being good like
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: co owners of this child and this group project that
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: you're working on. I've seen that work very well, but
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: it's about early intervention and cutting that cutting the foot
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 1: off before the gang green reaches the whole leg. You know,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: it's it's just damn. That was a World War One reference.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 1: That was bloody.
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: Okay that but but I get it.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, all right, that one landed better than ice cream joint. Okay,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: ice cream. I don't know what I was doing.
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: It's the back pain, y'all blaming on the back pain.
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 1: I do want to land this plane, and can I.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: Say one point before you landed?
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: Sure?
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: It just reminds me of something that my mom used
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: to say, like, don't spend all of your reserve energy
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: making something work, because just because you work harder doesn't
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: make it a better fit. Sometimes things are just not
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 2: a good fit.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: Sunking cost fallacy what it's called a sunking cost fallacy.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: You see people do that right now. A lot of
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: uh hate to get political, but you see a lot
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: of you see a lot of Republicans right now back
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 1: in off of the president right now because of sunking
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: cost fallacy. It's basically this idea that I put so
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: much work and so much energy, so much thought into
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: this thing that I gotta go down with the ship
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: even when it's obvious that this thing is not working.
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 1: Think about it like a car. They tell you a
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: your car, your car needs to be replaced. You like, no,
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna just pay an engine twelve hundred, Pay the engine,
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: then the tires go out. I'll just pay the tires.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: Pay the tires. That's eight hundred dollars than the fuel
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: inject to go out. Oh and it keeps doing that,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: and you have a sunking cost fallacy. You sunk in
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: so much costs into this thing that you you can't
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: let it go at this point, even though it is
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: killing you. Sunk and costs fallacy, take it with you,
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: all right? So takeaways, takeaways, takeaways, I want to talk
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: about those. I want you to tell me what you think.
• 1:08:39
  Speaker 1: How do I say this? Will more women need to
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: understand in order to balance a relationship. Talk to the girlies.
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: Throw the word balance away. Okay, throw that's step one.
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that is your thing.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: Balance is not real. Balance. Balance is a way to
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: keep I was about to say, women, I was about
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: to go on my little tangent, but just throw the
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: word off. Balance. Balance does not exist. No, I think that.
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Barack Obama just said that. By the way, what were
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: you trying to be great? There's no balance?
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Like it's it's a dance, It's it's a harmony,
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: it's a rhythm. It's like this cyclical thing where you
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: constantly have to be concerned about different things at different times,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 2: sometimes at the same time, with yourself, how you feel,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 2: how you come across, with your partner, how they feel,
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: how they come across. You know, what are the invisible
• 1:09:27
  Speaker 2: loads on both hands? Because I think a lot of
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 2: times we think of invisible load as just us so
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: for me, us as women. Yes, so I'm looking at
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: myself as an example. I had a really tough week
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: last week. I'm dealing with health issues from a really
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: close family member. You know, it's the end of the
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 2: school year. We have like five businesses into one. I've
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: recently joined the sorority. I joined a whole bunch of
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 2: extra clubs and things, and I felt like nobody stopped
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 2: to see how I was doing. I felt like I
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 2: was drowning and everybod was just watching me drown. And
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 2: I noticed in that moment that I never spoke up.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 2: I never said, hey, I'm not doing well. Can you
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: check in on me, or like, hey, this is a
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 2: lot on my plate, can you take this off my plate?
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: Or if you can't take it off now, when can
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: you take it off so that I can plan for
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: my you know, break? And I think that sometimes you
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: just gonna have to push through, Like right now, I'm
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 2: in a season where we have the conversation. It's like
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: nobody can take breaks right now, but there's a break coming,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean. Now everybody kind of knows
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: where it is. At home with the kids, doing all
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 2: day laundry and doing all this stuff was a lot.
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 2: And then I looked up one day and it's like,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 2: why am I doing it? So I taught them how
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: to do it. I taught them like sometimes it's going
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 2: to take you speaking up, you doing a little bit
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: more work, you delegating work to other people, but it's
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: going You are in control of what happens around you,
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 2: and I think a lot of times women don't always
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 2: feel that, but you definitely have so much power in
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 2: your relationship. You control, You are the rhythm of your
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 2: relationship of your family. If I'm not good, there's a
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 2: really good chance that everybody's not good. So I think
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: kind of owning that place, speaking up and then saying no,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 2: like you know what, I'm gonna drop the ball here,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: so just so y'all know, so we can all prepare
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 2: for it. And it's okay. Nothing is going to burn down,
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: I promise you. And if it does, somebody got a
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 2: fire extincture and they'll just blow that shit out like
• 1:11:33
  Speaker 2: it really is fine. It really isn't the end of
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: the world, and there is. You don't have to carry everything,
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: you really don't don't actually don't carry everything.
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 1: That's when I started A majority of my clients are women,
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: and that those are two of the biggest surprises that
• 1:11:49
  Speaker 1: I had in treating women. One is how powerless women
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 1: feel sometimes I feel powerless. That made me say I
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 1: didn't realize that until I started doing counseling with women.
• 1:11:59
  Speaker 1: And also the idea if I don't do it, who
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 1: wills let that ship burn? But it'll so hard. I know,
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 1: I know, I know. You can't tell women to do
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 1: that directly, because it's two society has told y'all too much,
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 1: like who you are and how you operate in those
• 1:12:15
  Speaker 1: situations are the same thing. So if you drop the ball,
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: it's not just an indictment on what you do. It's
• 1:12:20
  Speaker 1: an indictment on who you are. I know, it's very
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: hard to get women to depersonalize that until you know,
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: you become an a decenter man, divorce your husband. You know,
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 1: I ain't doing nothing for nobody person.
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: We don't have to take it that far. Trust me,
• 1:12:33
  Speaker 2: they'll figure it out.
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: I get why people can get while women take it
• 1:12:36
  Speaker 1: that far, but I just wish that women had more
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: steps to say, hey, before we do that, like, let's
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: look at these other options right here, to see what
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 1: works for you and have somebody like guide them step
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 1: by step. But good therapist would do that, and a
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: good friend, a good group of friends, group.
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: Of friends, and I'm gonna just show this one thing
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: because I know we really do have to land this plane.
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: It really started working and changing for me. One I
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: became a little bit more honest and vulnerable with other
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 2: women in my life about what I was actually dealing with.
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: And then when I started to hear the similarity, the
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: fact that a lot of us were kind of going
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 2: through the same thing and the commun like and it
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 2: wasn't even like, oh, we're all drowning. It's like, wait,
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 2: let's just all put this stuff down and let's get
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: out of here, you know what I mean. And the
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: community will help itself, like sometimes you just kind of
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: have to put your foot off the gas and let
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 2: somebody else do the driving, and they will, they will.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 2: I think the benefit of having community and being open
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 2: even with social media, like women are sharing the invisible,
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 2: Like visible labor wasn't even a word that I recognized
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 2: until a couple of months ago because we started talking
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 2: about it. And the response or the solution isn't to
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 2: do more or to blame is to not do as much.
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 2: It's to do less.
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: We gotta bring you back for conversation on how to
• 1:13:59
  Speaker 1: let it go when you don't have a partner that
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: will help get it done.
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 2: I'm learning from my friends that don't have partners. That's
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: what I'm learning the most from.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: Lord have the merse, I uh.
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 2: Bring them up on the pod. We need to ask
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: to come on the pot and teach the people. She's
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: teaching me.
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, well, who's guess. She's our mutual friend, she's your
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: friend first. But you stole is amazing. That's that's just
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: that's she's amazing.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: Man.
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: I love shah All right, So I guess so for me,
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: what do more men need to understand about how to
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: move in partnership? In a relationship. It's so tough because
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 1: I feel like women are becoming more liberal with their
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: identity and men are as conservative as we've ever been.
• 1:14:46
  Speaker 1: I think the I think men, y'all gonna kill me
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 1: for this one. If you talk about gender, people start
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: champing out. Man. But I think men need to like
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 1: expand sometimes expand the idea of what that manhood actually
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 1: looks like. So we deeply associate manhood with things that
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: aren't nurturing and warm and supportive, or that are so
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: focused on leading that they don't know how to follow.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 1: And I don't think you could be a good leader
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: if you don't know how to follow. I don't think
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: you can be a good leader. And I don't think you,
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: being a man, make sure a leader by default. That's crazy.
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 1: Some of the shittiest leaders I know are men, and
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: they feel entitled to that leadership and they're absolutely terrible
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: at what they do. I think it's understanding. Me and
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: Trip Fontaine talked about this episode too, understanding what power
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: does and how power works. Man, When you move in
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: a partnership or relationship with somebody. So when I met Shorty,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: she she's never asked me to get nails done. He
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: had done none of that. She always been her own
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: person and I never really had to take care of her.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: I just live alongside of her. And for some dudes,
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: that is antithetical to the message we've been told about
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: what to seek in a partner. You want a woman
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: that actually need you, who depends on you, but we
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: kind of place that heavily in the financial category and
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: not really in a relational category.
• 1:16:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you for emotional support partnership.
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: But it's not in a way that feels draining, And
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: I don't think a lot of men understand that you can.
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: You can have that without being drained, without being drained
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: of your emotional resources. It can feel it doesn't have
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: to feel like a chore or like a duty. It
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: can feel like a labor of love as well. Man
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: a moving partnership in your relationship, like you need to
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: know how to do everything. You gotta be You gotta
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: know how to play every single position on the court.
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: I'm more of a football guy and a basketball guy,
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: so to me, like you got to be the ultimate
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: Cordell Steward. You gotta be damn that's a that's a
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 1: deep cut. You gotta be able to know how to
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: throw the ball. You got to be able to know
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: how to run routes if you need to. You need
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: to know how to be able to be to hit
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: the a gap if you're running back get ten yards downfield.
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: You need to know how to block. You need to
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: know how to do everything in this family system because
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: dire times when you gotta knock it out. I had
• 1:17:05
  Speaker 1: to make a ponytail the other day, man, and I've
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: been making ponytails ever since. You know how hard it
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: is to put a cheerleading uniform on a little girl,
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: all the arms, all the holds of the link armholes.
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: And that's just the topical stuff. You also need to
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 1: know beyond how to cook for yourself, like how do
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 1: you long term playing? What groceries are going to look like?
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: But also you in order to do that, you have
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: to be in a relationship that's safe enough for you
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: to be for you to make mistakes without one your
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: capabilities being questioned for two, without you being constantly blamed
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: and reminded about your mistakes. And three I don't think
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: we talk enough about how a lot of men are
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: little boys that grew up being told that they're disposable.
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 1: In many different ways, life does a great job of
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: reminding men that we're disposable. Our lives are disposable. It's
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 1: very obvious. Even in the draft, we all got to
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: sign off a select the service. Your life is disposable.
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: The war men have these high risk jobs. Your life
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: is disposable to employment, and then the constant remind us
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: that we're not needed for from whoever and for whatever reason.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: Just they power on this thing of disposability. And in
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: your relationship, you have to have a safe place where
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 1: you can make mistakes and not feel disposable. But in
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 1: order to do that, you got to be honest about
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: your mistakes, upfront about your mistakes, and not cover them
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 1: up with machismore ego. But in order to do that,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: sometimes you got to realize that the machism more ego
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: comes from a place way back when when you were
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 1: making mistakes as a child, and what those messages look like.
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 1: Because you can't be in a secure little boy, that's
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 1: not a thing. You do not have the latitude to
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: be that. In order to understand that you got to
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 1: see why that's wrong. Not just cleave to that as
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: a part of your identity, but see it. Not you
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 1: as a little boy, but you as a human that
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: needed love, warmth, reassurance and comfort and you didn't get that.
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: And the fact that you didn't get that affects the
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: way that you operate as an adult.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: But just one thing.
• 1:19:02
  Speaker 1: It's a circle of life. It's one thing that comes
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: from one thing that comes from one thing that comes
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: from one thing. I think if you could just do
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: that introspection and back away from a man that's supposed
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: to to this is me as a human what I
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: come with. I'm going to do the best I can
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: in these areas. Want to delegate where I don't know
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: and I'm gonna learn. I'm gonna humble myself and say, hey,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: I don't know how to do that, broke, can you
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: teach me? You know, asking your wife to teach you
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: gets funny with the whole labor and women things. So
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 1: just find a community to lean into and try stuff. Man,
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: be exploratory. What happens if I do this experiment? That's
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 1: the way that you get better? All right? Last thing,
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: last thing, last thing, last thing, last thing we talked
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: about individuals in what men and women can do and
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: just to kind of understand this thing better. But how
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: do you break the cycle as a couple. I want
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 1: you to give briefly. I know we're coming up on time.
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 1: I mean, you can talk, but what are the top
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: two things that you think people can take away at
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: as a couple in order to like break the cycle
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 1: of dysfunction stockness?
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna keep this brief. I think these are buzzwords
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 2: for sure, but I think self awareness, but not self
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 2: awareness in the way that I don't want to say defensive,
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: but not in a way where you can defend your
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: stance on things, but self awareness in the stand in
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 2: the place of like understanding where I kind of miss
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 2: the mark sometimes, Like for me, I'm I'm very aware
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 2: of how I feel, but I'm not always aware of
• 1:20:37
  Speaker 2: how I come across or if I have actually created
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: we love to say, a safe place to land in
• 1:20:43
  Speaker 2: our relationship? Have I created a safe place for care
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: to land? Am I open enough? Am I am receptive enough?
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 2: Am I am I looking at what he's doing or
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: not doing as it affects me, or as a reaction
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 2: into what he's going through. And I think that in
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 2: a relationship, yes, be aware of how things are affecting you.
• 1:21:09
  Speaker 2: But to move through a relationship not aware of how
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: you're creating a space for your partner isn't enough. Like
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 2: you have to do both. You have to be able
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: to advocate for yourself. Advocate for yourself, but also be
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: self aware on how you're coming across.
• 1:21:26
  Speaker 1: One man, right, help man?
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: What that's my brief? We can talk about it in
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: another episode. If you want to bring me back.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: In of course I do. All right, that's good, I
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 1: think mine. I'm going to go in a little bit
• 1:21:38
  Speaker 1: of a different direction. I think two things that you
• 1:21:41
  Speaker 1: could do to break the cycle. One is figure out
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: what your relationship to criticism is. What is your relationship
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: with being criticized? Not everyone is good at being criticized.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 1: And men are going to say that women are terrible,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: and women are going to say that men are terrible.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: But I'm going to tell you the truth is a therapist,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: you are both terrible, terrible.
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 2: But we're not taught to deal with.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, not especially from somebody that we love, because the
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 1: stakes are higher. And then relationship it encompasses a lot
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 1: of performance so I'm performing.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: For you and you still criticize me.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: Damn, Now you're criticizing me the person and me the performer.
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: That double hurts. Well, they say, damn, double homicide. And
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: then I think the second thing is I want you
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: to be honest with yourself about what you do when
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 1: you hear things about yourself that you don't like. I
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 1: think that's going to be a killer people. You shut down,
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: you get defensive, you get dismissive, you get dodgy silent treatment,
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 1: you start bringing up stuff they did, and what about
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: itism comes out? It happens, man. I think people point
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 1: to how they're treated as the demise of a relationship,
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: which is true, but it's only one of many truths
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: that exists. The other one is the way you react
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 1: to things that you hear that you don't like. That
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: causes the death of a lot of relationships and also
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: your connection to yourself. Man, I feel like that's really important. Yeah, damn,
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 1: thanks babe, thank you. Yes, just give it up for
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: knowing me being on the pod today, big pod.
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 2: Congrats baby, this this is a big deal. I'm very
• 1:23:19
  Speaker 2: proud of you. What having my wife on the pod,
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: Having these kinds of conversations growing.
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: We've been on the top the top one hundred of
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: Apple Health Wellness podcast since since we dropped, so thank
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: y'all for that. I don't think we left the top
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: one hundred. Thank y'all for that. All right, I'm gonna
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: break a podcast rule because we pre record these. Oh shocking.
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: At the time of this recording, we've only dropped two
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 1: episodes and we have not left the top one hundred
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: in our category on Apple podcasts. That is crazy. I
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: think right now we're a number sixty and it was
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 1: fifty something last night. We got another episode coming very soon.
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 1: So if you've listened to this, if you share this
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: with somebody, if you've listened to it with your partner,
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: y'all had to talk. If you listen to it with
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 1: your friends, y'all had to talk. If you are not
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: a man, if you are not black, if you are
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: not a black man, and you still come here and
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 1: you feel welcome into spaces you always are, I sincerely
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 1: appreciate you. The goal of this podcast is to take
• 1:24:25
  Speaker 1: mental health from clinical to cultural, and it's a way
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: to do it. We can all get better, live better,
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 1: be better. But it only happens if we do these
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: conversations and we're honest and we listen and we think
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: and we contemplate and we try shit and that's what
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: I feel like we're doing here. So yeah, appreciate you again.
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: My name is Kia Gaines. This is my lovely wife,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: No Ami Games. My back is falling off the bone
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 1: right now we go Goresse with oil on it. Put
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 1: my feet up, y'all. Pray for myself for my spinal corps.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: But until next time, man, y'all be well. Job o
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 1: done peace. Learn the Hard is a production of iHeart Podcasts.
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: I'm your host, Ker Gaines. We're produced by Courtney Deans
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: and Cason Alexander. Ashley. J. Hobbs is our senior producer.
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: Our executive producers of Will Packer, Doctor Joy Harden Bradford,
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: Alex Balden, and Carla Willmaris