Latest / The Andrew Mychal Podcast / E1 | "Everything's Going to Be Okay" with Brian Pezzetti

Transcript

E1 | "Everything's Going to Be Okay" with Brian Pezzetti · The Andrew Mychal Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: A quick note before we begin: the Andrew Michael Podcast is a space for people to share their personal stories and lived experiences.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not a doctor, therapist, licensed health professional, or coach.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: And nothing shared here should be considered medical, mental health, or professional advice.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: Some content may not be appropriate for children.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: Listener discretion is advised.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: What do you wish you could have told the version of yourself back then that you know now?
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: I would try and encourage myself to have the strength to have difficult conversations rather than tests.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that would be something that I would go back in time and challenge myself to do differently.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: Some we understand, some we still carry, and some we don't even recognize until another person helps us see them differently.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Andrew Michael, and this is the Andrew Michael Podcast.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Honest conversations about the experiences that shape us, the patterns we carry, and what becomes possible when we finally understand what's been driving us.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes hearing someone else's story is exactly what we need to better understand our own.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: Today's conversation is a personal one.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Brian isn't just someone from my past.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: He's someone that changed the way I understood love, tenderness, and myself.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: He's also a major part of my book, Who's Driving the Bus?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: And today, for the first time, you'll get to hear his side of the story.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: On February of 2020, I sat in front of a rainbow-colored cake and closed my eyes.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: I had one wish to bring me the man of my dreams so that I could live happily ever after.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: What I got was a different type of love that I had never had.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And one of my greatest teachers, that person is here with me today.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: His name is Brian.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Brian, thank you for being here with me today.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: I know it takes courage to revisit our past.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful for you.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: I am very excited.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it is not often that I get to reflect back on kind of what's happened in the past.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so taking that moment is pretty exciting for me.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so let's take a little trip down memory lane.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: Ryan and I met in 2020.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was COVID.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So dating was kind of interesting at that point.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember our first date?
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, 100%.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: It was probably the one of the most interesting dates that I had ever planned.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: And everything that could have gone right did go right.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_01: So it was an interesting combination.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: We had talked for several weeks before we actually met in person.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember what actually made you consider to go on a date with me?
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think part of, you know, this was COVID.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was what, May, June, somewhere around there, uh, that we had our first date.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: And when you think, you know, you locked down in March, I was a bit eager to meet somebody, right?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd spent COVID isolated.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I had a townhome that I had just moved into, so I didn't even know my neighbors very well.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so I was I was a bit eager to start putting myself out there and being able to do that with someone that I had had a phone call with that just dove right into some deep questions.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they weren't even like light surface level questions.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: They were they were full on, you know, what's your life goal in detail type questions?
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so that piqued enough of my curiosity that I was I was pretty eager to meet you.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: For those people who can't see Brian, Brian is six foot seven and is one of the most loving and caring people I've ever met.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: He's what I would call a gentle giant.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of my nicknames for him is Bam Bam, because he sometimes doesn't know his own strength.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Brian's the type of person who might accidentally knock you down, but then he will apologize for it because of course he would never want to hurt a fly.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Our first date, we went and got pizza.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: We did.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: It was we were gonna go to an Italian restaurant, but COVID was still kind of a question mark.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so it became a question of like, do we bring it back?
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Do we go in a restaurant?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I was planning a restaurant the full time.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, you know, back to normal.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna force no COVID and plan on a restaurant.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh, when you said you wanted to eat at my place, everything pivoted.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so I ordered a pizza and the world's smallest strawberry salad.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the restaurant told me it fed two, and I think there were probably two strawberries, not two people, but that was a fun experience.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: So prior to that date, do you recall the last date you had before that?
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it was probably three years before that.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: It had been a really long time.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: My career has me move quite a bit.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: And so I had just moved to San Diego and was trying to get myself settled and moving from Washington State down to San Diego was a hard one for me.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so this was kind of me putting myself back in after a relatively long try spell.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: You said that you have moved a lot for your career.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: I kind of want to start at the beginning.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Can you speak to the moving you did as a child?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I mean, I grew up uh a Navy brat, you know, child of an enlisted uh person in the US Navy.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so we moved around a bunch as a kid.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in Idaho, and then before I even started preschool, we had lived in Florida, Illinois, and then Virginia.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: So within the first four years of my life, I moved four times.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: And that kind of trend continued up until we moved back to Virginia a second time.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: And that second time, we lived in Virginia for all of eight years.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then my senior year of high school, we had to move to Washington.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: My dad retired and he got a job at a nuclear power plant up there.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we moved to eastern Washington.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, for anyone that is not familiar, eastern Washington and Southeast Virginia are two very different places.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'll never forget going to senior year of high school, first day of high school, and there were gun racks in the parking lot.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: I like I went to high school where you went through metal detectors to get in and out.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so to go and see gun racks in the high school parking lot was just shocking to me.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so that was that was quite a cultural shift for me.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_00: When you were in school, were you a good student?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have a lot of friends?
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: For me personally, elementary school was wonderful, and junior high was horrific.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: That was a really hard time in my life because I remember kids calling me gay for the first time and not really knowing why they were saying that.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: I made it through that, thank the Lord, and got into high school and then found out if I just was really good friends with girls, they would protect me.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that was my junior high and my high school experience.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Can you speak to how your experience was?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I I always, I mean, I'm I'm fairly nice person, so I've always had a lot of acquaintances.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I had a very similar journey to yours.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think the first time somebody called me a fag, right?
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's the first they didn't call me gay, they called me a fag.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I remember it was in the seventh grade, and they said it was because my shorts were higher than my knees, and so people could see my knees.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And at my height, like there aren't a lot of shorts that are gonna cover knees in general.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So like it was just like me choosing, you know, the shorts that looked normal.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I I I'll always remember that day.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then kind of continued the same.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: I always had friends, I was very popular uh in the you know the circles I was in, which were all very nerdy.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I wasn't like a popular kid, I was the nerdy kid.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I did A V club, student counsel.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there was a program called Governor's School, which was like advanced placement.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so they everyone in those programs were always very welcoming, they were friendly, very friendly.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I really found a community in those team, in those groups.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and in that community is where I kind of found myself.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, as two gay men, it's very hard for us to find community where we feel welcomed.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of ironic that we are part of a community that is ostracized by so many and yet we do it to ourselves.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: When that person called you gay and seventh grade, where were you in terms of your sexuality at that point?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: Did you agree with him or had you still not accepted that part of yourself?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: For me, I I suffered more from body dysmorphia since the fifth grade, well in advance of even starting to think about my sexuality.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: And in that body dysmorphia, I never really thought about my sexuality because who would want me, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: Was kind of the approach that I that I had, which was really unhealthy and it's hard for me to say, but like why think about your sexuality if neither gender is gonna want somebody.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so I didn't think about whether gay straight until probably late high school and into college.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was one of those things where you know your body's developed, you've developed, and you couldn't ignore it after a certain point.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_01: And it was that after ignoring it, after I couldn't ignore it, I uh I kind of accepted it.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: But I I think part of me always knew.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you happen to remember how old you were when you kissed your first boy?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I was 20, 25.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was I was late in life.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't kiss my first girl either until I was 19.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, I didn't kiss my first boy until I was 27.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: So technically I'm a later boomer than you.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: I want to kind of go back for a second to the body dysmorphia.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for sharing that.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: I would say that you and I both kind of share that in common.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of things during our relationship that I didn't realize that were somewhat parallel.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when your people come into your life, they're a mirror.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: They show you things about yourself.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: But it's hard when you don't like to look in the mirror and see your own self.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know that that has been a struggle for you.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_00: Was there uh a time where you were able to overcome that?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: What did you do to um kind of let go of that?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that is actually I I can only thank you for that.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was our relationship that gave me the courage to deal with it.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, watching your journey, watching how you dealt with your traumas at the time, um gave me the courage after our relationship to try and do the same.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um, where I tried to deal with my dysmorphia the best I could.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um there's you know, I I ended up having a surgery, one that I had taught wanted for almost a decade, but was too afraid to actually do.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and and and kind of do some personal work to feel more comfortable with myself.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was probably a year after our relationship ended, I took my shirt off in public for the first time in 20 years.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So um thank you for that.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: But that that was very much uh an outcome of our relationship.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and part of why I think we still are friends today is because we help each other through those types of things.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I I can only say thank you for that.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you back.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: At the time when I made the wish on my birthday to fall in love, because I'm an Aquarius, I've always had this fantasy of what love was supposed to be.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then you meet somebody, and both people are dealing with their own traumas, and that fantasy is a very different reality.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I forget when we went to meet your parents and I brought the love language test.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: And you and I took the love language test, and your parents took it.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: When I think of our relationship, I tell myself that people asked why didn't it work out?
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm being honest, you can't love someone else until you love yourself first.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't love myself when I met you.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_00: And you were very loving and very caring and very soft, and you tried to give that to me, but I could not receive it.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't accept it.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: There were a few things that I want to point out that you did do that were very helpful.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: For the first time at 40 years old, you would give me a hug every morning and tell me that everything was going to be okay.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: Prior to you, I would never let my significant others hug me.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_00: They called me the iceberg.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: I would kind of go like this when you grow up, or you there's distance from your family, that really, at least for me, scarred my development.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_00: It made it very, very challenging.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't really understand where it came from.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: And then one of my favorite taglines that I learned from you was everything's gonna be okay.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And at the time that you and I met, I was going through a lot physically and mentally and emotionally.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: And every day I would get a hug.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Every day you would tell me everything's gonna be okay.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_00: And somewhere in that, I started to believe that.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Again, I was 40.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: No one had ever said it to me.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, even after we have broken up, when we see each other, now I make it a point to hug you and tell you that everything's gonna be okay.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: Where did you learn that?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Did you experience that in your own childhood, or did you see it in a movie?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: How did you learn those two things?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I think it's not really something learned so much as something I always wanted from others.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_01: It was something that always was a fantasy of mine, right?
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: To have a partner that would come in and see me struggling or see me needing something, even just a touch, a hug, something like that, and provide it without me having to ask for it.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_01: And so that was that's where that came from.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: I did grow up in a house that believes that there's a plan for us all, and that that plan is a reason to accept what you can't change and to change what you can.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so part of that upbringing probably fed into it a little bit, but it was always something I I wanted from a partner.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_00: Brian, did you grow up in a household where your parents were very affectionate?
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, not particularly.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my for my mom is English, you know, born in England.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my great uncle is England, English, and he immigrated here.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I remember taking a trip to England for the first time to visit my great-grandma, who still lived in England and refused to come to America.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: And is part of that very English approach, is is kind of a stiff upper lip moment.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: For those that don't know what that means, that's you know, you you kind of push through emotions.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: That's something that you overcome, not something that you embrace.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And my mom was very English.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my dad is very logical.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: He he operates a nuclear upper power plant.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's what he did in the Navy.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's what he does now, um, as after he left the Navy.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so from somebody that came up operating a nuclear power plant at uh an English mom and an accountant at that, um affection wasn't necessary, emotion wasn't necessarily something that was embraced in the house.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there was always the moment here and there, but it wasn't necessarily something that was always present.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so talking about the word emotion, it was probably about a year into our relationship that I realized that Brian is passive aggressive and I'm aggressive.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I didn't know I had never really been around people who were passive aggressive.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there was an altercation where Brian, one of my Achilles heels, is that I grew up in a family of pokers where we kind of use others to be the butt of the joke.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I thought that was normal.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: It was Brian who elegantly taught me it's not funny.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: The things you say are not funny, and I would laugh and he wouldn't.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that happened several times.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then I remember a moment where he was in his office and I was standing on the steps and he stood up and his body language changed and he like huffed and puffed.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember thinking, Oh, I better stop doing that.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard when I think back at that person that I was, because again, if somebody asks you one, two, three, four, five times not to do something, why do you keep doing it?
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there was always this kind of unspoken tension where if Brian, Brian is the one who pointed it out to me, if people aren't yelling or screaming at me, I'm not taking them serious.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: So after he kind of said that to me, I tried to really change the behavior.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: From your perspective, Brian, do you remember that?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: And do you feel like after that situation things changed?
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: I would say you definitely changed, period.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: No question, no caveat, no fine print to that.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: The way I think I see that change is maybe through a different story and shock, you and I looked at things differently.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: As always.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think the biggest one that showed that change that you kind of just talked about was the way you talked about yourself.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: When we first met, you were like, I'm that bitch.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you you would come in and just be like, that's who I am, and use language that wasn't always affectionate to yourself.
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I would tell you at the time, you were like, hey, maybe don't talk about yourself like that.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like the way you talk about yourself matters, just like the way you talk about to others and and you listen to others matters.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Words matter to me.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I don't think I've heard you say that probably like nine months after you know I brought it up a couple times and and that story happened and it clicked for you.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I've heard you refer to yourself that way.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or at least around me, you don't.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that is a really good example of you you taking that lesson, right?
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: The the the concept that words matter and it's not just screaming that matters.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: I had somebody say to me one time, a lot of times we talk to strangers better than we talk to ourselves.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: And that kind of just punched me in the gut because it is true, I would be nicer to strangers than to myself.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes back to that loving yourself.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, I write about it in the book that there are the three parts of self, your inner child, your adaptive child, and your wise adult.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_00: When I met you, I was mostly my adaptive child with a little bit of wise adult in there.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: And it was really, again, and with your guidance and support that I could kind of give that adaptive child a little break.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: You know, again, you're one of the first people.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_00: One of your many gifts is that you're very nurturing and very loving and very soft.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't grow up with a lot of men like that.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_00: And on top of that, you're a man of great stature.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: So to live in that environment was very healing and helpful.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Our family dynamics are again another part where we have parallels but are very different.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Can you speak to the introduction uh that I had with your parents and how your parents found out about me?
• 21:50
  unknown: Yeah.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it goes back to, you know, earlier in the conversation, you know, uh I I I had a lot of issues with myself around.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Body dysmorphia and it's stopping a lot of relationships.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so you were actually the first person I ever introduced either gender to my parents as a potential partner, somebody that I was dating, somebody that I wanted to wanted them to know.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: I so you were the first.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember a phone call ahead of that to let my parents know I was bringing you to Thanksgiving.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a moment where it became clear to me that I never really came out, right?
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like coming out wasn't a thing I did.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: I just somebody asked, I would answer.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: I don't advertise these things.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so my phone call to say I was bringing you to Thanksgiving was when they kind of connected the dots.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you came to Thanksgiving, that was something that that was in the background.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: You weren't necessarily aware of it.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I should have articulated it and prepped you for it.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: But that was that was a pretty I felt like Thanksgiving went well, even with that in the background and in the undertow.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the uh now I'll give you my version of the story.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that Brian's parents didn't know that he was gay.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: So I show up at Thanksgiving and I make the comment to his mom and dad, who are very welcoming and like to ask a lot of questions.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: Or if I ask if I ask them questions, they're happy to answer.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Hey, when did you know that when did Brian come out to you?
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we're sitting at the table, and they're like, uh, about a week ago when he told us you were coming to Thanksgiving.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I was shocked because again, Brian didn't prepare me for that.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember us going upstairs later and me kind of reading him the Riot Act, which he ended up breaking down.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that was sad for me because I didn't realize the fear that, again, this is my perspective, the fear that he must have been holding to tell them or then to have not told me.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the part that was helpful is I know that he never has any malicious intent.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: He didn't do it on purpose.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: But when you think back to that, was fear an element?
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I guess that's my question.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Was fear one of your guiding forces for not saying something earlier?
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: There's probably two pieces to answer that question.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: One is when I look back on our relationship, that is the only regret that I have.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_01: Period.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: It's the only thing that I wish I had done differently.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: Everything else, I feel like I always did my best in the moment, but that is the one moment in our relationship where I felt like I wasn't living up to who I was, and I wasn't necessarily living up to who you needed.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: The second piece of it is it was fear, right?
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think in that kind of first couple of dates that we had, you know, I and even to this day, I'm happy to answer I am gay.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not, I don't hide it from anyone, but it isn't necessarily the first thing I identify myself with.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and you can call that either out of fear, you could call it out of a number of things, you could call it uh you could call it out of a number of things, but that's not necessarily my sexuality isn't what I lead with.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've had friends tell me I am probably the the most asexual person they've met.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: I've had people tell me I'm the gayest straight person or the straightest gay person, and they don't know which.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of that has to do with the fact that I just don't lead with my sexuality.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's not something that I start with.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: If you think back to the stories about like me growing up, it was something I always tried to ignore.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not because I was trying to be somebody else, but because why?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: If you never think of yourself as potentially having a partner, what does your sexuality matter?
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so that that is probably what led to it is that fear of having to look at myself that way.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you and I moved to Florida in January of I think 2022.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: At that point, we had lived in four places in less than two years, and then in February of that year, we moved into a house.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know at the time, but Brian craved stability and routine, and I was everything but that.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: There was always chaos and construction and people all around.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: So we moved into this house in February, and at as soon as we moved in, I started construction.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_00: Brian worked from home, the smoke alarms going off, my friends are in the pool.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Let's just say I wasn't always the most conscious of what my partner needed.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: We were in that house, I want to say a total of 60 days, and then Brian and I had a conversation out by the Tiki Hut about what our next steps were.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: Bri, do you remember that conversation?
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_01: No, I remember.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh would you like to lead it off or would you like me to?
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: I will let you lead it off because I think you and I approached that conversation from different perspectives.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't until reading your book that I understood where you were coming from to start that conversation about next steps.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know that I've ever told you my perspective.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: So this might be shocking to you.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, it might be.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so in my head, uh, that morning when we came to talk, Brian was supposed to go to Paris and wanted me to go with him.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we had been dating almost two years.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm like, he wants to get married.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna go to Paris.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna stand under the Eiffel Tower, and it's gonna be this big moment.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: And before that, I had always had questions or concerns about our relationship because we were always seeing things differently.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: Our communication styles, again, aggressive, passive, aggressive.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: I've now also realized that I'm avoidant, which I never thought of myself as avoidant.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: But what I realized over time is when you grow up being a chameleon, you try to say what you think people want to hear.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like I did that.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like most people do that in a relationship.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: You're on your best behavior for the first year.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're auditioning, you're in a job interview.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: And then over time, that's people slowly start to see the real you.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: So we're sitting out at the tiki hut that morning, and you asked the question of, hey, do you want to get married?
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to have kids?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: And either you asked it or I asked it.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then the response was, you said to me, I think you like the idea of things more than the actual reality.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: You said that to me several times during our relationship.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: You were one of the only people who's ever said that to me in the 20 years I've been dating people.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it's true.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's still true to this day.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love the idea of things more than the actual thing.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: But where does that leave your partner?
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: Where does that leave your partner when you are in this fairy tale?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And part of the friction from my perspective in our relationship was you live in reality and I live in fantasy land.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: So when those two worlds collide, um, fireworks.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: So long story short, that conversation ends with if you don't want to get married and you don't want to have kids, then I'm leaving.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: And a couple hours later, you came back and said, I'm leaving.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I sat there in shock because it wasn't what how I expected the day.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And then another part of me was relieved.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: I think, again, my perspective, it's easier to stay than it is to go.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I think people stay because they don't want to be by themselves.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: One of the biggest blessings that I have from the time that I had with you was we both wanted someone to pick us and we picked each other.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, technically I picked you first, but we picked each other.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then again, as time went on, we realized that it just wasn't working.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like it wasn't for lack of trying.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think when you have two wounded little boys who didn't know how to love themselves, it's hard for them to figure out how to love each other.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then to throw a marriage on top of that is just too much.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: So that was how I recall that moment.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna take a deep breath, and now you can give me your perspective.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: So I appreciate you sharing that because that's pretty much how that conversation went, right?
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_01: Like we recognized something wasn't working.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, the reason why I was asking those questions was I could deal with a lot.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think I you said it in your book, right?
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_01: My my quote at the time, you know, I'll live in an unhappy marriage if there's a goal, if there's something for us to work towards, a commitment made, something.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if we weren't gonna be heading in the same direction, if we weren't gonna be even relating to each other and just two parties out there in the world, you know, that happen to live together.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_01: That to me is a relationship, and and it was time that and the relationship had run its course at that time.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And the unfortunate part for me was France was that for me.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: When you told me you weren't gonna come to France, I only I wasn't gonna propose.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that wasn't the intent.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: What it was was a test of our relationship to make sure that we we had something in common, that we wanted to be around each other, that that this was uh an opportunity for me to share one of my life goals, which was to see France for the first time and with someone I loved.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of the few, it's the only country at the time that I hadn't traveled to that I wanted to, and I wanted to do it with someone rather than all by myself.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you said no to that, that to me was there was there was no connection anymore.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: There was no common anything, there was no common vision, there was no common activity, and and it was time and what that relationship looked like at the end is you know what it was.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I have zero regrets out of our relationship.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's been one of the biggest teachers for me.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's been one of the few regrets in my life that have been generated from that relationship.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: And we've already talked about that one, but it's also been some of the happiest moments in my life, and I I will always be thankful to that relationship.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but like you said, you know, we have very different communication styles.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was thinking about marriage pre-Washington when we went to Seattle and and ultimately to my parents' house, and it was like clear that we weren't communicating well, and I I absolutely own a part of that.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: I I stopped thinking about marriage.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's kind of how I remember that's that from my perspective.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what that conversation was was we were we were just two people living together at that point.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: There was nothing tying us together, and I didn't want to be in Florida, and I wanted stability, and so I went back to California.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: What I appreciate about still having you in my life is you know what you want, and you deviated a little bit with that with me, but then you went right back to your happy place, which is California.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, you just recently just bought a house and you got a good promotion at your job, and you're settling in.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: What do you wish you could have told the version of yourself back then that you know now?
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: That is a hard question to answer.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oof, that's a hard one.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I would try and encourage myself to have the strength to have difficult conversations rather than tests.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like the fence trip, right?
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: Was a test.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_01: It was it was me, okay.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: If he doesn't do this, then I'm gonna do this.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I generated a little plan, and here's what that's gonna look like rather than just having the conversation.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: There was a test.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I feel like that would be something that I would go back in time and challenge myself to do differently is think about conversations rather than putting things out there and seeing what happens.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: As somebody who has read the book and was a major star in the book, I, from my perspective, part of the reason to write the book was so that people would realize that there's nothing wrong with either one of us, but there are things that happened to us that we hadn't processed.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_00: And we weren't working actively to process them together.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was kind of doing it on my own on my own, which you got a front row seat too.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I wish that we could have done that together, but you were busy working.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: And because of that, you know, you had kind of told me, Andrew, your job is self-care.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: Your job is to take care of your own mental health.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Which, again, had I not had that support, I would not have been able to do that.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: My hope is that for people who do read the book, that they realize that there are resources out there.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the times we do the best we can with what we have and what we know.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: I remember one of the conversations that we had was you asking Niki why I don't have a therapist.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: And at the time I told you, you know, I feel like a therapist gives you tools.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have the tools already, but your problem is somewhere else, what is another tool gonna do?
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you don't have the will to do to use the tool, what's the purpose in having the tool?
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that was always something I struggled with, right?
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: Was my my own journey in pushing myself out of my comfort zone until I was ready to do that?
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't ready to have a therapist.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_01: And what I would hope is that folks that don't necessarily have the either self-awareness to know what they're what they're trying to conquer is, or they aren't necessarily in a moment where they know that they have the tools ready, or a moment where they were like me and maybe had some tools, but weren't ready with the self-determination to implement those tools to read your book, right?
• 37:56
  SPEAKER_01: I I think we gain those three things by learning from others.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that is one of your biggest gifts is the ability to share your journey with others in a way that lets them think about how it could impact them in their own journeys.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and that would be the reason I would I would give your book to anybody, right?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's not necessarily, you know, oh, that person goes to see a therapist, they don't need to read Andrew's book.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or, oh, that person is unwilling to do better, they don't need to read the book.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's not really about that, it's about understanding other people's journeys and trying to take lessons and learn from each other.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: That that's how we work individually, and that's how we work as a group.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_00: As we come to a close, I just want people to realize that there's value in all relationships.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's value in all people that come into your life.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's just the lens on how you see that relationship.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: You know, sometimes you meet, you fall in love, and it doesn't work.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: But it's been very important for me to keep my relationship with Brian.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: He is somebody that my inner child and my adaptive child will forever be grateful.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you for that.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And thank you for sharing your story.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: Sharing your story is very healing and it lets people realize that they're not alone and that takes great courage.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't believe that the Brian five years ago could have done that.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm really proud of the Brian today that he shared that story because he's an amazing man.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, with that being said, I want to thank you for being here.
• 39:40
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, this is the Andrew Michael Podcast.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_00: If something in today's conversation made you recognize the piece of your own story, stay curious about it.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to have all the answers.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes awareness is where change begins.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: If you've enjoyed this episode, make sure to follow the show.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: And if someone came to your mind while you were listening, share this episode with them.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Andrew Michael.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, thank you for being here, and thank you for listening.