Latest / The Love Drive with Shaun Galanos / How to keep going when your life is falling apart

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How to keep going when your life is falling apart · The Love Drive with Shaun Galanos

0:00
Like, how do you, how do you live when you're in transition?
0:03
Whether you're between jobs, between houses, between
0:06
relationships, What does that look like?
0:25
Hello. Hello.
0:26
Welcome to the Love Drive Podcast.
0:28
My name is Sean Galinos. That's right, Galinos, not
0:31
Galinos. What happened?
0:33
At some point in the last couple years since my dad passed away,
0:37
I have inherited his way of pronunciating, pronouncing, Oh
0:45
my God, his last name, which is Galinos.
0:49
I used to say Galinos and other people will say Galanos and so I
0:54
think it's the kind of name where it has multiple
0:56
pronunciations and since my dad passed away I'm trying his on
1:01
for size and so far so good. Welcome to this third episode of
1:07
the Love Dr. relaunch. I am currently in a sublet in
1:11
Berkeley at my friend Alvin's house, and I am currently
1:14
recording this from the bedroom, which, you know, this isn't the
1:19
podcast studio that I thought I would have, but it is the
1:23
podcast studio that I do currently have.
1:27
And I will say there was some trepidation about getting this
1:32
podcast up and running again for a whole bunch of reasons that I
1:36
touched on in our first episode. And also because in my head, I
1:41
wanted to have a podcast studio that I could host guests at.
1:48
That's always been a dream of mine is to have a studio that I
1:50
can have guests at. And in my ideal world, in my
1:54
fantasy brain, this podcast was recorded from that studio.
2:00
But the problem is that I'm in transition.
2:02
I'm bouncing between sublets. And I'll share a little bit more
2:05
about that. I do not have a fixed address at
2:09
this point. There's been a lot of transition
2:14
and moving around in my life in the last couple years.
2:16
I actually realized that I've been living out of bins, 2 bins
2:19
for the last couple years and that's challenging.
2:24
So I wasn't prepared to wait until I had a fixed address to
2:29
get this Dang podcast back up and running.
2:33
Which means that I will be recording these episodes from
2:36
God knows where. Some of them have already been
2:40
recorded in Mill Valley, CA, Montreal, QC, Canada, Berkeley.
2:46
I'm heading to Thailand in April to celebrate a 50th, a friend's
2:49
50th, which is what happens when you get older, your friends
2:52
start turning 50. So I might record some episodes
2:55
from there. I'm going to do a little jaunt
2:58
in Europe, maybe Berlin, maybe Paris, maybe, who knows.
3:02
But the reality is that like, I'm not going to have a fixed
3:04
address until at least June. That's not going to stop me from
3:08
doing this podcast. OK, So if you're along for the
3:11
ride and you're OK with me recording this thing in a
3:14
freaking closet in a hotel in Bangkok or whatever, let's go
3:19
right now. You're in my bedroom in
3:20
Berkeley. OK, today's episode, a little
3:22
update on what the hell I've been doing for the last six
3:25
months and then a discussion on living in transition.
3:30
Like, how do you, how do you live when you're in transition?
3:34
Whether you're between jobs, between houses, between
3:37
relationships, What does that look like?
3:40
Actually, the title is of this episode is when shit hits the
3:43
fan because I feel like living in transition can be very
3:49
shitty. It can be very, very difficult
3:52
to feel comfortable when you just don't know what the hell is
3:55
going on, right? So we're going to talk a little
3:58
bit about what do you do when you're feeling self doubt, when
4:03
you're feeling low self-confidence.
4:05
By the way, these are all things that I have been feeling.
4:07
So I'm, I'm really just going to share what I have done when I've
4:10
felt this way, went to retreat and went to push through how to
4:14
build the life that you're proud of.
4:16
So this is just a pep talk episode for everybody who's not
4:22
thriving, for everybody who's listening to this from a place
4:25
of like, what the hell am I doing?
4:29
For anybody who is living with a lot of uncertainty, this is for
4:34
you because I've been there and I'm I'm kind of there.
4:36
I'm a little bit on the other side, actually.
4:38
And it feels really nice. Let me tell you.
4:41
Oh, also, by the way, I guess this is like Virgo season, like
4:44
Virgos are going to thrive from this point on.
4:47
From like today, I'm actually recording this on March 11th,
4:51
but you're listening to this, you know, a week later.
4:53
But from this point on forward, Virgos are going to thrive,
4:58
which thank fucking God because it has been brutal.
5:04
It's been brutal. I'm also going to play a couple
5:07
clips, do a couple Q&A's, and read an e-mail.
5:10
So, OK, great Segway. I've been going through it.
5:15
I have been going through it ever since my dad died in June
5:19
of 2024. Sorry, 2023.
5:23
I've been all over the place physically and emotionally.
5:27
It's just been really, really challenging.
5:30
And thank God I've had an apartment in Montreal to call
5:34
home in a community over there to like welcome me and hold me
5:38
in their arms because it's just been really, really, really
5:41
challenging. And that's also why it's been
5:46
hard for me to launch this podcast because I feel like I've
5:49
been such a vulnerable place and it's just scary to put this out
5:53
on the Internet. And now that my audience has
5:56
grown a little bit, even more scarier to put a lot to even
5:59
more people. And still, I know it's what I
6:03
need to do. Like I still need to show up for
6:06
you, but also for myself in this way.
6:09
So the last two years have been a doozy.
6:11
I'm not going to fill you in on everything that's happened, but
6:13
let's Fast forward to the last six months, which is winter time
6:18
in Montreal and or end of summer, actually end of summer.
6:22
Let's, let's, let's rewind to September, September 2025, where
6:31
I had a short fling, an unexpected romance that was
6:37
really just a weekend long and then kind of turned into like a
6:42
little FaceTime thing because it was for, it was with somebody,
6:45
someone fantastic who didn't live in Montreal.
6:49
And that thing was short lived. It was, it lasted like a month
6:53
and it ended abruptly. And what happened was that it
6:59
triggered a past childhood wound that had not been explored since
7:08
childhood. And I spent, I, I, I kid you
7:13
not, I'm being 100% serious. I cried for two months, not like
7:20
straight, not like 24 hours, but like every single day I cried.
7:27
I felt a wound, a pain, a sadness that I have yet to feel
7:33
or that I had, that I had yet felt.
7:37
And it was both excruciatingly difficult and sad and hard.
7:44
But also, God damn, was it beautiful.
7:48
It was so beautiful that I was able to give myself that space,
7:53
that time to just feel sad, to like touch the sadness.
7:59
And some people will say, hey, isn't there like a limit to the
8:03
amount of sadness that we should be feeling?
8:06
And I'm not sure there is, because I feel like when your
8:10
body and your soul and your heart is that sad and you are
8:14
crying, you need to get that stuff out.
8:18
It needs to come out. Those emotions cannot stay
8:22
inside. And, and we try, right?
8:24
We bottle it up and we, we compartmentalize because we've
8:27
got jobs and we've got kids and we've got responsibilities and
8:31
aging parents and we've got stuff, you know, we've got life
8:34
that we need to show up for. And sadness is debilitating.
8:39
It will kind of bring you to your knees.
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That's kind of what it does. And I was grateful that I didn't
8:45
have a relationship. I didn't really have a job.
8:47
I didn't have that many responsibilities.
8:49
And I was able to just break down and cry and feel so sad for
8:55
the little Sean that just has felt abandoned, not necessarily
9:01
by others, but maybe by myself. Like the little shot inside that
9:06
I adult Sean haven't really been taken care of.
9:12
And we don't have to talk about like how the little Sean got
9:15
there. I feel like everybody's got a
9:16
little person inside that is not doing well, you know, that needs
9:21
TLC, that needs a lot of nurturing, that needs attention.
9:27
And I think I've been dealing with that little Sean with like
9:30
other stuff, substances, nicotine, caffeine, sex,
9:34
scrolling, scrolling, doom scroll, Reddit, Instagram,
9:38
external validation, comments, likes, shares.
9:43
Instead of like just sitting with this little guy inside,
9:46
inside that just like feels really lonely and feels like
9:50
he's not good enough or feels like he's always abandoned or
9:53
feels like whatever, whatever thing that I think all of us to
10:01
a certain degree are kind of struggling with.
10:04
So that's what happened. That's what happened in these
10:07
last six months. Is that like I just was not
10:11
doing well. I was, I mean, I was, it was
10:13
beautiful. And it was really, really hard.
10:15
I struggled a lot to just sit with this pain.
10:20
And yeah, it was hard. It was hard to show up.
10:24
I really couldn't show up for much of anything.
10:26
Oh my God, I forgot. And while this was happening, my
10:29
dog died literally while this is happening, Roger is just old,
10:39
you know, he's 13 and he started to limp.
10:42
And I bring him to the vet and the vets like he's not doing
10:45
well. He's got like a, a mass and it
10:48
was benign, but it was preventing his ability to walk.
10:51
But then he also, they took X-rays and they found like all
10:53
this tissue damage basically like crystallized whatever,
10:58
basically from like long term osteoarthritis.
11:02
Because Rodger was a freaking legend.
11:05
And he fetched every single day of his life up until the day he
11:09
died. The day he died, he did not
11:12
fetch, which was sort of like maybe the I was like, all right,
11:16
dude, you're not fetching. Let's get out of here.
11:18
Let's do this thing. But so this happened in October,
11:21
right? So there was like the August
11:23
romance, the September heartbreak, the triggering of
11:27
all of these, you know, deep childhood things.
11:29
And then my dog gets sick and it's like, whoa, it was a lot.
11:34
It was a lot. I will say Roger and I had an
11:37
amazing run. He was a legend.
11:41
He was iconic. He was the dog that everybody
11:43
wanted. They wanted their dog to be like
11:46
him. He was so well behaved, a true
11:49
Angel. We had a beautiful going away
11:51
ceremony with just me and my friend Adele.
11:54
We sang him songs, Tracy Chapman, Nick Cave, fucking
12:00
Dirty Dancing time of my life. Like he had Michelin star
12:07
chicken and fries as his last meal.
12:09
I mean, leftovers from the night before, but still Michelin star.
12:13
I mean, the the guy was blessed. And I think he was like, yo,
12:17
bam, I'm tired. And I'm like, hey, I get it.
12:20
Let's do this thing. And we did, we went to the vet,
12:22
we did the thing. I'm not going to go into
12:23
details. I wrote all about it.
12:25
I'll put it in the show notes. So that happened.
12:28
So then I lose the love of my life on top of all this other
12:36
like hugest a human existed. It's like a human wound, right?
12:41
And Needless to say, I'm struggling.
12:44
I'm not doing really well. I'm also kind of frozen at this
12:48
point and I'm not ready to leave Montreal because I have friends
12:51
there and I have a lot of community there.
12:53
But I know that I have to come back to the States because I
12:55
have a freaking trauma bond with the United States.
13:00
I'm not going to go into every single reasons why I'm here, but
13:03
like, we moved to the States when I was 13.
13:05
I'm born in Montreal. Montreal is my one and only my
13:10
true love, and I will be back there.
13:12
But I still have unfinished business in the United States.
13:14
But we moved to the States when I was 13.
13:16
So like ostensibly I'm American. I mean, I am American and we
13:20
got, we got naturalized when I was 22.
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So I've lived like half my life, more than half my life in the
13:26
United States, the rest of it in Canada.
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So I've got friends here, I've got an apartment here, I've got
13:33
a car here, I've got toys, I've got family like in my, I have a
13:36
life here as well as in Canada. And so I'm not quite ready to
13:39
give it up. And so the plan is move back to
13:42
the United States, get this podcast back up and running,
13:45
even though I feel terrible and I'm in a huge amount of
13:49
transition, but I did it. I moved back and instead of
13:53
moving back to LA, I moved back to the Bay Area because I have
13:56
friends here and I have family here and I have community here
14:00
and I moved back here Jan 1 and today it's March, March 11th.
14:04
And it's hard not to have a home.
14:07
It's hard to be living out of bins, 2 bins.
14:13
And on top of all of this, I am feeling an incredible amount of
14:18
self doubt. Like so much self doubt.
14:22
It's crippling. And someone on Instagram
14:24
yesterday was like, oh, don't feel that you're great.
14:28
And it's like, OK, thank you. But that's not how self doubt
14:32
works. It's like no matter, no amount
14:35
of external validation changes how I'm feeling inside and how I
14:40
have been feeling inside. Not currently today, but like,
14:44
you know, as of pretty damn recently.
14:47
Is that like I don't know what I'm doing with my life?
14:52
I don't know what I'm doing with the love drive.
14:55
I don't know if I'm the kind of person that should even be
14:57
giving advice or talking about matters of the heart.
15:01
These are sort of like the questions that are coming up.
15:04
I'm not telling myself that I'm not the kind of person that
15:07
needs to be doing this work or I'm, you know, that I don't know
15:11
what I'm doing. I'm just questioning whether I
15:14
know what I'm doing or I know what my place it is like in
15:18
where what my place is in life. And I'm just feeling low
15:23
self-confidence again, Not today, right now I feel OK, but
15:27
it ebbs and flows. But I had a, a long period of,
15:29
of self doubt and I think that's normal.
15:34
I think it's normal. It's just that we don't talk
15:37
about it. We don't talk about it.
15:40
I think there's a lot of people walking around with a lot of
15:43
doubt. There's a lot of people walking
15:45
around looking like they know what they're doing when they
15:47
don't know what they're doing and they're scared of being
15:50
found out and they feel alone because no one's really talking
15:54
about the fact that like, most of us don't know what the fuck
15:56
we're doing. I got a little tender there
16:01
thinking about how there are people out there, lots of people
16:05
who are feeling a lot of self doubt, even though they have
16:10
gifts, so many gifts that they are actively sharing with the
16:14
universe, or maybe they could be sharing it more with the
16:19
universe. But the self doubt is getting in
16:22
the way. And that's kind of what happened
16:24
to me for a little bit. I was just like, wow, I'm I need
16:27
to sort of recharge. I need to go inward for a little
16:30
bit. I need to be stuck, feel stuck.
16:35
We don't, we don't give people permission to be stuck, right?
16:39
It's like we live in a world of like, just do it.
16:41
Hyper productivity, you know, thrive, king thrive.
16:46
And it's like, no, not thriving, actively struggling.
16:51
And I'm not even talking about like geopolitically how fucked
16:56
we all are or from a environmental perspective, how
17:01
fucked we all. There's like so many reasons why
17:06
we should not be OK. Not to mention that society will
17:09
be like, well, if you're not OK, you need to figure out how to
17:11
get OK. You cannot walk around not OK.
17:15
That's not OK. So you need medication, you need
17:20
therapy. You need to push through it.
17:23
You need to bottle it up. Probably not.
17:25
You need therapy. Probably more like you need to
17:28
bottle it up so that you can continue to produce and pretend
17:33
like you're OK. But I think there's a lot of us
17:37
that are not OK, and that's OK. It's OK not to be OK.
17:42
It's OK to be stuck. It's OK to retreat when you need
17:46
to. It's OK to try to shut the world
17:49
out and to lick your wounds. That's what dogs do when they're
17:55
sick. They go in, they they hide out
17:57
and they lick their wounds. It's OK to do that.
18:01
And it's also OK to be like, man, I am kind of sick and tired
18:06
of this. I'm tired of licking my wounds.
18:08
Maybe my wounds are good enough, like healed enough, not totally
18:13
healed, healed enough for me to go out back into the world and
18:18
see what the hell is going out, what is going on out there,
18:21
Which is what I'm doing right now.
18:22
I have licked my wounds a little bit and I am putting myself out
18:28
there again. Something that I've learned
18:31
recently about not having a fixed place, like I'm a huge
18:35
nester. I love a nest, I love my things.
18:40
I love being cozy and safe. It's like a big thing for me.
18:44
And I haven't really had that lately.
18:46
I've just sort of been bopping around and I've, I have had to
18:51
find how I can feel at home without having my own home,
18:58
right? So like actually right now, if
18:59
you can see if you're watching this, I'm in my bedroom.
19:03
That's not my bedroom. It's somebody else's bedroom and
19:06
I'm like, I'm going to record this podcast here because it's
19:08
kind of window and so you can see my face really well.
19:11
But the background wasn't that interesting and actually the
19:14
room didn't feel that great until I brought 2 plants in and
19:18
I made my bed fluffier. The bed was not fluffy.
19:21
I made it fluffier. I went to Marshall's yesterday
19:25
and I bought like just a cheap ass comforter that's like
19:28
polyester. They call it down alternative.
19:31
What? Just call it what it is,
19:33
freaking plastic. But it's fluffy.
19:36
And I got a new duvet cover and I got extra pillows and like you
19:39
could see, the bed is nice. There are plants.
19:42
This feels nice. It's not my home, but it feels
19:46
like a homey little place for me.
19:49
But not only that, not only in the physical spaces, I actually
19:52
have to find a way to feel at home inside of me.
19:56
And I hadn't been feeling that way lately.
19:59
I've been eating, not great. I haven't really been working
20:01
out that much. And so I signed up for the gym.
20:04
I'm back at the gym, I'm doing sauna after the workout, which
20:09
by the way, guys are kind of gross in saunas.
20:11
I mean, they're not jerking off or anything, but like not all of
20:15
them are sitting on towels like yesterday.
20:17
This is so gross. I'm sorry.
20:19
But yesterday I watched this guy sit in the sauna and his penis
20:25
was resting on the wood, you know, like the towel didn't
20:29
extend far enough. So his bare penis head was just
20:33
sitting there. And I'm sure that this the sweat
20:37
is dripping down his body, off his extremity, off his little
20:42
penis and just soaking the cedar, you know.
20:45
And I'm like, I know saunas are just full of sweat.
20:49
Like it's sweat and then it dries.
20:50
I don't really understand, like how clean are saunas really?
20:55
Like I'm so sorry for the tangent, but like, I just
21:00
couldn't help myself. Anyways, I found I'm starting to
21:03
find a home inside of me. You know, home is where the
21:05
heart is starting to find a little home inside of me
21:08
wherever I go. That's, that's it.
21:13
That's what I got for you. Actually, I do have this, this
21:15
line here that says build the life that you're proud of,
21:18
right? And it's like building the life
21:22
that you're proud of is going to require some energy, some
21:26
resources, some action. And this is different than
21:31
society saying just do it. Get out there and fucking make
21:34
your dream happen. It's like something a little bit
21:36
more realistic. It's like, OK, I'm not exactly
21:40
where I want to be. Maybe it's my relationship
21:43
status. Maybe it's that I want a
21:45
relationship, maybe it's that I want to I want more sex in my
21:48
life. Or maybe it's that I want my
21:49
career to be a little bit different.
21:51
I want more responsibility, or I want to, or I want to actually
21:53
do something completely different.
21:54
Or maybe it's like I want to live in a different place in a
21:57
different city or different house.
22:00
Or maybe it's that I want to feel stronger at the gym or
22:04
leaner. I want to be able to do more
22:06
pull ups. Like whatever.
22:07
The thing is you're going to have to do some amount of work
22:13
to get to that thing. And that's like that's life.
22:17
We focus on a couple goals. We make some progress.
22:20
You know, sometimes it's 2 steps forward, one step back, but
22:25
that's what we're doing. Not a whole revamp of like this
22:27
is how I'm going to get from shit hitting the fan to thrive
22:34
world. You know, like I just don't
22:36
believe in that. And like, that's the problem
22:39
with social media is that they, you know, people don't really
22:42
show you the process. They don't show you how long it
22:45
takes. They don't show you how hard it
22:47
is. They just kind of show you the
22:48
finished thing and go, hey, I got from this to this, I got
22:52
from here to here and this is how I did it.
22:54
That's great. But that's not realistic for
22:57
most of us, at least not for me. I don't know.
22:59
I'll speak from I'll speak from personal experience.
23:03
OK, so that's my little pep talk for you today.
23:06
I've got a couple of Q And as I actually have a really sweet
23:08
message, I just want to play this right now.
23:13
Hi, Sean. My name is Wendy and I'm calling
23:16
from Toronto. And I don't have a question.
23:20
I'm just really oddly glad that you are back.
23:23
You were one of the first podcasts I listened to along
23:27
with Marc Maron, and he is gone. And now I'm just actually kind
23:31
of pleased that another kind fellow is talking about things.
23:35
Honestly. Take care.
23:37
Bye. Not me crying.
23:46
Yeah, me crying. Thanks, Wendy.
23:50
That means a lot. That's my hope.
23:58
Not that I cry, although, yeah, why not?
24:01
My hope is that I can bring, like, a different male voice.
24:06
There are other good male voices out there.
24:08
I think Marc Maron is one of them.
24:10
I'm glad I don't think that he handed me the torch.
24:20
There was no like Marc Maron to Sean Galanos hand off of the
24:24
mail podcast. But I mean, that's a huge
24:26
compliment, by the way. I mean, he's a he's a a
24:29
phenomenal podcaster and over thousands of episodes.
24:33
And I know it was sort of like a fixture in the space, but it
24:38
feels nice to hear that there's, there's room for me for like a
24:42
kind, dare I say sensible at times, misguided, hopefully
24:48
funny and sassy, also male voice in the space.
24:54
Because I think, you know, the, I think that the predominant
25:01
sentiment is like, gosh, can we just stop it with the guys in
25:04
the podcast? Like, can we stop giving basic
25:07
Bros a microphone? And I agree.
25:11
And it's interesting because sometimes I, you know, part of
25:13
myself doubt is like, oh, do I really have anything to say?
25:17
But as you can see, I have a lot to say.
25:20
It's been 27 minutes and I'm, I'm going on on pure passion
25:24
here with very few notes. So I do have a lot to say.
25:29
And sometimes I wonder whether my voice is valuable.
25:34
And I know that that is I got sad hearing myself say that, you
25:46
know, or like the fact that that doubt lives inside of me, right?
25:53
Like there's a part of me that thinks that my voice is not
25:55
valuable. And that's really sad.
25:58
That's an old message from childhood or from whatever life,
26:05
you know, like I had experiences.
26:07
I must have had experiences where, you know, I felt like my
26:11
voice wasn't valuable or that I wasn't valuable.
26:17
And that's really sad. There's this really funny
26:21
practice. I love this practice so good.
26:24
But you know, negative self talk is pretty common.
26:29
We all do it. We all do it and sometimes we do
26:33
it live like out loud in front of people.
26:37
We'll, we'll like bash ourselves in front of people.
26:40
And I have a friend and sometimes she'll, she'll go, Oh
26:44
my God, I'm so stupid. And then I will say, Hey, don't
26:49
talk about my friend that way. And it's really cute.
26:52
And it, it's a, a, a light hearted way of sort of bringing
26:58
attention to this negative self talk that we sometimes do
27:03
inadvertently, like we are not aware that we are negatively
27:06
talking to ourselves. You know, like, like, let's say
27:09
you'll do something bold, like you'll, you'll try to talk to a
27:13
stranger in public and you'll, you'll fumble because that
27:17
shit's hard. And then as you walk away, you,
27:19
you'll go, you idiot, you shouldn't have done that instead
27:23
of saying, ah, buddy, that was bold.
27:28
Damn, way to go, bud. You know, we'll actively be mean
27:32
to ourselves. And I have been working so hard
27:35
on this. I've been working so hard on not
27:39
being mean to myself and only using loving language.
27:43
And it's really difficult. I'm getting teared up again.
27:47
Jesus Christ, get a get a grip. And instead of doing that little
27:55
joke that I just made, I could have been like, Jesus Christ,
27:57
There's, there's a lot there. There's a lot to feel sad about.
28:01
So go talk about my friend that way.
28:04
OK. And thank you, Wendy.
28:06
Gosh, what a sweet little message.
28:09
OK, let's do a question. Hi Sean, I love your work.
28:15
I'm glad you're doing this. I'm Emily and I'm calling from
28:18
Montana. I have about 3 1/2 years now
28:23
post a breakup that pretty much rocked my world and I came out
28:28
on the other side with a lot of huge wins in my own life and
28:32
career and I've totally put my life upside down in the best way
28:35
possible. So I'm not here to just say it's
28:37
all bad and and everything's awful.
28:39
But I still can't get past the story of like I left a really
28:44
good guy and he moved on right away, got married right away.
28:49
It's hard for me to move past the story.
28:52
And I think even lately, even 3 1/2 years later, I've been
28:55
wondering, it feels like I let a really good love go and that
29:00
that could have been a once in a lifetime thing and that it might
29:03
not come back again. But it feels so true.
29:06
And I'm just wondering like, how do you forgive yourself or how
29:09
do you move past that and find hope, Especially in a time where
29:13
you're trying to stayed in a pandemic day or whatever and
29:16
there's just nothing happening for you out there.
29:17
And the other person did it so quickly.
29:19
It's so hard to not think that somehow you kind of got this
29:23
short end of the stick. I'd love to hear your thoughts
29:25
on how to kind of like break those patterns, to think about
29:28
it differently so that you can keep healing.
29:32
Thanks so much. Thanks, Emily.
29:35
Emily from Montana, everybody. I used to call Montana, Montana.
29:40
I think people, people call it because people call it Montana
29:42
because there's so many men there.
29:45
Yeah, there's a lot here. There's a lot here.
29:48
One thing that I heard, which is kind of interesting is that like
29:51
after the breakup, you experienced a lot of big wins,
29:55
right? And maybe those big wins, maybe
29:59
you maybe you wouldn't have experienced them after the like
30:02
there was a sort of a glow up after the breakup in a certain
30:05
way, but not romantically is is one thing that I want to flag.
30:10
The second thing is we just don't know how things would have
30:15
played out. So if you and this guy had
30:17
stayed together, we have no idea what either of your lives or
30:23
your relationship would have looked like.
30:25
It could have been happily ever after or it could have been kind
30:30
of a nightmare. Like we just don't know.
30:32
We don't know if any of the glow up would have happened if you
30:35
had stayed together. All of the the gifts that you
30:38
were that were bestowed upon you after this breakup, Unclear if
30:42
you would have gotten those. You probably would have gotten
30:44
some of them, maybe not all of them.
30:47
Your life could be actually would be marketedly different
30:51
than it is now. Markedly, marketedly, markedly.
30:55
So it's like we just we don't know.
30:58
We we don't know how life pans out when we make different
31:03
decisions. The other thing that I find
31:06
really interesting is that the story that you're attached to is
31:11
I let a good love go. And that love was once in a
31:15
lifetime. The first part of the story is
31:19
true. I let a good love go or like we
31:22
had good love or something, whatever, whatever the story is,
31:26
that's true. The other part is like a
31:29
projection, right? It's like, and that love will
31:32
never happen again. We don't know that it's so
31:35
unlikely that that that's true. What if these two things were
31:40
separate? OK, I have to accept that I let
31:44
a good love go. I have to grieve the fact that
31:47
I, I let a good love go. And my experience is that it is
31:52
really hard to find a person to have a loving relationship with
31:56
currently in my life. These are two different things,
32:00
right? I have to grieve this
32:02
relationship and I have to acknowledge that, gosh, things
32:10
are hard. I, it's hard for me to find
32:12
someone to have this a similar kind of relationship that I had,
32:17
right? I don't think there's anything
32:20
to forgive, right? You're, you're like, how can I
32:23
forgive myself? What are we for?
32:24
Your forgiving ourselves for. If you broke up with this
32:28
person, you were doing what you thought was the best thing for
32:32
you at the time with the information that you had.
32:35
It's not useful to beat yourself up about.
32:36
Oh, in hindsight, I guess I should have stayed because we
32:39
don't even actually know what would have happened if you had
32:41
stayed in the first place. Maybe it would have been a huge
32:44
nightmare. So there's nothing to forgive
32:46
yourself about. I think it's more about grieving
32:49
that life, that life that you could have had, the potential
32:52
fairy tale life that you could have had with this person, and
32:55
also sitting with the discomfort and the sadness and the
32:59
challenge of not having the kind of love that you want to be
33:03
having in your life right now. And lastly, try not to compare
33:09
your grieving process with that of another, right?
33:13
So like he quote UN quote, moved on quickly and remarried and now
33:17
he's, you know, the happiest he's ever been.
33:20
Sure, maybe we don't know how he's doing inside, right?
33:25
So another thing is don't compare your insides with the
33:27
with somebody else's outsides. And you live in a state called
33:31
Montana, you know, so there's good chances, good chances.
33:35
There's some, some rugged ranch hand out there that's a good fit
33:41
for you and I want this for you also.
33:44
I just want you to to be kind, to be kind and to not compare
33:48
yourself to to other people and hope you find what you're
33:52
looking for. Thank you for the question,
33:54
Emily. All right, what else?
33:58
I got an e-mail, actually, that I want to read to you.
34:02
It says in your intro, you mentioned you're a Rape Crisis
34:06
counselor. I've never heard you say this.
34:07
Do you think this has helped you with communication during
34:10
difficult or awkward situations, such as during sex?
34:13
Wishing you the best, Savannah. Hey, Savannah.
34:15
Thank you for your e-mail. Yeah.
34:17
So, gosh, when was this? This must be at least, like, 13
34:21
years ago. I was living in the Bay Area,
34:24
and I wanted to do some sort of training.
34:26
And it was either, oh, I wanted to do sex education training,
34:30
and I didn't get into the program.
34:33
And so I started looking around and I wanted to work for some
34:35
sort of crisis hotline. And I found Bay War, which is
34:39
the Bay Area, Bay Area Women Against Rape.
34:41
And it's a crisis hotline for women who have experienced rape
34:45
or sexual abuse in any kind who can, you know, they can call
34:48
when they're struggling. And I thought that that would be
34:52
interesting. I had worked on a hotline in my
34:55
teens doing like volunteer work and I forget what that hotline
35:00
was for, but I remember really enjoying the experience and I
35:02
was like, OK, let me get some additional training.
35:05
And so I got accepted into the Bay War program and I did, I
35:08
feel, I feel like it was like 3 months of training and I became
35:11
a California State certified Rape Crisis counsellor.
35:16
And I did about a year of working the hotline.
35:20
And I will say I learned a ton. And one of the things that I'm,
35:25
that I walk away with or remember on a, on a regular
35:28
basis is that it's only weird if you make it weird.
35:35
It's only weird if you make it weird.
35:37
It's only awkward if you make it awkward, right?
35:41
And So what I learned from Rape Crisis counseling is that, like,
35:46
you got to be able to say the thing that's hard to say.
35:51
And when you're talking to somebody who's gone through
35:54
sexual abuse, you have to use words like rape and sexual
35:59
assault. And you can't really make it
36:02
weird, right? Like, you don't want the crisis
36:06
counselor making it weird. And so I just kind of learned to
36:09
say hard things without cringing or like, looking awkward.
36:14
I just was like, OK, this situation requires a level of
36:18
maturity here because it's in this situation where I'm
36:22
supporting somebody else. It's not about me, it's about
36:24
them. Everything is about them.
36:27
All I'm here to do is support, give resources, listen,
36:31
validate, whatever, whatever they need, I'm here for.
36:35
And so that's kind of how I learned to like get out of my
36:40
head and be in a supportive role.
36:44
And so I guess it has helped with my communication during
36:47
difficult or awkward situations because I've learned to just
36:49
like say the thing and oh gosh, we just need to say the thing.
36:55
We just need to say the thing. So much for everybody, for
37:00
yourself, for others. Like there's so many things that
37:03
are going unsaid, which is why I have a job.
37:07
You know, people ask me all the time, like, hey, when he did
37:09
this, what did he mean when she said this?
37:11
What did, what did she mean? Or what did she mean when she
37:14
said? It's like just ask the question.
37:17
There's, there's a lot of unspoken stuff out here that's
37:20
making life really complicated because we're scared of talking,
37:23
we're scared of being honest. We're scared of speaking our
37:26
desires, our boundaries. We're scared.
37:30
And look, I'm not faulting anybody for being scared.
37:33
I'm scared too. I feel like fear is an emotion
37:36
that I really struggle with and I don't really know how to
37:39
express it appropriately. I don't know how to live with
37:41
it. Sadness, I got anger.
37:44
Anger I'm not so great at and fear.
37:48
Fear is a tough one. Fear is a tough one because I
37:50
think the the knee jerk is to freeze.
37:56
Well, I mean, I guess some people flee and some people
37:58
fight and some people fuck. I guess those are the four FS of
38:02
a of a stimulus response. But I freeze.
38:06
I freeze. I just don't know what to do.
38:07
So little tangent there. Little tangent.
38:10
OK everybody, thank you so much for being here.
38:14
I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you have a question,
38:19
please send me your questions 415-494-9559 and you could leave
38:25
me a voicemail or an e-mail on Nope, Not Sean Podcast podcast
38:33
at the love dr.com. I love hearing from you.
38:36
By the way, this is my full time job now, so I need your
38:40
questions. I need your comments.
38:41
I need your feedback. I need your criticisms as long
38:45
as it's constructive. I need your hate mail.
38:48
Send it. Leave a comment on Spotify or
38:49
YouTube, leave a review. Tell a friend next.
38:54
OK, this coming, this this next Thursday, we will be sitting
39:00
down with Jenny Young, who is a professor of rhetoric who
39:07
inadvertently stumbled upon a dating method called the burned
39:10
haystack dating method, where you burn it all to the ground in
39:14
order to find your needle. There has been some constructive
39:19
criticism or criticism about this technique.
39:22
Actually, if you listen to last week's episode with Dan Savage,
39:25
he talks about his experience not burning the haystack down
39:30
and that if he had burned this haystack down, he wouldn't be
39:33
with his boyfriend and his husband.
39:34
He has a boyfriend and a husband, so your mileage may
39:38
vary. Use it with a grain of salt.
39:40
Take it with a grain of salt and take what you want and leave the
39:44
rest. Actually, that's just a good
39:47
philosophy for life, you know? Especially when you're listening
39:50
to like advice, podcasts or reading self help.
39:53
Take what you want and leave the rest.
39:55
And that applies to this podcast as well.
39:57
So thank you for being here. I am grateful that you are here.
40:02
I'm excited for our future, you and I, and the future of this
40:06
podcast. And as always, have a beautiful
40:09
week.