These are my personal opinions.
Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well -being.
Okay, if you're ready for a little controversy, let's get into it.
I'm gonna talk about love.
Love is something that I have defined throughout the years and redefine throughout the years, but basically for the last decade or so I call it when you support someone's happiness.
That's the most basic definition that I wanted to shorten it to one little line.
Supporting someone's happiness, that contains supporting the decisions they make that make them happy.
Supporting what they watch, what they listen to, what they read.
Even if you disagree with it supporting their choice of political candidate controversy there that's love you're supporting their choices even when you disagree does this mean you have to stay with somebody that you disagree with no you don't have to stay with somebody you disagree with if it's a romantic love but if it's a familiar or familial love like family.
If it's family mmm you know you're kind of stuck because you're family but do you have to hang around them?
I don't know. If you're still living at home that's tough but hopefully you'll move out if you don't agree with the people you're living with or whatever.
The point is Love is different than, let's just say, commitment.
Love is different than commitment, because you can love someone and you can commit to be with someone for an indefinite period of time or for the rest of your lives.
You can commit and say, this is who I'm going to be with for the rest of my life.
The commitment is, I'm here as long as things continue along the path they're on.
Like a promise. I promised to be with you for the rest of my life.
As long as the path that we're on doesn't change too drastically.
What I mean is, you know, you go through life with somebody in a romantic relationship through thick and through better and worse or worse and that means you are tackling life's challenges together.
You are working on things together.
So when a challenge comes along if it's only one person dealing with that challenge then the commitment isn't necessarily something that can be binding in a way might be the wrong word here but let's just say that you make a commitment to someone I want to be with you for the rest of my life and the challenge comes along a challenge comes along and that person says well that's your problem you deal with it and then you try to deal with it and it's very difficult and they're just going off doing their own thing, having a good time, not invested in your happiness anymore at least regarding this challenge
because they've gone off and done their own thing, not helping you through the challenge.
That to me, again there's some controversy here, that to me invalidates the commitment.
It's like the relationship contract I've talked about in the past. We sign up for a up knowing or hoping that both of us are going to go through life together and deal with the challenges together and it balances the relationship.
So the relationship, double meaning there, doesn't list doesn't sync because it takes two people to keep the relationship afloat and if the two aren't working on the relationship, the relationship will sink.
Or one person will be, with the bucket, constantly scooping out the water from their end so that they don't sink.
And that is no longer a relationship.
It's just a sinking ship.
And that's an important distinction because when you're not both working on the relationship, you are risking its sinking and you are also risking one person drowning.
It's not even a risk.
It's a reality. If you're both not working on the relationship, there's one person who will be drowning.
There's one person that will be having a lot of trouble staying afloat.
And so that's why when you have a commitment like this, you're supposed to work on things together.
And I know there are always circumstances and exceptions and all kinds of things that can happen that can put the burden of challenges on one person, but there should at least be some sort of emotional support or the other person saying, I'll do whatever I can to help.
So I know that there are circumstances out there that will have one person suffering more than the other, but there should still be that support of some sort.
The challenge comes when one person says, you have a problem, you deal with it.
That's a challenge because there's no longer a balance in the relationship and coming back to, um, commitments and promises.
When you commit with somebody, commit to be with them, commit to having a life together, it should involve what I call, love.
It should involve supporting the other person's happiness.
And there's a lot involved there.
Love is the feeling of being supported for who you are and the decisions that you make to live your life, practically the way you want.
That's love. Even when the other person doesn't like it, the other person doesn't agree with the decisions.
But to feel love is to feel supported for who you are.
It's feeling 100 % trusted even when someone disagrees with you.
Like I'm gonna do this, I just want you to trust me and they might say I disagree with this, it's not gonna work.
But they say I know it's gonna work and I just want to do this.
And so the other person says okay let's just see what happens.
This is what I do my marriage.
I'll see my wife start to do something, and she says, why don't we just do this?
Why don't we just hammer this into the wall, and I'll say, well you know if you did that the the nail isn't...
I mean this isn't really what happened but let's just say it happened like this.
If we did that the nail's not gonna stick because it's drywall.
And she might say well you know it's tough enough so maybe it'll work.
And I'll say okay. See what happens.
I can always patch it and so she'll do it and it's either gonna work or it's not.
But I decided to trust her.
And again that's a fake example.
She's actually pretty smart but things like that happened because I've also said to her in other ways and she's done the same with me the words something like okay I'll stand back here and I just don't think it's gonna work or I know it's not gonna work but if that's you want to do, then go for it.
You know what that does?
It strengthens trust. It increases trust and it shows that you both support each other's decisions and perspectives but one person still knows it's not going to work and the other person needs to prove it to themselves that it will.
And when you step back and build connection and also, also build a stronger faith in the person that says I told you it wasn't going to work and hopefully it doesn't become a I told you so thing but the other person's going to know.
The person who tried it and it failed, they're going to know, oh yeah they did tell me.
So you probably don't need to say I told you so, probably don't need to say that at all.
But what that has done in my relationship, because this is what we do, we do this with each other, I don't think that's going to work or Asha will tell me, I know that won't work.
I know it. And I'll say, well, I need to do it for myself.
I need to fail for myself.
I need to do it for myself.
Just so I'll have that failure in my mind.
So I know what doesn't work.
That's kind of how I operate.
And she'll say, okay, just step back and sometimes I don't fail.
And sometimes she'll say, I don't know how you did that.
that doesn't make any sense.
And I said I need to know, I need to know for myself, that's why I did it.
And it's not a I told you something.
Anyway, coming back I know what I just said isn't always the healthiest response, especially when somebody says hey I want to try this I want to try heroin for the first time.
It was something dangerous.
I want to use needles that I found on the street, something dangerous.
You know, that's not gonna happen, hopefully, but that's something that you might not want to step back and say, okay, we'll see what happens, because a real danger is there.
But hopefully you have built a trust and faith in one another that when somebody says don't do and this is why that you have enough sense to say, okay I'll listen to the reason and then you can talk back and forth.
But that's that kind of trust and faith and confidence in another person has to build it has to be earned and it's usually earned not by saying I'm not gonna let you do that with every little thing.
No, don't do that. It's wrong.
I'm right. Go away.
I'll take care of this with every little thing.
No, don't pound that hammer into that soft drywall.
It's not gonna last. It will not hang that 45 pound picture or painting or whatever.
It will not work so don't try it.
So they never gain the experience and they never learn.
It's like with kids right?
With kids you want to hopefully they'll fail enough to succeed later on in life.
They'll fail when they're young, they'll succeed later because they know what failure looks like.
That's why sometimes it's helpful to have kids try and fail.
But, you know, we don't want to treat our partners and adults as kids.
When they say, I know it will work, and you want to give them an opportunity to show them that it won't work, they may surprise you or they may validate you.
Either way, coming back to talking about.
I have a notes here that I want to talk about love and what I believe love is and what it consists of and it is helpful before I read you some of my notes it is helpful if you are with someone or know someone in your family who actually has an emotional connection to themselves who actually can connect emotionally inside themselves who can access some layers of emotion.
Sadness, anger, happiness, joy, elation, bliss, even a bit of apathy kind of in between.
All of the emotions, the whole pool of emotions that we have have inside of us.
The more someone can access the more likely they're able to love.
It doesn't mean emotionless people or people that are less connected to their emotions aren't capable of love.
It just means the more emotions someone's capable of expressing and feeling and allowing that feeling to be expressed They're more capable and my vast knowledge of my life and my perspective that has been my experience is that the more connected somebody is inside to their emotional state, the more capable they are of loving.
And again, it doesn't mean they can't love if they're not like if you are...
if somebody is an engineer and they're very computational very analytical they may still be capable of loving at a deep level and maybe not expressing it very well but they still love they do things to show you they love you but they have a very hard time emoting it doesn't mean they're not capable just means they may not be capable of showing it in a way that you appreciate or that you need because some of us, some of us need a broader depth, an expression of love.
When I met Asha, she's about halfway what I'm used to as far as the expression of love.
And it took a long time for me to get used to that.
Probably a couple years it took me a long time because I'm the kind of guy that says, Oh, I love you, oh I love you back.
And I'm that, I have been that guy for a long time.
Some of it was dysfunctional.
And what I mean by that is that sometimes I would say it to hear it.
I mean, that's not necessarily dysfunctional, but there is some level of fear in there.
Like I need to hear it.
And when there's some level of fear, when you say you love someone, There is probably some dysfunction in there as well.
I hope they say I love you back or I need to hear it.
And again, it's not always dysfunctional.
Sometimes you just in a, you're just in a bad space and you want to hear it.
You might say it to somebody hoping they say it back.
But what I learned from Asha is that she used to be that kind of lovey, dovey mushy type of person and her heart was crushed so many times.
And especially when she got married to not a good healthy person.
She had to or she's she learned to suppress a bit and what she did was hold back and not just fully trust and fully have faith in another person that they won't crush her heart.
So when we met, I'm the kind of guy that says hey I'm open 100 % then I trust you 100 % on day one until you crush my heart?" and hopefully you you don't, but I was open to that.
I was open to it going anywhere, because I have learned that if you don't open your heart a hundred percent, then it's very hard to be 100 % satisfied.
I mean if that's even possible.
Be 100 % satisfied in a relationship, because you're holding back.
And so for a couple years, maybe three or four years even, in the I have with my wife, what I learned was that her heart grew more fonder over the years.
It took a long time and it had to for her because she needed reinforcement.
She needed for me to keep showing up in a healthy way, for me to keep showing up in a way that she could trust, she had to learn to trust that a person wouldn't be harmful or hurtful to her and I did the best I could and I kept showing up and kept accepting her for who she is and I still do to this day and that allowed her to open her heart become more vulnerable with me say I love you when she feels it and accept when I say I love you and there are times that we connect that we never connected like before because she wasn't in that space.
That doesn't mean she's in a 100 % mushy space but it feels like a very adult mature love it's a very trusting love and the only reason I'm telling you this is because sometimes love isn't all about being mushy Sometimes it really is about wanting to see someone happy.
Accepting them 100 % as they are even when they change.
Even when they shift. Even when they have mood swings.
Because that's how you care about someone.
You love them for who they are.
You accept them for who they are.
And again, this doesn't mean you have to stick with someone who you love because their changes or their personality or their bad habits or whatever, you don't have to allow those things into your life if you can't tolerate them.
This is one of the more important points that I'd like to make, is that we can love someone from afar.
We can love someone and say, I love all of these things about you but there are certain things that I can't allow into my life.
So I won't be able to be with you because of those things.
That's not a judgment.
That is personal boundaries that is protection personal protection it is loving yourself to the point where you give yourself what you need to be happy it is supporting your own happiness because if you can't get that from someone else that's the default it should be the default you should say I needed to support my own because I'm not getting it in this situation.
I'm not getting it in this relationship, so I need to support my own happiness.
That's nothing against you.
That's nothing against the other person.
It's for you, for yourself.
So this is something that I've had to express to people who've written to me who say, I don't want to be judgmental.
I don't want to make them feel bad.
I don't want make them think that they're bad people and that I'm putting them down for what they're doing and then I'm leaving because of their bad behaviors or anything like that.
And I say you don't have to feel judgmental at all.
In fact all you have to do is ask yourself, is this right for me?
Is what they're doing?
Is what they're saying right for me?
Because if it's not right for you it's not a judgment against them.
There might be some judgment in there but it really does come down to is this right for me.
So you keep it about yourself.
Is this okay for me?
Because if it's not then it's not about them.
It's about you. So if someone's mistreating you, treating you badly in some way, make it about yourself.
Don't make it about them because it really is about you.
It is about you and your decisions and what you need to do to take care of yourself because sometimes people will not have the ability to love you in a way that works for you because these people can still love you but not in a way that works for you and sometimes they can claim to love you and then mistreat you hurt you and do other things that you don't want in your life.
I am a big proponent of saying what's right for me?
Is this right for me?
Is this okay for me?
Can I be okay with this is another question, can I be okay with this?
My favorite question is will I be okay with this if this never ever changes?
That's my favorite question because it really gets down to the nuts and bolts of the thing.
It really gets down to the final answer, what is your final answer?
Your final answer is gonna be the answer to that question.
If this never ever changes will this be okay?
No I turned it around but the same thing.
Will this be okay if this never ever changes?
Because if you say, well no it won't be okay if it never ever changes, you know where you stand.
The person who gets stuck in a rut says, but what if?
Well, that's the rut.
But what if they change?
What if things change?
What if I do get that raise next month?
And what if that raise is five cents?
And what if they do change, but it's for the worse?
You know, talking about a different relationship.
What if that person does change, a change that you hoped they would make, but it's made up for somewhere else?
I mean there's a lot of what -ifs what if they do change and things get better that's a big what -if.
If you've been listening a while you know that I like trends.
I like looking at the trend of any relationship or any work situation and I ask myself what has been happening and I say okay this has been happening and then I tell myself okay what has been happening will happen and it's when it's been years, instead of months, like okay, they've been treating me this way for months, let's just see, you know, it's only a few months.
Okay we can wait and see, you know, unless it's very damaging but let's just wait and see what happens.
But a few years, that's easy, that's an easy one you can just say, this has been happening for a few years, this tells me that it's okay to say, this will never ever change.
And then you stick with it.
Because what I love about knowing something will never ever change, is that knowing leads to decision making.
Knowing leads to action.
And then when you start taking action you're either going to see change or you're going to see things get worse you take action for yourself that's when change usually happens why because either they see you doing something that is totally unexpected or you finally do something that you haven't done before and that leads to the change that you need to make for yourself that's how change happens when somebody doesn't change then you have to make the change that is my formula for change.
That means that one person has to change in order for change to exist and if the person that hasn't changed and doesn't show any sign of changing, that leave the burden of changing on you.
It's not really a burden because changing means you want something better for yourself.
You want something to improve in your life?
And so you adopt a philosophy like that, you can adopt that one if you want or make your own, but I like to look at things as is this going in a good direction?
Or is the trend line going down into the right or staying steady at a terrible level?
And I don't want this anymore in my life.
Is this right for me?
Because if it's not right for me, I need make another decision and that decision may not involve the other person, because I need to do what's right for me.
And then when you make a big change they may say, what...what are you doing?
Why are you doing this?
You're gonna stop doing this.
Oh wait, you're doing this for real?
This is actually happening?
Okay, I'll change." I I see that honestly 99 percent of the time when one person changes the other person finally gets it.
The other person says, oh you're serious.
Yes! I'm serious! I'm gonna do it now so what are you saying?
Oh I'll change. I promise.
It could happen or not.
It really depends on who the person is.
They might think they're righteous and don't have to change for anyone and they might just let you make your decision and do your own thing.
If that's the case, great!
Kind of what a loving person does.
They let you do your own thing.
I'm not saying that they're loving you in that moment.
They may feel self -righteous knowing that you're just terrible and you're gonna do your own thing and they're gonna blame you and they're gonna smear you to their friends and family but sometimes you got to do your own thing when there's no change.
So that can happen.
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So let me come back to my notes about love.
I already said love is the feeling of being supported for who you are and the decisions you make to live your life the way you want.
Love is feeling 100 % trusted even when someone disagrees with you.
Love is a consideration of your well -being without controlling what you decide being well looks like.
I like that one! Love is when someone allows you to be yourself.
Love is trying to make someone's life easier and happier.
Love is prioritizing another person's happiness over your own.
That's a controversial one, I know it is, because you're going to say, if I prioritize their happiness and their hurtful to me, that puts me in a bad space, that makes it awful for me, that makes it an abusive relationship.
Yes, you're right. That's why love requires all people involved to do these things, to define love in a very similar or the same way.
because if you love someone who prioritizes your happiness over theirs and you prioritize their happiness over yours you both get what you want.
Again my definition, my perspective may not be yours but that's how I see things.
If I prioritize my partner's happiness over mine she'll prioritize my happiness over hers.
That sounds self -defeating a little bit, but let me explain.
Let's just say that, and this is true, I have hobbies that I like to do that she doesn't want to partake in.
She has hobbies, gardening, that she likes to do that I don't want to partake in.
Boring to me. Boring, literally boring.
If she goes to a garden thing I'm not going.
But I support her going 100 % just like she supports me and my recreational activities and my hobbies 100 %!
So I feel like I'm getting all my needs met.
She feels like she's getting all her needs met and we have each other's back.
We think about each other if I see something about gardening I'm gonna tell her about it.
It doesn't mean I'm ignoring everything I see.
I just I'll send her pictures, hey look what I found because I want her to feel that happiness and it makes me happy to see her happy.
It makes me happy knowing she's happy and sending her something about something that I really don't care about still makes me happy.
Wow look at this it's a book on gardening.
I'm gonna her a picture of it do you want this book on gardening i found it she'll say yes or no and she'll do the same with me hey look what i found is this something you want wow that sounds great thank you honey that's why i like prioritizing someone else's happiness but both people or anyone in the relationship has to do it for each other that's how it works so there's my uh tiny list of what love is it's a lot more than that but that's kind of the foundation of how I view love and how I experience it.
Now, what isn't love?
Love is not trying to change someone.
Love is not making someone's life difficult.
Love is not putting the person you claim to love down or making them feel bad.
Love is not permission to hurt.
And finally love is not selfish.
That should be obvious but selfishness is one of the biggest relationship destroyers out there.
It is fulfilling your own wants and desires regardless of how the other person feels.
So let's just say I had a hobby that was intrusive to her in some way.
Let's just say my hobby was drilling all day long right below her office.
I have a wood, a little wood shop it's nothing fancy, wood shop in the garage and her office is right above the wood shop and she has to make calls and she has to record things because she has an office in the house and it's right her office is right above it and the wood shop is right below it and I make sure I tell her, hey I'm gonna make some noise for the next five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes, will that be okay?
I get permission because I know it will be intrusive to her.
She supports me. She wants me to be able to do the stuff I love and I'll go downstairs with her permission and use something loud.
I try to save it for night but sometimes I have to do it during the day.
And if I selfish I would just go downstairs and use anything loud I wanted to and not care if she was on the phone or not just like if it's laundry day and she says hey don't do laundry tomorrow cuz I want to do it if I was selfish I would do my own laundry and say whatever you know just wait for me.
This happens in some relationship someone will act selfishly without regard for the other person's feelings and when you do that you will destroy love without a doubt you will destroy love if you do things without regard for the person in your life if you want to do something that you know will make someone unhappy or will make them angry at you but you don't care and you don't consider it then expect love to dissolve and fizzle out because you did not include the other person in your decision -making process to do that thing.
How much does this apply to?
Almost everything! That's why I say love is not selfish.
When love is selfish it's not love.
It really comes down to that.
In fact I would say love is the opposite of selfishness.
I would also say love is the opposite of control.
So control and selfishness are the opposite of love.
When you control, you are not allowing someone to be themselves.
You are not allowing them to be who they are.
When you are selfish, you don't care about their happiness.
So let me close with something that I really wanted to talk about today, which is when people write to me.
They'll say, I love that person so much but they hurt me and they hurt me and then I left and then I came back and then we had some so many good times but the bad times are terrible and they hurt me again and then I leave or we have these arguments or the hurt and the love and the hurt and the love repeat and that's what my podcast love and abuse is all about my other podcast but I'll get these letters like this and I always mentioned the Because when you have love and abuse, or love and hurt in a relationship, you start mixing those things.
Like you believe that love contains pain.
Love can … not pain in the sense that the pain of loss or the fear of loss, but the suffering that someone can create in you, someone can cause you to suffer.
And so you start to believe that suffering is a part of a loving relationship and you start to believe That in order to get love you have to suffer for it And that's not true.
That's not true. You will suffer in some ways even in healthy relationships Yes, but it should not be half and half.
It should not be 90 % suffering and 10 % love There could be 5 % suffering and 95 % love but even that that is a wildly high number.
It should be like a .001 percent suffering and a 99 .99 % feeling good, feeling normal, feeling neutral, but not suffering.
That suffering should be the lowest number in the equation.
That suffering number should not be high.
So when there's a relationship that has 50 -50, when the suffering number is higher than the normal or happy number, there's a problem.
That's why I say something like, what do I say?
If you're unhappy more then you're happy.
Then your relationship is experiencing a big problem.
If you're unhappy more than you're happy in the relationship, something is going on in the relationship that needs to change or it will fizzle out.
So that's important.
And coming back to the love and the hurt or the love and the abuse back and forth back and forth.
You're hurt and then you have a great day and then you're hurt for a week and then you have a great three days and then that cycle creates a trauma bond, meaning you are traumatized inside the relationship and you are creating a bond from the trauma, like there's without the love there's no abuse and without the abuse there's no love.
And so that trauma bond messes with your thinking.
It messes with your understanding of love.
That's why I created this episode that messes with your perception of love and what it means to feel love and how you define love.
It is all about understanding what love is supposed to be.
And different people will have different versions and different definitions and different perceptions of love.
And I encourage that.
If love is different for you than it is for me, you need to define it.
And then when you see it, you know what it looks like.
And when you experience something other than the way you define it and it doesn't feel very good you know what that looks like too so that you can say ah this isn't love this is something else this is something else I need to address.
This needs to stop I need to address it either that means talking to the other person or telling yourself this isn't this isn't right for me so I'm going to do this for me.
I'm gonna make a big decision for myself because this is what I need to do because I love me because I know what love looks like and I don't want that in my life because that's not what love looks like to me that's why it's important to have a definition for love so that when someone comes along and hurt you you can say is this my definition of love because if it's not you can address it and addressing it again may mean talking to that person having a conversation or taking care of yourself and doing your own thing making this making a decision to leave to do something else with your life whatever
this is a tough topic for a lot of people because they make these commitments they make these quote promises to another person and they say I'm gonna love you forever I'm gonna love you for the rest of our lives I want to be together forever and then something happens and they either fall back back to their promise and say I'm not gonna leave you because I made a commitment I made a promise they'll say something like that falling back to their original agreement or they'll understand what the commitment was about and how both people are supposed to commit to each other in a relationship.
You have both people saying I will do this for you and some it is unspoken I will be this way for you all will be this I will do that and when I don't do that or when I'm hurtful that gives you the right to say you broke your commitment because the commitment involved all of these things and now that the commitment is broken we need to talk about it because this isn't what I signed up for I don't want this and then wherever it goes it goes you have control of that though you control your destiny in that respect then here's work it's dicey right like I can't control it I'm in this relationship
I'm stuck or someone might write to me and I've had this message many times but I love them that's what they'll say this this happens this happens this happens and 90 % of the time it sucks and 10 % it's great and when it's great it's so great it's amazing and I don't want to lose that.
You know my first question is are you willing to go 90 % of your life feeling this one way this terrible terrible way for this 10 % of great times.
If you're willing to do that then by all means go for it you might say but they might change we'll go back to that if we have to.
But I don't like to make people make decisions based on what might happen.
I like to make decisions and have people make decisions based on what has happened.
So that is a consideration that I want you to make.
There are people that get into relationships that say this...
they'll say... but I love them so much!
I don't want to, I don't want to miss that.
I don't want to miss out on that.
I are good and I feel really special.
I feel really loved and I really love that feeling and this is my final thought of this episode.
Do you love the person or do you just feel lost without love because there's a big difference between loving someone who has been hurtful or abusive and feeling lost without love.
That's the question for reflection because if you love someone who does that to you I would ask you to again define what love means to you and then ask yourself if you really love the person or are you just worried that you will be lost without love.
That is the question of reflection.
Like I said and I know that I'm wording it as a very black and white question.
I know somebody out there saying what but but here's the thing.
I want you to consider this because if you feel like you need to stay in a relationship because you love the person and you love when things are great and you hate when things are terrible and you hope those terrible things don't happen again but you maybe are staying in a bad relationship because of the good times but the bad times are really over overpowering everything else my question to you is if someone came along that made you feel the same way they were just as maybe attractive, they made you laugh the same way, they liked the same things or they liked more things or they were just as
funny, they were just as unique in their personality.
If someone came along that was all of the things that made up the person you love but maybe even more and even made you feel the same way if not better?
Would you not consider a relationship with that person?
I'm not gonna give you the right answer because there is no right answer this is the question that I actually asked myself at the end of my my last marriage.
The divorce became final and I was in a bad place.
I reflected on everything that I of the marriage, because I believed when we get married we're with that person for the rest of our lives.
That's it. When you get married you're there.
That's it. You've made it.
That was my belief.
And so I never really treated the relationship like I'm talking about today.
And so the divorce was in process and I eventually got the paperwork and I forget if I did this after the paperwork arrived or not, but I remember saying it's gotta be her.
You know, I said her It's gonna be her.
If it's not her, I'll never be happy again." By the way, I said this in every breakup of my life.
I'll never be happy again.
It has to be that person or no one.
Every breakup taught me something new and every breakup, I realized, oh, I will eventually be happy again.
But it takes time. You gotta grieve the relationship like grieving the death of a part of you.
That's how I see it.
the three entities in a relationship, you the other person and us.
And us has died and in your heart the other person has died.
So there's like a quarter of you left it feels like, if that, because such a big part of you, a big part of your identity went away when the relationship ended.
And so I asked myself the question, I was in the middle of this down state that I was in because I was so unhappy.
I believed I would never find happiness again and it had to be her.
We need to get back together so that I could be happy again and I asked myself the question because I was always inquisitive.
I was always asking myself questions.
I asked myself the question, what if someone came along that was just as attractive, if not more, than her?
What if she had just as much a sense of humor, if not more, than her?
What if she was just as fun to talk to or just as intelligent or more?
And I just asked myself these what -if questions.
What if somebody else came along that wasn't her...
wasn't her by name?
Call her Mary. It wasn't Mary.
It was somebody else, but it's not Mary.
So, I want Mary back, but what if somebody else came along that had all these qualities, but maybe even better?
Would I consider it?
And would it make me happy?" That was my question.
I went, well...wow!
When you put it that way.
That changed my perspective.
Thanks for tuning in today.
Thanks for listening to another episode of The Overwhelmed Brain.
Hope you got some value from today's episode.
I want to thank the patrons who give to the show every month I am so grateful for your support I don't ask for it it just happens I'm so grateful for you Thank You patrons thank you to people who donate there's one person that donates like every now and then or once a month or something it always surprises me, but she did something a little bit different this time she donated and then she donated it again And I say her name with a lot of effort every time she does so Supra Supra Supra Something like that.
I am so grateful for you.
You sent me another donation right after and you said what did you say?
You said I owe you an email, but I'm writing out of turn.
I stood up for myself in a professional setting today I'm celebrating that along with the overwhelmed brain podcast that gave me the courage to do it and Wow, I love messages like that.
You did not have to send me any money for that.
I try to give this information away for free and you decided to pay me?
So, hey, I'll take it.
I'm so happy to hear that you stood up for yourself.
This is exactly what I did like 10 years ago.
You decided to stand up and probably say what was right for you.
Kind of the theme of this episode.
You decided to say, I respect myself enough and I love myself enough to say what needs to be said in this moment.
And I'm just going to add this regardless of what happens to me.
Oh that's tough! That's a very, very challenging place to be.
You know you could get fired.
You know somebody might yell at you, but you did it anyway.
I never tell people to do this.
I just ask the question, what would you do or say if you had absolutely no fear of the consequences and this is what happens.
You end up doing things that you probably normally wouldn't have ever done and when you don't do something that you want to do, your life typically never changes.
But when you do do something that you want to do or you want to say your life does change.
The big risk is that will it change for the better or for the worse.
And the way I look at it is hey things are pretty crappy now so I don't care how they change.
That's how I that's how I look at things when I need to make a big change.
It's not always crappy but sometimes you just have to say something or do something because you don't want to keep the status quo.
You want something to change or you notice an injustice or you feel slighted and you want to say something.
And so this is what Superhot said and I am going to get that name right someday and I'm so grateful that you shared this with me and I don't see a follow -up that says I got fired so so I think that it sounds like it went okay.
Thank you, Supra, and I'm very grateful once again.
And thank you for sharing that, because I was able to share it with others who might be in a very difficult position right now, and there's somebody out there that might want to make a decision that will absolutely change things, or maybe it won't change anything, and maybe things will be fine, or whatever it is, but we never know, and that's why we typically don't make these kinds of decisions because we don't know what's gonna happen.
But we always know what will happen if we do nothing.
That is where I live.
I know what's gonna happen if I do nothing.
And I have to ask myself do I want this to continue?
Because if I don't I have to do something.
If you find value in the show like these patrons do or the people who donate, visit moreTOB .com and there are options to do that over there.
Thank you again and I tell you about another show that I do called Love and Abuse.
I mentioned it earlier it's over at loveandabuse .com.
It is about manipulation and control and emotional abuse in relationships and gets deeper into the weeds about relationship issues and we dive in head first over there that's over at loveandabuse .com.
And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship, you can join a program that is helping a lot of people heal over at healedbeing .com.
And that's where I help people who are hurtful in a relationship, stop being hurtful and start healing the emotional triggers that make them hurtful in the first place.
And that is changing lives over at healedbeing .com if you're dealing with that.
And with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions.
And be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want.
Always take steps to grow and evolve.
You are powerful beyond measure.
And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you, you are amazing.
