Welcome to the Overwhelmed Brain Podcast, helping you navigate the difficulties in your life and relationships.
These are my personal opinions.
Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and wellbeing.
You know I was about to say this is going to be a quick episode, but when I say that it doesn't always work out, so I'm not going to start the show with a deception.
It's good to have you here.
I'm glad that you're here.
I don't know if it's going to be short or long.
I'm just going.
Well, here's the reason I was going to say that is because in about an hour I have to leave, because my wife and I are celebrating our second anniversary being married.
And I think that's pretty important.
So...
We're going to enjoy an evening out at a restaurant and it'll be nice.
So we just got home from hanging out with some friends, and their mom was 90 years old and that was a nice celebration.
So there's my life in a very short window.
I'm going to get to today's topics, which is one of them, is a quick question that i want to answer that somebody wrote in the overwhelmed brain empowerment group in facebook that's a group that you can join that um, i post typically once a week and Trying to give you a good message or some tips or advice or suggestions.
Just my thoughts and my insights on certain things and stuff I talked about on the show, I talk about in there as well.
But that group is on Facebook if you want to check it out.
It's called the Overwhelmed Brain Empowerment Group.
And somebody wrote, what is the bare minimum to expect in a relationship?
And that was a reply to one of my other posts.
And I've had episodes on that and I gave her a link to a bunch of them.
But I was thinking about that question.
What is the bare minimum to expect in a relationship?
And it always comes down to one thing for me.
In fact I think if you adopt this one philosophy or outlook or just understanding in a relationship, then everyone gets along great and everyone's happier.
You may not be happier when I tell you what it is, but if you've been listening a while, you probably know what I'm going to say.
I think the bare minimum in any relationship is total acceptance of another person.
That's it.
Total acceptance of who that person is.
Total acceptance of their belief system, their thoughts, their values, their opinions.
If you accept somebody 100 or you do the best you can to accept them 100 as is, I believe that most relationship issues can be resolved or avoided.
So that's how I see things.
When I got into the relationship with Asha, my wife, we've known each other since 2014.
When I got into this relationship, that was something that I had to get on board with in myself, because I wasn't that way with my previous partners.
I had to understand that everyone is unique and different, and their life is the culmination of every single day they've been alive.
So when we get into a relationship, I think wanting to change the person, the person they've been all of their life, I think wanting to change them, is what starts to cause resistance and conflict and tension and stress in a relationship.
As soon as you want to change something about someone.
That's what creates issues in the relationship.
So that's why I say that the bare minimum in any relationship should be a full acceptance of that person, who they are, their thoughts, their values, their opinions, their decisions.
That doesn't mean you can't have discussions, like if you disagree on something.
Hey, this is how I feel.
And they say, this is how I feel.
And these are the facts as I know them.
And the other person says, these are the facts as I know them.
Let's talk about this.
Let's reach a compromise.
Or maybe one of us will have enough factual data that one of us will concede and say yeah, that's a good point, but it's not about changing the person.
You can change someone's mind if they come to that conclusion themselves.
So I believe that it's okay to have a conversation where the other person's mind changes.
But if you are trying to force them to change their mind, or manipulate them or deceive them into changing their mind, that's when we are choosing not to accept them as they are.
Accepting them means trusting them.
For example, i trust ayesha to make the right decisions for her, for me and for us.
That's how i accept her.
I accept that, even if i'm worried that she'll make the wrong decision, that my acceptance overrides my worry.
And then, when she makes a decision, if it was wrong, I also have to accept that it wasn't her intention to harm me or harm us.
It wasn't her intention.
So acceptance involves a lot of trust.
So I believe that when we accept somebody fully, we are trusting them fully as well.
Now, if you can't do that, if you can't accept someone, that probably means you have an issue trusting them too.
Now you may say well, I can't accept them because they do X Y, Z.
Let's just say that you can't accept certain behaviors because it's against your values or beliefs or whatever, or your morals.
If you can't accept that behavior, it doesn't mean you don't necessarily trust them.
So I understand there's that argument.
But I also come back to the point where, if it's the bare minimum of accepting someone, if that's the bare minimum accepting them as they are, as is like buying a used car.
You're accepting them as is.
And if something happens along the way and they do something to betray your trust or they do something that hurts you at a values level or a morals or an ethics level?
If they do things like that, Your next step isn't necessarily to trust them more or give them carte blanche to make any decision they want, and it continues to hurt you.
Your next step is to ask yourself if this is a person that you can continue to accept as is or not, which comes back to what I've talked about in the past, the four choices.
The four choices are accept and stay, accept and leave, reject and stay, reject and leave.
So I can choose to accept someone and stick around, which means I'm not going to complain.
I'm not going to try to change them.
I'm accepting who they are.
So there may be quirks and nuances that I don't like, but I accept it.
I accept all those little components that make them up, that make who they are.
And if I accept that, then I've basically given up my choice to complain.
And that is a choice.
I'm giving up that choice.
And when I give up that choice, that means I don't hold resentment.
I don't look at them with a dirty look.
I don't try to influence or persuade them to do something that they wouldn't want to normally do anyway.
I mean, I don't do these things because I'm accepting as is.
So I accept and stay.
I stay in the relationship.
But if I accept and leave, that means I'm accepting who they are still.
Hey, you be you.
That's great.
Everything that you're doing, I fully support.
I don't agree with it, but I support you doing it because I support you.
But I can't be here with you.
I'm accepting who they are and I'm leaving because I'm honoring myself.
So that's choice two.
Choice three is reject and stay.
I'm rejecting who you are.
Don't like it.
And I'm going to complain about it.
And I'm going to be resentful.
And I'm going to try to convince you otherwise.
I'm going to try to manipulate you or influence you into changing your mind, because I reject who you are and the decisions that you're making.
But I'm going to stay.
So rejecting someone and staying in the relationship is basically what I started talking about.
The stress, the tension, the conflict, all of that will come up.
And that is I'm going to say it.
You creating your own stress because you refuse to accept them as they are, but you're going to stick around and complain about who they are.
So there's choice three.
I don't recommend choice three, but it's there.
And of course, choice four, reject who they are and leave.
I can't be here with you.
I don't accept your values.
I don't accept your political views.
I don't accept that you don't like a certain type of person.
I don't accept any of that.
Or I don't accept the way you treat me.
That could be part of it too.
So I reject all that.
And I'm going to honor myself and leave.
Now the secret is choosing one of those and sticking with it, but knowing the consequences of doing so.
So if you choose the worst one, in my opinion, reject and stay then you stick with somebody knowing the consequences, and you don't blame them.
You don't point the finger at them, saying that they are the problem because you are choosing not to accept them.
Everything about them, their decisions, their thoughts, their values, their beliefs.
You're choosing not to accept those things.
And you're also choosing to stay.
It's like saying I don't like when I'm sitting this close to the fire because it burns me, but I'm not going to move.
I, that's your choice.
And I know it's not easy to leave sometimes.
And sometimes you've got a lot of commitments and things are together.
A lot of things are tied together, tied up, and you could have kids and there could be a lot of shared things.
But we made our choice to be with somebody or not, and this is why I like to have these four choices available, because what it does is it grounds you.
Because when you realize that you have one of four choices and you realize the consequence of each, then you come to a I'm just going to say grounding place inside yourself.
So when it comes to Asha, my wife, I will come up to a conflict or a challenge.
And this hasn't happened in a long time, but over the years, Because we get to know each other for many, many years, we get to learn things about each other.
And sometimes challenges will come up when a challenge has come up.
And I have chosen to reject and stay.
Happened like two or three times in our relationship.
I had to think about that.
I am causing my own misery.
I'm choosing not to accept her as she is and staying, driving her crazy.
Because she doesn't want to be with somebody who has a problem with her.
She doesn't want to be with somebody who is supposed to love and support her as she is, and he can't do it.
So I had to reflect on my own thoughts and feelings about that and take my own advice.
Paul, what's your choice?
Accept and stay, accept and leave, reject and stay, reject and leave.
I decided, you know what?
I have to come to a place of accept and stay because everything else is wonderful.
And I remember a specific incident where I said, no, I can't accept that.
I'm going to reject it.
I don't want to accept that.
And then I thought about it and I asked myself, why am I rejecting that?
What is the real problem here?
Because her as a whole is wonderful.
But what am I doing here if I'm having a problem with this one thing?
And I came to understand that I had an old emotional trigger about something that happened and I realized that no longer applies.
So I was emotionally triggered by something that she said or she was going to do.
And I realized that that's ridiculous.
It's an old trigger from when I was a teenager and I lived with an alcoholic stepfather and I had all these dysfunctions and I developed a belief system back then that made me feel and believe that people had to be a certain way and do certain things, and that's when i developed very high, impossible standards for others, and so that reflection really gave me a boost in my mental capacity to make a better decision.
Because if I had held on to this rejection of something that she didn't even do, it was just a conversation.
If I held on to that rejection, then that would have been a problem throughout our relationship.
I believe it would have been.
You know little things that compound, that are a problem in your relationship because you can't get past them.
So I had to come to the point of acceptance or I couldn't stay in the relationship because I put it all on me.
That's my belief.
We should put our acceptance or rejection on ourselves, not somebody else.
And so that's the point I had to come to.
Because if I couldn't come to that place of acceptance, then I would make both of us miserable.
That's really what it comes down to.
I've done that in the past.
And I will never do that again.
I don't want to ever be in that situation again.
So if I can't come to a place of acceptance and just allowing her to be and think and do as she wants, as she has done all her life?
Because I'm not here to change anyone.
I'm here to accept people as they are.
At least that was my journey.
I wanted to accept people as they are.
And this is what I'm conveying now is that, if you don't don't make their life miserable by sticking around,
That's where I come from.
And that is the bare minimum.
And that's how I look at this question.
What is the bare minimum in a relationship?
And when I came to that place of acceptance, it went away.
The trigger went away.
Like I had resisted certain things all my life because of these old beliefs that I developed when I was dysfunctional.
And I had toxic behaviors.
I developed those at a time in my life where I wasn't thinking clearly, where I was foggy, where I had different beliefs.
And when that stuff clears up and I have to readdress, reprocess what triggers me, or when I had to do that stuff.
Then I realized that some of the beliefs and values that I had no longer applied.
Sometimes we have to do that.
Sometimes we have to look at our life and ask ourselves, does that really apply anymore?
If I ask myself, does someone doing this particular behavior still bother me as much as it used to?
And I really think about it.
It's just like when people used to drink around me, especially the people I loved.
My stepfather used to drink every day.
He used to pass out.
He used to get violent.
He was very scary to be around.
So I have this thought in my mind that drinking is bad, or at least I did when I was in my teens and 20s.
And I started judging people right away that drinking is bad.
So if they drink, they're bad or dangerous.
And I got over that by asking myself, is drinking bad?
That's the question for the way I processed it.
And I asked myself, is drinking bad?
And the answer was no.
Drinking isn't inherently bad to most people.
It's just that some people get addicted and they become violent or angry, and so those people aren't necessarily bad.
They're just a different person, and i don't like being around that person when they are drunk.
So it became less about alcohol and more about somebody who is using alcohol in a way that is dangerous unsafe, untrustworthy.
And that changed everything.
It changed my perception about alcohol.
And when that changed I had no problem with it later, because then I would witness people who drank alcohol, who were sorry, more fun to be around sometimes, more laughy, more happy, more loose in a good way, where they're just like free to be themselves.
And, um, I was okay with it.
Now, I don't mean all the time.
I mean, every now and then if somebody had a drink, It wouldn't be a problem like it used to be.
So that became a level of acceptance because I had to reflect on what I used to believe.
And I had believed up to that point.
And when that changed, my life changed.
I didn't carry around any preconceived biases or judgments and that helped me progress.
So again, that's something I wanted to talk about as far as that question.
And I wanted to get that out of the way because I have a second question.
Um, I want to thank the person who wrote that in the empowerment group and I hope that did help.
And again, if you go to that group, you'll see all the links that I made to other episodes, like the uh top 10 components of a healthy relationship.
I have that on my blog over at theoverwhelmedbrain.com.
There are many episodes where I talked about a lot of healthy components of a relationship, but that's where I believe everything stems from being able to accept the person as they are and then learning to deal with what you can't accept and learning to process that differently and asking yourself if you can come to a place of acceptance.
And that is, in my opinion, the closest you can get to unconditional love.
And uh, i'm always working on that.
It's always a work in progress absolutely but um, as you practice it more and more, it does get easier.
So thank you again to the person who wrote that, and i'm going to read you this next message.
The person wrote and said i need your input on something.
Um, you helped me with my divorce and uh, now i have a problem with my dad.
I had a strained relationship with him and he wasn't really there in my childhood, but in my teen years and when he was sober, he was.
He then remarried and we grew apart.
Since my transition, he hasn't reached out.
He didn't because he is very introverted, but was never affectionate.
And now he's 70 and I don't know what to do.
Do I cut ties or try to save the embers of the man I tried to care and love?
Okay.
Thank you for sharing that.
You did say something very important here.
That may or may not have anything to do with anything, but you said since your transition and I know who wrote to me and I believe I'm going to get all the language wrong
So I apologize for this, because I'm not fully immersed in the language of gender identity and transitioning and things like that.
I think this person was a male and transitioned to female or identifies as female.
And again, I apologize if All of that is incorrect, but that may have something to do with it, of course, or not.
So you didn't say it did.
So I don't know if that little factoid is part of all this.
It could be.
Older people may sometimes have a more closed mind than other people.
Especially about this because it wasn't so, you know, transitioning wasn't so prevalent.
I don't believe it was way back when, when they were younger.
So that could be a part of it.
But since you are not focused on that, I'm not really going to focus on it myself.
But I did want to mention that some people, the more conservative people, don't really uh, or they're not very comfortable with that, with that thing, where I mean we were just talking about it, right.
Accepting someone and their choices.
Uh, They're not comfortable with accepting people and the choices they make because it's not in their reality.
It's not like who other people should be.
So they develop different standards, higher standards maybe.
And I don't mean that as in they're more higher quality standards.
I just mean they're higher walls to climb so that they come to that place of acceptance.
And some people have their walls, their standard walls, so high that you will never be able to satisfy them.
You have to be this age, have this job, have this kind of partner, and they must be this color and this nationality.
There are some people like that.
And you'll never be able to satisfy somebody with those kind of standards unless you meet them perfectly.
And even then, you are more likely to disappoint them, even though you're not a disappointment.
You're more likely to not be loved as much by them, even though you're completely and wholly lovable.
And so there are people like that.
And we just have to accept that there will always be people like that.
There will always be people that won't come to that place of acceptance that meets you where you are and where you want to be.
They will want you to meet you where they are and where they want you to be.
And if we remember that we have to accept others as they are, then we leave them be.
So if they can't accept you where you are, you have to accept them where they are.
You don't have to.
But I believe it's a lot easier in life to look at someone and say well, they can't accept me as I am.
They can't accept my decisions.
So I'm going to accept that that's who they are and not try to change their mind.
And, um, In this case, if it's family member and you still love them, you love them from afar.
This is how I look at things.
I can't change your mind about who I am, who I'm becoming, who I've become.
So I'm going to still love you because that's who I am.
But if you don't love me back or you feel uncomfortable or you're very close minded about my thoughts, my ideas, my values, my decisions, that's on you.
So you deal with your own conflict in you.
And I will still have love for you, even though you can't have the same kind of at least as close as possible unconditional love for me.
I will still be able to care about you and what happens to you.
Because I accept who you are, even though I don't like it, even though I wish you were different, but I still accept who you are.
What does that mean?
Accepting somebody as they are means you don't try to change them.
Means that you know it'll be a waste of time.
It'll be a waste of energy.
It'll be a waste of all your resources, all your internal resources, to try to change someone's mind about you.
Which is why you can choose to be who you are and understand and accept that other people may never accept who you are.
That's very challenging, I understand, because some people have hate in them.
It doesn't sound like this is the case here, but in general, some people have hate in them.
Some people are so closed-minded and very structured in their life that they can't allow differences inside their mind.
And so they will, may always have, they may always have a closed mind around or about certain things, and so if we can say well, you know, that's your battle, not mine, then our lives are much happier.
I mean yes, it's sad to lose people that we love and wish they could reciprocate, but some people can't.
And can we look at those people and say I accept that you can't love me as I am, but it doesn't matter, because I love you as you are.
I think that's a very powerful place to be.
Very powerful.
Because if you can look at somebody and say, I can accept that you can't accept me.
Where does that put you in relation to them?
And I don't mean it's a power play or anything like that.
I mean, this is true understanding and caring for someone else.
And if you can truly understand and care for someone in that place they're in, if they are closed minded, if they feel superior or if they feel like you're a piece of crap, you know, if they don't like you, if they think that your decisions are terrible or they hate you, it doesn't matter.
That's their problem.
And if you can leave their problem with them instead of taking it on as your problem, you're free.
You're free of their conflict.
You're free of the stress they're trying to create in your life because they have something to deal with inside of them.
They have internal conflict.
They have stress.
They have to reconcile their thoughts and opinions about somebody that shows them they care about them.
Meaning the closed-minded person is loved by the open-minded person.
But the closed-minded person can't love back.
And that is their dilemma, their conflict.
So to this person who wrote that's kind of where I'm going with you is that you show love, you show who you want to be and you be that person.
To the person who can't give it back, or who won't give it back, or Whatever their state of mind is, wherever their heart is, doesn't matter, because who you show up as is not affected by who they show up as, because you are accepting them as they are.
This doesn't mean that you should accept.
This doesn't mean that you have to show somebody that you care about them and love them when they can't do it back or choose not to, or they're just absent from your life.
It doesn't mean you have to do it.
But I fully believe in showing somebody that you care about them, even if you have to let go of them.
And that might look like I love you and I care about you and I would love to have a relationship with you.
And I do hope that maybe someday we can.
But if you're not there, that's okay.
If you don't want to reconnect with me, that's okay.
I can accept that you aren't in the same place I am.
But just know that I am here when you're ready.
I love you.
I care about you.
I am here when you're ready.
And that's it.
You let them go because this is putting the ball in their court and they can either hit it back and now you can have interactions and a relationship or not.
But you've shown who you are.
And if they have an internal conflict where they can't reconcile getting back together with somebody they don't want to spend time with or have an issue with because of their morals, their religious beliefs, their values or whatever, that's their issue.
And it's very difficult with parents, I understand, because we want a daddy and we want a mommy.
And I'm speaking in a childlike state because that's what happens.
We grow up wanting some parental figures.
And if we don't get them, if we feel neglected, then we feel it's missing from our lives.
If the parental figure is neglectful in our lives, we tend to crave it more.
We look for that mom energy or that dad energy or whoever.
We just want to feel loved and important and worthy.
And when we don't get that when we're younger, we might look for it when we're older, from the same people or even others, typically romantic partners.
But if we can't fully get it, we might seek it from people who aren't capable of it.
And then it's an endless pursuit that can be destructive.
And I'm not blaming you for that.
I've done this all my life, actually.
I'm looking for that mom energy and that dad energy.
Or at least I used to when I was in my past relationships.
And when I didn't get it, I would become more dysfunctional.
I would be more clingy and more possessive.
And that never worked out.
And when I was looking for more love from a father And my real father was absent in a lot of ways and my stepfather was absent in the ways that, even though I was in proximity to him, he couldn't love me as a father figure because his mind was already wasting away because of the alcohol.
The point is that um, I you know I didn't have very good role models and I didn't have good representation of, or at least sometimes of, a fatherly, parental figure, and my mother was a people pleaser and very passive and sometimes passive aggressive.
And I didn't learn boundaries.
And so there are all kinds of things that we learn in childhood that we bring into adult relationships, that kind of mess those up.
But that's what happens.
Sometimes we have parents that don't have all the prerequisite skills of a parent and they don't know how to raise somebody and love them.
And they don't know what happens to a child when that happens.
So in this case, this person says their father was an introvert and sounds like that there may have been alcohol involved there as well.
And then their father remarried and then they grew apart and now they haven't reached out.
So it sounds like this father has been this way most of their life.
And when they weren't married, when the father wasn't married, there was more of that connection time.
And now that the father is remarried, they don't.
And so we can look at a number of things.
We could say the new relationship is what he's focused on now.
Probably doesn't really want to spend any time with anybody else because he's all about the relationship.
It's sad, but it could be how it is.
Or something else.
It could be the transition that he doesn't like or can't get used to, or it could be a number of things.
But if we don't know, we don't know.
And of course, A conversation would be helpful.
Like, if I don't know if you've had a conversation, this person who wrote if you've had a conversation with him that asked the question hey, ever since you got remarried, we don't spend time together anymore.
And I'd really like to.
What do you think about that?
I don't know if that question has been posed.
I'll assume that it has, but maybe it hasn't.
But what do you think about that?
Let's just talk about this.
And if he says well, you know this and that, then you know where you stand, because it sounds like he doesn't really want to have a relationship with you, which is hard for me to say.
Because if that's the case, that's very heartbreaking.
I understand that.
It's very sad.
And at the same time, it also sounds like how he's been his entire life.
You said he was an introvert.
You said you didn't really connect with him when he was younger.
And there was a point where you did connect with him, but now he's back to where he was.
I remember my dad, we spent at least 10 years apart without talking, my biological father.
And I loved him, but there were things that happened that I decided not to talk to him anymore.
And 10 years went by.
And then the next time I heard about him was from my brother who said he's in the hospital and he has cancer.
And so I'm thinking, I got to go see him.
I got to go see him because first of all, I've grown and I avoided talking to him.
Because I didn't like the conflict.
There was conflict.
It wasn't stressful, but it was irritating.
It's a very immature stance.
But I didn't want the conflict anymore.
And I was in a good relationship.
And he was kind of interrupting me and not making me feel good.
And there were just things about that that were problematic.
And I don't want to put him under the bus right now and tell you all the problems.
But there was a particular issue that occurred.
And I decided that I wasn't going to talk to him anymore.
And maybe someday I'll figure it out.
Maybe we'll rekindle and see what happens.
So that someday never really came until I heard he was in the hospital.
And I traveled a few hours to go see him.
Yeah, it wasn't that far, but I went and I saw him in the hospital.
It was weird.
It was weird seeing him from my new space inside myself.
This was a point where I was starting to improve emotionally and I was starting to mature.
It had been 10 years and when we saw each other last...
I was in my early 20s and now I'm in my early 30s.
And so it was a different place and time.
And I felt completely different inside of me.
And I really felt that I could handle anything that came up.
So yes, I went to see him, because if I didn't see him before he died, I might have felt bad about that.
But I also felt like if anything made me feel irritated or weird again or he was doing some weird stuff that I could speak up and honor myself.
Because that wasn't me in the past.
I couldn't really honor myself in the past.
I just kind of worded things in a way to get through it.
So if he annoyed me or violated my boundaries in some way, I found ways to talk my way out of it, instead of just saying hey, I don't like when you do that.
It would have been easier for me to say, I don't like when you do that.
Please stop doing that.
And so now I was at a place when I was visiting him that I could say that.
And so I got to see him.
It was great because I was a different person and seeing him from this new place was actually very helpful for me.
I didn't realize how cranky he was.
I'm throwing him under the bus now, but he was cranky.
I didn't realize how cranky he was.
And I thought to myself, was he always this cranky or is it just the hospital or what?
And I remembered the past and yeah, I think he was always this cranky, but I didn't see it back then.
I just knew him as my father.
And so, yes, I went to visit him and I was in that space of accepting him exactly as he was.
And if I had a problem with it, I would either speak up or honor myself and get away from him.
But I didn't.
You know, I was in a new place and I'm actually so happy that I did that, because I was able to rekindle the connection and I was able to talk to him before he died.
And that was just a special moment for me.
We don't always get that chance.
So this is why I would rather and I'm coming back to this person who wrote I would rather love somebody leave the ball in their court and say I'm here when you need me.
And if we don't ever talk again, that would be sad to me, but This is where I am.
I still love you.
I care about you and I would love to have a relationship with you again.
I didn't do that with my dad at least the 10 years previous to seeing him.
I didn't say, I love you.
I want to have a relationship with you.
If you would like to have a relationship with me, certainly let's reconnect.
Or if not, if you want to go along and do your own thing, I honor that.
So this is me accepting his path and the decisions he makes.
And I didn't do that.
And so that's why I like offering this suggestion is to say, I'm here with love in my heart for you.
If you can't be in the same space with love in your heart for me, that's okay.
Because again, this puts you in the place that you want to be.
And now he has to decide the place he wants to be.
And I don't mean you have to say those words.
I'm just saying, I care about you.
If you were going to say anything, I'd say, I care about you.
I love you.
I want to reconnect with you.
But if you're not there, if you're in your own space and you don't want that kind of connection with me, then I honor that.
And again, that puts you in a place of I extended the olive branch.
I passed the ball to you.
And whatever you do with it is your choice.
And I love you no matter what choice you make.
And when you have that kind of relationship, I mean, if very traumatic or abusive things have occurred, you don't have to say, I love you and here's the olive branch.
I'm just saying that if you have somebody that's estranged or is ignoring you or just not keeping in touch, To let them know that you are here when they are ready, because some people Just aren't ready and some people may never be ready.
You may go the rest of your life without a Your father wanting to connect with you.
And again, that's not you.
That's not on you.
That's him making choices that he believes are right for him.
Even if you see those choices as dysfunctional or judgmental or transphobic.
If that's the case, whatever.
Doesn't matter.
You make your choices from a place of how you feel about somebody that you care about.
And he makes his choices about how he feels.
And again he's battling his own beliefs, his own thoughts, his own ideas about what's right and what's wrong.
It could have something to do with this.
It may not have anything to do with that.
But when you've extended that olive branch and let him know that there is love, when he's ready to reconnect with that love, And then you've done your part.
This is all about.
You do your part and then you honor the path he wants to take, even if you don't like it, because that's how you accept somebody as is.
I hope that was a good wrap up and full circle for this episode.
But thank you so much for writing that.
And I wish you the best with that.
And thanks for listening to another episode of The Overwhelmed Brain.
I want to thank our patrons this week, Ashley and Brad.
Always good to see your names.
Thank you so much for your support.
I am very grateful and humbled. of your generosity.
So thank you again.
If you value the show like these patrons do and you want to give back, head over to moretobcom and there are options to do that over there.
Thank you again.
And for a show on how to navigate the difficult relationship, listen to my other podcast called Love and Abuse over at loveandabusecom.
And if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship, well, there is a solution.
Join the program that is helping a lot of people heal over at healedbeing.com.
And I'm even getting to witness some relationships being saved.
So if your relationship's on the verge, maybe that program will be helpful.
That's over at healedbeing.com.
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.
