This is Pod Popular Podcast for the People, the Great Love Debate. It's
the Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate. It's a Great Love Debate.
Hi again everyone, It's Brian Howie. Welcome to The Great Love Debate,
the world's number one dating and relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. I am
here in the very fine studios of Pod Popular Podcasts for the People. I
was initially going to record this at the brand new one in Vegas. Is
a little too echoey. It's not quite done. It will be done in
a few weeks and I will record there and it'll all be fine. It's
a beautiful studio. But I'm here at the one in Scottsdale's very early in
the morning, in the gloaming. As they say, maybe the gloaming might
be twilight, but it's pre dawn. So before I get into what I
want to get into, one weird little Apple podcast quirk that people have asked
me about when it comes to podcasting. About a month or so ago,
they stopped automatically downloading episodes if you have not listened to one in a few
weeks. They kind of stopped that, And it used to be that once
you picked up again and you listen to an episode, it would automatically download
all the all ones and it'd be like, oh, you're back. It's
not working like that anymore. So if you are a sporadic listener, you
might have to go back and manually download, which you should and you should
not be a sporadic listener. But I'm just saying you might be missing some
episodes, and you never want to listen miss any episodes, So if you
listen regularly, you want to have this problem. So anyway, speaking of
problems, my friend Tom text me some complaint about him and his golf buddies
and how they were all bitching about the henpecking disconnected on amorous state of their
marriages, and he says to me, this is what you working so hard
to get people into. Unhappy relationships are really the outcome of your efforts,
meaning the Great Love Debate. And I was like, Tom, we thank
you for your service, We're sorry for your loss, but no, I
don't believe the outcome of any of our Great Love Debate doings is unhappy relationships.
We hope that the outcome is relationships, and what you do with and
within those relationships determines whether or not, you're happy. You're on your own
once you're in a relationship. So I'll get to the how and what of
that in a second. But he did have a point. And I say
this as someone who has never been married, though it's very very early to
day is not over, but as someone who's had a fair amount of long
lasting, healthy relationships and more than a few really bad and toxic and unhappy
ones. Basically, what I'm getting at is, I can't believe, even
though I've been one of those people, how many people stay in relationships,
especially marriages, for months, years, decades with not only very little lover
affection for their partner, but open disdain, even flat out contempt. They
don't even hide it or pretend otherwise. They don't hide it from each other.
They don't hide it from their friends and neighbors. They don't hid it
from strangers at the grocery store, and they don't even hide it from their
kids. They are trapped together doing hard time, and I see it all
the time. So every once in a while, I'm I'm in a soccer
game, or a networking function or a musical performance, and I will see
the parents and two things I will notice the weird sexual energy between people who
are not married to each other. Jim, you're looking good. Have you
been working out? Hey? Kelly Ashley played really great. All your hard
work with her seems to be paying off. That weird little banter that's really
not about anything. The cordial comments and the positivity leading up to some sort
of potential adultery. That's what's going on at these games. So I always
noticed that part of it. But the other part, the people who are
together are supposed to be Can you just grab her coat from the car?
Why are you letting him eat that? This isn't about the struggle of parenting,
which I grant you is absolutely an impossible and thankless task. Now,
this is about a partnership broken down and dead in the water. And I've
said many times that when you go from boyfriend, girlfriend and to husband wife
it's a different dynamic. But going from husband wife to mom and dad is
a different planet altogether, and very little of the atmosphere on that planet is
about anything that brought you together in the first place. So what is keeping
you together and why and if it should at all. That's what I want
to take a deep dive on, mostly for the married folks out there,
but lessons learned for all of us. And again I'm not here to necessarily
give you the answers, but I do have to raise the questions, and
in raising questions, perhaps all of us, the married and the want to
be married among us, can get somewhere. So don't go anywhere. Got
to take a quick break, So so let's stay together. We'll be back
right after this. And we are back, and right before the break,
I said, let's stay together, and I unintentionally trigger thoughts of the al
Green song in my head, loving you weather times are good or bad,
happier, so you know the song. Maybe I should have stayed in the
Vegas studio with the echoes. Maybe that would sounded better. And I get
that those are the fundamental tenets of a relationship and especially a marriage. And
we brought it up in the episode we did it a month or two ago
about wedding vows, where it was about sickness and in health, et cetera,
et cetera. But I think those are more about physical maladies or collective
life challenges that you can and should take on as a couple within the framework
and strength of a partnership. But what about when you simply grow apart or
change your perspective, or you or her or him simply change who you are,
what you want, what you need, and you've changed that initial attraction
and whatever it was that brought you together, it turns into this toxic stew
of resentment and anger and flat out hate. Than what why are you sticking
it out? It's very rarely when I see this or I inquire about this,
when it gets to this point is the answer. We're trying to work
through some things. More likely it's somewhere in the ballpark of I'm trying to
ignore some things. We are getting by despite those things. And I'm always
like, why why Tom and the golf buddies who no longer love their wives?
Why is it convenience? I don't know, doesn't seem very convenient sleep
in separate rooms not to me? Or do you have what is colloquially colloquially
colloquially known as hallway sex? You pass each other in the hallway and say,
fuck you? So are you together because of the kids? I mean,
I get that a little. Logistically, financially, you know, there's
a chance you can hide the hatred from the kids, and you don't want
to break up, at least the illusion of the family. I get that.
I understand that, And I also get that a lot of you don't
want to be divorced, not once, not twice because you feel there's some
stigma of failure that you perceive to be associated with that. I understand that
too, valid. I don't know if there are reasons or excuses or what,
but I'll just say points taken. But let's put those points aside for
a second. You can have many loves in your life. You know,
obviously you want one great last, forever and ever, but you can have
many. But you only get so many time periods, so many decades.
So you want to throw away your twenties on that asshole, and you want
to miss out on your thirties because you were with her or him, but
you're busy finding yourself or she was busy finding herself, or he was busy
finding herself. Do you want that? Do you want your forties and fifties
some of the last best windows of opportunity to pass you by, while well,
he sits in the basement playing video games and downloading porn, or she's
spending her night in the Twins bedroom, barely acknowledging your existence. Is that
what you want? Because that's not the love that was described in the brochure,
and that is that is not what I believe we are meaning me,
you and this show on the quest to find and to have and to grow.
So why do I bring all this up? I bring this up because
I see it all the time and I don't get why it has become the
normal you've heard me on this podcast. I always say that when somebody gets
divorced, finally, I don't ask them when they knew they were going to
get divorced. I asked them when did they knew that it wasn't going to
last a long long time. And the answer to that is very scary.
It's always like when he asked me the honeymoon, the wedding days, very
early on, and then this divorce happens ten to fifteen years later. So
props to trying to work it out. But I don't think you're trying to
work it out at that point. I think you're sticking it out. And
there's a big, big difference. You know, my friend Tom and his
friends, they thought I was the weirdo and I am the weirdo for believing
in something different. They're like, oh, you have no idea what it's
like. Maybe I don't. Again, I'm not a husband, I'm definitely
not a dad. But those things should naturally equate, shouldn't equate with and
they do equate for a lot of people with unhappiness or a broken down partnership.
That's what marriage means to a lot of people. That's why a lot
of divorce people, when they get out of it, they don't want to
be part of getting back into it again. They don't want to get back
on that ride. So there are millions of examples of it working positively,
healthy, happy, and there's probably one hundred different paths to get there,
and we give you a few dozen of them. So I think what I'm
getting at is that I don't know why it has become such an accepted reality.
Jennifer and John have been married for seventeen years and they have two kids.
Well, that doesn't tell me anything about their relationship because it shouldn't be
defined by the longevity or the offspring. It should be I would hope something
like, no matter how long they've been together, they still have a date
night every Friday night. Excuse me. My grandparents had that, My mom's
parents had that, And you can say, well, that was a different
time and women didn't speak up as much, and maybe all the grandma's needs
weren't really being met and they just kind of went along with it. Maybe,
but they had that date night, and I think if they didn't have
what I think they did have, they wouldn't have had that, because to
me, it didn't seem like something that was done out of routine or habit.
It seemed like it was done because it was the fundamental core of who
they were as a couple. And I saw it, and I believed it,
and I still believe in it. So maybe I'm naive. My parents
were married over fifty years. I don't even think they liked each other.
So as a kid or as an adult, you pick up on what you
pick up on. Maybe it's not one hundred percent accuracy, but the vibes
are strong, you know. And this show is filled with a lot of
single people horror stories and life lessons and dating disasters before we get into the
relationships. We believe we want to get into all of that. But I'm
focused on and worried for what's next, what happens after that? Because the
married people, a lot of you to me collectively, seem to be the
ones who've lost the hope and have given up on the possibilities. And this
isn't something I'm talking about where a few counseling sessions will fix it, or
it's just a temporarily temporary misunderstanding or a phase he's going through. This is
about being checked out, counting the days till the youngest graduates high school.
You know the old line about if you're thinking about quitting, you've already quit.
This is that if you're thinking about divorce, this is a really good
chance you should get divorced. A friend of mine a few years ago said,
and she was in an unhappy marriage, and she said, my parents
said I need to give it ten years. And I'm like they did.
Why? What kind of arbitrary line in the sand? Is that you get
multiple chances at love, you get one chance at life, and you're wasting
a big chunk of it in a situation that you do have the ability to
change. So this is the great love debate. And most of what we
discuss and banter and argue about around here is meant to help you find a
good relationship. That's the quest. But this today, what I'm talking about,
this is about getting out of a bad one. So as much as
we want you to get married, a bunch of you, a whole lot
of you, a whole lot of wetted listeners on this show, we want
you to get divorced. Come back into the dating pool. The water's warm,
the options are deep, and the doors are open both ways. You
can come in, you can get out as far as us back to the
Hope. Our Big, Big tenth Anniversary show, the tenth anniversary of our
live tour, which kicks off our eleventh season tenth Anniversary eleventh season February sixth
at the Boca black Box Center for the Arts and Book raton, Florida.
Tickets are on sale for that Boca Blackbox dot com, Great Lovedebate dot com.
We have amazing lineup and all kinds of surprises and crazy guys and girls
coming to that. If you have not been to a Great Love Debate live
show, experience the madness, come, please like, share, follow,
and review this podcast. I brought up the apple thing at the beginning of
the show. Pay attention to that a lot of quirky things in the podcasting
ecosystem. Shoot us an email, Great Love Debate at gmail dot com.
If you want to get out of your marriage or you want to get into
one, shoot us an email. Great Love Debate at gmail, gmail dot
com because, as always at the Great Love Debate, we never stopped making
love. See you next time, the Great Love Debate. It's the Great
Love Debate, the Great Love Debate. It's a Great Love Debate.