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'm back
here in the very fine studios of Pod Popular Podcasts for the People. It
is what they call this season down here. It's very festive. It's fun,
it's nice, sunny, all the good things. Uh. We've been
doing this podcast, as you guys know, a long long time, and
the overwhelming majority of our episodes, we always are trying to push that the
motivating factors when it comes to love, dating relationships are hope and possibilities,
and we always want to say that things are rooted in that, and all
the good things are rooted in that. Yes, I stand by all that.
Let's put that over on the on the side here for a second,
because I want to get into something a little deeper, a little more complicated.
I got a real pro is going to come in and help me in
a second. But so much of our dating and I just talk about this
at our live shows back in the day. It really put a downer on
it, so I stopped talking about it, which is a little bit dishonest.
But so much of how we date, love exist in relationships is rooted
in fear. It affects how we date, it affects who we date,
even why and when everything is somewhat rooted in fear and fear can be a
motivated thing, motivating thing, but a lot of times it holds us back,
not just in dating, but in the changes we want to make in
our lives that's going to lead to, hopefully something better. So I want
to take a deep dive on that. I hate to bring her. She
could probably talk about a lot of things, but I know I heard her
say something about this, and I'm going to tell her what she said that
I thought was so interesting. She is an empowerment coach. She's the host
of the Bravo Unscripted podcast. She knows a lot about a lot of things.
Like I said, I had to bring a pro when I take on
the lovely Susanne Bravo, how are you? I'm amazing and thank you so
much for that introduction. I think I might just like have you come around
with me and just introduce me to people. That was really great, except
for the fear part. I heard you say once and I was like,
oh my god, that's smart. That The old adage that when you fall
off a horse, you got to get right back on is the way people
are sort of told to live their lives, and a lot of people do
that. They jump from relationship to relationship, they jump from experience to experience.
And I heard you say that before you get back on the horse,
you got to kind of figure out why you're sitting in the mud, Like
what am I doing down here? Like why do I keep do these patterns?
Why do I keep? And people are so afraid not just to look
in to do any analysis on the mistake they made, or on the situation
they got themselves into, I think a lot of times because they don't want
to take ownership of it. That guy hurt me, he was a bad
guy, that relationship wasn't right, I did this, or whatever, because
they're afraid to look too close, which is the growth we all need,
sort of self analysis. I think people are afraid to do that, which
drives a lot of decisions. When it comes to love, it is so
much easier to blame the other person than it is to look within, because
that requires vulnerability. That requires also debunking the belief that if we made a
mistake, we did something wrong, and we need to throw that belief out
the window because it's not true. Like we're all we're human beings. We're
all humans on this planet having a human experience by the time we get to
this stage in our life when we're dating. I love what you said about
joy and optimism and hope, but let's face it, we've all been burned,
and we've all been burned more than once. And that requires every time
you get burned, getting back up and getting out there again. And a
lot of people do. They just keep repeating the same patterns because they don't
take that time, they don't look within. You're right, and we are.
You know, we're making a lot of decisions based on that. I've
always said that the men are afraid of being rejected and the women are afraid
of being hurt. But I think there's a little bit of that on both
sides, which is why people are so deeply committed now to online dating.
Because in online dating, before you get to the point where you might be
rejected or hurt, you get some sort of validation, some sort of match,
some sort of swipe that lets you take that baby step, versus just
in real life, going for it the way we used to have to do
it. Even on the fact if you are in a relationship, I'm afraid
to get out of a bad relationship because I don't know what's possible. I'd
rather sit in a bad seat than no seat. And a lot of the
decisions are based on the unknown, which is scary, or it's based on
the fact that I don't want anything that might be worse. Yes, and
that online dating is great, but what online dating has also done is it
has given people way too many options. What is that It means that it
used to be to find somebody to date, you had to go out and
mingle in the world, and you had to go to restaurants or bars or
parks or wherever it was that you found your people, and you know,
at the end of the night, you know, after your date, like
he went home, you went home, and you know, maybe you talked
on the phone or whatever. But now like everybody's going home and if they're
on dating sites, you know, maybe they're scrolling the dating site. They've
got a million other people, or maybe they're going on the date. Okay,
I've heard that brought up to me. Here's where I counter that.
Every time you leave your house to go to the gym, to go to
work, to go get some food, whatever you are through the course of
a day, any day in any reasonably sized city like Boca Raton, Florida,
you are going to be within ten yards of one thousand people of the
opposite sex. Every single day. You're going to be within ten yards of
a thousand men. I'm want to be in ten yards of a thousand women
if that's your preference, unless you're giving yourself a real bad case of carpal
tunnel syndrome swiping. You're never gonna swipe on a thousand possibilities. So I
believe that people think that is a pool of safer opportunity than looking at Oh
my god, all these people here. I don't know how to engage with
them. I don't know how to approach them. I don't know how to
recognize the possibilities that I talked about. You know, and if you did
the math on that, and you're like, Okay, if I had a
chance to engage with all thousand people for five minutes each. How many do
you think you could possibly have a spark with that could lead to falling in
love. I don't know, six seven, something like that. And you
can kind of look at that like needle in a haystack, like that's not
a big percentage. But if you looked at every single day of your life,
as long as you in a course of a year, if you left
your house, there's six or seven a day over a course of a year,
that's two thousand people that you could fall in love with if you engaged
with them. So the fear that I'm talking about is the fear for that
that seems overwhelming, that seems like I don't even know how to go about
finding these people. So I'm gonna go I'm gonna narrow my criteria. I'm
going to go into my online platform and at least be like, oh,
that's where the options are. We didn't use to date that way, no,
And it's it definitely provides much greater opportunities than you do because you have
access to a lot more people. But the key, and it kind of
goes back a little bit to how you open this conversation, is it all
comes down to fear and that fear of not wanting to be vulnerable, right,
Because I don't care where you meet somebody, if you meet them in
the grocery store, if you meet them in a park, you meet them
online. A successful relationship depends on vulnerability. I agree, and I think
that there is. I think there's a lot of unhappy people. There's a
lot, but I think there's a larger pool of people now twenty twenty three,
as we record this Erica doing the work and going to especially the men,
going to the scary place of vulnerability, of asking questions, of trying
to find answers that has ever existed. And I think, just like you
said, the lack of judgment is probably gonna take a generation for everybody to
understand like there's good in doing that, especially for the men. The men
are so used to I have to be strong, nothing wrong with me,
and they bury all this anger and fear within themselves and it manifests itself in
a lot of bad ways. But the more women that can put out there
like this is a good thing. I know you're fucked up, as long
as you know we can work with this together, you know. I think
there is an environment now where more and more women are telling the men.
I like that you're doing the work. I like that you're going to therapy.
I like that you're asking questions and you are vulnerable, which for generations
we weren't taught to do that. Yes, and I want to applaud all
of the men who are looking at themselves and are doing the work and are
really bucking up against what the system has told them their whole life. Because
exactly what you said, men are supposed to be strong. Men aren't supposed
to have feelings. Men boys don't cry, right, I mean, and
it's men shoulder so much responsibility and it's unfair. It is patently unfair.
And you know, for women, we're supposed to be vulnerable and emotional,
but men they're not supposed to. But they have pain, they have things
that they've been through, They've been hurt, they've had their hearts broken.
Why do they have to just suck it up and not deal with it?
You're right, And the women kind of are taught to deal with it from
the age of fourteen. The guys at jerk and you build up a little
bit of scar tissue and learn how to process, and your friends will get
the men will, their friends will scatter. There are so many men that
might be in their thirties, forties, fifties who are carrying around either anger
or heartbreak from some girl in high school who might not have even known they
existed. You know, some incident, some rejection that scarred them and wounded
them so badly that who knows how this is going to turn on. You
can be in a relationship with somebody for eight years and not knowing something could
trigger him, and then it's like ugh, But back to the fear thing.
The women can't operate that way either, and it's really hard for the
women to date not knowing is this a time bomb? Is this guy a
basket case? Is this guy angry? Is this guy whatever? Because you
can't read either how much work he's done or how much work he needs to
do, And you don't want to lead on a date with so how fucked
up are you? Can I have the number of your therapists so that I
can call her and get exactly yeah, And it goes to what I was
saying, When you fall off the horse, you don't just get back on.
This vulnerability and this doing the work and this asking the questions is sitting
in the mud and saying, Okay, that didn't work out the way that
I wanted it to, Right, What can I do differently in the future?
Where do I need to focus attention? Because it's not When we blame
the other person, you're putting your control outside of yourself. You're trying to
change somebody else, and we can never do that. And in that you
give all of your power away. You can't change them. It's about you.
You can't write and we are trying to always. We're either trying to
change them for us or we're changing them into something that we believe we can
handle because we're afraid of the unknown. And everybody's different, Every relationship is
different. And going down that path with somebody and all you know is what
didn't work out with the last people and all the people before, that's scary
because there's no guide. And even if it's going well for a lot of
people, this is the first time I've ever felt this way, is the
first time ever. That's scary because you don't necessarily trust it either. You
don't trust the shoes gonna drop. You're not gonna trust this. Good feelings
scare people too, right, So in that fear of oh my god,
this feels really good. When is the next sho you're going to drop?
What do we try to do? Would most of us go to a space
of control. Okay, so I can control every little thing about this person,
everything about this environment, everything about this relationship, then I can make
it successful. And when you try to control that, you smother it and
probably end up chasing the other person away. Because we have no control over
anything except the only thing we have control over is our response to stimulus,
right, and sometimes we don't have control over that either, or which is
why a lot of people that's where the work comes in. But that's where
the alcoholic that works in. Yeah, I agree, that's where the work
comes in. So you know, before you get to know the other person
or even know the relationship, you really have to spend some time knowing yourself.
A lot of people really take it for granted that they know. No,
you only know how you might react in certain things that happened before.
You might not know how you react to good things, bad things, scary
things, new things. I imagine the first time somebody gets engaged, gets
married, all of that has kids. The joy is tempered by the unknown,
the fear. Is this the way this is supposed to be? Is
this how I'm supposed to feel? Is this the way this is supposed to
look like? And then if you don't get this sort of paint by numbers
response to the stimuli, then you think there's something wrong with you. And
we tend to project our beliefs and our feelings about things onto other people.
So if you're somebody that's been hurt in a relationship, maybe somebody that you
were in a relationship with broke your heart, maybe they cheated on you,
so you walk into every relationship after that expecting that to happen again, right,
And then a lot of times when you're in a relationship, you're you're
dating the ghosts of the guys who came before you or the girls who came
before you, and whatever they did, and you don't know what's going to
either be a trigger or reminder. And all this comes down to positive communication.
But two people in a new relationship aren't necessarily comfortable having that talk,
and two people in a relationship for a while aren't never a hey, can
we talk about something? And then everybody's like, wait, what I thought?
We're fine, We've been together eight years and you want to talk about
this like scary either way, and then you bring up something that triggers the
other person and sends them into you know, they start time traveling back into
the past and things that came up and those feelings and those emotions and they
start projecting them. And you know, I found for myself, I did
a lot of work, a lot of therapy, and you can think you
have all of these things in order, but when you get in relationship with
another person, that is when all your shit will come up, like every
bit of it while you're in relationship and communication. I love what you said
about that, because communication is the key because you have to talk about these
things. I know it's really hard, but you have to talk about them.
You have to know where that person is coming from, and you have
to figure out a way to come together. And you have to be confident
that the communication, if it's going to occur, and it should occur,
will come from and to a place of no judgment. That's going to come
and go to a place of honesty, sharing, growing, and hopefully the
purpose of the of the conversation shouldn't be confrontation that you've been like let's see
if we can get either through this place or to this place together with You
bring up that word all the time. It's a hard word interpret is vulnerability,
you know it is. I never take my glasses off because I feel
too exposed. It's true, it's hard. You're putting your heart and soul
on the table with another person, and you know, having no judgment in
these conversations is the key and the other thing to understand. My therapist actually
said this to me a few years ago, and it hit me pretty hard.
When you're having a conversation with the person you're in relationship with and there's
an issue, it is not you against each other. It is not you
against him or him against you. It is the two of you against the
problem. And how do you work through that problem together? And how do
you open up that space of vulnerability where he can share and you can share
and there's no judgment and there's acknowledgment. I hear you, I see you.
I want to be there for you. How can I support you?
That's a good point I brought. I did a whole episode on that that
people don't want to necessarily be right, but they do want to be heard
that's a challenge though, when you're bringing up something that you perceive to be
a problem or an issue and the other person thinks it's no big deal and
then they're like, oh, it's fine or whatever, but it's important to
you, and so finding out a way to bring that person to the negotiating
table. First the chore is to get them to even understand that this is
an issue. It's a problem. And that's hard too, and that's afrase
because when they don't react to yeah, I want to talk about that too,
and they're just kind of like, why do you want to talk about
that, then you tend to retreat because then it's hard to be vulnerable in
that spot because you're then defending the right to have the conversation before you can
get the conversation right. So the goal you want to be in a place
where the goal is not to be right. Do you want to be right
or do you want to have healthy relationship, because oftentimes you can have both
and there is a negotiation, and it is about again vulnerability, saying to
your partner, I know this might not be a big deal to you,
but it is very important to me, and then ask for what you need
in that right. So it would be very helpful to me if you could
X Y Z. A lot of people know what they don't want or don't
like, and they haven't spent nearly as much time thinking about what they do
want and do like. And it's really hard for the other person to know
that because most people are so rooted in the negative, we're going to be
rooted in some positive I got to take a quick break because we have to
pay for positive things around here. I'm with Susette Bravo, and we're taking
a deep dive on some scary shit. But we will be back right after
this. And we are back. So I've heard you talk about this before
and it fascinated me. What was your moment where You're like, I need
to talk to somebody, I need some help. Was there a moment or
time where like, therapy is an option to me? Like, you didn't
just come out of the womb asking these questions. No, it was a
I fell in the mud. I was sitting in the mud, and I
was like, why am I in the mud again? Like I keep getting
up and getting back on the horse, and now I'm back in the mud.
And there was this moment where I was like, oh, it's me,
Like, it's me, I'm the problem. And that's when I was
like, Okay, I need to do better. I need to do better
for me. Right, isn't it better? And people don't want that.
The one you can work on and change is you. It should be a
relief to know the problem is you. Right, people don't want to take
that burden out. I can work on me. I can't work on society
exactly. And that's why when you blame and you put everything on society and
everything outside of you, you have just essentially given all of your power away,
every bit of it. Right, you have no power in the world
outside of yourself. So look at you and look at how you can show
up better in the world, because, let's face it, lead by example.
If you want a healthy, loving relationship, create love and creativity within
yourself. Yeah, the old line, don't worry about things you can't control
because if you can't control them, don't worry about them. And don't worry
about things you can control because if you can control them, don't worry about
them. Easier said than done. But so let's get into that concept for
a minute, the concept of self love. It's very nebulous, it's very
catchy, it's very manifesting, and self love over anything, but it's a
real thing. I believe that self love is the willingness to pull the rock
up and let the sun shine on all of the bad stuff that you have
covered up before. And if you're willing to do that, it means you
care enough about yourself, your future, maybe the relationship the people around you
to recognize it at the real race record. I'm not saying fixically recognizing it.
I believe that's the first step. I agree, And self love is
one of my favorite topics because the problem is that we learn over our lifetime
that there are things that we have all done, and we tend to label
them good or bad, and we develop what is often called the shadow self,
which is the part of yourself that maybe you don't put front and center.
You know, it's things that you've done in your past that maybe you
wish you had done differently, And it's okay. We all have a shadow.
We do. And when you can incorporate your shadow into your lights and
accept and honor all of the parts of you, the parts that have made
good decisions, the parts that have made not such good decisions, then you
can move forward from a space of worth. Because what happens when you don't
love yourself is you tend to think that because you don't love yourself, you
don't deserve the things that you want. And if you're walking around in the
world and you want love and you want acceptance, and you want all of
these things, but you don't believe that you deserve them, you will self
sabotage. Deserve is a good word. What do I deserve? And everybody
does deserve to be loved and to feel loved? Amen, What is the
first step to somebody either listening to this or somebody you talk to who's like,
I cannot get I can't even see a possibility of that, Like,
is there one step? I mean everybody, I'm always like, just go
outside for a minute, Like that's the first step? Get off the couch?
Is there a first step towards and picking up a phone? And finding
the right therapist? Is daunting to people too, because not only do you
have to find a therapist, getting in the right relationship with the right therapist
is almost sometimes as hard as getting into relationship with a person. So what
is a step that somebody can can take Who's Like, I've heard you talk
about self love. I think I need to feel about I need What do
people do? Well? First of all, I'm a huge fan of therapy,
but therapy might not be what you need. There's a million different modalities
out there, So first, have an open mind. But the very first
thing that you have to be willing to do, and I'm not saying this
is the easiest, but it is the most important, is you have to
be willing to accept yourself for who and what you are now in this moment.
You cannot change anything that happened in your past, and you have no
control over anything that's going to happen in your future. You have self honesty,
right and if you have been kin o curs Fuck yeah, Okay,
if you've been a shit show your whole life, own it. You can't
change it. You can't. You're where you are today, So accept that
you were a shit show and accept that you want to do better moving forward.
Well, it's like these women who And again I'm not downplaying it your
pain or your experience, but statistically, every guy you date is not a
narcissist. It's statistically impossible. I hate it. I'm like, that's a
real clinical diagnosis, and statistically, it's not that they might not have liked
you and you might not have been likable, and you can't just blame it.
And the more you're just like, I haven't met the right person or
all the men's sock or all. You're never going to get anywhere if you
don't take some degree of ownership around it. First of all, we all
have narcissistic tendencies, every single one of us. We do right, but
yeah, narcissist if that word gets so overused and it makes me a little
bit crazy. But when you can accept where you are okay, So imagine
you're going on vacation, you're going on a road trip and you pull up
your GPS and you want to get to North Carolina. You're going to put
in the address of where you're going, But the second thing your GPS needs
is where are you now? And if you don't acknowledge and accept where you
are now, your directions are going to lead you all over the place.
You have to be okay with who you are. We have this tendency to
look back at our past, at the decisions that we made from the lens
of what we know now, and we judge ourselves for what we did then
based on what we know now, and that's tragic because at the time you
did the best you could with what you had. Right, you might do
different now and that's okay, but except where you are now, because you
can't change it, and what you have in the present moment is the only
place that you have to do any kind of work, any kind of shifting,
any kind of changing, any of that. So even if you believe
it was them, just pretend for a second and like, what about me?
What would I've done differently? And a lot of times the knee jerk
reaction is you don't want to blame yourself. If a reaction a lot of
men and women do this where they're like, oh, if only I had
allowed him to cheat on me more, or if only had allowed him to
bring it up, if only I had done this, And that's not right
either. It's what do I do in behavior that either created a situation or
created a pattern with this situation repeats itself, and a lot of people like,
you're not you must be the most unlucky person in the world. If
you've had fifteen consecutive first dates and no second dates, you know, rather
than they're all jerks, like, mate, what are you doing on the
first date? What are you saying? There's a common denominator there. Yeah,
I know, and listen, it's hard to self reflect for a lot
of people, Like I said, it's much easier to blame the fifteen guys
that you went out with that never called you back. Yeah, or they
think it's easier, it's really easier to blame yourself because then you're like,
oh, it's me, let me fix this. You can't go call the
fifteen guys and then look at the next fifteen guys, like the one thing
that you can control to some degree is what you're bringing to the table exactly.
And if you realize that we are all I always say, we're all
special needs children, we are, and if you figure out what those needs
are or why you didn't get them. It took me a long long time
and the right therapist. I had to find a therapist who was really out
on the kookie fringes, like in the shaman world, to find somebody,
a woman who I wouldn't try to charm to get the answer that I wanted.
I need somebody that I would I could just be so authentic with because
I'd gone through a series of them and I'm like, I just want my
therapist to tell me I'm fine, And you're wasting a lot of money and
you're wasting a lot of time and on trying to get an answer that you
want. So I really had to go through to find one who was just
a kook, and that environment allowed me to go to this scary place and
childhood and all that kind of stuff to figure it out. That took a
long time, though, and then you beat yourself up. Oh my god,
I wish i'd this when I was twenty six. And that's where acceptance
comes in. So at twenty six, obviously you weren't ready because you didn't
do it, but you're doing it now and you are ready. So you're
in this place and you can beat yourself up for not doing it when you
were twenty six, and you can just accept that you weren't ready. You
do but you're doing it now, right. But then there's a part of
you that for once is not self centered, and they're like, if I
had done it earlier, would I have not hurt that person or those people
or that relationship would have worked out? And whatever. And you can't call
them all back up either and say, oh, you know, I went
to therapy. You were right in nineteen ninety six. Like they don't want,
they don't care, they don't want to hear it. But recognizing like
from this path forward, that was really good that you brought up the GPS.
In order to get somewhere, you have to figure out where where you
are, where you're starting, I'm lost, where are you? I don't
know makes it really hard for somebody to give you directions. Right, So
being able to recognize and that we all have, you know, because you
bring up that narcissistic social media world. Oh my god, she has it
so easy, he has it so easy. Look at this. You don't
have any idea. No, the list social media is highly filtered, most
of it's untrue. And again it comes down to the only thing you have
any control over is yourself. You cannot be comparing your normal, average,
everyday life to everybody else's highlight reel on social media. Now, how do
you do it? If either you're you're in a relationship, and if your
partner comes to you and says you know what I want and you think everything's
fine and they come to you and they're like, I want to take this
journey of discovery and sell exploration therapy, whatever you want to call it.
That's probably scary. You're trying to be encouraging of that, because ninety nine
percent of the time that's a good thing, but you're also scared they're like,
oh, they're going to come out of this a different person and recognize
they don't need me. How do you be supportive of your partner's journey without
trying to just maintain the status quo? Does that make sense? It does?
And listen, that can be very scary because somebody's going on a journey
and you're not sure where that journey is going to take them, but where
that journey is hopefully going to take them. If they're stepping out into that
journey, they're feeling that they're missing something, so they're seeking to grow and
love themselves more deeply, and as frightening or as scary as that may be,
part of being in relationship with somebody is encouraging them to be the very
best versions of themselves and whatever outcome that is, whatever uncertainty is there,
I get it. That can be really scary, but so can being in
a relationship with somebody who is not being true to themselves right, and you
should want the very best version of them right, and you should, And
you would think that you could be like, oh, the relationship's fine,
well if they want to take this journey or see because some part of it
is not fine with them, and then you're just kicking the can down the
road on whatever the issue is. And you want to support and you'd be
like, you know, I want to do that too. And I'm not
saying you have to go go to therapy to gather or do anything, but
if you're both on these journeys. You know, we've had people come on
this podcasts and they're like, it takes two complete people to come together,
and I'm like, nobody's complete. Nobody. You should have somebody who's constantly
working towards moving in the right direction. But if this idea like I'm good,
I did all the work, Like there's no check please on that.
You know, it's a journey. It's a process. No. We grow
every day, we take in different stimulus, we see different things, we
meet different people, our goals change, our everything changes, and as humans,
it's just like a plant. You're either growing or you're dying, Like,
we don't ever stop, We're never complete. And I want to circle
back kind of really quickly to this thing that you mentioned a little while ago
about blaming, because again I want to caution everybody be very careful about where
you place your blame. And the greatest question that you will ever ask yourself
is how could I have done that better? How can I show it better?
And the same thing, so, when your partner is seeking to grow
and is seeking to expand themselves, ask yourself, Okay, how can I
best support her him in this venture of theirs? And hey, you know,
maybe this is a good opportunity for me too. How do you you're
in a relationship with somebody, there's some you know that there's some issues,
trauma, circumstances, feelings that preceded you or have nothing to do with you.
How do you suggest that you might want to talk to somebody? How
do you bring that up? It's sort of on them to see it.
Is there a way to politely say have you ever seen a therapist? Or
would I talk to somebody? Like? How do you have that converse?
That's a rough conversation. It's a very rough conversation, and I'll be honest
with you, I've tried to have that conversation before and it hasn't gone well,
And that is a very Are we having that conversation now? No,
those are very tricky waters because you want to be very careful about projecting,
about judging, and about putting that person in a position where they feel defensive.
Do you think you have a drinking problem? They're going to say,
no, well, if there's but there are times, okay, So if
you're in a relationship with somebody and they just totaled their car because they drove
home from the bar drunk, I think it's perfectly okay to say, hey,
listen, I think you've got a problem and you need help. Right,
some things require more nuance. And you know, again it goes back
to if somebody were having that conversation with you, how would you want them
to approach you with it? Because if you come in a place of again,
if you come in a place of blame, that person's going to get
defensive. And once we get defensive, we tend to shut down. So
how do you open the conversation, maybe asking some questions and allow them to
come to their own But setting ourselves and our partner up for success right in
a conversation is key. That's the challenge though, is clearly there's some leftover
issues with her second husband, something like that, you're the sixth husband and
so and so you want to you don't want to open that vault that maybe
they have sealed off because that's how they deal with it. But clearly there's
something lurking there that I haven't worked on. So and I get that early
on a relationship. The conventional wisdom is you're not supposed to ask questions about
like why did you get divorced? You know what, what's serious relationship?
What? Like I'm I'm like ask away. I think we're you know,
we've all had experiences at this point. I want to learn, but mostly
I want to see what they have learned from it. If they're constantly like,
yeah, this guy was an asshole and this sock and blah blah,
and then I'm like, oh, you know, I want to be like
I just didn't give it the attention I wanted to. I wasn't emotionally vulnerable,
like these are the answers I want. It's tough to bring that up
and just hope they're going to just jump in the game over the bondou you
know, right, Yeah, I'm I'm all were asking questions because I want
to know. And you know, if you are involved with somebody and you
know you're the sixth wife and all the other five were crazy red flag or
died, right, like, I want to know, Like inquiring minds want
to know, and I naturally ask a lot of questions because I'm curious.
Yeah, and I think I'm always flattered when somebody asked questions of me,
chose the care to get to know me. Some people are like, why
are you asking? Or you're prying or you're judging, And I think you
have to set an environment of ask me anything and hopefully that that being forthright
and honest and vulnerable we talk about before will lead to oh wow, they
told me that, I'm going to tell him this. And when those things
come up in us, when somebody asks a question and we get triggered by
it, the best the best thing to do in that moment is to take
a breath and ask yourself, Okay, why is this coming up? What
is coming up for me in this? You know, because if we if
we take a breath and we take a moment and we things in our body,
because our bodies will keeue us in on things before our brain does.
The emotion comes up and then the brain goes to work trying to make sense
of it. But if you tap into what's going on in the body,
okay, so wow, my breath is getting heavy, like you know,
I'm feeling this thing? Am I stomach? Why what's coming up? And
then a lot of times you can trace that back and figure out what's coming
up for you. And just you know, we when asking questions, that
person might not be comfortable answering that in the moment, and too, like
if somebody asks us something that we're not comfortable with, it's okay to say,
you know what, I'm not comfortable answering that right now. I validate
your question and I want to get back to you, but I'd like to
take some time to really think about that before I respond to you. And
that's okay because my people might not have an answer or they're going to feel
there's a right or wrong answer, you know, want that you don't want
to give somebody like they're going to feel like they're getting judged on with the
response. Is you know, a lot of people are like, what is
the most serious relationship you ever had, or something like or who's the love
of your life? People ask stuff like that that could change depending on where
you are in life. That could change in the moment. I could change
this, and sometimes that might be too painful when you're trying to grow something
new. But that you're interested in their experiences from you know, birth till
the appetizer came, I think matters. I think that you're open to creating
a judgmental space of sharing emotion and information. Right, yes, and you
just hit the right word. It's non judgmental. And that's really challenging because
we all see the world through our own lens of the world and it's been
very colored by our experience. And you may even be on a date with
somebody that you've known for a long time, but we have no idea what
people have been through. And kindness is always the first route because you don't
know. You could have brought something up that triggered something deep inside of them
that was really painful and really hurtful, and it's okay to give them some
time to move through that. It's okay if they don't want to talk about
it. Yeah, if they're giving a waight or a hard time because it
came out medium instead of medium rare, there's some stuff there that's not about
the steak. That's a red flag. It is a red flag. That's
a huge riss. I agree with you. And so some guy suggested me.
He came to our my great love to bat in Boston and he goes,
I sometimes order something that is screwed up so they can see how well
I handle the situation. I'm like, that's bullshit, but it's actually a
good move. Like people do notice that I don't worry about it. We're
good, you know, And I'm like, okay, it's game playing with
the waiter. They feel like a failure, but I get it. People
want to know how you react. But you know, for the first ninety
days, everybody's sort of at with each other's publicist. They're sort of presenting
the best version of something. It's hard to get the information you really want
and that you really need, and that person might not be comfortable enough to
share it for a long long time. I think your goal, if you
really want that information, and we should all really want that information, is
to really set an environment of trust and sharing and growing and authenticity and the
things we need for this to foster. Yes, I agree one hundred percent.
You can't ask questions and draw somebody into becoming vulnerable and then beat them
up for becoming vulnerable and for what they shared. Yeah, I know,
if you're willing to open that door, you've got to walk through it with
them, and you've got to be okay with whatever's on the other side.
Allow that person to share whatever's on their heart, and then you get to
decide what that means to you. You know, if they're sharing something with
you that's a deal breaker for you, that's okay, It's perfectly okay,
you know. And I'm not sure we should judge anybody of how they were
at nineteen or before they become a parent, or three marriages ago, or
two jobs to go a different city or whatever. I mean, there's things
that are deep rooted and there's things that might be patterns. But you know,
if somebody you know shoplifted from target at nineteen and they're forty one now
and a responsible parent, I'm not going to hold that against them. I'm
want to be like, what was going on in your life then that you
did that and how have you evolved? And what did I do when I
was nineteen twenty nine or thirty nine exactly, you know, And I'm like,
you know, nobody wants to be judged on their worst day, and
I don't think you should judge anybody in their best day. It's there how
to handle most days? And how are you going to handle most days with
you? And how are they going to handle not the things that happen to
them, but how are they going to handle the things that happened to you.
You're not going to know that until you're willing to find out, and
willingness to find out comes with fear, and fear can be a good thing.
You'd be a motivating factor. Getting information can be driven by fear.
But once you have that and once you can sort of put that in your
toolbox, you know, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Fear can
all. The thing about fear, though, is fear can be a liar
because, you know, think of your brain is kind of like this little
yes person who lives in your head and whatever belief system you're holding onto,
your brain is kind of out in the world looking for proof on that.
So if you go into a relationship in fear that they're going to cheat on
you, or that they're going to lie to you, or that they're going
to do something to hurt you. Chances are you're going to find evidence to
support that, whether it's valid or not. And the Buddhists have a great
philosophy, and that is that the majority of our suffering is created because we
want things to be different than what they are. So your wanting the situation
to be different than what it is and not accepting it for what it is
is what creates our suffering. And that again comes down to that just accepting
because it is what it is. You can be driving forward, you can
want to change and grow in all of these things, but you are what
you are in the moment. The person across from you is who they are,
and people are, you know. The number one fear that people have
is to do things that are outside their comfort zone, whatever that is.
If you're afraid of heights, you know, jumping out of airplane, or
get into a relationship. The answers almost always lie outside your comfort zone.
So first you have to do things to inch yourself outside. You have to
identify why is this a comfort zone? I think, and then do things
to place yourself, even for a moment, slightly outside your comfort zone where
you retreat. And the more you can do that, the more that feels
normal to you. I mean, I'm afraid to fly. I get on
planes all the time. I'm not doing it because I'm trying to get out
of my outside my comfort zone. But I notice that I am significantly better
than it because I'm just like, I have to do this, and I
have to figure out ways to do it, and you know, not just
pop thirty zan X to get on a plane, like I have to been
like, okay, I'm uncomfortable with this, so then it could then you
change it from fear to discomfort and that is a giant step. And if
I could just make it like I'd rather not versus I'm not doing this,
I think you open up a lot of doors. You do, and I
love that approach because you do. You just keep pushing your outer limit just
a little bit, you know, and every time you do, you build
resilience. Every time you step a little outside of your comfort zone, you
build this belief that you can step outside of your comfort zone and you're not
going to die. So each time you do that, you get stronger and
stronger, and that's how we build, and that's how we become resilient humans.
We have brought this up almost since the day we started this podcast that
the three words that people have to get rid of and never use again are
the words not my type. If you're over thirty and you're still single,
you have no type. Your type's not working out for you. And what
we always mean by that is it's a fear of like. I've never been
around that dated, that experience that before, so I can only date all
the guys there are six' four that's my type, and that's what I
like. It's the fear of the unknown. You've tricked your brain into thinking
that this is your comfort zone. You'd be surprised at what you find out,
not about the other people, but if you find out about yourself when
you give this person an opportunity to sit across from you for ten minutes.
Yes, yeah, And I think that's with a lot of things in life.
When you decide I don't like this, kids do we started kids like,
I don't eat that right? Try it, Just try it. You
might like it, and at some point you probably will like it. Right
it, and maybe you won't. But what have you lost? Right,
you'd be surprised. Yeah, all of that stuff. All right, I'm
gonna let everybody tell where they can find you and track you down and get
more wisdom from you. But first, this is your first time on the
p I can't this is your first time on the podcast. You have a
lot of things to say. We play something called worst date or first date,
So you either have to give us the worst date you've ever been on
or the greatest first date you've ever been on. Your choice. Oh boy,
wow, that's a tough one, you know. I will say I've
been very blessed. I haven't had a lot of really awful good dates.
Best first date, wow, I'm going to go with my actually one of
the I don't know that it was necessarily one of my best first dates,
but it was a lot of fun. It was my first husband, and
this was probably God, I'm going to age myself because it was probably thirty
years ago maybe, and I just we had such a good time. He
was a musician, and he was a solo musician, and you know,
we were kind of running in the same friend circle and kind of like the
first night that we sort of connected with each other. It was just really
really powerful, and I just remember like being in this group of friends and
kind of just looking over at him and just being like, Okay, like
I think this is going to be something really cool. And I can't remember
no, but I can't remember the song, but it had something to do
with quarters, and I remember going over to the bar and asking for rollo
chords. It was something about a quarter to call you or something. It
was a really long time ago, and I remember just going over to him
and handing him like this roll of quarters, and that was kind of you
know, we'd sort of been dancing around each other for a while and that
was sort of like the moment had some music to the day connected, Yeah,
and it was just really cool. What kind of musician he played a
lot of like Jimmy Buffett, James Taylor like that, but he could play
the guitar. Oh yeah, so that's a huge super talented, super talented.
Yeah, no, very Yeah, guys, learn to play the guitar,
learn a little bit about wine, and take French lessons. You'll be
a lot better off if you could do one of those three things, all
right, Tell everybody where they can track you down, so you can find
me on Instagram Susette k Bravo. I'm also on Facebook and LinkedIn, and
then my website is Susette Bravo dot com. And if you go check out
my website and you sign up for the newsletter, I have a I have
a program that we're going to be launching in January, and you'll get all
of the insider information about that and even some little goodies on goal setting before
that. No Fear, no Judgment, No Fear, no Judgment, and
your podcast Bravo Unscripted. There you go. Thank you. This was fun.
It was fun. We'll have to do this again. I like learning
stuff. I feel smarter now as far as us like share, follow Please
review this podcast and Bravo Unscripted your reviews. Still, even after all this
time, I mean a lot in the podcasting ecosystem. Shoot us an email
Great Love Tobate a gmail dot com if you have comments, questions, thoughts,
fears that you want to share with me or Susette'll pass those along to
Great Loovedebate dot com. Our big big tenth anniversary show, the Live the
Great Love Debate Tour that started it all we're having our kicking off our eleventh
season, if you can believe that, with our tenth anniversary show, and
it's actually right here in Boca Raton, Florida. It is that the Boca
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February sixth or seventh, or eighth, I don't know. It's on the
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It's going to be awesome. Don't miss it because as always at the
Great Love Debate, we never stopped making love. See you next time the
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It's a great love to be