Speaker 1: This is pod popular podcast for the people, The Great
Speaker 1: Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate.
Speaker 2: The Great Love Debate.
Speaker 1: It's a Great Love Debate.
Speaker 2: Hi, get everyone, It's Brian Howie. Welcome to The Great
Speaker 2: Love Debate, the world's number one dating air relationship podcast
Speaker 2: since twenty fifteen. I am here in the very fine
Speaker 2: studios of Pod Populi Podcasts for the People. I am
Speaker 2: back at the one in Boca Ratone, Florida. I have
Speaker 2: not been here in some time, and it is delightful.
Speaker 2: It's delightful here in the Boca Ratone. There's many issues
Speaker 2: that come up on this podcast, in this Great Love
Speaker 2: Debate that we're doing, this conversation that we've been having
Speaker 2: for over ten years, and there's a lot of them
Speaker 2: that I can see both sides on. People are always like,
Speaker 2: where do you stand on the debate. I'm not saying
Speaker 2: my job is to stay neutral, but I'm saying that
Speaker 2: my job is to hear all sides of this and
Speaker 2: then try and relay a consensus that is going to
Speaker 2: give people the better opportunity to find what they're looking for.
Speaker 2: Kind of lets me sidestep any responsibility. But there's there's
Speaker 2: certain things that there's no absolutes on there's no clear
Speaker 2: cut answers. But what I'm talking about today, I think
Speaker 2: there are two clear cut answers. And not only does
Speaker 2: each side have two clear cut answers, but I think
Speaker 2: each of those have two answers. So it's a perfect
Speaker 2: alignment of hopefully logic. You know, emotion doesn't always match
Speaker 2: up with logic. It's one of those rare occurrences, like
Speaker 2: a like a comment or any clips that sort of
Speaker 2: sores by you and you can be like, was.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 2: Do that what happened line up with what I thought
Speaker 2: and felt? Doesn't always happen that way. And so this
Speaker 2: is what I want to talk about. It's about getting
Speaker 2: back together with your ex. And I'm not talking about
Speaker 2: married people doing that.
Speaker 1: That happens every once in a while.
Speaker 2: It's extremely rare, and I'm gonna explore that a whole
Speaker 2: lot deeper with a couple that I recently met, who
Speaker 2: did that, Who did just that?
Speaker 1: They got back together after forty years forty years.
Speaker 2: I have an upcoming episode that I'm going to have
Speaker 2: them on, I promise, And it's unbelievable what happened.
Speaker 1: But that's a tease for you. But as I've mentioned before.
Speaker 2: On this show, I'm not really sure why married people
Speaker 2: don't get back together more often after they divorced, because
Speaker 2: you figured, at the peak of that relationship, it's very
Speaker 2: height the marriage, the kids, the hope for the happily
Speaker 2: ever after, you figure that peak was a greater peak
Speaker 2: than almost any other relationship that they had, and you
Speaker 2: would figure you'd want to revisit that peak. You figure
Speaker 2: they'd get together at a high school graduation with the
Speaker 2: child that they made together, and they would feel that
Speaker 2: bond and they would give to say that, give us
Speaker 2: another try.
Speaker 1: But people who have gotten divorced always.
Speaker 2: Explained to me, because I've never gotten divorced, they always
Speaker 2: explain that once lawyers get involved, any shot at the
Speaker 2: romance is gone, and the any good and some of
Speaker 2: the memories have been sucked out of it. So, Sey LEVI,
Speaker 2: even for people who are like, oh my god, we're
Speaker 2: the best of friends still, it just very rarely, rarely happens. Well,
Speaker 2: what I want to talk about today is when it
Speaker 2: happens with boyfriends and girlfriends, the ones that go on
Speaker 2: and off, back and forth. And so I'm going to
Speaker 2: break that category down.
Speaker 1: Into two subsets. The first type of this.
Speaker 2: Is when you're in the relatively early stages of the relationship,
Speaker 2: maybe the first year or so, and you might say
Speaker 2: a year isn't early, but you know, if you're planning
Speaker 2: on doing fifty years with someone, a year is two percent,
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's still early.
Speaker 1: Those situations.
Speaker 2: So there's a few reasons why people break up and
Speaker 2: get back together.
Speaker 1: In these situations.
Speaker 2: Lots of it has to do with not understanding the
Speaker 2: other person clearly enough, or what you might not want,
Speaker 2: what you might want or need from the other person.
Speaker 2: And lots of it might come from external stimuli that
Speaker 2: you weren't prepared to handle. It was, you know, jealousy
Speaker 2: from certain behaviors, why is that girl always around.
Speaker 1: Who's that guy from the office, blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Pressures from your job or your family. Could be one
Speaker 2: or two bad nights out, It could be a drunk
Speaker 2: morning after. It could be a fight, a misunderstanding, somebody
Speaker 2: said too much, somebody said too little, somebody got scared
Speaker 2: or came on too strong or misinterpreted, and no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1: And on.
Speaker 2: The list is endless of why we can be pulled
Speaker 2: apart or not want to work through the awkwardness or
Speaker 2: the ick to the other side. But what happens is
Speaker 2: soon enough you think, oh, maybe they weren't so bad.
Speaker 2: You know, that anger kind of fades away, and they
Speaker 2: were kind of cute, and you knew a few things
Speaker 2: about them that you liked, and you remember those things.
Speaker 2: But a whole lot of the pull towards a reconciliation
Speaker 2: is usually centered around the unknown. You still don't feel
Speaker 2: like you played out the whole hand.
Speaker 1: I said this to this woman the other day.
Speaker 2: I go, women are oftentimes more likely to get back
Speaker 2: together with their boyfriend from college than they are their
Speaker 2: ex husband, even if they dated that guy in college
Speaker 2: like six weeks. And it's not that the XPUZM was
Speaker 2: so bad. It's that there's that part of I didn't
Speaker 2: quite play it all out in the circumstance I want
Speaker 2: at the time I want, and their shrinings and I
Speaker 2: didn't wait for them to turn thirty five and all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff. I feel like there's still some
Speaker 2: meat on the bone, so to speak. And yeah, you
Speaker 2: found out some things you didn't like, but you didn't
Speaker 2: find out everything. And finding out everything thing is where
Speaker 2: the hope and possibilities lie that. We always talk about it,
Speaker 2: so you keep after it, and you revisit it, and
Speaker 2: you return to it, and on and on and on.
Speaker 2: And that's why there are two sides to this. Some
Speaker 2: will say, as soon as you see a red flag,
Speaker 2: that's it. When people show who they really are, believe them.
Speaker 2: And I agree with those, yes, and there's absolutely merit
Speaker 2: to that train of thought. And most of the time
Speaker 2: it probably is the case. It wasn't quite right from
Speaker 2: the jump, and rather than you know, square peg round
Speaker 2: hole it, you just.
Speaker 1: Get out and move on. But there's also the other.
Speaker 2: Side of those who say, well, maybe if you just
Speaker 2: communicated better, or if you just got through that misunderstanding,
Speaker 2: or someone was willing to change their habits, And that
Speaker 2: is always the key to every relationship, even the ones
Speaker 2: that are you know, blissful for forty years from the beginning,
Speaker 2: the willingness for one or both of them to change.
Speaker 2: And that's where this elasticity comes from, not that you
Speaker 2: stretched it out so far out that you stretched out
Speaker 2: the sweater and it doesn't work anymore. It's that pulling
Speaker 2: apart and the coming together within a relationship that actually
Speaker 2: has benefit, you know, Do you want to be in
Speaker 2: a relationship that is constantly fighting and making up? No,
Speaker 2: you do not. It's too dramatic, it's too exhausting. Do
Speaker 2: you want to be in a relationship where where one
Speaker 2: is always looking at the good parts and one is
Speaker 2: always looking at the bad parts? The red flags green
Speaker 2: lights conundrum that we always come back to around here.
Speaker 1: No, you don't.
Speaker 2: That's not healthy either. And you can go to couple's
Speaker 2: therapy and work it out. But if you never work
Speaker 2: it out, then you're doing nothing but making a therapist
Speaker 2: very wealthy. But the best relationship I've ever had of
Speaker 2: you have had is the one where you had a
Speaker 2: crossroads come at you fairly early on, maybe ninety days in,
Speaker 2: and you asked a question, or you gave an answer,
Speaker 2: or you took a stand one way or another ended it,
Speaker 2: and that became the light bulb or the impetus or
Speaker 2: even the ultimatum for the other person to know what
Speaker 2: you really want and see it clearly if you're going
Speaker 2: to do this, you're going to have to do this.
Speaker 2: And maybe a day, a week, or a month later,
Speaker 2: somebody texts and you grab a drink and suddenly either
Speaker 2: you forget what you kept you a part or remembered
Speaker 2: what brought you together, the possibilities. I heard someone say
Speaker 2: the other day that almost nobody is afraid of marriage.
Speaker 2: Despite the general thought that a certain percentage of the population,
Speaker 2: especially the al population, is scared of commitment, that's.
Speaker 1: Not really true. What they're scared of is commitment marriage.
Speaker 2: With the wrong person, being stuck. And so a lot
Speaker 2: of early breakups and frequent ones.
Speaker 1: They're rooted in that.
Speaker 2: I think I might maybe I don't know, I can't decide.
Speaker 2: Let me have some space and think, and let me
Speaker 2: look around some more, and on and on and on,
Speaker 2: and you keep circling back because maybe they weren't so bad,
Speaker 2: and let's try it again. So there's an element from
Speaker 2: the friends and the families that I can't believe you
Speaker 2: guys are still doing this. And there's also people who
Speaker 2: are like, I'm really glad you're still doing this. I
Speaker 2: like you guys together, work it out. You might say,
Speaker 2: if it isn't right to the point where you keep
Speaker 2: breaking it up breaking up, then it.
Speaker 1: Will never be right. And you would be right to
Speaker 1: say that.
Speaker 2: And you might say I like it that you guys
Speaker 2: keep giving it a shot and working at it to
Speaker 2: to get it right and hopefully, maybe eventually you will
Speaker 2: get it right. And you would also be right to
Speaker 2: say that, because there's a million examples of both red
Speaker 2: flags though sometimes might be false flags, could be wrong
Speaker 2: and what that red flag might have been raised to
Speaker 2: you based on something that had nothing to do with
Speaker 2: this person or their circumstance. You might see a red
Speaker 2: flag because sixteen boyfriends ago somebody did something similar, and
Speaker 2: green lights might be you know, yellow lights with a glare.
Speaker 2: So you take a minute, think about it, revisit it,
Speaker 2: and maybe up to a point. And I don't even
Speaker 2: know what that point is, because you obviously have to
Speaker 2: set some boundaries and deadlines and ultimately some ultimatums. Is
Speaker 2: that redundant? Ultimately some ultimatums. You know, you can't be
Speaker 2: doing it at twenty three and thirty three and forty
Speaker 2: three and you're still not anywhere solid.
Speaker 1: You can't do that.
Speaker 2: I get that everyone is on the clock here, But
Speaker 2: is it possible, No doubt. So I want to get
Speaker 2: into the other example of revisiting the past. But in
Speaker 2: the present, we got to pay for some things around here.
Speaker 2: I need to take a quick break, but we will
Speaker 2: be back right after this.
Speaker 1: Okay, and we are back.
Speaker 2: We're talking about breaking up and getting back together. The
Speaker 2: boomerang dating scene might be like, well what about you know?
Speaker 2: And this came out came up a lot during COVID
Speaker 2: days when we were sitting around not me. I was
Speaker 2: not sitting around you guys during COVID and thinking, oh,
Speaker 2: what about that girl from poly pside class in college?
Speaker 2: We only went out twice, but maybe I wasn't ready
Speaker 2: or you were bored and finish your binging and you're like, oh,
Speaker 2: what about that guy that I lived with for three
Speaker 2: years and they moved for a job opportunity. What about
Speaker 2: the one who you thought you were ready to propose
Speaker 2: to but she didn't quite make you feel sure enough,
Speaker 2: you know? Or what about the one uh, you know
Speaker 2: you broke up with you because you were drinking too
Speaker 2: much or traveling too much or going out with the
Speaker 2: guys or the girls too much, And then you know,
Speaker 2: you saw them on Instagram and they seem single and
Speaker 2: lost weight and got their act together and whatever, and
Speaker 2: you're thinking, what about revisiting that? And half of you
Speaker 2: would probably say no, no, no, stop revisiting, Move ahead,
Speaker 2: windshield not rear view merrit. But I'm the eternal optimist,
Speaker 2: and I am somebody who absolutely believes in and subscribes
Speaker 2: to not just the power of change, but the ability
Speaker 2: to change. I'm stubborn in the belief that stubbornness can
Speaker 2: be overcome, that if somebody says the right thing and
Speaker 2: the right way at the right moment, the light bulb
Speaker 2: can go off and the pieces can click into place,
Speaker 2: and everything can be different. And the biggest different sense
Speaker 2: can simply be you know, time and place. People grow up,
Speaker 2: people hopefully evolve, and people have other relationships in between
Speaker 2: that might make you revisit and rethink the way you
Speaker 2: behaved in the earlier ones. You know, you might take
Speaker 2: some good things out of the relationships that happened between now,
Speaker 2: then and now. My friend wrote a book once called
Speaker 2: I think it was called Everything I Learned About Dating
Speaker 2: a Man I learned from dating a woman, Meaning she
Speaker 2: was able to see the patterns in herself when she
Speaker 2: was no longer the quote unquote girl in the relationship.
Speaker 2: And you've heard of say a million times that you
Speaker 2: know the answers always lie outside of your comfort zone. Well,
Speaker 2: for her, clearly way outside. That's where they were. That's
Speaker 2: where she found the answers. So anybody can find answers
Speaker 2: or have a wake up call or hit across or
Speaker 2: pressure point where bam, they are a different person, not
Speaker 2: so much that you don't recognize them, but enough that
Speaker 2: maybe some of the edges have been smoothed over.
Speaker 1: Flip side to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can someone change for the worst, no doubt, But
Speaker 2: I think that will.
Speaker 1: Reveal itself soon enough.
Speaker 2: I think that will reveal itself quickly if they are
Speaker 2: the same or if they've gotten worse. You won't have
Speaker 2: to spend a whole lot of time on it, even
Speaker 2: if you do revisit. But I'm hugely open to somebody
Speaker 2: saying that the person from they dated, three, five, ten,
Speaker 2: fifty years ago, maybe I want to see how that
Speaker 2: might work out. I'm absolutely, yeah, fucking go for it.
Speaker 2: I prefer that to people who who never dated somebody
Speaker 2: and then they're suddenly like, Hey, that guy I knew
Speaker 2: from college as single, so maybe I'll go after him,
Speaker 2: Meaning that because you had one thing in common, that
Speaker 2: suddenly it was something worth pursuing when it wasn't worthsuing
Speaker 2: back then. Everybody has many things in common. We all
Speaker 2: have a lot in common. We're I think I read
Speaker 2: ninety eight percent Our DNA is ninety eight percent of
Speaker 2: the same as a banana. So you got a lot
Speaker 2: in common with a banana, and you've got a lot
Speaker 2: common with everybody else. But if it's like, oh, we
Speaker 2: you know, went to junior high together, let's talk about it,
Speaker 2: it's totally fine because you're using that commonality as an
Speaker 2: opening to connect, which is great. You know, you got
Speaker 2: to start somewhere, and sometimes the hardest part is recognizing
Speaker 2: and acting on and opening. Take that opening, have at it, fine,
Speaker 2: But this is about somebody looking at it and saying,
Speaker 2: what was the thing that broke us up? And is
Speaker 2: this something that I have changed or they have changed,
Speaker 2: or time has changed, and maybe there is room for reconnection.
Speaker 2: I'm on the side of that. And you know you
Speaker 2: want to play a amateur professional psychologist on me here.
Speaker 2: Maybe that is me silently screaming to the world that
Speaker 2: I'm a better person than I was in my twenties
Speaker 2: and thirties, and I want the world to recognize growth
Speaker 2: out of those of us who believe it has taken place. Guilty,
Speaker 2: But I look at a lot of people, you know,
Speaker 2: so you know, take caution with some of my words.
Speaker 1: They are biased. I'm a biased jury.
Speaker 2: Here, but I look at a lot of people recently
Speaker 2: and maybe they were so politically charged up. People on
Speaker 2: both sides of it have had their brains broken by
Speaker 2: Trump pro and con. So do I think in ten
Speaker 2: years some people might be like, Jesus, I can't believe
Speaker 2: how much time and energy I spent obsessing and hating him.
Speaker 2: It actually changed my personality. And some people might be like,
Speaker 2: I can't believe I went so far down that road
Speaker 2: with that hymn them. I never really looked great in
Speaker 2: a red hat. Why did I wear it every day
Speaker 2: for six years?
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: Time can bring wisdom and hindsight can bring clarity. But
Speaker 2: oftentimes what it also does is it brings an opportunity,
Speaker 2: one that you never fully appreciated, one that you never
Speaker 2: correctly acted on, and ones that you never knew you had.
Speaker 2: So for all those who say no, no, no, never,
Speaker 2: I hear you and I agree with you, And for
Speaker 2: those who say, well, maybe impossibly, and if only I
Speaker 2: hear you and agree with you too, And every situation
Speaker 2: in relationship is different. So all I'm asking to do
Speaker 2: is just look at it and think maybe because absolutism has.
Speaker 1: No place in the love business. None. I will never
Speaker 1: do that. I would never get no place.
Speaker 2: There always has to be nuance, and there's always room
Speaker 2: for interpretation, and there are always circumstances within and beyond
Speaker 2: your control. So in a nutshell, it's a big nutshell
Speaker 2: my answer to the question. It depends on the circumstance,
Speaker 2: and that is a that's a lazy answer, but it's
Speaker 2: also a definitive answer.
Speaker 1: Duck in the answer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but definitive answer is possibly, which is good and
Speaker 2: which is why we debate and why the debate continues.
Speaker 2: So shoot me an email, Great Load Debate at gmail
Speaker 2: dot com if you've got thoughts, questions, or a history
Speaker 2: with an on again, off again or a.
Speaker 1: Revisiting of an off again, and we'll get into it.
Speaker 2: Uh Like, Share, follow, Please review this podcast. Reviews mean
Speaker 2: a lot in the podcasting ecosystem because, as always at
Speaker 2: the Great Love Debate, we never stop making love.
Speaker 1: See you next time. The Great Love Debate. It's the
Speaker 1: Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate.
Speaker 2: It's a Great Love Debate.