← The Overwhelmed Brain
The Overwhelmed Brain
What is love?
00:53:49
How you define love will be what you get from it. If you don't have a definition for love, you may get stuck with something that appears to be love, but is really something else altogether. If you are 100% happy with the people you love in your life,...
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Lowe's official Partner of the NFL these are my personal opinions Always seek a professional when you're making choices about your mental health and well being. Okay, if you're ready for a little controversy, let's get into it. I'm going to talk about love. Love is something that I have defined throughout the years and redefined throughout the years, but. But basically for the last decade or so I call it when you support someone's happiness. That's the most basic definition that I wanted to shorten it into one little line. Supporting someone's happiness. That contains supporting the decisions they make that make them happy. Supporting what they watch, what they listen to, what they read, even if you disagree with it. Supporting their choice of political candidate. Controversy there. That's love. You're supporting their choices even when you disagree. Does this mean you have to stay with somebody that you disagree with? No, you don't have to stay with somebody you disagree with if it's a romantic love, but if it's familiar or familial love, like family. If it's family, you know, you're kind of stuck because your family, but do you have to hang around them? I don't know. If you're still living at home, that's tough. But hopefully you'll move out if you don't agree with the people you're living with or whatever. The point is, love is different than, let's just say, commitment. Love is different than Commitment, because you can love someone and you can commit to be with someone for an indefinite period of time or for the rest of your lives. You can commit and say, this is who I'm going to be with for the rest of my life. The commitment is, I'm here as long as things continue along the path they're on. Like a promise. I promise to be with you for the rest of my life as long as the path that we're on doesn't change too drastically. What I mean is, you know, you go through life with somebody in a romantic relationship through thick and thin, through better and worse or worse. And that means you are tackling life's challenges together. You are working on things together. So when a challenge comes along, if it's only one person dealing with that challenge, then the commitment isn't necessarily something that can be binding in a way. Might be the wrong word here, but let's just say that you make a commitment to someone, I want to be with you for the rest of my life. And the challenge comes along. A challenge comes along, and that person says, well, that's your problem. You deal with it and then you try to deal with it, and it's very difficult. And they're just going off doing their own thing, having a good time, not invested in your happiness anymore, at least regarding this challenge, because they've gone off and done their own thing, not helping you through the challenge. That to me, again, there's some controversy here that to me, invalidates a commitment. It's like the relationship contract I've talked about in the past. We sign up for a relationship and we sign up knowing or hoping that both of us are going to go through life together and deal with the challenges together. And it balances the relationship. So the relationship double meaning there doesn't list, doesn't sync, because it takes two people to keep the relationship afloat. And if the two people aren't working on the relationship, the relationship will sink. Or one person will be with the bucket constantly scooping out the water from their end so that they don't sink. That is no longer a relationship. It's just a sinking ship. That's an important distinction because when you're not both working on the relationship, you are risking it's sinking. And you are also risking one person drowning. It's not even a risk, it's a reality. If you're both not working on the relationship, there's one person who will be drowning. There's one person that will be having a lot of trouble staying afloat. And so that's why when you have a commitment like this, you're supposed to work on things together. And I know there are always circumstances and exceptions and all kinds of things that can happen that can put the burden of challenges on one person, but there should at least be some sort of emotional support or the other person saying, I'll do whatever I can to help. So I know that there are circumstances out there that will have one person suffering more than the other, but there should still be that support of some sort. The challenge comes when one person says, you have a problem, you deal with it. That's a challenge because there's no longer a balance in the relationship. And coming back to commitments and promises, when you commit with somebody, commit to be with them, commit to having a life together, it should involve what I call love. It should involve supporting the other person's happiness. And there's a lot involved there. Love is the feeling of being supported for who you are and the decisions that you make to live your life practically the way you want. That's love. Even when the other person doesn't like it, the other person doesn't agree with the decisions. But to feel love is to feel supported for who you are. It's feeling 100% trusted. Even when someone disagrees with you, like, I'm going to do this. I just want you to trust me. And they might say, I disagree with this. It's not going to work. But they say, I know it's going to work, and I just want to do this. And so the other person says, okay, let's just see what happens. This is what I do in my marriage. I'll see my wife start to do something, and she says, why don't we just do this? Why don't we just hammer this into the wall? And I'll say, well, you know, if you did that, the nail isn't. I mean, this isn't really what happened. But let's just say it happened like this. If we did that, the nail is not going to stick because it's drywall. And she might say, well, you know, it's tough enough, so maybe it'll work. I'll say, okay, see what happens? I can always patch it. And so she'll do it, and it's either going to work or it's not. But I decided to trust her. And again, that's a fake example. She's actually pretty smart, but things like that happen because I've also said to her in other ways, and she's done the same with me the words something like, okay, I'll stand back here, and I just don't think it's going to work. Or, I know it's not going to work, but if that's what you want to do, then go for it. You know what that does? It strengthens trust. It increases trust, and it shows that you both support each other's decisions and perspectives. But one person still knows it's not going to work, and the other person needs to prove it to themselves that it will. When you step back and allow that to happen, that can build trust and build connection and also build a stronger faith in the person that says, I told you it wasn't going to work. And hopefully it doesn't become a I told you so thing. But the other person is going to know. The person who tried it and it failed, they're going to know, oh, yeah, they did tell me. So you probably don't need to say, I told you so, probably don't need to say that at all. But what that has done in my relationship, because this is what we do, we do this with each other. I don't think that's going to work. Or Asha will tell me, I know that won't work. I know it. And I'll say, well, I need to do it for myself. I need to fail for myself. I need to do it for myself just so I'll have that failure in my mind, so I know what doesn't work. That's kind of how I operate. And she'll say, okay, she'll step back, and sometimes I don't fail. And sometimes she'll say, I don't know how you did that. That doesn't make any sense. And I said, I need to know for myself. That's why I did it. And it's not a I told you so thing. Anyway, coming back, I know what I just said isn't always the healthiest response, especially when somebody says, hey, I want to try this. I want to try heroin for the first time. Something dangerous. I want to use needles that I found on the street. Something dangerous that's not going to happen, hopefully. But that's something that you might not want to step back and say, okay, we'll see what happens. Because a real danger is there. But hopefully you have built a trust and faith in one another that when somebody says, don't do that, and this is why, that you have enough sense to say, okay, I'll listen to the reason, and then you can talk back and forth. But that kind of trust and faith and confidence in another person has to build. It has to be earned. And it's usually earned. Not by saying, I'm not going to let you do that with every little thing. No, don't do that. It's wrong. I'm right, go away. I'll take care of this with every little thing. No, don't pound that hammer into that soft drywall. It's not going to last. It will not hang that 45 pound picture or painting or whatever. It will not work. So don't try it. So they never gain the experience and they never learn. It's like with kids, right? With kids, you want to. Hopefully they'll fail enough to succeed later on in life. They'll fail when they're young, they'll succeed later because they know what failure looks like. That's why sometimes it's helpful to have kids try and fail. But you know, we don't want to treat our partners and adults as kids when they say, I know it'll work and you want to give them an opportunity to show them that it won't work. They may surprise you or they may validate you. Either way. Coming back to what I was talking about, I have a some notes here that I want to talk about love and what I believe love is and what it consists of. It is helpful before I read you some of my notes. It is helpful if you are with someone or know someone in your family who actually has an emotional connection to themselves, who actually can connect emotionally inside themselves, who can access some layers of emotion, sadness, anger, happiness, joy, elation, bliss, even a bit of apathy kind of in between all of the emotions, the whole pool of emotions that we have inside of us. The more someone can access, the more likely they're able to love. It doesn't mean emotionless people or people that are less connected to their emotions aren't capable of love. It just means the more emotions someone's capable of expressing and feeling and allowing that feeling to be expressed, the more capable. In my vast knowledge of my life, my perspective that has been my experience, is that the more connected somebody is inside to their emotional state, the more capable they are of loving. And again, it doesn't mean they can't love if they're not. Like if somebody is an engineer and they're very computational, very analytical, they may still be capable of loving at a deep level and maybe not expressing it very well, but they still love. They do things to show you they love you, but they have a very hard time emoting. It doesn't mean they're not capable just means they may not be capable of showing it in a way that you appreciate or that you need. Because some of us need a broader depth and expression of love. When I met Asha, she's about halfway what I'm used to as far as the expression of love. It took a long time for me to get used to that, probably a couple years. It took me a long time because I'm the kind of guy that says, oh, I love you. Oh, I love you back. I have been that guy for a long time. Some of it was dysfunctional. What I mean by that is that sometimes I would say it to hear it. I mean, that's not necessarily dysfunctional, but there is some level of fear in there. Like, I need to hear it. And when there's some level of fear, when you say you love someone, there is probably some dysfunction in there as well. I hope they say, I love you back or I need to hear it. And again, it's not always dysfunctional. Sometimes you just in a. You're just in a bad space and you want to hear it. You might say it to somebody, hoping they say it back. But what I learned from Asha is that she used to be that kind of lovey dovey, mushy type of person. And her heart was crushed so many times, and especially when she got married to not a good, healthy person. She had to, or she learned to suppress a bit. And what she did was hold back and not just fully trust and fully have faith in another person that they won't crush her heart. So when we met, I'm the kind of guy that says, hey, I'm open 100%, and I trust you 100% on day one until you crush my heart. And hopefully you don't. But I was open to that. I was open to it going anywhere, because I have learned that if you don't open your heart 100%, then it's very hard to be 100% satisfied. I mean, if that's even possible, be 100% satisfied in a relationship, because you're holding back. And so for a couple years, maybe three or four years even in the relationship I have with my wife, what I learned was that her heart grew more fonder over the years. It took a long time, and it had to for her because she needed reinforcement. She needed for me to keep showing up in a healthy way, for me to keep showing up in a way that she could trust. She had to learn to trust that a person wouldn't be harmful or hurtful to her. And I did the best I could, and I kept showing up and kept accepting her for who she is, and I still do to this day. And that allowed her to open her heart, become more vulnerable with me. Say I love you when she feels it, and accept when I say I love you. There are times that we connect, that we never connected like before, because she wasn't in that space. That doesn't mean she's in a 100% mushy space. But it feels like a very adult, mature love. It's a very trusting love. And the only reason I'm telling you this is because sometimes love isn't all about being mushy. Sometimes it really is about wanting to see someone happy, accepting them 100% as they are, even when they change, even when they shift, even when they have mood swings. Because that's how you care about someone. You love them for who they are. You accept them for who they are. And again, this doesn't mean you have to stick with someone who you love, because their changes or their personality or their bad habits or whatever, you don't have to allow those things into your life if you can't tolerate them. This is one of the more important points that I'd like to make, is that we can love someone from afar. We can love someone and say, I love all of these things about you. But there are certain things that I can't allow into my life, so I won't be able to be with you because of those things. That's not a judgment. That is personal boundaries. That is protection. Personal protection. It is loving yourself to the point where you give yourself what you need to be happy. It is supporting your own happiness. Because if you can't get that from someone else, that's the default. It should be the default. You should say, I need to support my own happiness because I'm not getting it in this situation. I'm not getting it in this relationship. So I need to support my own happiness. That's nothing against you. It's nothing against the other person. It's for you, for yourself. This is something that I've had to express to people who've written to me who say, I don't want to be judgmental. I don't want to make them feel bad. I don't want to make them think that they're bad people and that I'm putting them down for what they're doing, and then I'm leaving because of their bad behaviors or anything like that. And I say, you don't have to feel judgmental at all. In fact, all you have to do is ask yourself, is this right for me? Is what they're doing, is what they're saying right for me? Because if it's not right for you, it's not a judgment against them. There might be some judgment in there, but it really does come down to, is this right for me? So you keep it about yourself. Is this okay for me? Because if it's not, then it's not about them. It's about you. So if someone's mistreating you, treating you badly in some way, make it about yourself. Don't make it about them, because it really is about you. It is about you and your decisions and what you need to do to take care of yourself. Because sometimes people will not have the ability to love you in a way that works for you. Because these people can still love you, but not in a way that works for you. And sometimes they can claim to love you and then mistreat you, hurt you, and do other things that you don't want in your life. I am a big proponent of saying what's right for me. Is this right for me? Is this okay for me? Can I be okay with this? Is another question. Can I be okay with this? My favorite question is, will I be okay with this if this never, ever changes? That's my favorite question. Because it really gets down to the nuts and bolts of the thing. It really gets down to the final answer. What is your final answer? Your final answer is going to be the answer to that question. If this never, ever changes, will this be okay? I turned it around, but the same thing. Will this be okay if this never, ever changes? Because if you say, well, no, it won't be okay if it never, ever changes. You know where you stand. The person who gets stuck in a rut says, but what if? That's the rut. But what if they change? What if things change? What if I do get that raise next month? And what if that raise is 5 cents? And what if they do change, but it's for the worse? You know, talking about a different relationship, what if that person does change? A change that you hoped they would make, but it's made up for somewhere else? I mean, there's a lot of what ifs. What if they do change and things get better? That's a big what if. If you've been listening a while, you know that I like trends. I like looking at the trend of any relationship or any work situation, and I ask myself what has been happening? And then I say, okay, this has been happening. And then I tell myself, okay, what has been happening will happen. And it's great when it's been years instead of months. Like, okay, they've been treating me this way for months. Uh, let's just see. You know, it's only a few months. Okay, we can wait and see, you know, unless it's very damaging, but let's just wait and see what happens. But a few years, that's easy. That's an easy one. You can just say this has been happening for a few years. This tells me that it's okay to say this will never, ever change. And then you stick with it. Because what I love about knowing something will never, ever change is that knowing leads to decision making, knowing leads to action. And then when you start taking action, you're either going to see change or you're going to see things get worse. You take action for yourself. That's when change usually happens. When? Why? Because either they see you doing something that is totally unexpected, or you finally do something that you haven't done before and that leads to the change that you need to make for yourself. That's how change happens. When somebody doesn't change, then you have to make the change. That is my formula for change. That means that one person has to change in order for change to exist. And if the person that hasn't changed, changed and doesn't show any sign of changing, that leave the burden of changing on you. It's not really a burden because changing means you want something better for yourself. You want something to improve in your life. And so you adopt a philosophy like that. You can adopt that one if you want, or make your own. But I like to look at things as, is this going in a good direction or is the trend line going down into the right or staying steady at a terrible level? And I don't want this anymore in my life. Is this right for me? Because if it's not right for me, I need to make another decision. And that decision may not involve the other person because I need to do what's right for me. And then when you make a big change, they may say, what? What are you doing? Why are you doing this? You gotta stop doing this. Oh, wait, you're doing this for real. This is actually happening. Okay, I'll change. I see that. Honestly, 99% of the time when one person changes, the other person finally gets it. The other person says, oh, you're serious? Yes, I'm serious. I'm gonna do it now. So what are you saying? Oh, I'll change. I promise. It could happen or not. It really depends on who the person is. They might think they're righteous and don't have to change for anyone and they might just let you make your decision and do your own thing. And if that's the case, great. Kind of what a loving person does. They let you do your own thing. I'm not saying that they're loving you in that moment. They may feel self righteous knowing that you're just terrible and you're gonna do your own thing and they're gonna blame you and they're gonna smear you to their friends and family. But sometimes you got to do your own thing when there's no change. So lately I've been dealing with a pinched nerve in my back and as you can guess, it's absolutely no fun at all. 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So let me come back to my notes about love. I already said Love is the feeling of being supported for who you are and the decisions you make to live your life the way you want. Love is feeling 100% trusted even when someone disagrees with you. Love is a consideration of your well being without controlling what you decide being well looks like. I like that one. Love is when someone allows you to be yourself. Love is trying to make someone's life easier and happier. Love is prioritizing another person's happiness over your own. That's a controversial one. I know it is because you're going to say if I prioritize their happiness and their hurtful to me that Puts me in a bad space. That makes it awful for me. It makes it an abusive relationship. Yes, you're right. That's why love requires all people involved to do these things. To define love in a very similar or the same way. Because if you love someone who prioritizes your happiness over theirs and you prioritize their happiness over yours, you both get what you want. Again, my definition, my perspective may not be yours, but that's how I see things. If I prioritize my partner's happiness over mine, she'll prioritize my happiness over hers. That sounds self defeating. A little bit. But let me explain. Let's just say that this is true. I have hobbies that I like to do that she doesn't want to partake in. She has hobbies that she likes to do that I don't want to partake in. Boring. To me, boring. Literally boring. If she goes to a garden saying, I'm not going, but I support her going 100%. Just like she supports me and my recreational activities and my hobbies 100%. So I feel like I'm getting all my needs met. She feels like she's getting all her needs met and we have each other's back. We think about each other. If I see something about gardening, I'm going to tell her about it. It doesn't mean I'm ignoring everything I see. I just. I'll send her pictures. Hey, look what I found. Because I want her to feel that happiness. And it makes me happy to see her happy. It makes me happy. Knowing she's happy and sending her something about something that I really don't care about still makes me happy. Wow, look at this. It's a book on gardening. I'm going to send her a picture of it. Do you want this book on gardening? I found it. She'll say yes or no and she'll do the same with me. Hey, look what I found. Is this something you want? Wow, that sounds great. Thank you, honey. That's why I like prioritizing someone else's happiness. But both people or anyone in the relationship has to do it for each other. That's how it works. So there's my tiny list of what love is. It's a lot more than that. But that's kind of the foundation of how I view love and how I experience it. Now, what isn't love? Love is not trying to change someone. Love is not making someone's life difficult. Love is not putting the person you claim to love down or making them feel bad. Love Is not permission to hurt. And finally, love is not selfish. That should be obvious, but selfishness is one of the biggest relationship destroyers out there. It is fulfilling your own wants and desires regardless of how the other person feels. So let's just say I had a hobby that was intrusive to her in some way. Let's just say my hobby was drilling all day long. Right below her office. I have a little wood shop. It's nothing fancy wood shop in the garage. And her office is right above the wood shop. And she has to make calls and she has to record things because she has an office in the house and it's right. Her office is right above it and the wood shop is right below it. And I make sure that I tell her, hey, I'm going to make some noise for the next 5, 10, 15, 20 minutes. Will that be okay? I get permission because I know it will be intrusive to her. She supports me. She wants me to be able to do the stuff I love. And I'll go downstairs with her permission and use something loud. I try to save it for night, but sometimes I have to do it during the day. And if I was selfish, I would just go downstairs and use anything loud I wanted to and not care if she was on the phone or not. Just like if it's laundry day and she says, hey, don't do laundry tomorrow because I want to do it. If I was selfish, I would do my own laundry and say whatever, you know, just wait for me. This happens in some relationships. Someone will act selfishly without regard for the other person's feelings. And when you do that, you will destroy love. Without a doubt, you will destroy love if you do things without regard for the person in your life. If you want to do something that you know will make someone unhappy or will make them angry at you, but you don't care and you don't consider it, then expect love to dissolve and fizzle out because you did not include the other person in your decision making process to do that thing. How much does this apply to? Almost everything. That's why I say love is not selfish. When love is selfish, it's not love. It really comes down to that. In fact, I would say love is the opposite of selfishness. I would also say love is the opposite of control. So control and selfishness are the opposite of love. When you control, you are not allowing someone to be themselves. You are not allowing them to be who they are. When you are selfish, you don't care about their happiness. So let me close with Something that I really wanted to talk about today, which is when people write to me, they'll say, I love that person so much, but they hurt me, and they hurt me, and then I left, and then I came back, and then we have so many good times, but the bad times are terrible and they hurt me again, and then I leave, or we have these arguments, or the hurt and the love and the hurt and the love repeat. And that's what my podcast, Love and Abuse, is all about. My other podcast, but I'll get these letters like this. And I always mention the trauma bond, because when you have love and abuse or love and hurt in a relationship, you start mixing those things. Like, you believe that love contains pain. Love and not pain in the sense that the pain of loss or the fear of loss, but the suffering that someone can create in you. Someone can cause you to suffer. And so you start to believe that suffering is a part of a loving relationship. And you start to believe that in order to get love, you have to suffer for it. And that's not true. That's not true. You will suffer in some ways, even in healthy relationships. Yes, but it should not be half and half. It should not be 90% suffering and 10% love. There could be 5% suffering and 95% love. But even that, that is a wildly high number. It should be like a 0.001 suffering, percent suffering and a 99.99% feeling good, feeling normal, feeling neutral, but not suffering. That suffering should be the lowest number in the equation. That suffering number should not be high. So when there's a relationship that has 50, 50, when the suffering number is higher than the normal or happy number, there's a problem. That's why I say something like, what do I say? I say if you're unhappy more than, then you're happy, then your relationship is experiencing a big problem. If you're unhappy more than you're happy in the relationship, something is going on in the relationship that needs to change or it will fizzle out. So that's. That's important. And coming back to the love and the hurt or the love and the abuse, back and forth, back and forth. You're. You're hurt, and then you have a great day, and then you're hurt for a week, and then you have a great three days, and then that cycle creates a trauma bond, meaning you are traumatized inside the relationship and you are creating a bond from the trauma. Like there's. Without the love, there's no abuse. And without the abuse, there's no love. And so that trauma bond messes with your thinking. It messes with your understanding of love. That's why I created this episode. It messes with your perception of love and what it means to. To feel love and how you define love. It is all about understanding what love is supposed to be. And different people will have different versions and different definitions and different perceptions of love. And I encourage that. If love is different for you than it is for me, you need to define it. And then when you see it, you know what it looks like. And when you experience something other than the way you define it and it doesn't feel very good, you know what that looks like too. So that you can say, ah, this isn't love. This is something else. This is something else I need to address. This needs to stop. I need to address it. Either that means talking to the other person or telling yourself, this isn't. This isn't right for me. So I'm going to do this for me. I'm going to make a big decision for myself because this is what I need to do. Because I love me. Because I know what love looks like and I don't want that in my life. Because that's not what love looks like to me. That's why it's important to have a definition for love. So that when someone comes along and hurts you, you can say, is this my definition of love? Because if it's not, you can address it. And addressing it again may mean talking to that person, having a conversation, or taking care of yourself and doing your own thing. Making. Making a decision to leave, to do something else with your life, whatever. This is a tough topic for a lot of people because they make these commitments, they make these promises to another person and they say, I'm going to love you forever. I'm going to love you for the rest of our lives. I want to be together forever. Then something happens and they either fall back, back to their promise and say, I'm not gonna leave you because I made a commitment. I made a promise. They'll say something like that, falling back to their original agreement, or they'll understand what the commitment was about and how both people are supposed to commit to each other. In a relationship. You have both people saying, I will do this for you. And some of it is unspoken. I will be this way for you. I will be this. I will do that. And when I don't do that or when I'm hurtful, that gives you the right to say you broke your commitment. Because the commitment involved all of these things. And now that the commitment is broken, we need to talk about it, because this isn't what I signed up for. I don't want this. And then wherever it goes, it goes. You have control of that, though. You control your destiny in that respect. And here's where it gets dicey, right? Like, I can't control it. I'm in this relationship, I'm stuck. Or someone might write to me, and I've had this message many times, but I love them. That's what they'll say. This, this happens, this happens, this happens. And 90% of the time, it sucks. And 10%, it's great. And when it's great, it's so great, it's amazing. And I don't want to lose that. And, you know, my first question is, are you willing to go 90% of your life feeling this one way, this terrible, terrible way for this? 10% of great times? If you're willing to do that, then by all means, go for it. You might say, but they might change. We'll go back to that if we have to. But I don't like to make people make decisions based on what might happen. I like to make decisions and have people make decisions based on what has happened. So that is a consideration that I want you to make. There are people that get into relationships that say this. They'll say, but I love them so much. I don't want to miss that. I don't want to miss out on that. I really want that in my life because they're so good. When things are good and I feel really special, I feel really loved, and I really love that feeling. And this is my final thought of this episode. Do you love the person or do you just feel lost without love? Because there's a big difference between loving someone who has been hurtful or abusive and feeling lost without love. That's the question for reflection. Because if you love someone who does that to you, I would ask you to again, define what love means to you and then ask yourself if you really love the person or are you just worried that you will be lost without love? That is the question of reflection, like I said, and I know that I'm wording it as a very black and white question. I know somebody out there saying, what? But. But here's the thing. I want you to consider this. Because if you feel like you need to stay in a relationship because you love the person and you love when things are great and you hate when things are terrible, and you hope those terrible things don't happen again. But you maybe are staying in a bad relationship because of the good times, but the bad times are really over, overpowering everything else. My question to you is, if someone came along that made you feel the same way, they were just as maybe attractive, they made you laugh the same way. They liked the same things, or they liked more things, or they were just as funny, they were just as unique in their personality. If someone came along that was all of the things that made up the person you love, but maybe even more and even made you feel the same way, if not better, would you not consider a relationship with that person? I'm not going to give you the right answer, because there is no right answer. This is the question that I actually asked myself at the end of my last marriage. The divorce became final and I was in a bad place. I reflected on everything that I did to cause the downfall of the marriage. And I was also grieving the end of the marriage because I believed when we get married, we're with that person for the rest of our lives. That's it. When you get married, you're there. That's it, You've made it. That was my belief. And so I never really treated the relationship like I'm talking about today. And so the divorce was in process, and I eventually got the paperwork. And I forget if I did this after the paperwork arrived or not, but I remember saying, it's got to be her. You know, I said her name. It's got to be her. If it's not her, I'll never be happy again. By the way, I said this in every breakup of my life, I'll never be happy again. It has to be that person or no one. Every breakup taught me something new. And every breakup, I realized, oh, I will eventually be happy again. But it takes time. You gotta grieve the relationship. Like grieving the death of a part of you. That's how I see it. The three entities in a relationship. You, the other person, and us. And us. Has died. And in your heart, the other person has died. So there's like a quarter of you left. It feels like if that because such a big part of you, big part of your identity went away when the relationship ended. And so I asked myself the question. I was in the middle of the. This down state that I was in because I was so unhappy. I believed I would never find happiness again. And it had to be her. We need to get back together so that I could be happy again. And I asked myself the question because I was always inquisitive I was always asking myself questions. I asked myself the question, what if someone came along that was just as attractive, if not more than her? What if she had just as much a sense of humor, if not more than her? What if she was just as fun to talk to or just as intelligent or more? And I just asked myself these what if questions. What if somebody else came along that wasn't her, wasn't her by name, call her Mary? It wasn't Mary. It was somebody else, but it's not Mary. So I want Mary back. But what if somebody else came along that had all these qualities, but maybe even better, would I consider it and would it make me happy? That was my question. I went, well, wow, when you put it that way, that changed my perspective. Thanks for tuning in today. Thanks for listening to another episode of the Overwhelmed Brain. Hope you got some value from today's episode. I want to thank the patrons who give to this show every month. I am so grateful for your support. I don't ask for it, it just happens. I am so grateful for you. Thank you, patrons. Thank you to people who donate. There's one person that donates, like every now and then or once a month or something. It always surprises me. But she did something a little bit different this time. She donated. And then she donated again. And I say her name with a lot of effort every time she does. So super. Ha, supra, supra. Something like that. I am so grateful for you. You sent me another donation right after and you said. What did you say? You said, I owe you an email, but I'm writing out of turn. I stood up for myself in a professional setting today. I'm celebrating that along with the Overwhelmed Brain podcast that gave me the courage to do it. And wow, I love messages like that. You did not have to send me any money for that. I tried to give this information away for free and you decided to pay me. So, hey, you know, I'll take it. I am so happy to hear that you stood up for yourself. This is exactly what I did, like 10 years ago. You decided to stand up and probably say what was right for you. Kind of the theme of this episode. You decided to say, I respect myself enough and I love myself enough to say what needs to be said in this moment. And I'm just going to add this regardless of what happens to me. Oh, that's tough. That's a very, very challenging place to be. You know, you could get fired. You know, somebody might yell at you, but you did it anyway. I never tell people to do this. I just ask the question, what would you do or say if you had absolutely no fear of the consequences? And this is what happens. You end up doing things that you probably normally wouldn't have ever done. And when you don't do something that you want to do, your life typically never changes. But when you do do something that you want to do or you want to say your life does change, the big risk is that will it change for the better or for the worse? And the way I look at it is, hey, things are pretty crappy now. So I don't care how they change. That's how I, that's how I look at things when I need to make a big change. It's not always crappy, but sometimes you just have to say something or do something because you don't want to keep the status quo. You want something to change or you notice an injustice or you feel slighted and you want to say something. So this is what Superhot said and I am going to get that name right someday. And I am so grateful that you shared this with me. And I don't see a follow up that says I got fired. So I think that it sounds like it went okay. Thank you Supra. And I'm very grateful once again. And thank you for sharing that because I was able to share it with others who might be in a very difficult position right now. And there's somebody out there that might want to make a decision that will absolutely change things or, or maybe it won't change anything and maybe things will be fine or whatever it is, but we never know. And that's why we typically don't make these kinds of decisions because we don't know what's going to happen, but we always know what will happen if we do nothing. That is where I live. I know what's going to happen if I do nothing. And I have to ask myself, do I want this to continue? Because if I don't, I have to do something. If you find value in this show like these patrons do or the people who donate, visit moretob.com and there are options to do that over there. Thank you again. And I want to tell you about another show that I do called Love and Abuse. I mentioned it earlier. It's over@loveandabuse.com it is about manipulation and control and emotional abuse in relationships and gets deeper into the weeds about relationship issues and we dive in headfirst over there. That's over@loveandabuse.com and if you know you're the difficult one in the relationship. You can join a program that is helping a lot of people heal over@HealedBeing.com and that's where I help people who are hurtful in a relationship stop being hurtful and start healing the emotional triggers that make them hurtful in the first place. And that is changing lives over@HealedBeing.com if you're dealing with that and with that, always keep your mind open because that's how you make the best decisions and be firm in your decisions and actions so that you can create the life you want. Always take steps to grow and evolve. You are powerful beyond measure. And above all, and this is something I absolutely know to be true about you. You are amazing. 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