here. What's going on, sonia here with you? And Oh man, welcome back to men explain. It has been a while? Just like a relationship. We took a short little break? But we are back? Yeah. Yeah. Mm And I've got some special guests here with me today. There will be no strangers to you. I promise you that. And um it's always going to be like a little catch up for us to please welcome Tabatha and Louis. Hi, thanks for having us. Hi, I'm Tabatha. I'm a singer,
sometimes actress, a dog lover and dog mom. And um I also like cheese.
Hi, I'm louis with his partner.
Oh, sweet. Okay. I like how you said um I like cheese and then you look at louis anyway, you know, we're here today to talk about relationships and this is what the podcast is all about. We explore different facets of relationships um both in the workplace, friendships, relationships, romantic relationships, everything We've been through so much over the past few episodes and now we're going to be addressing toxic relationships, Dum, dum, dum. Yeah, that's right. It's such a
broad topic, isn't it? Because it doesn't just cover one thing. Like you've got the emotional aspect of it, then, you know, sometimes like the more serious stuff would be like the physical aspect of it. Um it's very broad, there's so many things that fall under it. It
has to be like toxic bosses or managers. And of course,
of course, yeah. Today, I mean obviously we're gonna be focusing on toxic relationships and romantic sense as well? Um Have you guys, personally experienced anything like that at all? Have you been in a toxic relationship?
Are you the toxic 1? I don't think I have I've had close friends in toxic relationships before which
you can also share stories about anonymously to
Nice. You
can anonymously.
Yeah. I think I may have been like when I was younger had like ex girlfriends that were like a little bit toxic, but nothing crazy, nothing physical more like emotional and
perhaps you might not even have realized it at the
Time. Exactly. And you're young, like 13, 14, you
uh I think for me, maybe this topic like is a little bit close to home because I have been in a relationship before where it was toxic. And so I've got some experience, I would say so, maybe tabs if you want to like sort of expand on that a little bit. Um what did you experience in this toxic relationship that you want to highlight here on the show today? Yeah. Okay.
Where do we even start? I feel like the relationship that I was in uh in the past was your very typical standard toxic relationship in a sense that it was very emotionally manipulative, very controlling. There was also physical abuse. These are the things that you need to look out for in order to I don't know how to prevent yourself from
a lot of people don't realize they're in like Exactly relationships. And that's the problem. It's
true. It's true? And it's funny because I feel like I only realized it years after I wouldn't even say like right after it took me a while of like, you know, having to really sit down and think about the things that did happen and process them and then really like look inward to realize actually, you know what, I was kind of messed up. Like I didn't even see it like someone else had to be like, hang on a second, that's not right. Have a look at that again because you know, it's
not okay. So on that note, experts have actually defined toxic relationships as any relationship between people who don't support each other where there is conflict and people are undermining each other as well. There's perhaps competition, disrespect, you know, lack of cohesiveness, understanding. I think that's kind of all that you have mentioned earlier on as well. But you know, on the flip side, I guess I want to know also how you got out of that situation.
It's not so much. When did I realized that this was a bad situation? I think I realized it pretty early on. Like I was like, yeah, this is bad. Like obviously if somebody's hitting you, that's not a good thing, right? You don't want to be in a relationship like that. It was more of how do I get out? That was what I was struggling with, right? I saw this interview that F. K twigs did, right? And so there's always the question, oh if you're in an abusive relationship,
why didn't you just leave? Right? And so not to give any sort of explanation for why I didn't leave. But I think a good um context to help everyone understand is that abusers tend to cut off any close relationships that a person would have. So any close friends which ended up happening at the time, like my close friends at the time, I ended up being cut off from my family wasn't in the country like my mom and my sister. So having they were far away, like
I felt like I wasn't really isolated. It kind of felt like that I was living in his house. So again, you know, not my own space and I didn't feel comfortable with all of these layers of things to get out is not that easy. You know, they're like so many different things to unpack. And so for me, I always knew at some point it was going to happen. I just didn't know when I tried many times before, which is also something that I read about that a
lot of survivors of toxic relationships go through. They try multiple times before they can actually get out. I wouldn't say that this was the full reason why I left. But what did help was the fact that I met lou and I felt extremely supported and safe and safe? Yeah, I felt really safe and he at the time had no idea what was going on because
I still wasn't talking about it to anybody. I didn't want to because I didn't want people to look at me in a weird way, so I wasn't telling him what was going on, but just him being around us, talking me getting to know him a little bit better. I felt extremely safe and I've always felt that way since day one and I still do now guys is like, okay, I suppose something now before I ask you the next question, So I had an ex boyfriend quite early on, I think like I was still quite young
before I even started doing this. Um it was it was really nice, like I was totally in love with him, everything we met at a club door, Like, as I usually do leave people in clubs um and it seemed great, you know, like for a while I was over at his place so much, but things started to show like the cracks started to show when
he was constantly like checking my phone firstly. I I hate that, like, even though I may not even have anything to hide, you still feel the need to check my phone firstly secondly, he would get super crazy and insecure when I don't for example reply a message fast enough girl, I know all of these. I no, no, no, this is before this was way before I was doing school school school. Yeah.
And then this was the deal breaker. Okay one night um I didn't respond because I don't know I was out with friends or my phone is on silent. I can't remember. I saw like a ton of missed calls from him. He shows up at my house and back then I was living with my parents, he shows up there and he beats himself up in the stairwell.
I've heard another story like this, what is wrong with you? I
don't know. Like and my dad was like, my dad was just a boy, can you stop doing that? I'd be like, it was like, can you get it together? I can't imagine papa chew.
He
was with the straightest face like get it together and he didn't even know the context what was going on. He had to have a sit down with him and ask him like what happened when he found out it was because I didn't reply some text,
you
know? But also I felt for him because
I don't want a boyfriend
with them boyfriend because uh huh I also feel like my dad, I feel is
like him just walking out and like short and like I mean just like, like eating dinner and it was like this little waste man is there like
there's no ankle I know you're going to say that to say like himself, you know I mean, I was so young back then. I felt so bad for this guy was like, oh my God, this guy is beating himself up. You know, like beating himself up like this,
can you beat yourself up with your own fists? I mean, I don't know, maybe he was going through something, you know, I can't I can't speak for him because we know that there's so many levels of um mental well being that we also have to address and I can't explain why he did that or what he was going through at the time, but that was his way of acting out to me, not responding or you know, the possessiveness and insecurity and it just got too much I think at that point
in time and there and then my parents were like, we need to talk
to you. But, you know, there's another form of manipulation though, because it's like, no, it's making you feel guilty because I went through the same thing. Yes. That's why I'm like, this story is mad.
So, I felt like it was my fault that he was beating himself up. Exactly, manipulation. Exactly. I was I was like, maybe 18. I had no like, freaking idea what was going on. I was like, this must have been my fault. Yeah. But, you know, we moved on from there. Like, we broke up shortly after So thankfully at the time. I mean, I have very supportive
parents. Yeah, I was gonna say, did you break up because you had the support from your mom and dad.
Yeah. So to give them credit, they didn't yell at me or say like, what kind of choices are you making? Like, seriously? But they knew that they had to let me learn and I feel okay, this is a a personal message to my parents or public message. I'm sorry for putting you through so many ex boyfriends. Yeah,
that
is a scary guy. Okay. Like my friends back in school used to not there to send you home because you're like, your dad must be waiting at the door like that so that, you know, sort of sideways into the next question, which is about insecurities Yeah. Relationship. What do you think causes that kind of insecurity in a partner? Where do
you think that you can go? I think you could break that down like so much. Whether it be like their upbringing where they've got hugged enough as a kid, whether they got praised enough as a kid,
there's so many,
it's too deep. It's way too deep to be working out like why they're narcissist? I don't know. Maybe people just want to be controlling.
Have you ever been guilty of checking your partner's phone before? I
don't like to do it because I always go if you're going to go look for something, you're gonna find something and it could be, but at the same time, I'm like, you don't wanna do that to yourself because you hurt yourself jimmy, just trust your partner enough to be like, no, I don't look
okay, hold on. But what if I am guilty? I've checked my partner's not jeremy. Yeah.
When you're a kid, right? When you're like teenagers,
you know, I have checked my partner's phone before, but I had a reason, I had a feeling and you know, I had a gut feeling and I did find something that was pretty disastrous at the end of the day. So I don't know whether, you know if you're you give your partner a reason to feel insecure or guilty. Like where does this begin? Like is it because I made my partners feel insecure. That's why he checked my phone. You know what I mean?
There's a theory like everyone is self destructive in some way where like you've got a good thing going on and you're happy in this little bubble that you form that you're almost like it's too good to be true. So you go looking for something or like you find out like little things annoy you whether he may not pick up the laundry or he may not do the dishes or like like as simple as those little tiny tasks could be one of those things that like snowballs you two
having a reaction. Yeah, maybe. I don't know. It's just
like either you have a reason to like you have a gut feeling or you're like it's too good to be true. I can't, I there must be something that's why it's hard. But I think from what I've experienced, the insecurity comes from the person, not what the partner is doing in the relationship. The insecurity is not what you've done to the partner, but majority of it comes from the partner itself. I think that's what it stems from. And then the actions after that pile up on top of it, right?
They must have had a bad experience. Yes. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It's never in the future.
So let's say you guys have a suspicion on each other on something or like you're unhappy about something. You would first talk about it, right? You guys have this open relationship
like communications, right? You don't talk in, your relationship is never gonna work.
Who is more of the person that raises things up and confronts the other? Or is it even?
It's hard, right? Because tabs are stubborn and I'm stubborn. No, like swear spread out, spread out. I think my most toxic traces, I just shut off and ignore people. Whereas like, so me and towers, if we have an argument, we'll do the standard thing just ignoring each other for a little bit and then we like someone will do something stupid and then we'll just talk about it. I think it after. Yeah.
I think you ignore me to be, I'll show you I'll ignore you, but my style of handling um stuff is to take a moment to just not speak because if I speak straight off the bat, I'm going to say something I regret. That's so I always speak, Don't speak and I wait until I'm a little bit more calm and then I'm like okay, then I will speak, but I think he takes it as a she's not talking to me, I'm not gonna talk to her.
Yeah, it's terrible. It's terrible. It's very mature, very mature and I know that it's very mature
and I think certain traits like this come with age and experience and maturity as well. Like I used to be super fiery back then in my relationships. I'm like, I'm right.
I'm right. I think that's a defense mechanism. You're defending yourself, right? Like you would be fired because you're like, well I'm not going to be attacked. I'm gonna defend myself by attacking back. Yeah. My defenses just
hindsight. When you look back at it, you're like, maybe I should have just calm down a little before, you know, like going all out and you like you just learn these things with time, right? Exactly. With experience. So types in a previous interview with vogue, Nice feature by the way and you work quite a bit with them to some nice photos coming out from there. Maybe the next one will be with louis modeling debut. Perhaps
you never know. Um you mentioned that, you know, obviously louis helped you confront certain things in your past toxic relationship as well. So, tell us more about that and how, you know, a couple can work together after having a past like that.
I knew something was up with tabs and then I think a couple months down the line, we just actually had like a sit down talk about it because you were like, and this was in the case of like, oh, I asked what was wrong and she said nothing. Like I you know, when you can just tell you engage something's happened in the
background that you could tell
something. I think it was just I think I think it's just watching her interact with like said person or like seeing her behavior change slightly. And I think those are kind of like tell was like, you know, I'm not trying to say to put you down anyway, but you know, when you can tell like, a child has been told off by the month, right? Like say in a supermarket, you can tell a child being told off by their mom
and their moods change. I think it's almost like that where you get inside yourself or you notice someone get inside yourself and you're like, oh, that's not right.
But what you're talking about, when I would
have like interactions, you have interactions is what I'm talking about.
Okay, so because the X was still in the equation,
it's like crossover in the sense.
Yeah. And so I guess you must have seen some
Sense? Something. Yeah, 100%, Just like properly sketchy behavior. Was
it a difficult conversation for you guys to have? The conversation in itself is always going to be difficult. But I didn't feel like it was hard to tell him because of how understanding he is. I think
it's harder to hear. Open.
Yeah.
But so you have a child and you have like this X amount of love for that child and then you know that the child getting bullied or getting hit or like something much worse has happened to the child, painful for you to hear. Yeah, it's painful for you to hear. But also at the same time you're like I hate injustice, what can I do? Yeah, I mean so I'm like a helpless partners. Like I want to like stamp on his face like great, that sounds like 100% right? Like I like I want to like but there's like
initial reaction. You feel terrible for the person and then your main focus now is on like, okay well how do I help this person? You migrate? That energy that you had for like ruining someone to like, okay how can I help? The one that you love? That
was my next question. What did you what sort of steps did you take or identify to take to help to be? Because I think for the benefit of our audience as well, I know it sometimes so broad and difficult to address a topic like this, but if you could, what were some things you did to support her?
I think I think knowing what went on in the background previously I tried to the complete opposite in the sense of like, I don't think tabs as much control of what she was allowed to wear what to do. I don't think she had control of her own money.
For example, even though like we work together now, I don't deal with any of that stuff I put on a pedestal because I'm like, I want her to be the most independent like boss as bits that she could be because she should know how that feels and she is, that makes sense. I don't want to feeling small again. And I think that's like the hard thing to work out.
So it starts from the basic actions basically
we're going to eat like just putting those, giving the like the control yeah the choices and let her decide to dictate where she wants to go and what she wants to do is not being lazy. I think it just being like consider it.
Yeah and you make decisions together
exactly, you're equal. You're just equal. You're not like it's not like this man being like gentlemen and all that, you generally just are equal and be like, hey you make the decisions as well.
So to be obviously, you know, as we come to an end to our podcast very soon in a few minutes, how would you then identify certain things to uh certain people, for example, friends, family members, how can they show support or how can they reach out to someone who might be going through a toxic relationship.
One of the main, like, pieces of advice I would give is that just Be there, there's going to be moments where like, survivors feel like they are taking three steps forwards and then it's gonna be like 10 steps back and then they'll try again. It's like five steps forward, one step back and it's gonna be like this wave of like, you know, up and down
of
trying to to to leave or whatever, right? But I think there needs to be constant support because if they feel constantly supported, they're going to have a bit more courage to do it because you can't just tell someone to leave, they need to feel like they
can. So you guys have been friends for a long time, did you ever pick anything up? Right? Did you ever get a vibe or a sense of anything? You
know, the funny thing is when we were working together at the period of time, it was so much more of a relationship that it was hanging out with that and I don't think that I was really in tabs in a circle at the point in time to not to make excuses or anything. But yeah, I don't think
I interacted with them enough to see certain things. Maybe like you know, if there's somebody that's listening out there that you are some how in the same relationship where you know it's toxic or whatever, this is advice I would have given myself back then be open and speak to somebody about it. That was my thing. I did not want anyone to know that this was what I was going through. So I refused to tell anyone. Even my closest best friend had no idea for six years.
I didn't want to open up. I didn't want to talk to anybody about it because I felt like this was my problem. It's something I needed to deal with. But your friends and your family are there to help if you open up. Were you concerned about the image of your relationship to others at that point in time when you're in a toxic relationship and you know, you mentioned you don't really open up to many people. You're closest friends. Were you worried about saving phase or
the image? Yeah. I mean I didn't I again, I didn't want people to perceive me to be something else. Right? I am Captain Mauser the singer, right? And like, you know, I I think I project, you know really like extroverted like friendly personality. I didn't want people to think of me as somebody that wasn't strong, right? And so I didn't want anyone to know. And you also wanted your relationship to look strong on the outside on socials. I don't think so much about
the relationship. I didn't want the relationship to look
strong. It was more
of me because I was with this person. I you know how you know, when you were the partner, your partner reflects you and blah blah blah. Um I just wanted people to look at my choice and be like, yeah, okay, she made a she made a good choice, right? And so I didn't want it to be perceived as like, oh, how could she end up? You know, like how when did this happen? Like this makes no sense. But on a related note, I think, you know, we've all seen a fair share of people on instagram and are
portraying this like beautiful relationship. You know, all these nice pictures and all that and you don't know what is actually going on behind there because sometimes they just want to project a perfect
relationship. But I think that's where like every fox up at the same time because you want to be relatable at the same time. I mean like tabs had her ep come out things I should've said ep where tells a very honest and open about it and I think it's the most relatable piece of work that she's done, right?
Where so much so that everyone would comment on it and be like, I've been feeling exactly the same thing I've been going through that or I've had friends that go through that and I think that allows you to connect more and shows that just by being yourself and showing a bit of weakness allows you to be stronger than like the long run.
Yeah. And that's something that I've
learned 100
after anything else that you guys would like to add maybe even as a couple to our audience members before we wrap up,
your friend may be defensive still, right? But don't give up on them. Don't give up checking. Like save you fall out, be a good friend in the sense of checking on them, maybe like a month down the line or two months down the line because maybe they're dynamic has changed because you have lost friends who were trying to reach out where I'm like, I'm not saying it's on them to do it, but like say they reached out three months
down the line where your mood has changed. You might have been like, yeah, this has been happening. Yeah, don't give up on trying to say,
I think that's a very important point because with a lot of friendships and relationships when it reaches the breaking point where like I'm telling you
that you understand
why don't you and then you give
up and you know exactly what I'm saying is you can do that and you may be like if you're a good friend and even though you've got a strong relationship in a couple months down the line just be like, hey, you okay, is everything okay? I know I was a bit of a dick pushing it, but I want to check in again. Yeah,
yeah, because
they may not like appreciate it then, but they will appreciate it later.
And I think we've had so many key takeaways from this podcast, you know, although I understand it can be tough sometimes to open up about these things and I really respect and admire that you guys came on talked about it to be especially, you know, I know you have tons of experiences to share and I hope that you didn't have to hold back too much on it.
I know that there are details where it's tough to review on a public platform as well, but you hit many key points and louis thank you for sharing how you support it to be along the way too. I think you guys are perfect match. I'm so glad you found each other. Um I made me love louise cooking but still I love you guys together. She's saying she doesn't love you.
Just
your food. Well, yes, and
so it's
fantastic to see you guys build a life together with your little animal farm happening is so adorable. What Yeah, we do have.
So
what do you guys have on coming up in the next few months,
her single coming out in next couple of months. We don't really
have a date yet but we know that it's going to be in the next
two. I'm hoping before Chinese new year. Right? Hopefully fingers crossed. We're currently twitching and live streaming.
Yes. So
I'm playing a few games. Yeah,
yeah, but lose the main one. Okay, let's be real. I'm just sort of there is like uh
joining me,
I can't even never get my way around Call of duty. Like I'm shooting this guy like floor. Like I don't know how to thank you guys so much for joining us for having us. We had a fantastic time is the first time we've ever sat down to do something like this. Especially to address such a challenging
topic that
has so many layers. But you know, thank you for being personal And opening up as well. On a more serious note, if you feel like you are in any sort of trouble or physical danger, you should consider calling the national anti violence helpline. That is 1 800 triple 70000 facing violence or abuse is not a trivial matter. So we really hope that you reach out to the right people and it could start with just talking to your friends and loved ones and know that you are not alone.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of men explain if you like this episode, please hit the follow button. We are on Spotify and Apple podcasts also follow at its clarity dot co on instagram and facebook From our content like this, we'll see you next
time. Bye bye.