GLD 473 - Deep Diving The Dating Amendments

from them and never do that again. But anyway, the Dating Amendments episode, so I wanted to pop it to the top of your inbox, as the kids say, I want to pop it to the top of your listening box here and revisit it, reimagine it, See what holds up, see what doesn't. I stand by it. There's a lot of good information. If you have heard it before, well listen, you listened to it four years ago, so it's time for refresher. If you have not, it's all relevant. It's

all good information. I think as you move forward towards the end of this year and into the years ahead. So without further ado, we are revisiting the Dating Amendments.

and I think they're killing time. And that's never a good way to date, because it is dating from a negative place and not a positive one. And it is dating because you feel bad, and it is not dating because you feel good. So that does not help. That does not work. Dating is dicey enough without having to add a bunch of zoom and Skype issues to the situation. My preference during this time. Now again, if we're doing this for two years, you know, all bets are off.

But for two months or so, worry about something besides dating, or I will get to this in a second. We have a better way to do it, you know. Like I said, dating is dicey enough without adding in the tech. I would take every bit of this time to work on yourself. Don't get fat, get in shape. I mean, half of prisoners come out of doing their time in the best shape of their lives, and half come out

in absolutely the worst shape of their lives. And it all depends on Probably depends on where you do your time, but it all depends on how you use your time. And you should use this time. This strange, confused, somewhat lonely, time to better you. And you know that's part of what we do in this podcast, besides hopefully entertaining you and engaging you, is sometimes we enlighten you in ways

that can better you. And on that note, two years ago, twenty eighteen March of twenty eighteen, we unleashed a two part episode called The Dating Commandments. And these were the ten things that if you did them that they were indisputable, they were inarguable or inarguable. And if you did these ten things, it was going to change your dating life, it was going to change your love future. It was

really going to do things for the better. And we have never gotten more positive feedback on any show we've ever done, any series we've ever done, or any idea we've ever had, than we did for the Dating Commandments. That was great love tobate like GLD one thirty three and one thirty four. If you don't, if you didn't listen, go back and listen. If you did listen, just to review those ten things are as I just said. Number

one was make a change, do the work. Number two was get rid of the words not my type because your answers lie outside of your comfort zone. Number three was three to two one, which is the magic formula for changing your dating profile. It's going to lead to a lot of love. Number four was he pays, and we get into a little bit more detail on that.

Number five was the importance of one hundred hours and what one hundred hours means as a body of time and a body of history between two people before they can decide which to date. Number six was you need to define love before you can find it, what it is, what it means, and what you want. Number seven was the best dating site is Earth, and I don't mean

quarantined Earth, I mean real Earth. Number eight was there is magic in maybe, which means you got to stop looking for red flags and start looking for green lights. That there's magic in the possibilities. Number nine was to practice patient, wait, give it time, hopefully get a little older before you decide to decide this is the person you want to spend fifty years with, So practice patients. And number ten was go all in. At some point you were going to have to put all your chips

on the table and hope that person met you. So that encompass a lot of things. We stay and buy all of those, but just like and Alexander Hamilton back in the day, and Thomas Jefferson and George Washington and Ben Franklin and the gang. When they put together the Constitution, which despite everything that is going on, still is a pretty sturdy document and is still holding up pretty well, they had to make some additions. They had to make

some addendums because they did not account for everything. So over the last two years I have been taking notes and I have been analyzing things, and I'm like, what didn't we cover or what was left out or what changed or or what can we add to sort of tweak this. And much like the Constitution, framers came up with the Bill of Rights and added ten amendments. And there's ten amendments in the Bill of Rights. Just to go back to your sixth grade history class, there's ten

amendments in the Bill of Rights. And we came up with our own ten amendments. The dating amendments sort of reflect what the Bill of Rights was. They filled in some gaps. And if you've ever gone back before, I did this. I went back and just to make sure that the Bill of Rights was ten and there was ten amendments. I wanted to look at it and All of the ten amendments in the Bill of Rights are

things we're very very familiar with. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, you know, no unreasonable search and seizure, plead, the fifth everybody knows what the fifth Amendment is, the right to speedy trial. The god awful second Amendment that I know a lot of you love your fucking guns, but I mean, come on, the second Amendment. Everybody's very

familiar with most probably nine of the ten amendments. The weird one in there, the strange one, the outlier in there that is like, wait, what, that's one of the Bill of Rights, That's one of the ten minutes. Is the third Amendment? You know what the third Amendment is. The third Amendment is no soldier in time of peace shall be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner, which means somebody from the military cannot knock on your door and suddenly want to get into your bed.

And I think there's a lot of people who wouldn't mind that. There's a lot of women who wouldn't mind a soldier knocking on their door and asking if they could sleep over. There's a lot of dudes who really wouldn't mind some military dude. And if you've ever lived in New York City during fleet week, fleet Weeek was when you know, twenty thousand navy guys roll into town and try and get laid over three days. These are the

most eligible men you'll ever find. And every single woman in New York seemingly is hoping to violate the Third Amendment and to be violated by the Third Amendment and hoping that she can quote quoter in her house with the consent of the owner. So the third Amendment, just to give you a little more history, is a very odd one, So take it or leave it. But we're not here to talk about us history. We're talking about

talk about dating history and most importantly, dating future. So these as I'm going to lay out are the ten dating amendments. And I wish Keiko is here because she could give us little fanfare. But these are the ten dating amendments that are going to be added to the dating Commandments. So not that an amendment isn't as good as a commandment, but it's sort of a next step

from the commandments. And these are your rights, and these are inalienable rights, and these are the rights that every single one of you have so, dating Amendment number one, you have the right to be afraid. You have the right to feel fear. You have the right to show it, you have the right to express it. The most confident person in the room, in any room, is usually the

one that's the most vulnerable. It's the one who's not shy or reluctant to recognize and to own whatever their weaknesses, whatever their vulnerability is, and whatever our fear is, and almost all of our behaviors are motivated by fear. We're afraid of being rejected, we're afraid of being hurt, we're afraid of missing out, we're afraid of being alone. And all of that is absolutely okay. And you need to recognize that that is okay, and you have a right

to feel that way because it is absolutely normal. I get asked all the time when I do press is what is the one thing that everybody has in common? For people that I encounter or meet or who come to our shows. And ninety nine percent of the people who I meet or come to our shows or listen to this podcast believe in love and believe that they hopefully can find a future with one other person. That

it laps forever and ever and ever. That's about ninety nine percent of people hope for that believe in that want that they're afraid it might not exist for them, but they believe in it. But the thing that one hundred percent of the people share without exception and it is fear. And they're afraid of something, and they're afraid to be with the wrong person, to make the wrong move,

to do certain things at the wrong time. And so you're right, as one of these ten amendments is that you're it's okay to be afraid, and it's okay to admit that, and it's okay to embrace that, but most partly, it's okay to question that. And you want to know why, and you want to know how that manifests itself into your day to day life, and you want to know how you can turn that fear into a strength, and

you need to know how to overcome that. I am very, very aware that I am afraid of snakes, and rather than just go through life afraid of snakes, I'm trying to find little ways, slowly, slowly, slowly, and at a very great distance to incorporate more snakes into my world. So I'm not sleeping with them. But I'm a lot more likely to go to a zoo or an aquarium, or to research them or to do things because it's it's not strange that I'm so afraid of them. It's

normal to be afraid of them. But the thing that would be abnormal about it is to not recognize that fear and to let the defeat me. So you have to take that fear and turn it into your strength. And the first thing to give you the ability to do that is to recognize it and understand that you do have the right to feel that way, and you do have the right to be afraid, and you do have the right to have fear, and you do have

the right to feel that because everybody does. Okay, now everybody admits it, everybody owns it, not everybody embraces it. But as long as you know that you do have that right as a feeling, sharing, growing, evolving, hopefully loving person, that being afraid about some things all the time, or about a few things some of the time is perfectly

normal and perfectly okay. Number two, you have the right to wear white after labor Day, and I'm not saying that is that's the only thing but because you also have the right to wear orange on a Tuesday, or socks with flip flops, or shorts in the winter, or anything you want any time you want. Fashion is about individuality. You have the right to stand out. You have the right to be bold. You have the right to find your brave and you do not have to go by

any sort of societal or norms or anything. You do whatever you want. You let your freak flag fly. You dress the way you want to dress. If you want to dress for comfort, you dress for comfort. You want to dress for speed, you dress for speed. You want to dress to impress, you dress to impress. If you want to dress in a way that nobody else is dressing, you do that because that will give you a certain kind of confidence that nothing else will. We talk all

the time about Halloween and that costume confidence. When you understand that you have the right to feel the way you want to feel, look the way you want to look, dress the way you want to dress, and get people to react the way you either do or don't care how they react, good for you, Good for you. You want to wear white on Christmas Day, good for you. Once you realize that you have that right, You will

so break out of your comfort level. You will so expand beyond the boundaries of your normal you be surprised at how far that can take you in love and in life, and most importantly, in your dating world. So number two, you have the right to essentially be you. Number three, you have the right to travel baggage free, and hopefully, if the airlines ever ramp up again, we're probably all gonna have to travel baggage free, leave your baggage behind, clean house. You don't have to clean out

your experiences. You do not have to eliminate your memories. You do not have to forget everything you've learned. But you do have the right to travel baggage free, leave it home. Everything that happened before it does not mean it's going to happen again. And you don't have to travel with your guard up all the time. You don't have to bring this sort of all encompassing shield from everything that's happened to you into either your non relationship

or your next relationship. You have the right to let it go. There's nothing wrong with that. It's not scary to do that, it's not unhealthy to do that, it's not dangerous to do that. It's actually liberating and free. And the more you are liberated and free, the more your opportunities are going to come to and the more you're going to learn, and the more you're going to

actually be able to live. So if you understand that, I have the right to move forward and look in the in the windshield instead of in the rearview mirror all the time, My God, the change that that will make for you, the change that that will make for the people around you, and the change that that will make for the relationships you're trying to develop. I cannot emphasize that enough. So Number three, you have the right to travel without baggage. Number four you have the right

to say enough okay. You need to know when to fold them. We talk. We did a whole podcast about a year ago and I laid out the law of twenty percent and a few people listen to that. I think you remember it. For those of you who did not, shame on you. Go back and find it. You know, we spent a lot of time trying to get people into good relationships around here, and last year we did a fair amount of episodes trying to get people out

of bad relationships. Because it's just important of a skill to get out of a bad relationship, to know when to say enough, to know when to say this is not working for me, and you have the right to get the fuck out and say enough. The law of twenty percent that I laid on that podcast means that if you are not completely happy or satisfied more, if the times that you are not happy and not satisfied

are more than twenty percent, that's it. That means that relationship is not working, which means two days out of seven is twenty eight point six percent. To do a little math there, So if two days out of a week you're not happy and you're not satisfied, you have

the right to make that change. And the other half of that twenty percent thing was we said that when it's time to make that decision, you take twenty percent of the time that you are in that relationship and you look at that as Okay, we're going to start the clock on whether we can either fix things or get out. So, if you were dating somebody for five months,

twenty percent of five months is one month. So after the five month, if you're like twenty percent of the time I'm not happy, you take twenty percent of the five months, and you say, I'm going to give it one month to try and fix this. If you've been with somebody for five years, same thing, you give it

one year, because that's twenty percent of five one. You're gonna say, I'm gonna give it one year, and if I cannot change that, and if we cannot change this, and if the work we do during that time, then I'm gonna get out. And that's a very easy formula to follow, and it's a very easy way to assess where you are in your relationship and where you are in your life and where you are in your happiness. Is the law of twenty percent. And you have the right to say enough. You have the right to ghost

you do. People are such fucking babies, and you're like, n I need somebody to call me up and tell me why they don't like me. No, you don't, that's your curiosity, that's your need for nice closure. Somebody has the right to get out, however, they have to get out whenever they have to get out. Is it cowardly, sure, maybe, but that's their right. And they have the right to do whatever they need to do to move on and to be comfortable. A lot of people need to do.

Whatever they need to do is to move on and be safe. So if they sense that you are a psycho, essentially they're leaving the metaphorical keys on the counter and they're getting the fuck out. So if they ghosted you, it's over. Who gives a shit. If somebody says I don't want to do this anymore, that's their right and they can do that, and that's all of our right. You have the right to say enough and knowing when

it is time to fold them. As our late friend Kenny Rodgers said, that is such a valuable thing to recognize. It's such a valuable tool in our belts that we have. It is a valuable not to mix metaphors here. Card to play is that you have that right to say enough. Number five, the fifth Dating Amendment. You have the right to be curious, and you need to abc always be curious. You have the right to ask questions of them. You have the right to ask questions of yourself. You have

the right to ask questions of your relationship. And asking questions isn't always an inquisition. Sometimes it's to get to and most of the time is get to know somebody better. Is trying to understand a situation better. It's trying to get to levels of learning and knowing and sharing and

growing together. So if you don't understand things, or something doesn't feel the way you want it to feel, or just in case, you want to try and take things to another level, whether that's in the kitchen or in the bedroom, or on vacation or just the two of you sitting beside by side, you have the right to do that, and you have the right to be curious, and you don't have to ever wonder why am I thinking this way? Or why am I feeling this way?

All of these things are perfectly normal, and that is your right as a human being, and that is your right as a dater to wonder. And wondering is good. Wondering is imagination, Wondering is creativity. Wondering is what leads you to the places you need to go and the happily ever after. If you do not wonder, and if you do not question, and if you are not curious, you're never going to continue to grow and evolve. That is what we should be doing, and that is what

you need to be doing, constantly, constantly, constantly. We could not emphasize that on this podcast enough is how curiosity is the number one asset that anybody can have as a dater and is probably the number one asset that everybody can have as a human being. It is where you find the answers, It is where you find the progress. It is where you find everything that you ever wanted to find lies in curiosity. So number five, you have the right to be curious. Number six, you have the

right to move. Literally, if you are in an unhappy place in life, or you're not in a happy relationship, you need to move. I personally believe every person in America needs to move seven hundred miles every seven years. That's my personal formula and philosophy. I have not always practiced that it's time to move, but I believe if every person moved seven hundred miles at least every seven years, you'd get the most out of life. You'd get the most out of love, you get the most out of yourself,

you get the most out of others. You'd get the most out of your country. Your perspective would grow. You do not have to stay there just because you've always stayed there. You do not have to live there because you grew up there. I'm always shocked by the statistic of how many people still live within fifty miles of where they went to high school. That's shocking to me. That saddens me. That means people are not moving out of their comfort zone. And your comfort zone is never

where the answers lie. Nobody says you have to stay there. And don't give me that, Oh, well, my family's here. You can visit your family, and your family would much rather visit you in a place if it was a better place and you were happier. You know, if you're happier, that's a fun person to be around, and that's always a fun place to visit. I want to go visit happy. I want to go visit a happy person. I want to go visit a person who's exploring new things and

can tell me about them. I want to visit a person and I want to talk to a person. I want to gauge with a person who has had new experiences. Some people, I don't understand why they don't believe this is their right, or I don't believe they can do this, or they think it's logistically impossible. Bullshit, and don't give me that you have kids. Kids move all the time.

And one of the things that is going to come out of this unfortunate situation is a lot of industries are going to be go through a lot of upheaval, a lot of businesses are going to be changing, a lot of people are going to have career paths that they might have to make an alteration on, and that is both unfortunate and that is also really fortunate because it's changed to it. It's a chance to assess where you are, where you can go, what you can do, and maybe who you can be if you take it

somewhere else. Pack a bag, hit the road. You do have the right to move. Nobody is forcing you there. We're spending this time feeling imprisoned in our homes. Maybe people understand that you are not imprisoned in your town, you are not imprisoned in your community, and most importantly, you are not imprisoned in your life. So pack it up, hit the road. I'm doing that. Be like me. Okay, probably eight years too late, but I'm doing it. So

stop procrastinating. You have the right to move. Number seven, this is a good one. You have the right not to care. And we talked about that in a podcast a few episodes ago. People care about the stupidest shit. Kids Remember the one we did with the kids like five episodes back. Kids care about the right things. Kids care about sharing, and kids care about learning, and kids care about playing, and kids care about doing the right things.

You have the right not to care, not to give a fuck the I don't give a fuck about this or that or a situation or whatever. Stop caring about things that do not matter. The more you care about things that do not matter, the more you're going to forget what does matter. You need to focus on things you should care about. And if you don't have enough things that you should care about, you need to figure out a way to find things that you care about.

Me I, personally, it's very sad for me how little this quarantine situation has changed a lot of my day to day life. I don't engage with that many people. I don't do that manything except when I'm you know, traveling around doing the Great Love debate. I do lead a little bit of a hermit existence. That's a bad, bad thing. It means I'm not caring about the right things, and I'm not getting all the experiences that I should, And most importantly, I'm probably caring about the wrong things.

I care too much about Starbucks hours, I care too much about French fries, and I gotta stop caring about that. And you have the right not to care about all of those things that you believe you need to care about. And that's really really important. So you need to make a list of things, what do I care about and what don't I care about? And you need to take off a lot of things on the list of what you do care about, and you need to add a

same thing with both lists. You need to add things that you do not care about and make that list long. It's a good thing not to care about things. It's a liberating thing. It's a healthy thing. Stop caring about the wrong things, start caring about the right things. And those lists should change. It shouldn't be the same five things for fifty years of your life that you care

about or don't care about. They should be fluid, they should be going because there should be new things, new experiences, new people, new stimuli always coming in and out of your world, and you should look at them and think, I have the right not to care about that. Now, I have the right not to care about that anymore. And I have the right to not care about that ever. Again, it's a really healthy thing. It's going to go a long way in your life. It's going to go a

long way in dating. On the next note, and these are related, but they are separate. Number eight, you have the right to not be your parents. You have the right to not be your parents. We're always afraid of being our parents. They're turning into our parents. But I'm shocked at how many people are living the exact same life, on the exact same path, and a lot of times, i say earlier in the lots of the same place

as their parents. Good for fucking Prince Harry. You know, we did foreshadow that very presiently on this podcast two years ago, that he was not going to be happy in his relationship and in his marriage with Megan. If he followed the path that Charles followed, and he followed the path that his grandfather Philip followed, and if he even followed the path that his brother was following, he had the right to seek a different path. You have the right to seek a different path just because your

parents were episcopalian. And I'm not to pick on the Episcopals, but they're the most neutral. My mother was a Piscopalian. Again, just because my mother was Episcopalian doesn't mean that I have to be Episcopalian. Just because my father was Catholic doesn't mean that I have to be Catholic. Just because my grandmother was Jewish doesn't mean I have Yeah, and I'm a real mess on this stuff too. Maybe that's why I don't hold all these kinds of stings. But

you don't have to do anything. You don't have to believe anything that your parents believed. You don't have to do anything that your parents did. You don't have to have the live the life that your parents did, And you don't have to live a life or marry the person or do whatever is expected just because your parents did so or say so. The Bachelor of this season, it was a huge plot line at the end where it was about whether or not the mother approved or

you know, was the right one for the mother. I'm one of those people like, who gives a fuck. You do what you need to do to be happy. Your mother does not know how you are. Ninety five percent of your existence from the time you left the house at eighteen years old. She doesn't know you, like everybody, She just doesn't this whole. Like your mother knows your best and your family knows your best. They don't. They really don't. They don't see a lot of your existence.

They don't understand the way your brain works. They don't understand what makes you you at thirty five or forty five or fifty five the way they did it five. My mother thinks because I liked apple sauce when I was three years old, that I would like it at forty Like, that's insane to me. But you don't have to like anything the same. You don't have to like things because your parents did. You don't have to do

things because of their expectations. And most importantly, you do not have to live the life they did, and you do not have to do the things they do. You are you, They are them, They gave birth to you. That is not a right to control your life, and that is not a right to tell you how to live your life. So you need to find your own path. You need to grow your own thoughts, and you need to create your own opportunities that are going to make you happy, whether that is in love or in your

occupation or in anything you do. You have the right to not be your parents. Number nine, you have the right to do better, and that can be anything that could be. You could do better in your in your fitness, You could do better at your job, you could do better in your house, you could do better in your hobbies. And you have the right to do better in who you date and how you date. Just because this is fine or this has worked out or these are the kind of people that I liked in the path doesn't

mean anything. Doesn't mean one thing moving forward, as we go back into the world and God knows what kind of world that's going to be, you can do better. You can always do better, and you can always find and I'm saying you can do better than your happily loving husband that you're with for twenty years. It doesn't mean you can do better than him. It means you can do better with him, or with her, or from her or from the two of you. You can constantly

improve your status quo. Your status quo is a snapshot of who you guys are. When you guys are it's stagnant, you need to look where can we go, what can we be, and how can we become everything that is possible, beyond what we ever thought was possible, the level of possibilities in who you are and in your in the two of you, or in the relationship you want to get. Never stop forgetting that that you have the right to do better, even if you are as happy as you

possibly could be. And I'm a pretty happy person, and I think I'm happier than most people because I do think that way. I do think that I'm always going to get better, I hope. I do believe I have the right to get better. I do believe there's opportunities to get better, and I recognize those all the time. I am getting in better shape during this quarantine. I

am being more thoughtful during this time. I think a lot of this is good for me because I look at this as an opportunity, and the opportunity stems out of the right that we all have. We have the right to be and do better. And most importantly, this might seem obvious, but you know, a lot of things in the Bill of Rights seem obvious, but maybe they weren't. Except for the soldier quartering in your house. One not obvious.

The tenth Amendment to your Dating Bill of rights is you have the right to be happy and to feel loved, and to be loved and to love, and all of those seem separate, but they are all tied together. You be surprised at how many people do not feel that they have the right to this, either because they haven't experienced it, or because they have something from their past that is leading their brain or their actions or their mindset to think, I don't deserve this. I don't know

what this is. I don't know if I'm capable of doing. This stems into the fear we talked about stems in the childhood we talked about and yeah, I think if you go to therapy like I did, you will understand that you didn't necessarily do something wrong when you were seven or seventeen or thirty seven, or the situation wasn't right when you were eight, at eighteen or twenty eight, but you do retain the right. That is the inalienable right that never goes away for anybody, regardless of your

life situation, regardless of your dating situation. You have the right to be happy. And once you understand, you have the right to be happier, like I deserve this. This is what I'm supposed to have. Then you can say, how do I get this? Not that, Where's mine? Where's my chat? Where's my happily? Ever after, once you understand that you have the right to it and that you own that, and that your entire happiness and love life and dating existence is in your control because it is

your right. I would much rather have that than to believe that, you know, my next fifty years of my life are out of my control because of some other reason, because I want to point fingers or blame somebody or wait along till fate intervenes. Fate wants you to do the work. You control your own fate all the time, the decisions you make, the actions you take, all of it. That is about you. What you're doing, what you're thinking, what you're feeling, and the changes that you are making.

So if you believe you have the right to be happy, then you need to figure out how to make that happen. Here you go, You're right, go ahead, leave doors open, doors open to enter and the doors open to exit, either one. But it's your door and you have to go through it. And you have to recognize that that door is never going to go away. That is the inalienable right as a human being is you have the right to be happy. You have the right to be loved. You have the right to feel love, and all of

us have the right to love. So to review. The ten dating amendments to the ten Dating Commandments are Number one, you have the right to be afraid. Number two you have the right to be you wear that orange, and fuck you if you say I don't have the right to wear socks with flip slops, I absolutely do. I'll consider it. People consider it Asian because it's a little exotic. I'm gonna wear it. That's my right. Three you have the right to travel without baggage. Number four you have

the right to say enough. Five you have the right to be curious. Six you have the right to move literally or metaphorically. Number seven you have the right not to care. Number eight you have the right to not be your parents. Number nine you have the right to do better. And number ten you have the right to be happy. If you thought we left anything out, and we need to because remember we're up to I don't

know what are we up to? Twenty five amendments, twenty six amendments, A lot of amendments, some very logical ones never get through uh and some very crazy ones do get through. So shoot us your feedback Great Lovedebate at gmail dot com. Let us know what you think. We believe as always that the best dating site is Earth and we need to get together again because, as always at the Great Love Debate, we never stopped making love. See you next time.