This is Pod Popular Podcast for the People, The Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate. It's a Great Love Deba.
Hi again, everyone's Brian Howie. Welcome to The Great Love Debate, the world's number one dating and relations podcast since twenty fifteen. I am here in the very fine studios of Pod Popular Podcast.
For the People. I'm at the one uh just outside.
Of Cleveland Legacy Village where I could I could tell you what time of year it is as I record this, but I want to keep it ever green and vague, so I'll just say that the weather is miserable outside. And if you know Cleveland, that's pretty much covers everything from October to June.
So take a guess. You got a pretty good shot of hitting it.
Anyway, I don't have a guest today. Some of you like that, some of you don't like that. Some of you like, you know, when it's just me. Some of you don't like just me. Some of you don't like me, which is fine. That actually makes for better banter, you know, say LEVI here on the shores of Lake Erie. I can handle it, but this one's just kind of personal, so I didn't want to have some random author on here to be like, wait, why did you do that?
Because that didn't quite seem relevant and seemed a little disingenuous and not fair to them. So an ex ex ex girlfriend of mine, I don't know how far back you have to go in the girlfriend pantheon to sort.
Of label how far back, but pretty pretty long ago. I'm getting old.
She was in my twenties, so she's probably a Baker's dozen serious girlfriends ago.
And she reached out to me out of the blue the other day.
She sent me a message, and I had not spoken to her in probably a decade, and I hadn't seen her in probably twice that But she reached out because she wanted to talk about my other podcast, Dead to Me, an estrangement podcast, both to tell me that it was good and to possibly be on it as a guest. And I said, who are you estranged from? And I knew she was never close to her dad since birth, So I don't really consider that estrangement because the relationship
never really existed in the first place. If you never really had an relationship, I don't think you're estranged from it. He was kind of absent, and she said, no, my mom, and she began to explain her very complicated and apparently at times really angry relationship with her mother, who I actually remember knowing pretty well, spending quite a bit of time with. They had a nice summerhouse in the Hamptons, it was lovely, and I remember liking her mother quite
a lot. And as she was explaining this relationship between her and her mom, I began to thank Jesus, how out of touch was I with this girlfriend who I lived with and had somewhat of a life with as much as you can in your twenties. And I had no idea about any of this. So as she's telling me, I'm like, did I not care? Did I not ask? Did I not pay attention? Did she not feel close enough or comfortable enough to even tell me any of this? Or did she tell me any of this? And I
just didn't pay attention to it. And so randomly, while she was telling me about her mom and the complicated nature of it, I felt the need to apologize to her, and I basically said, I think you were the one who got the worst of me, at least as a boyfriend, And that probably isn't true, I assure you.
I got way worse.
In subsequent relationships, you know, not because I was a jerker, a cheat, or any of those things, mostly because I think I just didn't care or didn't care enough, or didn't care enough about them beyond you know, you're my pretty girlfriend, and didn't care beyond like this is fun? What are you upset about? I didn't care enough to know them, to peel back the layers, to ask the questions, and looking back and knowing how much I need that now from people, from my partners, and knowing how much
I do that now. Thankfully, I'm constantly curious and trying to learn and know and understand the woman I'm dating. I just felt like, how much did I miss out with these relationships and these mostly really great girls by simply being out of touch. So again, as she's relaying this, I probably fell back on old habits. As she was explaining her situation, I suddenly, you know, consciously or subconsciously made it about me and how I felt. So the
conversation got off track. She will be coming on dead to me, so follow that podcast. But it got me thinking about this conversation, the one I'm having and want to have with you, guys today are our partners and have our partners present in past gotten the best of you or at least the best at that moment? And how important is that in the greater context of making a relationship work? And last, so you know, as I've learned, when you go to therapy, you go to therapy, They're not going.
To give you answers.
They're going to try and lead you down a path to find those answers. That's what I'm gonna do today. I don't think there is an easy answer for this, but I do want to explore it a bit from a few different angles because it's complicated. You know, a little bit of me sort of talking through this out loud in real time, but I want you guys to kind of do the same thing. But I got to take a quick break at a deep breath because I
don't know where this is going to go. And we will be back right after this, and we are back, So what is the very best of you? Because obviously we're all works in progress and the very best has probably hopefully definitely yet to be realized. But if you suddenly right here in a moment, you hit the buzzer like on that uh, what's that old game show with the whammy? I'm probably dating myself a bit here, press
your luck. Actually, come to think of it, I think that old show is back on ABC now, Like every old show is hosted by Strayhan or Seacrest or Steve Harvey or someone Elizabeth Banks. Somebody just said, Elizabeth Banks, it's on anyway. If you hit the button and you froze it? What version of you is someone getting? And I think all you can really ask for and hope for is that it is a better version than it was a month ago, or a year ago, or a relationship ago.
But if you were real, I don't know at best self.
Centered aloof emotionally distant shithead like like twenty six year old or thirty four year old Brian Howie. Is the shift incremental and that matters? Or can it be seismic?
Can you just shed the skin and change things?
And we've had a lot of really important and smart voices on the show over the years who talk about how how to be better partners and the fundamentals, you know, more empathetic, more attentive, is your partner being heard in a moment or a situation and awesome that that's all correct, and I'm not dismissing any of that. And I've said it before that I personally have gotten a million times better, like I think in the top, you know, one percent
time in terms of expressing gratitude and remorse. There are a whole lot of thank yous that I'm sorries that come out of me these days, and not because anything significant has changed behavior wise, like I don't need to say these things, and not because I have bushels of them, you know, saved up in star because I spent decades not using them, but mostly because I feel things better.
And deeper and more often.
And I don't think that comes from an increase in empathy, you know, on that scale, I think you are who you are. I think doing this show has made me listen to a lot of voices more and figure out what's important. I think the great love to be has mattered, and so I have a unique advantage with that.
You know.
But it's not so it's not empathy. I think it's curiosity. And you guys know, I love that word and the concept. To me, everything from the from the first date till to death to us part is rooted in curiosity. The desire to learn and share and grow and explore.
With another person.
But I think curiosity in this case we're talking about here being the best version of yourself with your partner. I think it comes from learning them and understanding them, the curiosity, the questions why do they feel this way? Why aren't I seeing what matters to them? What are their past and present triggers and traumas, And how does my behavior or lack thereof, or behaviors or communication or
lack thereof tapp into those triggers and traumas. So I grant you, none of this is first date shit where you're trying to negotiate the nacho toppings, so you don't want to bring all that up then, But all of it matters. I think I told a story once twice on this podcast. I've done a lot of these podcasts. I don't know what I've told about. How I was dating a girl for six months once and then I
suddenly mispronounced her last name, just didn't know it. So she had this unusual Israeli I think it was Israeli name, and I never heard her say it out loud before, and I had never said it out loud before and one night we're at a restaurant where she made the reservation and the made her d asked and I boldly blurted it out incorrectly, and she freaked the fuck out, fucking freaked.
You don't even know my name, And she wasn't quite right. I knew her name. I just didn't know how to pronounce her name.
But she was right on the fact that I never asked because I didn't care. She was super hot and we were having fun, so who cares about her origin or her family or her ethnic roots, right, it was exotic, And that was my mistake, not the mispronunciation, because I could give you the name and the spelling, so you guys could be like, oh, I understand screwing that up.
That's weird, But to be honest, like, I still don't know it, so I don't even want to say it now in case she's listening, and I'll be like, he fucker still doesn't know my name anyway. But that's my point, and that was her point. Something as simple as that totally wrecked the relationship because I was just doing enough to get by. I didn't know because I didn't want
to know, or I didn't care. To know it didn't matter exotic name, she had exotic eyes, cared about the exotic eyes, which is and was a terrible job by me, and as you can see, obviously not the best version of me or anyone. I wouldn't do that now, somewhat of a lesson learned, But I'm sure I do a dozen other things that I need to be better on. We all do, so yeah, I mean, if I'm looking back on the one who called me, we can forgive a whole lot of behaviors in our twenties because of
the of the blur of the buzz or whatever. So if you're listening to me and you're twenty three, you're off the hook on a lot of shit. But you will have to get better, and you will have to turn a bit of a corner in your thirties so that by the time we turned that corner into real adulthood and you can decide for yourself whenever that starts. We really shouldn't have any more excuses. We should care enough and be curious enough about them to do better
and be better for them and for the relationship. And I've received calls like that from people I've dated ex girlfriends, on the flip side, meaning they called me and said I know I was difficult to date, or hey, I know you tried. I was just a mess at the time, and that call used to make me feel better because I felt like it let me off the hook. I was like, Aha, I knew it wasn't me.
She was just stressed out at work. I was wonderful.
But to be honest, now that I kind of know, it probably wasn't true. Not that they, you know, were a mess or shouldn't have made that call, but the way I played a part in it, the best version of me probably could have done more to create a better version of her. So it's not my job or
your job, you know, to fix anyone, not completely. But it was my job as a boyfriend and as a partner and as a man to create an environment where some degree of healing can at least start to take place, or they at least feel safe enough and be vulnerable enough to say, I'm struggling here. Can we work through this together? Can you help me? Can we talk? And if they, you know, weren't feeling that they could say that or were in a place to say that, how much of that was because I did not create an
environment where they could. So, you know, while it's probably too late for the past relationships, I'm not saying you should pick up the phone and call everybody ever dated. Yeah, you know, you know you don't need to fire off a text or do any of those things like they're in the rear view mirror most of the time for a reason. This is about the relationship you are in
now or the one you want to be in. Are you in it or going into it with a version of yourself that is the very best it can be, or are we still falling back on old habits and patterns and behaviors. I don't I don't want this to sound all dating coachy because that is not what I want to do and it drives me nuts.
And somebody's like, oh, you're a dating coach. No, I am not, And I don't want to get to woo woo therapy.
A lot of this is coming from my own therapy, and I'm kind of relaying things questions that have been raised in my sessions to you guys to save you three hundred dollars, But because that's not what I do here, I'm not I'm not trying.
To be your guru.
We're all in this together, the same boat, the same level of relationship competence or incompetence, we're all But I think this is a valuable exercise to ask yourself these questions, because I do that, to be curious about yourself, your mindset, your behavior.
What are you doing? Can it be better?
And how close can you get to the best of you so you can get the best of them, get a much better shot of getting the best of them if they're getting somewhat close to the best of you. And a lot of these thoughts in my own head are rooted in regret. And I used to say all the time proudly, like I have no regrets because I looked at what the outcome was for me. Of course I have no regrets if the outcome was fine for me, But what kind of trail of wreckage did I leave behind?
I bet those people have regrets. I bet those girlfriends have regrets. I don't think they regret like, oh my god, I think I wish I never met him or we never dated. I think they regret like I wish things things were better, And so I bet they think I should have regrets and regrets aren't necessarily a bad thing. That tends to be a bad word, you know, because you're taking a moment or you're taking a temperature or situation and thinking what could I do differently or better?
But you know, if you look at it that way, not to change the outcome, but you look at it like, what were the nuances and what were the decisions, and what were the conversations, and what was my mindset to think? How can I change the possibilities moving better? Because you should learn from regret. How do I improve the chance
of things working out? The odds, the percentages. Does it have a better chance of working out and making us happy if we can just do better and be better and try and get as close as you can to the best version of you, because that's what they want and I think you want it too. So I hope that made some sense.
I don't know.
Check the aforementioned Dead to Me podcast on all the platforms. It's good, and the response to it is just it's blown me away. It is already in the top ten percent of all podcasts in the world, and a lot of that is because a lot of you guys.
Have been checking it out.
So shoot me an email about this podcast and we're talking about today. Great Lovedebate at gmail dot com. Questions, comments, thoughts. I promise the next episode we need to laugh a little bit more on this podcast. I feel like it's got a lot too a little bit too serious in the last few months. Maybe that's the bad weather in Cleveland. So we're gonna flip it to the sunny side of dating shortly. I promise please like, share, follow, and review
this podcast and dead to meet your reviews. Still after ten years of this podcast mean a lot in the podcasting ecosystem because, as always at the Great Love Debate, we never stopped making love.
See you next time the Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love.
The Green love to be. It's the Green Love to be.