GLD 494 - Your Own Worst Enemy

I am here. It is not warm, so I'll tell you what time of year it is in Cleveland, which could be anywhere from January to January. Anyway, you're in there anyway. So we are at the four hundred and ninety ish episode of this podcast, which means the ball is dropping and countdown is on towards our big five

hundredth episode. It's coming up. And I asked you guys for some suggestions on what we should do, and I've kicked around some ideas with the longtime producer of The Great Love Debate, the two time Emmy Award winning Kickup, and I think it's going to be a little bit of everything you guys like worst Dates, Happily Ever afters, some of our greatest hits, some surprise guests, and more. So you have just a couple more weeks to send in your suggestions, so sent them in Great Love Debate

at gmail dot com. We do have our absolute finalized list of the ten worst dates ever. Those are locked and loaded. So I don't care what happened to you this past weekend. I don't care what's going to happen to you next weekend. You ain't cracking this list. These are gold. We've been working on this list for ten years,

so look forward to that. So, because it's miserably cold here in Cleveland, Ohio, apparently my guest has a cold and she was going to be really good for this episode, but she canceled, which you know, that could be sort of related or tangential to what I'm going to get into today, or maybe just coincidence. I don't know. You guys often wonder do I pick my guests first and then decide what I want to talk about with them?

What I picked the subject matter first, and then the guest can sort of hit the ping pong ball back around the topic. And the answer is the latter. She did not show today, but it is on with the show because I knew what I wanted to talk about very specifically, and you know, she's really good at this. But we'll see what we can do here. What I want to talk about today is self sabotage, the whole thing, why we do it, when we do it, how we

do it, because it is a whole thing. My guest, she's self sabotaged having a big audience by canceling on this podcast today, so Sey LEVI, but I have dated my share of self sabotage. And I know what you're thinking. You're like, oh, it's a mercy killing by them, or you know who wouldn't want to sabotage a relationship with you for self preservation. So I will pause while you

get your jokes and wise cracks in three two one. Good, okay, And I'm sure men do this too, but I'm gonna focus mostly on the female side of this because that is what I've witnessed the most. They call it runaway bride, not runaway groom, you know, So it is what it is. Maybe it's a stereotype, but that's what we're getting in today.

And what do I mean by self sabotage. It means that they can't handle it when it's too good, or they're afraid of it getting too good, feels too right too quick, or they pull away before having to even decide if it's good at all. I had a girlfriend once who every time we had a good time or had a nice experience or positive feelings, she would say, yeah, I'm just waiting for the other shoe to drop, and

I'm like, what what a buzzkill? It was like somehow she couldn't handle things simply being nice or going okay. There had to be some impending backlash or repercussions around the corner, or some price to pay for the pleasantry. Not to be too I literative, but the price to

pay for the pleasantry. And it was so incredibly frustrating, definitely for me and almost assuredly for her too, that she felt like she would either either jinx it or set herself up for heartbreak by letting any positive feelings kick in. And I kept telling her just because something didn't go right before, it didn't mean something couldn't go right now, and she couldn't accept it because she just

wouldn't believe it. There always had to be some boomerang, some backsplash, and that was someone I was actually in a relationship with for quite a while. And so it would always be this Sissyphusian Sisyphis, the one who rolled the rock up the hill and kept prolling back down, Sissyphus. But how many who's the one who flew too gross to the sun Icarus? Something like that Greek mythology. It's a classics minor, But how many of us have steered away from from green lights and towards the red flags

before something even had a chance. You cancel the night before, or you ghosted when you started to have these feelings, you pulled the parachute right before the best part of the night. You know, I've had it happen. I've seen it happen. They they seek an off ramp before the second or third day because of the headlights ahead. Were just heartbreak in their minds, almost like you from the past. So that's a little bit what I want to get into complicated stuff again. I don't have all the answers.

My jobs to raise the questions. I had somebody coming in she might have the answers, but we're going to seek some answers together. I'm gonna raise a few more questions, but I take a quick break. We will be back right after this, and we are back. So the reasons people self sabotage, I think it's pretty obvious. They're almost always rooted in fear, fear of being hurt, the fear of being rejected, the fear of the unknown, fear of the outcome. But the ways that people self sabotage, that's

that's such a huge range of possibilities. Sometimes it is stuff you wouldn't think of. It is nit picking your your partner to death. You'll you know, death by a thousand paper cuts, a little bit every single day, po poke, poke poke, hoping subconsciously it'll drive them away, you know, knowing that your constant comments or subconsciously having it taking a toll and you're unable to stop it because that part of you that you can't reach and really can't

even understand it wants to blow it all up. Or you stop communicating any positivity whatsoever. You're always harping on and you're obsessed with the negative. Or you get jealous for no reason and you cause a fight because of the jealousy, or you don't show up for the dates, or you don't speak to the future, or you reach out to someone in your past. All of it can do any of it, either quickly or over the long haul.

It can even rise to the level of cheating. You know, we did an episode a couple months go on infidelity. You feel too good in his arms, so let me spend some time in someone else's because I don't deserve that. I don't feel worthy of the good, so let me revert to the bad. What happens a lot. You don't know that you deserve the right to feel good, to be happy, to be loved. And I learned that doing this show. I never really thought about that before. We

had a guy named doctor Gary Solier. He's our live show Bunch, but he's on this podcast too, and that was his real his mantra is that all of us have a right to be loved. And I never really thought about it that way. You know, somebody that you've heard deserved to it, or I've earned it or whatever, but a fundamental human right to be loved. That was

this philosophy, and I think I agree with that. I never thought of it that way, and sometimes either we don't recognize that right or we forego that right simply because it feels too right, So you don't even give a new relationship a chance, or you might prevent an existing relationship from being everything it could be and needed to be. And it's weird. I always hear like what happened? Oh he looked good on paper. So many people tend to date quote unquote on paper. I go out with

him because he seems good on paper. This guy was perfect on paper. And then somehow and sometimes it all falls apart because of something that wasn't even on the paper, never date on paper, or something that ever wasn't ever going to be on the paper. So you're really you're going this with this listless list, and then you're scrolling in the margins of stuff that was never going to be there in the first place, good or bad, And it's simply ghosts in your head. It's ghosts of past

relationships or things that simply aren't real. You could not, you know, ride that high to see where it might lead. And I'm fundamentally an optimist when it comes to dating. I don't believe in it's too good to be true. I want it to be too good to be true, because that means we're living in a fairy tale. And yeah, even a grumpy, aging dude like me, Damn right, I want to live in a fairy tale? Who want that? Isn't that the dream? Isn't that why we call it

a dream? So why can't the dream be a reality when the dream becomes real? Sign on the dotted line, don't scare it away? No, I don't know. You can't aim too high if you keep shooting yourself in the foot. Does that make sense? I don't know. You can't win the race if you can't even get out of that the gate. Whatever simile or metaphor or analogy you want to apply to this, it's true. We are always, almost

always our own worst enemies. And if we don't believe in us and our ability to get everything that we absolutely deserve, then the relationship has no chance, and the

other person never stood a chance. And so yeah, we always need to look after ourselves first it But doesn't it suck to know that you were depriving the other person at a happy relationship and a real honest chance at loving simply because of something in your head that's not fair to them, and you keep doing it over and over and over and it keeps happening over and over and over, Like that would suck if somebody was really giving you everything that you ever wanted, and you

found a reason to imagine that they were giving something that you weren't getting in a negative like that makes no sense and it's not fair to the person. Imagine how frustrating that would be if you were on the other end of it. I can't even imagine. Actually I can imagine because it's happened to me. It sucks. And I know this sounds a lot like a like a

pep talking, and sometimes it is. And when you know it's happening to you with someone and you're trying to convince them of what they're doing and how it's all

in their head, and it makes it even worse. It sounds so insane, sounds so insane to them because they don't want to believe that this is what they're doing, and it sounds so insane to you because you're like, is this this relationship that I'm in that I keep doing everything that I think they want me to do and they and they can't accept the good they cannot receive I give, they don't receive, or the other way around,

like it has to be rooted. The dream has to be rooted in reality, and the reality is what has actually happened, not the negative imaginary stuff. You can imagine that the good stuff that is ahead, But if you're imagining bad stuff that is right in front of you, like that's that's going to kill the road. It's gonna kill everybody, you know. And so if you're somebody who does this, generally you're aware and is the one good thing. A lot of people who have done this repeated and say, yeah,

I tend to self sabotage. I think you got to let that person know up front. Don't let them know, you know, when you're collecting your belongings at their house, like, yeah, sorry, self sabotaged it because it's too late. Then you know, be aware of you why this is fundamental. You know, this is therapy one on one again. The person I was going to have on here tease, he wrote a whole book on it. We'll have her back if she doesn't self sabotage, the opportunity be on the great love debate.

But if you're somebody who does it, or you've had it happen to you, well not to let ourselves totally off the hook. What is it about our behaviors and the environment we're creating the causes somebody to self sabotage? What made them pull the parachute the emergency? Uh, fire thingy, fire thingy, I'm looking at one right now. What makes them do that? Or is there anything about it? I mean, it's not just like, oh I'm so good they couldn't

handle it. It's not quite that. So we all have to sort of do a little inventory and self analysis on this to figure it out. On this note, the good people here at pod Popular, which includes me, we are we did this couple of years ago, we're gonna do it again. We want to do a podcast that is sort of related to this, like produce a show

about this. And it's going to be called cold Feet, and it is about from men or women who called off engagements, not who got divorced three weeks after or not who broke up you know before I want actual called off an engagement or called off a wedding. And we are looking not for stories, we are looking for

a host. We are going to produce this podcast. We're gonna give this podcast away a year of podcasting to anybody who feels they can do this, who can drive this ship, has personal experience with it, interested in it, and wants to We'll do the job of getting all the stories. But we were looking for somebody to host

this show. I thought about doing it myself because I'm fascinated by it, but I've never had the cold feet, so I'm not a good example somebody who because the hardest thing to do in the world world is to call off that wedding, call off that engagement. The deposits are there, the families invited, like it takes such guts to do that, and so many people go through with

it knowing that it's not going to work out. So I want to hear from the ones who stepped up and did because I think it'll help a lot of people. The podcast will be called cold Feet, and we are looking for a host. So shoot me an email, Great Love Debate at gmail dot com if you think you've got the stuff to do this, and I think it's got to start with your own personal experience. Those of you who have reached out because you're listening to my

other podcast dead to me. Really, we're very gracious knowing that I shared my own story. So if you're gonna host the gold Feet podcast, you can have thought out feet now, but they've better been cold in the future. And I don't mean you live in Cleveland, Ohio in the middle of the winter. So shoot us an email if you think you've got a win it takes. We

will handle all the hard parts. If you want to host the Cold feat podcast, shoot me them a Great Love Debate at Gmail comm as well, if you've got thoughts about self sabotage or history with it, or if you want to chime in your thoughts on what we should do on the five the show. I think we have it locked and loaded. I have a meeting with Kko about it and we're gonna break it all down. Please, even after ten years, like share, follow and review this podcast.

Your reviews always mean a lot to me and in the podcasting ecosystem because, as always at the Great Love Debate, we never stop making love. See you next time the Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate. Degreat Love Debate. It's a Great Love Debate.