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 Debate.
Hi, get everyone, It's Brian Howie. Welcome to The Great Love Debate, the world's number one dating air relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. I am here in the very fine studios of Pod Populi Podcasts for the People. I am back at the one in Boca Ratone, Florida. I have not been here in some time, and it is delightful.
It's delightful here in the Boca Ratone. There's many issues that come up on this podcast, in this Great Love Debate that we're doing, this conversation that we've been having for over ten years, and there's a lot of them that I can see both sides on. People are always like,
where do you stand on the debate. I'm not saying my job is to stay neutral, but I'm saying that my job is to hear all sides of this and then try and relay a consensus that is going to give people the better opportunity to find what they're looking for. Kind of lets me sidestep any responsibility. But there's there's certain things that there's no absolutes on there's no clear cut answers. But what I'm talking about today, I think
there are two clear cut answers. And not only does each side have two clear cut answers, but I think each of those have two answers. So it's a perfect alignment of hopefully logic. You know, emotion doesn't always match up with logic. It's one of those rare occurrences, like a like a comment or any clips that sort of sores by you and you can be like, was.
Is that right?
Do that what happened line up with what I thought and felt? Doesn't always happen that way. And so this is what I want to talk about. It's about getting back together with your ex. And I'm not talking about married people doing that.
That happens every once in a while.
It's extremely rare, and I'm gonna explore that a whole lot deeper with a couple that I recently met, who did that, Who did just that?
They got back together after forty years forty years.
I have an upcoming episode that I'm going to have them on, I promise, And it's unbelievable what happened.
But that's a tease for you. But as I've mentioned before.
On this show, I'm not really sure why married people don't get back together more often after they divorced, because you figured, at the peak of that relationship, it's very height the marriage, the kids, the hope for the happily ever after, you figure that peak was a greater peak than almost any other relationship that they had, and you
would figure you'd want to revisit that peak. You figure they'd get together at a high school graduation with the child that they made together, and they would feel that bond and they would give to say that, give us another try.
But people who have gotten divorced always.
Explained to me, because I've never gotten divorced, they always explain that once lawyers get involved, any shot at the romance is gone, and the any good and some of the memories have been sucked out of it. So, Sey LEVI, even for people who are like, oh my god, we're the best of friends still, it just very rarely, rarely happens. Well, what I want to talk about today is when it happens with boyfriends and girlfriends, the ones that go on
and off, back and forth. And so I'm going to break that category down.
Into two subsets. The first type of this.
Is when you're in the relatively early stages of the relationship, maybe the first year or so, and you might say a year isn't early, but you know, if you're planning on doing fifty years with someone, a year is two percent, So yeah, it's still early.
Those situations.
So there's a few reasons why people break up and get back together.
In these situations.
Lots of it has to do with not understanding the other person clearly enough, or what you might not want, what you might want or need from the other person. And lots of it might come from external stimuli that you weren't prepared to handle. It was, you know, jealousy from certain behaviors, why is that girl always around.
Who's that guy from the office, blah blah blah.
Pressures from your job or your family. Could be one or two bad nights out, It could be a drunk morning after. It could be a fight, a misunderstanding, somebody said too much, somebody said too little, somebody got scared or came on too strong or misinterpreted, and no, no, no, no.
And on.
The list is endless of why we can be pulled apart or not want to work through the awkwardness or the ick to the other side. But what happens is soon enough you think, oh, maybe they weren't so bad. You know, that anger kind of fades away, and they were kind of cute, and you knew a few things about them that you liked, and you remember those things. But a whole lot of the pull towards a reconciliation is usually centered around the unknown. You still don't feel like you played out the whole hand.
I said this to this woman the other day.
I go, women are oftentimes more likely to get back together with their boyfriend from college than they are their ex husband, even if they dated that guy in college like six weeks. And it's not that the XPUZM was so bad. It's that there's that part of I didn't quite play it all out in the circumstance I want at the time I want, and their shrinings and I didn't wait for them to turn thirty five and all that kind of stuff. I feel like there's still some
meat on the bone, so to speak. And yeah, you found out some things you didn't like, but you didn't find out everything. And finding out everything thing is where the hope and possibilities lie that. We always talk about it, so you keep after it, and you revisit it, and you return to it, and on and on and on. And that's why there are two sides to this. Some will say, as soon as you see a red flag, that's it. When people show who they really are, believe them.
And I agree with those, yes, and there's absolutely merit to that train of thought. And most of the time it probably is the case. It wasn't quite right from the jump, and rather than you know, square peg round hole it, you just.
Get out and move on. But there's also the other.
Side of those who say, well, maybe if you just communicated better, or if you just got through that misunderstanding, or someone was willing to change their habits, And that is always the key to every relationship, even the ones that are you know, blissful for forty years from the beginning, the willingness for one or both of them to change. And that's where this elasticity comes from, not that you stretched it out so far out that you stretched out
the sweater and it doesn't work anymore. It's that pulling apart and the coming together within a relationship that actually has benefit, you know, Do you want to be in a relationship that is constantly fighting and making up? No, you do not. It's too dramatic, it's too exhausting. Do you want to be in a relationship where where one is always looking at the good parts and one is always looking at the bad parts? The red flags green lights conundrum that we always come back to around here.
No, you don't.
That's not healthy either. And you can go to couple's therapy and work it out. But if you never work it out, then you're doing nothing but making a therapist
very wealthy. But the best relationship I've ever had of you have had is the one where you had a crossroads come at you fairly early on, maybe ninety days in, and you asked a question, or you gave an answer, or you took a stand one way or another ended it, and that became the light bulb or the impetus or even the ultimatum for the other person to know what you really want and see it clearly if you're going to do this, you're going to have to do this.
And maybe a day, a week, or a month later, somebody texts and you grab a drink and suddenly either you forget what you kept you a part or remembered what brought you together, the possibilities. I heard someone say the other day that almost nobody is afraid of marriage. Despite the general thought that a certain percentage of the population, especially the al population, is scared of commitment, that's.
Not really true. What they're scared of is commitment marriage.
With the wrong person, being stuck. And so a lot of early breakups and frequent ones.
They're rooted in that.
I think I might maybe I don't know, I can't decide. Let me have some space and think, and let me look around some more, and on and on and on, and you keep circling back because maybe they weren't so bad, and let's try it again. So there's an element from the friends and the families that I can't believe you guys are still doing this. And there's also people who are like, I'm really glad you're still doing this. I
like you guys together, work it out. You might say, if it isn't right to the point where you keep breaking it up breaking up, then it.
Will never be right. And you would be right to say that.
And you might say I like it that you guys keep giving it a shot and working at it to to get it right and hopefully, maybe eventually you will get it right. And you would also be right to say that, because there's a million examples of both red flags though sometimes might be false flags, could be wrong and what that red flag might have been raised to you based on something that had nothing to do with
this person or their circumstance. You might see a red flag because sixteen boyfriends ago somebody did something similar, and green lights might be you know, yellow lights with a glare. So you take a minute, think about it, revisit it, and maybe up to a point. And I don't even know what that point is, because you obviously have to set some boundaries and deadlines and ultimately some ultimatums. Is
that redundant? Ultimately some ultimatums. You know, you can't be doing it at twenty three and thirty three and forty three and you're still not anywhere solid.
You can't do that.
I get that everyone is on the clock here, But is it possible, No doubt. So I want to get into the other example of revisiting the past. But in the present, we got to pay for some things around here. I need to take a quick break, but we will be back right after this.
Okay, and we are back.
We're talking about breaking up and getting back together. The boomerang dating scene might be like, well what about you know? And this came out came up a lot during COVID days when we were sitting around not me. I was not sitting around you guys during COVID and thinking, oh, what about that girl from poly pside class in college? We only went out twice, but maybe I wasn't ready or you were bored and finish your binging and you're like, oh, what about that guy that I lived with for three
years and they moved for a job opportunity. What about the one who you thought you were ready to propose to but she didn't quite make you feel sure enough, you know? Or what about the one uh, you know you broke up with you because you were drinking too much or traveling too much or going out with the guys or the girls too much, And then you know, you saw them on Instagram and they seem single and lost weight and got their act together and whatever, and
you're thinking, what about revisiting that? And half of you would probably say no, no, no, stop revisiting, Move ahead, windshield not rear view merrit. But I'm the eternal optimist, and I am somebody who absolutely believes in and subscribes to not just the power of change, but the ability
to change. I'm stubborn in the belief that stubbornness can be overcome, that if somebody says the right thing and the right way at the right moment, the light bulb can go off and the pieces can click into place, and everything can be different. And the biggest different sense can simply be you know, time and place. People grow up, people hopefully evolve, and people have other relationships in between that might make you revisit and rethink the way you
behaved in the earlier ones. You know, you might take some good things out of the relationships that happened between now, then and now. My friend wrote a book once called I think it was called Everything I Learned About Dating a Man I learned from dating a woman, Meaning she was able to see the patterns in herself when she was no longer the quote unquote girl in the relationship. And you've heard of say a million times that you know the answers always lie outside of your comfort zone. Well,
for her, clearly way outside. That's where they were. That's where she found the answers. So anybody can find answers or have a wake up call or hit across or pressure point where bam, they are a different person, not so much that you don't recognize them, but enough that maybe some of the edges have been smoothed over.
Flip side to that.
Yeah, can someone change for the worst, no doubt, But I think that will.
Reveal itself soon enough.
I think that will reveal itself quickly if they are the same or if they've gotten worse. You won't have to spend a whole lot of time on it, even if you do revisit. But I'm hugely open to somebody saying that the person from they dated, three, five, ten, fifty years ago, maybe I want to see how that might work out. I'm absolutely, yeah, fucking go for it.
I prefer that to people who who never dated somebody and then they're suddenly like, Hey, that guy I knew from college as single, so maybe I'll go after him, Meaning that because you had one thing in common, that suddenly it was something worth pursuing when it wasn't worthsuing back then. Everybody has many things in common. We all have a lot in common. We're I think I read ninety eight percent Our DNA is ninety eight percent of
the same as a banana. So you got a lot in common with a banana, and you've got a lot common with everybody else. But if it's like, oh, we you know, went to junior high together, let's talk about it, it's totally fine because you're using that commonality as an opening to connect, which is great. You know, you got to start somewhere, and sometimes the hardest part is recognizing and acting on and opening. Take that opening, have at it, fine, But this is about somebody looking at it and saying,
what was the thing that broke us up? And is this something that I have changed or they have changed, or time has changed, and maybe there is room for reconnection. I'm on the side of that. And you know you want to play a amateur professional psychologist on me here. Maybe that is me silently screaming to the world that I'm a better person than I was in my twenties and thirties, and I want the world to recognize growth
out of those of us who believe it has taken place. Guilty, But I look at a lot of people, you know, so you know, take caution with some of my words.
They are biased. I'm a biased jury.
Here, but I look at a lot of people recently and maybe they were so politically charged up. People on both sides of it have had their brains broken by Trump pro and con. So do I think in ten years some people might be like, Jesus, I can't believe how much time and energy I spent obsessing and hating him. It actually changed my personality. And some people might be like, I can't believe I went so far down that road with that hymn them. I never really looked great in
a red hat. Why did I wear it every day for six years?
Yep.
Time can bring wisdom and hindsight can bring clarity. But oftentimes what it also does is it brings an opportunity, one that you never fully appreciated, one that you never correctly acted on, and ones that you never knew you had. So for all those who say no, no, no, never, I hear you and I agree with you, And for those who say, well, maybe impossibly, and if only I hear you and agree with you too, And every situation
in relationship is different. So all I'm asking to do is just look at it and think maybe because absolutism has.
No place in the love business. None. I will never do that. I would never get no place.
There always has to be nuance, and there's always room for interpretation, and there are always circumstances within and beyond your control. So in a nutshell, it's a big nutshell my answer to the question. It depends on the circumstance, and that is a that's a lazy answer, but it's also a definitive answer.
Duck in the answer.
Yeah, but definitive answer is possibly, which is good and which is why we debate and why the debate continues. So shoot me an email, Great Load Debate at gmail dot com if you've got thoughts, questions, or a history with an on again, off again or a.
Revisiting of an off again, and we'll get into it.
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See you next time. The Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate.
It's a Great Love Debate.