This is pod Popular Podcast for the People, the.
Great Love Debate. It's Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate.
It's a Great Love Debate.
Hi again, Everyone's Brian Howie.
Welcome to The Great Love Debate, the world's number one dating and relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. I am once again in the very fine studios of the Pod Popular Podcast for the People. I am at the one in Boca Raton, Florida. It is the hot of a Florida summer. So do with that information whatever you like. I'm gonna give you some aphrase. It's gonna be me today. It probably won't be that long. It wasn't what I wanted to talk about, but it really something happened to me
over the weekend. I'm gonna explain it to you that I was like, oh my god, I need to talk about this. So you guys have heard me say many many times, it's not that you haven't met the right person. It's almost always that you haven't been the right person. I am exhibit a of that. I probably was not always the right person. There's a chance I might have met a right person.
Eventually. I didn't meet the right person, but.
I don't know it's just about who you are in a moment and recognizing that we all sort of are on a journey and we all have.
Work to do.
So this past weekend, my friend Jen, I will just call her my friend Jen, who I have known a long long time because we are not young anymore, and she's a good friend of mine to this day, and she's been a good friend of mine for a.
Little thirty years.
I used to date her back in the day and she was rummaging through a box in her attic. I think she was trying to find something, and she found something and she sent it to me. She sent me a f facts in nineteen ninety three. This is how we communicated our intentions and our feelings back then. We sent them by via facts nineteen ninety three, So of the date of this recording over thirty years ago, and I want to read the facts that she sent me, and I'm gonna get into why it's relevant to me,
Dear Brian. The last two weeks or so, my feelings have been going up and down. Every time I feel secure with my decision about us, someone changes my mind. Tonight, I finally sat myself down to find a real conclusion. The way I look at it is I think somewhere deep inside you do love me. Even though we were only together for a short time, I felt really close to you. I can't just sit around a couch with just anybody and be happy. Maybe it was not definitely love,
but there was something special between us. Everyone tells me you were just feeding me lines, which is possible, but I think under the Brian Howie that goes out every night, there is much more sincere person with real feelings. Someday you'll be able to understand what is really important in life. You have a lot of growing up to do, hopefully before it is too late. The person that I think you really are is much more desirable than the one you present to the general public. I want you to
know that I really care about you. I think it is best that I less things rest, and like you said, when the dust settles, who knows. If things were really meant to be, then they might find a way to work through anything. And if they don't, they aren't then at least I got to have memories of the experience of dating Brian Howie. So first of all, she was twenty years old when she was wise enough to stand up for herself and say this me then.
Is not what I want.
And to tell you the truth, it was probably three weeks of chicken fingers and mountain.
Dew and alcohol, and I don't remember much of it.
And like I said, she's my friend now, but the point when she's dated me thirty years ago, it was a.
Bit of a blur. But I was so pleased that she sent that, not that she kept it, but I.
Was like, oh my god, how many women could have sent that exact same email to me.
Or facts.
Throughout my dating history up until very recent history, how many people could have said, he is not who he shows to the public. He is not authentic with me, He is not able to let his guard down, he is not able to be comfortable with who he is. He has not done the work, he has not gone to therapy. And so you know, that was nineteen ninety three. I guarantee you there was somebody in nineteen ninety eight and two thousand and three and twenty fifteen, and up
until then I probably was the same way. I hadn't been the right person yet, and I hadn't done the work yet.
And you know, props to her.
As a woman for recognizing that being able to express it. So I share that with somebody and they go, how did you feel when.
When she sent it?
I have no idea. I might not have gotten the facts. I might not have remembered it. I certainly didn't retain it. And so you know, some of this is this little
woo woo. But when I was eventually able to find a girl who who was able to relay that same message to me much much later in life in a way that I could accept and I could understand, and I could change, and I could let my card down, and it was more than just sort of sharing space that we were trying to share a life together Like that took the right person at the right time and the right way to give me my message. And it also took me being in a place where.
I was willing to accept it.
And a part of the reason that I was sort of willing to accept it when I finally did, was from doing the Great Love Debate and traveling around. And I think you guys have heard me say this before for years and years and years. You know, early on in this show, probably the first four or five years of doing the Great Love Debate, I was like dating is easy girls like me. I don't know why everybody is so hard. And I considered myself a little bit
above the fray. I was almost a little Jerry springerish, like men against the women. But eventually I started to hear stories, especially from men, about people feeling things and experiencing things and being hurt and being heartbroken and having pain from relationships, and I'm like, what are they doing that I'm not, because although it didn't necessarily seem pleasant when they talk about those things, it certainly seemed more substantive. And so when Jen sent this facts, I'm like, oh wow,
a twenty year old girl felt that she needed something substantive. Again, it wasn't like I was forty. I was also twenty something substantive out of a relationship. And I probably didn't even know what she was talking about. I probably didn't know what she wanted. I probably couldn't comprehend it. I wasn't listening to it. And that has to be incredibly frustrating for anybody who dates anybody that way. But it had to be incredibly frustrating for anybody who dated me
that way. And it was a long long time of me being that way, so on a break this down a little bit. I want to get into a lot of this stuff. We have to pay for things like nineteen ninety three fax machines around here.
I have to pay for fax paper. I think that it is fax paper.
I take a quick break, and we will get into all of it right after this, and we are back. I talked to my therapist about this. I talked to other people about this, and it is really about not just focus, but emotional intelligence, and the boys just don't have it. It does take a while for the boys to grow up. And not to make an excuse for fifty percent of the human race here, but it takes a while, and I shouldn't give myself a pass out
that I understand. Back then, I probably would have argued that if she didn't send a fact since she said it to my face, which I'm sure she probably did, I would have gotten defensive. I would have made excuses. I would have downplayed or belittled whatever she was trying to say, and I would have made her feel like in some way she was probably you're crazy.
We just went out last night. What are you talking about. I was there for you.
I bought you those m and MS late night and probably just wouldn't hear it. And so, you know, we talk about doing the work, and we talk about wanting to become your best selves, and there's lots of things we can all do to improve. Listening to this podcast, I hope this isn't, you know, coaching to you. This is sort of sharing an experience. But hopefully somebody is like, yeah, I'm that guy or I was that girl, and a lot of people because like I said, I did share
that that facts via text. I'm combining worlds here. I'm combining nineteen nineties technology with twenty twenty five technology.
I shared that facts via text.
And a lot of the women were like, she speaks for all of us, and she spoke for me at twenty, and she speaks for me at forty, and she speaks for me, you know, as a wife, and she speaks for me as a girlfriend, and she speaks for me as somebody who wants my man to live. And it made me feel good that she still had it. It made me good that I got to peek through this
sort of window of nostalgia. But all I could think about since the time I read that text facts whatever I call it, was my god, how many other women felt the same level of frustration and disappointment. And if I can just get him to understand what I'm talking about, things could work out. We could have a relationship, we could be a couple, you know. So when I was finally ready to hear those words and listen and understand or whatever, you know, a lot of damage you've probably
been done to a lot of people. I'm not sure that I was like an asshole boyfriend, but I certainly wasn't a gold star in terms of being a human being, in terms of being able to communicate my issues or hear their needs or their wants or whatever was going wrong. I always just wanted to make a joke, like, hey, the resume I handed it in was for boyfriend, what you're looking for as a husband? Good line, flip and joke.
But it was also about me not hearing them. But mostly it was about me not to be in touch with myself. It was about me not understanding there's a part of me that is broken. And you guys have heard me go way way back to my childhood and the trauma that comes from that and how I never trusted my parents' love for each other, which means I didn't trust their love for me, which means I didn't trust anybody's love for me, which means I didn't really
trust the concept. So fast forward years later, I'm doing the great love debate. A lot of this is me. I'm not just trying to heal that, but trying to seek answers and to try and find these moments in time where maybe the light.
Bulb did go off, but it didn't go off from me. And what did I need to hear?
And if somebody had sent me that a version of that facts ten years ago, and somebody did, I don't know if the language was what woke me up. It was just the time and hearing from enough people to realize that I wasn't I hadn't been the right person yet, and I had to do more work and I had to go to that scary, scary place that honestly, it's hard, you know. I went a long long time in my twenties and thirties and part of my forties just this
is fun. There's no downside, there's no risk, there's no scariness, you can't get hurt. It's all just fun. But the people in my in my Galaxy were probably not experiencing the same.
Joy out of the Brian Howie ride.
And I feel bad for that always, and I try and think back on that, like what kind of partner was I? What kind of boyfriend is I was? I? How could I have done better? What messages did I miss? What request did I dismiss?
All of that?
And so, you know, not sharing this out of guilt, I'm sharing this out of I'm sure a lot of women feel the same way. I'm sure a lot of women have these kinds of conversations all the time that if we could just shake their head and get them to understand what the fuck we're talking about, how many relationships could be better and how many people could be better. And like I said, there's two parts of this. Somebody has to be willing to say it and somebody has
to be willing to hear it. And I probably heard it a lot, but I wasn't willing to absorb it. I wasn't willing to take responsibility for it. I wasn't capable of understanding it. And so that's the prism I look back for now. A lot of people are like, oh my god, you must have had a fun time in Hollywood. I look at it differently. I look at it like, who did I hurt, Who did I frustrate? Who did I not accept the love from? Who did I not give the love back? Who deserved? And so
on and so forth. Everything is sort of chicken egg in anything, especially in love dating relationships. So if I got this, I could have given this, and you're kind of hitting the tennis ball back to each other. But there was a lot of stuff I could have done differently, and there's a lot of stuff.
I could have done better.
So I'm going to dive into this subject of a little more as somebody who's kind of an expert on this, she's gonna come on a couple of weeks and where we're going to talk about this. What are the signals and how do we communicate this and how do we find the best version of ourselves. Because to my friend Jen, I give her the shout out I love you, I always will. I'm sorry I did not love you in the way back then It worked.
Out for you.
Your husband's great, your daughter's great, and you didn't need me. But I'm sorry that in some way like it caused her her pain. And but she was probably the first one in my life that tried to be like Brian, you can do better, you can be better, you can understand more, you can feel if you would just let that guard down for the world. And then you know, people always ask me, what have I learned from the from the Great Love Debate and doing it all these
years and talking to thousands of thousand people. Is the one thing that we have in common that gets in our way is fear. Fear of getting hurt, fear of getting rejected, fear of picking the wrong partner, fear of making mistake, fear of saying the wrong thing. And I guess for me it was fear of not hearing the right thing, and because I was afraid because when she said it and how she said it, I probably looked at it as a flaw in me or a criticism
of me. And really it was just trying to say, I see you, and I know what you're doing and I'm okay with it, but can you just kind of meet me halfway?
And so many of.
People I've been in relationships with, they've probably tried a version of the same thing.
Again.
It took until you know, the right girl said in the right way at the right time, and I was like, Oh my god, is that who I am?
Is that what we're doing?
But mostly it could have been like, Oh, this is who we can be, this is what we can find together, this is the journey we can have, this is the life we can have. And it just took a long long time. Like I said, it takes a long time for the boys to grow up. Took a really long time for this boy to grow up. So I want to share that this isn't the longest podcast I've ever done. This probably is the most substantive podcast I've ever done.
But it really sort of hit me. It really was just.
Like, oh my god, a the technology of the facts, communicating feelings by facts just seems insane. Maybe I never got it. Did he go to FedEx's office, back the Kinkos?
Back then?
Did he go to Staples? Where did she even fact it? I need to track that down. But to you know, you always hear the people say, if you could write a letter to your teenage young person's self, what would that letter say? Jen wrote, What that letter would say? Everything she said is probably everything I would say to myself back then or now that there's a version of me that is either hiding or crawling out slow or niss to see more light.
That really would make.
My partner happier and would really make the people in my world a little bit happier to be around.
Brian Howie, shoot me an email.
Great Love Debate at gmail dot com if you've got question, thoughts, comments about any of this. If you want to say, way to go, Jen, I will pass that along. She's been on this podcast before, so search that out. This is like our five hundredth and something episode. Shoot, go to jeez, I lost my train of thought there.
Let your reviews.
Still am in a lot in the podcasting ecosystem, so please like, share, follow, and review this podcast.
I want to hear your reviews.
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So please give us five star review because as always, I have not been a five star boyfriend, but I'm trying. At the Great Love Debate, we never stopped making love.
See you next time, the Great Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate, The Great Love debate.
It's the great love debate.
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