growNman
growNman
167 Effort Makes Love Work
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What if the difference between a fragile relationship and a joyful home is not chemistry, but effort? I unpack the hard truth I wish I learned sooner: maturity, not vibes, keeps love alive. From passing red flags to leading with intention, this is a blueprint for building a partnership that feels safe, energizing, and real.
We start with the cost of shortcuts—how “cheating the system” in love creates blind spots, selfish patterns, and pain you never meant to cause. Then we get practical. I break down what vetting actually looks like: meeting the family, noticing stress patterns, and asking questions that reveal values, not just charm. We talk about red flags honestly and why so many of us ignore them. If you still choose to stay, do it with a plan and daily effort, not a fantasy that time will fix everything.
I put a clear challenge to men: leadership is service. Selection and early choices set the tone, and avoidance is not neutral—it’s costly. Communication becomes the hinge for all of it. If you’re arguing, you’re not communicating; you’re triggering. I share the simple, steady tools that lowered the temperature at home: slower pacing, cleaner words, and intention over impulse. We also explore how to create joy inside the home—rituals, purposeful time, and active connection that your kids can feel and copy. The goal isn’t dependence; it’s a partnership you look forward to every day.
If you’re single or early in your journey, invest in mastery of self: communication, movement, diet, and emotional intelligence. Protect your future peace by asking better questions now. If you’re rebuilding, let effort be the answer you haven’t tried consistently. Subscribe, share this with someone who’s ready to grow, and leave a review with one behavior you’ll change this week—what’s the first step you’ll take?
What up, Doe, and welcome back to I'm Growing Man, Shiman John D, in the building. You know, um, I do believe that this episode is my birthday week. Um not gonna tell you how many weeks I'm ahead, but I do want you guys to know that this is my fifth year, like full year of really podcasted. And Growing Man, I believe, started in twenty-two. So this is my fourth year doing this. And 52, 150. No, this is my third year. So I'm going into my fourth year of I'm Growing Man. I believe this will be the first episode. But regardless, uh, I just want you guys to know I don't have any plans of slowing down. I've even thought about creating more content, but I've decided that since I found a good balance and I'm not chasing after anything other than trying to get better in communicating, I'm gonna just continue to do this and update you guys on my progress through my practice with students, my family, and anybody I interact with. But today I was just like brainstorming what can I do that I feel like I am confident that I have an idea of what I'm talking about and how can I break it down where we can change a message together. And I've done a lot of research, you know, just like myself, but watching other people and how they got things that they got, and I realized that if you don't have anybody to pull you to the side and tell you, hey, this is what you should do, you'll kind of just do what your environment does. And I think the missing key in my progress was effort. I've always tried to cheat the system to get a result, not knowing that effort created it creates something that you haven't seen before. But since I cheated it, I kind of created this vision of whatever it's supposed to feel like. So now I'm so so much more intentional with my time. I come up with these ideas to talk about the things I'm gonna talk about today. Now I am 48 when this comes out. It's been a blessing to say the least that I feel like I'm confident enough to say that I'm mature, where my decision making can't endanger my family, like like the stability of my family. Before I was so immature that I followed messages that said that I had to be happy, and which is true, you do have to be happy, but relationships are for mature people. And if you get into a relationship and you're willing to compromise the person in the relationship for your own happiness, that means you're not mature. I'm telling you, if if you can compromise the person you're in a relationship with for your own happiness, you probably shouldn't be in a relationship. And this is through my own experience and listening to people older than me that didn't do so well in this game of relationships, and try to, I tried to analyze so that I don't fall for the okie dope. But I realize that if you're immature, you'll come up with a reason on why it's okay to do what you're doing. And you will compromise everything that you're trying to build because you don't know how to do it. So those of you that are not in relationships, and I do want to say this: if you're in a relationship and you're looking for it to grow, it can. But there's some steps you gotta do. And and I tell you this, this is the best information I can give you. If you believe you're that important where you could change your behaviors, you'll receive a happiness that I can't describe. And you'll actually ask yourself, like, why didn't anybody say anything about this before? And the reason why I'm saying this is because it's the way I feel. And that's the reason why I want to share this information, because I've I'm trying I'm willing to stand on that nobody can really argue with me or disagree, not even argue, because you can argue, but I believe I have enough information that says your effort determines everything. And but remember, there's order of operations. You could put all the effort into the wrong person. And that's another story, but I'm going to tell you for those of you that are in the very beginning or consider thinking about being in a relationship, just focus on yourself. And when I say that, if you focus on yourself, you won't pass red flags to create something in somebody who don't see it for themselves. I see this in so many different relationships. People will pass a red flag because this person looks so good or they're so intelligent, or it's so many different things that it sounds good, but there's something that's preventing you that could hurt you later. And sometimes you'll get into a relationship and you'll be blind to things that you wouldn't allow any other person to get away with, but this person gets away with it. And you've been compromised because not enough vetting was done in the beginning. I will say this. I do believe now it is a man's fault if the relationship in the beginning leads the woman on. Because I do believe that a woman gets in with a relationship with a guy thinking that this guy is going to do everything that they're supposed to do. Now, that's the thought of a woman. Now, in my mind, of a man, a man is like, this woman better continue to do what she's been doing to keep me. Now, I'm not saying that's not the case, but I'm saying if you pick this young lady, you have to know that that's not how women operate. And listening to unsuccessful people complain about where they are and what things work, if the relationship doesn't work, it is on the hands of the man. Because we are truly selecting this young lady. And I'm not saying that there are not exceptions, but at the end of the day, the man is going to choose the lady. And the lady, in her mind, if she hasn't been compromised, is willing to do whatever it takes to get this relationship to what I'm describing. And I do believe all women can do that. Now, I'll say this: there are some women that self-sabotage due to bad practices, but it's not because they don't want to be here. I don't want people to think that women do want to be happy. And I know that we come up with these scenarios where we prove time after time that women are showing that they just want to be mad. We create the scenarios to talk about why they're mad. It's not fair. And that's why I say relationships are for mature people. And if a relationship is truly gonna work, it determines the effort of that man. Because if the man does what he's supposed to do at the beginning, like get to know the young lady, or let's say this. I apologize if I'm kind of making it one way. But I'm just specifically talking about man. If a man is interested in hit in a partner, right, and they want this thing to work, they have to vet the person. And I was just talking to uh some friends. Like, if you don't find out where that person came from, the family they live in, you like family can reveal so many different things. So if you haven't seen their family, don't think that you know enough. You have to get some eyes and you have to be rational because people will walk past that red flag. And I'm not saying it can't work. I'm just saying it's going to be a lot more work than you anticipate. If you talk to people like unsuccessful relationships, ask them, uh, did they do research on their family? And sometimes you'll get some immediate looks like, I wish I would have known that. So I'm telling you, if you want to be successful, there are going to be some behaviors of a family that you recognize you like I could deal with. But if you haven't seen these behaviors before and you're like, oh my God, don't play with it. Because if you play with it, it's gonna be a lot of heartache and pain. And that comes with the relationship, and it doesn't have to. I thought it did, but it comes with it if you're not mature enough to be in the relationship, you will create heartache and pain. And nobody gets in a relationship to create that, right? So if the man does his due diligence and gets to actually know the people he's like, let's say he's interested, like three to four women, he should be asking questions where he can find out who is going to compliment him if he gets in dark times and whatever dark times can look like, but you should be able to look at a woman and see, and this is the thing, if you have a woman who has no idea what dark times look like, but she's you know she's gonna be successful, if she doesn't understand what she needs to give you, it'll cause friction because my wife has said to me before, like, I would I wouldn't think that you would do something like this, or I I didn't think that you were capable of doing that. Like when I was doing these things, I was acting selfishly. I was immature. And I didn't realize I was immature because I was truly believing I'm following the messages that my wife sees on television or sees and hears. I'm thinking that she knows what I know. But I realize everybody has their own perspective. And my wife had no idea the perspectives I had because it just never came up. So through the course of time, I look back and I know that if you pick the person that can ultimately compliment you, it's up to that man to make the relationship work. Because most men have no idea the amount of work it actually takes to be happy in a relationship. Most men, and I'm gonna say this I get in conversations with men all the time and they say I be doing too much. Or some of them will say, man, that sounds pretty good, but you know, we it, you know, it don't work. That might work for you, but I don't think that'll work for me. It won't work for you because you don't want to put the effort that I feel is mandatory to get to this state of relationship I'm trying to describe. If you don't put in the effort, why is it supposed to get better? And, you know, how about this? I know people that are in relationships and they just like passing through the day. They're just there for the family. And I'm not saying that this is a bad thing or a good thing, but it needs to be um brought to the attention of what we can do to build. And I think that when you're just passing through the day and you're just working, you have no idea what it's supposed to look like. It has to be on purpose. And I'll say, when I understood what my wife deserved, I burnt her out because I was all about trying to be around her and get to know her. Like, and mind you, I've been working on communication, right? So I wasn't so good then. So it would, she would say something that would trigger me, and then I would trigger her, and we would go back and forth in my head. I'm like, why is she doing this? And I had to realize that neither one of us are communicating correctly. You know, you get confused with different languages you speak, but we're I'm talking about English. Just simple English. And I didn't realize how poor of a communicator I was. So she and I grew across grew through time. But in the beginning, if you want a successful relationship, you need to figure out if this person has goals, what is the plan to get to the goals, because if they don't have that, you're gonna have to help them get there or you're gonna expect them to know how to get there. You got to ask them key questions, or you're gonna work harder than you need to to make this relationship work. That's the reason why you're supposed to vet your partner. And that's why I say it's all about the man, because I don't know a woman says, I'm trying to get in this for it to not work. Men, I know they want it to work, but it's a certain expectation they think women are supposed to do. They have no idea the expectation we're supposed to do to make this thing work. Relationships are for mature people, period. So when I told you earlier about being selfish, men are selfish, like we we get these messages about we need time, like me time, you know, time to ourselves or whatnot. You can have that. But your family needs time where it's productive and on purpose. Like we can set up throughout the week, we're gonna go to a game, we're gonna go to a house party, we're gonna go to this groove. But what are we doing on purpose with our family other than just like going somewhere? Like, let's sit down and talk, let's have conversations, let's like interact. And I'll say this a lot of families don't even know to do that. I'll tell you this, in my mind before my selfishness, I truly believed I was doing everything I was supposed to do, but I can still see like I can do more. And if my kids don't get it, it's because I didn't do more. You know, I'm the parent. So I look back, you know, I'm doing way more than my parents, but am I doing enough to give my kids the childhood where they can say, I really enjoyed it, or where they could benefit and find mastery in themselves. So by the time they do get a certain age, they can attract the energy they deserve and not have to deal with so many red flags. Because red flags, now mind you, I want to I want to tell you what a red flag is. A red flag is, let's say if you got two, two people, right, you got to make a decision. And one of them has a red flag. You are they both the same people, but they have a red flag. So you're not gonna deal with this person, right? It's somebody that you like you wouldn't normally deal with because it's not good for you. It's not healthy. But we're willing to pass red flags to think that it's going to change because we're the exception. And that comes with the maturity thing I'm talking about. If you think you're the exception, you're not mature enough for the relationship. You should only be the exception if you're willing to put in the effort to beat it. Now, I will say, women do have the impossible task of hoping that the person that's in their face is legit. And until we change the message for men to like go in it with the intentions of building. So, so how can I make this relationship look like something you should want to do? Like, if any of you know me, I've been talking about this relationship thing for like last five or six years, right? But the the the place that I've gotten to, like this, this energy my wife and I has, like, she's sick, right? And she wants me in the room with her because this is our relationship. She was just like, I I want my friend back. And I'm like, well, you know my immune system, you know, like we we can't. We like it's like we enjoy each other's company like that. And I didn't think that this is a place that I could get to. But I'm gonna tell you, if men knew that they could be the happiest that they've ever felt in their life, if they put the work in to their partner, like on purpose every single day, you create a relationship where you didn't know, like, and it's not where you depend on the other person, like, oh my God, I need this person. It's like you look forward to the experience. And the ideas of most men think they're creating new experiences outside. Just imagine if you could create new experiences on the inside. It's way cheaper, it's less like misunderstandings, no distractions, because you, if you have kids, your kids are watching, their parents have this relationship where they can look forward to like their person, being around their partner. And I don't think that we have enough relationships that that represent this idea that I'm talking about. Now, I will say this in the last five or six years, with this mindset, I have got to the point where I've driven her mad where she did not want to be in this relationship. She just thought maybe we were not meant for each other. And if it did not work, it was my fault because she wanted that. And I had to learn that. Like, if she keeps saying, like, hey, you know, maybe this isn't working, I was like on the clock. I was like, I have to make this work because if it does not work, I'm going to send this trauma to my kids of a divorce because their father could not figure it out. Now, there are people that went through these things already, but I'm talking about for the people who want to prevent this for the future. Like, you have to take the beginning part of the relationship seriously. Because if you don't, you're going to send on bad messaging to your kids and the people around you like it's okay. It is not okay. Okay. Like, we have to make better decisions. We cannot just be walking blindly into a relationship and like the way that we feel and feel like this is something you want to build on. It needs to be more intentional. So, look, if I had this information, if she had this information, we already know. We probably would not have been together because no, well, I guess we could have been together if I was that mature, but she already knew. She just didn't know the red flags on me. She should have let me go because I came from dysfunction and I normalized it and I was able to make it seem like this is okay. And it took me a long time to realize that I needed some help and I didn't know how to do it. So through the journey of trying to improve, I realized there were so many things, resources that were around, I just didn't know how to take advantage of. But when I give you this information, it's it's for you to make sound decisions so that you're able to build something that you want. Like, I I've I've seen people say, you know, I picked the wrong person. Nobody wants that on their record. Nobody. So those of you that are interested in being with somebody that you think you want to build with, you have to ask enough questions to see is it something because like when you're in this this this little this little bubble where you like the way you feel makes you feel good when you're around them or you think about them, there's gonna be a time where that feeling, it's it can be there, but it's not gonna make you feel like you feel in that mood where you just like anything can happen. It doesn't matter. And that's an unsafe feeling. Because if you get in that feeling and this person can't protect you, your heart is going to feel a pain that you don't deserve. And if it happens to you enough times, it could turn you into a different person. And I don't want that to happen to you because the way that I feel about my wife, if I could describe it so that men could say, that's what I want, I would do it. And that's the reason why this podcast and is real to me. I'm intentionally working on communication so that I can help men that could have been in a similar boat as me that was willing to go out but didn't know where he was going and was going to end up crashing it and destroying a family that didn't deserve it. And I don't think any family deserves that. But it comes from the ignorance that we don't look for more information. So keep this in mind. If you want a successful relationship, it's gonna take an effort that you haven't seen before, and you're gonna have to work on your communication. All of you, every single one of you. If you think you're a great communicator and you're arguing with somebody, you're not very good at communicating. Because if you were, you know who you're talking to. So you can say things to not trigger this person to get them to open up. And now, mind you, I'm still learning this, but I do know that with that mindset, you reduce arguments and misunderstandings where the person is more likely to receive the message that you're trying to give and not cause a verbal altercation that you don't need. So the first 25 years of your life, you should be working on your communication, activity, uh, diet, and your emotional intelligence. That's called mastery of self to me. You get it from your childhood, whoever's parenting you, the environment you grew up in, your schooling. This is you learning to discover yourself so that when you are mature enough, you'll attract the energy you're supposed to attract. Most people attract energy that they think they want and it's not in their best interests. It only feels good in the temporary gratification. But if you learn to be patient and put yourself first and believe you're so important that you don't deserve to make a decision that could impact your happiness later, just focus on yourself. You will get what you deserve. And when I say focus on yourself, I mean like learn as much as you can. Go explore. Like you have to do it safely because if you don't, you can change the trajectory that you think you're supposed to go in, watching your environment, not knowing what they're supposed to be doing. So become the example by asking questions so you can make better decisions. If you don't, you're going to create a story that you never intended for yourself. So, young people, don't even worry about relationships. And I know it's easy for me to say, but I'm telling you, it's so many things you could do to work on yourself to increase the chances of you finding a person that wants the same things for you that you as you want. Because it's easy to fall for a trap. And understand this: if you decide to pass the red flag, you can still get there. It's just going to take more work. And if you think the person deserves it, go for it. Whose story better than that? Because I'm telling you, the tougher the journey, the better the story, right? But I don't think you should go for the tougher story. You should go for the story that's yours because the relationship's already difficult travel. But don't make it more difficult than it has to be. Maturity is a blessing. And relationships are for mature people. Y'all make today better than yesterday. Don't worry about anything you can't control. G A T A, get after that action, or that action will get after you. Be great on purpose.