Dating Differently Podcast
Dating Differently Podcast
Minisode 2: Is Relationship Influence a Thing?
Ever tried to squeeze a fully unpacked suitcase back into its original box? That's what merging two adult lives into a marriage often feels like. Join us as we exchange raw, poignant tales of our personal experiences navigating the realms of commitment. From the struggle of blending diverse lives to the joy of shared triumphs, we draw from the well of wisdom found in my parents and grandparents' enduring marriages. We also dissect the constants of successful marriages - commitment, resilience, and hard work.
The thrill of finding love often comes with the anxiety of meeting societal expectations, as my unconventional love story can attest. Hear about how a Skype call blossomed into a beautiful marriage and the rollercoaster ride to a wedding ceremony we initially didn't want. Then, we pull back the curtain on the often-discussed topic of wedding costs and how it reflects a couple's shared values. Drawing parallels with entrepreneurship, we delve into the often surprising similarities between launching a start-up and starting a family. So buckle up for this emotional ride as we unravel the intricate dance of love, commitment, and the resilience it takes to keep a marriage thriving.
I'm trying to think through the examples of marriage that I have in my family and I. I mean I could be wrong, but I think we really all want to end up there, End up in having a committed relationship, whether it's defined by marriage or just defined by a committed relationship moving forward in a longterm fashion where you both die together, I would call that marriage. But my parents, I think, are great examples. They were wildly different people when they met. My dad is 13 years older than my mom.
Speaker 2:He was a and I talked about that at the party, by the way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was a grown ass man. I'm going to say asked me, because he was a grown ass man and my mom was a grown woman, like he was 39. She was 26. And I. They had to blend two fully formed adult lives together and they were married in August. The next September I was born and the next October my brother was born.
Speaker 1:So there wasn't a lot of like figuring out who they were, wow, and trying to like hey, I don't like the way you fold these napkins or why is your stuff like that in the bathroom, like that just doesn't logically make sense or whatever the weird things that you like. Learn about people, and it really grates on your nerves. After a period of time You're open to it for a little bit, but then not anymore because you're like this is cute, let's get on with my pattern, you've messed up my pattern, and so they really didn't have time to really create these new patterns. And my mom tells the story just how she was not very pleasant at the very beginning. My dad is possibly the kindest, softest man that could ever walk the planet. He would convince me to come home in college by making French toast, because that's my favorite thing he he makes. He was like don't you want to come home? I'm making French toast? I went to school an hour away from where I grew up, so it was not that far for me to go, but I never went home in college.
Speaker 1:But anyway, my mom was not a pleasant person and she will tell you that she really struggled with being in New York because my at the time, my dad worked for the New York Times and she had lived all of her life in the South, was born in the South, grew up in the South and moved to New York and she just no one was nice and she was grumpy and they didn't have their own home. They lived in like a giant house that a church bought to be their church home and so every weekend she, at any moment in time, random strangers would come through her house. So it was like she didn't really feel settled. I think is what she would probably say now.
Speaker 1:But, knowing all of that foundation and who they are like, when they argue they want to be right, sure, but they argue to get past the thing that they're arguing about. I think and I've said this before to many people I think that the best example and parents have given me is that they fight in front of us. I have a brother who's. I have a brother who's 13 months younger than I am. They would fight in front of us and then we would watch them apologize and say they were sorry, and usually it happened in the same day, probably within like an hour, two hours.
Speaker 2:Did they fight fair most of the time?
Speaker 1:Yes, question mark. I mean I don't think they like throw any punches or anything, but like yeah, I would say so. They didn't pull up like things from like 15 years ago of problems.
Speaker 2:When I say fight and fair people who don't fight fair, they say things specifically to upset you or to hurt you.
Speaker 1:So if none of that is happening, then I don't think I wouldn't say that they did not fight fair. Anyway, I'm sure that there were probably moments where that did happen.
Speaker 2:I just don't remember them, which I think is a great mark.
Speaker 1:Checkmark mom and dad and my, my grandparents are a great example. They've been married for almost 60 years 60 some years, I guess.
Speaker 2:I don't know a long time, yeah, a long time.
Speaker 1:They know life together and don't remember life not together. Right, and they're in a different phase of life now and, just like watching their, their marriage evolve with their phases of life, my parents marriage has evolved as my brother and I have gotten older. They parent much like, in a very different way.
Speaker 1:Yeah and that's what I see. Like I see the hard work of of spending life with another person my friends are great examples of that like they are pretty open about, like the struggles that they're having, not in a like I'm gonna talk trash, but like a this is where I am right.
Speaker 2:This is hard Marriage is hard and that's very important. I want to say a couple of things about that. Go ahead, let me. Let me first start by saying you know, the story you tell about your parents is a lot like my story with my wife, and I know we've talked, done, done, done, yeah, and your dad and I had this conversation at Christmas party, right? Because he said, hey, I'm 13 years older than my wife. I said I'm 13 years older than my wife and when I got married, I was 41 years old and my wife was 29. So he and I were having that particular conversation. When we got our anniversary was November 20th and I did a Facebook post married in 68 days yeah, because my wife and I went on our first date in September 2010 and we were married by November 2010 three months, 68 days later, and we would have gotten married earlier. But you know, you know my wife's from Jamaica and she was just coming overnight.
Speaker 1:So that's the reason why we waited six years. Yeah, that's a fair challenge.
Speaker 2:But I bring that up because you know, you know I have to always disclaim this and say I would never, ever, ever recommend Anybody getting married to a woman in 68 days, like that's something you shouldn't do.
Speaker 1:Now I was there exceptions to every rule. Absolutely like yeah.
Speaker 2:I got lucky in that regard. But you know, going back to the idea that marriage is hard she and I were just talking about this the other day the reason why we are so great today Like absolutely great, bulletproof great. I honestly feel and I try not to get cocky around this, because I know that anything could happen. I've seen enough in my 53 years on this planet, noted anything can happen, as I try not to get cocky on this. But I'm at a position with my wife now where I believe there is absolutely nothing that I could do though make her say I'm out of here, and I absolutely know that there's nothing she could do to say Absolutely out of here. But you don't get to that point. You don't get to the point of strong relationship without Exercise, if you will, without without the work that it's just like anything else. You won't get big muscles unless you go lift something heavy. You won't get a strong relationship unless you go through something heavy, and we've gone through some heavy things in our.
Speaker 2:I tell people that I've been successfully married for 12 years. Right, I don't use word happily married for 12 years, because there's a little years in our marriage where she was miserable. There were years when I was miserable right, and I will often hear people, specifically men, will say to me you guys talk about how hard marriage is. Why would anybody ever want to get married? The analogy I use is entrepreneurship. I think about the fact that people start business fair visual.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, think about it some people start businesses and some get lucky and business takes off year one, year two and they live happily ever after for a long time. They will eventually get sued. They will eventually, you know, store burns down or you know COVID closes down their restaurant. Those things will happen Sometime, like, and you'll either work through it and get to the other side of it or you'll, you know, you'll go bust. Now there's the other side of that. Entrepreneurship is there? People start businesses and it's not till 10 years later that they finally get some traction and now they can quit their other job and now they can live like nobody else has lived.
Speaker 2:Right but that's the way I think about it, that's the way I analogize it when I when I think about marriage. Sometimes people get married and they're great for a long time. They might run into a snag eventually, but they're great for a long time. And then there are times when, like we got married and you know, I adventure to say that within weeks we felt like we were in trouble. Right, yeah, let me give. Let me give you the rest of the story. So it's absolutely true that I went on my first date with her that September is absolutely true that we got married 68 days later. But the full story is I actually met her early in the year, in April, and she was on her way back to Jamaica and I reached out to her.
Speaker 2:I shot my shot on Facebook day she was on her way back to Jamaica and we had a six month long courtship over Skype If you guys remember Skype and during those conversations I got a chance to know what type of woman she was and I had done the work on myself, so I knew exactly what I was looking for in a wife. And this is let me side note here and say this is what I say to clients often. One of my very first questions to people when I meet them is tell me about the person you're looking for. And they'll say, hmm, I don't know, let me think, let's see. And then we'll start rattling off some stuff and I say to them you've never thought about this question before. Like, if you don't know what that person looks like, how will you know when they?
Speaker 1:show up. Sometimes people don't wanna be too quick to answer that question, and I think you can probably tell the difference between someone who hasn't ever thought of it and someone who isn't too quick. Cause I think I paused for a second when you said that, cause I was like, oh, here's where I get to be really judgmental. We just met. This is great. Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 2:So the whole point of me asking that question is if you haven't thought about it, go think about it, and if you have thought about it, let's try to hone it in, because I can promise you that if you know what that person looks like, you will recognize them when they show up. And if they have a little bit of dust on them or somebody you know it's the right person.
Speaker 1:Do you see the?
Speaker 2:good bones, but if you haven't put any thought behind it, then that person comes and goes. Now let's go back to my situation. My situation was such that I wanted to be married when I was 23 years old and I've read hundreds of books from age 23 all the way up to 50. So for the next 25 years I didn't see any signs of being married. But I will say I took all the assessments that I could think of whether it be. I did Myers-Briggs and we did this, and I did love languages. I was doing the work and when I dated, I dated with purpose. I dated to better understand what it is I like about this person and why. What it is I can deal with the woman and what I can't, what it is I need in order to be fulfilled and you know, whatever it is.
Speaker 2:But you got to learn about yourself, right, yeah, which is the next piece of the formula. Actually, that's the first part of the formula. The second part of the formula is after you know about yourself. Now figure out what it is that you need in a person to be happy for the rest of your life. So that was what my situation was. So, wrapping that all back up into this story about me, those six months that I spent on Skype with this woman helped me to understand that, wow, everything that I ever said that I was looking for in a woman, that was it right. The only objection I had at the time was that she lived in Jamaica. So I told her I wouldn't date her, because I can't date a girl who's in Jamaica and I'm here in the US.
Speaker 1:So when she came here and what, she Did she come here to date you?
Speaker 2:No no, actually no, she came. If you were to ask her, she would say, yes, she came here to marry you. She knew it was for the long game, so I didn't see that at the time, but nonetheless that whole story was-.
Speaker 1:Good job, debbie. Where to hide that?
Speaker 2:That whole story was just really to highlight the fact that I really felt like I did the work and that way I was able to recognize her. When I found her and then, you know, and I remember the day I got engaged to her, I called my dad and I said to myself why do people wait years after they Because the ring to me is the commitment to say, hey, I'm ready to spend the rest of my life with you, so what sense does it make to spend another two years? Because I will say this one of the reasons that I decided I wanted to marry this woman is because she said she didn't want a wedding. Now she Well, and not that I'm against weddings, because I'm all for weddings for people who can afford weddings but I've seen far too many people do weddings and ruin their lives and, like people, are still paying for weddings and they're already divorced.
Speaker 2:Like and I just think that's asinine. You know, I used to be a professional photographer and I did a lot of photography at weddings and I would talk to grooms after these weddings and the vibe that I got from them after spending $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, $80,000, the vibe that I got from them is that that's it Like very anti-climactic right you get some photos that last forever.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So she said to me in one of those Skype calls. She said can we not have a wedding and let's get some matrimonial max? And when she said that to me I was like like Mac, like computer Mac yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah that is so clever she said she wanted matrimonial max.
Speaker 2:I said I want to marry this lady.
Speaker 1:Oh my gosh. So how many max have you had since then?
Speaker 2:Oh my God, oh my goodness, too many to count.
Speaker 1:Okay, okay, it started with some matrimonial ones, Really really too many to count.
Speaker 2:But you know Did you?
Speaker 1:have like a party or something Like I'm very concerned about a party, yeah. So I love a good celebration.
Speaker 2:Listen, we had. We ended up having a wedding, but let me tell you how the wedding went down. So the church I was a part of at the time she was very close to the leadership of the church, right, and I was on the media team. I did the photographer for the church at the time. Long story short, she brought me into the fold, behind the curtain, with the leadership, pastors and all of that kind of stuff. They decided that she would be happier if she had a wedding. She had already said I don't want a wedding, but they decided you really do want a wedding. Intrigued, you just don't know that you want a wedding. You'd be happier if you want a wedding. Now she was crying on my shoulder at night saying I really don't want a wedding because she's a very introverted person, right, and she doesn't like the idea of being the center of attention Like that.
Speaker 1:just terrifies me, and that is a core difference between Debbie and Anna Bevin. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But she genuinely did not want a wedding right. But it was tough to fight the leadership of the church, you know, because you gotta respect and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:So what I said as the new husband? I said listen people, my wife does not want a wedding and if y'all want to wedding, that bad you pay for a wedding. If you pay for a wedding, we'll show up that way. Ooh, shots fired. They paid for a wedding, they paid for everything. Wow. And the wife and I went down to the bridal dress place and looked on the clearance rack and found the dress that she liked and the dress was, I think, $100. Stop and listen. We showed up at their wedding and it was a nice wedding, party favors and everything.
Speaker 2:Party favors, yeah it was a nice wedding and we told them to meet us over at I think it was Johnny Carino's was the name of the Italian place for the reception hey, everybody, meet us over at Johnny Carino's and, you know, pay for your own food, type of thing. We didn't say any of that. We just say, hey, y'all, meet us over at Johnny Carino's, and but Did you have a back room at least?
Speaker 2:No, let me tell you. Let me tell you, anna Bevin, that's what my wife wanted. But listen, that is so funny. Okay, good, in the six months that we had our Skype conversations there was a lot that I got to know about her, you know. I got to know where her values were, I got to know what type of person she was, you know, and they were just really in line with my values and the things that I wanted in a wife, specifically that I could spend the rest of my life with, and that's how we ended up together. So I know that I can't duplicate that for other people, but I understand the principles around how I got what I got in this lifetime right. And going back to the conversations we had earlier about marriage and how marriage can be tough sometimes yeah, marriage can be tough sometimes, but the reward is like you wouldn't imagine you know, and that's the reason why I analogize that to entrepreneurship.