Ep. 25 - Growing Apart from Your Past Self Our Trip To New York - The 10 Year Marriage Podcast

Dave and Angie share a deeply personal story about Dave's return to his Long Island hometown after 13 years—and the profound realization that changed everything. What started as a trip to show their kids where Dave came from became a powerful lesson about growth, identity, and why you can't go back to who you used to be.

In This Episode

Dave's emotional journey returning to Long Island after 13 years
Why their kids' reaction wasn't what he expected
The moment Dave realized he was doing it for himself, not them
How growth changes your perspective on everything—including your past
The fantasy football test for relationship health
Why harboring resentment toward your former self is toxic
The parallel between outgrowing places and outgrowing people

Memorable Quotes
"You can't go back to that, right? But there's beauty in it because that made you who you were."
"If you don't change that perspective, you're just setting yourself up for failure."
"If a marriage is only looking backwards, you got some fucking problems."
"Some people die at 25 and live until 70."
"I didn't realize how much I was harboring resentment to myself... resentment of holding on to something that had run its course."

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Transcript

EP 25 V1-1
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Angie: [00:00:00] When you get into a relationship and you break up and then you get together and then you break up again and you know, there, there's all these like lingering things. You might date a couple of people in between, but then you go back to that original person and then you break up like the odds of that relationship actually working out.

Very slim.

Dave: So let's just read this. Write off episode 25 where it all began. Closing loops, opening eyes. I thought I was going, going back to show the girls where I came from. My humble beginnings, my old neighborhood, the 900 square foot house with one bedroom, the beat up Ford Escort with 150,000 miles. I thought maybe it would give them some perspective, ground them, but standing there, I [00:01:00] realized something.

I wasn't doing it for them, I was doing it for me. It's a good way to start it off. 

Angie: Yeah, I think it's great. 

Dave: So set the table, went to New York this past weekend 

Angie: with all three of our children and your dad. 

Dave: And his buddy Steve. Yep. So, which is like having two more children, 

Angie: five kids. 

Dave: I don't go back to New York a lot.

Angie: Well, it was the first time our youngest had ever been there and really the first time the girls has ever had ever seen it where they could remember it. 

Dave: I haven't been back to Long Island where I'm from in 13 years. 

Angie: Wow. 

Dave: It wasn't about it. This trip wasn't even about going to Long Island. Mm-hmm. I just had this like.

Calling that while we were there, we were gonna go back to where I'm from. I wanted them to see it as a 13-year-old and 12-year-old. 

Angie: Yeah. 

Dave: And ironically, this is my 30 year reunion from graduating high school and leaving Long Island. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. [00:02:00] Yeah. And you and I are from similar backgrounds, right? As far as environment and what the, the town looks like and the amount of people, that kind of thing.

And they've gone to see my hometown multiple times. So when they go, I don't think, I mean, they know all the stories. They know how the history has gone through my family, but they're looking at it through different eyes than when they were going back to Long Island. 'cause it was the first time they had seen that.

And it was interesting how they reacted because I don't think they reacted how you expected them to 

Dave: listen. We weren't going back for that. My, my Uncle Danny's 80th birthday, you know, we stayed in Hudson Yards in the Penry, in this gorgeous hotel, this brand new part of Manhattan. That used to literally be there for the, for the train cars.

Mm-hmm. Right. Yet our mindset is still sometimes playing small, like rather just remembering we're at this basically concierge [00:03:00] hotel. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: Remembering who we are. 

Angie: Yep. 

Dave: We're sitting out in the morning and going on, you know, 15 block walk, searching for a. This trendy bagel spot, you know, killing everyone along the way.

Our kids, my dad, you know, like 70-year-old man. And, 

Angie: but that was part of the experience of New York City. It was, it was 

Dave: perfect, but it was also like a lot of other people 

Angie: mm-hmm. 

Dave: Would've done these things. And that's just like the same conversation over and over again. Whether it's the weirdness of treating myself to the Lamborghini or the watch, which everyone seems to get triggered by, but like these representations to remember, like.

Not material things, but like this is, you gotta think big to do big things. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: You have to have this abundant mentality. So going back there and getting out of our com, not our comfort zone, but like we talked about with the Portland trip, it breaks your frame. And so, you know, seeing my aunt who lived in the same house for [00:04:00] 55 years and going through the, all these things.

And so first day exploration, second day Broadway, connecting to the family, third day Bronx Zoo, and going to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, which I'd never been to. It's just different for me. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: When Ella asked. Why don't we go to New York often? I say my mom lives in Texas. My dad lives here in Vegas. My best friend Eddie, I grew up with lives in Florida with his family that helped raise me.

One of my other best friends is George, who I grew up with is in Pennsylvania. Another really good friend Kyle is in South Carolina. That restaurant we owned is no longer the restaurant. Like there's no reason. 

Angie: Yeah. There's no pull for you anymore for me to go. Yeah. 

Dave: So we were supposed to go on Sunday. We ended up going to the zoo with the family.

You know, my cousin's son got [00:05:00] married and had a baby. So it was just, you know, seeing that was really cool. And you know, my cousin's daughter's, my goddaughter and getting to experience them as adults coming in as a 47-year-old man. There's this contrast of. Who you are and who you've been. Now you, on the other hand, you still have a whole life back where you're from.

Angie: Yeah. I still have similar feelings to it though. Like I, I feel like every time we go and I, we kind of mentioned it just going into your aunt's house, that like every time you step into an environment or a situation or a relationship as a new version of yourself, it's almost like everything actually changes in size, right?

Yes. Like everything feels smaller. Or different in some way, like physically, not only emotionally, but very physically. Um, and I have that experience every time I go home, you know? And I, I love where I'm from and I love the people where I'm from, but I had a lot of things that pushed me away from [00:06:00] there.

And it's almost like, I mean, I remember driving on what is the highway that you drive on to Long Island, the LIE. 

Dave: Yep. 180 5, the LA Expressway. 

Angie: And so we're driving and I could feel the emotion coming from you. I could feel this sense of like. Almost like connection to where you're from and all these memories trying to drop in and all these feelings coming up.

But then also when you got there it was kind of like, holy shit, I'm not the same person. This isn't the same feeling. And it was like on Cue hometown from Kelsey Ballerini comes on as we're pulling off exit 64 into your, like right on your home street. And I even was brought to tears. I was like, wow, this is a full circle experience.

You showed me, you know, you showed us your h, the house that you guys grew up in. You showed us all your schools. You showed us where your best friend and you were hung out, and all the houses that meant something to you. And how quickly did it turn for you, where you were like, okay, [00:07:00] I've seen enough, I'm ready to move on.

Dave: I felt myself building up and even talking about it, I, I was, I was justifying, I was like, why do I want to drive out? It's gonna take us an hour and a half to get there from the city. It's usually only like 45 minutes to Queens, but once you get into Manhattan, it's a shit show. Mm-hmm. It's like 20 minutes to go three miles, right?

Angie: Yep. 

Dave: And I was like, why do I want to basically travel an hour and a half there, an hour and a half back for what's probably gonna take. 30 minutes to show them my life, and I had this story of like, Nope, my kids, they need to see where I'm from. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: They need to see the come up. They need to see the Italian version of the Jeffersons.

They need to have perspective. Mm-hmm. That was my story from the bagel store that's still there, that they sat in. I walked to from the house, from the real estate office my dad worked in now, now it's abandoned tax shop. That was a maybe a thousand square foot piece of shit. Little mm-hmm. House on a corner off the [00:08:00] LIE.

I see my house. The trees are gone. 76 is was my address. Six is not even on the the house. Immediately I had this like disappointment. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: I was looking for something to grasp onto that I was proud of. And there was nothing there, my gut, about wanting to get out and that I was meant to grow, outgrow that like I wanted more.

Angie: Yeah. 

Dave: From the get from the jump. 

Angie: Yeah. And you know, every time I'm like, obviously this is a marriage podcast, right? And as you're talking, I'm going, how many people and how this story correlates with people that have been in a relationship and they go back to maybe see. Like they have an ex or they have a past relationship that they go back to and they think that, you know, those times were great or there could be something more there.

There's something they were [00:09:00] proud of and yet that person never changed. That person is still in the same situation. They're still making the same choices and. How it's kind of like when one, it's, it's the conversation we're always having, right? If two people are growing and one person's growing and, and doing what we've done in our lives, and this other person or situation or relationship is stagnant, I.

You can't go back to that, right? Yeah. But there's beauty in it because that made you who you were, right? All of those memories, all of those situations, the place, the physical place, the everything made you who you are today. And that's the same with a relationship like. I talk to the kids all the time about, oh, I mean, we're very open with our past relationships with other people and we're trying to show the girls, like give them an example of what this looks like, right?

And so when we are open, they're kind of like, they can't imagine that we were with anybody else but each other. But when I explained to them, I'm [00:10:00] like, we had to go through that so that mommy and daddy could find each other, and our paths had to go that direction so that they could cross. And now go on the same path and grow together.

But it would've never, like if I wouldn't have had the experience and you wouldn't have had the experience that we had before us meeting, there's no way we'd be married right now. 

Dave: No. 'cause our, our trajectories in our life have so many similarities. Just pretty much a decade apart. 

Angie: Exactly. 

Dave: And that's one of the reasons why you gotta find your people, right?

Mm-hmm. But you're right, I just pictured, you know, being in a relationship. And the relationship's over and you like see each other and you sleep together and you're laying in bed and you're like, why did I do that? 

Angie: Yeah, exactly. 

Dave: Like there was no point to this. You, I 

Angie: thought there was like this glimmer of hope, this little thing.

Yeah. You know, and it's 

Dave: no harm, no foul. I mean, it's not like you're having slept with that person before. Right. But you're laying there and you're like, what am I doing? Like, and that's the death [00:11:00] process. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. When you get into a relationship and it's living in the past, you break up and then you get together and then you break up again and you're like, you know, there, there's all these like lingering things.

You might date a couple of people in between, but then you go back to that original person and then you break up like the odds of that relationship actually working out. Unless two people are growing and committed to growth together. The odds of that relationship are just very slim. 

Dave: My coach, Garrett, Garrett, calls it the karmic cul-de-sac.

Yes. Because if you don't, you jump, you just keep going all the way back. You, you're just circling and circling. Yes. 

Angie: However, there's a a point there where I believe that if you do the work. And you heal and you grow, and you look at things differently. Like when we moved to Texas for four months, right? We ended up coming back to Vegas, but we came 

Dave: new people with 

Angie: completely new eyes, with a refreshed vision of like what this could look like, what it could be.[00:12:00] 

And so like, if you don't change that perspective, you're just setting yourself up for failure. But if you change that perspective and if you grow and if you heal within that time, I think you can go back to, well, also even relationships. Right. We 

Dave: also broke, we, we went all in. Mm-hmm. 

Angie: Like 

Dave: we didn't leave anything back.

Like we took everything we owned on the truck. Like we were never coming back. Yeah. We had all the goodbyes, everything. So when we came back, we came back as different people. 

Angie: Yep. 

Dave: With a child, different friends, like I. We came back and we weren't hanging out with the same people anymore. We were doing a different business.

We came back reborn, 

Angie: totally reborn. And it's interesting because it always reminds me of my godparents. They got divorced, she ended up, my godmother had a child with somebody else. I. And then they ended up getting remarried and they're still married to this day. They had two kids before they got divorced.

She had another kid and now they're, they're happily married. And they've been married forever. Like I would be so curious to see like what in that time span, [00:13:00] what changed and what kind of work did they do? Come way because it could come back to each other. Come be way, I mean, 

Dave: we don't know the inner workings, but it could be a cop out and they just went back.

Or it could be they came back as different people. 

Angie: Yeah. 

Dave: Which is. The whole thing. 

Angie: If you're constantly going back to who we were when we first met, or who we were, when we were jealous about certain things or who we were when we wanted to control certain things, it's not a place of growth and it's not a place where we can thrive.

So I 

Dave: got a great, I got a great thing that I say about friendships that I think I can apply to. Mm-hmm. To, um, marriages. Every year I have fantasy football drafts. And depending upon how many years I've been in the league, some have been 20 years, some have been 10 years, some have been five years. I can tell if this is a backwards relationships.

Mm-hmm. A current relationship or a forward relationships based on one thing. You know what that thing is, which 

Angie: is no. [00:14:00] 

Dave: Are the things we talk, we're talking about of stories of the past. Things we've just done or things we're going to do. 

Angie: Hmm. I love that. '

Dave: cause I'll be around some friends, like one of my best buddies in the world who I love.

Um, I stood in his wedding twice and instead of mine rich, like he'll always be my friend. And we're not in each other's lives as much as I'd like. We got different lives every time we get together. We're talking about these stories and some of 'em are 20 years old. 

Angie: Yeah. The past. Yep. The past. 

Dave: And then, you know, now I had some present friends, now it's becoming past.

Angie: Mm-hmm. Because 

Dave: I don't hang out with 'em as much. Everyone grows, they do their own thing. And then there was a group, like when I was in, um, some YPO drafts, I just met them. So it was talking about the future and business. Right? 

Angie: Yep. 

Dave: So like if you and I 

Angie: we're always talking about the future. 

Dave: So that's the beauty.

We have wonderful stories of the past. We got [00:15:00] so much going on right now in reality, obviously more than we can even handle. 

Angie: Yep. 

Dave: And our future is obviously always something we're talking about. And so if a marriage is only looking backwards, you got some fucking problems. 

Angie: I agree. 

Dave: Well, the thing, it's like the life cycle of your, of a human, but also of a relationship.

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: Right? And so if you're in a, a marriage, h you infancy, honeymoon phase, right? Mm-hmm. Then it grows up Kid fa or marriage phase, kid phase, house phase. When you get to that point when you're peaking 

Angie: mm-hmm. 

Dave: It goes to the decline, you peak at the top and you decline businesses. Marriage, midlife crisis, like that is the time where you have to reinvent.

That's 10 year marriage. That's five year what? Pick a timeframe and reinvent. I don't care if you're Coke, [00:16:00] Pepsi, if you've been married for 50 years, you need to reinvent and grow and let. Go the past. You think of like stars like Madonna or Lady Gaga or Eminem like, or even actors who go away and come back.

They reinvent themselves, right? 

Angie: Well, they have to. 

Dave: What's the saying? Like some people die at 25 and live. The 70. 

Angie: Yeah, no, I know what you're saying. I don't know how the actual saying goes because 

Dave: they stopped growing at a certain time, so the fire went out and they stopped and so I didn't know I needed it.

I didn't understand why. Maybe it's because Urban Nest and the way it was run, me being the president and you with the real estate and it was so much of the last 13 to 20 years. Of my life that it became so much of my identity that going back I had to start [00:17:00] not I, I had to finish that loop of my childhood and the loop of that part of Urbanness almost at the same time.

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: I'll leave you with this. This is what you have to be careful with. So we have a follow up. To our last episode about that equine therapy. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: So we're in New York. You gotta love, Angie and I, we get into the lobby and I. We have one laptop and we have the earphone. So we go side by side. I put my left earphone in, she puts her right.

We're sharing the earphones and we're doing the first check-in after equine therapy. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: And we're talking about our takeaways and how we feel now that back home. And here we are, we from Portland to Vegas, and now we go from West the Pacific Ocean. Now we're on the Atlantic Ocean. It's my turn to talk and I'm talking about balance and I'm also talking [00:18:00] about how I didn't realize I was getting out of my heart.

'cause I feel like I'm all heart. That's my identity to an extent. New York love hug, get you. You know, I didn't realize how much I was closing off myself to other than my like immediate family and the people. I was like making my circle small and smaller. Because of what we just went through with the move over for real.

And so many people questioning and so many people talking shit about the Lamborghini and so many people with opinion. It was just, I felt like I was being fucking attacked. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: And at the same time, like not having this feeling of like, no, trust yourself, trust your relationship with a higher power, your gut.

And have faith that it's all gonna work out. So I left it with this comment. I was like, I didn't realize how much [00:19:00] I was harboring resentment to myself. 

Angie: Mm-hmm. 

Dave: Harboring resentment to who I was and that identity that was no longer serving me, that I was holding onto not resentment towards. The owner of a company for 13 years, not resentment towards the little boy who lived in New York for 17 years, but resentment of holding on to something that had run its course.

It was time to let go. So if you stay too long in the past, not only can you not go back, you'll start resenting it. And then that just rips you up inside. And I just felt like the being released in my heart, opening up again and not having to like put the walls up. And I never thought I would [00:20:00] ever be like that 'cause I'm so out there and like, come stab me a, you must, you know what I mean?

Like I am going to keep it open. And so for me, that's the full circle loop. These concurrent loops of like looking in the eye of that 17-year-old boy going, thank you so much for taking a chance on a girl and getting outta here. And taking a look at that 33-year-old man and saying, thank you so much for going for it with this company and growing and doing all the hard things.

Angie: Yeah. But leaving them behind.