Love, Lessons, and Emotional Intelligence: A Journey to True Connection

Love isn’t just about romance—it’s about self-discovery, emotional growth, and the courage to embrace vulnerability. In this heartfelt Valentine’s Day episode of Friday Feelings, host Jenelle Friday sits down with a very special guest—her aunt, Karen Rhinehart—who recently found love and got married in her sixties. Together, they dive deep into emotional intelligence, self-awareness, and the power of love in all its forms.

Karen shares her remarkable journey of navigating heartbreak, self-discovery, and healing before she could fully welcome love into her life. She reflects on:
❤️ Learning to love herself first
❤️ Recognizing unhealthy relationship patterns
❤️ How emotional intelligence helped her approach love differently the second time around
❤️ The shift from seeking “Prince Charming” to valuing trust, partnership, and authenticity
❤️ Finding love later in life and embracing marriage with fresh perspective

This episode is raw, honest, and deeply inspiring. Whether you’re single, in a relationship, or somewhere in between, Karen’s wisdom will challenge you to rethink how you approach love, relationships, and personal growth.

Key Takeaways:

✨ Self-awareness is the foundation of EQ—you can’t love others fully until you love yourself.
✨ Love isn’t just about romance—it’s about deep connections, trust, and emotional resilience.
✨ It’s never too late for love—but first, you must heal, grow, and be open to it.
✨ Emotional intelligence strengthens relationships—from better communication to recognizing triggers and creating deeper connections.

This conversation is a must-listen for anyone seeking love, personal transformation, or a deeper understanding of emotional intelligence.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:05

All right. Well, welcome to Friday Feelings, where we turn emotions into power, vulnerability into strength, and remind you to feel everything, fear nothing, and transform your life. I'm your host, Janelle Friday. And first of all, happy Valentine's Day, everybody. We are celebrating lovely Valentine's Day, the day of love on Friday, my namesake day. And I want to kind of talk about love because love is a word that I think makes people a little bit itchy and uncomfortable in a professional setting. But really what we're going to do is we're going to deep dive into the emotions that shape our lives and explore how emotional intelligence transforms the way we think, feel, and connect. And today we're talking about one of the most important, sought-after and sometimes misunderstood emotion, love. Okay. Now, love isn't just about romance, it's about self-discovery, growth, and emotional resilience. And today I have a very special guest with us to help with help us explore this topic, my aunt. She is in her 60s and has recently made a huge leap and gotten married. So, first of all, welcome, Karen, to Friday Feelings. I'm so excited to have you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:19

And happy Valentine's Day. All right.

SPEAKER_01 1:23

Well, you have recently been married. You found out the love of your life. And I would classify your journey as not easy, right? Um, you've had to unlearn old patterns. You've had to embrace emotional intelligence and redefine what love truly meant before you could really welcome it into your life. And so um I really want to dig into that, but first let's have you kind of share with us a little bit about you. Um, tell us what you do for work, tell us about you and your brand new husband. Just let us have it.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Thank you. Uh so as you said, I'm in my early 60s looking. Retirement is, I can see it, uh, but it's still quite a few years off. Anyway, I am a professional in the health insurance industry. Work for a major international health insurance company, very large, very corporate. I've been there uh coming on. I think this is gonna be my 12th, 13th, 13th year.

unknown 2:23

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

In for the same company, and they have been really good to me. Um, and so I work in that professional space. Uh, I did get married when I was in my mid-30s. So I was late, I think. A lot of people get married in their 20s and 20s and early 30s. I I was 36 when I got married for the first time, was married for 17 years, and it I decided to get a divorce, and we can delve into that later.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

But let's not do that on Valentine's Day.

SPEAKER_00 2:56

And then uh, you know, life happened, and I ended up having to be the caretaker for my mother, your grandma, uh, for seven years, and she passed away, and I was all alone. And really, when you have that event happen, um, and I was alone, right? It was just me. Uh, granted, I you and I and and your mom and the family surrounded me, but it really was incumbent upon me to discern how I was going to live the rest of my life and what did I what did that look like? And I had just recently moved to the state of Colorado to be, you know, with you guys, right? And I think you'll recall that um I had had was involved in a relationship that was absolutely not healthy for me. That I was of the understanding, based on communication, that the relationship was going to be pursued, and that didn't happen, and that crushed me. You you were part you were aware of that. And so it was.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Well, let's pause there for a sec because you and I took a road trip back to Grand Oregon to bury grandma with grandpa, and um, I believe it was on the way back on our road trip back to Colorado.

SPEAKER_00 4:21

It was because I had known so for the audience, Janelle made it very clear when I moved to Colorado several years ago prior to my mother dying, that I was going to find a love of my life in Colorado, and that she was praying for that fervently, probably daily, if not two or three times a day. I can't tell me I love you. And then uh, and then it was during that drive back. You know, we I had to get out of the town where we buried grandma because I just was not feeling it. And you and I decided to go to Jackson Hall, remember? And we saw the Grand Tetons.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

And it was a profound trip. I think for both of us, it impacted us differently. But for me, it was like, I don't need to seek out love. I need to learn to love myself. And so I told you, Janelle, stop praying that I'm gonna find someone because I need to focus on me. And and I really felt like that the journey ahead of me was solitary. And it was that was really the part where I decided I needed to focus on me and being a healthier version of myself emotionally. Um, and I wanted to bring that to my professional life. And I was learning how being emotionally intelligent and really thinking through the triggers of what I was triggered by um and working through those issues internally within myself needed to be my focus. And so, yes, I told you stop it.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

And what did I say? Uh, I'm not gonna stop. She said, I'm not stopping.

SPEAKER_00 6:07

Don't tell me what to do.

SPEAKER_01 6:10

So uh, and and and for those of you listening, right? I am a woman of prayer. Everyone knows that. I really believe my aunt is such a unique and special lady that I just knew in my gut that there was a man out there for her. And so we don't need to get into that part of the story. Really want to focus on is Karen, as you think about your relationships before Jeff. Jeff is her current husband, and we're gonna get into that. Um, but before Jeff, right? What were some of the emotional patterns or struggles that you can now identify going backwards that contributed to those relationships not being successful?

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Well, a lot of it for me personally had to do with an element of selfishness, pride, and thinking I'm always right. Um, I I would categorize my personality as a very dominant person with a large personality. Uh, I'm very social, outgoing, and you know, I put it all out there good, bad, and the ugly. Yeah. And I had my own sense of values and integrity. And boy, if somebody stepped on that, it was kind of a hair-fire trigger. So I think when it came to personal relationships and relationships of love, and and and let's also clarify that love isn't just with a partner.

SPEAKER_01 7:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

It's love, right? Love is bigger than that. We love our families, we love our animals, our pets, our friends. Yeah, I mean, love is universal that way. Um, but for the purposes of our talk today, I mean, we are talking about um, I think two kinds of love that play into my emotional intelligence growth. And that is I had to learn to love myself. And part of loving myself is being honest with myself. What behaviors do I have that are inhibiting me professionally and personally? And you were a part of that, you know, you were a part of that, you know, right? Because you were also changed by love. You were changed when you got married, and we've had multiple conversations about, you know, how you had to change. And it was through your honesty that I was able to look at myself and go, you know what, I have those same behavior patterns that do not serve me well personally and do not serve me well professionally.

SPEAKER_01 8:37

Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a really hard lesson. And I mean, obviously, my um knowledge of EQ came into this into the picture um early 2021 after my personal trauma and and that impacted our whole family. We're not going to get into that either. But really, what I what I want to dig into is when you think about from the time that I kind of started this EQ thing and was sharing with you and feedback, right? All of the conversations that we've had. Um, what was one of the hardest EQ lessons that you had to learn? So, so of all the things that you look back on over the last year, two years that have led you to become the person you are today, what's one of the hardest lessons that really took you aback and really forced you to sit back and go, wow, I I have some serious work to do.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

Yeah. Um, I I was the first thing that comes to mind is usually the the truth. And the truth is, is I'm not always right. I don't always have the best ideas. And that opened me up to being more curious. You know, maybe there is another perspective that would serve me. And because of my narrow-mindedness and my narrow-minded thinking, um, I was missing out on personal growth, on on learning how to view things. And and, you know, part of that too is the older you get, sadly, um it's easier to stay there. It's easier to stay not curious. And it's harder to open yourself up to a new idea or open yourself up to a new pathway of behavior, right? Um, so it's been a struggle.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

What are you what do you attribute? What do you attribute the need to always be right? Where does that come from?

SPEAKER_00 10:24

You know, Gina, I would have to say the way I was raised. It it definitely is the way I was raised. My parents were um uh pretty strict in their, you will be the best that you can be, and you you you strive to be the best in it, but they would put you know a framework on it in school. You know, I wasn't allowed to get B's. I had to explain if I brought home a B. So I had to be a straight A student all the time. And you know, both parents being teachers, I can understand where that comes from. And so being able to go back and look at the lens of this is how they raised me. And in some respects, professionally, it has served me well, but in others, it has been actually um not served well because our culture has shifted since the 1960s and 70s when I was raised. Yeah, and we have to accommodate and be uh open to the shifts in our culture and behaviors and thought path patterns, and work has changed. You know, there were no computers back then, we didn't have AI technology, and so that um in and of itself has changed how we work too. So um, yeah, that's that's where a lot of that comes from. And so it's deeply ingrained, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:49

Yeah. So you're we're we're really honing in on self-awareness. Like I say, that self-awareness is the front door to EQ. If you're if you're not self-aware, you can't manage your emotions. If you're not self-aware, you have no clue how you're impacting the people around you to build great relationships. So here you've gone through this growth experience, you've had these learning lessons, you're working through self-awareness and kind of addressing those things. How did that change the way you approached a romantic relationship?

SPEAKER_00 12:19

So after my divorce from my first husband, my trust muscle in relying on someone else was broken. And then I was independent for 12 years. So I had to take care of the bills, I had to take care of the house and you know, all that stuff. And grandma, right? Yeah, my mother. Yeah. Um, and so you know, I became very, very independent. And I I can recall a conversation on that same trip to Jackson Hole where I told you that it would be very difficult for a man to um be in love with a very independent woman that, you know, I've I I can handle my stuff. Uh and so when I met Jeff, I was really brutally honest about this is who I am, this is what I'm about, I don't trust easily at all. And he also had came to our relationship with past, I don't want to say failed relationships, because I I've come to the place of learning that if a relationship doesn't work out, it doesn't necessarily fall under the category of failure. Yeah, it's it's a learning experience and it was an opportunity for you to learn something. And I can even say that about my own past failed or not failed, but my own past relationships. Um, Jeff and I came together, uh both of us being transparent and honest, and it took me probably about five to six months before I could say I'm starting to trust him. And he demonstrated in every way why I could trust him. And I came to the realization that the right person will never come into your life at the wrong time. But a lot of ra but a lot of people that you think are right are coming in at the wrong time. And it that never works. That never works. And so um yeah, and and then it was after learning that I I could trust him and he met all of my needs in being a partner, not being someone who was wanting to come into my life and be the man and take over everything. Uh, he appreciated uh that I, you know, I can handle my stuff. And I was willing to start letting go of control over certain aspects of a relationship, of when you're involved in a relationship, um, and letting him do things for me and not feel like it. I mean, one of the things I struggled with initially was if he if he took my car and filled it up with gas, I felt bad that there wasn't enough gas in my car and that he had to do that. And coming to the realization that um, you know, there there really are five love languages, and one of his is acts of service, which is not high on my list of love language. Me neither.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

Me neither.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Right. And so it's through the lens of love and emotional intelligence and talking to him about this is how I feel. I appreciate that you put gas in my car, but there's another part of me that feels like it you should have not had to do that.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

And so let's let's pause. Let's let's talk about before you started this self-awareness journey, before you we were really digging into EQ as a family. What would you have looked for in a partner versus identifying the qualities in Jeff that were not necessarily what you had looked for before?

SPEAKER_00 16:16

Um, what I looked for in a partner before was definitely white-collar businessman. I kind of felt like I needed someone who was in the business realm um to understand my personality uh because I am so work-driven. So it definitely was a white-collar businessman who was successful. Um, and I did marry that. Uh, he wasn't as successful uh as far as you know, he wasn't like a vice president or anything, but but I mean he did well um in in his career. And so that was important to me. Um, and someone that uh that could take care of me. You know, the whole I don't mean to besmirch Disney, but the whole princess thing, you know, I I kind of fell into that trap. And what ended up happening, as you saw, was it didn't work. And I struggled for 17 years and and then decided, nope, that's it. I I I don't need this. Jeff uh is not, was not, he's actually retired, but he was not what I would consider a white-collared businessman, more more blue-collar driven. Um and but I it that didn't matter to me because he showed me what love truly is. And that is the real gem about Jeff, is that I didn't know what it was like to be truly loved. And I don't think I could have opened myself up to that if I had not gone through that year after grandma died to look at myself and say, yeah, I am worthy of love. If it if it comes, great. If it doesn't, that's fine too. But I am worthy of it. And and and working on myself. I I could not appreciate all that Jeff is um had I not gotten to that place within myself, because it's taking a leap of faith. It's that when you when you have for anyone who's been hurt by past relationships, it's sometimes really hard to step out there again and do it again.

SPEAKER_01 18:25

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, whether you're in your 60s, you know, for me in my my mid-30s with with Brett, uh, not my first uh marriage either, it's terrifying because in my mind I was a failure. I had failed a marital relationship. And so you question yourself, right? So I I I want to pause. Let's just take a couple minutes, Karen. So tell us about this holiday season and how you went from being a girlfriend to being a wife in a very short span of time. Just give us the story.

SPEAKER_00 19:01

So uh Jeff and I have been together for about a year and five months. Uh, and just this past Christmas, we had a family celebration that you were not unfortunately part of at our house on December 23rd.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

We call that Christmas Adam in our family.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah, we do. We call it Christmas Adam. Um and the family was getting ready to leave, and Jeff said, I need to talk to everyone. And it was the tone of his voice that thought something was wrong. Somebody had done something that he wanted to address. And it was in front of the the rest of the family that he um talked about how we had future plans and that he was looking forward to those future plans, but he wanted he wanted our relationship to be man and wife. And would I please marry him? And of course, you know, I cried, and my sister cried, and your sister cried. And of course, I said yes. Uh, after the family left, it was imperative that I call you. You and I have a special relationship, um, and I did not want you to hear it from anyone else. So I called you and I said, Hey, just want to let you know, Jeff finally proposed. And after you screamed with delight, your first question was, When are you gonna get married? And of course, I hadn't even thought of that. It said, I I don't know what I said, Chanel, something to the effect that, you know, I don't know. We'll figure it out. Yeah, just gotta gauge. And you very jokingly said, Well, tomorrow works for Brett and I. And we laughed.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

I was totally kidding. I was totally kidding.

SPEAKER_00 20:41

Totally kidding. And I hung up the phone from you, and Jeff had overheard your comment and looked at me and said, Why not tomorrow? And I could not come up with a reason why not. Now, other engaged women, girls, would say, I have a whole wedding to plan. And I completely understand that. That is not what I was interested in. I've already had the wedding, I've already had the princess dress and all of that stuff, and and that's fine. But for me, at this stage of my life, I didn't want a wedding. I knew I would never have another wedding. I just wanted to get married. And so after we contacted Jeff's best friend who agreed to do our ceremony for us, we were able to get an appointment at the local county offices that were, thank goodness, open on December 24th, where we got our license to get married. And then we went to a local um outdoors store, Shields. And because I didn't have a ring for Jeff, and I didn't want to have a uh marriage ceremony without giving him a ring, so we bought him a uh one of those rubber rubber tiny.

SPEAKER_01 21:56

I think I remember telling you that Brat had gotten his uh Shields that. Rubber. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

unknown 22:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

So we picked one of those up and at three o'clock, three thirty the next day, we called you and Brett and said, Come on over, we're getting married on the front steps of my house. So my engagement, I think, was maybe 18, 19 hours.

SPEAKER_01 22:16

And it was awesome because the front of your house was all decorated for Christmas. Your wedding date now is 12, 24, 24, which that's easy to remember. It's really great. And so far to kind of to to move to the close of our session, right? I really want to talk about um EQ. Now that you're married, uh give me here's what's my question. How do you and your husband, how do you and Jeff practice emotional intelligence in your marriage?

SPEAKER_00 22:46

Um, well, it's new, and and I have to keep remembering that I am married because I've called her my boyfriend a couple of times within two weeks of us getting married. Um, you know, how do we practice it? It's when I ask a question or when he asks a question, I want to make sure where it's coming from, or if I make a statement, this is what I'm saying, not what I'm I'm I'm meaning this, while the question or statement might sound like that. And if I receive a statement from him or a question from him, instead of reacting to the negative to ask for clarification, say, did you mean this or did I miss it? I mean, we we had a situation at the grocery store just uh just before you this our deal. Um, as you know, I'm hard of hearing and wear hearing aids, and when people are behind me, I don't quite hear them, which happens oftentimes in the grocery store. I will turn away from Jeff and head away, and he's not done talking to me, or he has something else to say. Uh and uh I had gotten an item on sale and showed it to Jeff. And he, as I turned away, he said goodbye. And I thought it was a sarcastic, oh, now she's walking away from me again in the grocery store. And I turned around and said, Well, what did you mean by that? And and he could he immediately understood where I was coming from because historically, um, that has been like, gosh, you're walking away from me when I'm talking to you. And it's it's not deliberate, it's because I don't hear. Um, so that kind of it really is about communicating and checking your emotions and your feelings from immediately going to a negative to asking, what did you mean by that? And then it turned out to be something that we were laughing about as we walk out the store. So it it really is trusting yourself in that emotional intelligence space of knowing when you're triggered, knowing when, ooh, this this is triggering me, whether it's negative or positive, right? I mean, we always talk about the negative, but sometimes you are triggered in a positive way and you still need to get confirmation of that.

SPEAKER_01 25:02

Yeah. So what would you say to someone who feels like it's too late to find love for me at this point?

SPEAKER_00 25:08

No, and and I actually said that it was too late. It's never too late to find love. Um, but it's it's critical that you learn to love yourself because it's difficult for someone to love you if you can't love who you are. And and I mean that in a selfless way, not in an arrogant or boastful way, but you know, fall in love with yourself and appreciate who you are and what all you can bring to a relationship. And for people who are in their, you know, for anyone listening who's in their 20s or 30s, you know, it's it's not too late. Just know that the the right person will come at the right time. It's never going to be the right person coming at the wrong time. It will be the right time.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

So, how has finding love later in life been different than what you expected a a loving marital relationship to be?

SPEAKER_00 26:00

Well, you know, I didn't uh I didn't have any expectations because remember, I told you I didn't want to, I I was not, I was done. I was done with that part of my life. Um, so finding love later in life, your priorities change. It doesn't matter what Jeff did for a living, it doesn't matter how much money he made or makes, doesn't matter what he looks like. What matters is he demonstrates pretty much every day that he's that I'm his number one priority. He thinks about my comfort, about my sense of peace uh every day. And he demonstrates that. And as someone who is on a journey of emotional intelligence, I watch for that and I tell him how much I appreciate that and acknowledge that that's what he's doing so that he can feel feel fulfilled in our relationship as well. And so we come to the relationship um with open hearts and but open communication as well. Um, and the physical side of the relationship that takes care of itself as well. So for anybody that's in older like I am, it's you still have the enjoyment of intimacy. But the intimacy is different as someone who's in their 60s than say when I was in my 20s, 30s, and 40s.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Very different. Um, but still every bit as fulfilling and joyful and happy um as it was because it's it's it's love.

SPEAKER_01 27:36

Yeah. So here's my here's my last question. What is the biggest lesson you've learned about love and emotional intelligence that you wish you had known before you got married the first time?

SPEAKER_00 27:49

Um certainly the biggest lesson is putting your pride down and doing the work to understand who you are as a person and to work through the challenges that prevent you from engaging on an emotional intelligent level.

SPEAKER_01 28:10

I love that. Well, absolutely. This has been such a special episode for me. Um, I mean, you have been my example because you didn't get married until later on in life. You were the career-driven individual, and I think that's where I get a lot of my push from. Um, but we have come through a lot in our relationship from an honesty, trusting perspective. We've had to work through a lot of things. Um, and I'm really proud of that. But to celebrate you and Jeff in a way over the holidays, it just really reminded me that yet again, watching you grow, watching you push yourself, watching you step out and take a leap of faith with Jeff, even though you know you were like, I don't know what I'm doing. You know, it's like you how it's turned out for you has just been joyous for all of the families. So um, Valentine's Day, thank you so much for sharing with myself and with our listeners your journey to find love. And um, I'm just so thrilled that it has worked out for you the way that it has because we adore Jeff and I could not be happier at how things turned out for you.

SPEAKER_00 29:13

Thank you. And I'm so grateful that the family has welcomed Jeff the way they have, and I'm truly blessed. Truly.

SPEAKER_01 29:19

He's a kooky dook, so he fits right in. Yeah, he does.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

He totally does. The best. All right.

SPEAKER_01 29:25

Well, uh, as we wrap today's episode, I'm gonna encourage you to be inspired, to feel deeply, to be fearless and stay authentic. So when you keep leaning into those feelings, your transformation starts from within. And Karen's journey has definitely encouraged us today. So have a lovely rest of your weekend. Happy Valentine's Day to everyone, and we'll see you next week. Bye.