growNman
growNman
I am growNman 73 Embracing the Tapestry of Commitment: Unraveling the Myths of Love and the Art of Intentional Relationship Building
My wife and I often laugh about how we used to think love would be easy, but our journey together has taught us that a thriving marriage demands intention and hard work. Tune in as we open the book on our own transformative path, sharing the purposeful steps and the hard questions that have been central to our relationship's success. We confront the myth that love should come effortlessly and discuss the dangers of shortcut-seeking in life and love. By offering a glimpse into our experiences across different social circles and their varying attitudes towards commitment, we hope to provide a beacon for others navigating the waters of relationship fulfillment.
Communication stands as the bedrock of any strong relationship, and in this episode, we peel back the curtain on how we've worked through our share of struggles. Reflecting on the transition from life in Abu Dhabi back to our roots, we unveil the importance of adapting roles, behaviors, and the very way we convey thoughts and feelings to each other. We share actionable insights on improving communication, recognizing harmful patterns, and building accountability within ourselves. Listeners are invited to join us on this continuous journey of growth, as we make clear that the perfect decision-making is a myth, but bettering our bonds with each passing day is a promise we can all strive to keep.
what up, though, and welcome back to I'm growing man. It's your man, john d, in the build. I want to give a shout out to everybody who's been tuning in. It's a complete pleasure to keep you guys, hopefully, entertained with information that can create a different you. Not even a different you a better version of you. I just know the person that I used to be. I'm so excited about becoming a better version of that person because I wasn't doing all of the right things and I thought I was supposed to play by those rules.
Speaker 1:Now, realizing that there's a process in everything, and I think that the messages I got growing up was cheating the process. It's like it's all about shortcuts and the fastest way to get to something doing the least amount of work, and I think I just it got the better of me, and that leads me into me talking about relationships. You know I can only give my analysis because I'm in a successful relationship. I saw it. I saw it just exist, and then I saw it actually flourish, and being a part of it makes me feel like I'm supposed to share my experiences with you, and if I don't do that, I feel like we're just hoping that you're supposed to get it right by yourself. And I'm not saying all of my ways are the right way, but I know what ways don't work. Just thinking about how me and my wife got here, it was just that we wanted to be good parents. She wanted a good relationship, but I didn't know how to give it to her and I think I was almost doing everything to prevent it from growing and I think she just got tired and I think that my behaviors were very common in your average household. So I think that if you knew more and you knew how to do it be easier to apply some new options that you didn't know, that could possibly be for you the relationship my wife and I have. Currently. It's only here because it was intentional. And when I say intentional, this is where I don't understand. Like everybody knows, people say marriage is hard, like that's the common thing, but why isn't it? Like nobody's trying to intentionally figure out how to be in a successful world? Everybody thinks it's easy and I think that when you don't understand the process of things, you'll quit and find an excuse on why it was OK for you to quit. The only reason why it's OK for one to quit is when you can say I didn't have enough information to select the right person. If you can't be accountable and say that, you're always going to come up with the excuse on blaming somebody else. This is just my opinion and this and this video is not to offend anyone. It's hopefully to talk as candid as possible without disrespecting, but to enlighten some of your journeys from mine.
Speaker 1:My experience I've been in a lot of relationships with so many different men. My experience I've been in a lot of relationships with so many different men and when I say that I mean like I'm in different groups, from being the cues, being a Mason, being an educator, being black, enjoying basketball, enjoying sports. You know you pick up different groups of people and I've lived in different places so I was able to establish these groups from low income to high income and overall I can hear that, like the common themes of, you know, happy wife, happy life and all of this, when you see people get married or get married, you hear don't do it. You know, say goodbye to your freedom and all of this. It's so crazy because I can see why people would say that. But if you haven't seen anybody get to a place where the relationship is actually worth it.
Speaker 1:I will say this too If you work on anything with the intentions of getting better, it will get better. Anything with the intentions of getting better, it will get better. Depending on how open-minded you are, how big your ego is, can determine how fast you guys can get to this point of growing. Because what you're doing is you're bringing your set of beliefs, she's bringing her set of beliefs, and you guys are making a lot of assumptions, because most of the time we don't even have enough conversations to understand other people's foundation for real. We're just attracted to them physically. Do they have a job? You know what are their hobbies? Like why aren't you in a relationship now? Like, why aren't you in a relationship now?
Speaker 1:You know your basic questions. It's not like things that you think about. These things are going to become important later. You know so when you're in the relationship, you're supposed to ask the most difficult questions because you don't want to develop you do not want to develop emotions for anybody. And then you ask difficult questions later and then mentally you're already trapped. You're like if I didn't do this before and people like you know it's a you gotta ask you, it's a process. When you ask questions. Well, what's the process?
Speaker 1:To be successful at it to me is to ask the most difficult questions in the beginning, because if you don't trapped is real, because emotionally you're going to be like it's very difficult to walk away, no matter how abusive or how unhealthy the relationship is. Like you feel like you are committed to this person to a degree and it's hard for you to walk away. If we were to ask those difficult questions in the beginning, at least you can get mentally prepared and say if I can do it or not. But a lot of times again, we're drawn to physical attraction and things that don't matter. I know a lot of people like I know a little something about relationships and for me to get on here and try to share different options for you to succeed in yours, it's the least I can do. And guess what? If you don't like the commentary, this information is not for you. You so it's almost like a horrible channel that can't do anything for you. It just doesn't come in your feed. So masking, you know. If you want to know more, just ask.
Speaker 1:A lot of times I get you know comments and I was thinking like it shouldn't affect me, but it does, because my intentions to help and I know that if my language was received the way it was supposed to, I wouldn't get comments that make me feel a certain type of way, and it's not even comments that are disrespectful or anything, because they don't know my disrespect right, we don't know each other, but at the end of the day, I only want to help. So it's like me explaining myself to those that I'm offending, because it's not my intent and I can. I can just say this I know it works for me, like what worked for me was realizing that the only way this relationship was going to be successful as if I wanted it to be successful my wife only wants the best. So if she wants the best, what am I doing? I realized how lazy I was in our relationship because I was on some regular man roles and I asked her to help me, tell me what you need me to do, and I didn't realize.
Speaker 1:There's so many things that women do. They multitask in so many different ways that men don't you know. You only know what you know, and what happened in my household may not happen in your household, but I'm just thinking about the reoccurring conversations with different men on what we were complaining about, and a lot of things we were complaining about are things that was supposed to be done. She wanted me to do this. She wanted me to do that. It's only helping the household. You know what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Like, if you as a man, if we as men, looked at things, what she's saying is like is it, is it helping the household? Is it hurting the household? And you actually think about it and don't look at it like, oh, is it helping a household? Is it hurting the household? And you actually think about it and don't look at it like, oh, it's maybe, like it's taking up my time. What are you doing where it's taking up your time? Because whatever she's doing is literally trying to help the household. Like, maybe it's like painting a room, it's bringing value to the home. You know, it's like making sure this gets done.
Speaker 1:And if because if it doesn't we will procrastinate things it's supposed to be bad. That's why we need to be told what to do, because we're not trying to break a family. We don't want women to work as hard as they do. We just want them to at least do their part. But what the problem was is that we never got all out of this the responsibilities to balance it for women.
Speaker 1:So right now we're in the phase of the relationship where we're trying to redefine roles that work for both parties, so that at least you can have a blueprint of accepted responsibilities until you guys can communicate effectively enough to say, hey, I need you to do this, and then you could like say okay, and I, typically in a relationship, if you do it once, it's almost like if you can do it, do it. You know, don't look for them to tell you to do it again. And I don't know too many women that take advantage of their men. I don't, and people, even my friends in my close circles, they'd be mad at me because they say I'd be letting women off the hook. Well, I feel like this If we men and we're supposed to be responsible and accountable we should know the person we're selecting If we vetted them correctly or were we just driven off the black looks, or if they had a nice job or their potential like did we really get to know them? You know, and if you got past all of that, like if the relationship's not working, what are you doing wrong? It's not what they're doing wrong, it's what are you doing wrong Because you're supposed to be their compliment right, or they're supposed to compliment you so they can't like.
Speaker 1:We have to learn how to communicate. We got to set boundaries and we have to create rules for both parties to understand, because a lot of times we go into the relationship assuming the other person is going, and that's where the conflict comes. And being that we don't know how to communicate effectively, the way that we say it or present the information, it could sound like an attack, and if one person is attacked, the other person is going to respond in a way without stopping hey, what's going on? We're on the same team. That's because we're not good communicators and overall, most relationships fail because communication is poor.
Speaker 1:So if you want to have a chance at a successful relationship, communication is by far the most important ingredient, and when I say that I mean transparency, whatever that looks like to you. If it's something that could change the relationship, it's important enough to reveal to you. If it's something that could change the relationship, it's important enough to reveal. If you don't reveal it, you have to know that at some point it may not even be that situation, but you're going to be put in a situation where the shoe is going to be on the other foot and it's going to be a tight situation for you, and I'm trying to show you that there's no shortcuts in this If you're going to do this relationship. How about? This relationship shouldn't be for amateur people. I hear people say you know you can grow people, but you can only grow with people that want the same things you want. If you don't talk to each other about what you want, you guys could be creating a life chasing different things, causing the conflict that's preventing you guys from actually getting there. Because you are assuming you understand each other. You don't have to listen to anything I have to say, but understand this.
Speaker 1:Communication is the key for any relationship to flourish. You know, when you communicate with somebody, you understand their intent or you hope to. You hope to ask them enough questions for you to feel like you can bring down your guard and be vulnerable. You know, if you do it too soon, you automatically think the other person didn't value you the same. They didn't grow up the same as you. You probably didn't talk about what would you do if this situation occurred. A relationship is about growing and if you guys can't see that, then wherever you are in your relationship, you're probably touching a ceiling. The only way you can not touch a ceiling of a relationship is if you constantly intentionally work to create the relationship that you say I will want to be in a relationship like that 10 years from now, relationship that you say I would want to be in a relationship like that 10 years from now. It ain't going to just miraculously just turn that overnight. You got to work toward it.
Speaker 1:Me and my wife have been intentionally working on this relationship together maybe a year and a half, two years, but I've been doing it maybe three, three and a half. Like to bring some context. I was living in Abu Dhabi and so I was a year out, but mentally I was preparing myself for this move back because I realized our relationship was where it was, because the way that I was viewing life and my roles as a man. So I started working on communication because I just felt like I was being misunderstood and when I learned how to communicate better, she started to see what I wanted and where we are now. It's the only reason why this podcast is so instrumental to me, because I felt like if I had just known a little bit more information, I would have been more successful, I would have been less likely to ruin a beautiful day, and to me, I was skating on thin ice for too long and I see people on thin ice and hopefully one of these podcasts can catch somebody before they create a butterfly effect that they can't control.
Speaker 1:And that is the worst feeling in the world Like creating something that you can't stop, no matter what. No matter what, you can't stop it and it's your fault. That is a feeling that a lot of people haven't felt and unfortunately, that is like that's an experience that you got to carry and say I was ignorant or I don't know. I don't even know other than you. Like did you? You did it on purpose, like if, if, if you get caught for something or you, something happens to you because of something you've done and you knew the consequences isn't that stupid? Like you know it's wrong and you do it anyway, or you didn't know the true consequences or you didn't think about what could happen if this happened. I'll tell you, if we don't become accountable for our decision making, there's going to be a cycle you create that you can't even stop. You just got to hope that they figure it out. Don't get your hand caught in the cookie jar. It's not worth it.
Speaker 1:Before I get out of here, I just want y want you to know I'm creating these episodes, hopefully for the remainder of my life, because I'm intentionally working on myself and I want you guys to see what it looks like as a person continues to work on themselves. At some point my words are going to be less threatening or less aggressive or less do what I say. It's going to be like pain. That's dope, because that's my intent. I'm working on it. I just want you guys to know I'm not trying to say anything to offend any of you. I am talking in a way where I don't want to offend. That's what I'm in my head. I want somebody to be like dang. I didn't look at it that way. That's it, because if you only see it one way your tunnel vision you're saying you're perfect, that you are making the right decisions at all times. That's not the case.
Speaker 1:There's so many different options you can do and before, like I said, I get out of here, if you want to have a better relationship, work on your communication, ask better questions, ask them what do they need to see from you and you know, know what you may have to write it down, because the way we say things sometimes could sound like very aggressive or that's not. You know it's. It doesn't sound well to be on the other end and it's abusive. Because you may not know you're doing it. But I'll tell you. You're probably talking in a way where other people are looking at you like why are you talking to her like that? And that's probably the person you love. Just fix it. But 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, all-pipers Boom.