what up and welcome back to. I'm growing man. It's your man, john d, in the building. Uh, hope everybody's having a wonderful evening. Uh, this wonderful weekend.

I just happened to get on one of the social media platforms and I saw a post from a friend of mine who said in order to be in a successful relationship, men have to be whipped or sprung. And instead of sitting on it, I decided I want to get on here and talk about it, but before I just kind of want to give how the order came about. So I wanted to ask what was whipped or sprung, because I wanted to be as fun as possible, but I didn't even give him a chance to respond. So I'm all here because I can tell you what I thought about that at one point and I thought that that was true you had to be whipped or sprung to be in a successful marriage. And when I thought about successful marriage, I meant that it was hit on all the cores. Both people are happy with each other's company and all of this. And, as crazy as it sounds, it's like I didn't even know if it was possible for real, because I thought how long does whipped and sprung last being sprung last? And I've seen a lot of relationships just fall to the wayside because of false expectations and not really knowing what it takes to be in a successful relationship. But with this post it insinuated that the only way a relationship could be successful is if a man is whipped and or sprung, and I did. I thought like that, but now I don't think I'm whipped or sprung, uh, and I believe my relationship, my marriage, is on a scale of one to 10 and successful a 10 without a doubt, like it's always room for improvement. But we've created boundaries and rules and parameters just in case we get to a place in our in our journey where we haven't discussed it before and it's new information. So we have, like these things set up just in case, you know, some childhood trauma comes out of nowhere to know that. You know it wasn't you, it was something that's unsettled and I do. It was the first time or I've never dealt with this before, but when I tell you, like, when you know how to play a game, it's really difficult to not be good at it. I mean, you know what I'm saying. Like my wife and I, we practice our relationship every single day to some degree, to some degree on purpose, intentional, whatever you want to call it, but it's so on purpose that it has changed the way that we communicate with each other. And that's why I want to say I'm not sprung and I'm not whipped.

That phase that was gone in the very beginning and I don't even think I was ever whipped or sprung. I dubbed her a lot, but whipped and sprung. If I looked at it, if I was thinking on the levels of it, I wasn't. She and I had great conversations and we were cool. And then our relationship developed over a short period of time and then we were lifing together for real.

And this is the time where I would have thought in my mind like in order to be in a successful relationship, a man has to be sprung or whipped. And I will say when I say during that time I wasn't unhappy, I just thought that the relationship could be better but it would look differently. So it was just me looking from a selfish standpoint, like I'd probably be happier if, or if this happened, I would be happier or we would be happier, but it was more so like what was going to stimulate my idea of what happiness is supposed to look like. So as I've matured into this man I've become, I realized I just didn't understand the rules of engagement and most people don't. The mating game is crazy if you're not intentional, because you could end up with somebody that was only skin deep. Everybody's meant for somebody and a lot of times the outside can trick somebody to getting an opportunity to live somewhere else. I don't want to get into that. If you got it, you got it. But just thinking about how my wife and I have matured into this idea of a successful marriage, this is what's so cold about our marriage that we know that it's only going to get better and our baseline is successful. The baseline of our marriage is successful. Imagine that the baseline of the marriage is successful and you're so intentional that you're moving, that it just keeps getting better and better.

That's and I, like I said, I'm being completely transparent. I'm not whipped or sprung. Uh, I do enjoy her company, but I don't have to be around her all the time, nowhere near it. You know what I'm saying. But I enjoy her company enough that it doesn't make me feel like that feeling of whipped or sprung, because I remember this idea when I was younger. You know that person that made you like you enjoy being around them. And he was like I'm doing this and I was like so why don't you consider this? You know he was like you considering it and your change plans. You know what I'm saying.

Like that to me was more so like were you willing to just drop everything for your person and I'm like, if I don't want to do it, I won't do it. But if you whipped or sprung, you will do it for her and you should do it for yourself, even though you know it's for her. But if you drop everything else, that's what this run and I feel like I don't, I don't have to do that. So you know, to his question or to his statement, it's false information. What's so crazy is that I used to believe in that. But if you haven't seen a relationship or heard of one, why would you believe it's possible?

There's nobody out there talking about 10,000 hours and working toward a relationship. That is the coldest journey that any two people could take on, because if you could eclipse 10,000 hours, just imagine how many different conversations you wouldn't only learn your person, but you would become a better communicator, because you will learn what you sound like, what another person sounds like, because you start to listen to other things. You know, some people say, oh, there's only so much you can talk about. No, there's so many things you can talk about. Some people just choose not to talk about them, and that's one thing that I really enjoy about our relationship, because I like to talk about the things. That's uncomfortable, even though I'm not the best person, because because sometimes my tone changes and I sound really aggressive and this was so cold about it.

Last week she got me and she kind of told me what happened. My tone changed and I was already ready to defend it. She was talking like you know, I don't want you, I want you to take this with love. And you know, sometimes I can just be like ready, defensive, and I don't even know that I am, but she was able to walk me down and look at it and I just you can't do that unless you put that work in with somebody. And that's what you want. You want somebody who can identify a weakness that you have, that you don't even know when it's happening. And I told her I needed some guidance or some help to recognize those weaknesses I have in my communication, because I even have it with my students.

I apologized to them. Recently too. I told specifically certain ones that I really have a short tolerance for their attention span and I know that's unfair. But I have a relationship with them where they know my expectation. I'm pushing you. I'm like I'm your teacher. If I don't push you, what kid is disciplining? I got to push myself because my teacher's not pushing. My job is to push every one of my students and sometimes my talk is how? Like I don't want to get help from a person who's going to talk to me like that and I mean they, they understood. And I told him I apologize and I told him I'm really working on it because I don't want who wants to be talked to like that.

You know, and being a math teacher is already you know insecurities with the math and if you got a teacher that sounds like he don't beat me up because I made a mistake, and that's not even everybody. There's just a few students that I have that you know they'd like to ask for my help and don't be prepared. And when I say don't be prepared, I'm like no paper and no pencil. And I told them don't ask for help unless you got paper and pencil. So now I got them into the routine of it, but like they ain't even wrote the problem down, they got me going back there. Then I get them to read the problem. It was like, oh, I was like how you come back?

Anyways, the whole point is my wife, my relationship, the person that I don't believe I'm sprung or whipped on, was able to help me recognize a feeling that I had I couldn't identify. That causes me to get really aggressive for my, my demeanor and like jerking and like real, real aggressive, like, and I'm like, and I told I appreciate it because I'll be able to at one point figure out why I have that and what I can do to recognize when it's coming. Because, at the end of the day, I just want to learn how to listen and observe. I only want to give information to people who ask for it and I'll plant seeds anywhere and everywhere I go, whether they materialize into something, realize into something. My intent is I come in peace and she allowed me to find that and I don't know if you can see it on my demeanor, but I'm not lying, I'm really not whipped or sprung, but I know that I've never loved a person more than I loved her because she had the patience for me to mature into the man that I'm becoming, and without that I'm average. So, with the work I put in on a daily basis, I want to become a better communicator, with the intent of just listening and observing and hopefully only giving information to those who's looking for it.

I don't want to become that person that says this is the way you should do it, because there's a million ways you can do it. But I think people are looking for you know an easier way to adopt something that can help them grow without dealing with some poor habits they may carry. You know, poor habits are real. You know I do recommend this, though just just attack one. But you have to replace it with something so that you don't fall back into relapse because it's so easy when you don't have that, like you've been doing it for so long. It's a habit because you've done it for so long. So you would have to replace it with something that you want to become better. And at one point I'm telling you it's going to be like a switch, like you don't even remember it was even there.

And I don't think I could have learned that without my wife and I'm blessed, to say the least my wife and I'm blessed to, to say the least like she's given me. She's given me a more polished perspective when I approach any and everything, although my demeanor, my body language, doesn't reflect, uh, my peace, and you know people, people will take it in a wrong way and I just had bad habits that I'm trying to remove. People say your natural actions, say everything they do, but if I've never dealt with this thing and it just causes this emotion where it comes out of my language and my body language, I'm a grown man now and I'm still underdeveloped in certain areas because I haven't found peace on why I speak the way that I do when I get, I guess, defensive about something that I believe in, I guess, and instead of having a nice dialogue, it causes me to feel like I got to defend myself and I couldn't have done that without her, and tell me that's an example of a successful marriage and this has been a complete blessing to get to this point too. Some of my students have found me on different social media platforms and they show mad love and it's dope, because imagine teaching math all day and you have students that don't mind listening to you in their free time To me. That's that's. That's awesome, you know, and I'm trying to get the information translate as much as I can so that they can take any and everything they can and turn it into something that only they can come up with, because they're going to be that code.

So I told them that they're my younger versions of me and I'm trying to give them everything I can Try to get rid of a lot of this horrible language that they use. You know, when I was young, I cursed, but I did not curse in front of adults. I didn't want to do that, but these kids have. I guess they don't understand how important your presentation is now, of course, but the language is so foul they apologize. I don't want to make it seem like like you know they, but they use it so often it's almost like just second nature and I'm like, golly, how do they not use this in front of their parents because they be on one?

But regardless of any of that, shout out to you guys. You guys have been a complete blessing for me, because this is by far the best year of my professional career in education, and it's just. It's just. I've just seen it exponentially grow, because I think I found the routine as a math teacher that made them adopt some routine. I told them like the more minutes you accumulate, the better you and more confident you become in math. And you know I got them signing in on their phone, doing lessons on their phone, doing lessons on weekends, during breaks.

You know, anything helps and at this age, if they develop a routine as early as this age, they're going to be, they're going to be prepared to dominate the world at some point. But they have to believe that they're that important and I think they will. So shout out to my students. That's allowing me to become a better teacher, because the successful marriage that I'm in it allows me to go to school and just get these kids a better version of a math teacher. 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.