187 Communication Changes Everything

Love can be strong and your relationship can still fall apart. That’s where we start: the uncomfortable truth that feelings alone do not build a stable partnership. I walk through why relationships fail even when both people care deeply, and why rules, boundaries, and intentional conversation matter more than chemistry when life gets real. If you’ve ever said “we love each other, so why is this so hard,” this one is for you. 

I also put responsibility back in the man’s hands. If I choose her, I can’t spend the whole relationship grading her performance while ignoring my own habits, my triggers, and my effort. We talk about doing real due diligence early, asking tough questions before emotions run the show, and prioritizing the kind of connection that lasts: the ability to communicate when you’re tired, mad, embarrassed, or wrong. That’s where trust is built and that’s where most couples break down. 

From there, we zoom out. What happens if men treat communication skills like something to master? Less misunderstandings, less fights, and more peace, not just at home but everywhere we go. Then we get practical about priorities: your free time tells the truth about what you value, and wasting it keeps you stuck. I share my own shift toward routines, self-improvement, and showing up better for my family, plus why many men never evolve emotionally and what it takes to change. 

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Transcript

Welcome And New Format

SPEAKER_00 0:11

What up, Doe? Welcome back to I'm Growin' Man. It's your man John D in the building. So today, this episode is going to go a little different from my previous episodes. I decided to be a little more intentional yet spontaneous. So I am going to read some questions and I'm going to answer it honestly and tell you what I think and why things happen the way that they do. And you could either take some of my words to help you grow, or you could say, I already know how to do it. But remember, these messages are messages are specifically for those who

Why Love Does Not Save Relationships

SPEAKER_00 0:54

need it. The first question I'm going to answer is this, why do most relationships fail even when two people love each other? And love has nothing to do with anything in a relationship, to be honest. Love is this idea that has been given to us that says, if you care for somebody a lot, it's love. But a relationship has rules, boundaries, and a lot of other things that need to exist in order for it to exist and be successful. Love, you don't even need to love anyone in the relationship, you know. But when you do, it's this idea. Now I'm gonna be honest with you guys. Love is, I guess, my my idea when I hear it. It's when you care very deeply for somebody. You can feel very deeply for somebody and not, you know, do things inside of a relationship. So to answer the question, relationships fail because people don't know the actual rules and boundaries for it to be successful. And I haven't watched as many relationship experts because a lot of them sound pretty similar. But I know that the way that mine worked, my relationship worked because I took full responsibility for it to win. Now I know people say a relationship is 50-50, but if the man chooses the woman, and typically that's most of the time, there's always gonna be exceptions, right? So if the man chooses the woman, the man should not be looking for the woman to do everything to keep him. We should be doing everything to keep her. Because if you picked her and you did your due diligence, and when I say due diligence, I mean like when you guys were getting to know each other, did you ask them the tough questions that you wanted to know now versus getting your feelings involved and making a tough decision later? And I think that a lot of times we kind of get this idea of what a relationship could look like and not realize how important the conversation is. The conversation is the most important part of any relationship. If you don't find somebody you can talk to, there goes your answer. Relationships fail, even you look you love each other. Like our intention has to be on purpose. And if it's not, we're gonna come up with excuses on why we don't get what we think we deserve. If men, and I said men, now mind you, majority of my episodes or my perspective is gonna be for men, because I'm a man. And I'll try to give some feedback about what women are thinking because I want to be the voice for my wife. But outside of that, I'm putting this in the man's hand. If if you're not winning in a relationship, it's because of you. It's not because of her. You chose her. If you don't have anybody, do your diligence, get to know this person, find out if you can talk to them. When you if you know you can talk to this person, and it has nothing to do with any type of extracurricular activities, like you could genuinely enjoy the conversation, you could have something special. Because everything else you can learn to become attracted to or learn to evolve together. But that conversation is so important because when a person gets mad and they respond in a way where the other person doesn't like it, if you can't communicate very well, it's going to be a fight. No lie. And depending on the background, it could be a physical fight. And I feel like, again, that's on the man. The man is picking a woman. If a woman is out here fooling, like I see these memes where it was like, if yo, the woman did this, would you stay or leave? Like, why did the woman do that? Like, why is this the story? Like, men be really feeling like women get in a relationship to try to trick them. And you know what that is? It's insecurity, poor examples from childhood, terrible experiences. I truly believe if you can communicate effectively the relationship, it's a different relationship. You can literally stand back and see why people are not doing well in relationships. Like, I hear people say, you know, I'm just not attracted to them like that. It's the conversation. Some people be attracted to people's physical looks and can't converse and think that they can get past that red flag and find out it was a waste of their time. Some people end up getting trapped because they get pregnant. You know, we have to make better decisions as men. Relationships fail because men don't know the parts of a relationship that's necessary to be happy. Like I didn't either. You know, in the beginning, it was like, I want a woman to be super attractive, have a great body, be in shape, do this, do that. Like, like, like when you're real young, you think it is, you know, wear her hair any way she wanted, she was bad and all of this. And like nobody says, you know, you know, the conversation piece. Like some people be like, you know, we could talk all night. But what are you talking about? Because I remember conversations, meaningless conversations dealing with extracurricular activities that you could talk all night about. But if you can't talk about anything but that, and if we are trying to talk about that and we're we're trying to date somebody, that's the messages that leads us into poor decision making. And you can say, you know, now you can't say, because I know this information is good information. Like, if you really want to be happy, you have to do different things. You can't do what you've been doing. Look at your parents. I'm talking to you. Like, there's a better way to do it. You don't just don't look at your parents, look at everybody. Like, it's very rare you're gonna find a happy marriage, like where both of them enjoy each other's company. You're gonna find the latter part, you know, well, at least in in the realm I'm in, there's very few people that's married outside of my friends, but my family, it's it's it's not that many, you know, and and I realize how difficult it is. And but this is the journey that every man wants, though. Imagine this. If you conquer the relationship, like you will be in a very rare few of men that truly enjoy the relationship. There's way more people talking bad about relationships, why you shouldn't get in them than why you should deal. I was fortunate enough to mature in time to realize how important that conversation is. And when when the conversation like was intentional, like it was a lot of arguments, I'm not gonna lie, a lot of disagreements. It was because I didn't know how to communicate, though, because I would respond in a way if I'm triggered. And I was learning that she she could trigger me, and I had to figure out why she was triggering me. So this is the type of growth that I was trying to do. Like, how can somebody that say she loved me trigger me and I don't even know if she's doing it? But I'm always responding in a negative way. So when I realized I was the problem, all of that went, it decreased greatly. I mean, like, like it's very rare where we'll have a moment where we don't want to be in each other's company. And that's a great feeling. I'm gonna tell you, like, I can't even describe it. But back to that question. I think I gave y'all enough information on that. Most relationships fail even when people are uh love each other because a relationship requires way more than emotional feelings. Like, it's not even required for a relationship, but it makes things more complicated when you don't know what a relationship is supposed to look like. Facts.

Communication As A Skill To Master

SPEAKER_00 9:22

Oh, what's another question I just saw? This one's pretty good. It says, What would happen if men approach communication like a skill to master? Men would get in less arguments, less misunderstandings, less fights. They would learn more, they would be open to being wrong and growing in real time. It doesn't have to be like an event. They would get into the practice of listening to others because the people around us have so much information. But this is what I learned. We like to hear ourselves talk. And I'm talking about men again. If you ask a man a question about himself, he'll he'll go on days about it. That's what that's what I was told by a woman. Like men like to talk about themselves. So if we could, if we could take communication and intentionally say, I'm gonna master this, like I think peace would happen. Because I think it most of the conflicts in the world is just misunderstandings or past misunderstandings that we had no control over, and people are upholding a loyalty to something that probably wasn't even in the best interest of mankind, and we are we are still like practicing these poor behaviors, just like worldwide. Like we're still, we still go to war and kill people. Like you telling me, I've said this before, we can't have a conversation about this where nobody has to die. Somebody has to die? We can't, we can't talk about that. So if men approach communication like a skill to master, we would end war. It would be less violence dramatically, because I do believe humans are very helpful. Like they want to help people, but prior experiences prevent them from wanting to help people. Certain groups of people, depending on you know how you grew up, religion could really cause you to separate yourself from good people because you believe in whatever some man wrote in a book. It was inspired by God, that is what I hear. And and I don't doubt it. I don't want that sound to sarcass be sarcasm. I truly believe it was inspired by God, but I do believe there's more information out there for us to grow. So if men focused on communication and mastered it as a skill, every part of their life would improve to the nth degree. That's on everything I love. Like communication is the key to getting what you want. Like if you ask the right way, you can get whatever you want. But if you don't know how to ask, or if you don't know how to ask the question to get to that point to be able to ask that question, you're gonna be stuck. And we have to look for ways to improve. Like, I told you guys, I'm in I'm in the mindset that I'm gonna work on communication for the remainder of my existence so that people will know that I come in peace. You know, no matter what I got on, who I'm with, like if you see me from afar, you're gonna be like, yeah, I've heard he's peaceful. I want that. Like, I don't want to like be in an area where somebody could get hurt. I want people to know, that's why I say I like I'm trying to work on communication to the point where people want that for themselves. And I'm working on communication so that the people around me receive my message and they know how much I care for them. Like, I need them to know that. And anybody else who listens to me, I need them to know that it comes from my heart where I try to get better to be an example for whoever's willing to receive a message to know that I am in constant progress on a daily basis to get better. So, whatever I'm teaching you today, understand that tomorrow I'm working to improve it for whoever's willing to listen. Because life can really be fun. But you have to put that work in. And the work for everybody should be communication. If you work, like I said, on communication, your relationships change. The people in the relationships are different people now. Like they treat you differently because you think more, you think before you speak. You don't just respond, you put into consideration the words you're gonna say because this person could really take it the wrong way. But if you put that work in, your life changes.

Free Time Shows Your Priorities

SPEAKER_00 13:59

The next one says, How does a man's free time reveal his priorities? Whoo! Well, this is this could be a courageous question, like one of those questions where people don't realize how much time they wasting. Like, I'm gonna just give you a rundown of my my when I lived in Atlanta. This is like a long time ago, but every day of the week, it was like I was looking for a game. As long as I was home to have dinner, and I was home by 10, I feel like I could go out. If a game's on, I could leave after the game, but it was everything, right? So let's just say seven days a week. You know, not to mention on specific seasons, your Sundays and Monday nights and Thursdays could be locked up. So just imagine seven days a week. If you're into sports or you like to listen to music, you like to have a good time, and you were like outside, you could spend an easy 21 hours, right, just going to a groove 21 hours in a week. You know, you work 40 hours a week. So 21 hours, you are out here having a good time. So when I think about those, that 21 hours, like you sleep, you're supposed to sleep, like 56 hours. I'm just gonna make this way too complicated. But let's just put it like this my priorities was more focused on how I could get better in life and my family. Like when I went on this journey, nothing else mattered. Now, work, because I kind of, I've retired from education. I was just caring about how can I become a better person and how can I be a better father and a better husband. And over the course of time, I I felt like I was learning how to become better. And I decided to start to add things little by little because I was so stringent because I felt like I was out here fooling. And then, and when I say fooling, I mean like I wasn't maximizing my time. I wasn't spending it with the ones that I cared about. I was trying to balance this idea of what I thought life was supposed to look like. So me prioritizing my family and my improvement, it started to go into my work. Because when I got back into education, I was like, I can become a better educator. I just have to do it on purpose. So I was using these moments to get better, created my routine, wake up at a certain time, and I did these things where I could see over the course of time, I was seeing results. So when I really realized how much time I was wasting in my past, like going out, I'm not saying you can't have a good time, but when you're having a good time, sometimes you don't realize the work you're supposed to put in within yourself to improve. Because I ain't gonna lie, it's gonna be a lot of people continuously working for a living because they never decided to master anything. So they have to work to live, you know, and I realized I wasted so much of my time having fun outside that I never mastered anything. So now I am in the mindset, I want to master something where money just no longer matters. So I started prioritizing my improvement a lot more. Like I started to like really get intentional with it. Like my health, my the things I do, like when I'm not, let's say when I'm not at work, this is what I'm doing. I'm shooting an episode, I'm watching videos of conversations to see what I could add to my own perspective so that I can continue to improve. I'm watching chess videos because I pray I play chess every single day because I want to improve. I believe through the course of time, I am going to be a master of these areas that I want to do. And the reason why I say that, because I picked them. Nobody said, hey, you should do this because it works for you. I picked them because these are things that I said, if I mastered these, I would be very proud of myself. And I don't mind doing it. So it wasn't like somebody said, John, you uh you a uh you're a great athlete, man, and you should do this. You know, it it wasn't a suggestion, you know. It was like, what can I do for the rest of my life that's going to allow me to continue to grow and become the person I want to become? I picked these things: language, communication, chess, meditation, communication uh videos. And when I say that, man, there's so many different parts of communication you can learn, but I want it all. I want all of it. So it's gonna take me for the rest of my life. So as I continue to put these hours in, you guys and my students, my family's gonna see, like, hey, he out here, focus. And I'm telling you, I'm happy. Like, if you talk to the people at school, I'm genuinely smiling most of the time. Like, sometimes I'm tired, but I am a happy dude because I like the results from the work that I'm putting in. So if people prioritize their time and focused on the them, they would enjoy life that much more. Look back, I had some good times, I'm not gonna lie. But it wasn't worth me just now finding this part of me this late in life. You know, like I'm almost 50. And it took me this long for me to realize I was not not becoming who I should have. Well, I couldn't have. I didn't have any. I look, I had I found it. I'm just look, I'm blessed that I found the energy to improve because I enjoy the journey of it all, you know, because some people don't want to improve. But when you get into a habit where you enjoy the feeling of improving, you benefit all proceeds. And not only that, the people around you enjoy you more. So take that as far as evaluating your priorities and see how much time you're wasting on things that don't matter.

Why Men Stall Emotionally

SPEAKER_00 20:08

Why do many men never evolve emotionally? It's a very good question. Uh I don't have I got look, I've been spending so much time, I should wait for this one, but let's just talk about it. So, in my mind, men don't evolve emotionally because we've been taught to say, to feel a certain way. And we're afraid of our feelings being hurt or they've already been hurt and we don't want to feel that again. We don't realize that, like, you didn't have to go through it, but you went through it to learn how not to go through it again. But we don't look at relationships like, okay, what did I do wrong so that I can improve? It's it's not like that. It's like it's just the wrong person. We picked the wrong person. But retrospectively, we just don't know enough about relationships. And the information I have now, I realize that that's what it was. Like, I do believe like in the next 10 to 20 years, relationships are going to change because men are going to accept the responsibility of doing more, being more responsible of who they're picking so that they can do more for them. Like, relationships are different when it's intentional. And we can't pass red flags. And if we do pass the red flag, know that it's gonna be a difficult journey. I'm not saying you can't get there, but it's gonna take some work. And that is the reason why we haven't evolved emotionally because we don't know the amount of work it actually takes to be in a relationship. The relationship that I'm in now, I've never felt this way before, but I only want her to know how much she means to me. Like, and it goes through work, through effort. I don't want you to think it's just me talking or buying things. It's like the actual conversation, the time we spend, the connection we share now is totally different. And I believe women would like that, but I don't believe men have seen enough men look like me, go for that. And I I I talked to all my well, my the friends that I do, like, if you're not happy in your relationship, it's your fault. You know, they be trying to say, it's hers. You picked her. You don't know what a woman looks like. You know, I'm I'm that's what it is. Like, all these single men disqualified, they're gonna have a rude awakening as they get older. Like, they don't understand that. The the relationship building, that is the real quality of life. Like, I want anybody who has been paying attention to me or haven't been, understand this. When you're in a relationship that you totally enjoy, you look at things differently. Like, the my my wife has given me, she's excited the different parts of my life because I enjoy this one so much now. She didn't cloud me from other areas, she she made me want to work that much harder in the other areas for her. And I I love it. I I love and I want people to have that because I feel like if men can find that, they are going to change what mankind looks like. And and if the mankind changes the way that I think, it's gonna be fun to watch over the course of time. It's like, oh my gosh, this is when this happened. But time will tell.

Final Challenge And Sign Off

SPEAKER_00 23:20

I appreciate y'all kicking it with me. Uh, the next episode, I'm gonna ask some more questions, 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 the action will get after you. Be great on purpose.