189 Why Relationships Fail

Transcript

Welcome And The Real Problem

SPEAKER_00 0:11

What up, Doe, and welcome back to Um Growing Man. It's your man John D in the building. You know, um, a lot of my episodes are directly centered on men, the improvement of life and relationships. And today I want to talk about why I think relationships fail. Now, I've talked about this on different occasions for sure, but I just want to talk about the things that lead up to relationship failure. And it has a lot to do with poor messages we were told from other men. Um you know, out of all of my friends, I don't know more than two or three where their parents enjoy each other's company, like

Bad Messages And No Examples

SPEAKER_00 1:05

at this t stage in life. And I don't even know if I know that many. I just want to make sure I know, like you know that it's not that many people. So if men don't have examples, where are they supposed to get it? Now, through this journey, I determine if you don't have the example or somebody to pull you to the side, you have to do it yourself. Now, this will change the trajectory of your family. If you don't find it, the cycle will continue within your kids, or you're just hoping for a miracle. But our kids are a product of us, therefore, we're a product of our childhood. And following the wrong messages will lead you into what you think a relationship should entail. Now, relationships are for mature people, we know that. And in my personal opinion, a lot of men are immature. And when I say immature, I mean in the relationship area. The reason why they're immature is because if you follow the wrong messages, you won't know how to approach a situation with a different intent. Now, some people be like, like, what makes you think you know? My energy that I possess was given from my wife. I didn't realize I had to mature to be able to appreciate who she is. And when I say that, she's my biggest fan. She's my biggest cheerleader. And she's

How Ego Breaks A Marriage

SPEAKER_00 2:45

always been that. But in the beginning, maybe the first 10 years, our conflicts derive from the way that I perceived how a relationship was supposed to be. Now I do want to say this. In my mind, I thought we were, we had a great marriage. I didn't think it was, I didn't think it was bad to say the least. I did think that we could always get better, but I realized we couldn't get better because of me. Like I was pretty much controlling the idea or narrative of what this is supposed to look like. Her ideas, suggestions fell to the wayside because I feel like I knew more than her. And if you think you know more than your partner, that's already a conflict within itself. So looking back, I was creating more problems on the back end versus finding solutions together to not worry about the back end. But by the blessing of God, I was able to mature in time before my wife made a costly decision for our family. And my wife was going to make this decision because I backed her into a corner. When I say I backed her into a corner, I made her question her decision making by even being with somebody like me. When I say somebody like me, you know, arrogant, think they know everything. Uh, I wasn't abusive, but my communication was, it sounded really mean sometimes. And when I say mean, a lot of people don't know that. It was like because they're not yelling or raising their voice. You can say words that make somebody sound like they're stupid. And I think I used to do that because in my childhood, even though I didn't believe I was stupid, I got called stupid a whole lot. I really, my father was the one, really. You know, he he would use names, so I can only imagine what he was called. Um, but I realized I learned a lot of his communication practices, and I was giving that to my wife. And I said, forcing her to a corner. Who wants to be spoken to like a child? Or who wants to be spoken to where it sounds disrespectful? And I do want to say this disrespect has to be on purpose. If I'm talking to you and I say something to you and you don't like it, and you like he disrespecting me, in communication world, in a in the right communication world, you would say, Hey, what did you mean by this? So that I can clarify it, so you can hear if it was disrespect. If you respond without asking the question, there goes another problem. And I realized in in my marriage,

Respectful Speech And Clarifying Intent

SPEAKER_00 5:20

that wasn't a common practice. Hey, what did you mean by this? It was like we automatically assumed the other person was trying to disrespect on purpose. And the only thing that I can really say was disrespectful on both of our behalf, we would be petty. Because that's being petty is is disrespectful because you are doing it on purpose. But sometimes when we speak to each other, it comes out in a way where we weren't really thinking for it to come out that way, but it sounded like that. So I had to learn how to speak to my wife because I had bad habits from childhood. So, with all that being said, communication is the reason why most relationships fail. Because we don't know how to talk to each other. We don't know how to respond to each other. We don't know how to, I'm not gonna say listen, but we don't have we don't know how to give that person the belief that we are listening. I was just writing or talking about different ways you can have wisdom. And when you communicate with somebody, and I've been trying to make this practice, but I'm telling you, if you guys practice this, you all of your relationships will change. Whenever you're having a conversation with somebody, somebody asks you something, or they make a statement that puzzles you, questions you, where you feel like you know the answer, this is my suggestion from what I've read. None of these are my ideas, just something that I want to present because I believe my life has changed because I've

Two To Three Questions First

SPEAKER_00 6:55

been working on communication on purpose. You should always ask two to three questions before you respond, give an answer, any type of solution. Because when you ask two or three questions, you allow this person to know that you're listening. And they could find out if they said it correctly. Not only that, you'll get better clarity when you do respond, and the conversation is so much more peaceful when the person feels like they're being heard, and you ask these questions where you can come up with a better response for that person. This will change every one of your relationships. Every one of them. Um another reason why relationships fail. Men have this idea of needs. And when I say needs, I'm talking about sexual needs. And I feel like with the messages that we heard, we we're told that we're supposed we're we're like, uh, what is it? Well, we're animals and we have this need for things and we try to compare ourselves to other animals. Just because you want to do it does not mean it's the most appropriate time to do it. And it's supposed to be mutual on both behalves on whoever you're participating with. But I feel like in the relationship, when that decreases, that activity, men feel like this relationship's not working. And that's a poor message for anybody. If your sexual participation decreases and you get a divorce from that, it's gonna kick you in the butt later. And the reason why, because we believe that women have the same appetite as we do. And I don't care what woman, what a woman says, woman's appetite of whoever is excited because this woman says, I feel just like a man, when they get in that relationship, they're gonna understand there are different, different levels of everything. And what I I want you guys to understand what I'm saying is like when we we get aroused, we don't even think about it most of the time. It just happens. Like when you sleep in the middle of the night, when you get an arousal, you didn't put no effort into that. And we feel like if it's there, we we need something needs to happen. And if you're married, your wife, your better half is sleep, and you don't properly wake her up, this could look like it could look bad. And when I say that, I've heard people say you married, you can't rape your wife, or you can't take advantage of your wife. You can. Like it's supposed to be mutual. And you, if you think that's your wife's job to do that, it may be, but it needs to be in the right time. It ain't when you want to do it. And most of the time, I'm gonna tell you, men don't have discipline when it comes to that because we followed the wrong message. We don't know that we should master that part. Because if you master the idea that you don't need to do this all the time, even when you want to do it, it makes you a different person. And you'll understand this sexual activities in a man's idea,

Sex Expectations And Mutual Consent

SPEAKER_00 10:05

it could become an addictive pattern where it will ruin all of their relationships. Unfortunately, I know a bunch of men who think this is very important in a relationship. And I don't know how many of them are truly happy. You know, I can say what I think, but they have to live that life. I know this. Being married for 18 years, happy for majority of them. And when I say majority, I'm saying 17, 18 years. There are definitely patches where I was not happy, but it didn't add up to a year. Now, her behalf, she she probably had some years where she was unhappy. But I tell you this, I'm gonna make up for it because I truly believe where we could benefit together. And I think that that is, that's my that's because of my intentional effort. You know, um some men believe relationships are 50-50. I don't. I do believe it's it's the man's responsibility in the entire thing. The woman's gonna reciprocate if it's worth it. If you know how to pick a woman, she's gonna do everything for you that you need and want. Communication plays a significant role. If you don't know how to communicate with your partner, the relationship will die sooner than later. 10,000 hours of intentional conversation will put you and your partner in a life's reward that you haven't even seen yet. You probably haven't even heard of it. But if you do this, you practice this, the quality of your life will increase tenfold in every aspect of it. You have 24 hours in a day. Eight hours supposed to be sleep, eight hours supposed to be work, eight hours is personal time. If you could communicate effectively, being at work and being at home, less arguments, less misunderstandings, less uh possible chances for it to go left and where we will say things that we don't mean. But we have to, I don't want to say, yeah, I do want to say, we have to practice it on purpose. Like those of you that happen to watch me, I'm I'm greatly appreciative of your time. However, if you don't write things down and say, I'm going to work on this the next time I have a conversation, the next time I interact with somebody, you can't get better. It has to be on purpose. And I do a lot of writing now. Well, not now. I've been doing a lot of writing. And this writing is to help me formulate my thoughts so that when they come out, it's easy to receive. So relationships fail because we were not told the right information. We followed the wrong messages, and we have no idea how important communication is. My wife and I have definitely cracked 10,000 hours of intentional conversation. Some people be like, How do you know that? How do you document that? We've been married for 18 years and we used to talk. But when I went on this journey the last seven years, seven, eight years, our communication has increased so much that if we haven't reached 10,000 hours, it feels like it. Because I enjoy talking to her. I enjoy hearing her thoughts. I enjoy hearing her come up with ways for me to maximize my experiences in life, whether it be at work, at home, as a parent, her partner, or just as a friend. And at some point, I truly believe that men will step up and do more work than they've ever done to get the reward in the relationship. You know, for years I've heard men say it ain't worth getting married because of this and because of that. Like you're only hearing people who lost in it. You should hear from people who have won, who are winning. If you look for guidance from somebody who did not win in that, you are gonna put up a barrier for you to not get what you deserve because you believe maybe that person was more qualified to get something that they didn't even put the work in. And now it prevents you from putting the work in to get what you want. It's an unfair idea of following a message. You can follow a message from afar just by not trying because somebody else failed in it. But I'm telling you, the rules of engagement in a relationship, communication, create boundaries, have safe words, being able to walk away peacefully without disrespect, and being

10,000 Hours And A Safe Space

SPEAKER_00 14:40

able to come back and address anything in a way where, like, uh, why did you feel that way? I'm sorry, I didn't even try to make you feel that way. These conversations make it a safe place. If you don't make it a safe place, why would anybody want to talk to you? And I look, I realize that I'm not a safe place for everything for my wife because there are things she don't want to talk about still. But my goal is to become the safest place where she doesn't have to worry about keeping that inside. Now, I have kids, two of them. And there are things that they don't talk to me about because maybe my tone, my cadence sounds like it's judgmental, accusatory. Who wants to talk to anybody like that? But like I said, I am intentionally working on it because I want my kids to always feel like they can come to me. They can, but if they don't feel safe, why would they come to me? And I realized that my father was not ever a safe place, neither was my mother. I didn't share anything with them that I didn't have to. And things that I had to, if I wasn't gonna get in trouble, I never shared it with them. So they were never my safe place because I was I got physically abused as a child to the point where I thought I was smart enough. So if I messed up, I was gonna figure it out. I wasn't looking for help. And that is an unsafe place for a kid to be. So I don't want to make my kids to feel like that, being that I'm very open-minded that I don't communicate as effectively to them. But it doesn't make me feel good either. So that's the reason why I work on this. And now that they're pretty much adults, I know that our relationship will get better. I just hope that they know that I like I was really trying. I just, and hopefully my kids will be, well, my son will be a better communicator to his kids, and they can be the safe place that I thought I was gonna be for my son. But when I say relationships fail because of information, now my kids are watching, my wife and I. I truly believe that we're an example that I wouldn't mind them following. Like I said, when you have disagreements or misunderstandings, there's a way to handle that without yelling, raising your voice, talking in a slick tone, being short, sarcastic, condescending. All of these words will make a conversation so difficult to have if you are not intentional on how you sound. And I'll tell you, my wife was like, before she was like, why you say it like that? I was like, This is who I am. If that's my wife, why am I talking to her like that? If this is who I am, why am I not improving so she does not have to feel that energy? And I used to feel like since we were married, she knew who I was. I didn't have to change. How immature is that? A lot of people won't know that's immature. It was like, man, you know who I was, I ain't changing. That's immature to say that out loud. I'm not changing. You can always change for the better. And if you're not changing that for the better, who wants to be with you? If your life is just to be where you are and you're not looking to grow, I'm gonna tell you, most women don't want to be a part of that. And if you're not looking to improve and work on your communication, all of your relationships will fail unless you want her to be the reason why you stay together. And you don't want that story. The story, even if she is the one that keeps you together, you still want to grow so that she can say, I am glad we stayed together. My wife gave me the time to mature, and God has given me the time to put words together to help men find more quality in the relationship. It is so many fruits in the relationship that you haven't seen because poor message. So as I continue to impress with my wife, and I continue to put these words together so that it makes a lot of sense. And that's that's that's what I want to be. I want to, I want to give the right set of words for somebody to be like, I could do this now. You know, it's just like a push, some training wheels. It's crazy that the world is this old with humans, and we're in a place where relationships are not as important as they should be. Of course, you don't need relationships to procreate, but I tell you this that kid is not thinking like, I hope my parents are not gonna be together. Nobody wants that story. So I'm telling you, if you're going to lay down with somebody, make sure you do your due diligence and make sure the person is qualified to even entertain you. And if they are, you need to go through the question gauntlet and give them as many questions so you can get the right answers to say this is something you can do. And I'm talking to men. I'm not talking to women. Men have to realize how important they are if they're going to change the trajectory for their family. And due to the messaging we grew up in our childhood, it can be very difficult because when you become like an adult, you really think you know enough. And there's way more things we don't know than what we do. And a lot of the things we are doing can improve. Like I told you guys, I have a

Intentional Growth And Better Choices

SPEAKER_00 20:05

routine where I wake up at four o'clock every morning for the last six or seven years, and I work on languages, chess, meditation, different forms of communication. Um I even started working out, like physical workout. And the goal is by the time it's time to go to work, that I've completed two or three hours of work just for me. How do you grow without intentionally working on yourself? So I'm all about self-improvement. Intentional work is the key to get results that people haven't written about. I know everybody's afraid of AI. AI can't be smarter than humans. AI only knows what we know. And for some reason, we have people that believe that they're gonna surpass us. If they surpass us, it won't be in our lifetime. But however, I know this AI can't become something we haven't seen because we create everything. And I don't believe artificial intelligence can pass up the spontaneity of the thought that we have. Different things can have us go this way. When AI, they don't have spontaneous thoughts. They have this specific idea and whatever's related to it. We can think about a force and end up being inside of an ice cream truck like that. Like AI don't think like that. So I'm telling you guys, you can control your thoughts to be able to deliver a message to anyone, especially to your person. So, men, if you want the relationship to work, if you're looking forward to getting into a relationship, learn about the person. Find out their childhood, find out how they treat their parents, their sisters, their brothers, uh, get their ideas on anything that you think is important for y'all to grow. But if you pass up these important questions, these areas of topics, and you get into a relationship, you could prove to waste your time. And time is the most valuable currency in the world. Because no matter how much you spend, you can't get it back. So let's make the best use of our time and continue to find ways to improve. 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. Boom.