Speaker 1: I am Yamla.
Speaker 2: I've been very open about the fact that I was
Speaker 2: not always good at making my relationships work. I have
Speaker 2: been divorced three times, twice from the same person. In
Speaker 2: other words, I have seen a lot and failed a
Speaker 2: lot in my relationships. So I am here to share
Speaker 2: with you what I learned along the way, because I
Speaker 2: did take copious notes. Welcome to the R Spot, a
Speaker 2: production of shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. Welcome, Welcome, Welcome,
Speaker 2: Welcome to the R Spot. I Ami Yamla, your facilitator, support,
Speaker 2: your sister, woman, your friend, your guide posts as we
Speaker 2: del deeper into these conversations about relationships, all kinds of
Speaker 2: relationships as the universal classroom for becoming.
Speaker 1: More of the truth of who we are.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, relationships, relationships, relationships. I don't think there's
Speaker 2: any more important than those parental relationships.
Speaker 1: And I don't know.
Speaker 2: About you, but mine was not what I would have
Speaker 2: created had I gone into the room with the pot
Speaker 2: to make it. And mine wasn't either with my father,
Speaker 2: who was emotionally unavailable, or my mother.
Speaker 1: Who was deceased.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, nobody bothered to tell me that my mother was dead,
Speaker 2: so I grew up thinking one woman was my mother,
Speaker 2: who wasn't thanks to my father.
Speaker 1: Anyway.
Speaker 2: That's the story. The outcome is what you have before you.
Speaker 2: So it's all good, Ah, everything the way it needs
Speaker 2: to be. That was all my docket. That was my
Speaker 2: curriculum and nothing. That's what I lived through. I guess
Speaker 2: it was also on my docutent in my curriculum. To
Speaker 2: marry the same man twice. I didn't get enough the
Speaker 2: first time. I had to go back and get it again.
Speaker 2: But I learned something, you know. I left him the
Speaker 2: first time, and he left me the second time.
Speaker 1: And one of my.
Speaker 2: Teachers told me, you never really heal a thing until
Speaker 2: you experience it from both sides. Until what you think
Speaker 2: someone has done to you you do it to them.
Speaker 2: That's when the fullness of your healing is unfolding. So
Speaker 2: I am healed of the need to marry the same
Speaker 2: person twice, and I also understand why I did it,
Speaker 2: But it was a function of my parental relationship. He
Speaker 2: was my father, and I was trying to accomplish with
Speaker 2: him everything that I had never accomplished with my father.
Speaker 2: And once I got that, we were both free. Your
Speaker 2: parental relationships.
Speaker 1: It's important.
Speaker 2: That's why today, for this very important conversation, I have
Speaker 2: a guess. You know I do love a guest. My
Speaker 2: guest today is Ker Gains.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a.
Speaker 2: Young and I love him. I saw him when I
Speaker 2: went to the White House. It was so exciting. I
Speaker 2: love you young people who are out here doing the
Speaker 2: work because the more work you do, the less I
Speaker 2: have to do. I'm tired, I'm old. I want y'all
Speaker 2: to get on it and get it done. Okay, But
Speaker 2: he is a licensed therapist, a black man, young black man,
Speaker 2: licensed therapist. That also tells me that at some point
Speaker 2: in his life he was absolutely crazy, but we're not
Speaker 2: going to have that conversation. He's also a mental health advocate.
Speaker 2: That means he really supports and is doing it on
Speaker 2: the social media. I don't know if it's the Tiki
Speaker 2: Taki Hill or whoever you know me and the social media,
Speaker 2: but he's putting it out there and he's an accomplished speaker.
Speaker 2: He does his things on TikTok.
Speaker 1: It's got a.
Speaker 2: Huge following because people love his realness as his authenticity,
Speaker 2: and you young ands like to relate to each other,
Speaker 2: so he's not like me all with you know, dyed
Speaker 2: gray hair.
Speaker 1: He is out there, he's.
Speaker 2: Young and he knows. He probably knows who's number one
Speaker 2: on the chot. I don't know none of that.
Speaker 3: Oh, you give me too much credit, now, I too
Speaker 3: much credit. Now.
Speaker 2: He's a dad and he's a husband, and he's still
Speaker 2: doing his work in the world.
Speaker 1: You can have it all, beloved.
Speaker 2: You can take care of you, you can grow in you,
Speaker 2: and you can serve others caregames.
Speaker 3: What an intro, good gracious. I need you to follow
Speaker 3: me everywhere I go and just say that to people
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I will, I'll record it for you.
Speaker 2: He comes from Southeast DC for me as a Brooklyn Knight.
Speaker 2: That's Brownsville, right on the border of East New York
Speaker 2: Southeast d C.
Speaker 1: And that's where he learned.
Speaker 2: And developed his commitment to support his community, to support
Speaker 2: his brothers and his sisters.
Speaker 1: But he didn't stay there.
Speaker 2: He been to the White House, he been to Nasau Nasa.
Speaker 2: He's done some stuff with an Amazon movie, and he
Speaker 2: knows my good girlfriends Miss o Oprah Winfrey and Ms
Speaker 2: v Viola Davis and people are lifting acknowledging him for
Speaker 2: his authentic approach. We're gonna talk today, Kiir Gaines and
Speaker 2: I here on the R spot. Welcome, Welcome, Kiir. So
Speaker 2: glad to have you.
Speaker 3: As I could have just sat and listened to that
Speaker 3: all day. That was such a beautiful introduction. I've watched
Speaker 3: you on my TV screen for so long that this
Speaker 3: don't even feel real right now. They don't feel real,
Speaker 3: But I am glad to be here.
Speaker 2: You know what, I want to ask you this question
Speaker 2: straight up because a lot of my listeners are women,
Speaker 2: and you, regardless of the age, I know what you're
Speaker 2: going to say. Well, I don't know what you're going
Speaker 2: to say, and if I did know, I probably forgot.
Speaker 1: But in your.
Speaker 2: Heart when I was reading your bio and listening to
Speaker 2: some of your things, because you've talked about it, you
Speaker 2: were raised by a single mom in Southeast DC. So
Speaker 2: here's my inquiry. I want to make this inquiry. I
Speaker 2: don't ask questions anymore. I inquire how does a fatherless
Speaker 2: son learn how to be a good dad? I mean,
Speaker 2: what's the model that you follow? What are the tools
Speaker 2: that you need? How did you learn that? I want
Speaker 2: to know your story?
Speaker 3: You know, I just I lean into what feels good.
Speaker 3: I think one intrinsic part of masculinity that I've grown
Speaker 3: to resent is this narrow definition of how you're supposed
Speaker 3: to operate. Like I even talked to my friends, I'm
Speaker 3: a member of the fraternity, your all time shout out
Speaker 3: on Megasife five fraternity route to the brus my brothers,
Speaker 3: but those are those are excellent men. They deserve that
Speaker 3: shout out. But even in that community and men, they
Speaker 3: are excellent fathers. But without here sometimes is this belief
Speaker 3: of I gotta be hard on my sons and I
Speaker 3: have to roll out this benevolent carpet of princess treatment
Speaker 3: for my daughters. And I'm like, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: what if you reverse the roles and you laid out
Speaker 3: that benevolent, warm love to your sons and you can
Speaker 3: see the brain kind of dysfunctioning and saying, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: that's not in my scheme of how manhood is supposed
Speaker 3: to work. And it's but that's how you develop a strong, healthy, secure,
Speaker 3: conscientious man. And I think my mom did a really
Speaker 3: good job of that. So I leaning on what feels good.
Speaker 3: I trust my instincts, I trust my heart. I believe
Speaker 3: that men can be warm and still not to be
Speaker 3: played with. I believe that men could be soft and
Speaker 3: he will be very strong. I believe that men can
Speaker 3: defer to the genius of the people around them and
Speaker 3: still be a strong leader. So that's that's kind of
Speaker 3: what I shift into. I don't I don't think that.
Speaker 3: You know, there are a lot of men that were
Speaker 3: raised by their fathers and raised in the wrong direction.
Speaker 3: Doesn't necessarily teach them how to be good dads. You
Speaker 3: take your experience into account, you take who you are
Speaker 3: into account. You listen, and you try to be the
Speaker 3: best that you can be with the bandwidth that you
Speaker 3: have in the moments that are in front of you.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: You you talked about going to therapy. What led you
Speaker 1: in that direction. It's so funny.
Speaker 2: I was in the store the other day and I
Speaker 2: met a brother and he was so excited to see me,
Speaker 2: and he said.
Speaker 1: Miss miss Yamla I started therapy.
Speaker 3: That said, who won great?
Speaker 1: You know, he recognized the need.
Speaker 2: And he It reminds me of I had to guess
Speaker 2: Tony Porter.
Speaker 3: Love Tony Porter. That's my mad mad box. Yeah, shout
Speaker 3: out to Sony.
Speaker 2: So my question to you, my inquiry that I'd like
Speaker 2: to make of you is what was.
Speaker 1: The impetus for you as a man going into therapy?
Speaker 3: Ironically, it was fatherhood. The woman that I am now
Speaker 3: married to and I called my wife, she wasn't always
Speaker 3: my wife, and she was not my wife when we
Speaker 3: found out we were going to have our first child,
Speaker 3: she was my girlfriend. And much like you, I lost
Speaker 3: my mom when I was young, so I realized that
Speaker 3: there was some touch points that I was missing. I
Speaker 3: realized there was some connective tissue that wasn't quite there.
Speaker 3: And my biggest fear was.
Speaker 2: That that wait a minute, I don't want to slip
Speaker 2: past that. How did you realize that there were touch
Speaker 2: points and connective tissue?
Speaker 1: How did you realize it?
Speaker 3: Just in some of my thought processes, I've always been
Speaker 3: good at compartmentalizing. So I can compartmentalize the way that
Speaker 3: I see the world, and I can tell where my
Speaker 3: biases are, Like I think that because I grew up
Speaker 3: black and poor, or uh, I think that because I
Speaker 3: only have the experience of being a man. So sometimes
Speaker 3: my experience is dealing with women. When I was dating,
Speaker 3: dealing with work, culture, everything, I could see these gaps
Speaker 3: in what I wanted to do or what I wanted
Speaker 3: to say, or how I wanted to think, versus what
Speaker 3: actually came out. Wow, And I could feel the disconnect,
Speaker 3: but I couldn't tell you where it came from or
Speaker 3: while I was there. And I operate under the assumption
Speaker 3: that if you've been trying to do something for a
Speaker 3: long time by yourself, and after a long time you
Speaker 3: still not better at doing it or figuring it out
Speaker 3: or solving it, that's indicative of you having the inability
Speaker 3: to not be able to do it by yourself, and
Speaker 3: perhaps you need to get some help.
Speaker 2: One of the things Tony talked about is how challenging
Speaker 2: it is for men to admit they need help, to
Speaker 2: ask for help, and to receive help even when it
Speaker 2: shows up.
Speaker 1: He talked about that, So it was.
Speaker 2: You becoming a father, recognizing some gaps in your own
Speaker 2: cognitive of ability. And I'm repeating this because I think
Speaker 2: what you're talking about women experience as men is they
Speaker 2: don't care, or they're this or did that or the
Speaker 2: other thing, And it may just be a level of unawareness.
Speaker 1: Where did you go to school, did you get did
Speaker 1: you do Howard?
Speaker 3: No, No, I didn't do Howard. So I got my
Speaker 3: undergrad and my master's degree from the University the District
Speaker 3: of Columbia only public college in DC HBCU. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's why I got my education.
Speaker 1: Okay, good for you, Good for you.
Speaker 2: I was reading something and listening to something you wrote,
Speaker 2: and when I saw you on Holda and uh, what's
Speaker 2: her name?
Speaker 3: Hold On Jenna?
Speaker 1: Yeah, hold In Jenna.
Speaker 2: But you had this very wonderful thing that you wrote.
Speaker 2: Oh no, it was your podcast where you say eight
Speaker 2: things you should never say to or do to your partner.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, let's talk about them, because that's
Speaker 2: gonna touch everybody.
Speaker 1: The men, the women, the flute, the nuts and the berries.
Speaker 1: What do you say, I'm old.
Speaker 2: On?
Speaker 1: Are the eight things. Let's talk about them one at
Speaker 1: a time because people people do it all the time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they do, they do. Let's see if I can
Speaker 3: remember that was like a million articles ago. I can
Speaker 3: tell you the spirit of the things that you shouldn't
Speaker 3: do or say, and I know a lot of them
Speaker 3: were around blaming and accusatory language. I think that's the
Speaker 3: hardest thing when I see couples, you know, resentment builds
Speaker 3: in a relationship so fast and The scariest thing about
Speaker 3: resentment is it allows you to have car blanche to
Speaker 3: say behavior things yeah, and behave in a way that
Speaker 3: isn't conducive to you get in the results that you
Speaker 3: so desperately need. So now you think you're helping yourself
Speaker 3: and you think you're being communicative, but the way that
Speaker 3: you're presenting with you have to say to the person
Speaker 3: they can't even hear you for real, and that it
Speaker 3: happens frequently. So the blaming and accusatory language was one thing.
Speaker 3: Another thing was the pathologizing and vilifying everything your partner does.
Speaker 3: It's you know, when you get to a point when
Speaker 3: you're tired of somebody, or you're getting tired of somebody,
Speaker 3: it's like that person that work that you don't like.
Speaker 3: You don't like Carol. You know, you don't like Carol.
Speaker 3: You don't like what she brings to the pop. Look,
Speaker 3: you don't like her stupid haircut. You don't like Carol.
Speaker 3: Carol can come in and be the perfect person, but
Speaker 3: you have already decided that you don't like Carol. So
Speaker 3: when Carol sneeze you, why you gotta sneeze that way? Carol?
Speaker 3: You're so damn annoying. You've already vilified her, and you
Speaker 3: pathologize everything that she does.
Speaker 2: She can't do right, anologize explain that because women do
Speaker 2: this the men all the time.
Speaker 1: But I want to come from you to.
Speaker 3: You just say that I can't. Yeah, So a good
Speaker 3: example of pathologizing women do not care he me. This
Speaker 3: is not an indictment, it's an invitation to.
Speaker 1: Me to our conversation.
Speaker 3: So a good example of pathologizing sometimes that I see
Speaker 3: is what's the term that's really popular now, I'm weaponized
Speaker 3: in competence. Okay, so the guy in the relationship forgot
Speaker 3: to do something, and he, to be fair, he has
Speaker 3: a history of forgetting to do things, but it'll automatically
Speaker 3: get labeled as weaponized in competence and its symptomatic of
Speaker 3: a larger psychological social issue that he has. When in
Speaker 3: all actuality, there's a big chance that he forgot because
Speaker 3: it isn't quite as important to him as it is
Speaker 3: to you, or he doesn't have the touch points on indicator,
Speaker 3: there's no calendar that he can go back and reference,
Speaker 3: or maybe it's not on his calendar, maybe he has
Speaker 3: other things on his mind. All of these things that's
Speaker 3: an example of pathologizing something.
Speaker 1: Let me give you an example, because I hear this
Speaker 1: all the time. You used the wind.
Speaker 2: He said, you asked him to, I don't know, fix
Speaker 2: the garage door, fix the window, and you asked him once,
Speaker 2: you asked him twice, you asked him three times. He
Speaker 2: didn't do it, and he told you he forgot. And
Speaker 2: then something comes along on the spot of the of
Speaker 2: the on the spot that he forgot to do. And
Speaker 2: the woman's response to that is, see, you never do
Speaker 2: what you say you're gonna do. Every time I asked
Speaker 2: you to do something, you forget. I asked you to
Speaker 2: fix the closet door.
Speaker 1: You forgot.
Speaker 2: I asked you and something you know you only want
Speaker 2: to do what you is that It is that how
Speaker 2: they do it well.
Speaker 3: The multiple things happen just now, because then you start
Speaker 3: dog piling, and once you dog pile, the issues become
Speaker 3: so stacked and layered that there's no real place to
Speaker 3: know how to start. It's like those old telephone calls
Speaker 3: back in the day. And see that now I'm old
Speaker 3: in the conversation. But the ones that swirl up and
Speaker 3: they get tangled up together, five or six of them
Speaker 3: get singled up together. You don't know where the beginning
Speaker 3: or the end is, and that's what dog piling does,
Speaker 3: because now you're reaching back from stuff unresolved, issues from
Speaker 3: early in the relationship that probably could have been much
Speaker 3: easier to hash out and talk about had they been
Speaker 3: resolved closer to the time of it happening. But now
Speaker 3: it's five six years later. You're digging in that bag
Speaker 3: and it's stacking and stacking and stacking, and now it's
Speaker 3: more so about expression frustration and it's not about problem solving.
Speaker 3: There's a space for expression frustration and it's valid, but
Speaker 3: in terms of problem solving it isn't always helpful, especially
Speaker 3: when you consider the tone that you're expressing those frustrations through.
Speaker 2: Boy, I'm so glad to hear that come out of
Speaker 2: your mouth, because I say the women all of the time.
Speaker 2: A woman's mouth is connected to the valves and the
Speaker 2: chords and the strings of a man's heart, because the
Speaker 2: first thing he heard when the little ears were forming
Speaker 2: on his body was his mother's heartbeat. That was the
Speaker 2: first thing he heardman's voice and her tone, her tenor
Speaker 2: you can destroy a man's heart that way. What you're
Speaker 2: talking about too, is what I call historyonics. Women are
Speaker 2: history majors.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It could be twenty twenty four. We'll go back and
Speaker 2: dig up something you did in twenty nineteen. You don't
Speaker 2: even remember you did it, you know, and the impact
Speaker 2: of that and how that is emasculating. Here's another thing
Speaker 2: I'd like you to talk about from a professional experience.
Speaker 2: And I don't know what you call this, but it
Speaker 2: would be among my eight things that you don't do
Speaker 2: to your partner where nothing they ever do is good enough.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, ooh, that goes deep too.
Speaker 1: Wait a minute, Wait a minute, hold that answer, hold
Speaker 1: that answer. Let's do that. After the break, we'll be
Speaker 1: right back.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to the R Spot. My guest today is
Speaker 2: care Gains. He's a licensed therapist, a mental health advocate,
Speaker 2: and an accomplished speaker on the subject of relationships. So
Speaker 2: I have so many things whenever I have a man
Speaker 2: on the show, I just have so many things I
Speaker 2: want to get a masculine opinion about, because I know
Speaker 2: y'all get tired of hearing me talk about my stuff.
Speaker 3: You know what I figured out what I found working
Speaker 3: with women that oftentimes in a marriage a heterosexual relationship
Speaker 3: is what we're talking about. Oftentimes, in those relationships, if
Speaker 3: a woman demonstrates that behavior nine times out of ten,
Speaker 3: I hate those type of terms, but let's just go
Speaker 3: with it. Nine times out of ten, she's modeling what
Speaker 3: was given to her as a child. Because I think
Speaker 3: women's relationships with their mothers is something that we're just
Speaker 3: now kind of publicly talking about, and there's a lot
Speaker 3: of problematic tension in those relationships. Quite often. Immy wounds,
Speaker 3: oh and they run, they run very deep. And just
Speaker 3: like a number of those things, the shame of being
Speaker 3: a female slob, the shame of being a woman, at
Speaker 3: a young girl at rest Sunday, you better get up
Speaker 3: and clean the house. All of these things, the permanent
Speaker 3: dissatisfaction with your performance. No matter what you do, it's
Speaker 3: not good enough for mom or it's not good enough
Speaker 3: for dad. You begin to model those same behaviors in
Speaker 3: your relationship. The shame of being a female slob. Well,
Speaker 3: girls should never be dirty. They don't have the room
Speaker 3: to be that. And you see those dynamics play out
Speaker 3: in marriage all the time. When there may be a
Speaker 3: compulsion to clean or anxiety around cleaning that urges everybody
Speaker 3: in the house to be on that same page, and
Speaker 3: it becomes a sense of dysfunction. And it's hard to
Speaker 3: see it because cleaning is productive and people don't see
Speaker 3: dysfunction as something that can also be productive or something
Speaker 3: that can also help you. So yeah, that happens very often.
Speaker 3: Usually it's a byproduct of a parental relationship that was
Speaker 3: very much so molded under those same guys.
Speaker 2: I said, some of us grew up in such dysfunctional
Speaker 2: for mental relationships. I want to talk to you about
Speaker 2: this because a lot of men, men finally trust me
Speaker 2: after all of these years.
Speaker 3: Congratulations. That's hard.
Speaker 2: I know it is as a public person. But they'll
Speaker 2: tell me anything, some things I really don't even want.
Speaker 3: To know, but are you in there?
Speaker 2: But they trust me because I honor them and their dignity.
Speaker 2: Women trust me too, but they have I want to
Speaker 2: talk to you about this because I hear this today
Speaker 2: from so many men, and maybe if you can address
Speaker 2: it and support the women who are listening. And that
Speaker 2: is the aggressive experienced, that disrespectful manner in which women
Speaker 2: have become accustomed to addressing men today.
Speaker 3: Can you give me an example, jumping up in their
Speaker 3: face pointing their finger at.
Speaker 2: Him, calling them names, you know, the big word, you
Speaker 2: know in please, who you talking to?
Speaker 1: Who you think?
Speaker 2: It's just very, very aggressive, And sometime in that aggression
Speaker 2: is also put down. And I know the way women
Speaker 2: will dismiss it is they'll say, but what about the
Speaker 2: way he talks to me, he calls me out my neck? Well,
Speaker 2: we're not talking about that right now. We're talking about
Speaker 2: the seemingly acceptable behavior of women. I've seen it, jumping
Speaker 2: up in a man's face and with the finger and
Speaker 2: rolling of the head.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I so I've seen it before. I will say this,
Speaker 3: that's not a part of my personal data and experience.
Speaker 3: As soon as you start to exhibit uncontrollable anger, misplaced anger,
Speaker 3: uncontrollable rage. Whether you're physically smaller than me or not,
Speaker 3: doesn't matter how much you can can or can't hurt me.
Speaker 3: It matters to me what your intent is. So as
Speaker 3: soon as you start to display those behaviors, my boundary
Speaker 3: game is fantastic. I have nothing for that. I didn't
Speaker 3: grow up in a house with that. I never was
Speaker 3: interested in women who display those behaviors. My wife ain't
Speaker 3: nothing like that, My female friends ain't nothing like that.
Speaker 3: That's never anything that I've ever let anybody be comfortable
Speaker 3: displaying in front of me twice, so I don't have
Speaker 3: any experiential history with that at all. I do see that,
Speaker 3: and I don't know where that comes from. That's probably
Speaker 3: a better question for a sociologist, but I will say this.
Speaker 3: I think that it's this unwritten rule because I used
Speaker 3: to work in education and students would do a similar
Speaker 3: thing where physically, boy, I will mop this floor with you,
Speaker 3: what is you talking about. I will put your head
Speaker 3: through that concrete wall. I'm gonna call my father. I'll
Speaker 3: put his head through that concrete wall to stop playing
Speaker 3: with me. It's the students know that you have a duty.
Speaker 3: It is against your social role, it is against your
Speaker 3: social script to hit them back, so them a different
Speaker 3: it emboldens them in a different way. I think there
Speaker 3: may be some of that where we know boys don't
Speaker 3: get taught many things consistently, but one thing boys get
Speaker 3: taught consistently is you're not supposed to put your hands
Speaker 3: on women. And I think that that's a bit of
Speaker 3: a safeguard.
Speaker 1: I think they're taught that. I don't think they taught that.
Speaker 3: I think they're taught that. How many of them absorb
Speaker 3: and demonstrate that learning is a completely different thing. But
Speaker 3: I think they're taught that. And I'll say we I
Speaker 3: hate when men talk about other men and say they
Speaker 3: don't exclude yourself from the shit like I'm sorry you
Speaker 3: say it.
Speaker 1: I love it. You're bilingual. You're bilingual. That was a
Speaker 1: sentence and answer.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it's when it comes to men in violence
Speaker 3: and things like that. On one hand, you have to
Speaker 3: flash light on the fact that black women have the
Speaker 3: highest rate of intimate partner violence, like it's an epidemic,
Speaker 3: it's really really bad. And also in the same breath,
Speaker 3: it could be very problematic to say that black men
Speaker 3: are inherently violent, because not all black men commit those acts,
Speaker 3: So it's hard to shine light on one in a
Speaker 3: public eye without taking away from the other. But to
Speaker 3: wrap it all up, I think it's a little bit
Speaker 3: of that you're not supposed to hit me, You're not
Speaker 3: supposed to do this, And I think it emboldus folks
Speaker 3: to lean in a little bit more. We were at
Speaker 3: a fair last year and this big guy cut in
Speaker 3: front of this woman and I saw it happen. He
Speaker 3: didn't see her. He didn't see her, and I mean,
Speaker 3: she got livid and she it continued to escalate and
Speaker 3: continue to escalat and the next thing I know, she's
Speaker 3: in his face, point in her finger, and I told
Speaker 3: my wife, I'm like, yo, she needs to chill because
Speaker 3: you could see him trying to move on, and she
Speaker 3: follows him and she continues to antagonize him, and that
Speaker 3: dude was big. If he would have swung, it would
Speaker 3: have been an issue. And you know, I'm like, hey, y'all,
Speaker 3: everybody relaxed. Everybody relaxed. Trying to de escalate. That didn't work.
Speaker 3: She was very angry. And I think sometimes because of
Speaker 3: the gender scripts that we have in society, like men
Speaker 3: can't really see themselves in a way that's different from
Speaker 3: what society says they are, like emotionally complex, men have
Speaker 3: a hard time grasping their own emotional complexity. And because
Speaker 3: in society, women don't always have a lot of power,
Speaker 3: and women aren't always framed as angry or violent, I don't.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of women have a hard time
Speaker 3: seeing sometimes when they have issues around anger and controlling
Speaker 3: their anger on what that looks like. So I think
Speaker 3: it could be a mix of all that.
Speaker 1: Nice girls don't get angry, you know.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that I'm really glad about
Speaker 2: is all of these false notions and misnomas and the
Speaker 2: ridiculosity and crazy men, that it's being busted up.
Speaker 1: I mean, we see it out of the world. I
Speaker 1: love it.
Speaker 2: I love it that we're being forced to make inquiry.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about marriages relationships today. Let's bring it right
Speaker 2: here home to the twenty first century. Because I'm looking
Speaker 2: out in the world, I see and you know, I
Speaker 2: could be very wrong about this.
Speaker 1: I see this presidential.
Speaker 2: Election as a function of the deterioration between.
Speaker 1: Men and women.
Speaker 3: Oh please any more.
Speaker 2: Well, I just see how the world is responding to
Speaker 2: a woman candidate, particularly a woman of color who's a candidate.
Speaker 1: I have to say this.
Speaker 2: You know, her opponent, the Republican candidate. I've been very
Speaker 2: aware of the things that he has said about her
Speaker 2: and the silence I've heard from black men about it.
Speaker 2: It's been very disturbing to me. And I'm wondering if
Speaker 2: it's because she's got a white husband. I'm wondering if
Speaker 2: I just I want to get to the day where
Speaker 2: because I love black men and I mean, I've got
Speaker 2: some powerful black men in my life and you better
Speaker 2: not mess with me. I make two phone calls and
Speaker 2: you done. Okay, Yeah, I don't understand. I wanted to
Speaker 2: know why has there not been a public outcry about
Speaker 2: the way these people have been speaking about her, denigrating her.
Speaker 1: I wanted my brothers to stand up and say no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: not yet. I don't care. They can say everything else
Speaker 1: on tw it. I don't care if you're voting.
Speaker 3: For her or not.
Speaker 2: Why has that been allowed to go on? And I
Speaker 2: think it's the same way that in today's society, I
Speaker 2: don't hear black men's voice speaking out about the like
Speaker 2: you said, black women are the number one victims, or
Speaker 2: the experience in home violence, relational violence with any other
Speaker 2: I don't hear enough black men speaking about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't either. And in my mind,
Speaker 3: I always wonder where will those conversations live and what
Speaker 3: do they look like? Because I do see black men
Speaker 3: speaking about it, but they don't have a large share
Speaker 3: of voice. And I'll even go as far as to
Speaker 3: say it's hard to find intelligent male perspective online that
Speaker 3: isn't of overtly sexist, that isn't overtly propagandists, or isn't
Speaker 3: talking about finances or securing external resources.
Speaker 1: How about brothers, keep your hands off your wife.
Speaker 3: You out of order, and I think that does well.
Speaker 3: I'll say this in my mind. It happens in interpersonal conversations. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think so to what magnitude, clearly not enough. To
Speaker 3: what magnitude, I don't know. But I also know that
Speaker 3: men get very defeated when it comes to changing the
Speaker 3: attitudes of other men. I've seen this a lot. Whereas,
Speaker 3: like I've told him two three times, he's going to
Speaker 3: do him, and at some point, men who are doing
Speaker 3: what they're supposed to do they do a thing that
Speaker 3: I'm not sure is hopeful. And I've been guilty of
Speaker 3: this myself. We disassociate from those men, okay, and those
Speaker 3: men are no longer connected to a community of men
Speaker 3: that have a difference of opinion, that have a difference
Speaker 3: in philosophy, and who can correct you. When those men
Speaker 3: know that they're doing the wrong thing, they don't come
Speaker 3: back and tell us. I always say, in my circle,
Speaker 3: I don't have any dead be dads in my circle.
Speaker 3: I thought that. I thought that until I continue to
Speaker 3: do some investigation, and time did what time does, and
Speaker 3: it started revealing things. But those men don't come I'm
Speaker 3: back and say, yeah, man, I hit my wife the
Speaker 3: other night, and then continue on with the conversation. You'll
Speaker 3: think he gonna come and tell me that and then
Speaker 3: have to hear my mouth continuously and feel my judgment continuously,
Speaker 3: and feel my constant correction. And then he has to
Speaker 3: look at the way my life goes and constantly compare
Speaker 3: myself to him. I don't he won't say that, he'll
Speaker 3: be quiet, He'll be silent around us. So I think
Speaker 3: that's more of a complex phenomenon than I need brothers
Speaker 3: to speak out loud, because man, it's you speak. If
Speaker 3: I go on Twitter and I say something positive, if
Speaker 3: I refresh the screen, you can't even see what I
Speaker 3: said anymore. The information moves so quickly. So it's my
Speaker 3: personal philosophy is, you know, I'm not gonna just call
Speaker 3: you out, but I'm gonna also call you in. And
Speaker 3: it starts with the inner circles. How to do it
Speaker 3: from a larger perspective, I'm working on that. I don't
Speaker 3: think that's going to be a one shot killed. But
Speaker 3: I think it starts in in our immediate circles, in
Speaker 3: our immediate communities, And I'm afraid that's something that we
Speaker 3: can't track or really see in a place where we
Speaker 3: can get like a like a catch off you point out.
Speaker 2: I hear that, and I believe that, and I'm on
Speaker 2: that step with you. But when I look and I
Speaker 2: see the thousands and thousands of comments from black men
Speaker 2: about Diddy they got something to say about that, I
Speaker 2: want to know, why can't we have that same voice,
Speaker 2: you know, brothers, if you're in breakdown with your wife
Speaker 2: and you feel come here, come there. I know that's
Speaker 2: the work that Tony Porter does. I just you know,
Speaker 2: I want to see a stronger presence of black men
Speaker 2: in the world standing up for black women because and
Speaker 2: now let me just say this, they also did it
Speaker 2: to Hillary.
Speaker 1: They tow her.
Speaker 2: Down when she ran, but that won't that was white
Speaker 2: men stand up for her. You know, I don't think
Speaker 2: I want to see brothers standing up, you know, for
Speaker 2: a sister, because the things that they're saying are just disgraceful.
Speaker 3: But anyway, yeah, and and just to just to wrap
Speaker 3: this thing up, I do too that's something I want
Speaker 3: to see, and that's one of the things that influenced
Speaker 3: me and inspire me to do the content that I
Speaker 3: do because with men, reaching men is hard. We were
Speaker 3: talking about that before we hopped on the pod.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not going to say that, cancel, cancel. Reaching
Speaker 2: men is a challenge, it's not all Okay.
Speaker 3: I accept that. Yes, okay, let's let's use that frame.
Speaker 3: I love that. Actually reaching men is a challenge. And
Speaker 3: one thing we didn't we haven't been doing a great
Speaker 3: job of, is meeting men at eye level, like meeting
Speaker 3: men exactly where they are, and also telling men is
Speaker 3: one thing, but sometimes men need to see it. And
Speaker 3: then my content, I don't just tell you this is
Speaker 3: what I do, this is how you should do it,
Speaker 3: how to model it, This is what my version of
Speaker 3: that thing looks like. Your version might be very different,
Speaker 3: but take my version. Keep what's nutritious, discard what isn't,
Speaker 3: and try and try and try. This masculine ideology isn't
Speaker 3: real big on experimentation, It isn't real big on flexibility.
Speaker 3: It ain't oh man, it's so heavily self reliant to
Speaker 3: a fault. So I try to demonstrate that in my
Speaker 3: everyday life, so I can definitely call me in on that.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so glad to have you here. Today is
Speaker 1: my guest care.
Speaker 2: We're going to have more and more to talk about
Speaker 2: when we come back. Welcome back to the R spot.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm my guest Today is care games and
Speaker 2: we're just talking about all sorts of goodness as it
Speaker 2: relates to men and women and relationships. And I want
Speaker 2: to ask here some stuff about that so I can
Speaker 2: get another opinion.
Speaker 1: Help me with this. And this is for the ladies
Speaker 1: listening to.
Speaker 2: If I do a workshop on the weekend, women will
Speaker 2: show up, They get the babysitter, they'll do what they
Speaker 2: have to do, blah blah blah. If I'm doing something online,
Speaker 2: women will show up. Most men who show up come
Speaker 2: because the woman brought him. Yeah, here's helped me understand
Speaker 2: the thinking here. If a man has to pay the mortgage,
Speaker 2: the childcare, the car note, and I'm doing a weekend workshop,
Speaker 2: does he have the freedom to spend that money to
Speaker 2: take that time to come.
Speaker 1: And do it.
Speaker 3: Can't one? Why wouldn't he?
Speaker 2: Because will she support him in it? Or will she
Speaker 2: say you ain't you got to do this. You can't,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm just asking. I'm not making any accusation.
Speaker 3: I hear you. I hear you. I don't. I have
Speaker 3: a tough time to generalize on women like that. My
Speaker 3: experience with women has been largely either either it has
Speaker 3: been positive or it's been human right, It's been one
Speaker 3: of those two things. And I think that relationships are very, very,
Speaker 3: very complicated. And I think that when it comes to
Speaker 3: men seeking help, uh, it's it's so far outside of
Speaker 3: the schema of of men what we always thought about men.
Speaker 3: Put it like this, I honestly believe in my heart
Speaker 3: that in terms of the way that we look at
Speaker 3: gender identity and gender scripts, I think that women are
Speaker 3: becoming more liberal with the way that they see those things,
Speaker 3: and not politically. I'm just talking about personal ideology, becoming
Speaker 3: more liberal in terms of the way they see womanhood
Speaker 3: and femininity. And men are either as conservative as we've
Speaker 3: always been, or we're becoming more conservative. And that in
Speaker 3: that concern, rovatism does a thing where it sticks to
Speaker 3: an old philosophy that don't really apply anymore. Like you,
Speaker 3: the protector provider that was that was that was the
Speaker 3: ship in the sixties and in the seventies. Yeah, you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying. That was, but now you have
Speaker 3: to be more. And I think the conservative piece of
Speaker 3: masking the ideology that's really self reliant and really big
Speaker 3: on masking vulnerability. I understand why it exists. It had
Speaker 3: to fulf very for a very long time. But the
Speaker 3: human brain doesn't always do a good job of knowing
Speaker 3: when it's time for change. And societally, man, we're a
Speaker 3: big ship and the Titanic king Bucker you like before
Speaker 3: that scort, you know, it takes a long time for
Speaker 3: that thing to turn around and change course. So I
Speaker 3: think we're dealing with a lot of different things at
Speaker 3: one time. And with men, I think the buying is
Speaker 3: going to be them seeing themselves in the work. I
Speaker 3: think when most men think of a workshop, they think
Speaker 3: of something that's for women, where you sit around and
Speaker 3: you get affirmed and y'all might be clapping a snap
Speaker 3: in the yes, live your best life, walk in your truth,
Speaker 3: and that's fantastic. But that's how my wife talks. That's
Speaker 3: not how I talk.
Speaker 1: They need to come to one of mind. I don't
Speaker 1: talk like that either.
Speaker 3: I love that, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm
Speaker 3: glad that women vibe with that. Women deserve those spaces
Speaker 3: and languages and language that feels like them, you know.
Speaker 3: But if we're going to reach men and have it
Speaker 3: be less arduous to do so, I think we have
Speaker 3: to change the service delivery approach.
Speaker 2: I think that they don't know well in terms of
Speaker 2: my other question, the weekend workshop, I don't think they don't.
Speaker 2: Either they don't know how, or they haven't given themselves
Speaker 2: permission to take that time for themselves.
Speaker 3: Because we're so glad you said that they don't.
Speaker 1: Give themselves permission to take that time.
Speaker 2: That's one thing, you know, we did when Courtney be
Speaker 2: Advanced Dvance released his book The Invisible Ache. We did
Speaker 2: like workshop online and I had probably five hundred and
Speaker 2: something men sign up and forty something show up.
Speaker 3: Five hundred signed up and forty showed up. Yeah was
Speaker 3: it free?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah it was anutrition would the free stuff be crazy?
Speaker 1: Rayest competitor, My greatest competitor is free. I just was
Speaker 1: slapping down she everywhere giving herself away. She's a howl.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, free as a howl. I mean, she
Speaker 2: just gives herself to everybody. But yeah, four five hundred
Speaker 2: signed up and only forty showed up. And you know,
Speaker 2: I really had to take that into prayer and see
Speaker 2: and one of the things that I said, I want
Speaker 2: to talk to you about these two things before you
Speaker 2: get out of here. Number one, my father said it,
Speaker 2: and I've seen it and I raised my son.
Speaker 1: I've seen it in my husband's I've seen it in
Speaker 1: my friends.
Speaker 2: A man who is not accountable to anyone is a
Speaker 2: danger to himself and everybody else.
Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely, absolutely absolutely, And in there anyone, yourself needs
Speaker 3: to be included. You need to be accountable to self. Yeah. Absolutely.
Speaker 1: How do men learn that if they haven't seen it?
Speaker 2: Which goes back to my original question, how does a
Speaker 2: fatherless son become a good father? How do men learn
Speaker 2: accountability when they haven't seen it or experienced it? How
Speaker 2: do they learn it?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: You bought that thing all the way back around there?
Speaker 2: I'm good like that, Yeah you are.
Speaker 3: I think how do men bring themselves to a point
Speaker 3: of self on ability when it has not been modeled
Speaker 3: for them.
Speaker 1: And when nobody's holding them accountable.
Speaker 3: To do it, and when no one's holding you accountable
Speaker 3: to do it? I think the only way something has
Speaker 3: to institute change. Something has to bring about a desire
Speaker 3: for change. Either it's something that's going to be self motivated,
Speaker 3: like I'm tired of being this way. I'm tired. I
Speaker 3: don't like the way I feel when I'm drunk anymore.
Speaker 3: I feel like I'm running from my problems. I don't
Speaker 3: want to do this anymore. I gotta change or do
Speaker 3: something different. Either it's going to be that or when
Speaker 3: he loses everything and he's rock bottom, does it mean
Speaker 3: that he'll do the things that are necessary, because you
Speaker 3: still have to take the steps. But I think the
Speaker 3: light switch that turns on that says I have to
Speaker 3: do something, have to be self accountable is when you
Speaker 3: have a very strong and deep desire for changing your
Speaker 3: own life, and you're at the point, you're at the
Speaker 3: point at the stages of cha's not pre contemplation, not contemplation,
Speaker 3: You're at the point where you're ready to make a
Speaker 3: step forward. And I think what supercharge is that is
Speaker 3: if you're one of those men that could say, hey,
Speaker 3: I know I'm self reliant, I'm independent, I can provide
Speaker 3: for myself and do all of those things, but I
Speaker 3: really need some help right now. Seeking behaviors yeah, the
Speaker 3: help seeking behaviors. And with men, what I find what
Speaker 3: we do oftentimes is we jump to the extreme of
Speaker 3: something in order to fix it. Like, oh, my cars
Speaker 3: making noise. Time to change the engine. Yo, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: might be the fuel pump. Bro, you know you might
Speaker 3: have a valve in that engine. That's a little bit off.
Speaker 3: Let's check the easy to fix things. I've had men
Speaker 3: come in my office, like y'all need to take this
Speaker 3: cold plunge in this twenty degree tub. Like, yo, you
Speaker 3: know you could just take a shower and if it's hot,
Speaker 3: like turn it on cold for the first two minutes.
Speaker 3: Baby steps matter. It's so hard to get through the
Speaker 3: men sometimes, I'll say, so challenging to use your framing
Speaker 3: to get through the mess. Sometimes the baby steps matter,
Speaker 3: the little touch points matter, and it's okay, bro, it's okay.
Speaker 3: It's okay. If you need somebody to hold your hand
Speaker 3: through this, it's all right.
Speaker 1: But do they know they can trust?
Speaker 2: What I find with men is if you burn them
Speaker 2: one time, if you violate them one time. One of
Speaker 2: the ways that women do that is he has a
Speaker 2: vulnerable moment. He tells you something sacred or secret and
Speaker 2: you use it to beat him up later.
Speaker 1: If you do that, he's done.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, or you tell me, how does
Speaker 2: a woman let a man know you're safe with me?
Speaker 1: What does she need to.
Speaker 2: Communicate or how does she need to be to communicate
Speaker 2: your safe with me?
Speaker 3: Let me say this first. If a man has not
Speaker 3: done the work to let his brain notify the rest
Speaker 3: of his body that he is safe, there's nothing that
Speaker 3: she can do.
Speaker 1: Okay, got it.
Speaker 3: That's the first. First thing. First, I hear that I
Speaker 3: grew up. I grew up in the projects, and when
Speaker 3: we move, I'll never forget when we moved our first townhouse.
Speaker 3: I mean it was projects adjacent, but it wasn't in
Speaker 3: the projects. Me and my wife moved our first townhouse.
Speaker 3: I was outside with my cousin and every car that
Speaker 3: rolled by was looking in the car because you know,
Speaker 3: you ride through the hood, you think them boys looking
Speaker 3: in the car because they're trying to hurt you. No,
Speaker 3: they want to make sure you ain't trying to hurt them, right,
Speaker 3: you know that's PTSD at it's finest. But I'm looking
Speaker 3: at the cars, I'm looking at everybody. And my cousin said, hey, bro,
Speaker 3: you know you safe. You ain't gotta do that no more,
Speaker 3: right like you ain't in the hood no more. My
Speaker 3: brain did not know that I was safe. I own
Speaker 3: my own business. We do very well, but sometimes, you know,
Speaker 3: when you're an entrepreneur, sometimes the money don't always look right.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: What I don't have money in my account. I don't
Speaker 3: feel safe, and I have to keep reminding my brain
Speaker 3: that I'm safe. I'm safe. There's nothing my wife can do,
Speaker 3: There's nothing anybody's mama can do. If I do not
Speaker 3: feel safe in my own mind and body, then externally,
Speaker 3: there's nothing that can happen to help kickstart that. So
Speaker 3: I think first things first is he has to be
Speaker 3: cognizant of where he is and he has to be
Speaker 3: able to know that he's safe. And I think the
Speaker 3: second thing is just my data and experience. Every woman
Speaker 3: thought she was safe just by virtue of being her.
Speaker 3: I never met a woman who didn't think that she
Speaker 3: was safe. My wife wasn't always the safest person for
Speaker 3: me to be vulnerable with, you know, before we got married.
Speaker 3: But I think it's a mix. It's not whether it's climate,
Speaker 3: it's not the individual things that happen always in these
Speaker 3: little touch points. It's what the attitudes, behaviors, conversations, and
Speaker 3: mutual love and respect looked like over a long period
Speaker 3: of time. What is you all shared experience with each other.
Speaker 3: Don't tell me you're safe, Demonstrate that you're safe if
Speaker 3: I tell you something that's uncomfortable for you to hear,
Speaker 3: if it's uncomfortable saying hey, I'm feeling a kind of
Speaker 3: way right now, Babe. You told me that, and it's
Speaker 3: making me feel insecure or it's making me feel defensive.
Speaker 3: I want to be here for you right now, but
Speaker 3: what you say is making me feel the way I
Speaker 3: need a minute like. You have to externalize these internal
Speaker 3: thoughts that are going through your mind so that you
Speaker 3: all both know where you are now. That takes a
Speaker 3: great deal of emotional intelligence, and in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 3: that's not something that's in abundance. It's not a commodity
Speaker 3: that there's a great deal of. But you have to
Speaker 3: you have to show it in your actions off It's
Speaker 3: I feel so sorry for folks. It's too much going on,
Speaker 3: it's too many distractions. People are categorizing value in these
Speaker 3: very obsessive, very peculiar.
Speaker 1: Ways, dysfunctional. It's all dysfunctional.
Speaker 3: It is, but we don't see it that way. I say,
Speaker 3: you know, people always look back at the nineties and
Speaker 3: early two thousands and say that it's really cringe. I
Speaker 3: think we want to look back at this time with
Speaker 3: all the fifty to fifty conversation and the relationship godly gook,
Speaker 3: and it's going to be so uncomfortable to watch how
Speaker 3: collectively ridiculous we were. That's right back in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: But yeah, back to the back to what I'm saying
Speaker 3: about it. I think it's just something you have to model.
Speaker 3: You have to model safety. You can't just talk it now.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's for the men. Now for the women,
Speaker 2: I say the women all the time, let me see
Speaker 2: how this lands for you and what you would say
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: I say to women, take the pants off.
Speaker 2: He don't want to come home and find another dude.
Speaker 1: Take the pants off.
Speaker 2: And I literally have an exercise where I tell women
Speaker 2: to wear a skirt for twenty one days so that
Speaker 2: they can get a different, vivate rational pull from the universe.
Speaker 2: When you hear me say that, ladies, take the pants off,
Speaker 2: what does that stimulate for you?
Speaker 1: As a man.
Speaker 3: It makes me think of this rhetoric we have about
Speaker 3: masculine and feminine energy. I don't subscribe to it, but
Speaker 3: I understand the conversations that people are having and my
Speaker 3: clients talk about it, so I have to lean into it.
Speaker 3: Taking the pants off I often hear when women are
Speaker 3: being independent or where women are gaining autonomy economically, academically,
Speaker 3: vocasionally all these different fields that are very new and
Speaker 3: excited for women that they did label is masculine, which
Speaker 3: bothers me. What's masculine about achievement?
Speaker 1: Like, it's absolutely nothing.
Speaker 2: I don't mean it that way, but I'm glad that
Speaker 2: you that to hear that that's what you're hearing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and maybe that's me being a girl dad and
Speaker 3: me being invested in women from that angle, but you know,
Speaker 3: take the pants off to me is also about control
Speaker 3: and allowing yourself to take the hands off the steering
Speaker 3: wheel of control and allow your relationship to be or
Speaker 3: not assuming the super domineering role in your relationship that
Speaker 3: makes you and I know this is tough because you know,
Speaker 3: the good girl thing with women are supposed to be warm,
Speaker 3: but makes you kind of impenetrable. Where I can't get
Speaker 3: to you. I can't get to you for the reasons
Speaker 3: that I got it. Yeah, yeah, I think it's a.
Speaker 2: Control and domination and insisting that it looks the way
Speaker 2: you think it should look.
Speaker 1: Give you know.
Speaker 2: And I say this to women all the time, particularly
Speaker 2: single women. I say, for men with a drop out
Speaker 2: of the sky into your life today, is there room?
Speaker 1: Do you have closet space for it?
Speaker 3: Oh? I like that. I like that.
Speaker 1: I like that, you know, or you're just gonna give
Speaker 1: him a little box by the stove.
Speaker 2: When I say take the pants off, I mean make
Speaker 2: room for him who he is, as he is, and
Speaker 2: not that it's always got to be your way and
Speaker 2: that you're in control and you're dominating the space.
Speaker 1: Give him space. You know. My partner best away about
Speaker 1: three years ago, he could not cook.
Speaker 2: When he would say to me, I want to I'm
Speaker 2: gonna cook dinner tonight. Inside, I would say, Lord Jesus,
Speaker 2: help me, let me get it. Go get a big bag.
Speaker 2: But let me tell you something. I would sit at
Speaker 2: that table and eat that food and yummy, yummy, yummy
Speaker 2: and yummy, as opposed to say, how.
Speaker 4: Can you even put more flour on the chicken? And no,
Speaker 4: I just just be in the space in my heart
Speaker 4: because for me, so many women have made the head
Speaker 4: at home the heart is in deep freeze. That's what
Speaker 4: I mean when I say not the masculine feminine, because
Speaker 4: our nature is warm and soft and our dominant organ
Speaker 4: should be a heart. But when we have the pants
Speaker 4: on into our head, that's what I mean.
Speaker 3: I love the framing of that. Yeah, and I think
Speaker 3: it also you have to you can't let the idea
Speaker 3: of like this hyper idealized version of romance and partnership.
Speaker 3: You can't allow that to hold a gun to your
Speaker 3: head where you know this ain't a fit, but you
Speaker 3: know this is somebody, This is a warm body. I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna be alone. I'm not gonna be myself. I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna be by myself. This is my opportunity to
Speaker 3: have a person when everything is showing you. If you
Speaker 3: cannot take the pants off at all because who you
Speaker 3: are and who they are is just bumping, I think
Speaker 3: that's an indicator that something's wrong. I'm not saying you
Speaker 3: need to leave that relationship or exit, but I think
Speaker 3: that's indicative or I think that's an indicator that perhaps
Speaker 3: you need to reassess the direction and this relationship is
Speaker 3: going in. If you can't naturally find a place and
Speaker 3: not saying that it's that person's fault, perhaps you all
Speaker 3: they bring a part of their personality, brings out a
Speaker 3: part of your personality that won't allow you to take
Speaker 3: the pants off. Or maybe something from your past, maybe
Speaker 3: like we were talking about earlier, your relationship with your parents,
Speaker 3: maybe it triggers something there, or to remind you of
Speaker 3: something deeply hurtful where you just don't have great control
Speaker 3: over that in that moment with that person, I think
Speaker 3: it may be a great indicator that you need to
Speaker 3: dig deeper with self. Maybe you need to pivot, maybe
Speaker 3: you need to pause. Maybe this just ain't your person.
Speaker 2: I think everybody, every relationship, if it takes if it
Speaker 2: takes foot, you know, takes hole beyond, you know, bump
Speaker 2: knocking boots, that person is still there to teach you.
Speaker 1: I believe that they'll teach you something. Show yourself agreed.
Speaker 2: What they trigger up in you is what you need
Speaker 2: to heal. And sometimes you know that gets triggered in
Speaker 2: a one night stand. I know you've got to run.
Speaker 2: So I want to get these three things out to you,
Speaker 2: what is the number one measure of success in a relationship?
Speaker 1: What would you say?
Speaker 3: Oooh, that's a good question. I got you mutual respect one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it ain't gonna work without it.
Speaker 2: Just I respect you for who you are as you are,
Speaker 2: respect me for who I am, and then let's come
Speaker 2: together and see where we need to integrate.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: Number one thing you want men to know about intimate
Speaker 2: loving relationships.
Speaker 3: That they are They're deeply complex, no matter how badly
Speaker 3: your brain wants to oversimplify them. They are deeply nuanced.
Speaker 3: I can't remember the name of the couple, but it
Speaker 3: was a story about a couple who was married for
Speaker 3: like fifty years or something, this other couple that was
Speaker 3: married for twenty and the couple that was married for
Speaker 3: twenty as the couple that was married for fifty years
Speaker 3: asked the couple who's married for twenty, well, how long
Speaker 3: you all been married? And they told them, and the
Speaker 3: couple that was married for fifty years said, oh, y'all
Speaker 3: still getting to know each other.
Speaker 5: Ya, twenty years married, they still getting to know each other.
Speaker 5: It is deeply nuanced. It goes deep. It is an
Speaker 5: abyss of feelings that you need to grasp that concept
Speaker 5: before you go deep diving.
Speaker 2: What is the number one thing you want women to
Speaker 2: know about intimate loving relationships?
Speaker 3: Even though women are still fighting to wield power in society,
Speaker 3: women oftentimes have a great deal of power in their
Speaker 3: relationships that I don't know if they always see both
Speaker 3: good and bad. Well, I won't say good and bad.
Speaker 3: I don't like that framing, but.
Speaker 1: Both positive and not so volative?
Speaker 3: Yeah, both constructive and deconstructive, which I know is something
Speaker 3: you've talked about many, many, many times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Oh, care gains. You are an
Speaker 2: absolute joy and a delight.
Speaker 1: I tell you.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I saw you in one
Speaker 2: of your videos, your daughter was saying something. You say, well,
Speaker 2: do you want me to do so? Or do you
Speaker 2: need some time alone? And she said I need time alone?
Speaker 2: You said, okay, I'll be right here. I'll check on
Speaker 2: you in five minutes.
Speaker 3: That's right. And I do the same thing with my wife.
Speaker 3: What's up, baby? You need some space or you need
Speaker 3: a hug? What's good? What you need? Oh? Yeah, one thousand?
Speaker 3: Absolutely check on you?
Speaker 1: And how do we find you? Kiir does?
Speaker 2: How do we find you? How does the ar Spot
Speaker 2: family find you? Because I want them to. I want
Speaker 2: my family to become a part of your family.
Speaker 3: I love that. What's up our Spot Family's good with you,
Speaker 3: y'all been listening to this whole episode. Thank you for
Speaker 3: sticking with us. You can find me on Instagram. My
Speaker 3: name is kier Gaines k I E R G A
Speaker 3: I N E S. I am also on TikTok. I
Speaker 3: am also on YouTube. My wife and I have a
Speaker 3: podcast called to Sit Down Talk where we talk honestly
Speaker 3: about loving relationships and imagine Jordan's under the waterfall, because
Speaker 3: that ain't gonna help you, That ain't gonna help you
Speaker 3: get better at being a partner. You can find me
Speaker 3: any of those places. I will be happy to have
Speaker 3: you as part of my community.
Speaker 1: Thank you so very much.
Speaker 2: Our Spy Family Care Games. He is a licensed therapist.
Speaker 2: I know we were all over the place, but there
Speaker 2: were so many things that I wanted to get from
Speaker 2: him as because back, yes, absolutely absolutely, and you know what,
Speaker 2: this is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna bring you back with your wife.
Speaker 3: Ooh, that's gonna be good. That's gonna be good. I
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 2: Back with your wife, and then I get to ask
Speaker 2: her questions about you, and you questions about her.
Speaker 3: She's brilliant, Your love her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my sister at the bar. She's a lawyer,
Speaker 1: right she is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, intellectual property and trademark lawyer.
Speaker 1: Okay, oh lord, that's above my grade. I just do
Speaker 1: criminal defense.
Speaker 3: I definitely married up for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, my love, Thank you so very much. I want
Speaker 1: to respect your time to get out and we'll be
Speaker 1: in touch, okay.
Speaker 2: Before I leave you today. This is our last episode
Speaker 2: of season two on The R Spot, and I'm sure
Speaker 2: hoping there will be a season three. I want to
Speaker 2: thank you for listening. But more than listening, I want
Speaker 2: to encourage you to go back and listen to whatever
Speaker 2: episode was your favorite and see what you can find
Speaker 2: to put into action in your life. Because at the
Speaker 2: R Spot, our intention has been to give us more
Speaker 2: are loving, more fulfilling, more satisfying relationships in every area
Speaker 2: of our life. So to my our Spot family, I
Speaker 2: want to thank you for tuning in. I want to
Speaker 2: thank you for your support, and take good care of
Speaker 2: yourself until next time, Stay in.
Speaker 1: Peace and not in pieces.
Speaker 2: Bye. Ther Spot is a production of Shondaland Audio in
Speaker 2: partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit
Speaker 2: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 2: your favorite show.