Hey, fam I'm Jada Pinkett Smith and this is the Red Tabletop podcast all your favorite episodes from the Facebook Watch show in Audio produced by Westbrook Audio and I Heart Radio. Please don't forget to rate and review on Apple podcasts. Single Dating, Divorced, Married on this special edition of Red Table Talk or expert Men who have made it their life's work to help people have healthy relationships. They've coached millions of people navigating the complicated world of love. I'm Matthew Hussey. I've been coaching for fifteen years, helping women in their love lives build the confidence they need to make really good decisions. My nameless stuff on Level. Sierre, also known as Stefan speaks um a sort of fire relationship coach, an author of ten books, and I'm all about helping people experience healthier and happier relationships. I'm Lewis House and that was a former pro athlete, written a bunch of books, got a top podcast, had many failed relationships, and now in a beautiful one. I'm Divine Franklin. I'm here as a relationship advisor and author. I'm committed to just uplifting as many people as I can. Plus a special woman with relationship wisdom to share. The man I've been looking for my whole life is me for the first time, they're joining forces to reveal their findings and experiences. Grab a notebook were retaken note, we've got a pen and paper. You don't want to miss this. Some women are just looking to have sex and that's the real deal. God, I wish I had this information. And the table, this is a table. This is so re tell us how dating has been for you. I have a meme that really captures it because it was so exciting in my younger years and now it's kind of like, what, Yeah, it's not the same, but it's it's good because I'm in a healthier space, in a season of intention. So because of that, the pool has gotten smaller, and that's a good thing. It is. That's a good thing because you don't waste a lot of time with goings and situations that you know aren't even right before I would have entertained that. So it's about self love first, because if you don't, I'm serious, I can't give it if I don't have it. I can't give it if I don't have it, you know, Whoever, my partner will be I have to bring my best meat to the table. And I didn't realize how far off track I got and the lack of self love, and I came to a place where I'm like the man I've been looking for. My whole life is me. When we look to other people to give us something that we're void of, we set them up to fail. That's what we do, and we set ourselves up to be very disappointed. To me, the saddest thing, the thing that drives me in all of this when people say, why you whatever you want to call me a dating coach or whatever, why are you that thing? I think they think that I'm going to say, because finding love is the most important thing in life. Actually, to me, it's not that that's the most important thing in life. Is that if you make bad decisions in that area, then the wrong love can corrupt everything in your life. You can run out of the clock on your time, you can run out the clock on your energy, you become bitter, and even the good thing. You can have a job you love, you can have a family you love, it will poison your energy and all of those things. If you're unhappy here what you said, sure, he is really important to me because you've got to a point and that allows you then to be very discriminating when it comes to who do I need in my life and who do I not When I see couples who stay together no matter what, you start teaching kids this other message that the ultimate failure is being alone. The ultimate failure is to leave something. We don't teach enough, the idea that having no thing is better than having the wrong thing when it comes to our love life. Dn't know you didn't know. Yeah, this is a but we gotta share, y'all. So we have a whole wall of single women joining us with burning questions about the complicated world of relationships. Some of them have even taken their search for a partner to the next level, appearing on popular dating shows and hoping to find love. So let's say hello to all the single ladies. First up is Teresa, who said she's notoriously bad at dating. She even tried to find a partner using her zodiac sign on the Amazon series Cosmic Love. Hi guys, Hey Teresa. I consider sexual chemistry a big priority when I am dating someone, but it hasn't been serving me well. So I've been wondering if maybe I need to slow things down and try the opposite, even though it is such a huge priority for me. Oh yeah, that's real, great question. I'm gonna let you take that. Here's the thing, a lot of guys start off in a relationship around sexual chemistry first and instead, that's the mistake I made for many years, is not creating the foundation of spiritual connection and really getting clear on what are my values and do your values match up? What is my vision for a life for a relationship and does your vision matchup? Do we have shared aligned lifestyles? And I think a lot of us, myself included, it was all about this sexual attraction, Like you look good. I want to experience what that might feeling talking to me, I'm talking to what's going on? But I think I think sexual attraction is a good thing if there's a spiritual connection tied to it. But I think you need that spiritual connection before we sexually bond. And then let me ask you a question, how long do you think it takes a dude to come to that realization? Oh man, that took me to thirty eight years because I repeat the pattern thinking a new person is going to give me a different outcome. I wasn't realizing where my wounds were. Once I started the heal, I realized that I was the common denominator of every relationship that didn't work because when I was fully honest, which most women from my personal experience, weren't able to handle the truth of my values, my vision, what I want, what I believe in in a relationship, and so would scare them. And then I would coward and I would say, well, actually, you know, I'll agree with you here, I'll agree a little bit with you here, I'll give it. I'll abandoned my I'll abandoned myself to make you happy because I don't want to rock the boat, you know, I don't want to shake this big table. And I think lacking that courage created conflict deeper in the relationship, as opposed to being fully honest, upfront and kind of pushing away people that aren't in alignment so I could be my honest self and not the image of the best self. I believe love is commitment to your well being. So if I say I love you, then that means I have to be committed to your well being. If you say you love me, that means my well being is important to you. That means it's got to show up in how we act, right Because let's say I love you, it's words are cheat I mean, listen, I love you cost nothing. It's in the air, it's out and not just my emotional well being, my spiritual being, my well being to me, it's about that because then we can actually feel like this person really does want my best interest at all. It's not just romantic Absolutely, no relationship can thrive off of independence on either side. It's all about interdependence. We have to lean on each other, we have to do for each other. That has to be there. So that's what we're trying to figure out here, how to have that energetic interdependence between the ship. I think you have to look at it like some people are looking for an experience and other people are looking for a real relationship and experience. Chemistry, sexual attraction, it's all an experience. What you're talking about, Devon is a standard standard for how I choose to love, and that requires discipline. So in a way, what you're really looking for is for a person a with knowledge. How do you get to the point where you value connection spiritually compatibility, giving love more than just chemistry, and you can say, okay, well, there's the guy that struggles to get there because he never has the thing that Lewis you had. You're a good looking guy with options, right, it's successful. You're very attractive, so you got to experience that and go it didn't work. A lot of men never really get to play it out and say it didn't work, so it's like stuck, and so their whole life they're trying to date the cheerleader because they they're eight and still imagining what it would be like, so they never got there. Then there's the guy that gets there and has access and does all those things and realizes it doesn't work. But realizing something doesn't work doesn't stop you replaying the same addiction over and over in your life. You have to then have the discipline to say, Okay, I like pizza, but I can't eat pizza every day. That can't be my life. You don't stop eating pizza because pizza stops being delicious. You stop eating pizza because you value the way you feel when you live better. And so for a guy who stops just chasing the gratification, it's not that there's not still that urge. It's just that something more nutritional became the thing value. One thing that I've discovered is that we're not all wired the same. There's a lot of men they value committed relationship. Then you have the other guy who wants to be with a bunch of different women. You have to just be mindful of. Okay, what kind of man do I want to get with? Like if you surveyed most men, most men are just happy with I got food on my table, a roof over my head, my kneeds are being met. I'm fine. Then there's other men who want more in life. They go after more. They show that same attribute in their business and their career. That kind of man takes a longer time to develop when it comes to settle down one woman, I'm good here. The other guy, he's fine, you'll never care for another woman. But I think the unfortunate problem is that man who's very driven tends to exude a lot of mask and energy. Women tend to be more drawn to that. Well, you know that's very primal, right, you know, Like how men are? You know, it's like it's problem when you see a fine woman who's got a nice body, So as a woman when you see a driven in who's out, you know, conquering the world and let's go, and you're like, damn, he's gonna kill that Lion's got the village. But women have to understand what comes with that, right. It's like, hey, you're dealing with a lion, you know, versus versus stepping up to that line and expecting that line to act like a kitty cat, you know what I mean. But if you want that driven, masculine, ambitious energy, you better be prepared for what comes with it. And I think a lot of times we as women have to have more understanding where you know, a lot of times we get connected to that oh my goodness, he can provide. He's dynamic, and it's like all right, but just know it's a lot that's gonna come with that boo. It's gonna be It's gonna be a journey, you know what I mean. And so I think it's really important for women to understand these different kind of characteristics of the of the male kingdom. You know, the point you're making is critical for this reason. Don't marry a lion and then want them to be a kitty cat. But that thing that attracts is then the thing that you can detest and a commits relationship because it's like you love the idea that you know, I'm out there and conquering the world, But then that means I'm not gonna be home right Like that means I have another calling and a thing and a passion. And so I think it's very critical with understanding who it is you're going for and appreciating who they are and not saying, well, they're a lying now, but once I get them, I got plans. Yeah, what you see is what you get. There's a cute that says women Mary hoping the man will change, men marry hoping the woman will never change. So it comes down to what do you value. If you're a woman and you value most excitement and my adrenaline, always being up and always feeling like I'm like being kept on my toes, then you're going to choose a very different guy than if you're a woman who values peace. We're gonna go to another question. Deept didn't find her happily ever after on the Netflix dating show Love is Blind. I deserve somebody who knows for sure. So I'm choosing myself and I'm going to say no, my question. I think you said it best you choose yourself, and that's exactly what I did at the altar. But we're taught relationships don't work unless there's a little bit of compromise. My question is how do you find the balance between compromise and choosing yourself? That's really, really real. Here's the thing. I feel like I've made a lot of mistakes and relationships in the past, and I learned a lot. And in the current relationship i'm in right now with Martha, my girlfriend, I said, in the beginning, listen, I'm not gonna go there sexually with you until I want to commit to you, which never happened previously, right it was sexual chemistry. And then we'll commit now without having the conversations to see if you need to compromise for something. And then I said, the only way I'm willing to get into a new relationship is if my partner is willing to do therapy with me from the starting, so we both need to be on the healing journey together. I don't really think it is compromised. It's more healthy alignment of do I agree with this, and you give that and not waiting until there's an argument, waiting until there's a breakdown, and it's been an incredibly peaceful journey doesn't mean there's not conflict, but the conflict is minimized because we're both in it together and not one person is doing the world. Values are aligned, so she's not compromising something because we agreed before the commitment and neither are you now exactly exactly. I like that idea of healthy alignment versus compromise because that's a trigger word, compromise. I don't want to compromise who I am for the rest of my life. That seems like a trap. And I think we have to be careful because a lot of people confuse compromises with sacrifice, and to me, compromises a mutually beneficial agreement. We may have given a little bit of something, but we can sustain this. What I'm seeing a lot of relationships is you're saying, Okay, I like to go out dancing. He doesn't. My compromises. I'll accept not going out dancing, But the problem is you're not happy and you can't sustain not having that in your life. And now even if you try to, you're gonna start to have an attitude with now exactly now, intimacy is gonna start to get a hit because he doesn't give you what you need. If you are giving up something that's going to take away your ability to pour into your partner, don't do it. It has to be at a level where okay, we can still show up one percent for each other. But yes, I don't mind moving a little bit on this issue, and you move a little bit here so we can meet in the middle. For people that are listening to this, if you can imagine how much time that takes, you know what I mean, how much time that takes to get to that space, how much understanding that you have to have of the other person. It takes time. This is not stuff that happens overnight. And if you think about how we just jump into relationships and jump in the bed and yeah, and we want to like we want this. We had this idea of what relating is supposed to be. God, I wish I had this information years ago. Deep te, did that answer your question for you? Yeah? It does, thank you. Oh, I'm so glad. So you might recognize Michelle Young from the Bachelorette. What's your question, Michelle? So I came into reality TV, falling in love and the public eye, and it didn't work out. It was best that it didn't work out. But now that I'm healing and going on that journey, how do I move on and find a way to date now that I am in the public eye. I want a relationship where somebody doesn't know who I am. In the day of so social media, in the day of dating apps, you know, going to the club. I don't want to meet my forever person at the club. That's not where I'm going to meet them. So how do I do that? Where do I search for somebody organically where they don't know who I am. Your platform is going to be your biggest weakness if you're not careful, and it's going to pose as your biggest strength because it will look like the place where you can get all of this attention, and everyone goes, look how many options you have, Look how many people are in your d m s. This is crazy. You can have your pick, but the problem is every single one of them picked you for a bad reason. The hard part for you is talking to someone who has no idea who you are, which makes it much more likely you'll get rejected. But if you can sustain the rejections in places where people don't care who you are, then you actually might find someone who starts to care about who you are for all the right reasons. This is why I think it's really important to meet people in different contexts other than the ones that you might be meeting them in. You kind of have to start looking in some polls of people that actually don't care about any of that to begin with, Right, that's interesting. Yeah, you know, I've gone through a you know, very public divorce, and so most people I come in contact with, most women I come in, they know more about me than I know about them, and so that's some strange dynamic. But what I would say to you is part of the way to find it. Don't look for it, like I just don't. It's going to happen me. I know you deal with this. People know who you are, yeah, um or not, but at some point you know it comes up. Yeah, you definitely want to meet people organically, Like I don't do the dating sites, been there done, They just don't work for me. They don't work for me. But I met somebody at home depot and that crazy. I don't know where it's gonna go. But I'm saying it was just an organic thing and and just to talk and spend time. And um. Then yesterday it' funny because we talked and I old him, I said, I don't know if you know, because you don't know. You don't know what people know. He didn't know, and you look for the reaction. He never broke character, so to speak. He kind of stayed true to to who he was. He was not impressed. If you're impressed, that's an issue. If you are just if you're a friend to buy it, that's an issue. It didn't sway him. It didn't sway him at all. So read why doesn't this dating sites work for you? Though? I prefer to have somebody say, hey, girl, listen, I got a friend, because there's a paper trail somebody, can you know, vouch for this person? Scare me? There's too much work I have to do. Got it? You know? Because you can present any anything you want to present, You can pretend to be somebody. It's just too much, Yes, it just it has not worked. So how did you meet someone at home? Defense out they're looking for some tile, just needed some tile and was just there at the same time, say please started conversation. Because I'm a woman, I'm old fashioned in a lot of ways. I'm not going to go up to I'm not going to pursue a man. I'm not going to do that. He's going to have to pursue show interest first, and once he does, I'll give it back. What you say is very very common. I'm a woman. I don't want to make the first move. If you say you're old fashioned and that's why you're not making the first move, then you don't know what old fashioned was. Old fashioned was walking past a guy inadvertently dropping the handkerchief, and then and then you kept walking, and he saw an extraordinary opportunity to be a man, and he picked it up. And he'd walk over and he'd say, madam, you dropped this, and she'd say did I? And they now have a conversation that he thought was his idea, but it wasn't. It was hers. She chose him. That's not comfortable for me. I didn't know how to do that. I'm very friendly. You can flip your pretty hair and be like people don't know this because I'm an extroverted in revert. But there's a little shyness there no no, no, no, no, no, there's shyness, but there's a hint of you know, the moment you didn't miss a beat when Louis looked at you and said something sexual and there was immediate playfulness there. I can I'll give it back, right, But that's engaged. But that's it, that's what he's saying. It's so interesting to hear it from a male perspective, in the idea of what we see as going after a guy, and he's like, no, it's so civil. Just your feminine essence, your feminine energy is the handkerchief. You know, men live for them, maybe right if they think it's a no, they're not coming anywhere near you because it's so hard. This is what is I think sad for a lot of guys, this idea out there that if a guy likes you, he comes over to you, and it's just not true for men, they just don't. And they don't because it's hard, because it's hard to go over to someone in home depot and not seem like a creepy. It's a hard thing to do, even for a nice guy. So just that little green light that says I I am available, for you to talk to me is something that can radically change the game. Maybe I'm just a super super nerd, but I love the what are you reading. I've come up to a lot of guys and been like, oh, told story, that's fire. And now we're talking, and now we're in this whole conversation about authors and books that that we love, and now I'm like learning more about him. We're not really talking about being romantic. We're talking about something different but that, but that feeling can sort of trickle in as we're talking about something. It's like it's like it's a way to meet somebody. This person may very well say, you know what, You're not my type. Okay, great, but at least I shot my shot because that confidence of this is what I want and I'm going to position my life to get what I want. I think it's critical, but I think we were specifically taught men should approach us. Yeah, we were taught that men like to hunt. That's what you hear all the time. No, no, no, no, man hunt. The thing that people don't understand about the men like to hunt. Yes, men have this innate desire to conquer, face challenges, and we get a high off of that, but once emotions are involved, throw that out the window. No, man who's been a lovaful woman said, I hope she makes me chase her once we're now so invested. We don't want this to be difficult. We're hoping she reciprocates, not makes it more challenging. What you'll notice is easier for men to chase lust than it is to chase love, because when you love someone and they're not receptive to you, it hurts. When you're just lusting after the woman, all you're focused on is what you want to get from her, which is why you'll see some women have men who were never serious about you, but will chase you for years on end because they're just locked into I want this exactly, that's it. That's where the men are. Hunters kicks in, but once he's emotionally into you, he doesn't want all this resistance. That hurts too much. I do think that there are men who don't want to be aggressed upon in that way. How your actions will be perceived will be based on how much they had interested in you. So a lot of women will say, well, men don't want to be approach this way. No, he probably was never interested. He didn't want to be approached by you at all. You could have been subtle, you could have been strong. He didn't want it exactly. It didn't matter. But most men are so happy to have a woman show him that she wants him, she has interests. He's going to be receptive to that if he has interests as well. Okay. It's like when women say I don't want to ask certain questions because it might scare him away. You only scare away a man who's not serious. All right. I also understand this. I think always just be true to who you are, because if making that first move scares him off or cause you to lose value, he ain't for you. Simple. Something important in the framing of all of this is understanding that your power can't continuously come from playing hard to get. It's a problem if it does. The power has to become Okay, you got my curiosity, and my curiosity is me going out with you tonight. My attraction grows if the next week of communication after this date is good, and then you get a little more of me. If two weeks from now the communication gets bad, you suddenly, oh I'm questioning you again, and then someone says, oh, oh wow, she if I don't give her consistent energy, if I don't give her consistent communication, I've become a question mark. It's not the cat and mouse is hard to get. The challenges your standard that I'm not willing to allow someone into my life unless they can give me that standard, and then owning that standard and living up to it. Not I have a fake standard that says you have to treat me right, and then the moment they start to drift, I go come back because now what you taught someone is the exact opposite that the moment they pull back, they get more of you, not less. Ladies, does that raise your hand if that makes sense? Yes, indeed, thank you for that one. The standard is the declaration of how you feel about yourself, and you can't commise it quickly. That radiates everywhere, right, Absolutely, Some women are just looking to have sex, and that's the real deal. An experience an experienceship. Are you trying to find someone to be your life partner or do you want just an experience? Exactly? That's such an important point you're making. But you have to be real with yourself because here's what I see A lot I had a woman the other day and she said, me and this guy both have really busy schedules. We've been on three dates, we've been going seeing each other for a month and a half. How do you progress things when your schedule is so intense? And I realized, are you really saying your schedule is so intense that you don't want to like give more energy to this, And she went, well, I mean I could. I went, so, here's what's happened. You have appropriated his excuse, and in order to save face and not be vulnerable, you're making it the royal way. You're saying we're just so busy. It's a bit like saying some dating someone where you want something serious, but that person and says, you know, I'm just a really chill person. I just like to see where things mean. I don't want to put a later. I'm just like And then when your friend asks you, so, how's it going with that person? You go, well, you know, we're just like chilling and having a good time and we're just not And you go, oh, you're this person's ventriloquising you. This isn't you. You've done this so that you don't have to be vulnerable. You have to be brave enough to create what you want and then know if the busy guy with the intense schedule, which by the way, you have an intense schedule too, and you're willing to prioritize a relationship, that's where you are. If he's got busy schedule and he doesn't want to do that, then then that's okay. But know that now instead of pretending it's we have this expense, that's real top right there, because I do think that royal wet it happens a lot. So we have Violet. She's a comedian who made a name for herself with her Instagram alter ego Daddy Issues. She was crowned the memean by Vanity Fair and hosts a popular podcast about dating, What Did You Want to ask the guys? First, Ione to say thank you for all of your inside of a researching feminine energy and masking and energy, and I think we have those energies in both male and females these days. Yes, sometimes I feel like I bring out a lot of mask and energy in general. But I have noticed when i'm more my feminine energy, things come to me and I don't have to run after it. And my question is do men notice when women have mask and energy or feminine energy? Oh? Hell yeah. My research shows that men tend to be more drawn to women with feminine energy. So do you guys have any pointers on that? I want to said, Can I jump in with something, which is I think a different perspective on all of this, because I think language can be very very Yeah, because language takes us down the rabbit holes that we don't actually need to go down. I don't think masculine a feminine. Honestly, the terms themselves don't interest me very much. What interests me is that we're all many things. As there's a starting point. Maybe we have a dominant size. Fine, but you know what's boring is when we date someone who's one thing. Anyone who's one thing becomes boring. I consider myself to be a masculine person, and there's times where I love my fiance to take care of me, and it's really enjoyable for me to cut up under her arm and be like, I'm just going to be this now, and she enjoys the fact that I'm different things at different times. I enjoy the fact that she's different things at different times. There are times where it's really nice where I can step in and kind of be stereotypically manly, and she's smart enough to know that he needs this right now. But there's also other times where it's like, we're taking the trash cans out and she doesn't go, they can you take the trash cans out? She doesn't do that, she said, she grabs the heaviest trash can and she's like, I'm going to get involved. And it's called that she's like that because I go, oh, I have a real teammate. We tend to Over time, we become addicted to whatever we get the most validation for. Right if we're funny, we keep being funny, and then eventually, on a date we go we come up with the problem, why does no one ever want to sleep with me because you're just funny? And then someone else got validation young for being sexy, and they played that weapon over and over and over and over again, and they come to me, Matt, why does everyone just want to sleep with me because you're just sexy? Look at your Instagram profile. It's sexy, sexy, sexy, sexy, sexy, sexy, sexy. There's nothing else in there. There's a concept of unique parents, unique pairings, or when you find two things that are both attractive but you don't normally find in the same person. In the same person. If you can go deep with me on a date and have a great conversation and then five minutes later you can say something sexy, yeah, I'm like, oh, you're going to be addictive because you've got both. You know, we spend so much time going which thing should I be to me? The answer is you're gonna be both, because both is what actually is very attractive. It's not hard to find someone who's feminine all the time. It's not hard to find somebody's masculine all the time. By the way, women don't want a man who's masculine every second of the day because it becomes boring. It's just alpha alpha alpha, alpha alpha. Why is it so attractive when the alpha guy cries unique, so unique parents? That is the thing. Yes, it is lovely to watch an alpha man, and it's lovely to watch a sexy woman be a boss. Yes, if you are a woman who desires a masculine man and you tend to walk around with your mask and energy, you're gonna attract men who are more passive, more feminine, the type of men you're not really into. You can talk to a lot of successful women. If not that men don't want them, it's the type of men that want them they don't want to return. Question, yes, ladies, how many of you would rather have men that can really express more their feminine I would say no. I like a lot of men are being coddled as children, and now when they grow up, they're looking for a partner who's their mother, all right, and now they're putting the burdens on the woman because they can't stay on their own two feet. So just be real about what the energy dynamic needs to be in your relationship. Fantastic point. If you take a woman who is independent friends for herself, is quite capable. One of these things that traditionally we might associate with the masculine, and we say, why is there a lot of masculine men on't going for that woman? I would say it's nothing to do with any of those things. It's because one of the most attractive things about a relationship is I feel like I still I can do something. I feel like I can still serve you. What's confusing today is that you have a lot of women who are doing amazing things, earning money, taking away all men's normal weapons, and men don't know how to handle that because we're not used to it. I was raised by a mother who said, don't you let her carry that bag? How dare you If I came home from a date and told my mom that I let her pay half, my mom would be furious. I was brought up to think that my value was being able to take care of someone, was being able to pick up the heavy bag, was being able to pay for the check. Now I'm living in a paradigm where I have to find a different way of providing value, and that means my self worth as a man actually has to grow because guess what, I can't throw money at the problem and be important anymore. I actually have to be important by being a person of character, by being a person whose personality is enough without me doing all of these things. And women have to do a better job by the way of educating men on the fact that those things are sexy. And if they do that, I do believe men will have an easier time being with successful women because they will go oh, I still feel just as manly I still feel just as sexy. We have to know how to play off each other. If I don't know my role in my masculine energy and you and you're feminine, we will have moments where we're both being masculine. That's when the head start to but or we'll have moments where we're both being feminine, and that's going to be a problem. So if me as a woman, if I don't know how to navigate that energy, inevitably, I'm gonna knock heads up against an energy with my masculine. And let me tell you something, I don't care how much masculine a woman has in her body. It ain't even gonna of when a man brings up his you know, it's like that's a whole thing. I think my perspective of this is, um, there are times in my relationships where I've cried and been like hold me. And then there are times where I'm like, do this because you don't know how to do that right And then when you like, and there are times probably like okay, tell me what to do like, but you have that interchange and just knowing how to dance with the energy. And I think the person who knows you best is going to be able to play that with you and be a dynamic team and enjoy it. Yeah. You and Dad used to tell me a story trees don't grow without wind. You have to be able to be flexible. You have to be able to move with the way the wind blows. You can't just always be I'm like this all the time, like, no, the wind is blowing this way. Let me go like this, like you You're gonna break under the pressures of life, under the crazy ways that life throws you if you're always inflexible. And I think that's the part for me that even in being having been married, you know, I had to learn that balance. I was dealing, you know, with an incredible, dynamic, powerful woman and finding the balance of like, Okay, I'm going to be more feminine in this moment, I am going to be more masculine. And we were able to dance and find that was really really important. Yeah, we're gonna go to cats. Millions followed her relationship journey on social media, through pregnancy, a wedding, and now divorce. We just wanted to address some of the rumors about Oh Michael are being separated. Unfortunately they are true. We are separating, and we just wanted to be transparent with you guys, because you guys have been with us from the beginning of this whole journey. Cat has a question about healing after her most recent breakup. So what question do you have, miss Cats? So I'm a single mom, The question is how do you not fail again? I don't want to fail again, and I feel so much more pressure with her. That's a heavy word failed because I remember Will had said that this was his greatest failure. Oh yeah, I had an issue with that because I didn't understand how we could do what we do as a blended family and do it as well as we do and as loving as we do and have an amazing son, and it's looked at as a failure. Yeah, it did what it was supposed to do, So that was successful, and that had to end so that something else could begin. So I think you got to be careful with putting those words because that's a heavy, heavy, heavy word. You know. I think that what we consider success in relationships has to be redefined. I've had some big lessons on that one. Relationships come into your life, and you know, I was digging on this this morning. We think we know why we're in relationships, m okay, you know, and what the journey is supposed to look like, and sometimes we have to just see what is trying to be revealed, what the healing is. It's like, oh, I wanted my marriage this way or I wanted, you know, my family that way. So how we define success, how we define why we're in relationships and the purpose of relationships is like I think sometimes we get stuck on what they are supposed to mean to us. And I really have had to get with that, you know what I mean. I've had to get with that. I think that's a wonderfully made point. I think that anytime something goes horribly wrong in our lives and we lose something so important, it's a chance to access a level of ourselves that we never would have been able to access. It seems like she's just in a space of trying to evaluate and think about what happened and he and heal, which Devon, you know, is so important before you start jumping up and thinking about another relationship, which is good to that point. And you know, cat, let me tell you when you on the other side of a marriage that did not work the way you thought, yeah, it changes everything, and so I just want to acknowledge Cat's pain. It's painful, you know, I just brought a piece of property, first piece of property in the contract. Devon Franklin, an unmarried man. I might have well broken down because I never saw this moment when we said I do. There was never a moment when we were thinking I don'tn't so to live in the I don't. You don't know what it's like until you do. So Cat is living in a moment that psychologically never even accounted for. So on some level, you know, yeah, in a moment when you're trying to heal and you're trying to you know, deal with your stuff, the ideas and the and the theories, you're like, forget that. I'm hurt. Yo, I did everything that was the used to be done, and it's still got me here. So I would say to you, Cat, like it's okay to feel how you feel. I just applaud your courage to just admit, like, Yo, this is what I'm going through. The one thing I had to do navigating this is just be easy with myself. So Cat, I would just encourage you be easy with you, you know, love you, you know, care for yourself and give yourself grace because you're gonna feel a whole lot of ways and a whole lot of days. And it's okay, it's all right. It's all right because love is hard and it's painful in relationships don't work. So catt for whatever that's worth. I share your pain, and you know, just applaud your process. I want to add to cat because how can you trust you're gonna succeed? How can you trust that you won't fail again? Every woman, I've sat down with divorces after relationship and I asked them, at any point your spirit of intuition tell you this wasn't the man for you. The answer is yes. But I'm a huge believer in woman's intuition. Y'all can know in the first conversation this isn't it, But you rationalize reasons to put past that and give the guy a chance, and then yes, that can turn into months, years, whatever relationship that never should have started. It isn't to beat yourself up about it and feel bad about it, but it's to help you going forward. Your intuition knows. I haven't found a woman's intuition to be wrong. That hasn't been my experience. So I just encouraged to really tap into that. And in order for you to do that, you have to make sure you heal from what you've experienced, but not just from this past relationship, from everything in your past, because a lot of people make the mistake of just healing from that recent breakup, that recent disappointment, and they haven't uncovered the route or what even got you in that situation. To begins, I want to add that real quick. I've got a photo of my childhoodself on my phone, so I've been doing that for the last two years because we have to go back to the earliest childhood memories and heal the wounds of the past. So now I'm that young version of me that was banded or hurt or abused and developing a healthy relationship that way. Cat, I hope you've got some of your questions answered and we are wishing you the best with you in that beautiful Angel, You Angel. We have a question from Sierra Miller from the hit Bravo series Some House. Hey, Sierra, what's your question? Okay, so one, I've learned so much already, so to keep it short and simple, I come from to divorce, parents child of divorce, and as I'm dating, I typically date with the intention of I do eventually want to be married one day. I want to have babies, and I want to break the generational patterns. How do you decipher like a real red flag versus something that could be worked on. I feel like sometime meet guys, they might mimic my dad and a sense and you know who wasn't always the most present. There are some things that are red flags. There are some things that are amber lights. I actually am a little distasteful of the current culture we have, and I'm part of it because these video titles do well on YouTube. You know, five red flags to worry about, blah blah. You get to the point where you go, oh my god, so many things are a red flag. I shouldn't even be allowed to date any more red flags. You get to a point where you go, okay, not everything can be a red flag. Some things are amber lights, and an amberlite is an invitation to a conversation. Every great relationship gets better with conversation, not worse. If you have the conversation and someone attacks you. If you have the conversation and now they go cold for two weeks if you have the conversation and someone starts using your insecurities against you, and everyone can have a bad reflexive reaction because the fact is none of us like to be criticized and called out, so we're all entitled to a little bit of defensiveness. But it goes back to that well being things like if you really want my well being, you're gonna be like, Okay, you're hurt. Exactly exactly does the conversation make things better? If it doesn't, red flag if it does, Okay, let's keep going. Yeah, and not to just the conversation, but whether you see any change in actions, you know what I mean, any actions versus just words, because everybody can talk. Yeah, I'm just saying. And I would also say it's okay to have the intention of wanting your marriage to work out when you get married, but I would try to alleviate yourself from the stress and the pressure of the generations and people that had nothing to do with you that came before you, because then that could be a weight on your marriage and you might not make the best decisions for yourself because you're trying to protect an ideal versus like that was mom and dad, that's not my story and write your own story and feel comfortable with that. Does that answer your question for you? Yes, definitely. Thank you, appreciate you so welcome. Thank you. This has been awesome and we need to do a part two. And thank you all you beautiful women for being here with us, our beautiful wall. This was a good discussion. Don't dope. That was dope. This was dope. This was so awesome. Wait we needed by three more hours, Oh my goodness. Yes, Part two. To join the red table Talk family and become a part of the conversation, follow us at facebook dot com slash red table Talk. Thanks for listening to this episode of Red Table Talk podcast, produced by Facebook Watch, Westbrook Audio, and I Heart Radio.