Episode 1

The speaker is trying out a new format where he talks about a situation or topic and shares three things he learned from it. He tells the story of a relationship with a woman he met at work. They started off as friends, but he developed feelings for her. They spent time together, but she seemed distant and not interested in doing things he suggested. He eventually broke things off, but they got back together. However, things were never the same and he felt like she didn't make an effort to spend time with him. He eventually quit his job because she was criticizing him and he felt unsupported. They stopped talking and he realized that she didn't understand his needs. He learned that if someone is not willing to give you what you need, it's best to walk away. He also learned that she had a soft side that he fell in love with. Overall, he learned two good things and three bad things from the relationship. So I'm trying something different this time, this is something that I've been thinking about doing for a while, but haven't had the opportunity or the time or the thought of mine to do it. So what I'm going to do for the next couple weeks, I'm going to put out something where it talks about a situation or something that's on my mind and lets you know three things I got from it. So there's no fanfare, I got music, look if we get big in this that's great, if we don't that's great too. This is more or less maybe a way for me to let go of things. So let me tell you the story, there was a young lady that I met from work, absolutely beautiful young lady, worked hard, always was at work, I mean she worked 12, 14, even 16 hour days. She was the leader of her department, even though she had a leader that wasn't up to par, that's just thoughts and opinions. So we started talking, just as friends at first, I was new at the company and when we were talking we talked about things we went through and I kind of had a crush on her. She talked about her life outside of work and I talked about things I dealt with and for the most part I felt like we had a connection. So I actually asked her out on a date, I actually wanted to be her boyfriend and whatnot. And in the beginning things were fine, I had a beautiful roommate so we'd get hotel rooms, nothing would happen, we would play games, we'd cuddle, we'd talk, it was for her I know it was just peace, you know, where she could relax and be, you know, just in her own space. I mean I was doing things like buying roses, and hotel rooms are not cheap, FYI, because I wasn't getting no Motel 6's, these were like nice hotel rooms. And you know, I wanted to take my time, I even told her I didn't want to rush, I even told her that I didn't want to meet family for 6 months, which she held me to, well longer than that, but we'll get to that in a little bit. I feel like the more I got with her, the more time I spent with her, I was really falling for her. She was a sweet girl, she was always hard, like she was a very stoic person. She's one of those who I couldn't read, you know, and I tried to hug her and she said don't touch me, or don't kiss me, or we're at work. I'm like, my gee, we are at work, but they know, but she didn't want people to know. Maybe that's red flag number one. So there's a part where I kind of got frustrated, it was about, I'll say 4 months in, and you know, I'm not seeing her much, she's not texting or calling or not spending time with me, so I was kind of like, you know what, maybe this isn't the right call, this is not the right move, and I broke things off, you know, the next day I know she throws all my stuff, you know, my directions, she has her team bring her, you know, sell her butter to my office, and I just tossed it, I was really just that frustrated, and I didn't understand why, but later on, that's the end of the relationship I did. So eventually I calmed down and I did talk to her, I was like, this is what I see, I'm sorry, I don't get to spend time with you, and what ended up happening, you know, we got back together, but things were never the same. I don't think she understood the times where I would stay with her, you know, she gets off at 8, so I'm off at 4 or 5 o'clock, so I'm spending 3 hours with her, and it's just us in silence while she works, you know, I'd give a kiss once in a while, try to take her out, and she's like, I don't want to do that, let's go to eat, I don't want to go out to eat, let's go here, I don't want to go there, there's flag number 2, and as the relationship got into 6, you know, month 7, mind you, I have my own place now, you know, I went ahead and asked her to help me get the place set up, I wanted her to come over, I tried to start, you know, in the way of things that she enjoyed, and, you know, every time I ask her, I'm busy, I'm busy, I'm busy, I don't have time, and the bad thing, I'm sitting there looking like, my gee, like I'm making time off of my clock, and I think the thing selfish, you know, when it comes to me, like, yeah, I do want time with you, like, your kids want time with you, and I get that her home life was just as busy as her work life, but at the same time, you know, if she didn't want to date me, or she didn't want to put the effort in to come and see me, or come hang out with me, what was the point? Um, and I believe, in a way, it's just like a hunger, you want someone who will come and hug you, cause you spend time with you, but if you're sitting there 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, you know, we're in month 8, and all I'm getting is, hey, you need to do better at work, or when she came over, it was, hey, I'm going to sit over here, you're going to sit over there, it was as if I was just there, or she was there, because I served a purpose at work. Um, there was a point where I was hearing everything that I wasn't doing right through her, which pretty much frustrated me a little bit. I'm one of those people where I read my boss or somebody say, hey, you're not doing this right, hey, we need you to do this, but when I'm hearing it from her, it kind of made me feel a certain way, and it kind of messed with my perception of things. It's stuff that I wasn't getting told by second hand and third hand people were telling me about, and I got frustrated. Um, I think one of the last conversations we had was I took a day off because I was just frustrated with work, and I didn't like the way things were going at that time, so I took a day off. I was told I was acting like a child throwing a mantrum, and the problem I had with that was, it's like she didn't want me to show emotion, and I get it, like, we can be that way, we have our moments when we're upset, but like I said, it's a hunger. Well, say it softly, hey, I want you to hang out, or hey, I want this to happen. Then it becomes louder. It got to a point where I felt like I was being heard, so when all that stuff happened, I told her, look, I'm quitting the job, because once again, if I'm not getting told what's wrong, you know, or, you know, my supervisor saying, hey, this is what I need to hear from you, it shouldn't be my girlfriend saying, hey, this and this and this is what you're doing wrong, and you need to watch this, this and this. I was finally over it, so I quit, and she got upset. I think, not so much that it was a, you know, not her not being able to see me, it's just like, hey, you're messing stuff up for me. You're not thinking about how other people are acting, or how other people are affected. And that's red flag number three. So, she stopped talking to me, I guess she gathered my things up, she had to clean up my office, because I had no intention of going back to that job, and she complained the whole time, why is this always my mess? Why do I always do this? And I said, well, why don't you talk to me about these things? She was like, well, I tried to talk to you. And I told her, the only thing I wanted you to say was, even though you might not like it, I understand. It's okay. I get it. And instead of her saying that, she was like, well, I have nothing else to say to you. That's the last thing I heard from her. I tried to text her. Now, I'm not one of those people, you know, you have those folks who will send me a text, I don't do all that. I have a rule of three. I'll text you three times, and if you don't hear anything from you, that's it. So, I went in and sent a text to her saying, look, if this is the end, I get it. I don't want, you know, I gave her a key to my apartment that she didn't use. I bought her a lot of stuff. I said, I don't want it back. I don't want it making its way back to the apartment. I don't want to see it. That's yours. The key, throw it away. I can get another key made. I think what bothered me, though, was the time I put in. And during this time, mind you, of course, I'm a dude. Girls will ask, hey, how are things going? You know, hey, you know, hey, are you single? This, that, or the other. And, you know, of course, I'm with him, with somebody. Even though I was with somebody, I felt like I was alone. Even though I had the title of someone's boyfriend, I didn't get time with that person, or I got time across the desk, or it was across on another side of the couch, or it was via text message. And that got to me. So, don't get me wrong, and I bet you her side, and there's two sides to every story. I'm not going to say I was perfect. I mean, I had my mantra, and I'll go ahead and openly admit that. The first time was, I'm not spending enough time with you. Do you really care about this relationship? It was easy for her to walk away. There were moments even when she even told me, well, you can be single right now if you want. Hey, you can be single. When someone says that enough times, the first time was kind of funny. But, after a while, it got to a point to where you hear it enough, and you start thinking to yourself, hey, maybe she doesn't want to be with you if it's that easy. So, what did I learn? Because out of every relationship, good or bad, you learn something. I learned probably two things good and three things bad. One of the things that I did, she was somebody who wanted me to be the best version of myself. I feel like with her, she could have pushed me to great heights. The second thing is, I got to see her softness. That was, to put it into words, I don't think there's words to explain it. She is like hard at 7, 6.35 in the morning with no coffee. When I saw that softness there, when I saw her playing around smiling, that was the girl I fell in love with. Now, the three things that I learned. One, if she's not wanting to spend time with you, if she's not trying to give you what you need, walk away. I'm not talking about, now guys are going to take that as, you know, it's sexual or she's not doing this or she's not doing that. My love language is quality time. You can buy me nice things and that's nice. Me having you in my arms, that's important. Me even just sitting in the room while you're doing something and I'm doing something else, quality time. Just being in your presence. So I learned that if you're not getting what you want out of a relationship, if you're not getting what your needs require, what you need, what you need to feel loved, and it's on a consistent basis, you have to find a way to walk away. Number two, I'm tired man. It's hard for me to open up to a woman. It's hard for any man to open up to a woman. When I start talking about things I went through in my past, I talk about, you know, how relationships have gone. For me to go ahead and tell you everything that's on my mind and allow you to pick my brain, that takes a lot for me. So, I mean after a while, I think I've realized the next person I date, I'm not going to see there's a wall put up, but there's going to be a longer race. I don't want somebody who will in the beginning be great and then all of a sudden just disappear. That, it messed with me. When we went from hotel chilling, hanging out, going out places to I'll see you maybe once a month outside of work, or I'll get a text message, or I'll get a random phone call. The third thing I learned is I feel like time is the most valuable thing in the world. We can go and make enough money. We can lose clothes, buy clothes, lose cars, lose our apartment, get another apartment, get a mansion, if you really want to. But time, that is the one thing that once it's gone, it's gone. I'm realizing as a older gentleman now that's never been married, I've wasted my time with a lot of people who I thought were down for the cause, who were down for me. And at one point or another, they let me down. The older we get, the more ready to settle down we become as men. We don't want something that's going to last six, seven, eight months. We want something that's going to last a lifetime. You know, in our younger days, we played, we did all the things that we wanted to do. But after a while, you get to a point to where you want that one person, that one person who knows your heart inside and out, that one person who understands who you are, how they know my body language better than anybody else's. Somebody who I can come to for bad day and let me just vip and maybe not have an answer. Just be like, you know what? I get it. And I guess there's a fourth one. Energy. We put our energy into a lot of things. We put our energy into work. We put our energy into family. We put our, you know, energy into getting to and from work, doing all the things we need to do. When we put our energy into somebody, that's a big deal. There's a day where I went ahead and literally went out and found flowers, went out and searched up flowers, go out and find a card, you know, search out those things. And somebody's going to say, well, you didn't have to do those things. I get that. I wanted to do those things because I wanted to show my, my feelings toward this person. I think the thing she didn't understand was if I put energy and time into you, if I stay just to see you, if I find time to text you or if I see something and I think of you, I send it to you. That's the stuff that, you know, you weren't reciprocated. You want that return somehow. But I learned that that energy is not returned. And you're just throwing everything and everything and everything. And you're not getting or you're getting the bare minimum or even less than the bare minimum. At some point, you have to step back and realize, hey, this is not working. This is not, this is not it. And don't get me wrong. I wish her well. There's a lot of things that she never talked to me about and I hope that God gives her time to heal. I know for me, I realized that I try to people please too much. And this was a case where I did so much to where I literally got tired. And the more I gave, the less I received. So, and I know some people are going to try to trip or try to say something crazy. Let me finish off with this. For a woman, I know it's hard. And this is the last thing and I'm going to cut this thing short. Women have intuition and use it. Men have intuition and don't use it. Women, y'all know if a guy's cheating on you, if you have a feeling you'll have a dream. My mom knew, knows when any of us, you know, are about to have a kid, there's a fish stream. Y'all are intuitive as all get out. And y'all use your intuition. With guys, we have that intuition as well. We just fail to look it in the eye sometimes. In this case, my intuition was telling me she didn't want to be with you to begin with, but she felt sorry for you. That's the feeling I got. Somebody could say I was wrong. Somebody could say that I'm incorrect. But when the actions match that emotion, when you don't see that person or talk to that person often, if they have a time where they could talk to you until X o'clock or when you ask them to come over, it's always, hey, I'm here, but this, this and this, and I can't stay long because of this, this and that. It wears you down. But like I said, there's two sides to every story. I'm not saying I'm perfect in this, you know, situation. Like I said, I had to manage her once again. But at the same time, at some point, I have to realize what was best for me or in this case, what was not best for me. When I said I appreciate anybody who's listening to this. I'll try to do something next week around this time. I want to say, I think for me, it's therapy. Because sometimes we feel like we're crazy when we do what we do. When we don't let these things out. And be quite honest with y'all. I can't afford to have a psychologist telling me, tell me your feelings. Tell me how do you feel? I feel overall that this is my therapy here. But that said, I appreciate all y'all's time. If you have any comments or more, feel free to leave them. Take it easy, you guys.