[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: You're listening to casual talk radio where common sense is still the norm whether you're a new or long time listener. We appreciate you joining us today. Visit
[email protected] and now, here's your host, Ler.
[00:00:21] Speaker A: A penny for your thoughts here on this Monday, this slightly warming Monday.
Slightly warming in the sense that the snow is melting, the sun is shining, there's plenty of light, a new day is dawning, sunny and bright. But and plus points, if you can recognize that song. Today I read an article that I thought was worth talking about.
You know, Leister here has never been divorced. I can fortunately say I've never been divorced.
And I got to thinking, it seems like people don't understand.
It's my opinion, seems like people don't understand when we look at celebrities and how often they get divorced. Seems like they don't really understand what they were getting into. But look at how often people are getting divorced. Look at how frequent of a thing it is. Look at how common of a thing it is. That doesn't seem normal to me at least.
And it got me thinking. Perhaps the real problem is a lack of self reflection. If we think of, you know, I don't listen to Taylor Swift, but what I've been told is that most of her songs have to do with failed relationships. Let's grant that as true.
Part of the problem I think with relationships in general is a refusal, flat refusal to self reflect, to think within yourself.
What part you played in the failure of the relationship. I think there's a tendency to look at the other person and try to find blame with the other person and justify it. But I'm a reflection person. I like to self reflect. I like to think about it and try to understand. I may not perfectly get it the first time out, but I at least try. I didn't when I was younger, but I have since, you know.
So if we take a step back and where this is coming from is an article that claimed that the young folks are looking to get increasingly more into marriage, less so into the fickleness that is relationships.
So in other words, they want to leapfrog the dating part.
I don't think it's a bad idea, but it depends on age, it depends on maturity, it depends on money, it depends on a lot of different things. And it got me then thinking this is where I was going with it, thinking that a lot of these people are not really reflecting before they make a commitment to marry somebody.
If you're at the point that you in your mind believe that this person you've met is worth marrying?
Chances are that's based on something that you have were already looking for, you know, financial security or the way they look or, you know, they're funny. You know, these are. These are temporary paradigms, arguably, and they're what attracts you to a person. But do you ever stop and think about all the other intangibles and did you talk about those intangibles prior to making the commitment?
A lot of times I hear irreconcilable differences as a reason for divorce. I'm going to make a statement that'll piss some people off. I don't believe in such a thing as irreconcilable differences.
Are there situations where there's something where the two of you simply are not going to get on the same page? Absolutely. I don't consider that an irreconcilable difference.
I consider that both of you failed to ask the right questions before you committed. And after the commitment, you stumbled upon something that you found completely unacceptable.
You could reconcile. You choose not to. There's a difference between cannot reconcile and choose not to reconcile. Let's say one person is caught cheating.
You could reconcile that. You could be a swinger. You could, you know, look the other way. I mean, there's all sorts of things you could choose to do, but you don't choose to do them. If somebody is a, I don't know, has a criminal record, you could reconcile it. You could say, I can forgive. Like, there's very few things that you should have discovered after the marriage that you should not have discovered prior to the marriage that are considered irreconcilable. In my opinion.
You might throw some absolutely extreme example, like I found out that they were a serial killer. Again, these are things you should have identified before you committed to the person. So I don't, I don't accept the excuse of irreconcilable. I think there are simply. You don't do enough digging. And if you do stumble across, you know, where there's smoke, there's fire, you do stumble across a little something. You tend to look the other way, you tend to excuse it, you tend to justify it or completely ignore it because you're so fixated. And consider the age when many of you do this.
You're so fixated on those things that you know you want. Right again. Financial security, their looks, their humor. These are things that you already know. What about the things you don't know? What about the things you could not have Expected. What about the things you don't expect of a person? You don't expect them to be a serial killer. That's why you should check for it. You don't expect them to be a rapist, that's why you should check for it. You don't expect them to be a child molester, that's why you should check for it. You don't expect them to be a bum on the street. That's why you should check for it. You should check for the things you don't expect, not just for the things that you want.
That, folks, I believe, is the flaw that then triggers divorce. You identify something after the fact that was not expected.
And as a result, you make a decision, not irreconcilable. You simply decide you will not accept whatever it is, so you divorce. Well, divorce has significant ramifications. If you didn't do a prenup, there's significant ramifications. If you have kids, there's significant ramifications. If you live together, there's significant ramifications. You go on and on, friends and family and jobs and stalking, there's all sorts of ramifications. When you make the commit and then you separate.
All because, again, there were these things that you identified after the fact that you did not anticipate prior to going in that you probably should have. Some would say there's no way to know. Slash. People change, I would argue.
Let's talk about the second one. People change. Because I've seen this firsthand, but there's clues all the time. You have somebody who at the time, again, humor, financial, da da da, da da da, right? They lose their job. Now they're stressed and they start being abusive, whether verbally, physically, emotionally, all of the above, they start being abusive. They weren't abusive. This is the Ike Turner thing, right? They weren't abusive when everything was working good.
Well, if the reason that you ultimately committed or one of them was financial security at a time, then you have to reflect, what was it I did not anticipate. You didn't anticipate the unexpected, which is, what if you don't have no job? What if you're flat broke? What if you lose your job through no control of your own? How do you handle adversity? How do you handle things outside of your control that would be detrimental to the relationship? Do you even think about that before you commit? I guarantee you the answer is no, because you're thinking of the now. Right now the person has a good job. Right now the person's well Dressed right now, the person smells good right now, the person's in great shape right now, the person's attractive. Right now, the person's funny. There's never a desire to think about those things you don't expect before you commit, which then causes what you to overlook. What then becomes obvious but was predictable. You can predict it long since. I'll give you a great, great example. My second girlfriend. I've told story.
She was clingy. She was extremely dangerously clingy. I can say dangerously clingy. But I knew that when I met her. It was one of the things that attracted me to her at the time. She was clingy as all hell.
Complete polar difference to my first girlfriend, who was not clingy at all.
But she wanted to spend time with me. And while we arguably spent too much time together, she was in no way clingy. She could separate whenever she felt like it. It was a different paradigm. It's a different situation. My first girlfriend didn't listen to her friends.
My second girlfriend, that's all she did. My first girlfriend did her own thing with how she dressed in her own hair and all that. My second girlfriend would pick an argument, pick a fight over silly things like her hair. My first girlfriend listened to whatever music she wanted to. My second girlfriend would ask me about music and then when I'd give my opinion, she'd start a fight. See, these are things I knew. These are things that I expected, these are things I anticipated. As a result, I committed in my mind I wasn't going to marry either one of them. I knew it wasn't going to happen. I knew there was no way either one of them was going to be marriage material. Despite me even to this day saying I got love for my first girlfriend. And if she needed anything from me, I can see where I would actively help her if she was in need. Second one, I really would not care if she were hit by some sort of moving vehicle. And I say that not in hatred, I'm saying that there's no emotion there that would make me care if she was hit by a moving vehicle. I'd shrug it and say okay, and move on. That's how that was. The emotion just disappeared.
I can tell you, fresh in within five minutes of a conversation whether or not I would ever marry a person. I can have tons of people I'm attracted to, whether just spiritually, emotionally, sexually, physically, otherwise.
Because attraction is different than marriage material. But if you're knowing what you're looking for, you should be able to ascertain whether or not a person's marriage material within no more than five to 10 minutes of a conversation. I'm talking the first conversation marriage. When I hear stories about, yeah, we dated for months and then we got married, you're telling me that months later you still couldn't figure out these attributes of a person that would cause you to not marry that person or divorce that person after marriage? You're telling me that you had no way to know about these things that fell out. And again, I understand things like job loss and that. But job loss is not an excuse for the types of behaviors that trigger divorce. A divorce is a very serious thing. There are religions that purposely say this is sacrosanct. Right? It means something. Whitney Houston talked about it before she died. She said, one of the reasons that I stayed in what was arguably a toxic relationship between two people, it was not one sided, it was a toxic between two. You had two people who were in trouble, frankly, they were in trouble, they were having a hard time and they were toxic.
Although having immense amounts of love for each other, there was a toxic relationship. And she said one of the reasons that she stayed together is because she took that serious. Those vows, when you walked that aisle, she took it serious. And a lot, I think, specifically women take those vows seriously. Some don't, but I think a lot do.
Nobody's suggesting that you shouldn't. I'm suggesting if you're going to take those serious, how can it be that you're not able to detect certain things and attributes, behaviors, whatever, from that potential future spouse long before you ever make a commitment to where you're asking the questions of things you don't expect to be true? This means, yes, you have to be skeptical of the person that you're interacting with. Consider why I say that. It's because it's for your own safety, it's for your own security, it's for your own sanity, for your own health. You should always scrutinize, never blindly trust. You should never blindly trust anybody. You should always question, what is that person's motivation? Why are they in this relationship in the first place? What is the future going to look like in 1, 3, 5, 10 years? Make sure you understand simple things like the desire to relocate. If you find somebody, and let's say you're in the state of Texas, you find somebody, you think they're a good fit, but you never knew. All their, you know, extended family is in, I don't know, Maine, and at some point they wanted to move back there and Just, you know, retire there. You might want to have nothing to do with Maine because you've been in Texas your whole life and you don't want to leave. Well, that's a disconnect that should have been fleshed out long before you got to any sort of serious dating. You should have been able to say, we accept this is what you want. I understand, but this is what I want. And how are we going to get past this if you can't do that? It's like, I'm at odds in my mind how it's even possible that you don't ask those questions to make sure you know what you're getting into with such a serious commitment. And I suspect, again, people are simply not asking those questions because they're too focused on the things they know they want and not enough on the things they know they don't want. Make sure you're on the same page about having kids. Long before, I would argue, long before you even start dating, if you know it's what you want, you have to understand that that person is or would be on the same page. I don't mean a fluffy answer like, oh, I'm open to it. You need a commitment. If you're serious, they should be serious. If you're not both serious, that is a huge risk. And if you're taking that risk, challenge yourself as to why that makes sense. Why does it make sense to put yourself out for that risk, knowing again, there's a significant fallout when you have to get divorced?
There's also pressure, I'm told peer pressure. Your friends are all getting married. Your parents are pressuring you to do it. Whatever the pressure is. There's pressure sources that tell you that this is the right answer. I would question, why are you bowing down to that pressure?
This goes back to the kid. When you were a kid. If somebody says, no, come on in the van. Little boy, little girl. You're told, don't listen to these things. You should control and make your own decision. Don't let your friends pressure you. Don't let your family pressure you. Don't let anybody pressure you into a decision you're not ready for.
Your readiness is all that matters. Your readiness has to be predicated on not only what you want, but also in looking out for the things you don't want.
I think a lot of times the idea of a fit, right, this person's a fit, this person fits me, or whatever fit is distorted by too much skew towards that which you want and not enough focus on that which you don't want. In other words, I dated. Well, I can't say dated. Well, I guess it was a date. I dated a girl. I think I told the story. I dated a girl and she was pregnant. I didn't know. I knew she had a kid. I didn't know she was pregnant. There's a difference. It's a blind setup.
We meet, I get up there. She's got to be like seven plus weeks pregnant. She's. She's, you know, it's obvious. So I see that, and I'm kind of concerned. Now. She did have a daughter. And I forget how old her daughter was. Old enough to talk, old enough to walk. I forget exactly how old she was. A toddler, though. And daughter was the sweetest thing. Walking. Just an absolute joy. Bundle of joy.
And when I met the daughter, I would have convinced myself, okay, I like this idea because the daughter treated me like I was her dad, which there are some people who have different opinions about that. I get it. But the dad wasn't in the picture. She's treating me like dad. I'm cool playing that as long as the mom's cool with it. The mom was at first cool with it until the daughter took it to the next level when, you know. And ultimately she slipped. We're at the park. She. Daughter slipped, came running, wanted me to pick her up and hold her and comfort her. Didn't want to go to her mom, didn't want to hold her mom's hand. So the mom got jealous is what happened. I didn't initiate any of it. The daughter did this. The daughter treated me like family. And it was. It was. For me, I was fine rolling with it, knowing this is not my daughter, but she's the sweetest thing. But no, the mom wasn't having it because the mom just. She. She even said she likes somebody that looks like Shemar Moore. So this is a long time. This is Shemar Moore at his prime. So me and that person didn't work out. And the. The point is, I had to say in my mind, you know, the moment I met her, I knew I could not marry this woman. It was not going to happen. For multiple reasons, I couldn't marry this person. But her daughter convinced me at. For that moment, it's like, this might be something I could do, but I had to reflect. Is that. Is she the mom? Is she the person that I could spend my life with and not have any drama? And knowing that we can't even go to the park and get along okay, this I'm not even going to try. And I'm not going to put myself in a situation where I'm sacrificing what I want and what I don't want and the risk of dealing with you and the fact that you're fresh pregnant. There's another, like, I took the time to really think about it. And some might say that's rude or mean, but it's not. You have to preserve yourself. And preserving yourself helps you make the right decisions as to whether or not that person's worth committing to.
In summary, I am not saying marriage is a bad thing. Quite the opposite. I think marriage can be a good thing if people took the time to make sure before they commit to look for those things they don't expect. Look for the risks, look for the red flags. Do, do the research. Make sure you ask those questions about the what ifs. What if somebody loses their job? What about moving? What about where you want to live? How are we going to make things happen with the bills? Religion, Are you on two different religious veins? And unfortunately, politics, I think, plays a factor now. There's all sorts of things that you really should be thinking about that you may not need to think about before, but become increasingly important in the modern era. And if you don't take those things into consideration, one or the both of you will end up regretting it. Well, the real downside of divorce or any failed relationship is it changes you emotionally. You no longer open to those things. You no longer open to taking risks. You're closed. You close yourself off. Obviously, there's some that will just, you know, date anything on two legs, but the vast majority of people will close themselves off. They'll become highly skeptical or say, I just don't want to date anymore. Or they'll have some sort of mental something. There's a girl from Las Vegas and she's conning, you know, elderly men out of money. I mean, this is how bad it gets when you have these fallouts. And all I'm suggesting is that really it's about self reflection. First, you really need to understand what you do want, but you also need to understand what you don't want. And you need to scrutinize whoever it is that you're doing. Any sort of collaboration effort, I don't care if it's, you know, romantic or not, to make sure there's no red flags in what it is that you're seeing. And if you can't do that or you don't want to do that, or for some reason you feel that it's not the right answer.
There's just a huge risk of everything going wrong. And when everything goes wrong, it changes you. It changes you for the negative. Nobody's going to get it right the first time out. There's all sorts of stories about people marrying their high school sweethearts and all that other garbage. That's great, but it's the. I would argue it's the exception to the rule. Most of the time, the first person you date is not the person you marry. In most cases I saw, it's somebody from college that you just happen to be on that same wavelength. Right. Somebody's doing a program. You see, they're educated. You see, they're trying. But at the same time, we all go through life evolving. We see that different things happen on the job, different things happen with our health, different things happen with kids. Different preferences, tastes. You know, I'm one where you cannot be smoking or drinking. And if you have a history of doing so, we're not going to work out. You know, there's these nuances of the way people have gone through life. And as you get older, it's harder then to meet somebody that clicks with you. And I accepted that. I accepted. It just gets harder. It's easy to get married. It's not so easy to stay married, but it's easy to get married. But then you have to be studious about when and why you do get married to make sure you don't marry the wrong person. Or you could just roll dice and keep marrying different people and hope that one of them settles you. But it changes you. It really does cause you to think and be skeptical about people going forward. This is my thoughts on the matter. I would love to hear what people think that are in the situation. CasualTalkRadio.net hit the contact form and let me know what your thoughts are.
