February 10, 2024 • 46 mins
What's love got to do with it?
Rachel is ready to dissect what Tom said in Episode 2.
"I'm still very much in love with Raquel." - Tom Sandoval
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
This is Rachel Goes Rogue.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, guys, it's Rachel.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Savannah levis your host of Rachel Goes Rogue. So in
episode two of Vanderpump Rules, I got triggered a little
bit because when Tom said, I just miss her, you know,
I just want to see her and give her a
big hug. And then he says, I'm still very much
in love with Rachel, and I'm hoping we can give
(00:33):
our relationship a real chance. That was hard to hear, because,
you know, I really believed that I was in love
with Tom, and I had to come to the conclusion
that our connection was not love. I think that there
was a lot of love bombing involved in that relationship,
(00:54):
and so I wanted to bring on an expert who
is very knowledgeable with love bombing. His name is Pastor
Cal Calvin Robertson is a speaker, acclaimed author, marriage coach,
and relationship expert. He and his wife, Wendy operate a
marriage coaching organization. He is currently developing a dating app,
(01:18):
and you may know him as an expert on lifetimes
Married at First Sight. Welcome Pastor Cal.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Hey, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Okay, So I wanted to get into love bombing because
I've noticed a pattern in my relationships that involve attention, adoration, gifts,
and those are the type of things that I felt
special receiving and loved, and so I wanted to talk
(01:53):
to you and get more insight on why people love
bomb and what is it really that is love bombing?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You know what. First of all, I'm really excited to
talk about this because you know, there's been a lot
of a lot of talk about, you know, love bombing.
Before I define it, let me tell you where it
came from. Love bombing Actually, I guess it's from like
back in the seventies or even earlier than that, from
(02:21):
a time when religious organizations, mostly cult based religious organizations
would use this tactic to get young people to join them.
And so what they would do quite often is they
would you know, just shower them with love and shower
them with gifts and do things sort of like just
to to to ingratiate themselves and to bring people into
(02:44):
their into their into their hold. Right now, more recently,
I'd say, I don't know, the last five years or so,
we've seen a lot of the same terminology used when
it comes to online dating and just in relationships in general.
But there was a movie called The Mac it's probably
the quintessential example of love bombing, where the leader of
(03:08):
the star's name was Goldie. In the movie, he would
tell women he was a pip, and he was pretty
much tell women, you know what, look, maybe I can
be everything. I'll be your mother, I'll be your father,
I'll take you to the moon if you're not afraid.
And these women would come in and eat, you know,
string them out pretty much. So the whole idea here
is that love bombing is just over flooding someone with
(03:33):
gifts and love and all this other stuff, or it's
supposedly love and all these other things, and the hopes
of that person becoming attached. And then you know, when
that person resists, what have you? You know, of course they
drop you. I think that that's the origin of it. However,
when you look at the actual word, I think we
(03:54):
do a great disservice for love by calling this love bombing.
This is not love. This is emotional manipulation. M That's
exactly what it is. You're grooming. You're emotionally manipulating a
person who might feel as though they might need love,
or they might need affection, or they might need attention
(04:15):
because of a hurt, because of something they're going through,
et cetera, et cetera. And so as a result, you
find a person who may be vulnerable in some areas
and you take advantage of that vulnerability. You know, But
it's definitely not love. And we can talk about love
a little later on as far as what love actually is,
but this ain't it.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yes, Okay, I'm glad you clarify that, because I've reflected
on it, and I can see how purpose of love
bombing is manipulation, and it's to gain some sort of
coercive control over the other person. And it's interesting that
(04:57):
you say the origin of it came from cults and
religious institutions, because the people joining churches or colts are
trying to find a place of belonging, a place of acceptance.
And when they're greeted with open arms and hold that
(05:20):
yes you belong here, Yes we can show you all
the love that you desire, all the love that you deserve,
and it feels really good in that moment because you're like, Okay,
I found my people, right, But then you know, like gradually,
over time it becomes a control tactic. And it's almost
(05:44):
like that phrase of a frog in boiling water where
it won't jump out of boiling water even though like
it's going to kill them, because it's so gradual, and
I feel like it's this similar manipulation tactic. Like at first,
you just think that this person is so in love
(06:06):
with you and they adore you, and they're giving you
all this attention. But then as the abuse comes up
and the control comes up, it may be like once
in a month, and you think, oh, that was just
a one off thing, you know, and you like give
(06:27):
it a pass, But then it comes up more and
more frequently, and before you know it, you're so emotionally
attached to this person that you, you know, like you
just can't leave.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
That's what I experienced anyway.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's unfortunate because I believe that
what happens is that we miss interpret, we miss construe
what love actually is. Rachel. I have a definition for
love that I've used for decades, literally, and it came
from my professor in college, my psychology professor. And I
(07:04):
looked at it and I and I said, you know what,
this makes sense. And I've adopted it not only into
my counseling, but also into my own life. And this
is the definition of love. Love is an intellectual decision
we make to fulfill another person's legitimate needs. Okay, it's
a decision that we're making to fulfill a person's legitimate needs.
(07:28):
Now with that comes patience, comes kindness, comes acceptance, comes tolerance,
you know. It comes. With that comes putting on another
person's interests ahead of your own. Now that's how we
define love. So if someone's coming to you and is
(07:49):
showering you with whatever, be it emotional or or material gifts,
so what have you just to get you into their grips?
And then that person is not returning you know, patience, kindness, love, acceptance,
you know, are tolerance. But they're only returning possession. Okay,
(08:14):
that's not love, not by any stretch of the imagination.
When I love you, I am deciding to be committed
to you. I'm deciding to appreciate you. I'm deciding to
respect you, I'm deciding to value and esteem you. Okay.
So when I talk when we talk about loving someone,
(08:35):
it's a whole different a whole different thing as to
what we see when people are love Mommy. I call
it as I said, you know, you know, emotional manipulation
and people who fall into that, I turned the frame
of a manipulationship. You know, it's like they're in this
this manipulationship where they're they've been tricked into this thing
(08:59):
and now they're they're attached, right, because it's as you
made a statement, it's not that you can't leave, but
it's that your heart.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Is in it right right, Yeah, because you can't leave,
you can, like you always have that choice, but it
just feels like you're so emotionally wrapped up with this
person and maybe, like I think for me, feelings of
I don't know if I'll find anybody else that would
(09:27):
love me the same way or yeah, I don't know,
I don't know what it was, but for me, like
I stayed in unhealthy relationships for far too long.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, and just to speak to that, you know, you
don't want to find someone else who loves you that way? Okay,
And I know quite often people have to feel a while,
will I ever find somebody loves me like this? Again? Well, honestly,
if it's unhealthy, you don't want to find that. You
want to find someone who loves you the way you
need to be loved, not someone who's loving you the
(09:59):
way to want to possess you. Love is not possession, right,
It's not. Love has just as much giving as it
has received, you know, but when it becomes one sided,
it turns into possession. It turns into jealousy, it turns
into you know, control and manipulation.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, so I just wanted to fill you went really
quick because I know that you're not as familiar with
vander Pump rules as some of the listeners listening.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And so I fell in love.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
With one narcissistic asshole. And after that relationship ended, after
five years of being in that relationship, I fell into
the hands of another narcissistic asshole.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Sorry to say those words, but.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
I I feel like, yeah, yeah, I feel passionate about it.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I guess because.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
This is like all of my twenties pretty much, and
I feel like I maybe missed out on some precious
time learning these lessons the hard way. But in that
first relationship, this guy told me that he loved me
like one week after meeting me, and I thought that
(11:26):
was a bit odd, because how could you really love
somebody so quickly? But we discussed doing a long distance relationship,
and I felt like I had nothing to lose, and
so we worked it out and had a situation where
he would come up to see me every three weeks
(11:49):
and then I would come down to see him every
three weeks and we would just kind of flip flop
like that. And I think because of the distance away
from each other, it allowed us to live in this
fantasy where we were anticipating the next time we would
see each other, and then whenever we did see each other,
(12:09):
it was like fireworks and the full nine yards of
going on dinner dates and drinking wine and just very
romantic gestures. So it kept me in this like, oh,
this is this is a good relationship, Like this is
something that you would see on TV and think that
(12:32):
that's something that's I don't know, that's normal, I guess.
But after we moved in together, things started to change
and I noticed that his behavior, the way he would
treat other people and the way that he would talk
to me was not appropriate. And that's when our issues
really started becoming relevant. And then, you know, after breaking up,
(12:56):
I started dating this other guy who was on the show,
and he was in reallyationship with his girlfriend, who was
also a friend of mine, and so that got super messy,
and this affair lasted seven months.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
And in that.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Situation, I felt like he was really giving me this
undivided attention. I was able to express my emotions and
he could really understand what I was saying, and it
seemed like it was on a deeper level than what
(13:36):
I experienced before, and everything else went out the window,
all my morals went out the window, and he became
like the most important person to me, and you know,
we would go on trips together and stuff like that,
and I consider that like a form of love bombing.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I think that there's like a part with living in
the fantasy, and I don't know, for some reason, whenever
I'm dating guys like this, they become the most important
person to me.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, you know, you know, ra Chel, thanks for sharing that.
I think that what happens quite often is that I
think we all have a love cup, and we when
we're when we're when we're born, and as we're growing up.
You know, that cup is filled by our parents, it's
(14:39):
filled by our friendships, it's filled by people we care about,
and in an ideal world, when we have healthy relationships
based on the healthy relationships we've observed, then we're able
to pour out of that cup into other people. But
when that cup has not been filled because we didn't
(15:03):
have those positive relationships, so those positive examples or or
for whatever reason, you know, we didn't really become fulfilled,
then we become needy and we want someone to pour
into us. But if someone's pouring into an empty cup
and that empty cup is constantly draining, we're not able
(15:24):
to pour back, and it's we're never fulfilled, and we're
always wanting more. We're always wanting more. We're always wanting
more because our cuts are empty, and sometimes the people
who are pouring into you their cuts are empty. I
don't think there's anything wrong with wanting what you want,
with wanting to feel loved, with wanting to feel cherished,
(15:45):
with wanting to feel as though somebody cares about you.
I think that's what we all want. I mean, that's
you know, in hierarchy Mazow's Hierarchy of needs, he talks about,
you know, that that need for affection, you know, and
self actualization. So I think those are things that we
that we all of us naturally need The problem is
(16:07):
when when people who are not good for us can
smell that, they smell it like blood and over water,
and they can see that you're vulnerable, and because they're empty,
because they're not fulfilled, they take advantage of you, and
it's it becomes this ugly cycle. Based on what you
(16:29):
told me, Rachel. One thing that is a problem here
is that you fell in love. I don't think that.
I don't. I don't believe you can fall in love.
I believe every time you fall, you get hurt. Falling
in anything, falling on the street, falling anywhere. Falling brings injury. Okay,
(16:52):
And whenever someone tells me, tells me I fell in love,
I said, okay, fine. First of all, you did it
wrong because love was not something you fall into.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Hey, what is it?
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Then? Love is something you grow? Okay, it's something you grow. Yeah,
love is about growth. When they fall, I have no
control over my falling. It's and this is the mystic.
This is the mystery of love. I think we mystified
love to the point where it's like, oh love found me.
I fell in love. It just it just happened in
(17:23):
them if I'm in love, right, But what happens. And
remember we talked about making a decision next time around,
find somebody who has compatible values to you. Mm hmmm,
someone who has compatible values. In order to do that,
you got to know what your values.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Are, right.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
You have to know what are those irreplaceable principles that
you live your life by. What are my values? Is
my value? Loyalty is my value? Honesty is it? Family
is my value? Kindness are these are things that I
live by, the things that I need in my life
to make me happy. Find out what your values are,
and then find somebody who has compatible values to you.
(18:03):
And even if their values are different, they must have
compatible differences. Like, for instance, if you're an introvert and
that person is an extrovert, then that might be a
compatible situation because they can bring you out of your
sale or vice versa. But what you want to do
is find someone who actually has strong values, strong principles,
(18:26):
and then make a decision if this person has all
that you that you their compatibilities are suitable to yours,
if their values are suitable to yours, make a decision
that I'm going to grow with this person. And at
that point, remember you're growing in love you're watering it,
you're nurturing it. What happened to you is that you
never built a foundation, a love foundation. So anything you
(18:47):
were doing, whether they would give strict or whatever, that's
all just fluff. Crap. That's just crap. That's just fluff.
But it's not real. That that's not that's not anything
that's going to hold you. That's not anything that's going
to make you feel good, know you know, as you
grow older, make you want somebody to be by your
side when you're when you're going through a terrible sickness
(19:08):
or this is what love is. I did a wedding
last week, and in the wedding some of the vowels
that I said are for better or for worse, for
rich and for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking
all others, till death, do your part. Those are values, man, Rachel.
Those are values. But people unfortunately are not looking for
(19:31):
that anymore. We're looking for the fluff. And fluff gets
you a temporary high. M hm, that's it. But when
you look at a couple who's been married forty to
fifty years and their bodies now are all wrinkled, but
they still look at each other and slap each other
(19:51):
on the butt, and they're still what is that? That's
not because they look great? Those values, Yeah, they built
a foundation.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
I think it's so interesting too because one of the
old simatums that I gave James, who was the first
relationship that I was talking about, you know, when his
behavior wasn't in alignment with with what my values were
with treating other people with respect. You know, I said, basically,
(20:38):
if you don't stop drinking alcohol, or like, if you
don't get your.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Shit together, I'm going to leave.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
And he actually stopped drinking alcohol, and I almost felt
like I needed to hold up my end of the
bargain and give him another chance. In reality, I guess
I should have just ended the relationship there. But I
also think it's interesting because now with Season eleven, Tom well, okay,
(21:06):
so I went into this institution called The Meadows, which
is a recovery center, in patient recovery trauma therapy center,
and I told Tom that there's a very high chance
that I will not drink alcohol when I come out
of here. He decided the weekend that I went in
(21:30):
that he was going to stop drinking alcohol. Yet he
couldn't stop drinking alcohol when he was This sounds so bad.
When he was going to fertilize his girlfriend's eggs, he
couldn't stop drinking alcohol and it became a problem. He
now can stop drinking alcohol when I go into the meadows.
(21:53):
And when he was asked about that on camera, I
forgot what he said exactly, but it seemed like he
was waiting to drink until I came out so that
we could drink together for the first time. So I
just feel like it's a manipulation tactic, like yeah, and
it hasn't lasted, like he's not I mean, he's he's
(22:14):
drinking alcohol now that like I'm not in the picture anymore.
But is there a correlation there, because I just don't understand, Like,
I just think it's a odd pattern that both of
these guys had alcohol problems and then decided to stop
drinking to like save the relationship.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
I'm not drinking didn't save the relationship.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
No, it didn't, right, So it wasn't alcohol that was
the problem.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
It was a side effect, yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Was exactly, Yeah, exactly, So it was a symptom exactly,
So it was not the main thing. And in relationships.
We have to focus on the main thing. Someone said, well,
what's the main problem? Well, you know, if you're drinking,
there's something, there's a reason behind it, you know, if
you're if you're doing anything, there's a reason behind it,
(23:06):
you know, And I think that the key here is
to find what that reason is. You know. Right now, though,
I would assume you're not in any relationship, correct, correct, Yeah,
And I think that's the best place for you to be,
you know, because because this is a recalibration time for you,
a time for you to find out what's important for you,
(23:27):
a time for you to determine what your values are
and to go about this thing the right way. Well,
you're obviously are a person who craves relationship, as we
all do. Don't ever think there's anything wrong with that,
because there isn't. There's you know, I've seen people say,
you know, you know what, forget it, I'm not going
to be any that's that's of course, you're going to
(23:47):
be in a relationship. If that's something you want, then
you're going to find one. What you have to do
is simply just monitor yourself and make sure that you
know the next time down the road, and there will
be another time. As I said earlier, make sure that
that person is someone that you can see yourself with
ten years from now, twenty years from now, not because
(24:08):
of what they have, not because of what they bring
to the table, but because of who they are. Because
of who they are. I mean, is this a good person?
Does this person again I to be the dead horse?
Have values that are compatible to mine? You know, I
believe that I was telling someone recently about a relationship,
and I was saying, you know, if you remember high
(24:29):
school or middle school or whatever it was, you could
when building a volcano, you take a vinegar and baking soda.
You put them together, and all of a sudden it explodes.
Everyone's done that in school. There's nothing wrong with vinegar
and baking soda. In fact, if you take vinegar and
oil and a little salt, you have a nice salad dressing.
If you take baking soda, put some sugar and butter
(24:51):
and no flour, and you might have, you know, the
basis of a cake. So there's nothing wrong with the ingredients,
it's just the way they get together. There explosive. Okay,
So you I'm not saying that those people were bad
they were bad ingredients and they do not mix with you.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Okay, Okay, find the ingredients. Find people who have the
ingredients that mix well with you and are not explosive.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Okay, yes, yeah, Okay. Two questions, and it's like a
double edged sword. One, is there a specific type of
person that is more inclined to love bomb other people?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Then?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Two?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Is there a specific type of person that is more
inclined to be affected by love bombing and become more
attached to that person?
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Absolutely? Yeah, people who are more inclined to love bombing. Remember,
let's go back to where it started, back to cults.
That's when the term first made an appearance in the
tabloism what have you. Back to cults where people were
trying to get others to join their It was a
matter of control. People who tend to be controlling, people
(26:05):
who tend to be who don't listen. And I use
the word narcissistic lightly because it's actually a medical diagnosis.
You know, I'm not saying to anybody, yeah so, but
but people who who have control issues, people who have
issues with someone saying no to them. And you know,
(26:28):
I learned a long time ago that when someone shows
you who they who they really are, believe them. And
if you see people who are who are mean to
other people, if you see people who who look upon
other people, people who are lesson, who may be less
financially stable, or they may at a lower place in
life or a different place in life or not. And
if you're looking down on those people, Yeah, yeah, that's
(26:51):
those are people who are generally control freaks, you know.
And so yeah, those are the people who are going
to love momb you know. Those are the people who
are going to manipulate you. People who are so focused
on themselves and so focused on their own benefit that
(27:13):
they don't care who they hurt. The people who are
more likely to be affected by it are people, like
we said, who are in need, people who are hurt,
people who are who have not healed from some of
their past trauma, whether it's parental trauma, whether it's past
relationships that you haven't healed from, or you just have
pain inside that just has not been tended to. I'm
(27:36):
a big fan of therapy. I believe that everyone should
get therapy and find out. You know, why is it
that I keep attracting the same kind of person Generally
it's going to go back I mean almost almost almost.
I can say almost all the time. It's going to
go back to sometime when you created a standard of
(27:56):
what you felt love was or a standard of what
you felt you and you've never gone beyond that standard.
Somebody have used you in the past, you felt like
that's what you deserve, so that you're going to look
for that again. Someone who your parents treat you a
certain way. You felt like that was the standard you created,
That's what I deserved, So that's what I'm going to
look for. MH. So if you create that standard, okay
(28:20):
because of a past hurt, you need to talk to
someone professionally who can help you to reform your standards. Yeah,
what actually you know is good for you and what's
what's bad for you? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I feel like my parents did the best that they could.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
My younger sibling had a lot of behavioral issues, and actually,
like taking step back and looking at that dynamic, there's
a lot of similarities between James and my younger sibling.
So I think it was like something that I was
familiar with and something that I've accepted. I'm able to
survive in that kind of situation and I viewed myself
(28:57):
as someone who is patient and understand and thinking that
this person is misunderstood. But then that empathy was taken
advantage of. So I can see how, you know how
that came.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
And then I just wanted to follow up on something
that you said.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
You said, when somebody shows you who they are, believe them,
believe them. And for me, in my instance, some people
would say, oh, well, Rachel has shown us who she
really is. She's a liar and a cheater and someone
who will betray a friend. Personally, I don't feel comfortable
(29:39):
with that being my defining self.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I think all this is worth a situation.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
That's like, that is me, but that's that's me under
somebody else's coercive control.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Where I lost myself.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, what we're talking about is does is
a person's ability to check. I'm a big believer in
giving people the latitude to change course. You may have lied,
you may have been a deceptive person, you may have
done things that even embarrassed you. Just just to be
honest the things that you are not proud of. Okay, fine,
(30:16):
we all do those things. I tell you know, when
I talk to groups, I tell them, look if everybody
stood around in a circle and took all of their
worst traits and threw them in the middle so that
we all could look at them. We'd probably all take
our own worst rates back. You know. It's like because
when you look at what everybody else is doing and say,
oh my god, maybe I'm not that bad. So I
(30:37):
think that we all have things that we've done, We've
all said things, done things, and we can be characterized
by those things. You can't stop someone from characterizing you.
But what you can do is change course and make
sure that if no one else believes you, that you
believe that you're a different person. Okay, And there's an
(31:01):
old things and I always miss this up and my
wife gets on me. It's like the people the people
who matter don't care, and the people who care don't matter.
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yes, yeah, yeah, the people that matter don't care, they
don't care, and the people that care don't.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
They don't matter. Exactly, yes, exactly, And so that's yeah,
And I think that that's that's what you have to
focus on, because you know, yeah, if someone shows you,
and I think the whole idea that someone shows you
who they are, believe them. I mean if someone has repeatedly,
someone has repeatedly been a negative source of pain in
(31:39):
your life, and you're trying to change them, You're trying
to change them, but they never change. Believe that's who
they are. But anyone, even the worst people have I
believe that they should be given an opportunity to change.
You Know, someone says you know, want to lie, always
a liar, wants to cheat, always achieved, that's crap. I
(31:59):
don't buy it that. I believe byers can be great people.
I believe she just can turn their lives around and
become great people. I think everyone has the capacity within
us to be better than we are. We all have
that capacity. Now. Unfortunately, there will be people who are
frozen in time and whatever you did to them, they
will always remember you for that. Can't do anything about it.
(32:23):
All you can do is just be a better person,
be the best person you can from that point forward.
Eventually they might see it, they may not. That's not
your problem.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
So I think I was too patient in that affair.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Like I believe that Tom was working on breaking up
with his girlfriend, and he was telling me that he
was actively breaking up with her and didn't want to
be with.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Her, and I believed him.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
But you know, like why I'm frustrated out myself that
I didn't just like put my foot down and then
like no this is not okay and.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Left and like actually closed the door on that. I
don't know. Can you speak to that?
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah? You know what, Look, are you the kind of
person who wants to believe in the best, believe the
best in everyone?
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yes, but now I'm not so naive, right, but I
do want to believe the best in people.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yes, I feel like people.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Are innately good, But then I'm also learning that they're
you know, good and bad is just a perception.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
It's not even yeah real, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
To some extent, I think there are there are bad things,
and there are bad people that are just empirically bad. Look,
people who hurt children are just they're just it's they're
just a badness there. I don't think that's that's perception.
I think people who who who you know, indiscriminately not
in self defense, but who killed just intentionally without any remorse,
(34:05):
I think those are bad people. I think that's there
there's a there's a some kind of misfiring in the
synapses in their brains or something that causes them to
be that way. In the religious world, they're called you know,
evil or you know, just sinful people. But I think
we all have a natural desire. Well, I want to
(34:29):
think that we all have a desire for good, even
though we have a tendency to do bad. That's what
that's what I want to think. If we all had
a natural desire for evil, you know, you know, I mean,
the world would be just in complete chaos. You couldn't
trust your neighbors, you can't trust your family. So I
think that there is something in us that that wants good,
(34:55):
you know, And I think that that's what you that
that's who you are. But the problem is that when
someone is obviously doing things that are just outlandish, you know,
and you're still saying, well, I want to believe you,
want to believe you. I want to believe you, and
they're still doing the same thing. But you know, I
want to give you a little grace, I want to
(35:16):
believe you. At some point, you gotta slap yourself and
you got to realize, wait a minute, that person's not
the idiot. I'm the idiot.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
I'm the idiot.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yes, yes, right, because you you're doing bad things. But
I'm there, still enabling. I'm there still, you know, cajoling. Still,
you know, it's okay, it's okay. And then I said, well,
you're no, You're no, he's not that person. You're the
idiot because you're still there. Yeah, you're still enabling. You
know that wake up call has.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
To happen for sure. Okay.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
So I want to ask you if you're in a
relationship with somebody and you realize, oh wait, this might
be love bombing, how do you once you identify it,
how do you go forward? Because if I can just
give you an example. When I was at the Meadows,
(36:22):
Tom and I would send letters to each other.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
So I got a big package. There was three items
in there.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
A friendship lamp where you like tap it and it
changes colors, Bluetooth connected, one lamp per person. And I
was like, oh my gosh, that's actually a really cool gift.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
And then the.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Second thing that was in that box was an US
magazine and we were on the front cover in a
little square on the top right, and I was like,
oh my gosh, I've always wanted to be on the
cover of a magazine.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I didn't think it was going to be like this,
but like still cool, right.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
And the third item that was in there was a letter,
and I was like, Okay, I'm going to take this
letter with me and read it later. And so eventually
I got to reading the letter, and then I started
feeling sick to my stomach because the letter was so
insulting to me and the work that I was doing.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
At this treatment facility.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
He was basically saying, in all the years that I've
known you, I've never seen you so dependent on a place.
And he was trying to convince me to leave the
meadows and come back to him, and I knew that
(37:43):
that wasn't right for me for various reasons, but one
of them I expressed to him like, I, you know,
like I don't think that I'm gosh.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
This is heavy.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
I don't think I'm safe to myself if I leave
right now at this point, and he try to convince
me to leave anyway, and that's when I really knew
that this person does not love me, and this is
a love bomb tactic to try to have this control
(38:23):
over me. So, if somebody is in a position like
that where the light bulb clicks, how do you approach it.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, you can't be afraid to lose what's not good
for you. And I think quite often, you know, when
people are in situations like this with their being emotionally manipulated,
the easiest answer is to cut off all communication. That's
the easiest thing, but it's also probably the most difficult
because people in those situations are going to be asking, well,
(38:55):
what am I going to lose if I do that? Mom,
I'm going to lose. Well, here's the bigger question is
how bad can it get if you stay? And they
asked that it can get really bad because it's already bad,
so it can only get worse. At some point, you
have to start looking at you. You have to start
looking at what's good for you, you know, And this
is where you have to become selfish. And I don't
(39:16):
I don't mean selfish in a negative way. I mean
selfish as in self focused, as in focusing on what's
better for you. If someone is first of all, anytime
someone is leading with material gifts or leading with anything
except their heart. And I'll tell people all the time,
listen if you if someone's first overture to you, if
(39:40):
they first, the first thing they bring to you, is
a gift. Step back. If the first thing they bring
to you is a compliment, okay, But if the first
thing they want to do is for you to get
to know them. If they bring vulnerability, if they bring kindness,
if they bring patience, if they're giving you room to
know them and then they're given them they're taking space
(40:03):
to know you, well, then okay, fine. But if you're
coming with things that only spell control, you know, I'm
going to give you this gift. Now you're indebted to me. Yeah,
I'm going to give you this. Now you're indebted to me.
You know, if you want to get rid of that,
you can't be afraid of losing. You just can't be
(40:23):
afraid of losing. And the only thing that gets rid
of fear is knowledge. The only thing that gets rid
of fear is knowledge. I was afraid of swimming until
I learned how to swim and I realized, oh wow,
I'm not going to die. Oh no, I'm not going
to drown. Okay, fine, my knowledge has gotten rid of
the fear. You know. And so once a person is
(40:44):
doing that to you and you're afraid of losing, think
about it, or have an objective party to help you
to see, hey, you know this person is actually doing
this or this or this or this or this. I
need you to look at that, look at the pros
and the cons, and the cons far weigh the pros
in the situation. That knowledge has to wake you up.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yes, okay, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Well my therapist is like, she recommended just heading off
all ties and I was like, well what if. I
was like, well, I feel like I need to explain
to him or like give him a reason why. And
she was like no, she was like no, yeah, And
(41:31):
so you know, I just didn't call him again and
I blocked his number. And you know, some people would
consider that ghosting. And I think he was hurt by
it because you know, he didn't get any closure.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
You know, I hate that word. Closure is so overrated. Okay,
closure is so overrated. I've seen so many people go
back into relationships in search of closure. You know what
we need to we need we need to have closure.
We need to have closure. Look, if you want closure,
sit down and write a letter to him, or type
(42:11):
a letter to him and then burn it. If you
want closure, you know, sit down and do something that
does not involve him. You don't need another person to
have closure. I don't need to go to the person
who was injuring me to get closure, because what's what
I'm doing is when I go to them, I'm still
creating a new connection, and that new connection is going
(42:35):
to need closure. You never get closure until you close.
That's the essence word closure. Close it, shut it, tighten it,
cut it, burn the ends, be done with it. Okay,
that's what real closure is. It's not creating a new
connection with that same you know, detrimental situation and thinking, well,
(43:01):
you know, if we talk about it so we can
feel good about it, it gets and that doesn't work. It
doesn't work. Close it, tell him this is it, take
care we out. That's it. Yes, that's it. And it
doesn't mean he's a bad person. It just means that
as an ingredient, you're an ingredient, he's an ingredient. You're
baking soda, he's vinegar. Just doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
I love that analogy. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Okay, well, do you mind telling us about this app
that's in progress.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
You know, it's so funny because we're on the very
verge of that and this so ties into what we're
what we're talking about because you know, when it comes
to relationships, there's so many people Rachel who are on apps.
And you know, I don't know what the percentage is.
It was about nineteen percent of people who get married
now meet online. I don't know what it is now,
(43:52):
but people are swiping left and right and people are
feeling disposable. And every time, even on the show, everybody
had talked to they say, I hate dating app, that
he dating apps. So what are we doing. We're coming
out with an app. First of all, it's two applications,
and the applications are first of all for the married people.
For people in relationships, there's a place where you can
actually get resources, ask experts. There are places where you
(44:15):
can find out about parenting, about taking care of aging parents,
what have you. That's on the couple side and on
the single side. It's a match making service. And what
I love about it is that we're not swiping left
and right. What you're doing is that you're going to
have to answer questions that we give you, and those
questions are filled into the algorithm and then we find
(44:37):
one match who's good for you, and that's the only
match you're going to see. However, you're not going to
see that person. You're going to see an avatar of
that person that you create during the onboarding process, and
you have to mutually agree to remove that avatar. Remember,
the whole idea is getting to know each other from
a value space perspective, not just looking at me. You're
a pretty girl. I mean no, they were twipe. They
(44:59):
were I don't know if this right or left. I
don't know what it is. They will swipe you, yes,
you know what I mean. But no, we don't want that.
We want people to get to know each other from
the inside out. We're trying to change the game and
turn this thing from a meat market to a mate market.
That's what we're doing. And the app is called Marriage
Ain't for Punks, That's what that's the name of the app,
(45:20):
and it's marriage. It Ain't for punks in Marriaging for
Pumps dot Com is our website and you can find
us on Instagram or what have you, all over the place.
We're expecting it to be ready probably within the next
thirty days. Thirty days or so.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Amazing. Yeah, I love it. That's amazing. Well, thank you
so much, Pastor Cal.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
I'm so grateful to have you on with all your
knowledge on everything that we discussed today, I feel like
we covered a lot.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah. Yeah, I hope you got something from it.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yeah, I definitely did.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
It was a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Likewise, sixty PPGO trains this rectal then in scumenter
This is Rachel Goes Rogue.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, guys, it's Rachel.
Speaker 3 (00:11):
Savannah levis your host of Rachel Goes Rogue. So in
episode two of Vanderpump Rules, I got triggered a little
bit because when Tom said, I just miss her, you know,
I just want to see her and give her a
big hug. And then he says, I'm still very much
in love with Rachel, and I'm hoping we can give
(00:33):
our relationship a real chance. That was hard to hear, because,
you know, I really believed that I was in love
with Tom, and I had to come to the conclusion
that our connection was not love. I think that there
was a lot of love bombing involved in that relationship,
(00:54):
and so I wanted to bring on an expert who
is very knowledgeable with love bombing. His name is Pastor
Cal Calvin Robertson is a speaker, acclaimed author, marriage coach,
and relationship expert. He and his wife, Wendy operate a
marriage coaching organization. He is currently developing a dating app,
(01:18):
and you may know him as an expert on lifetimes
Married at First Sight. Welcome Pastor Cal.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Hey, it's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Okay, So I wanted to get into love bombing because
I've noticed a pattern in my relationships that involve attention, adoration, gifts,
and those are the type of things that I felt
special receiving and loved, and so I wanted to talk
(01:53):
to you and get more insight on why people love
bomb and what is it really that is love bombing?
Speaker 1 (02:01):
You know what. First of all, I'm really excited to
talk about this because you know, there's been a lot
of a lot of talk about, you know, love bombing.
Before I define it, let me tell you where it
came from. Love bombing Actually, I guess it's from like
back in the seventies or even earlier than that, from
(02:21):
a time when religious organizations, mostly cult based religious organizations
would use this tactic to get young people to join them.
And so what they would do quite often is they
would you know, just shower them with love and shower
them with gifts and do things sort of like just
to to to ingratiate themselves and to bring people into
(02:44):
their into their into their hold. Right now, more recently,
I'd say, I don't know, the last five years or so,
we've seen a lot of the same terminology used when
it comes to online dating and just in relationships in general.
But there was a movie called The Mac it's probably
the quintessential example of love bombing, where the leader of
(03:08):
the star's name was Goldie. In the movie, he would
tell women he was a pip, and he was pretty
much tell women, you know what, look, maybe I can
be everything. I'll be your mother, I'll be your father,
I'll take you to the moon if you're not afraid.
And these women would come in and eat, you know,
string them out pretty much. So the whole idea here
is that love bombing is just over flooding someone with
(03:33):
gifts and love and all this other stuff, or it's
supposedly love and all these other things, and the hopes
of that person becoming attached. And then you know, when
that person resists, what have you? You know, of course they
drop you. I think that that's the origin of it. However,
when you look at the actual word, I think we
(03:54):
do a great disservice for love by calling this love bombing.
This is not love. This is emotional manipulation. M That's
exactly what it is. You're grooming. You're emotionally manipulating a
person who might feel as though they might need love,
or they might need affection, or they might need attention
(04:15):
because of a hurt, because of something they're going through,
et cetera, et cetera. And so as a result, you
find a person who may be vulnerable in some areas
and you take advantage of that vulnerability. You know, But
it's definitely not love. And we can talk about love
a little later on as far as what love actually is,
but this ain't it.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
Yes, Okay, I'm glad you clarify that, because I've reflected
on it, and I can see how purpose of love
bombing is manipulation, and it's to gain some sort of
coercive control over the other person. And it's interesting that
(04:57):
you say the origin of it came from cults and
religious institutions, because the people joining churches or colts are
trying to find a place of belonging, a place of acceptance.
And when they're greeted with open arms and hold that
(05:20):
yes you belong here, Yes we can show you all
the love that you desire, all the love that you deserve,
and it feels really good in that moment because you're like, Okay,
I found my people, right, But then you know, like gradually,
over time it becomes a control tactic. And it's almost
(05:44):
like that phrase of a frog in boiling water where
it won't jump out of boiling water even though like
it's going to kill them, because it's so gradual, and
I feel like it's this similar manipulation tactic. Like at first,
you just think that this person is so in love
(06:06):
with you and they adore you, and they're giving you
all this attention. But then as the abuse comes up
and the control comes up, it may be like once
in a month, and you think, oh, that was just
a one off thing, you know, and you like give
(06:27):
it a pass, But then it comes up more and
more frequently, and before you know it, you're so emotionally
attached to this person that you, you know, like you
just can't leave.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
That's what I experienced anyway.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's unfortunate because I believe that
what happens is that we miss interpret, we miss construe
what love actually is. Rachel. I have a definition for
love that I've used for decades, literally, and it came
from my professor in college, my psychology professor. And I
(07:04):
looked at it and I and I said, you know what,
this makes sense. And I've adopted it not only into
my counseling, but also into my own life. And this
is the definition of love. Love is an intellectual decision
we make to fulfill another person's legitimate needs. Okay, it's
a decision that we're making to fulfill a person's legitimate needs.
(07:28):
Now with that comes patience, comes kindness, comes acceptance, comes tolerance,
you know. It comes. With that comes putting on another
person's interests ahead of your own. Now that's how we
define love. So if someone's coming to you and is
(07:49):
showering you with whatever, be it emotional or or material gifts,
so what have you just to get you into their grips?
And then that person is not returning you know, patience, kindness, love, acceptance,
you know, are tolerance. But they're only returning possession. Okay,
(08:14):
that's not love, not by any stretch of the imagination.
When I love you, I am deciding to be committed
to you. I'm deciding to appreciate you. I'm deciding to
respect you, I'm deciding to value and esteem you. Okay.
So when I talk when we talk about loving someone,
(08:35):
it's a whole different a whole different thing as to
what we see when people are love Mommy. I call
it as I said, you know, you know, emotional manipulation
and people who fall into that, I turned the frame
of a manipulationship. You know, it's like they're in this
this manipulationship where they're they've been tricked into this thing
(08:59):
and now they're they're attached, right, because it's as you
made a statement, it's not that you can't leave, but
it's that your heart.
Speaker 3 (09:07):
Is in it right right, Yeah, because you can't leave,
you can, like you always have that choice, but it
just feels like you're so emotionally wrapped up with this
person and maybe, like I think for me, feelings of
I don't know if I'll find anybody else that would
(09:27):
love me the same way or yeah, I don't know,
I don't know what it was, but for me, like
I stayed in unhealthy relationships for far too long.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
Yeah, and just to speak to that, you know, you
don't want to find someone else who loves you that way? Okay,
And I know quite often people have to feel a while,
will I ever find somebody loves me like this? Again? Well, honestly,
if it's unhealthy, you don't want to find that. You
want to find someone who loves you the way you
need to be loved, not someone who's loving you the
(09:59):
way to want to possess you. Love is not possession, right,
It's not. Love has just as much giving as it
has received, you know, but when it becomes one sided,
it turns into possession. It turns into jealousy, it turns
into you know, control and manipulation.
Speaker 3 (10:23):
Yeah, so I just wanted to fill you went really
quick because I know that you're not as familiar with
vander Pump rules as some of the listeners listening.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
And so I fell in love.
Speaker 3 (10:37):
With one narcissistic asshole. And after that relationship ended, after
five years of being in that relationship, I fell into
the hands of another narcissistic asshole.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
Sorry to say those words, but.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
I I feel like, yeah, yeah, I feel passionate about it.
Speaker 2 (11:01):
I guess because.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
This is like all of my twenties pretty much, and
I feel like I maybe missed out on some precious
time learning these lessons the hard way. But in that
first relationship, this guy told me that he loved me
like one week after meeting me, and I thought that
(11:26):
was a bit odd, because how could you really love
somebody so quickly? But we discussed doing a long distance relationship,
and I felt like I had nothing to lose, and
so we worked it out and had a situation where
he would come up to see me every three weeks
(11:49):
and then I would come down to see him every
three weeks and we would just kind of flip flop
like that. And I think because of the distance away
from each other, it allowed us to live in this
fantasy where we were anticipating the next time we would
see each other, and then whenever we did see each other,
(12:09):
it was like fireworks and the full nine yards of
going on dinner dates and drinking wine and just very
romantic gestures. So it kept me in this like, oh,
this is this is a good relationship, Like this is
something that you would see on TV and think that
(12:32):
that's something that's I don't know, that's normal, I guess.
But after we moved in together, things started to change
and I noticed that his behavior, the way he would
treat other people and the way that he would talk
to me was not appropriate. And that's when our issues
really started becoming relevant. And then, you know, after breaking up,
(12:56):
I started dating this other guy who was on the show,
and he was in reallyationship with his girlfriend, who was
also a friend of mine, and so that got super messy,
and this affair lasted seven months.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
And in that.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Situation, I felt like he was really giving me this
undivided attention. I was able to express my emotions and
he could really understand what I was saying, and it
seemed like it was on a deeper level than what
(13:36):
I experienced before, and everything else went out the window,
all my morals went out the window, and he became
like the most important person to me, and you know,
we would go on trips together and stuff like that,
and I consider that like a form of love bombing.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 3 (13:59):
I think that there's like a part with living in
the fantasy, and I don't know, for some reason, whenever
I'm dating guys like this, they become the most important
person to me.
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, you know, you know, ra Chel, thanks for sharing that.
I think that what happens quite often is that I
think we all have a love cup, and we when
we're when we're when we're born, and as we're growing up.
You know, that cup is filled by our parents, it's
(14:39):
filled by our friendships, it's filled by people we care about,
and in an ideal world, when we have healthy relationships
based on the healthy relationships we've observed, then we're able
to pour out of that cup into other people. But
when that cup has not been filled because we didn't
(15:03):
have those positive relationships, so those positive examples or or
for whatever reason, you know, we didn't really become fulfilled,
then we become needy and we want someone to pour
into us. But if someone's pouring into an empty cup
and that empty cup is constantly draining, we're not able
(15:24):
to pour back, and it's we're never fulfilled, and we're
always wanting more. We're always wanting more. We're always wanting
more because our cuts are empty, and sometimes the people
who are pouring into you their cuts are empty. I
don't think there's anything wrong with wanting what you want,
with wanting to feel loved, with wanting to feel cherished,
(15:45):
with wanting to feel as though somebody cares about you.
I think that's what we all want. I mean, that's
you know, in hierarchy Mazow's Hierarchy of needs, he talks about,
you know, that that need for affection, you know, and
self actualization. So I think those are things that we
that we all of us naturally need The problem is
(16:07):
when when people who are not good for us can
smell that, they smell it like blood and over water,
and they can see that you're vulnerable, and because they're empty,
because they're not fulfilled, they take advantage of you, and
it's it becomes this ugly cycle. Based on what you
(16:29):
told me, Rachel. One thing that is a problem here
is that you fell in love. I don't think that.
I don't. I don't believe you can fall in love.
I believe every time you fall, you get hurt. Falling
in anything, falling on the street, falling anywhere. Falling brings injury. Okay,
(16:52):
And whenever someone tells me, tells me I fell in love,
I said, okay, fine. First of all, you did it
wrong because love was not something you fall into.
Speaker 2 (17:01):
Hey, what is it?
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Then? Love is something you grow? Okay, it's something you grow. Yeah,
love is about growth. When they fall, I have no
control over my falling. It's and this is the mystic.
This is the mystery of love. I think we mystified
love to the point where it's like, oh love found me.
I fell in love. It just it just happened in
(17:23):
them if I'm in love, right, But what happens. And
remember we talked about making a decision next time around,
find somebody who has compatible values to you. Mm hmmm,
someone who has compatible values. In order to do that,
you got to know what your values.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Are, right.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
You have to know what are those irreplaceable principles that
you live your life by. What are my values? Is
my value? Loyalty is my value? Honesty is it? Family
is my value? Kindness are these are things that I
live by, the things that I need in my life
to make me happy. Find out what your values are,
and then find somebody who has compatible values to you.
(18:03):
And even if their values are different, they must have
compatible differences. Like, for instance, if you're an introvert and
that person is an extrovert, then that might be a
compatible situation because they can bring you out of your
sale or vice versa. But what you want to do
is find someone who actually has strong values, strong principles,
(18:26):
and then make a decision if this person has all
that you that you their compatibilities are suitable to yours,
if their values are suitable to yours, make a decision
that I'm going to grow with this person. And at
that point, remember you're growing in love you're watering it,
you're nurturing it. What happened to you is that you
never built a foundation, a love foundation. So anything you
(18:47):
were doing, whether they would give strict or whatever, that's
all just fluff. Crap. That's just crap. That's just fluff.
But it's not real. That that's not that's not anything
that's going to hold you. That's not anything that's going
to make you feel good, know you know, as you
grow older, make you want somebody to be by your
side when you're when you're going through a terrible sickness
(19:08):
or this is what love is. I did a wedding
last week, and in the wedding some of the vowels
that I said are for better or for worse, for
rich and for poorer, in sickness and in health, forsaking
all others, till death, do your part. Those are values, man, Rachel.
Those are values. But people unfortunately are not looking for
(19:31):
that anymore. We're looking for the fluff. And fluff gets
you a temporary high. M hm, that's it. But when
you look at a couple who's been married forty to
fifty years and their bodies now are all wrinkled, but
they still look at each other and slap each other
(19:51):
on the butt, and they're still what is that? That's
not because they look great? Those values, Yeah, they built
a foundation.
Speaker 4 (20:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:15):
I think it's so interesting too because one of the
old simatums that I gave James, who was the first
relationship that I was talking about, you know, when his
behavior wasn't in alignment with with what my values were
with treating other people with respect. You know, I said, basically,
(20:38):
if you don't stop drinking alcohol, or like, if you
don't get your.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
Shit together, I'm going to leave.
Speaker 3 (20:44):
And he actually stopped drinking alcohol, and I almost felt
like I needed to hold up my end of the
bargain and give him another chance. In reality, I guess
I should have just ended the relationship there. But I
also think it's interesting because now with Season eleven, Tom well, okay,
(21:06):
so I went into this institution called The Meadows, which
is a recovery center, in patient recovery trauma therapy center,
and I told Tom that there's a very high chance
that I will not drink alcohol when I come out
of here. He decided the weekend that I went in
(21:30):
that he was going to stop drinking alcohol. Yet he
couldn't stop drinking alcohol when he was This sounds so bad.
When he was going to fertilize his girlfriend's eggs, he
couldn't stop drinking alcohol and it became a problem. He
now can stop drinking alcohol when I go into the meadows.
(21:53):
And when he was asked about that on camera, I
forgot what he said exactly, but it seemed like he
was waiting to drink until I came out so that
we could drink together for the first time. So I
just feel like it's a manipulation tactic, like yeah, and
it hasn't lasted, like he's not I mean, he's he's
(22:14):
drinking alcohol now that like I'm not in the picture anymore.
But is there a correlation there, because I just don't understand, Like,
I just think it's a odd pattern that both of
these guys had alcohol problems and then decided to stop
drinking to like save the relationship.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
I'm not drinking didn't save the relationship.
Speaker 3 (22:36):
No, it didn't, right, So it wasn't alcohol that was
the problem.
Speaker 2 (22:43):
It was a side effect, yeah, it.
Speaker 1 (22:45):
Was exactly, Yeah, exactly, So it was a symptom exactly,
So it was not the main thing. And in relationships.
We have to focus on the main thing. Someone said, well,
what's the main problem? Well, you know, if you're drinking,
there's something, there's a reason behind it, you know, if
you're if you're doing anything, there's a reason behind it,
(23:06):
you know, And I think that the key here is
to find what that reason is. You know. Right now, though,
I would assume you're not in any relationship, correct, correct, Yeah,
And I think that's the best place for you to be,
you know, because because this is a recalibration time for you,
a time for you to find out what's important for you,
(23:27):
a time for you to determine what your values are
and to go about this thing the right way. Well,
you're obviously are a person who craves relationship, as we
all do. Don't ever think there's anything wrong with that,
because there isn't. There's you know, I've seen people say,
you know, you know what, forget it, I'm not going
to be any that's that's of course, you're going to
(23:47):
be in a relationship. If that's something you want, then
you're going to find one. What you have to do
is simply just monitor yourself and make sure that you
know the next time down the road, and there will
be another time. As I said earlier, make sure that
that person is someone that you can see yourself with
ten years from now, twenty years from now, not because
(24:08):
of what they have, not because of what they bring
to the table, but because of who they are. Because
of who they are. I mean, is this a good person?
Does this person again I to be the dead horse?
Have values that are compatible to mine? You know, I
believe that I was telling someone recently about a relationship,
and I was saying, you know, if you remember high
(24:29):
school or middle school or whatever it was, you could
when building a volcano, you take a vinegar and baking soda.
You put them together, and all of a sudden it explodes.
Everyone's done that in school. There's nothing wrong with vinegar
and baking soda. In fact, if you take vinegar and
oil and a little salt, you have a nice salad dressing.
If you take baking soda, put some sugar and butter
(24:51):
and no flour, and you might have, you know, the
basis of a cake. So there's nothing wrong with the ingredients,
it's just the way they get together. There explosive. Okay,
So you I'm not saying that those people were bad
they were bad ingredients and they do not mix with you.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
I like that.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
Okay, Okay, find the ingredients. Find people who have the
ingredients that mix well with you and are not explosive.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Okay, yes, yeah, Okay. Two questions, and it's like a
double edged sword. One, is there a specific type of
person that is more inclined to love bomb other people?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Then?
Speaker 2 (25:34):
Two?
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Is there a specific type of person that is more
inclined to be affected by love bombing and become more
attached to that person?
Speaker 1 (25:44):
Absolutely? Yeah, people who are more inclined to love bombing. Remember,
let's go back to where it started, back to cults.
That's when the term first made an appearance in the
tabloism what have you. Back to cults where people were
trying to get others to join their It was a
matter of control. People who tend to be controlling, people
(26:05):
who tend to be who don't listen. And I use
the word narcissistic lightly because it's actually a medical diagnosis.
You know, I'm not saying to anybody, yeah so, but
but people who who have control issues, people who have
issues with someone saying no to them. And you know,
(26:28):
I learned a long time ago that when someone shows
you who they who they really are, believe them. And
if you see people who are who are mean to
other people, if you see people who who look upon
other people, people who are lesson, who may be less
financially stable, or they may at a lower place in
life or a different place in life or not. And
if you're looking down on those people, Yeah, yeah, that's
(26:51):
those are people who are generally control freaks, you know.
And so yeah, those are the people who are going
to love momb you know. Those are the people who
are going to manipulate you. People who are so focused
on themselves and so focused on their own benefit that
(27:13):
they don't care who they hurt. The people who are
more likely to be affected by it are people, like
we said, who are in need, people who are hurt,
people who are who have not healed from some of
their past trauma, whether it's parental trauma, whether it's past
relationships that you haven't healed from, or you just have
pain inside that just has not been tended to. I'm
(27:36):
a big fan of therapy. I believe that everyone should
get therapy and find out. You know, why is it
that I keep attracting the same kind of person Generally
it's going to go back I mean almost almost almost.
I can say almost all the time. It's going to
go back to sometime when you created a standard of
(27:56):
what you felt love was or a standard of what
you felt you and you've never gone beyond that standard.
Somebody have used you in the past, you felt like
that's what you deserve, so that you're going to look
for that again. Someone who your parents treat you a
certain way. You felt like that was the standard you created,
That's what I deserved, So that's what I'm going to
look for. MH. So if you create that standard, okay
(28:20):
because of a past hurt, you need to talk to
someone professionally who can help you to reform your standards. Yeah,
what actually you know is good for you and what's
what's bad for you? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I feel like my parents did the best that they could.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
My younger sibling had a lot of behavioral issues, and actually,
like taking step back and looking at that dynamic, there's
a lot of similarities between James and my younger sibling.
So I think it was like something that I was
familiar with and something that I've accepted. I'm able to
survive in that kind of situation and I viewed myself
(28:57):
as someone who is patient and understand and thinking that
this person is misunderstood. But then that empathy was taken
advantage of. So I can see how, you know how
that came.
Speaker 2 (29:11):
And then I just wanted to follow up on something
that you said.
Speaker 3 (29:15):
You said, when somebody shows you who they are, believe them,
believe them. And for me, in my instance, some people
would say, oh, well, Rachel has shown us who she
really is. She's a liar and a cheater and someone
who will betray a friend. Personally, I don't feel comfortable
(29:39):
with that being my defining self.
Speaker 2 (29:42):
I think all this is worth a situation.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
That's like, that is me, but that's that's me under
somebody else's coercive control.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Where I lost myself.
Speaker 1 (29:54):
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, what we're talking about is does is
a person's ability to check. I'm a big believer in
giving people the latitude to change course. You may have lied,
you may have been a deceptive person, you may have
done things that even embarrassed you. Just just to be
honest the things that you are not proud of. Okay, fine,
(30:16):
we all do those things. I tell you know, when
I talk to groups, I tell them, look if everybody
stood around in a circle and took all of their
worst traits and threw them in the middle so that
we all could look at them. We'd probably all take
our own worst rates back. You know. It's like because
when you look at what everybody else is doing and say,
oh my god, maybe I'm not that bad. So I
(30:37):
think that we all have things that we've done, We've
all said things, done things, and we can be characterized
by those things. You can't stop someone from characterizing you.
But what you can do is change course and make
sure that if no one else believes you, that you
believe that you're a different person. Okay, And there's an
(31:01):
old things and I always miss this up and my
wife gets on me. It's like the people the people
who matter don't care, and the people who care don't matter.
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (31:12):
Yes, yeah, yeah, the people that matter don't care, they
don't care, and the people that care don't.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
They don't matter. Exactly, yes, exactly, And so that's yeah,
And I think that that's that's what you have to
focus on, because you know, yeah, if someone shows you,
and I think the whole idea that someone shows you
who they are, believe them. I mean if someone has repeatedly,
someone has repeatedly been a negative source of pain in
(31:39):
your life, and you're trying to change them, You're trying
to change them, but they never change. Believe that's who
they are. But anyone, even the worst people have I
believe that they should be given an opportunity to change.
You Know, someone says you know, want to lie, always
a liar, wants to cheat, always achieved, that's crap. I
(31:59):
don't buy it that. I believe byers can be great people.
I believe she just can turn their lives around and
become great people. I think everyone has the capacity within
us to be better than we are. We all have
that capacity. Now. Unfortunately, there will be people who are
frozen in time and whatever you did to them, they
will always remember you for that. Can't do anything about it.
(32:23):
All you can do is just be a better person,
be the best person you can from that point forward.
Eventually they might see it, they may not. That's not
your problem.
Speaker 2 (32:33):
So I think I was too patient in that affair.
Speaker 3 (32:37):
Like I believe that Tom was working on breaking up
with his girlfriend, and he was telling me that he
was actively breaking up with her and didn't want to
be with.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Her, and I believed him.
Speaker 3 (32:51):
But you know, like why I'm frustrated out myself that
I didn't just like put my foot down and then
like no this is not okay and.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
Left and like actually closed the door on that. I
don't know. Can you speak to that?
Speaker 1 (33:09):
Yeah? You know what, Look, are you the kind of
person who wants to believe in the best, believe the
best in everyone?
Speaker 3 (33:20):
Yes, but now I'm not so naive, right, but I
do want to believe the best in people.
Speaker 2 (33:27):
Yes, I feel like people.
Speaker 3 (33:29):
Are innately good, But then I'm also learning that they're
you know, good and bad is just a perception.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
It's not even yeah real, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
To some extent, I think there are there are bad things,
and there are bad people that are just empirically bad. Look,
people who hurt children are just they're just it's they're
just a badness there. I don't think that's that's perception.
I think people who who who you know, indiscriminately not
in self defense, but who killed just intentionally without any remorse,
(34:05):
I think those are bad people. I think that's there
there's a there's a some kind of misfiring in the
synapses in their brains or something that causes them to
be that way. In the religious world, they're called you know,
evil or you know, just sinful people. But I think
we all have a natural desire. Well, I want to
(34:29):
think that we all have a desire for good, even
though we have a tendency to do bad. That's what
that's what I want to think. If we all had
a natural desire for evil, you know, you know, I mean,
the world would be just in complete chaos. You couldn't
trust your neighbors, you can't trust your family. So I
think that there is something in us that that wants good,
(34:55):
you know, And I think that that's what you that
that's who you are. But the problem is that when
someone is obviously doing things that are just outlandish, you know,
and you're still saying, well, I want to believe you,
want to believe you. I want to believe you, and
they're still doing the same thing. But you know, I
want to give you a little grace, I want to
(35:16):
believe you. At some point, you gotta slap yourself and
you got to realize, wait a minute, that person's not
the idiot. I'm the idiot.
Speaker 2 (35:24):
I'm the idiot.
Speaker 1 (35:25):
Yes, yes, right, because you you're doing bad things. But
I'm there, still enabling. I'm there still, you know, cajoling. Still,
you know, it's okay, it's okay. And then I said, well,
you're no, You're no, he's not that person. You're the
idiot because you're still there. Yeah, you're still enabling. You
know that wake up call has.
Speaker 2 (35:47):
To happen for sure. Okay.
Speaker 3 (36:00):
So I want to ask you if you're in a
relationship with somebody and you realize, oh wait, this might
be love bombing, how do you once you identify it,
how do you go forward? Because if I can just
give you an example. When I was at the Meadows,
(36:22):
Tom and I would send letters to each other.
Speaker 2 (36:24):
So I got a big package. There was three items
in there.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
A friendship lamp where you like tap it and it
changes colors, Bluetooth connected, one lamp per person. And I
was like, oh my gosh, that's actually a really cool gift.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
And then the.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Second thing that was in that box was an US
magazine and we were on the front cover in a
little square on the top right, and I was like,
oh my gosh, I've always wanted to be on the
cover of a magazine.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I didn't think it was going to be like this,
but like still cool, right.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
And the third item that was in there was a letter,
and I was like, Okay, I'm going to take this
letter with me and read it later. And so eventually
I got to reading the letter, and then I started
feeling sick to my stomach because the letter was so
insulting to me and the work that I was doing.
Speaker 2 (37:20):
At this treatment facility.
Speaker 3 (37:22):
He was basically saying, in all the years that I've
known you, I've never seen you so dependent on a place.
And he was trying to convince me to leave the
meadows and come back to him, and I knew that
(37:43):
that wasn't right for me for various reasons, but one
of them I expressed to him like, I, you know,
like I don't think that I'm gosh.
Speaker 2 (37:57):
This is heavy.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
I don't think I'm safe to myself if I leave
right now at this point, and he try to convince
me to leave anyway, and that's when I really knew
that this person does not love me, and this is
a love bomb tactic to try to have this control
(38:23):
over me. So, if somebody is in a position like
that where the light bulb clicks, how do you approach it.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
Yeah, you can't be afraid to lose what's not good
for you. And I think quite often, you know, when
people are in situations like this with their being emotionally manipulated,
the easiest answer is to cut off all communication. That's
the easiest thing, but it's also probably the most difficult
because people in those situations are going to be asking, well,
(38:55):
what am I going to lose if I do that? Mom,
I'm going to lose. Well, here's the bigger question is
how bad can it get if you stay? And they
asked that it can get really bad because it's already bad,
so it can only get worse. At some point, you
have to start looking at you. You have to start
looking at what's good for you, you know, And this
is where you have to become selfish. And I don't
(39:16):
I don't mean selfish in a negative way. I mean
selfish as in self focused, as in focusing on what's
better for you. If someone is first of all, anytime
someone is leading with material gifts or leading with anything
except their heart. And I'll tell people all the time,
listen if you if someone's first overture to you, if
(39:40):
they first, the first thing they bring to you, is
a gift. Step back. If the first thing they bring
to you is a compliment, okay, But if the first
thing they want to do is for you to get
to know them. If they bring vulnerability, if they bring kindness,
if they bring patience, if they're giving you room to
know them and then they're given them they're taking space
(40:03):
to know you, well, then okay, fine. But if you're
coming with things that only spell control, you know, I'm
going to give you this gift. Now you're indebted to me. Yeah,
I'm going to give you this. Now you're indebted to me.
You know, if you want to get rid of that,
you can't be afraid of losing. You just can't be
(40:23):
afraid of losing. And the only thing that gets rid
of fear is knowledge. The only thing that gets rid
of fear is knowledge. I was afraid of swimming until
I learned how to swim and I realized, oh wow,
I'm not going to die. Oh no, I'm not going
to drown. Okay, fine, my knowledge has gotten rid of
the fear. You know. And so once a person is
(40:44):
doing that to you and you're afraid of losing, think
about it, or have an objective party to help you
to see, hey, you know this person is actually doing
this or this or this or this or this. I
need you to look at that, look at the pros
and the cons, and the cons far weigh the pros
in the situation. That knowledge has to wake you up.
Speaker 2 (41:05):
Yes, okay, yes, yeah.
Speaker 3 (41:09):
Well my therapist is like, she recommended just heading off
all ties and I was like, well what if. I
was like, well, I feel like I need to explain
to him or like give him a reason why. And
she was like no, she was like no, yeah, And
(41:31):
so you know, I just didn't call him again and
I blocked his number. And you know, some people would
consider that ghosting. And I think he was hurt by
it because you know, he didn't get any closure.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
You know, I hate that word. Closure is so overrated. Okay,
closure is so overrated. I've seen so many people go
back into relationships in search of closure. You know what
we need to we need we need to have closure.
We need to have closure. Look, if you want closure,
sit down and write a letter to him, or type
(42:11):
a letter to him and then burn it. If you
want closure, you know, sit down and do something that
does not involve him. You don't need another person to
have closure. I don't need to go to the person
who was injuring me to get closure, because what's what
I'm doing is when I go to them, I'm still
creating a new connection, and that new connection is going
(42:35):
to need closure. You never get closure until you close.
That's the essence word closure. Close it, shut it, tighten it,
cut it, burn the ends, be done with it. Okay,
that's what real closure is. It's not creating a new
connection with that same you know, detrimental situation and thinking, well,
(43:01):
you know, if we talk about it so we can
feel good about it, it gets and that doesn't work. It
doesn't work. Close it, tell him this is it, take
care we out. That's it. Yes, that's it. And it
doesn't mean he's a bad person. It just means that
as an ingredient, you're an ingredient, he's an ingredient. You're
baking soda, he's vinegar. Just doesn't work.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
I love that analogy. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (43:26):
Okay, well, do you mind telling us about this app
that's in progress.
Speaker 1 (43:31):
You know, it's so funny because we're on the very
verge of that and this so ties into what we're
what we're talking about because you know, when it comes
to relationships, there's so many people Rachel who are on apps.
And you know, I don't know what the percentage is.
It was about nineteen percent of people who get married
now meet online. I don't know what it is now,
(43:52):
but people are swiping left and right and people are
feeling disposable. And every time, even on the show, everybody
had talked to they say, I hate dating app, that
he dating apps. So what are we doing. We're coming
out with an app. First of all, it's two applications,
and the applications are first of all for the married people.
For people in relationships, there's a place where you can
actually get resources, ask experts. There are places where you
(44:15):
can find out about parenting, about taking care of aging parents,
what have you. That's on the couple side and on
the single side. It's a match making service. And what
I love about it is that we're not swiping left
and right. What you're doing is that you're going to
have to answer questions that we give you, and those
questions are filled into the algorithm and then we find
(44:37):
one match who's good for you, and that's the only
match you're going to see. However, you're not going to
see that person. You're going to see an avatar of
that person that you create during the onboarding process, and
you have to mutually agree to remove that avatar. Remember,
the whole idea is getting to know each other from
a value space perspective, not just looking at me. You're
a pretty girl. I mean no, they were twipe. They
(44:59):
were I don't know if this right or left. I
don't know what it is. They will swipe you, yes,
you know what I mean. But no, we don't want that.
We want people to get to know each other from
the inside out. We're trying to change the game and
turn this thing from a meat market to a mate market.
That's what we're doing. And the app is called Marriage
Ain't for Punks, That's what that's the name of the app,
(45:20):
and it's marriage. It Ain't for punks in Marriaging for
Pumps dot Com is our website and you can find
us on Instagram or what have you, all over the place.
We're expecting it to be ready probably within the next
thirty days. Thirty days or so.
Speaker 2 (45:36):
Amazing. Yeah, I love it. That's amazing. Well, thank you
so much, Pastor Cal.
Speaker 3 (45:43):
I'm so grateful to have you on with all your
knowledge on everything that we discussed today, I feel like
we covered a lot.
Speaker 1 (45:52):
Yeah. Yeah, I hope you got something from it.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
Yeah, I definitely did.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
It was a delight to talk to you.
Speaker 3 (45:58):
Likewise, sixty PPGO trains this rectal then in scumenter
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