October 18, 2023 • 11 mins
Couch Talks is the bonus episode of You Need Therapy where Kat answers questions listeners send to kathryn@youneedtherapypodcast.com. This week Kat gives her feedback to someone who witnessed their friend cheat on their fiancé on her bachelorette party.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat.
I am the host, and if you are new and
don't know what couch Talks is, it is the special
bonus episode of You Need Therapy where I Kat answered
the questions that you guys the listeners send to Katherine
(00:33):
at You Need Therapy podcast dot com. Now a quick
reminder that although I'm answering your questions, this podcast still
does not serve as a replacement or substitute for any
mental health services. However, we always hope that it can
help you or somebody you know in some way on
whatever journey you were on in the moment or in
(00:54):
the future. Now on couch Talks, I like to stick
to one quot uh in a week so we can
really just focus and dial into that one. And I
always keep them anonymous so you don't have to worry
about somebody hearing your name or exposing your stuff, because
the only thing that is going to be shared is
what you share with me in the email that you
(01:15):
write in This week, we have a pretty interesting question,
so I want to just get right into it and
then talk it out with you guys, so here it is. Hey, Kat,
I have a serious dilemma. Last weekend I went on
a baucherette trip and well, something happened that has left
(01:39):
me very torn and anxious. The last night, we went
out to a couple of bars and one thing led
to another, and the bride ended up kissing another guy.
And when I say kissing, I mean full on makeout
on a dance floor. There was, of course a lot
of alcohol involved, However, or I was not drinking much
(02:01):
and witnessed the entire thing. The next day, she never
brought it up. We all had to leave somewhat early,
so the next morning consisted of mostly cleaning and then
everyone headed home. But I felt really awkward walking around
without anyone acknowledging what happened the night before. At this point,
(02:22):
I'm not sure if the bride even remembers what happened
or if she's just avoiding the subject, but I feel
really uncomfortable not talking about it. I keep wondering though,
if she doesn't remember it, is it better for her
to just not know. But if she does remember and
it's just avoiding it because she feels embarrassed or shameful,
I would want to talk to her about it, so
(02:43):
there isn't this weird elephant in the room for the
rest of our lives. I know she would never have
done this in a sound ste of mind, and she
is madly in love with her fiance. But this feels
like a big secret I am keeping that I didn't
want to be a part of. I'm hoping you can
help me figure out if I should bring it up
or just leave it alone and try to forget it
ever happened. Okay, this one is what we would call
(03:08):
a doozy. There's not a simple way to answer this,
and I mean, that's a lot of the questions you
guys send in, but this is a really complicated situation
and I hear a lot of issues of morality in
here and what is the right thing to do? And honestly, sadly,
I think this happens more than people would assume, and
(03:30):
with the rise of things like TikTok, I feel like
people are getting caught a lot now on the internet,
which I do not believe is really the right thing
to do. Here. This is just a PSA to anybody
who like sees somebody on a bachel or a bachelort
trip and they're flirting with somebody, or they're I don't know,
they could be making out with them. Posting this on
(03:52):
the internet and tagging in hopes that it goes viral
and that people see it. I don't know if that's
really being helpful, and it honestly might really create more hurt,
because shaming someone on a public platform is never, from
my experience, the right way to help somebody out, especially
because it makes this issue public, not just for the
(04:14):
person that is doing the wrongdoing, but it's for both parties.
And so the person who might be being cheated on,
that's kind of like adding insult to injury. Not only
do they have to deal with this situation, they have
to deal with it on a public platform, and then
everybody knows about it. And I just can't imagine what
(04:34):
that would be like. And who are we to assume
that somebody wouldn't tell them anyway, or their partner wouldn't
tell them, and take care of it on their own.
And we really should give people the ability to take
care of themselves in those moments just a little PSA. However,
I know people are going to continue to do that.
Hopefully that did not happen to your friend, and there
(04:55):
are a lot of details in the situation that I
am not aware of that I I'm very curious about. However,
I totally hear you in the distress you're in, and
I want to acknowledge how difficult this position must be
for you. Now, what I am gathering is the bride
drunkenly made out with somebody on her bacherette party. You
(05:17):
are unsure if she remembers. You have not spoken about
this with the bride, and from your understanding, she has
not spoken about it with anyone else. You do not
know if the bride has talked about this with her partner,
and you feel conflicted because if she doesn't remember, you
are unsure if you should keep it that way, and
(05:39):
if she does remember, you don't want there to be
awkward tension within your relationship. So this may sound very harsh,
but I'm going to start by saying, this is not
your awkward tension to hold. It sounds like you have
more feelings about other people's feelings than your own, like
your own feelings, And again, I don't know all the details.
(06:02):
I don't know why she was a drinking the amount
she did. I don't know if she really did drink
the amount that equalled how drunk she was, or if
something else happened. There are a lot of details here
that I don't know and I can't know, and it
makes this very difficult. But from what you are sharing,
your friend had too much to drink and possibly blacked out,
(06:22):
and at the least drink enough to do something that
she would probably be mortified to do and wouldn't do
if she was a sound mind. Now there's not an
exact right or wrong here, and people are going to
have a lot of different opinions, and so I would
encourage you to keep the opinions that you're asking of
others to a minimum, because that's going to create even
(06:43):
more conflict within you. We are looking at not what
everybody else would be doing, but would What do you
need to do with your experience? What makes sense for
you and the person that you are, not what would
somebody else? And the person that somebody else is what
they would do. Now if he remembers and just isn't
bringing this up, it's not your responsibility to take care
(07:04):
of her feelings. It is hers. So if you want
to say something to her to ease attention, go for it.
But if you are doing it because you want to
take care of her feelings and ease her attenson, who
is to say that she isn't doing that by acting
like it never happened. We can't assume what she needs,
and maybe that makes more sense to her, and she
doesn't feel the awkward tension. She would rather just ignore
(07:26):
it and that feels better. We don't get to decide
what other people need. So if you're doing it for
you to take care of your attention, that's one thing.
But if we're doing it for her, we can't know
that that's what she would want, and that's not up
to us to decide. She is allowed to make decisions
and take care of herself. And again, I like to
allow people to take care of themselves before we intervene
(07:50):
and assume that we need they need us to take
care of them. Now, if she doesn't remember and you
bring it up, there's the other thing. Well, okay, well,
what if I do decide that it's a important for
me and our friendship to bring it up and I
need to say something. But then what if she doesn't
remember and I'm telling her about it for the first time, Well,
that sucks and that's unfortunate in some regard because now
(08:14):
she has to confront something that she did that she
probably would and does regret. But she is confronting something
that she did, not something that you did. So yes,
you let her know that it happened, but it doesn't
mean that you forced her to do it. So I
just want to encourage you to take the pressure off
(08:34):
of yourself again to manage her and to fix something
that you are not responsible for even breaking or tampering with.
You aren't responsible for her relationships, her behaviors, her feelings.
You were responsible for hers. So yeah, that would suck
in some regard, like, dang it if she would never know.
I don't know if that would if she would never
(08:55):
know that this ever happened. If I could have one
hundred percent clarity that she doesn't know what happened and
she is never going to find out, that might change
what you would do. But the difficult thing here is
you can't know that. There is no way for you
to know that unless you talk about it with her,
So you're kind of taking a risk either way. So
what risks do you want to take here? That's really
(09:17):
the question you're asking for. What do I need and
is that risk worth the need that I have? So again,
in order to move forward in this relationship, do you
need to acknowledge this for you? If not, then it
might be okay for you to move on and allow
her to take care of her experiences and her feelings
in the way and in the time that she would
(09:38):
like to do that. So my encouragement here is am
I doing this for me? Am I doing this to
take care of somebody else. It's a difficult situation, like
I said, just because there are so many things one
I don't know that I really just am curious about.
But in your experience, there are so many things that
you cannot know unless you do talk about it. And
we don't like that. We like certain I know that
(10:00):
you probably want me to be like, yes, you have
to do this, and I can't tell that. I can't
say that to you, and I actually assume that you
probably don't assume I'm going to do that if you
do listen to this podcast enough. So I just again
want to throw this back to you and encourage you
to allow yourself to take the pressure off yourself of
managing other people and be responsible and being responsible for
(10:21):
things that you did not do and that are not yours,
and take responsibility for what is yours and what you
need and how important those things are to you. I
hope that this doesn't happen to anybody ever again. However,
I think that that would be naive of me to assume,
just because of how insane and wild batcherette and bachelor
(10:43):
party culture has become. It's very interesting to me, and
it can be something that's really fun and fruitful and
exciting and wonderful, and it also can be something that
is very dysfunctional and toxic and not so helpful. It's
kind of like anything in the world. We can take
it to the extremes, and sometimes those extremes don't really
(11:06):
end up adding up to being worth it. So again,
I would hope this never would happen again, and I
hope that you, whoever wrote this, never gets in a
situation like this again. Maybe there's some things you learned
that you can take with you on future bacherette parties
or maybe your own if you have not had one
and you hope to have one one day. I would
(11:27):
love to hear other people's thoughts feelings on this, and
also other people's questions like I said, you can email
me Katherine at nied Therapy podcast dot com and until
I talk to you guys again on Monday, I hope
you guys are having the day you need to have
Hi guys, and welcome to a new episode of couch
Talks on You Need Therapy Podcast. My name is Kat.
I am the host, and if you are new and
don't know what couch Talks is, it is the special
bonus episode of You Need Therapy where I Kat answered
the questions that you guys the listeners send to Katherine
(00:33):
at You Need Therapy podcast dot com. Now a quick
reminder that although I'm answering your questions, this podcast still
does not serve as a replacement or substitute for any
mental health services. However, we always hope that it can
help you or somebody you know in some way on
whatever journey you were on in the moment or in
(00:54):
the future. Now on couch Talks, I like to stick
to one quot uh in a week so we can
really just focus and dial into that one. And I
always keep them anonymous so you don't have to worry
about somebody hearing your name or exposing your stuff, because
the only thing that is going to be shared is
what you share with me in the email that you
(01:15):
write in This week, we have a pretty interesting question,
so I want to just get right into it and
then talk it out with you guys, so here it is. Hey, Kat,
I have a serious dilemma. Last weekend I went on
a baucherette trip and well, something happened that has left
(01:39):
me very torn and anxious. The last night, we went
out to a couple of bars and one thing led
to another, and the bride ended up kissing another guy.
And when I say kissing, I mean full on makeout
on a dance floor. There was, of course a lot
of alcohol involved, However, or I was not drinking much
(02:01):
and witnessed the entire thing. The next day, she never
brought it up. We all had to leave somewhat early,
so the next morning consisted of mostly cleaning and then
everyone headed home. But I felt really awkward walking around
without anyone acknowledging what happened the night before. At this point,
(02:22):
I'm not sure if the bride even remembers what happened
or if she's just avoiding the subject, but I feel
really uncomfortable not talking about it. I keep wondering though,
if she doesn't remember it, is it better for her
to just not know. But if she does remember and
it's just avoiding it because she feels embarrassed or shameful,
I would want to talk to her about it, so
(02:43):
there isn't this weird elephant in the room for the
rest of our lives. I know she would never have
done this in a sound ste of mind, and she
is madly in love with her fiance. But this feels
like a big secret I am keeping that I didn't
want to be a part of. I'm hoping you can
help me figure out if I should bring it up
or just leave it alone and try to forget it
ever happened. Okay, this one is what we would call
(03:08):
a doozy. There's not a simple way to answer this,
and I mean, that's a lot of the questions you
guys send in, but this is a really complicated situation
and I hear a lot of issues of morality in
here and what is the right thing to do? And honestly, sadly,
I think this happens more than people would assume, and
(03:30):
with the rise of things like TikTok, I feel like
people are getting caught a lot now on the internet,
which I do not believe is really the right thing
to do. Here. This is just a PSA to anybody
who like sees somebody on a bachel or a bachelort
trip and they're flirting with somebody, or they're I don't know,
they could be making out with them. Posting this on
(03:52):
the internet and tagging in hopes that it goes viral
and that people see it. I don't know if that's
really being helpful, and it honestly might really create more hurt,
because shaming someone on a public platform is never, from
my experience, the right way to help somebody out, especially
because it makes this issue public, not just for the
(04:14):
person that is doing the wrongdoing, but it's for both parties.
And so the person who might be being cheated on,
that's kind of like adding insult to injury. Not only
do they have to deal with this situation, they have
to deal with it on a public platform, and then
everybody knows about it. And I just can't imagine what
(04:34):
that would be like. And who are we to assume
that somebody wouldn't tell them anyway, or their partner wouldn't
tell them, and take care of it on their own.
And we really should give people the ability to take
care of themselves in those moments just a little PSA. However,
I know people are going to continue to do that.
Hopefully that did not happen to your friend, and there
(04:55):
are a lot of details in the situation that I
am not aware of that I I'm very curious about. However,
I totally hear you in the distress you're in, and
I want to acknowledge how difficult this position must be
for you. Now, what I am gathering is the bride
drunkenly made out with somebody on her bacherette party. You
(05:17):
are unsure if she remembers. You have not spoken about
this with the bride, and from your understanding, she has
not spoken about it with anyone else. You do not
know if the bride has talked about this with her partner,
and you feel conflicted because if she doesn't remember, you
are unsure if you should keep it that way, and
(05:39):
if she does remember, you don't want there to be
awkward tension within your relationship. So this may sound very harsh,
but I'm going to start by saying, this is not
your awkward tension to hold. It sounds like you have
more feelings about other people's feelings than your own, like
your own feelings, And again, I don't know all the details.
(06:02):
I don't know why she was a drinking the amount
she did. I don't know if she really did drink
the amount that equalled how drunk she was, or if
something else happened. There are a lot of details here
that I don't know and I can't know, and it
makes this very difficult. But from what you are sharing,
your friend had too much to drink and possibly blacked out,
(06:22):
and at the least drink enough to do something that
she would probably be mortified to do and wouldn't do
if she was a sound mind. Now there's not an
exact right or wrong here, and people are going to
have a lot of different opinions, and so I would
encourage you to keep the opinions that you're asking of
others to a minimum, because that's going to create even
(06:43):
more conflict within you. We are looking at not what
everybody else would be doing, but would What do you
need to do with your experience? What makes sense for
you and the person that you are, not what would
somebody else? And the person that somebody else is what
they would do. Now if he remembers and just isn't
bringing this up, it's not your responsibility to take care
(07:04):
of her feelings. It is hers. So if you want
to say something to her to ease attention, go for it.
But if you are doing it because you want to
take care of her feelings and ease her attenson, who
is to say that she isn't doing that by acting
like it never happened. We can't assume what she needs,
and maybe that makes more sense to her, and she
doesn't feel the awkward tension. She would rather just ignore
(07:26):
it and that feels better. We don't get to decide
what other people need. So if you're doing it for
you to take care of your attention, that's one thing.
But if we're doing it for her, we can't know
that that's what she would want, and that's not up
to us to decide. She is allowed to make decisions
and take care of herself. And again, I like to
allow people to take care of themselves before we intervene
(07:50):
and assume that we need they need us to take
care of them. Now, if she doesn't remember and you
bring it up, there's the other thing. Well, okay, well,
what if I do decide that it's a important for
me and our friendship to bring it up and I
need to say something. But then what if she doesn't
remember and I'm telling her about it for the first time, Well,
that sucks and that's unfortunate in some regard because now
(08:14):
she has to confront something that she did that she
probably would and does regret. But she is confronting something
that she did, not something that you did. So yes,
you let her know that it happened, but it doesn't
mean that you forced her to do it. So I
just want to encourage you to take the pressure off
(08:34):
of yourself again to manage her and to fix something
that you are not responsible for even breaking or tampering with.
You aren't responsible for her relationships, her behaviors, her feelings.
You were responsible for hers. So yeah, that would suck
in some regard, like, dang it if she would never know.
I don't know if that would if she would never
(08:55):
know that this ever happened. If I could have one
hundred percent clarity that she doesn't know what happened and
she is never going to find out, that might change
what you would do. But the difficult thing here is
you can't know that. There is no way for you
to know that unless you talk about it with her,
So you're kind of taking a risk either way. So
what risks do you want to take here? That's really
(09:17):
the question you're asking for. What do I need and
is that risk worth the need that I have? So again,
in order to move forward in this relationship, do you
need to acknowledge this for you? If not, then it
might be okay for you to move on and allow
her to take care of her experiences and her feelings
in the way and in the time that she would
(09:38):
like to do that. So my encouragement here is am
I doing this for me? Am I doing this to
take care of somebody else. It's a difficult situation, like
I said, just because there are so many things one
I don't know that I really just am curious about.
But in your experience, there are so many things that
you cannot know unless you do talk about it. And
we don't like that. We like certain I know that
(10:00):
you probably want me to be like, yes, you have
to do this, and I can't tell that. I can't
say that to you, and I actually assume that you
probably don't assume I'm going to do that if you
do listen to this podcast enough. So I just again
want to throw this back to you and encourage you
to allow yourself to take the pressure off yourself of
managing other people and be responsible and being responsible for
(10:21):
things that you did not do and that are not yours,
and take responsibility for what is yours and what you
need and how important those things are to you. I
hope that this doesn't happen to anybody ever again. However,
I think that that would be naive of me to assume,
just because of how insane and wild batcherette and bachelor
(10:43):
party culture has become. It's very interesting to me, and
it can be something that's really fun and fruitful and
exciting and wonderful, and it also can be something that
is very dysfunctional and toxic and not so helpful. It's
kind of like anything in the world. We can take
it to the extremes, and sometimes those extremes don't really
(11:06):
end up adding up to being worth it. So again,
I would hope this never would happen again, and I
hope that you, whoever wrote this, never gets in a
situation like this again. Maybe there's some things you learned
that you can take with you on future bacherette parties
or maybe your own if you have not had one
and you hope to have one one day. I would
(11:27):
love to hear other people's thoughts feelings on this, and
also other people's questions like I said, you can email
me Katherine at nied Therapy podcast dot com and until
I talk to you guys again on Monday, I hope
you guys are having the day you need to have
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