March 3, 2025 • 67 mins
Relationships shape our lives—whether they’re friendships, family bonds, or romantic connections. But what does it mean to have a truly healthy relationship? In this episode, we have real, honest conversations about building strong connections, communicating boundaries, and recognizing when it’s time to walk away.
Join us as we explore what healthy love and friendship look like, how to communicate effectively, and the habits that foster lasting, fulfilling relationships. No sugarcoating—just real talk, real growth, and real change. Whether you’re navigating new relationships or healing from past ones, this podcast is here to help you build the connections you deserve.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Detours Family, welcome to another episode. I am here with my gorgeous wife Deb.
(00:26):
Hi guys.
Happy almost Easter. We're just a month or so, a little bit more than a month away from Easter.
My goodness, time is flying.
Yeah, I know.
It's been kind of cold here for Florida.
Really? You think?
For Florida, yeah. It's been, I think it's beautiful, but my gosh, like your parents, they're dying.
(00:48):
They're freezing.
Dad, he's...
He's got no meat on his bones.
No meat. A sweatshirt and a jacket isn't enough to keep him warm.
My goodness. But yeah, time is flying by. We are in season five. I don't even know what episode number we're on these days.
We should know the episode number, no?
I'll find out later when I go and post it. I have no idea offhand.
(01:10):
Okay.
But you and I were talking just the other day about a topic that we wanted to bring up in a podcast.
How do you know, Lera, what's the difference between friendships and or relationships when you or the other person is healthy or not healthy emotionally?
(01:31):
So potential wounding from a past.
Right.
Whatever it may be, everybody comes to relationships with baggage.
But just how does that impact people?
How do you know how to have boundaries? How do you have a healthy relationship?
How do you get yourself ready?
And when we say relationship, we don't necessarily mean a romantic relationship.
(01:54):
This can be you and one of your really good friends.
True.
So I guess where we kick off, you've had some tremendous healing in your life.
I know we had the season number one we did on your divorces.
We have yet to circle up and we fully plan to just on your sexual abuse and just how you've healed from that.
(02:17):
Yeah, it's a long journey of healing.
Yeah. So let's start unpacking that.
How long of a journey was that for you to get healthy?
Oh, that's a loaded question.
Sure.
It's a loaded question.
Because I thought I was healthier a lot sooner than God thought I was healthy.
(02:39):
Yeah. But now that you're past it, you can look back and go, yeah, there were some times where I wasn't being honest with myself.
But like, how long do you think from the moment you decided I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, I'm sick and tired of hurting, I need healing, I'm going to begin?
From that moment until you felt...
(03:01):
Oh, man.
There was a duration of time where I was working on specific things.
And that specific thing I felt was, you know, maybe a year, year and a half, two years.
But really, from the point I got divorced to the point that I was remarried to you, I think that whole time I was in a healing journey.
(03:24):
I was... it's a lot longer than you think it is when you go into like, hey, I want to be well.
I know that what I'm doing is somehow self-destructive.
Like, I keep finding myself in the same patterns and I'm the common denominator.
Like, how do I stop this madness?
(03:46):
So you don't get all the awareness all at once.
And a lot of times people just don't... they're in denial.
Oh, of course.
And I come from a family of deniers.
So I was always the one that was like, let's bring this to the table.
Let's talk about it.
Let's get it resolved.
Yeah, your son gets that from you.
Yes.
I desire resolution and I desire restoration.
(04:10):
And, you know, the people that you participate with don't always want that.
So, you know, if you're in a relationship with someone who is not on a path of growth and you are,
healing can take a long time.
But I was fortunate enough to be single in that process.
And I think that was really healthy for me.
Sure.
(04:31):
And so from your divorce until you and I were united, that was what, seven, eight years?
Yeah.
Something along those lines?
You know, you think about it and you want to round up.
That's a decade.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
So what happens during those seven, eight, ten years, whatever it is, what's the very first sign?
(04:54):
Do you just see something?
Are you feeling something in the pit of your stomach that every time you get close to someone, you're getting anxiety?
Like, what are the signs and symptoms that you realize that you go, man, I'm the lowest common denominator
or this anxiety within me is the lowest count?
What was that for you?
(05:16):
I had a tendency to self-protect because I was so deeply disappointed throughout my life and experienced trauma.
And the body's natural reaction mentally and physically is to protect itself.
That's why you see people who are, you know, very depressed or very hurt.
(05:38):
And even their posture indicates that they're drawing their heart in and rounding their shoulders forward to subconsciously, they're protecting their heart.
So I did a lot of, I wouldn't let people really know me.
I'll let you know me part of the way, but I was always afraid to show people the crazy, as my friend would say.
(06:00):
Did you show them the crazy?
Would you describe it as putting up walls?
Yes, I would.
It was a very big wall that I erected around my heart.
And I was really trying to protect the little girl in me, the one that was originally hurt in childhood.
You know, that little girl or that little boy, depending on, you know, who's listening to this, has some original wounds.
(06:24):
And I always felt like I wasn't protected in childhood.
And as I got older, it was just more and more incidents where people showed up and were manipulative and hurtful.
And so I really kind of kept people at arm's length.
Like I was very like personable and you wouldn't know that I was doing that.
(06:47):
But I had crafted this like wall that you weren't going to penetrate because you're not worthy to penetrate it.
Because you're going to hurt me and then I'm going to have to start this pain all over again.
So denial that I was in pain was part of the dysfunction.
(07:08):
Putting up walls to protect my heart was part of the dysfunction.
Codependency was a huge part of what I needed to heal from.
And typically you see that in romantic relationships, but I definitely displayed codependency in friendship during that season of singleness.
I had friends that I were really, really close with.
(07:31):
And I look back and go, wow, like I sought their approval so deeply.
And I did things that, like, if they were mad or they were disappointed, it would wreck me.
So the things that you just go, wow, that really doesn't just happen in romantic relationships.
(07:53):
That can happen in any dysfunctional relationship.
So what was the tipping point for you?
When did you have the moment where you said, okay, God, enough is enough.
I don't want to do this anymore.
How do I get healthy?
Is it a conversation like that?
Well, in season one, I talked about, you know, God used my sexuality as a tipping point for me.
(08:18):
I was celibate for the time I got divorced.
And I was pretty proud of the fact that I was celibate and I was doing it for Jesus and I was doing it in my own strength.
And I didn't realize that I was using that as a form of righteousness.
And I was trying to, I don't know that I would say I was trying to earn favor with God,
(08:42):
but there was some sort of like pharisaical something in me that was just like, you know,
when I was finding that no one else was celibate and that was ticking me off because like I'm trying really hard here
and no one else is doing this and the Christian, I'm not saying nobody, but that was my mindset.
I was coming across people that were like, you're waiting for marriage?
Like I was the weird one and I'm like, but we're Christians.
(09:06):
So I had a tipping point where I had been single for so long and celibate for so long that I just was like, I'm pissed about it.
I'm mad now, God, you know, I want this and you're not giving it to me.
And so I then again talked about in season one, but I had a one night stand.
(09:27):
And the next day I was just so broke. I was so broken about it.
Like how did I get here? How did I go from uber Christian to weeping on my kitchen floor,
feeling the disgust of what I had done with someone I didn't care about who later told me he had a girlfriend.
And I was just like, how is this my life?
(09:49):
And so that was really the tipping point at that season of my life where it was just like, this is not who I desire to be.
And I'm ashamed of what I've done and I never thought I could get there.
And that was the pridefulness of where I was at in my walk with the Lord.
Like you're a sinner. If you think you're not going to sin again, you're fooling yourself.
(10:16):
And I was sad and disappointed and disgusted.
And I had talked to another friend about it who was somewhat like, I don't know,
I wouldn't say that they were as supportive as I had hoped, but they were going through a program and they're like,
(10:37):
Hey, I did this thing called family life skills. It was really helpful for me.
I don't know. Why don't you try it?
So I went on my very first path of, hey, I have some issues.
I keep showing up in life in ways that I don't like.
And what was the description?
(11:01):
What's the sales pitch of life skills where you go, huh, okay, I can see how going through a course like this would be beneficial to me.
What was it about that?
The program itself was based on a man, Paul Hextrom, who was an angry man that abused his wife and was taken to court
(11:26):
and had to go through anger management and went through anger management and recognized like,
Hey, like there's a lot more to this anger. Where does it come from?
And he started to delve into where does it come from?
And so the pitch was like, Hey, we're going to talk through your family of origin first,
(11:49):
and we're going to understand what stories you've been told.
What's the narrative that you have been told since childhood?
And we're going to dissect that narrative and figure out, you know, how God sees your story.
And it was, you know, it was a Christian based program. So that was that was a bonus.
Like I really wanted something that was going to bring me back to Jesus and was going to be founded on biblical principles.
(12:18):
And that was like the start of like, wow, I've had some messaging all through childhood.
And when you really start to dig deep, you can see how that message, the message in essence was you're insignificant.
You're not worthy to be protected. And hence the wall, right?
(12:39):
If I wasn't going to be protected, somebody had to do it.
And the insignificance, it was like, you know, that can't be true because Jesus died for me.
How do I figure out how to unpack this? And that's where God showed up.
And it was time in his word to show me my value and worth.
But that took so much time. Like that was first of all, that was a 40 week class every every week.
(13:04):
And it was a three hour course every week for 40 weeks.
So that in itself was a long time. And it was a group of women.
It was eight of us. And, you know, you start to dig into other people's stories and perceptions about their lives.
And you start to see, wow, like when someone else talks about their dysfunction, you feel like, well, I I experienced that too.
(13:30):
And like you get this kind of like I don't want to say like there's something comforting,
even though it shouldn't be that other people have suffered and other people have had their share of dysfunction.
And you you're willing to go into the depths of the darkness with other people.
Yeah, you're not alone. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you get you find support in.
You know, in others. Yeah, absolutely.
(13:53):
And just recognizing that the internal dialogue was so polluted by the enemy's lies that, of course, I was finding myself in the same pattern.
I was picking the same kind of men. I was picking the same kind of friends.
I was self sabotaging because I really I really thought I was insignificant.
(14:15):
And if you would have asked me that on the surface, I would have been like, what are you kidding?
Of course, I'm not insignificant, please. You know, and that's the denial that that comes in.
So what were the type of friends that you had before all of this?
Well, I had no friends. I. Male, female, nothing.
(14:39):
I had no real significant friendships.
We moved when I was little, you know, and we moved a few times and when I moved to South Florida,
I was probably in seventh grade and I really just could not seem to connect with anyone.
And I wound up in a counseling program even as a teenager.
(15:01):
So I've been in therapy a very, very long time. May I just say.
But and then as I got older, I got pregnant in high school.
Everyone that would have been possibly a friend was going on to do college.
And their life was just now so different than mine.
And so women that were having children were much older.
(15:24):
Like, I just didn't have a place. So I was very lonely.
And then I met, you know, I kind of gravitate toward gravitated more towards guys
because I just felt like they were less judgy.
And, you know, so I had some guy friends that were, you know, very nice and wound up.
(15:45):
I don't know, like every friend that I actually had in my 20s were party friends.
So I just, you know, these were people that you drink and drug with, but they were not shallow friendships.
Totally. So is that the self sabotage?
No, I don't know that I was I just could not find depth in friendship.
(16:07):
So it wasn't until I actually got saved and my very, very first request of God was I truly just want a friend, Lord.
I haven't had a real friend since I was a little girl.
Can you bring me a friend?
And he answered that question beautifully.
He answered that prayer beautifully.
But that friendship became very codependent because now here is this one person that like I knew God brought me to meet this girl.
(16:35):
And her opinion became like the utmost important to me.
And I sometimes I would go to her for problems instead of go to Jesus.
And he eventually had to break that friendship apart.
And I'm so grateful he did.
And it was interesting because I was in this program and the closer I got towards healing
and really understanding myself and starting to process, the more she kept saying, Are you sure you want to dig this stuff up?
(17:01):
Are you sure you really why do you have to uproot this stuff?
Like she was almost the voice of I mean, I don't know that she meant it.
I thought she, you know, in all honesty, I thought she was trying to be protective.
But like, why do you got to bring this up?
Kind of like within childhood. Oh, just get over it.
Sure. You know, and I didn't like that.
(17:22):
And that was the first time I was like, Oh, when you start to get well, people in your life are uncomfortable with that.
And I don't really know why that is. But because you're becoming different.
Yeah. You know, yeah.
The person that they've known forever is making different decisions than they used to make.
Right. And if you were the center of my decision, you had control.
(17:46):
And, you know, like, I wasn't allowing that anymore because I knew I needed help.
I knew desperately that if I wanted to be different, I had to do the hard thing.
And the hard thing is to actually look at yourself and go, Gosh, there's something not right here.
Like, it's me. And until I figure this out, I I'm going to keep hurting myself and others.
(18:09):
Was there anyone that you knew that you trusted a mentor or somebody that you spoke into your life that you could turn to and go, Hey, I'm thinking about taking this course?
Actually, yeah, I had like a spiritual mom. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
And while this friendship that I was in, there was a third person that came into the friendship and I got super like insecure and jealous.
(18:35):
And I felt like they were leaving me out. And when I look at it, they kind of were.
But I was also very insecure. So she has doing like a discipleship program with me, my spiritual mom.
And in the course of this, we wind up every scripture wind up.
(18:56):
We're starting to talk about this dysfunction, and she's now starting to play therapist more than spiritual guide.
And she at one point we were like doing this week after week for almost six months.
And she said, I can't do this anymore, honey. I have to let you go.
I'm like, you're breaking up with me. What do you mean? You have to let me go.
(19:17):
And she's like, you need more help than I can actually give you. You're already solid in the word.
I don't there's not anything we're doing here that you don't already have a foundation of the word.
You're solid on the word. You're not solid in your emotional life. And I am not a therapist.
I think you really need to go get help. And then the other friend had planted the seed about like life skills.
(19:43):
And so she kind of the spiritual mom was like pushed me like you need to.
Sure. Baby bird leave the nest. Yes. Time to go get help. Thank God. Yeah. Time to go get professional help. Thank God.
OK. So God used that. And I didn't really as I started to like grow and learn and journal and forgive,
(20:08):
forgive some of the messaging that I got as a kid and rewrite the story with Jesus.
What do you say about this, Jesus? I've been told I'm insignificant my whole life. But what do you say?
Oh, yeah, I've had all the trouble I've had all day and day and day and day and day and day and day and day and day and everything was like back to the word,
(20:30):
arresting and replacing. Oh, yeah. Big big foundational part of my healing, arresting the the lie and replacing with God's word.
So living in south Florida doesn't help. It's such an angry area.
that you claim to have,
but it is a very angry area of the country.
(20:53):
I've lived in numerous, numerous places
and every state except Alaska,
and it is definitely a sunny city for shady people,
as they say, for Miami.
That's like spot on.
Yeah, and I found myself,
after I moved there from Chicago to South Florida,
(21:14):
I definitely found myself getting more angry
because the people down there are just more angry.
So I can only imagine.
There's an angst in the air that people can't explain.
And when I moved there, I didn't have the self-awareness.
I was still somewhat young.
I was just a few years out of college.
(21:35):
Did a lot of traveling with my job
when I first moved to Florida.
So I wasn't there a ton,
but once that job kind of transitioned out
and I was there,
yeah, I did not have the self-awareness to realize,
hey, you're getting angry.
Why is this?
I wasn't saved either.
So yeah, that's interesting
(21:55):
that you're a product of where you grow up.
So it's not just family, but it's also environment.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Because that wasn't the case for me
when I lived in the Midwest.
People are nice in the Midwest.
Comparatively, yes.
Definitely.
So what are the,
it's amazing.
Well, let's back up again.
(22:16):
So you did life skills.
Was first round,
you did a program called Trees of Hope twice.
That's a program for sexual abuse.
Was that, was the first round before or after life skills?
Both of those were after life skills.
Both were after life.
So you went life skills, Trees of Hope, Trees of Hope.
Correct.
Okay, so you did that twice.
(22:36):
The woman, it's just so God ordained
because the lady that taught family life skills
was an Italian lady from like Philly.
Like just to have somebody that understood how I was raised
and the dynamic of what it's like to be in the East Coast
in a cultural family like Italians,
(22:59):
like she would often say to me, Deborah.
And she would stroke her own hand and go,
be nice, be easy to yourself.
Because everything in my life was so like rough.
Yeah.
The way I spoke to myself, the way, well, you see.
Your family is rough.
I love them.
They're very rough.
(23:19):
They are rough.
They are.
They are, yeah.
Yeah.
They are rough around the edges to say the least.
Yeah, so to have somebody that like I respected
that kind of understood me was God ordained.
And at the end of the 40 weeks, she said,
we've done some amazing work,
but we've only scratched the surface of, you know,
(23:43):
your sexual abuse.
You've mentioned some things and I know there's more there.
Would you agree?
And I said, yeah.
I think I'm gonna recommend you to someone I respect highly
who deals with sexual abuse survivors,
who is a survivor herself.
(24:04):
So she understands your pain and grief.
And I'd like you to go see her and see what she says.
And that same woman was the one that ran a program.
It wasn't actually Trees of Hope.
It was like the book that Trees of Hope used,
but at that point it wasn't licensed to Trees of Hope yet.
Sure.
(24:24):
So other people could teach from it.
And so I simultaneously took one-on-one counseling
and did, you know, the first course of Trees of Hope.
Trees of Hope is how many weeks?
Goodness, 12.
Okay. Yeah.
So you did an eight-month program,
a three-month program with counseling,
(24:47):
took a little bit of time in between,
figured out you needed to retake.
Yeah, not a whole lot in between.
Like it was over and I had been on the waiting list
for official Trees of Hope.
And that took a while and finally was like,
oh, well I just took it, should I take it again?
And my counselor was like, yeah, you should.
(25:11):
Like you think that would benefit?
It's not like redundant.
And she's like, no, it's not.
You're gonna pull off more layers to that onion
than you think.
And she was right.
So what, you talked about self-sabotage
and you know, there were,
the lowest common denominator was always you.
But through taking these courses,
(25:34):
you start developing and massaging the muscle,
working out the muscle that is self-awareness.
Yeah.
What do you start to see in other relationships
in your life where you will go,
oh, okay, that's what we were talking about in that class.
That may not be healthy.
(25:55):
I should handle this differently this time
than what I've done in my past.
Well, I know that one of the common themes in my story
was men.
And I ultimately were finding men that would not protect,
did not treat me with the respect that I deserved.
(26:20):
So they literally, okay,
so there's something called a life commandment
and in this program that I took.
And it's the story that you've told yourself,
either somebody told it to you like a parent
or it was inadvertently taught to you
by how somebody treated you in your family.
(26:41):
And that story, that life commandment
is how you've lived your life until then.
And so I actually found men
that fulfilled that life commandment,
which was you're not significant, you're not worthy
and I'm not gonna protect you.
And I really started to look at the men
that I was attracted to prior to understanding that concept.
(27:02):
And those were men who were very much,
I was chasing after their love,
just like I chased after daddy's love.
They did not truly treat me like,
I was objectified really.
I was the pretty girl on the shoulder
(27:22):
that they got to walk around with like a trophy.
I never felt, I felt physically safe
in some of those relationships
and physically not safe in others,
which was kind of the chaos of my own family life
was sometimes, am I okay, am I not okay?
(27:43):
Who's gonna have an outburst?
You know, blah, blah, blah.
I won't get into too much detail there.
And so very volatile men.
And then I behaved in ways that were not respectful to myself
because I kept making these choices.
(28:04):
So that was one of the common denominators.
So when I was dating again, I was really scared.
Like, am I gonna, is my picker broken?
I thought my picker was broken, you know?
So does the pendulum swing the other way
where you're now with overprotective men
or anything like that or are you just questioning everything?
Well, I'm with you and I don't find you overprotective,
(28:27):
but I do know that I'm safe with you.
So I just, I don't know.
So now you've got all this self-awareness.
Too much almost at one point.
I'm hypervigilant now.
Yeah.
Everything looks like a red flag.
Like while you're healing
(28:48):
and you're like, now you have all this self-awareness,
now like everything's a red flag.
And you don't always trust your gut
because your gut was violated as a child.
So you're like, is this a red flag?
Is this not a red flag?
And what I found was in the dating journey,
I would go, hey, that doesn't seem right.
(29:11):
That looks like a red flag.
And depending on how attracted I was to that person,
it was either going to repel me really quick,
like, no, I'm not doing this.
Or I would make an excuse and go,
well, maybe I'm seeing it wrong.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong.
Or I do a combination of those two things
(29:31):
back and forth, back and forth.
So I was scared.
I was terrified that I was gonna make the wrong choice.
And so I, any little like, you know, thing I saw,
I was like, hmm, hmm.
Should I run now or should I wait to run?
Maybe it's okay.
So it was just a very confusing time.
(29:53):
And that's why I truly believe
when people go through divorce or any kind of major loss
because divorce is equivalent to a death in a sense,
in my humble opinion.
And we've talked about this in season one.
It's a death of a dream.
It's a death of what you expected your life to look like.
And if the Bible says you're knitted together,
(30:16):
a divorce is tearing apart,
you're literally tearing off a part of you.
So in that process, you're just like, I was terrified.
So being single was the healthiest thing I can do
until I like, could do a good portion of the healing.
(30:36):
And so what's interesting is God has definitely brought you
other women in your life that are out there dating,
looking to date, and you've kind of become the counselor
of, hey, this is what I'm seeing.
Right.
Is this a red flag to you?
(30:58):
What do I do with this?
I don't know what to do.
I'm questioning this.
Right.
Is this just me?
You know, I'm not sure.
It's just me.
You know, I think until I met you,
I had blinders on to the world of how many,
truly how many hurt women are out there.
I think it's far more than I ever realized
(31:20):
and far deeper than I ever realized.
So I was probably very insensitive to it,
just out of sheer lack of knowledge,
not like I was trying to be difficult or not acknowledge,
but it's amazing how many women are out there
that I've come across that are just,
have been very, very hurt.
(31:42):
And it doesn't even necessarily have to be
in the same way that you were hurt.
Like my own mother was hurt by my brother
by her other son passing away.
And she never got healing for that.
And you wanna talk about someone throwing up walls
and those walls would go up to people
(32:03):
that she's definitely not dating
because she's still with my dad,
but just people entering into her life.
And what's amazing is just slowly over time,
it just gets worse and worse and worse.
Until you deal with it.
Or you give up dealing with the world.
(32:23):
That's true.
And you recluse.
Yeah, you recluse.
And it's amazing to see just how God is bringing
these ladies, young ladies, middle-aged ladies
into your life where they're all the time
turn into you going, hey Deb,
went out on a date with this guy.
(32:43):
What do you think?
He did this or whatever it may be
and you're now speaking into their lives.
But it's so amazing that even people
that have gotten some help, what I admire most about you
is just how deep you dug down to get the healing.
And I think so many people wanna say, I dug deep
(33:08):
when in reality they dusted off the surface.
I mean, it took you seven or eight years
and all your journaling, we're just talking about the classes
and the, if you will, that you took.
But what it truly takes to get healthy,
I think a lot of people will go,
well, I go to counseling once a week.
(33:29):
Right, it's an endurance thing.
I mean, it is the most gut-wrenching thing
and I don't know that people realize
how much they're going to endure.
Like when you're being pruned by the Lord
and he is digging up deep roots of whatever,
(33:50):
mine was anger and bitterness and fear and insecurity.
Like those are deep roots.
It's painful and most people would rather not
deal with the pain.
Of course.
It's hard. It's hard and it's scary.
And it's messy, it's so messy.
Like I can't tell you how many times
(34:10):
I threw myself on the floor and wept.
Like just wept at my own depravity,
wept at my circumstance, wept that I don't want
to have to keep digging this up.
Can I just be done with this already?
Can I just be healed Lord?
Can't you just touch my life and it just be all over
(34:33):
and I'm better?
Yeah, it's messy.
And you have to have the fortitude to keep going.
It's war and that's what people don't understand.
You're warring against your past,
against the lies, against the pain.
And it's not for the faint heart.
(34:53):
And maybe growing up in a rough family
made me equipped to deal with that
because there is nothing soft about my family.
So maybe I was just built to do this kind of healing work.
I don't know.
But.
It's amazing.
There's so many people are getting divorced anymore.
(35:16):
And when I, again, another area where my parents
were always together.
So when I was younger, I never really saw the impact
of divorce until my best friend,
senior year in high school, it came out that his mom
was cheating on his dad and she left his dad
for whoever this other guy was.
(35:37):
Heart wrenching.
And even then he was a very quiet introvert.
So even then, initially, the initial wave,
it almost looked like he wasn't impacted.
But again, it was a slow erosion over time
where his view of reality and what a healthy relationship
(36:00):
and again, relationship meaning friendship,
not necessarily romantic relationship,
but that plum line got completely skewed.
And he changed as a person slowly over time.
Just almost the refusal to face reality
(36:22):
became very real for him.
A lot of times I often wonder if that's the reason,
one of the many reasons why things like,
Halloween is so important and cosplaying and so on
and so forth, because you can pretend
to be something you're not and you don't have
to face the reality of who you are and get,
(36:43):
you can just make something up and be something else.
I don't wanna be anything but me, truly.
Amen to that.
I don't wanna be, I have no desire for that.
Renfairs, I used to be a musician,
we would play renfairs from time to time.
The people that go to that a lot of times,
at least the people that are there every single day,
(37:05):
every single weekend.
Escapism.
It's just, yeah, they would rather be something else
than face what they are.
And my buddy back in high school,
I remember we were talking one time and I said,
why don't you go see a therapist
and just talk to the therapist about what you went through
and you're, and he just replied going,
(37:28):
no, I'm afraid of what the therapist would tell me.
And I think there, but because of that,
we were attached at the hip, we were best buds,
middle school and high school, we met in sixth grade.
Those are primary years of your adult,
like your childhood, man.
We were best buddies and I would walk to his house
(37:50):
after school every single day
and my mom would pick me up from his house
and, but it turned into this constant game of chasing.
Yeah.
I would actually have to start pursuing his attention.
He needed attention.
He wouldn't return my phone calls.
(38:12):
Lots of different toxic traits.
So now that you're on the other side and then-
It's not fun to chase.
It's not fun to chase friends.
With you, I think there's definitely a pursuit
that a man should always pursue a woman
and there is fun in that chase.
(38:33):
But when, yeah, when it's friends
and phone calls are just not getting returned and so on.
And so what are some of the traits that you see
now that you've gone through all these programs
and ladies are coming up to you going,
hey Deb, what do you think about this guy?
This was the date.
So what are the red flags?
(38:53):
What are you seeing?
What are those red flags and what are they symptoms of?
That's a loaded big question to answer,
but I'll do my best to unpack that.
I think you can see that wounded people,
like hurt people, hurt people.
It's a cliche for it.
People say it all the time,
(39:14):
but there's so much meaning to that.
Like when you said there's a lot of wounded women,
there's a lot of wounded men.
And what is different about that is men don't have
the same liberty to discuss that openly
because it's viewed as weakness.
Vulnerability in men is just like,
(39:35):
it's viewed as weakness in our culture.
And so you have a lot of wounded men
and you have men who maybe don't have the vocabulary
to articulate their pain because women are far more verbal.
So they're coming across these men
who are also not healed.
And when you have two unhealed people,
now you're really dealing with some stuff.
(39:58):
I see a red flag would be
not allowing the person to be who they truly are.
Like I briefly dated a man that was so insecure
about my being an extrovert,
like as somehow that would take eyes off of him
(40:19):
or that it made him feel like I was an attention seeker
when I really wasn't, I was just personable.
And I couldn't open up my wings and fly and be who I was.
I felt very stifled.
So people who tend to kind of suck you in
(40:40):
and dim your light,
like if you are attracted to somebody and you start dating,
you're attracted to them for their light.
So why would you wanna dim that?
Well, it's because you're wounded and you're insecure
and somehow maybe someone hurt you.
And now you're so frightened
that you start behaving very possessively.
(41:02):
Possessive behavior is definitely a red flag.
Constantly, constantly, constantly,
where were you, where have you been?
Like, yeah, there's a level of respect
you give to the other person.
Hey, I'm going out to the store,
I'll be back in 20 minutes, blah, blah, blah.
But if you're not back in 20 minutes
and they wanna know every detail of where you've been,
(41:23):
like dude, I was stuck in traffic, relax.
That's a red flag.
People who rush to love bomb you,
love bombing is so common.
And because-
Yeah, I love that one.
Yeah, because it's very much romanticized in movies,
that it's this quick,
there's this chemistry and it's passionate.
(41:45):
And like all of a sudden somebody's saying,
I love you, after a few months.
And you're like, dude, like slow down.
Even if that is how you feel,
like there's a time and a place and-
Well, make sure that's what it is.
It's not, yeah.
It is.
It's not just passion and dopamine and excitement
and maybe even a little lust, you know?
(42:07):
Like- Sure.
I think the I love yous get thrown out quickly
and I think that could be dangerous for wounded people.
There's, yeah, like how they interact with their own family
can be a little bit of a sign too.
I'm not saying, you know, that's always a tail
(42:30):
and that's always a red flag
because some people just come from crazy families
and they're able to set boundaries and say,
hey, love you from a distance.
But there are other times where, like a mama's boy,
that to me is a red flag.
Like if mom can put a wedge between me and you,
that's a problem.
(42:51):
Like that's not godly behavior.
Cause eventually, you know,
you're supposed to leave your family and, you know,
and become one flesh.
And so mama's boys are a big red flag for me.
Or mama's girls or daddy's girls
are just like not being able to detach when necessary
(43:12):
from family and like mom controls everything
that the son does.
That's just, yeah.
Or, you know, the kids rule the roost.
Cause you know, a lot of people are dating
and they have kids and they're blending these families
together and let's say the daughter is manipulating the dad.
(43:34):
Like those are just things that you gotta go,
if I'm gonna date this person,
I essentially am taking on their baggage.
Is this something that is worth it for me?
I don't think so.
You know, that kind of stuff.
And a guy or a girl that's super guarded
to the point where like they give you just little breadcrumbs
(43:58):
of who they are, just to kind of keep you hanging on.
Sure.
Like breadcrumbs, but never any depth.
Like, hey, let me text her and you know,
like and just leave her hanging.
And women do this too.
This is not specifically towards men.
Women do this a lot too.
Where I'll just kind of keep him on the hook on the side
(44:20):
and like he'll be my fallback guy.
Those kind of traits of, you know, that to me is a user.
You know, I'm using you for my own sense of companionship
when it's convenient for me.
And when it's not convenient for me,
I'm just gonna ghost you.
I mean, these are things that you think
are pretty obvious red flags, but you know,
(44:41):
it depends on what kind of pattern you grew up in as a child.
If you are always chasing daddy's love, trust me,
you're gonna find men that are emotionally unavailable.
And you don't realize you're chasing daddy's love
because you haven't dug down deep enough to go,
oh, wow, there's a pattern from my family of origin.
(45:03):
That's why the family of origin thing is so important
because if you don't recognize those patterns
from way back then, you have no idea
you're repeating them in adulthood.
You're just doing life because this is how you do life.
Well, that's what you know.
Right.
You're doing what you know.
Right.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy and it's pretty sad
(45:25):
to watch people go through it because there's a,
the saddest is when people,
I'll see people approach you saying, hey, Deb,
what would you do?
And you give them the advice and they just kinda,
in one ear and out the other.
Yeah, because-
And then they're surprised by the results.
I know, I know.
Well, and I could, you know, there's times where I,
I just don't, I don't believe in sugarcoating.
(45:47):
Like, it's just, I can't tell you what you wanna hear
because you wanna hear it
because I am responsible for what I like.
But that's not who I am as a person.
Like, I don't do that with anyone in my life.
Like, I do not blow smoke, as I like to say it.
Yeah, for me, I position,
don't ask me the question if you don't want the answer.
(46:09):
Truly, truly.
And there are times I've said, like, hey,
are you sure you really want me to answer this?
And that usually stops people, like, for half a second.
They're like, uh-oh.
They'll pump the brakes.
Yeah, I don't say that.
I just go straight for the jugular and answer the question.
And that's probably a bad trait on my side.
I, because tone definitely matters
(46:32):
and I can come across, you know.
Yeah, I've seen that occasionally in you,
but I think that you're definitely better at that
than, like, each passing year.
Yeah, it's definitely something I'm working on, for sure.
Especially in this season in life
(46:52):
where patience is just absolutely crucial
and we're playing a lot of politics and so on
and so forth with healthcare workers and so on.
Mm-hmm, that's true.
It's definitely teaching me how to maybe have that restraint
that you haven't, and it's not like I attack someone
(47:12):
for the sake of attacking,
but I do think there are times when people ask for feedback
and they're truly not ready for the feedback.
Right.
And I've gotta get better at acknowledging that
and go, like you said, are you sure you want me
to answer that?
And I think God does that with us.
I think there are so many times.
(47:33):
Yeah, I agree.
Where we're praying and we're asking God for an answer,
but he's not talking because he's sitting there going,
why would I waste my time?
Even if I talk, you're not gonna listen.
You're not really ready to listen to what I have to say,
so why would I waste my breath?
I absolutely believe that to be true.
Yeah.
I sometimes get overly like,
(47:57):
like I invest in friendships
and when people truly seek advice
and they seem to wanna follow it
and then do the complete opposite,
there were times, to be honest with you,
I get a little like, really?
Like I expended all this energy,
gave you solid biblical advice
and you're gonna do the opposite?
Like sometimes I get a little crunchy
(48:17):
and I have to like pull away and go,
okay, I just need a breather.
I need to set a boundary and go,
no, we're not doing this right now.
And then, you know, God will speak to me and soften me
and then I can come back and say those hard things tenderly.
And I think that's important
is being able to say hard things tenderly
(48:39):
is a skill that God has helped me really develop
over the years because life is hard
and I know what it's like to be in pain.
So when I say I don't sugar coat things,
I'm not saying that I come out the side of my neck
and just say things,
but I am the friend that is always gonna tell you
the hard truth because that's the kind of friend I want.
(49:02):
I am the kind of friend that I desire most,
which is please don't tell me what I wanna hear.
I am not that girl.
I would rather hear,
dude, what are you doing?
Knock it off.
Then, oh, it's okay, honey.
Everybody, you know, it's okay.
Like I don't, that doesn't work for me.
Like just tell me I'm being a jerk
(49:23):
so that I can make an improvement.
And that's my deepest desire in life
is to know Christ better
and to know how to grow in Him
because I'm a work in progress.
I don't think you ever stop growing.
And if you do, that's a problem for me.
Like I have that little placard in the room that says,
(49:47):
don't be afraid of change.
Be afraid of not changing.
And God gave me that placard
in the depths of my hardest season
of actually getting healing.
That's a really kind of quirky story.
I was thrifting and I came across the sign
and that sign was directly behind the cashier
(50:09):
and I was like, oh, oh.
Like I read it and it just struck me
almost like a God smack, right?
And I said, how much is the sign?
And he goes, what sign?
And I point and he turns around and he's like,
oh, that's decoration, that's not for sale.
And I go, no, I need that sign.
(50:29):
That sign is for me, please.
How-
Name your price.
Yeah, basically name my price.
And he goes, he kind of tilted his head and like paused.
Like, and I guess maybe there was desperation in my eyes
because I meant it.
I was not leaving that store without that sign.
And he looks around and he pauses and nobody's looking
and he picks up the sign and puts it in the bag
(50:51):
and doesn't charge me.
And I'm like, no, no, no, like I'll pay.
And he's like, no, take the sign.
And I was like, are you sure?
And he's like, I could not be more sure.
And like, I wound up with this sign
and it's still in my room today.
But like he was, it was just a weird encounter.
It was quirky and wonderful
and that was God's divine little kiss.
(51:13):
And I look at it every morning when I get up.
And you talked about something earlier
that's also interesting as far as red flags
and people that are wounded and that word was boundaries.
That's one of those words that people often talk a lot
about either A, someone just blowing through
(51:38):
all sorts of boundaries or someone
that's having their boundaries rolled over.
But a lot of people don't talk about
articulating your boundaries well.
That's a good point.
If somebody crosses a boundary, did you articulate,
(51:59):
hey, this is a boundary and it's a boundary for a reason.
You can't get upset with someone
if you didn't articulate well that something is a boundary
and they did something that hurt you.
I think it's critical.
So even that self-examination that you do
helps you understand, okay, I have identified this
(52:20):
as a boundary, now I need to let people know
that this is a boundary.
Maybe a little bit of the why, maybe a lot of the why.
Depends, yeah.
Depends on the reason.
But I think there's so many friendships out there
that end because boundaries are crossed
and it's definitely there are boundaries that get crossed
(52:41):
because somebody doesn't wanna honor those boundaries.
But there's also a tremendous number of friendships that end
because boundaries are crossed, but it was accidental
because the boundary was never set there.
Right, and you know what's interesting is
people are so uncomfortable with conflict
that they would rather not have the hard conversation
(53:01):
because it's gonna be uncomfortable
and they would rather just walk.
And that's dangerous.
If you're like, hey, people pleasing in a sense
where it's so uncomfortable to say what your needs are
and what your wants are, that you're willing to just
kind of blow over that and then it builds up and builds up
(53:23):
and then you just never explain why you're leaving
and why the friendship's over.
That's a problem in you, not necessarily in the other person.
Yes, the other person should have respected your boundaries,
but they didn't really know what those were.
They are not telepathic, they cannot figure it out.
You have to express what those are.
And then once you express it, if you let that person
(53:47):
cross that boundary that you've already expressed,
you are teaching people how to treat you.
Your word doesn't really mean anything.
You'll let me get away with that.
And so it's like standing up for yourself.
It's being okay with making someone else feel uncomfortable
by you telling them no.
(54:07):
And sometimes no's a complete sentence.
I don't have to explain to you why I don't wanna
go to the movies.
I can and it's probably nice for me to do that,
but if I'm going through a hard time and you ask me
to do something and I just say no thank you,
that should be enough.
I don't owe you an explanation.
(54:29):
Now, depending on the depth of that relationship,
sure I could give you an explanation like,
hey I'm really struggling today and I need some alone time
to just kind of reflect and deal with God tonight.
So no thank you to the movie.
But you don't necessarily owe anybody of that.
So when someone crosses that boundary and you let them,
(54:51):
then you will inevitably have more boundaries crossed
and more boundaries crossed because you're not willing
to have those hard conversations.
Yeah, I think that happens a lot in the United States.
I see that in a lot of people and I don't understand it.
Again, maybe it's the lack of self-awareness,
(55:13):
maybe it's the intimidation of having a hard conversation,
but that's also a sign that I see with people
that are wounded is they can't even articulate boundaries,
but all of a sudden you've crossed them.
Yes, and I can speak to that in childhood
is like as soon as I expressed a pain point,
(55:37):
it was either mocked or ignored or get over it.
And so it took me a long time to talk about my needs
because I was afraid of rejection.
And I think that comes up a lot for people.
If I say this, if I don't people please,
people are gonna reject me.
And conflict resolution is hard work.
(55:59):
It's much easier to run than it is to confront
and have hard conversations in truth and love,
in respectfulness, it's a lot easier just go,
eh, I'm not gonna deal with that.
I mean, people do that in relationships
and it's called stonewalling.
Like you can be in a relationship with someone,
(56:20):
you get into an argument and you wanna talk about it
and the other person just totally ignores you
and refuses to deal with it.
And that was my very, very first relationship.
I could not get him to express anything
about the pain I expressed to him.
He would completely shut down and just totally ignore me.
(56:42):
That is wicked and evil to do to somebody
and it's emotionally stunted.
That was his wounding.
And what's interesting hearing that is as,
not only am I an introvert but I'm a processor.
At the same token, when you and I have something
that we need to talk through,
(57:04):
a lot of times I'm not good in the moment
because I have not had the time to process
what has happened and come back being honest with myself.
Maybe what did I mess up?
What did you mess up?
Let me ask for forgiveness for what I messed up.
Let me discuss with you what I felt like you messed up.
(57:24):
So there's also that element of,
hey, we can't address this right now.
Maybe you want to.
And I'm not trying to avoid this,
but you also have to give me a little bit of time.
I'm not running and hiding,
but I am going in the other room to process.
Sometimes people go, hey, I need to take a walk.
(57:46):
For me, I have to pull myself out of the situation
and depending on how deep I was,
determines how long I may come to you and go,
hey, I need to cool off.
Well, let's talk about this tomorrow.
It may need to be something that's that serious,
but there's always a, we're not gonna avoid this.
(58:09):
We're gonna talk about this,
but yeah, you've gotta give me time
because otherwise I'm not gonna be fair to you.
If I can't be honest with myself,
then there's no way I can be honest with you.
And you've gotta give me time to be honest with myself
and go, okay, let's,
I literally will hit the rewind button
and go back to the beginning of whatever it was
(58:30):
and replay it and just do play by play in my head.
And almost like watching a football game,
the announcers do play by play and just go,
okay, this is where I messed up.
This is where I feel like you messed up
that I need to address this with you.
And maybe even here, maybe it wasn't you messing up.
Maybe it is a wounding from my past
(58:50):
or maybe it was a long day at work.
Who knows?
But even as a processor, the flip side to that coin is,
you can't always necessarily,
because you are very much,
hey, let's talk about this right now.
If we had a little spat on something,
like you wanna put it into it where I have to go,
hold on a minute, let me step away.
(59:12):
And I respect you enough
to not cross that boundary with you.
But I gotta tell you,
the things that you don't know that happened in that time
that I'm waiting for you to come back to the conversation,
I am in a war.
Like I am in a war.
Sure.
I'm making assumptions that God has to break down.
(59:34):
I'm fear mongering myself.
I'm in a war.
But I also respect you enough to know that
if you don't process our,
what do you call it?
Spirited fellowship would not turn out well.
And so I think that that's the hard stuff
that we're talking about is,
(59:54):
healed people respect other people's boundaries.
Even though, would I love to have the conversation
right now, right this minute?
Yeah, I would.
But it's not about me.
It's about us.
And as a team, my teammate needs a timeout.
And so, then I have to go directly to God and go,
you're gonna have to help me in his timeout
(01:00:15):
because I have a tendency to,
my thoughts can snowball really quick
and because I come from a negative family,
I can go real negative real quick.
And if I don't seek the Lord
while you're seeking your time to process, I will implode.
So, but I love you and respect you enough to go wait,
like how, there's no fruit to this.
(01:00:37):
If I push, there's no fruit.
And the, you know, speaking from the other side,
I also know that you are spiritually at war.
So I don't, I don't take longer than it needs to take.
Right, you're not avoiding.
No, it's truly, I know this is hard on you.
(01:00:58):
Give me some space because it's not gonna be fruitful.
But if I take too long, it's also not gonna be fruitful.
Yeah.
There's, that's not a good place to be in either.
Right.
So yeah, that just that ability to step back
and assess yourself and assess the situation
(01:01:20):
is super critical.
But yeah, I think the boundaries issue,
everybody wants to throw up
and everybody's almost so proud to throw up boundaries.
These days that are not known prior to being thrown out.
I call those expectations.
(01:01:40):
And when they're not met, that's how resentment starts.
So it's an expectation that you never expressed.
Right.
And you're calling it a boundary in your own head,
but it's not a boundary, it's an expectation.
You expect somebody to read your mind and go.
Do this or don't do this.
Meanwhile, it literally was nothing but I expect you
(01:02:01):
to do this and all of a sudden, okay,
that expectation wasn't met, oh my goodness.
Right.
That's why communication is so, so important.
And being able to say that at the right time
is so important and the right tone is so important.
Like just because you feel it doesn't mean
it needs to come out of your mouth.
And I had to learn, God has taught me
(01:02:22):
the long hard path of that.
Like, man, could I make a fire out of something?
Yes.
Have I done that in my past?
Yes.
So just because I feel the passion to say it right then
and there does not mean that I should.
And I have to always go, what's the big picture?
(01:02:42):
Will that yield fruit or will that destroy?
And if it's gonna destroy, then I need to keep my mouth shut.
And so when you say something is just important
as how you say it and in the, you know,
like for instance, if you're exhausted
and I come to you with something that I know
(01:03:04):
is gonna be a hard conversation,
that's just not gonna yield me any fruit.
I'm gonna wait until you get some rest, period.
Whether I wanna say it right now or not is not important.
And that's the thing that, that's when you stop
being selfish and you start being a team.
Because I always want what's best for us as a whole
(01:03:25):
and if I have to, if I can't control my mouth
and I just have to say it, because I have to say it,
because that is how I was raised, that's dangerous.
That's not fair.
So timing's super important, I think,
and setting a boundary that's actually articulated
is important.
And that's.
Yeah, and you said something earlier though too
(01:03:47):
that you also have to be sensitive to.
Just because you feel it doesn't mean it's true.
Oh yeah.
So you can feel offended, you can feel slighted,
you can feel all sorts of things.
But again, and that's where I need to buy myself time
to reassess the situation.
I may feel angry at you for doing something,
(01:04:10):
but I need to be honest with myself and honest with you.
Did you do something to justify me getting my feathers
ruffled, let me do the play by play?
And even if you did, the proper response is not anger,
it's communication.
It's communication back.
But just because you feel something
(01:04:32):
doesn't even make it true.
That's definitely, feelings are not facts.
No, it's very interesting.
But yeah, it's tough because you and I,
we have friends, we have coworkers,
we have all sorts of things where we just,
we sit back and we go, oh man.
(01:04:53):
Yep.
This is not bearing the type of fruit we would hope for
for this person or for these people.
Yeah.
It's tough.
It's tough because again, you can sit and have conversations
and speak truthfully in a loving manner with someone.
(01:05:14):
And it goes in one ear and out the other because dopamine
or because that friend that they're hanging out with
that's toxic has always been there
and that's what they're used to.
Some people just love drama.
They're addicted to the dopamine of drama.
Absolutely.
So they're not gonna leave a friendship
or they're not gonna leave a relationship
because they're addicted to the drama.
(01:05:35):
There's so many different things.
But it's amazing when you see healthy relationships.
It's, you sense the peace of God.
Like when you see a marriage where the husband serves
the wife and the wife serves the husband and you do it,
not because it's a chore, this, that and the other,
but because you truly just get joy out of doing something
(01:05:58):
for the other person.
You know, people will describe it as,
you know, you've got good vibes, you got good zen.
Yeah.
But truly what they're growing is
the peace of God. This is what Christ is supposed
to look like.
This is what Christ is supposed to feel like.
This is what Christ is supposed to be like serving
(01:06:21):
and loving serving.
It's pretty incredible.
So we hope that today's conversation has been helpful
for anyone that's out there that is trying to figure out
why they can't find healthy relationships
or you're not getting the right relationship.
So where you're, you know, you're trying to identify
(01:06:41):
and articulate something you're seeing in a friend going,
what is going on here?
Right.
Who knows?
We hope some part of this conversation today
was helpful for you guys.
I sure hope so.
Yeah, absolutely.
But this has been an interesting topic.
We've been seeing it a lot lately.
So we thought, oh, let's just chat about it.
Yeah.
See what comes up.
So.
I'm glad we had a chance to do that.
(01:07:02):
Yeah, absolutely.
But thank you guys so much for tuning in on this episode
of Detours.
We appreciate it.
Definitely.
We will see you guys again in a few weeks.
Take care.
Minh Th Val bread.
Detours Family, welcome to another episode. I am here with my gorgeous wife Deb.
(00:26):
Hi guys.
Happy almost Easter. We're just a month or so, a little bit more than a month away from Easter.
My goodness, time is flying.
Yeah, I know.
It's been kind of cold here for Florida.
Really? You think?
For Florida, yeah. It's been, I think it's beautiful, but my gosh, like your parents, they're dying.
(00:48):
They're freezing.
Dad, he's...
He's got no meat on his bones.
No meat. A sweatshirt and a jacket isn't enough to keep him warm.
My goodness. But yeah, time is flying by. We are in season five. I don't even know what episode number we're on these days.
We should know the episode number, no?
I'll find out later when I go and post it. I have no idea offhand.
(01:10):
Okay.
But you and I were talking just the other day about a topic that we wanted to bring up in a podcast.
How do you know, Lera, what's the difference between friendships and or relationships when you or the other person is healthy or not healthy emotionally?
(01:31):
So potential wounding from a past.
Right.
Whatever it may be, everybody comes to relationships with baggage.
But just how does that impact people?
How do you know how to have boundaries? How do you have a healthy relationship?
How do you get yourself ready?
And when we say relationship, we don't necessarily mean a romantic relationship.
(01:54):
This can be you and one of your really good friends.
True.
So I guess where we kick off, you've had some tremendous healing in your life.
I know we had the season number one we did on your divorces.
We have yet to circle up and we fully plan to just on your sexual abuse and just how you've healed from that.
(02:17):
Yeah, it's a long journey of healing.
Yeah. So let's start unpacking that.
How long of a journey was that for you to get healthy?
Oh, that's a loaded question.
Sure.
It's a loaded question.
Because I thought I was healthier a lot sooner than God thought I was healthy.
(02:39):
Yeah. But now that you're past it, you can look back and go, yeah, there were some times where I wasn't being honest with myself.
But like, how long do you think from the moment you decided I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired, I'm sick and tired of hurting, I need healing, I'm going to begin?
From that moment until you felt...
(03:01):
Oh, man.
There was a duration of time where I was working on specific things.
And that specific thing I felt was, you know, maybe a year, year and a half, two years.
But really, from the point I got divorced to the point that I was remarried to you, I think that whole time I was in a healing journey.
(03:24):
I was... it's a lot longer than you think it is when you go into like, hey, I want to be well.
I know that what I'm doing is somehow self-destructive.
Like, I keep finding myself in the same patterns and I'm the common denominator.
Like, how do I stop this madness?
(03:46):
So you don't get all the awareness all at once.
And a lot of times people just don't... they're in denial.
Oh, of course.
And I come from a family of deniers.
So I was always the one that was like, let's bring this to the table.
Let's talk about it.
Let's get it resolved.
Yeah, your son gets that from you.
Yes.
I desire resolution and I desire restoration.
(04:10):
And, you know, the people that you participate with don't always want that.
So, you know, if you're in a relationship with someone who is not on a path of growth and you are,
healing can take a long time.
But I was fortunate enough to be single in that process.
And I think that was really healthy for me.
Sure.
(04:31):
And so from your divorce until you and I were united, that was what, seven, eight years?
Yeah.
Something along those lines?
You know, you think about it and you want to round up.
That's a decade.
Yeah.
It's crazy.
So what happens during those seven, eight, ten years, whatever it is, what's the very first sign?
(04:54):
Do you just see something?
Are you feeling something in the pit of your stomach that every time you get close to someone, you're getting anxiety?
Like, what are the signs and symptoms that you realize that you go, man, I'm the lowest common denominator
or this anxiety within me is the lowest count?
What was that for you?
(05:16):
I had a tendency to self-protect because I was so deeply disappointed throughout my life and experienced trauma.
And the body's natural reaction mentally and physically is to protect itself.
That's why you see people who are, you know, very depressed or very hurt.
(05:38):
And even their posture indicates that they're drawing their heart in and rounding their shoulders forward to subconsciously, they're protecting their heart.
So I did a lot of, I wouldn't let people really know me.
I'll let you know me part of the way, but I was always afraid to show people the crazy, as my friend would say.
(06:00):
Did you show them the crazy?
Would you describe it as putting up walls?
Yes, I would.
It was a very big wall that I erected around my heart.
And I was really trying to protect the little girl in me, the one that was originally hurt in childhood.
You know, that little girl or that little boy, depending on, you know, who's listening to this, has some original wounds.
(06:24):
And I always felt like I wasn't protected in childhood.
And as I got older, it was just more and more incidents where people showed up and were manipulative and hurtful.
And so I really kind of kept people at arm's length.
Like I was very like personable and you wouldn't know that I was doing that.
(06:47):
But I had crafted this like wall that you weren't going to penetrate because you're not worthy to penetrate it.
Because you're going to hurt me and then I'm going to have to start this pain all over again.
So denial that I was in pain was part of the dysfunction.
(07:08):
Putting up walls to protect my heart was part of the dysfunction.
Codependency was a huge part of what I needed to heal from.
And typically you see that in romantic relationships, but I definitely displayed codependency in friendship during that season of singleness.
I had friends that I were really, really close with.
(07:31):
And I look back and go, wow, like I sought their approval so deeply.
And I did things that, like, if they were mad or they were disappointed, it would wreck me.
So the things that you just go, wow, that really doesn't just happen in romantic relationships.
(07:53):
That can happen in any dysfunctional relationship.
So what was the tipping point for you?
When did you have the moment where you said, okay, God, enough is enough.
I don't want to do this anymore.
How do I get healthy?
Is it a conversation like that?
Well, in season one, I talked about, you know, God used my sexuality as a tipping point for me.
(08:18):
I was celibate for the time I got divorced.
And I was pretty proud of the fact that I was celibate and I was doing it for Jesus and I was doing it in my own strength.
And I didn't realize that I was using that as a form of righteousness.
And I was trying to, I don't know that I would say I was trying to earn favor with God,
(08:42):
but there was some sort of like pharisaical something in me that was just like, you know,
when I was finding that no one else was celibate and that was ticking me off because like I'm trying really hard here
and no one else is doing this and the Christian, I'm not saying nobody, but that was my mindset.
I was coming across people that were like, you're waiting for marriage?
Like I was the weird one and I'm like, but we're Christians.
(09:06):
So I had a tipping point where I had been single for so long and celibate for so long that I just was like, I'm pissed about it.
I'm mad now, God, you know, I want this and you're not giving it to me.
And so I then again talked about in season one, but I had a one night stand.
(09:27):
And the next day I was just so broke. I was so broken about it.
Like how did I get here? How did I go from uber Christian to weeping on my kitchen floor,
feeling the disgust of what I had done with someone I didn't care about who later told me he had a girlfriend.
And I was just like, how is this my life?
(09:49):
And so that was really the tipping point at that season of my life where it was just like, this is not who I desire to be.
And I'm ashamed of what I've done and I never thought I could get there.
And that was the pridefulness of where I was at in my walk with the Lord.
Like you're a sinner. If you think you're not going to sin again, you're fooling yourself.
(10:16):
And I was sad and disappointed and disgusted.
And I had talked to another friend about it who was somewhat like, I don't know,
I wouldn't say that they were as supportive as I had hoped, but they were going through a program and they're like,
(10:37):
Hey, I did this thing called family life skills. It was really helpful for me.
I don't know. Why don't you try it?
So I went on my very first path of, hey, I have some issues.
I keep showing up in life in ways that I don't like.
And what was the description?
(11:01):
What's the sales pitch of life skills where you go, huh, okay, I can see how going through a course like this would be beneficial to me.
What was it about that?
The program itself was based on a man, Paul Hextrom, who was an angry man that abused his wife and was taken to court
(11:26):
and had to go through anger management and went through anger management and recognized like,
Hey, like there's a lot more to this anger. Where does it come from?
And he started to delve into where does it come from?
And so the pitch was like, Hey, we're going to talk through your family of origin first,
(11:49):
and we're going to understand what stories you've been told.
What's the narrative that you have been told since childhood?
And we're going to dissect that narrative and figure out, you know, how God sees your story.
And it was, you know, it was a Christian based program. So that was that was a bonus.
Like I really wanted something that was going to bring me back to Jesus and was going to be founded on biblical principles.
(12:18):
And that was like the start of like, wow, I've had some messaging all through childhood.
And when you really start to dig deep, you can see how that message, the message in essence was you're insignificant.
You're not worthy to be protected. And hence the wall, right?
(12:39):
If I wasn't going to be protected, somebody had to do it.
And the insignificance, it was like, you know, that can't be true because Jesus died for me.
How do I figure out how to unpack this? And that's where God showed up.
And it was time in his word to show me my value and worth.
But that took so much time. Like that was first of all, that was a 40 week class every every week.
(13:04):
And it was a three hour course every week for 40 weeks.
So that in itself was a long time. And it was a group of women.
It was eight of us. And, you know, you start to dig into other people's stories and perceptions about their lives.
And you start to see, wow, like when someone else talks about their dysfunction, you feel like, well, I I experienced that too.
(13:30):
And like you get this kind of like I don't want to say like there's something comforting,
even though it shouldn't be that other people have suffered and other people have had their share of dysfunction.
And you you're willing to go into the depths of the darkness with other people.
Yeah, you're not alone. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you get you find support in.
You know, in others. Yeah, absolutely.
(13:53):
And just recognizing that the internal dialogue was so polluted by the enemy's lies that, of course, I was finding myself in the same pattern.
I was picking the same kind of men. I was picking the same kind of friends.
I was self sabotaging because I really I really thought I was insignificant.
(14:15):
And if you would have asked me that on the surface, I would have been like, what are you kidding?
Of course, I'm not insignificant, please. You know, and that's the denial that that comes in.
So what were the type of friends that you had before all of this?
Well, I had no friends. I. Male, female, nothing.
(14:39):
I had no real significant friendships.
We moved when I was little, you know, and we moved a few times and when I moved to South Florida,
I was probably in seventh grade and I really just could not seem to connect with anyone.
And I wound up in a counseling program even as a teenager.
(15:01):
So I've been in therapy a very, very long time. May I just say.
But and then as I got older, I got pregnant in high school.
Everyone that would have been possibly a friend was going on to do college.
And their life was just now so different than mine.
And so women that were having children were much older.
(15:24):
Like, I just didn't have a place. So I was very lonely.
And then I met, you know, I kind of gravitate toward gravitated more towards guys
because I just felt like they were less judgy.
And, you know, so I had some guy friends that were, you know, very nice and wound up.
(15:45):
I don't know, like every friend that I actually had in my 20s were party friends.
So I just, you know, these were people that you drink and drug with, but they were not shallow friendships.
Totally. So is that the self sabotage?
No, I don't know that I was I just could not find depth in friendship.
(16:07):
So it wasn't until I actually got saved and my very, very first request of God was I truly just want a friend, Lord.
I haven't had a real friend since I was a little girl.
Can you bring me a friend?
And he answered that question beautifully.
He answered that prayer beautifully.
But that friendship became very codependent because now here is this one person that like I knew God brought me to meet this girl.
(16:35):
And her opinion became like the utmost important to me.
And I sometimes I would go to her for problems instead of go to Jesus.
And he eventually had to break that friendship apart.
And I'm so grateful he did.
And it was interesting because I was in this program and the closer I got towards healing
and really understanding myself and starting to process, the more she kept saying, Are you sure you want to dig this stuff up?
(17:01):
Are you sure you really why do you have to uproot this stuff?
Like she was almost the voice of I mean, I don't know that she meant it.
I thought she, you know, in all honesty, I thought she was trying to be protective.
But like, why do you got to bring this up?
Kind of like within childhood. Oh, just get over it.
Sure. You know, and I didn't like that.
(17:22):
And that was the first time I was like, Oh, when you start to get well, people in your life are uncomfortable with that.
And I don't really know why that is. But because you're becoming different.
Yeah. You know, yeah.
The person that they've known forever is making different decisions than they used to make.
Right. And if you were the center of my decision, you had control.
(17:46):
And, you know, like, I wasn't allowing that anymore because I knew I needed help.
I knew desperately that if I wanted to be different, I had to do the hard thing.
And the hard thing is to actually look at yourself and go, Gosh, there's something not right here.
Like, it's me. And until I figure this out, I I'm going to keep hurting myself and others.
(18:09):
Was there anyone that you knew that you trusted a mentor or somebody that you spoke into your life that you could turn to and go, Hey, I'm thinking about taking this course?
Actually, yeah, I had like a spiritual mom. Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
And while this friendship that I was in, there was a third person that came into the friendship and I got super like insecure and jealous.
(18:35):
And I felt like they were leaving me out. And when I look at it, they kind of were.
But I was also very insecure. So she has doing like a discipleship program with me, my spiritual mom.
And in the course of this, we wind up every scripture wind up.
(18:56):
We're starting to talk about this dysfunction, and she's now starting to play therapist more than spiritual guide.
And she at one point we were like doing this week after week for almost six months.
And she said, I can't do this anymore, honey. I have to let you go.
I'm like, you're breaking up with me. What do you mean? You have to let me go.
(19:17):
And she's like, you need more help than I can actually give you. You're already solid in the word.
I don't there's not anything we're doing here that you don't already have a foundation of the word.
You're solid on the word. You're not solid in your emotional life. And I am not a therapist.
I think you really need to go get help. And then the other friend had planted the seed about like life skills.
(19:43):
And so she kind of the spiritual mom was like pushed me like you need to.
Sure. Baby bird leave the nest. Yes. Time to go get help. Thank God. Yeah. Time to go get professional help. Thank God.
OK. So God used that. And I didn't really as I started to like grow and learn and journal and forgive,
(20:08):
forgive some of the messaging that I got as a kid and rewrite the story with Jesus.
What do you say about this, Jesus? I've been told I'm insignificant my whole life. But what do you say?
Oh, yeah, I've had all the trouble I've had all day and day and day and day and day and day and day and day and day and everything was like back to the word,
(20:30):
arresting and replacing. Oh, yeah. Big big foundational part of my healing, arresting the the lie and replacing with God's word.
So living in south Florida doesn't help. It's such an angry area.
that you claim to have,
but it is a very angry area of the country.
(20:53):
I've lived in numerous, numerous places
and every state except Alaska,
and it is definitely a sunny city for shady people,
as they say, for Miami.
That's like spot on.
Yeah, and I found myself,
after I moved there from Chicago to South Florida,
(21:14):
I definitely found myself getting more angry
because the people down there are just more angry.
So I can only imagine.
There's an angst in the air that people can't explain.
And when I moved there, I didn't have the self-awareness.
I was still somewhat young.
I was just a few years out of college.
(21:35):
Did a lot of traveling with my job
when I first moved to Florida.
So I wasn't there a ton,
but once that job kind of transitioned out
and I was there,
yeah, I did not have the self-awareness to realize,
hey, you're getting angry.
Why is this?
I wasn't saved either.
So yeah, that's interesting
(21:55):
that you're a product of where you grow up.
So it's not just family, but it's also environment.
Yeah, that's a good point.
Because that wasn't the case for me
when I lived in the Midwest.
People are nice in the Midwest.
Comparatively, yes.
Definitely.
So what are the,
it's amazing.
Well, let's back up again.
(22:16):
So you did life skills.
Was first round,
you did a program called Trees of Hope twice.
That's a program for sexual abuse.
Was that, was the first round before or after life skills?
Both of those were after life skills.
Both were after life.
So you went life skills, Trees of Hope, Trees of Hope.
Correct.
Okay, so you did that twice.
(22:36):
The woman, it's just so God ordained
because the lady that taught family life skills
was an Italian lady from like Philly.
Like just to have somebody that understood how I was raised
and the dynamic of what it's like to be in the East Coast
in a cultural family like Italians,
(22:59):
like she would often say to me, Deborah.
And she would stroke her own hand and go,
be nice, be easy to yourself.
Because everything in my life was so like rough.
Yeah.
The way I spoke to myself, the way, well, you see.
Your family is rough.
I love them.
They're very rough.
(23:19):
They are rough.
They are.
They are, yeah.
Yeah.
They are rough around the edges to say the least.
Yeah, so to have somebody that like I respected
that kind of understood me was God ordained.
And at the end of the 40 weeks, she said,
we've done some amazing work,
but we've only scratched the surface of, you know,
(23:43):
your sexual abuse.
You've mentioned some things and I know there's more there.
Would you agree?
And I said, yeah.
I think I'm gonna recommend you to someone I respect highly
who deals with sexual abuse survivors,
who is a survivor herself.
(24:04):
So she understands your pain and grief.
And I'd like you to go see her and see what she says.
And that same woman was the one that ran a program.
It wasn't actually Trees of Hope.
It was like the book that Trees of Hope used,
but at that point it wasn't licensed to Trees of Hope yet.
Sure.
(24:24):
So other people could teach from it.
And so I simultaneously took one-on-one counseling
and did, you know, the first course of Trees of Hope.
Trees of Hope is how many weeks?
Goodness, 12.
Okay. Yeah.
So you did an eight-month program,
a three-month program with counseling,
(24:47):
took a little bit of time in between,
figured out you needed to retake.
Yeah, not a whole lot in between.
Like it was over and I had been on the waiting list
for official Trees of Hope.
And that took a while and finally was like,
oh, well I just took it, should I take it again?
And my counselor was like, yeah, you should.
(25:11):
Like you think that would benefit?
It's not like redundant.
And she's like, no, it's not.
You're gonna pull off more layers to that onion
than you think.
And she was right.
So what, you talked about self-sabotage
and you know, there were,
the lowest common denominator was always you.
But through taking these courses,
(25:34):
you start developing and massaging the muscle,
working out the muscle that is self-awareness.
Yeah.
What do you start to see in other relationships
in your life where you will go,
oh, okay, that's what we were talking about in that class.
That may not be healthy.
(25:55):
I should handle this differently this time
than what I've done in my past.
Well, I know that one of the common themes in my story
was men.
And I ultimately were finding men that would not protect,
did not treat me with the respect that I deserved.
(26:20):
So they literally, okay,
so there's something called a life commandment
and in this program that I took.
And it's the story that you've told yourself,
either somebody told it to you like a parent
or it was inadvertently taught to you
by how somebody treated you in your family.
(26:41):
And that story, that life commandment
is how you've lived your life until then.
And so I actually found men
that fulfilled that life commandment,
which was you're not significant, you're not worthy
and I'm not gonna protect you.
And I really started to look at the men
that I was attracted to prior to understanding that concept.
(27:02):
And those were men who were very much,
I was chasing after their love,
just like I chased after daddy's love.
They did not truly treat me like,
I was objectified really.
I was the pretty girl on the shoulder
(27:22):
that they got to walk around with like a trophy.
I never felt, I felt physically safe
in some of those relationships
and physically not safe in others,
which was kind of the chaos of my own family life
was sometimes, am I okay, am I not okay?
(27:43):
Who's gonna have an outburst?
You know, blah, blah, blah.
I won't get into too much detail there.
And so very volatile men.
And then I behaved in ways that were not respectful to myself
because I kept making these choices.
(28:04):
So that was one of the common denominators.
So when I was dating again, I was really scared.
Like, am I gonna, is my picker broken?
I thought my picker was broken, you know?
So does the pendulum swing the other way
where you're now with overprotective men
or anything like that or are you just questioning everything?
Well, I'm with you and I don't find you overprotective,
(28:27):
but I do know that I'm safe with you.
So I just, I don't know.
So now you've got all this self-awareness.
Too much almost at one point.
I'm hypervigilant now.
Yeah.
Everything looks like a red flag.
Like while you're healing
(28:48):
and you're like, now you have all this self-awareness,
now like everything's a red flag.
And you don't always trust your gut
because your gut was violated as a child.
So you're like, is this a red flag?
Is this not a red flag?
And what I found was in the dating journey,
I would go, hey, that doesn't seem right.
(29:11):
That looks like a red flag.
And depending on how attracted I was to that person,
it was either going to repel me really quick,
like, no, I'm not doing this.
Or I would make an excuse and go,
well, maybe I'm seeing it wrong.
Maybe I'm reading it wrong.
Or I do a combination of those two things
(29:31):
back and forth, back and forth.
So I was scared.
I was terrified that I was gonna make the wrong choice.
And so I, any little like, you know, thing I saw,
I was like, hmm, hmm.
Should I run now or should I wait to run?
Maybe it's okay.
So it was just a very confusing time.
(29:53):
And that's why I truly believe
when people go through divorce or any kind of major loss
because divorce is equivalent to a death in a sense,
in my humble opinion.
And we've talked about this in season one.
It's a death of a dream.
It's a death of what you expected your life to look like.
And if the Bible says you're knitted together,
(30:16):
a divorce is tearing apart,
you're literally tearing off a part of you.
So in that process, you're just like, I was terrified.
So being single was the healthiest thing I can do
until I like, could do a good portion of the healing.
(30:36):
And so what's interesting is God has definitely brought you
other women in your life that are out there dating,
looking to date, and you've kind of become the counselor
of, hey, this is what I'm seeing.
Right.
Is this a red flag to you?
(30:58):
What do I do with this?
I don't know what to do.
I'm questioning this.
Right.
Is this just me?
You know, I'm not sure.
It's just me.
You know, I think until I met you,
I had blinders on to the world of how many,
truly how many hurt women are out there.
I think it's far more than I ever realized
(31:20):
and far deeper than I ever realized.
So I was probably very insensitive to it,
just out of sheer lack of knowledge,
not like I was trying to be difficult or not acknowledge,
but it's amazing how many women are out there
that I've come across that are just,
have been very, very hurt.
(31:42):
And it doesn't even necessarily have to be
in the same way that you were hurt.
Like my own mother was hurt by my brother
by her other son passing away.
And she never got healing for that.
And you wanna talk about someone throwing up walls
and those walls would go up to people
(32:03):
that she's definitely not dating
because she's still with my dad,
but just people entering into her life.
And what's amazing is just slowly over time,
it just gets worse and worse and worse.
Until you deal with it.
Or you give up dealing with the world.
(32:23):
That's true.
And you recluse.
Yeah, you recluse.
And it's amazing to see just how God is bringing
these ladies, young ladies, middle-aged ladies
into your life where they're all the time
turn into you going, hey Deb,
went out on a date with this guy.
(32:43):
What do you think?
He did this or whatever it may be
and you're now speaking into their lives.
But it's so amazing that even people
that have gotten some help, what I admire most about you
is just how deep you dug down to get the healing.
And I think so many people wanna say, I dug deep
(33:08):
when in reality they dusted off the surface.
I mean, it took you seven or eight years
and all your journaling, we're just talking about the classes
and the, if you will, that you took.
But what it truly takes to get healthy,
I think a lot of people will go,
well, I go to counseling once a week.
(33:29):
Right, it's an endurance thing.
I mean, it is the most gut-wrenching thing
and I don't know that people realize
how much they're going to endure.
Like when you're being pruned by the Lord
and he is digging up deep roots of whatever,
(33:50):
mine was anger and bitterness and fear and insecurity.
Like those are deep roots.
It's painful and most people would rather not
deal with the pain.
Of course.
It's hard. It's hard and it's scary.
And it's messy, it's so messy.
Like I can't tell you how many times
(34:10):
I threw myself on the floor and wept.
Like just wept at my own depravity,
wept at my circumstance, wept that I don't want
to have to keep digging this up.
Can I just be done with this already?
Can I just be healed Lord?
Can't you just touch my life and it just be all over
(34:33):
and I'm better?
Yeah, it's messy.
And you have to have the fortitude to keep going.
It's war and that's what people don't understand.
You're warring against your past,
against the lies, against the pain.
And it's not for the faint heart.
(34:53):
And maybe growing up in a rough family
made me equipped to deal with that
because there is nothing soft about my family.
So maybe I was just built to do this kind of healing work.
I don't know.
But.
It's amazing.
There's so many people are getting divorced anymore.
(35:16):
And when I, again, another area where my parents
were always together.
So when I was younger, I never really saw the impact
of divorce until my best friend,
senior year in high school, it came out that his mom
was cheating on his dad and she left his dad
for whoever this other guy was.
(35:37):
Heart wrenching.
And even then he was a very quiet introvert.
So even then, initially, the initial wave,
it almost looked like he wasn't impacted.
But again, it was a slow erosion over time
where his view of reality and what a healthy relationship
(36:00):
and again, relationship meaning friendship,
not necessarily romantic relationship,
but that plum line got completely skewed.
And he changed as a person slowly over time.
Just almost the refusal to face reality
(36:22):
became very real for him.
A lot of times I often wonder if that's the reason,
one of the many reasons why things like,
Halloween is so important and cosplaying and so on
and so forth, because you can pretend
to be something you're not and you don't have
to face the reality of who you are and get,
(36:43):
you can just make something up and be something else.
I don't wanna be anything but me, truly.
Amen to that.
I don't wanna be, I have no desire for that.
Renfairs, I used to be a musician,
we would play renfairs from time to time.
The people that go to that a lot of times,
at least the people that are there every single day,
(37:05):
every single weekend.
Escapism.
It's just, yeah, they would rather be something else
than face what they are.
And my buddy back in high school,
I remember we were talking one time and I said,
why don't you go see a therapist
and just talk to the therapist about what you went through
and you're, and he just replied going,
(37:28):
no, I'm afraid of what the therapist would tell me.
And I think there, but because of that,
we were attached at the hip, we were best buds,
middle school and high school, we met in sixth grade.
Those are primary years of your adult,
like your childhood, man.
We were best buddies and I would walk to his house
(37:50):
after school every single day
and my mom would pick me up from his house
and, but it turned into this constant game of chasing.
Yeah.
I would actually have to start pursuing his attention.
He needed attention.
He wouldn't return my phone calls.
(38:12):
Lots of different toxic traits.
So now that you're on the other side and then-
It's not fun to chase.
It's not fun to chase friends.
With you, I think there's definitely a pursuit
that a man should always pursue a woman
and there is fun in that chase.
(38:33):
But when, yeah, when it's friends
and phone calls are just not getting returned and so on.
And so what are some of the traits that you see
now that you've gone through all these programs
and ladies are coming up to you going,
hey Deb, what do you think about this guy?
This was the date.
So what are the red flags?
(38:53):
What are you seeing?
What are those red flags and what are they symptoms of?
That's a loaded big question to answer,
but I'll do my best to unpack that.
I think you can see that wounded people,
like hurt people, hurt people.
It's a cliche for it.
People say it all the time,
(39:14):
but there's so much meaning to that.
Like when you said there's a lot of wounded women,
there's a lot of wounded men.
And what is different about that is men don't have
the same liberty to discuss that openly
because it's viewed as weakness.
Vulnerability in men is just like,
(39:35):
it's viewed as weakness in our culture.
And so you have a lot of wounded men
and you have men who maybe don't have the vocabulary
to articulate their pain because women are far more verbal.
So they're coming across these men
who are also not healed.
And when you have two unhealed people,
now you're really dealing with some stuff.
(39:58):
I see a red flag would be
not allowing the person to be who they truly are.
Like I briefly dated a man that was so insecure
about my being an extrovert,
like as somehow that would take eyes off of him
(40:19):
or that it made him feel like I was an attention seeker
when I really wasn't, I was just personable.
And I couldn't open up my wings and fly and be who I was.
I felt very stifled.
So people who tend to kind of suck you in
(40:40):
and dim your light,
like if you are attracted to somebody and you start dating,
you're attracted to them for their light.
So why would you wanna dim that?
Well, it's because you're wounded and you're insecure
and somehow maybe someone hurt you.
And now you're so frightened
that you start behaving very possessively.
(41:02):
Possessive behavior is definitely a red flag.
Constantly, constantly, constantly,
where were you, where have you been?
Like, yeah, there's a level of respect
you give to the other person.
Hey, I'm going out to the store,
I'll be back in 20 minutes, blah, blah, blah.
But if you're not back in 20 minutes
and they wanna know every detail of where you've been,
(41:23):
like dude, I was stuck in traffic, relax.
That's a red flag.
People who rush to love bomb you,
love bombing is so common.
And because-
Yeah, I love that one.
Yeah, because it's very much romanticized in movies,
that it's this quick,
there's this chemistry and it's passionate.
(41:45):
And like all of a sudden somebody's saying,
I love you, after a few months.
And you're like, dude, like slow down.
Even if that is how you feel,
like there's a time and a place and-
Well, make sure that's what it is.
It's not, yeah.
It is.
It's not just passion and dopamine and excitement
and maybe even a little lust, you know?
(42:07):
Like- Sure.
I think the I love yous get thrown out quickly
and I think that could be dangerous for wounded people.
There's, yeah, like how they interact with their own family
can be a little bit of a sign too.
I'm not saying, you know, that's always a tail
(42:30):
and that's always a red flag
because some people just come from crazy families
and they're able to set boundaries and say,
hey, love you from a distance.
But there are other times where, like a mama's boy,
that to me is a red flag.
Like if mom can put a wedge between me and you,
that's a problem.
(42:51):
Like that's not godly behavior.
Cause eventually, you know,
you're supposed to leave your family and, you know,
and become one flesh.
And so mama's boys are a big red flag for me.
Or mama's girls or daddy's girls
are just like not being able to detach when necessary
(43:12):
from family and like mom controls everything
that the son does.
That's just, yeah.
Or, you know, the kids rule the roost.
Cause you know, a lot of people are dating
and they have kids and they're blending these families
together and let's say the daughter is manipulating the dad.
(43:34):
Like those are just things that you gotta go,
if I'm gonna date this person,
I essentially am taking on their baggage.
Is this something that is worth it for me?
I don't think so.
You know, that kind of stuff.
And a guy or a girl that's super guarded
to the point where like they give you just little breadcrumbs
(43:58):
of who they are, just to kind of keep you hanging on.
Sure.
Like breadcrumbs, but never any depth.
Like, hey, let me text her and you know,
like and just leave her hanging.
And women do this too.
This is not specifically towards men.
Women do this a lot too.
Where I'll just kind of keep him on the hook on the side
(44:20):
and like he'll be my fallback guy.
Those kind of traits of, you know, that to me is a user.
You know, I'm using you for my own sense of companionship
when it's convenient for me.
And when it's not convenient for me,
I'm just gonna ghost you.
I mean, these are things that you think
are pretty obvious red flags, but you know,
(44:41):
it depends on what kind of pattern you grew up in as a child.
If you are always chasing daddy's love, trust me,
you're gonna find men that are emotionally unavailable.
And you don't realize you're chasing daddy's love
because you haven't dug down deep enough to go,
oh, wow, there's a pattern from my family of origin.
(45:03):
That's why the family of origin thing is so important
because if you don't recognize those patterns
from way back then, you have no idea
you're repeating them in adulthood.
You're just doing life because this is how you do life.
Well, that's what you know.
Right.
You're doing what you know.
Right.
Yeah, it's pretty crazy and it's pretty sad
(45:25):
to watch people go through it because there's a,
the saddest is when people,
I'll see people approach you saying, hey, Deb,
what would you do?
And you give them the advice and they just kinda,
in one ear and out the other.
Yeah, because-
And then they're surprised by the results.
I know, I know.
Well, and I could, you know, there's times where I,
I just don't, I don't believe in sugarcoating.
(45:47):
Like, it's just, I can't tell you what you wanna hear
because you wanna hear it
because I am responsible for what I like.
But that's not who I am as a person.
Like, I don't do that with anyone in my life.
Like, I do not blow smoke, as I like to say it.
Yeah, for me, I position,
don't ask me the question if you don't want the answer.
(46:09):
Truly, truly.
And there are times I've said, like, hey,
are you sure you really want me to answer this?
And that usually stops people, like, for half a second.
They're like, uh-oh.
They'll pump the brakes.
Yeah, I don't say that.
I just go straight for the jugular and answer the question.
And that's probably a bad trait on my side.
I, because tone definitely matters
(46:32):
and I can come across, you know.
Yeah, I've seen that occasionally in you,
but I think that you're definitely better at that
than, like, each passing year.
Yeah, it's definitely something I'm working on, for sure.
Especially in this season in life
(46:52):
where patience is just absolutely crucial
and we're playing a lot of politics and so on
and so forth with healthcare workers and so on.
Mm-hmm, that's true.
It's definitely teaching me how to maybe have that restraint
that you haven't, and it's not like I attack someone
(47:12):
for the sake of attacking,
but I do think there are times when people ask for feedback
and they're truly not ready for the feedback.
Right.
And I've gotta get better at acknowledging that
and go, like you said, are you sure you want me
to answer that?
And I think God does that with us.
I think there are so many times.
(47:33):
Yeah, I agree.
Where we're praying and we're asking God for an answer,
but he's not talking because he's sitting there going,
why would I waste my time?
Even if I talk, you're not gonna listen.
You're not really ready to listen to what I have to say,
so why would I waste my breath?
I absolutely believe that to be true.
Yeah.
I sometimes get overly like,
(47:57):
like I invest in friendships
and when people truly seek advice
and they seem to wanna follow it
and then do the complete opposite,
there were times, to be honest with you,
I get a little like, really?
Like I expended all this energy,
gave you solid biblical advice
and you're gonna do the opposite?
Like sometimes I get a little crunchy
(48:17):
and I have to like pull away and go,
okay, I just need a breather.
I need to set a boundary and go,
no, we're not doing this right now.
And then, you know, God will speak to me and soften me
and then I can come back and say those hard things tenderly.
And I think that's important
is being able to say hard things tenderly
(48:39):
is a skill that God has helped me really develop
over the years because life is hard
and I know what it's like to be in pain.
So when I say I don't sugar coat things,
I'm not saying that I come out the side of my neck
and just say things,
but I am the friend that is always gonna tell you
the hard truth because that's the kind of friend I want.
(49:02):
I am the kind of friend that I desire most,
which is please don't tell me what I wanna hear.
I am not that girl.
I would rather hear,
dude, what are you doing?
Knock it off.
Then, oh, it's okay, honey.
Everybody, you know, it's okay.
Like I don't, that doesn't work for me.
Like just tell me I'm being a jerk
(49:23):
so that I can make an improvement.
And that's my deepest desire in life
is to know Christ better
and to know how to grow in Him
because I'm a work in progress.
I don't think you ever stop growing.
And if you do, that's a problem for me.
Like I have that little placard in the room that says,
(49:47):
don't be afraid of change.
Be afraid of not changing.
And God gave me that placard
in the depths of my hardest season
of actually getting healing.
That's a really kind of quirky story.
I was thrifting and I came across the sign
and that sign was directly behind the cashier
(50:09):
and I was like, oh, oh.
Like I read it and it just struck me
almost like a God smack, right?
And I said, how much is the sign?
And he goes, what sign?
And I point and he turns around and he's like,
oh, that's decoration, that's not for sale.
And I go, no, I need that sign.
(50:29):
That sign is for me, please.
How-
Name your price.
Yeah, basically name my price.
And he goes, he kind of tilted his head and like paused.
Like, and I guess maybe there was desperation in my eyes
because I meant it.
I was not leaving that store without that sign.
And he looks around and he pauses and nobody's looking
and he picks up the sign and puts it in the bag
(50:51):
and doesn't charge me.
And I'm like, no, no, no, like I'll pay.
And he's like, no, take the sign.
And I was like, are you sure?
And he's like, I could not be more sure.
And like, I wound up with this sign
and it's still in my room today.
But like he was, it was just a weird encounter.
It was quirky and wonderful
and that was God's divine little kiss.
(51:13):
And I look at it every morning when I get up.
And you talked about something earlier
that's also interesting as far as red flags
and people that are wounded and that word was boundaries.
That's one of those words that people often talk a lot
about either A, someone just blowing through
(51:38):
all sorts of boundaries or someone
that's having their boundaries rolled over.
But a lot of people don't talk about
articulating your boundaries well.
That's a good point.
If somebody crosses a boundary, did you articulate,
(51:59):
hey, this is a boundary and it's a boundary for a reason.
You can't get upset with someone
if you didn't articulate well that something is a boundary
and they did something that hurt you.
I think it's critical.
So even that self-examination that you do
helps you understand, okay, I have identified this
(52:20):
as a boundary, now I need to let people know
that this is a boundary.
Maybe a little bit of the why, maybe a lot of the why.
Depends, yeah.
Depends on the reason.
But I think there's so many friendships out there
that end because boundaries are crossed
and it's definitely there are boundaries that get crossed
(52:41):
because somebody doesn't wanna honor those boundaries.
But there's also a tremendous number of friendships that end
because boundaries are crossed, but it was accidental
because the boundary was never set there.
Right, and you know what's interesting is
people are so uncomfortable with conflict
that they would rather not have the hard conversation
(53:01):
because it's gonna be uncomfortable
and they would rather just walk.
And that's dangerous.
If you're like, hey, people pleasing in a sense
where it's so uncomfortable to say what your needs are
and what your wants are, that you're willing to just
kind of blow over that and then it builds up and builds up
(53:23):
and then you just never explain why you're leaving
and why the friendship's over.
That's a problem in you, not necessarily in the other person.
Yes, the other person should have respected your boundaries,
but they didn't really know what those were.
They are not telepathic, they cannot figure it out.
You have to express what those are.
And then once you express it, if you let that person
(53:47):
cross that boundary that you've already expressed,
you are teaching people how to treat you.
Your word doesn't really mean anything.
You'll let me get away with that.
And so it's like standing up for yourself.
It's being okay with making someone else feel uncomfortable
by you telling them no.
(54:07):
And sometimes no's a complete sentence.
I don't have to explain to you why I don't wanna
go to the movies.
I can and it's probably nice for me to do that,
but if I'm going through a hard time and you ask me
to do something and I just say no thank you,
that should be enough.
I don't owe you an explanation.
(54:29):
Now, depending on the depth of that relationship,
sure I could give you an explanation like,
hey I'm really struggling today and I need some alone time
to just kind of reflect and deal with God tonight.
So no thank you to the movie.
But you don't necessarily owe anybody of that.
So when someone crosses that boundary and you let them,
(54:51):
then you will inevitably have more boundaries crossed
and more boundaries crossed because you're not willing
to have those hard conversations.
Yeah, I think that happens a lot in the United States.
I see that in a lot of people and I don't understand it.
Again, maybe it's the lack of self-awareness,
(55:13):
maybe it's the intimidation of having a hard conversation,
but that's also a sign that I see with people
that are wounded is they can't even articulate boundaries,
but all of a sudden you've crossed them.
Yes, and I can speak to that in childhood
is like as soon as I expressed a pain point,
(55:37):
it was either mocked or ignored or get over it.
And so it took me a long time to talk about my needs
because I was afraid of rejection.
And I think that comes up a lot for people.
If I say this, if I don't people please,
people are gonna reject me.
And conflict resolution is hard work.
(55:59):
It's much easier to run than it is to confront
and have hard conversations in truth and love,
in respectfulness, it's a lot easier just go,
eh, I'm not gonna deal with that.
I mean, people do that in relationships
and it's called stonewalling.
Like you can be in a relationship with someone,
(56:20):
you get into an argument and you wanna talk about it
and the other person just totally ignores you
and refuses to deal with it.
And that was my very, very first relationship.
I could not get him to express anything
about the pain I expressed to him.
He would completely shut down and just totally ignore me.
(56:42):
That is wicked and evil to do to somebody
and it's emotionally stunted.
That was his wounding.
And what's interesting hearing that is as,
not only am I an introvert but I'm a processor.
At the same token, when you and I have something
that we need to talk through,
(57:04):
a lot of times I'm not good in the moment
because I have not had the time to process
what has happened and come back being honest with myself.
Maybe what did I mess up?
What did you mess up?
Let me ask for forgiveness for what I messed up.
Let me discuss with you what I felt like you messed up.
(57:24):
So there's also that element of,
hey, we can't address this right now.
Maybe you want to.
And I'm not trying to avoid this,
but you also have to give me a little bit of time.
I'm not running and hiding,
but I am going in the other room to process.
Sometimes people go, hey, I need to take a walk.
(57:46):
For me, I have to pull myself out of the situation
and depending on how deep I was,
determines how long I may come to you and go,
hey, I need to cool off.
Well, let's talk about this tomorrow.
It may need to be something that's that serious,
but there's always a, we're not gonna avoid this.
(58:09):
We're gonna talk about this,
but yeah, you've gotta give me time
because otherwise I'm not gonna be fair to you.
If I can't be honest with myself,
then there's no way I can be honest with you.
And you've gotta give me time to be honest with myself
and go, okay, let's,
I literally will hit the rewind button
and go back to the beginning of whatever it was
(58:30):
and replay it and just do play by play in my head.
And almost like watching a football game,
the announcers do play by play and just go,
okay, this is where I messed up.
This is where I feel like you messed up
that I need to address this with you.
And maybe even here, maybe it wasn't you messing up.
Maybe it is a wounding from my past
(58:50):
or maybe it was a long day at work.
Who knows?
But even as a processor, the flip side to that coin is,
you can't always necessarily,
because you are very much,
hey, let's talk about this right now.
If we had a little spat on something,
like you wanna put it into it where I have to go,
hold on a minute, let me step away.
(59:12):
And I respect you enough
to not cross that boundary with you.
But I gotta tell you,
the things that you don't know that happened in that time
that I'm waiting for you to come back to the conversation,
I am in a war.
Like I am in a war.
Sure.
I'm making assumptions that God has to break down.
(59:34):
I'm fear mongering myself.
I'm in a war.
But I also respect you enough to know that
if you don't process our,
what do you call it?
Spirited fellowship would not turn out well.
And so I think that that's the hard stuff
that we're talking about is,
(59:54):
healed people respect other people's boundaries.
Even though, would I love to have the conversation
right now, right this minute?
Yeah, I would.
But it's not about me.
It's about us.
And as a team, my teammate needs a timeout.
And so, then I have to go directly to God and go,
you're gonna have to help me in his timeout
(01:00:15):
because I have a tendency to,
my thoughts can snowball really quick
and because I come from a negative family,
I can go real negative real quick.
And if I don't seek the Lord
while you're seeking your time to process, I will implode.
So, but I love you and respect you enough to go wait,
like how, there's no fruit to this.
(01:00:37):
If I push, there's no fruit.
And the, you know, speaking from the other side,
I also know that you are spiritually at war.
So I don't, I don't take longer than it needs to take.
Right, you're not avoiding.
No, it's truly, I know this is hard on you.
(01:00:58):
Give me some space because it's not gonna be fruitful.
But if I take too long, it's also not gonna be fruitful.
Yeah.
There's, that's not a good place to be in either.
Right.
So yeah, that just that ability to step back
and assess yourself and assess the situation
(01:01:20):
is super critical.
But yeah, I think the boundaries issue,
everybody wants to throw up
and everybody's almost so proud to throw up boundaries.
These days that are not known prior to being thrown out.
I call those expectations.
(01:01:40):
And when they're not met, that's how resentment starts.
So it's an expectation that you never expressed.
Right.
And you're calling it a boundary in your own head,
but it's not a boundary, it's an expectation.
You expect somebody to read your mind and go.
Do this or don't do this.
Meanwhile, it literally was nothing but I expect you
(01:02:01):
to do this and all of a sudden, okay,
that expectation wasn't met, oh my goodness.
Right.
That's why communication is so, so important.
And being able to say that at the right time
is so important and the right tone is so important.
Like just because you feel it doesn't mean
it needs to come out of your mouth.
And I had to learn, God has taught me
(01:02:22):
the long hard path of that.
Like, man, could I make a fire out of something?
Yes.
Have I done that in my past?
Yes.
So just because I feel the passion to say it right then
and there does not mean that I should.
And I have to always go, what's the big picture?
(01:02:42):
Will that yield fruit or will that destroy?
And if it's gonna destroy, then I need to keep my mouth shut.
And so when you say something is just important
as how you say it and in the, you know,
like for instance, if you're exhausted
and I come to you with something that I know
(01:03:04):
is gonna be a hard conversation,
that's just not gonna yield me any fruit.
I'm gonna wait until you get some rest, period.
Whether I wanna say it right now or not is not important.
And that's the thing that, that's when you stop
being selfish and you start being a team.
Because I always want what's best for us as a whole
(01:03:25):
and if I have to, if I can't control my mouth
and I just have to say it, because I have to say it,
because that is how I was raised, that's dangerous.
That's not fair.
So timing's super important, I think,
and setting a boundary that's actually articulated
is important.
And that's.
Yeah, and you said something earlier though too
(01:03:47):
that you also have to be sensitive to.
Just because you feel it doesn't mean it's true.
Oh yeah.
So you can feel offended, you can feel slighted,
you can feel all sorts of things.
But again, and that's where I need to buy myself time
to reassess the situation.
I may feel angry at you for doing something,
(01:04:10):
but I need to be honest with myself and honest with you.
Did you do something to justify me getting my feathers
ruffled, let me do the play by play?
And even if you did, the proper response is not anger,
it's communication.
It's communication back.
But just because you feel something
(01:04:32):
doesn't even make it true.
That's definitely, feelings are not facts.
No, it's very interesting.
But yeah, it's tough because you and I,
we have friends, we have coworkers,
we have all sorts of things where we just,
we sit back and we go, oh man.
(01:04:53):
Yep.
This is not bearing the type of fruit we would hope for
for this person or for these people.
Yeah.
It's tough.
It's tough because again, you can sit and have conversations
and speak truthfully in a loving manner with someone.
(01:05:14):
And it goes in one ear and out the other because dopamine
or because that friend that they're hanging out with
that's toxic has always been there
and that's what they're used to.
Some people just love drama.
They're addicted to the dopamine of drama.
Absolutely.
So they're not gonna leave a friendship
or they're not gonna leave a relationship
because they're addicted to the drama.
(01:05:35):
There's so many different things.
But it's amazing when you see healthy relationships.
It's, you sense the peace of God.
Like when you see a marriage where the husband serves
the wife and the wife serves the husband and you do it,
not because it's a chore, this, that and the other,
but because you truly just get joy out of doing something
(01:05:58):
for the other person.
You know, people will describe it as,
you know, you've got good vibes, you got good zen.
Yeah.
But truly what they're growing is
the peace of God. This is what Christ is supposed
to look like.
This is what Christ is supposed to feel like.
This is what Christ is supposed to be like serving
(01:06:21):
and loving serving.
It's pretty incredible.
So we hope that today's conversation has been helpful
for anyone that's out there that is trying to figure out
why they can't find healthy relationships
or you're not getting the right relationship.
So where you're, you know, you're trying to identify
(01:06:41):
and articulate something you're seeing in a friend going,
what is going on here?
Right.
Who knows?
We hope some part of this conversation today
was helpful for you guys.
I sure hope so.
Yeah, absolutely.
But this has been an interesting topic.
We've been seeing it a lot lately.
So we thought, oh, let's just chat about it.
Yeah.
See what comes up.
So.
I'm glad we had a chance to do that.
(01:07:02):
Yeah, absolutely.
But thank you guys so much for tuning in on this episode
of Detours.
We appreciate it.
Definitely.
We will see you guys again in a few weeks.
Take care.
Minh Th Val bread.
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