Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Pod Popular Podcast for the People, The Great
Love Debate. It's the Great Love Debate, the Great Love Debate.
It's a Great Love Debate. Hi again everyone, It's Brian Howie.
Welcome to The Great Love Debate, the world's number one
(00:24):
dating and relationship podcast since twenty fifteen. Very early in
the morning as I record this, so sometimes I wake
up and I want to record a podcasts. I am
here in the very fine studios of Pod Popular Podcasts
for the People. So one of the questions that that
a couple always gets asked when they're introduced to someone
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is how did you guys meet? How'd you guys meet
each other? Like there's gonna be some awesome answer to that.
And to that question, I usually say who cares? Because
that's my answer now. But you know who cared for
a long long time about how someone met me? I did.
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I absolutely cared. I was totally fixated on and fascinated
by the idea of meeting someone cute, romcom style, interesting fashion,
fighting over a parking space, trapped in an elevator, getting
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her order by accident at Starbucks? Is there a tiffany here? Yeah?
That I wanted something like that. I always wanted to
be the one who had the best story. I want
to have the best answer to that, how'd you guys meet? Way?
Do you hear this? I want to be the one
who people would tell other people about, like they must
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have the best love because they have the best story.
Oh my god, you're never gonna guess how Brian how
he met his girlfriend. I had this weird, obsessive, probably
self centered ego thing. I get it. It's not good.
I'm not proud of it. But I really really wanted that.
For a long long time, I would date girls way
longer than I should, simply because I love the story
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of how we met. And I think I lost interest
in girls way faster because how we met bored me.
That's ridiculous, right. I remember, way way back in the day,
way back on the day kids, I met somebody online,
like back in the days of like match and the
whole time, like even on like the first date, and
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I'm like, I hate this. I don't want to meet
somebody online. That's terrible, that's not interesting, that that's not romantic,
And so I like held it. She was great and
smart and pretty, lawyer the whole thing, and I held
it against her of how we met. That's how ridiculous
I was, M was M TBD. I wanted to be
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the one who took ten years to say how I
met your mother. I wanted all of that. And then
one day you meet a girl and you go out
and you kiss her in the street, and that's that,
and nobody cares how you met, least of all you.
But the reason people ask it isn't really about you
and your relationship. It's about them and theirs or their
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lack of a relationship. They want to know the secret,
they want to know the magic formula. They believe that
you're where and you're how can sometimes lead them to
their answer, but in reality it's completely irrelevant. How you
met doesn't matter to them. If you met at Arby's,
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it doesn't mean Arby's is a magic place for romance.
Although it's not bad. It's still just a place for
curly fries. But people want to know, They want to help,
They want to answers. Many of you listen to this
show because you want help and want answers, and we
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don't necessarily give you those, at least not a knight
neat nice neat package. We just give you possibilities, but
the people around you, they don't like to let possibilities
play out, not theirs, not yours. They want to stick
their hands in and metal and manipulate fate. And if
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you're single, no, they don't want it to happen organically
for you. They are impatient. I've said on the show
many times that I think an extremely high compliment is
when somebody asks why are you still single? They don't
ask that of somebody that isn't desirable, They don't ask
that of somebody that seemingly nobody wants. They ask that
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because it's like, you're great, who wouldn't want you? So
be flattered? Be flattered. But here's the flip side to that,
and I've had it happen to me. I remember there
were two very attractive, very single girls that I knew
in New York City offer to set me up and
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I said no. And do you know why I said no?
Because I didn't trust their judgment, Because I didn't trust
their opinion of me. Because if you're single, and you're
attractive as they were, and you want to hook me
up rather than throw your own hat in the ring
and try and date me yourself, then I'm sorry. Your
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opinion of me is lacking. It's subpar. You shouldn't want
to pawn me off. You should think I'm amazing. I
don't want him for somebody else. I want him for me.
I'm amazing. You should want me for you. You're amazing.
I don't not good enough for me, but this person.
So I didn't trust their rating of me. If you
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think I'm not good enough for you, but I'm good
enough for this person that you know at work, either
you think the person at work is better than you,
which I highly doubt, or you don't think I'm very
great to begin with. So who wants that I didn't?
I wouldn't. So that's where we're gonna begin. I want
to take a little deeper dive into these meddling I
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guess we'll call them fixer uppers in your life. But
I'm gonna take a quick break before we kick it
all off, and we will be back right after this.
So I'm gonna start with the bottom line and then
work backwards here. Bottom line is you need to be
your own fixer upper. You don't even know what you want,
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or like you think someone else does. Everyone out there
is just throwing darts. You're throwing darts. They're throwing darts,
which is fine. You gotta throw a lot of darts,
and if you throw a dart a lot of times,
eventually you're gonna get more proficient at it, and eventually
you're gonna hit the bullseye. So you gotta keep throwing
darts and eventually you're gonna hit one. So we get emails.
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Should I hire a professional matchmaker? And we've been pretty
clear on this. Of course not. You're basically setting your
money on fire. Their lists of people are not only
no more of a match for you than tearing a
page out of a phone book, they're probably less. I mean,
if you tore a page out of a phone book
and started dating everybody, that's the same as the matchmaker list.
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It's random. It's probably worse because it's a lot of
people who really don't have a lot of relationship success
to their point where they have to pay. Especially the guys,
Oh you're too busy to date, but you're suddenly going
to put enough time into date mate, you don't want
to date that guy like the phone book? Is the
phone book a dated reference? You know what I mean?
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I think there's still phone books propped up against a
door somewhere. Dating is about spark and chance and fate,
and putting yourself in a position as often as possible
to find spark and take a chance, embrace fate. Some
people let their families hook them up, and I'm talking
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like old school arranged marriage. I'm talking about your grandmother
who says that Rick from the ups store seems like
a nice fella. Maybe Rick is a nice fella, and
maybe you will fall in love with Rick if you
went in there to mail package or buy some packing tape.
I don't know. My point is, grandma has no idea.
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She probably has an overinflated opinion of you, But grandma
has no idea what you like, what you want, what
makes you excited, what turns you on, Oh Grandma, What
gets your heart racing, what fills you with excitement? All
she knows is that Rick loaded a package into the
trunk of her car, which is not a bad start.
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Good mean, he's a nice guy. Good mean, that's the
store policy, and that's his job. Who knows it means
nothing in the big picture. And your friends, they never
are a great read on who you are, what you want,
or what you need friends. Usually when it comes to
this stuff fall into two categories, the ones who overrate
you or the ones who underrate you. Almost none of
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them have an accurate read on you or properly rate you,
either on your appeal or what is appealing to you.
They stick you at the table at their wedding and
they plot it all out, like, oh, let's put them
next to each other because they might like each other.
You know what, You might like each other, but you
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only like each other because you found that out by
sitting next to each other. It didn't really have much
to do with their magic insight on it. You got
together out of proximity, and then proximity led to possibilities,
which is why we always say go out of your house.
The best dating site is Earth. Your proximity to live
people will always lead to those possibilities, and you could
do that by yourself, without any help from anyone. Go
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out of your house. Go out of your house right now,
and go sit next to someone that's got a better
chance of fixing you up than anything Grandma does or
your friend does. Get on a plane and sit next
to someone. Don't sit next to me and talk to
me because I don't want to be talked to on
a plane, but I'm a weirdo. Go grab a seat
at the bar and sit next to someone. Those people
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you sit next to, they're no more likely or less
likely to be the one for you than anyone your
friend knows or your family knows. It's a game of
chance and putting yourself in a position to succeed. The
cute guy or the pretty girl at the office talk
to them. HR has a problem with that. Fuck them.
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You're allowed to talk to people. You're allowed to click,
You're allowed to inquire and discover, make your own moves.
Put yourself in a position to succeed. Someone's gonna say, well,
what about that guy? What about this girl? And that's
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great and that they're just pointing you towards possibilities, which
is helpful and should always be appreciated. But it still
goes back to you. You are always always in charge
of your outcome. If you raise these possibilities for yourself,
can we possibly see everything? No? Are we like those
fish with ten eyes? Are there? Fish with ten eyes?
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I think I invented a creature for the purpose of analogy.
It's like a fish, It's like a ten eyed fish.
I don't know. You can't be expected to see everything.
I get that, So is it helpful to get a
nudge or a little bit of information? Hey, you know
Kevin is single. Now I think that helps. Diane just
filed for divorce. You know, I think that could be
hugely valuable. Thank you very much. You should meet my friend.
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I think if you start there, just start there. You
should meet my friend. Could be for a hundred different reasons.
Could be business, connection, could be social, could be you
guys like the same things. I don't know. You should
meet my friend. I think that's a good thing, because
who knows what a meeting can lead to. The very
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best girl in the world, the very best girl I
know and I've ever met, came from my friend saying
you should meet my friend. And I'm not sure the
person who said that thought for one second it would
lead to anything beyond a cordial conversation. But that's not
a fix up. That person was not acting as a
fixer upper. It was creating connections and connections that can
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lead somewhere. Nobody knows what you want or like or need.
You don't even know what you want or like or need.
But it's about maximizing opportunities and exploring possibilities. Huge value
in that. I'm the guy who wrote the book How
to Find Love and sixty Seconds. That was not about
a quickie in the bathroom. That was about exploring the
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possibilities and the opportunities that we're right in front of
you every single day and not missing out on that.
And you can do all that on your own. You
can seek the network of others, but the burden and
the outcome is always in your hands. Be your own
fix or upper, a little sidebar, or a bonus thought. Here.
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I have said, and many of you have said and heard,
the phrase, you can't change how someone feels, or you
can't change how someone thinks. And those two things may
or may not be true. And I'm not sure how
strongly I feel in those about those two things. When
we're talking about absolutes, I you know, I have an
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inclination on them, and I have some thoughts on them,
but I don't I'm not like this is the way
it is and this is the way should be. I'm
not sure, but I absolutely think you can change how
someone understands. I do believe that. I think if you
say the right thing in the right way at the
right time, the light bulb can go off, and that
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may alter their perception of things, or you, or the situation.
I'm somebody who's always better off writing it down. It
gives me clarity of thought, and it's weird that I
don't do that for this podcast. I kind of ramble
on this podcast, and if I wrote it down, it'll
probably be a little bit better. But when I have
to say something important to somebody, I think I write
it down because I think I'm like, this is clearly
how I'm going to make them understand with this sentence
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and this paragraph and this word structure, all of it.
That's the way I am. So maybe that's why you
guys don't understand me. Sometimes I don't do a good
enough job of writing it down. But I think if
you say the right thing the right way, at the
right time, through the right format, whatever, the light bulb
can go off, and that really might alter their perception
of all of it. Almost every broken relationship stems from
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bad communication. Either the relationship didn't have it from the start,
or it broke down towards the middle, which led to
the end. Some people don't say things because they don't
know how the other person will react, which probably shouldn't matter,
but they don't know. You know, you probably should never
know how the other person will react. Even if you're proposing,
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you're not entirely sure how the other person will react.
You're only hoping. But some people don't say things because
of it. Some don't say things because they expect the
other person already knows. They think it's obvious. Some don't
say things because they don't have clarity on them themselves.
They'ven't quite formulated in their head. They should have a
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podcast and just talk it out. But all of those
lead to a lack of understanding of the moment, of
the issue, of the situation, and of the relationship. So
you might have to try a few different ways to
express it. And trust me, I am the king of
odd analogies and mixed metaphors, but I'm constantly trying to
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get people, not necessarily to agree with what I think
or feel a belief. I'm trying to get people to understand.
You don't have to share the perspective. You have to
understand it, or it would be hugely helpful if you
did understand it. Why did you do this? Why did
you think that? When did this happen? All of those
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the real answers lie in the realm of understanding. The
value is in the understanding, and understanding isn't always about
reason or being right. It's about hearing. It's about getting
it to sync in. Oh, I get it now, I
can see what you mean. That's why that happened, or
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why you did that, or why you thought that. Ah,
And that calms everything, and that brings you to a
place where you can get closer or reconnect or connect
for the first time. We do a lot around here
talking about trying to learn the other person, which is
I believe, be curious, Be curious, be curious, ask the questions,
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try and learn the other person. But a big part
of that is about understanding the other person and yourself.
Why did I react that way? What led to that decision?
What made me think that? Thinking? Learning, understating, understanding That
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can and should always lead to changing They thought you
did this because they believed you were doing that they
didn't understand. Help them understand, Give them the information, don't
let them guess. Express everything in the way you need
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to express it as often as you need to express it,
and then only then can you see where the chips
lie and if the outcome has shifted or improved or
been salvaged. Don't focus on the ilevel. You try to
understand why they love you, because that leads to so
much more. All of that understanding goes to growing, goes
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to learning, goes to evolving and hopefully for the two
of you sharing. So did I give you a few
random different bites at the Great Love Apple There? Yes,
I did shoot us an email Great Lovedebate at gmail
dot com if you've got question, thoughts, comments are anything
else and please, as always like, share review this podcast.
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Your reviews do and always will mean a lot in
the podcasting ecosystem because we say it every week at
the Great Love Debate, we never stop making love. To
see you next time the Great Love Debate. It's the
(18:55):
Great Love Debate. De Great Love Debate. It's a great
love to be