June 6, 2024 • 42 mins
In this enlightening episode, we dive deep into the question: "Now that we are single, does marriage again have to be our goal?" The conversation explores the evolving roles of women in society, the changing perceptions of marriage, and the newfound independence that many women experience post-divorce.
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(00:00):
Music.
(00:28):
All right, ladies. So tonight we're talking about the fabulous question,
now that we are single, does marriage, again, have to be our goal?
I would say no. That's a hard no for me. It does not have to be.
I think, you know, luckily we are blessed to live in this day and age.
(00:51):
We don't have to get married in order to support ourselves or our children.
We can earn our own money make
our own decisions have a credit card since
1974 i just heard
and i haven't i haven't checked the facts that women could not get a business
(01:14):
loan until the 80s 87 or 80 isn't that crazy not with that without a co-son
yeah yeah goodness so So we've come a long way, ladies.
I mean, I just can't even imagine being held under those constraints, even at 53.
You know what I mean? I can't imagine someone telling me I couldn't do something.
(01:37):
I don't think after divorce, if you've been married, I don't even know what
it's like for short-term people.
But after 21 years of marriage, I don't feel like that that is a number one
goal for me to get married.
And I will tell this story. I don't know if I've told it before.
If I have cut me off but after I
got divorced I talked to my daddy sweet my
(01:59):
sweet daddy his baptist deacon for years and Sunday school superintendent and
I called him and said daddy I just don't think I want to date I don't think
I ever want to get married I think I'm kind of ruined for that I said what would
you think if I just had like a friend a companion there was a big big,
long pause on the other end of the phone.
(02:21):
And I was thinking, there's my sweet daddy, 1953.
I don't know how he's going to take that. And he said, well,
I think that's a great idea.
And I was like, I was the one going, did he just say that?
I think, you know, things have changed. And now that women can support themselves
and have jobs, and there are a lot of us out there. Well, you know,
(02:44):
there's a whole new line of thinking on, do you have to get married?
Yeah. Now you have a partner. Your partner should be bringing more to your life
than you are already providing yourself.
That they should be adding to your life, not sucking out of it.
I guess really is kind of what that's saying.
(03:04):
And I think it's a really new concept. And I'm not sure the men my age have
really caught on yet. but I don't think they have because I think a lot of men
and this is just my personal dating is.
Want to look at you and say, if you're even in their age range,
which that might not happen, say, what do you bring to the table?
(03:26):
And I want to look back at them and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you bring into the table?
Yeah, it's a different mindset. You know, I think it's a whole different way of thinking.
Well, and I think from our experience, at least.
Our collective experience. Yes, our collective experience.
Marriage doesn't equal commitment. It just doesn't. In our experience,
(03:49):
it equals contract, but not commitment. That can be broken should one party
decide and not have to tell you. And you can be committed.
Like, I am, again, I have been with my partner for a while now,
and I feel I'm in a committed relationship.
I don't really feel the need to be more than in a committed relationship.
(04:12):
I don't know if I'll ever feel like that. But that doesn't mean necessarily
to say, like, if the person I was with, if that was valuable to them, then I might.
But it's not your goal. But for me, it's not a, no, I don't have,
like, some fiery reason to do that.
I have some friends who are in domestic partnerships or civil unions.
(04:38):
And that gives you a lot of the same kind of rights to eat. I think that's the
biggest thing is the rights to each other.
You know what I mean? Like if you want to legally be your next of kin.
That is a bigger issue to me.
I think right after I was divorced, I was still stuck in the mindset that I
(04:59):
was supposed to be married.
You know, I grew up and that's all I ever wanted was to be a wife,
to have that other person who felt like the other half with me and to have the family unit.
That's all I really ever wanted for the basis of my life.
And so when I first divorced, I felt like I needed to start dating.
I needed to try and find that again.
And I did. There was one person that I was like,
(05:21):
okay, hey, I can totally see myself in a marriage with this person because I
believe that person truly understood me and got me and cared and loved me in
a way that I would have treasured for the rest of my life.
Now, it turns out that was a farce and it was not at all something I should have believed in.
And after that, what I have experienced since the end of that relationship is
(05:47):
that I really like being with myself.
I am, for the first time in my life, don't feel like I have to have another person in my space.
I don't have to have anybody else. That is no longer, for some reason,
that one relationship broke that as a goal for me.
Okay, let me ask you this question. And this is to you, Lauren.
(06:11):
Bonnie and I grew up, we're closer in age.
And so I think in our collective generations,
you had the Disney princesses getting married and you had the Prince Charming
and you had, you didn't have as many options as far as careers, really.
(06:31):
It was just starting to open up for my age group. And there was an emphasis
on finding the right man and finding the right neighborhood and first starter
home and all those things that seem to be a problem.
I don't know that your generation, because you're younger than us,
actually grew up with that.
(06:51):
I think you grew up with higher expectations for your kids. I will say,
like, my parents, they were divorced.
It was very, I had a bit of a tumultuous upbringing.
They're wonderful people individually, but it was a riot.
But what they both did was promote education, like getting a good education, get a job.
(07:17):
Like, neither of them ever said, my father or my mother never said to me,
you need to get married. Well, see, my parents never did either.
My parents put education at the forefront. I did it to myself.
Yeah. See, I think the same way. I had very lofty educational goals,
and my parents definitely brought me up to be very independent,
be an independent thinker, know how to do a variety of skills.
(07:40):
And they made sure that I knew how to do everything by myself.
But at the same time there was an undercurrent of
this is what's supposed to happen somebody's wife
yes you know and we put money aside
for a marriage and we want it was you know it was never
said it was like this unspoken expectation not necessarily by my parents but
(08:01):
by i think it's about society like i felt like that was what was supposed to
happen so i think our age difference yeah i don't i don't it's a different thing
and i didn't feel that nearly as much i actually had a reunion with with my college friends.
We talked about this maybe on an episode with my college theater friends about a month ago, I guess.
(08:21):
And we sat down and I haven't seen some of them in 15 years.
And one of my friends looked at me and she goes, and many of us don't have kids
or we just have one child, like most of us, or we're not partnered at all,
or everybody's kind of very doing their own thing.
And she looked at me and she has one, she has a one link and I have a one link.
(08:41):
And she said, I think that it's wild that the two of us have children at all. And I said, no, I know.
She was like, I would never have guessed that you and I would both have kids.
And we just didn't. That wasn't on my radar. Because when I was that age,
what was on my radar was I've got this theater career.
I've got this stuff that I'm doing. You know, I didn't really that wasn't really my goal.
(09:06):
And I mean, let me let me state like I love my child.
I wouldn't change a thing about my life. But it was just a surprise.
It wasn't what you grew up to do. No, it wasn't at all what I grew up to do.
And I wonder if I would have had more of Lauren's attitude if the career I had
chosen to go into had been art.
Yeah. Instead of something, I mean. If you had fed your soul.
(09:29):
Yes. And granted, being an English teacher fed my soul in a lot of ways, but it's not the same.
It's not the, I was able to be creative, but it wasn't my creative passion.
And so if I had turned that somehow into a career, I wonder if my goals would
have been, if I'd have focused more on that. Yeah. I have no idea.
But I would just say in that to say that I think now that I am single and I
(09:53):
really like being single, my views of, I don't want to say my worth,
but sort of my, I guess the undercurrent of my worth.
Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. really my word, but my expectation of what
my life is going to look like is radically different than it was at 24 or 30.
(10:16):
I would say, despite the fact that I got married and had a child,
I don't know if at any point in my life I would identify myself first as a wife and mother ever.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, that's not, those are not my identifiable
things. I'm Lauren. I'm an artist.
I'm a, you know. Right.
But those are things that happened to me also.
(10:40):
See, and I gave up a lot of my identity. Yeah. To be a wife and mother.
I did too. To put a hundred percent into that.
I gave up dental school. I gave up a lot of my dream of who I wanted to be as
a person, like a working, functioning, productive person.
I gave up a lot of that. And that was important to me.
(11:04):
And it's still important to me to be a good mother. But I just think the wife
part and the whole, I won't say the bill of goods that I was sold,
But it kind of feels like that, that you will get married.
And I had the whole dream of the person that I'm married to would be as attached
to me and devoted to me and loyal to me as I was.
(11:28):
And I think I don't want to say that because he wasn't, it ruined me.
But it did sort of tarnish that whole.
This is who I am and this is what I'm doing and this is what I did. and I did a good job at it.
It kind of tarnished a little bit of how I felt about the life that I had built.
(11:51):
And that was centered around my marriage. It was centered around marriage and
the person that I married.
But now my life is more centered around me, my job, my house,
my children, of course, my friends.
It's more art and my art, but it's more of me, like the essence of me.
It's not the total package of me yet because I haven't gotten,
(12:14):
point i i'm working on it i feel like i had
some lost years you know what i mean of not quite being
myself and trying to actually we talked
about this a little bit and i think we talked about this at one point we're
talking about supposed to's yes but i think i functioned a long time for a long
time in this like what i thought lauren was supposed to be doing or you know
(12:37):
this this and i'm i'm a square peg like i i if i can't do my own thing i'm so
uncomfortable it makes me It's so uncomfortable.
But when I can just be myself and be myself, I'm great. I can do whatever.
But it's just certain expectations make me feel, no, this is kind of cringy. You know what I mean?
Well, okay. On that kind of note, this is where I go with that.
(13:00):
I am very comfortable with my life. My life is pretty full.
I mean, I have a lot in my life, and I'm embracing my artistic side and,
you know, my friends, And I put a lot more emphasis on my health and sleep and
children spend as much time as I can with them.
I really wonder, this is going to sound terrible.
Do I even have space for somebody? You would make space for someone that you
(13:27):
felt a connection with, someone that interested you.
I agree with that. You know, I mean, I think that just like you will go and
spend money on a new stitching pattern,
pattern and you're stitching a canvas that you really want
to do and you'll find the time to work on it if
somebody in beth can i tell you how i know that
i used to do i used to do every show i
could do to be to not be at home or
(13:50):
like after the show i would do whatever i could to
not be at home and now i'm like oh i have rehearsal that's
gonna mean i can't talk to your person yeah my boyfriend
tonight like that means we're not gonna be able to hang out or like
i'm like okay i'm off work now we can
go like that that's who i want to decompress with
you know right so yeah i guess i
(14:11):
don't have a vision of that yet because i think because you
haven't met the person yet yeah that would inspire that
that's true i am not inspired yes well
that's okay y'all at least knew who you were before
you got married i look back and think i did
not like i got i got i graduated from college
one weekend and exactly four weeks later
(14:32):
i got married like it it there
was actually in one even four weeks so i
mean i got like two or three weeks yeah well i was 23 because it took me an
extra year but you know so it took me so i i i never had that time really on
my own to figure out who i was and what i wanted and what was important to me i was checking boxes and.
(14:56):
Graduate, check, get married, check, move in with him, check,
you know, all of those things.
And so now on this side of divorce, I feel like all of a sudden I am that young
person again with the opportunity to figure out who I am, what I want,
what's important to me, and try and strive and go for those,
what I thought were just impossible goals, wouldn't even think about doing art
(15:19):
and making that a real thing in my life.
That would just be a hobby because I mean, there's no way anybody would pay
attention to me with that because that was, because I never took long enough to think about it.
Well, now I am an artist and I do sell my art and I, you know,
I'm doing fairly well at working on changing it up, but you know, it just, I don't know.
(15:40):
I think, I think divorce has provided me, divorce and having that last relationship
sort of tear down that wall of expecting a family for me to include a man in it.
Tearing that wall down has afforded me this beautiful time to be single and get to know myself.
(16:02):
And I may end up someday with someone, find someone.
And really, I hope that I do, but I want to make sure this will be the only time I'm single.
And I don't want to waste it. I want to make sure I'm exploring everything I
can while I can stay up till three o'clock in the morning because I'm the only
person here working on an art project.
(16:23):
I can leave my room a mess. You know what I mean? But can I tell you that?
With the right person, those things don't matter.
That's true. With the right person, you can stay up till three o'clock in the
morning. And I can explore whatever I want.
Because they know that that's who you are and they're okay with who you are.
Like, that is a wild difference. And I don't have an experience with someone who gives me that.
(16:48):
I've never been married or in a relationship with a best friend.
That's what I think, too. I have not experienced that. I thought they were my best friend.
But really, now what I've come to realize through thousands of dollars of therapy
is that I don't think the person I was married to even liked me.
(17:08):
Much less bothered to get to know who I actually was.
I think I looked good as a package and I checked off his boxes. I agree, Beth.
I think the person I was married to admired me, admired me, but I don't think he was.
Well, I think the person that I married, the man that I married when I married
him, I think he admired how I did things and that I was self-sufficient and I could do things.
(17:34):
And I think he didn't take the time to get to know me.
And when he had to get to know me because we were married and he was living with me.
The extrovert, and I'm good at a lot of things, honestly, this will sound terrible,
But I don't think he liked living with the person that made a lot of friends.
(17:56):
And I don't think he liked living with the person that didn't say,
honey, can you do this for me? I just did it.
I think he liked that he didn't have to pay somebody to come to his house to paint his house.
But at the same time, I feel like he had some resentment that I could do things well.
Do you think it just sort of, he took a hit to his masculinity every time you
(18:19):
did something? thing. Yeah.
My ex told me one time that I had qualities he wished he had.
That's generous that you said that. Yeah. I mean, this was...
Back when things were good. Yeah. But I think when you do that,
when you have somebody that's good at things that you wish you were good at, sometimes it does.
I think after 21 years, there was a lot of resentment.
(18:41):
Right. But like, I'm not... I never thought that about him. Do you know what
I mean? I didn't think that about mine either. And now, like, I'm not...
The person I'm with is just my best buddy. Like, we have the best talks, like the most fun.
And I can't, I had never, I've never had that before. It's very different.
(19:02):
Well, if I could have a best friend who supported me and liked me for me.
And pushed me to do better and be my best self. I would not need a piece of
paper. Yeah. Instead of tearing me down. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I'm going to say that I might need a piece of paper, but it's more of a religious thing.
Well, I don't feel that need necessarily.
(19:26):
But, I mean, it's just a different, I don't know. I feel in a very different world, I guess, today.
But also, can we just talk a little bit about the fact that we're caught up
on women feeling like they have the role of wife and mother?
Like that that was what you did with your life. Yes. And do we really think
that men ever go, well, I was a father?
I think some people are. My brother is a fabulous father. But do you think his
(19:51):
identifiable thing is like, I'm a father?
In my ex-husband, that is what he wanted.
He really wanted to be a good father. I don't say this out of snarkiness.
It is genuine curiosity.
Yeah. My ex-husband wanted that to be his identifier. He just couldn't pull
it off because he was sick.
(20:12):
But he really wanted, that was the one thing that alcoholism truly affected.
That just absolutely broke his heart and tore him up was that he knew it kept
him from being a good father. And that hurt him.
I will say that my first ex, that I had a very tiny marriage to.
(20:33):
Practice marriage right out of college. He is a good father.
He turned out to be an excellent father and he made that his role too.
He even retired early to be the dad.
But I think there are men out there. I think just like I always say,
there's nobody out there.
And then I see that there are plenty of people out there. I think it's tainted.
(20:54):
My view of that is tainted because that's not what I have in my marriage.
I feel like so many women feel like that's their life. Like that's their identifiable
thing that you did was that you are a wife and mother or, and that that's not
like at the end of your life is that, and I don't mean this negatively or, or.
No, I know what you mean. But that was like, that was their purpose.
(21:15):
But that was the thing you did. That was the thing you did. And how many men
say that the thing they did in their life was that they were a father.
Yeah. And so for so many men, their job and what they accomplish,
I think that probably for some women, but I know that for men,
not even being a provider, but leaving some sort of legacy, leaving some part
of them behind to continue to go on.
(21:36):
And I think children are a part of that and they're hyper-focused on work and
stuff as part of that. And I think women, some of us have that, too.
But at this stage in my life, I'm not done. I guess you're never done being a mom.
But it is no longer my top role. It is, yes, son, I'm so happy you're getting
married. It is, you know what I mean? Like, there's not.
(21:59):
It is not my top role. You're not active. Yes, I'm trying.
You have a passive role. I have a passive role in my children's life.
That's a very good way to put it. So finding that place in this empty nest place
of who I truly am and what's important to me in creating this life around that.
Now, I would love to have a partner that stepped in and was a part of this with me.
(22:20):
But it's just so hard for me to imagine that best friend-ness.
You know, my mom only ever got to be with her soulmate person.
In what her 50s i
mean it's been 10 years or so i guess that
they that they got together and i don't
(22:40):
like they've had this beautiful life together you know this like they do they're
they are best friends and they do whatever they want like and i don't know what
it would have looked like for them if they had raised kids together you know
i've thought that yeah so So sometimes it's,
you can have this hole in a part of your life to, you know. Yeah.
(23:03):
Child rearing, I mean, look, child rearing is difficult.
Raising a child is hard. It is a full-time job. And I can see how in past generations
that was your job, even though you didn't get paid for it and you didn't get
any kind of appreciation for it. It's a full-time job.
I'm over here and luckily I can, I mean, I'm a college professor.
(23:26):
So like I go to work and my kid can hang out in the green room sometimes.
Like he can just be there.
And you're not there for like 10 hours at a time. No, right.
Unless you have rehearsal. Yeah. Unless I have rehearsal. And so it's,
it's relatively flexible, but he came with me today and he's like, I'm bored.
I'm bored. What do I do? And I'm like, okay, I need to make sure that he has
something to do. Well, but at the same time, it's okay for a kid to be bored.
(23:49):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a part of being a kid. I just mean it's frustrating at work. Yes.
I'm not frustrated about it at the house yeah but at work
i'm like all right dude yeah if you're gonna be
in my building like let's do something well my thing
is kind of at almost to the
passive mother overall because i have one
that is going to be a senior in high school and that will be
(24:10):
changing but my main focus in
my life is not my main goal right now
is not to find a partner to be a part of
a couple my main goal is to hang out
and be an interesting person and get educated yeah
as much as i can on all the weird stuff i want to learn before
it's too late for me to learn yeah i just want to keep growing as a person and
(24:34):
keep investigating all the stuff i put on hold for those 21 years i want to
do it and i want to live life to the full and i'm like you know my son is 10
and i'm like okay reasonably i have eight more years with him in the house i need to be like Like,
as focused on what I can do with him as I can. And I do.
I spend lots of time with him. But the fun stuff is just in stolen moments because I work a lot.
(24:58):
But you're making an effort. And some people don't even do that.
I just have to figure it out. But...
I still don't feel, I still don't feel like it's good enough.
You know what I mean? But when we talked about this before, but that's,
it's woman pressure. It's female pressure.
Well, y'all can look on the bright side. I've already been through my Martha
(25:19):
Stewart phase, so y'all don't even have to come. Well, he came to work with us.
Like, my son came to work with me today and he was like, oh,
I'm bored, mommy. I'm bored.
And I was like, look, I have to meet with a student and then just like go to
the green room and do whatever.
The green room is where actors hang out before they go on stage, just FYI.
(25:39):
And that's generally where my son does his stuff if he's at the school with
me. He just kind of chills in there and does homework or reads or whatever.
But today he was just complaining. Well, there's no homework to be had.
There's no homework. There's nothing to do.
And so he's complaining about being bored. I told my boyfriend that.
And he was like, he's got an iPad. Just give him an iPad.
(26:00):
Does he know how lucky he is? I'm like, but it's five hours. or
yeah of just too much whatever so anyway
i'm trying to figure maybe his leg goes up there maybe yeah
just transfer the leg goes over well i think
as far as marriage goes i definitely have a much
different view of what i was i guess really in part of part of my struggle has
(26:23):
been i cannot see my future i cannot picture it well but that's it but i spent
my whole life going i I know what's coming next. I know what's coming next. I don't see mine either.
Well, but I can't say, I know I will be married. That's my goal.
I know, like, I can't picture what my life will look like in 10 years because
I don't know if there'll be a partner in it or not, which truly actually just
(26:46):
makes me focus on my here and now, which is good.
You know, I can, I can, I know what it'll look like if I'm single,
but you know, do I, it's just, it's just been a little bit strange.
You don't know what it'll look like if you're single. I assume it'll look a
lot like this only with more art.
But what if what if something new happens or like you I mean,
(27:07):
you just never know where the day you don't know.
You do not know where the day is going to take you ever.
And if you just walk through like I brought them up earlier, but I went to school.
I was really fortunate to go to college with a group of people who are very much yes people.
And when I saw them a few weeks ago, we just walked into whatever the yes was.
(27:30):
And that is the best feeling of just here's the day. Where does it take us?
And here's what we're going to do. And I like it is a magical feeling to not
give too much to years. You don't even know if you're going to have.
That's true. Like, what if we don't have them? But I wanted to,
you know, my therapist says that all the time. I want to do the year of.
(27:51):
Yes. Yeah. That's going to be my next thing.
And I have done sort of a year of yes in the past and has been really good.
It has taught me that I don't need to say yes to everything because I need to
have protect some of my time for my own things in my house, my own artistic things.
(28:14):
And when I say yes to everyone, to everything, I lose that time.
But when I was struggling to be social, I started saying yes to everything.
And that was helpful. helpful social yeses are
different from work yeses because that's true if you're saying yeses to volunteer
for things that you should actually be getting paid to do no no no no that's
different no no no that is not the year of yes i'm talking about i'm talking
(28:37):
about the year of yes like do you want to have an art studio for a year yes
can you afford it maybe not,
yeah oh by the way we are doing that oh yeah yes we said yes we said yes we
said yeah but like do Do you want to go on an adventure?
Yes. Do you want to learn a new skill? Yes. Do you want to learn about bourbon
(28:59):
and do the bourbon trail?
Yes. Sure. Do you want to learn how to stack a stone wall? I want to do the bourbon trail.
Yes. I want to do the bourbon trail. Okay. Do you want to have a podcast?
Monthly spontaneous things that happen during the month. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Do you want to go to Denae on Blanc? Yes.
(29:20):
See? I mean, yes. Yes, I agree with all that. So we're doing those things.
Fun, adventurous, learning things. And part of it also is. But not things that you don't want to do.
No, not learning. Or that you should be getting paid to do. No,
no, no, no. It's not learning.
It's how to enrich your life. Say yes.
Make friends. Yes. And do things you're interested in.
(29:41):
Yes. Because if we're going to meet, let's just say, someone to date out in the wild.
Not artificially on the apps. Which is better because of pheromones.
If you haven't listened.
So if we're going to meet somebody out in the wild, the chances are we'll meet
someone with similar interests if we meet them while we're doing things we enjoy doing.
Yes, which is how I've met every partner I ever had. Yeah.
(30:06):
Right? Yes, agreed.
Saying yes so we're good i did online
segment on that i did the social dating or whatever
it was one time and do you know who they gave me the
equivalent of my accessories and i was
like all right well clearly this looks good on paper and
i'm running away i have met people that
(30:29):
i think are great friends on the online dating but i
have not i just haven't met anybody who's knocked my socks off necessarily
pheromones are real well listen to that
i do want to get my socks knocked off that no
different but in a different way that arthur hey
that's a completely different podcast book that i
recommended a few back how to be happy it's something about how to be happy
(30:52):
anyway that he talks about that he talks about the fact that like online dating
is just an algorithm for you to be similar with somebody and that doesn't work
because you really i mean similar Interests are fine,
but there's some opposite things that need to happen in order for connections to make.
You need to have a little ying for the yang. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. That's fine. Anyway.
(31:15):
I love my life right now, but I do want to explore other things that I'm interested
in. I just want to have more money to travel.
I don't. I've got to figure that out. Yes. I need. It is my.
I need a better side hustle. That is my thing that I really want to do. I'm so.
Yeah. I'm so start-crazy to go somewhere, and I just looked at everything,
(31:37):
and I just can't go anywhere until I'm at a certain spot.
I just have to deal with it. Well, and this wedding is knocking me back a little
bit, and I'm still a little knocked back.
Going out of the country last year and it's it's i can't even think about it
because it means i'm not really going to do any sort of those big adventures
but that's a part of life adventure,
(31:59):
well i can do little adventures and i can really enjoy the art process and the
things that i need to do to make that more lucrative for me yeah so i mean that's
kind of what i've been doing looking at it i think i've got a year of sitting
pretty still yeah and that's okay yeah but see See, you know what?
That's my theory. You can do anything for a year.
(32:19):
That's how she talked me into doing the arts. And I'm also coming at it from
a place of extreme privilege where I've been able to go the places that I wanted.
Yeah, that's true. Because my parents saw value in travel.
Yes. And then as a result, I saw value in that. Yes.
So I'm at a privileged spot that some people don't know.
(32:43):
No, that's true. My parents gave me the gift of travel as well.
They gave me the gift of travel as an adult.
We didn't go as many places when I was a kid, but as an adult,
they took my whole family places out of the country.
And it truly, I have the bug.
I got that from my mom, who was a stewardess and took me everywhere.
(33:03):
My dad, or my mother has a stewardess, and my mom took us lots of places.
But my dad saw the value in it, and any time it popped up for me,
he gave me that opportunity.
Well, and I try to push my kids. My son went to Africa. My daughter's going to Spain.
And my other son, I hope at some point an opportunity comes up for him.
(33:24):
But he is really a homebody. He's not interested in necessarily going out as
many places as my other two.
But I really, if it comes up, I want them to do it.
It's always good to see that, how other people live in other cultures.
There's a little veer from the path, but... It was. Okay, back to marriage.
But you don't have to get married to travel. Like, you can travel with your buddies.
(33:47):
Which is normally what... I travel with students a lot.
Well, my daughter and I are the ones who went to Italy together last year. Italy and Germany.
And I've got my sister over there. Yeah. In two weeks to go.
Yeah, and y'all are going. So, I think it's just... Yeah.
And there's a lot of people who solo travel. Well, and I would say,
like, the biggest difference, my boyfriend and I, we are two peas in a pod.
(34:09):
Except he's a stayer and i'm a goer i
love to go and he wants to be home so at
some point like i mean that my a friend of mine actually my hairstylist calls
out the price of admission like yeah everything else is is perfect so like this
is the price of this is what you paid so you know you just figure out other
(34:31):
people to go places with and usually it's my gay husband i do
have one gay husband well but you know but being grown
up enough i guess you know i had to save for a
minute yeah to go to it to go to it and i'm gonna have to save for two or three
minutes to go anywhere else it's gonna be a couple of years yeah if you have
skin in the game it makes it a little yeah yeah it does but but it's important
(34:55):
enough to me to do that all right All right, back to marriage.
Do you have to be married? Not have to. Do you think it is necessary to live a full life now?
No, no. No. Not at all. Can you be just as happy being single?
I think this is kind of interesting because you know what just popped into my mind?
I wonder what a single man would say about that. Yeah. Oh, that's a good question.
(35:19):
Should we have a divorced man?
One we should have a divorce that's an
idea we haven't even talked about that have you yeah
we need to find yeah we need to i got one i
have a good idea i have a good idea actually because i think because it
would be interesting to see i think we should get one of each
age group because i think that's interesting to
(35:40):
me too because even from the marriage thing between our age groups we have a
little yeah would it be different yeah i wonder if it would be different like
from a young person like your age group i love that you're calling me a young
person thank you i'm decrepit it's okay you are not you are not at all night,
(36:01):
what was that nice.
That's like that's like you calling your son in the airport this week Like,
are you going to tell the story? Nope.
All right. So Beth went to go pick up her son at the airport. Oh, yeah.
And she had parked over in the parking deck, and she saw him come out,
(36:24):
and she did her incredibly high-pitched whistle.
And he races. He immediately knew who it was, raised his hand,
and went directly to her. And some man standing next to her was like,
wow. That was impressive. That was impressive.
Well, my friends thought it was terrible when I raced my children on dog whistles.
But let me tell you, it has come in handy.
I do a little. See, I think that's great. And I can be anywhere in the crowd,
(36:51):
and their heads will snap around to see where I am.
See? My mother didn't have to do that because she was a Yankee in Decatur,
Alabama, and all she had to do was say our names.
And everybody's looking at her. You could tell her voice everywhere because
she didn't have the Southeast. She didn't speak in the Southeast voice at all.
She had midwester so how funny that was.
(37:14):
Well, I think we're all pretty pleased with our non-married lives at this point.
Yeah. I mean, that's subject to change. I'm good. And I think.
I'm good either way. Like, I feel good either way. And I think even if I find
a person, I'm not going to be itching to get married quickly at all.
It'll be a long time before I decide that might be even halfway a good idea.
(37:40):
I just can't imagine myself wanting to jump into that again.
Well, I'm not going to jump in. I did that last time. I'm going to test the
waters, wait a little bit, see how it feels.
Well, I'm thinking that they always say that when you meet someone,
you really have to go through every season with them.
Yeah, we talk about that. And I think that I will need to go through all of
(38:01):
the seasons two or three times just to make sure I'm right.
Are you still going to be that way in winter? Let's try again.
All right. What about next winter? Let's try again.
I just don't feel that need one way or another. I mean, truly.
And I'm saying this because I've been with my person for two years.
Because you actually have a person. Yeah.
And so it's been two seasons with a little interruption, brief interruption.
(38:26):
But I don't, I could roll on forever like this or, I mean, it just,
it doesn't really mean, it doesn't really change anything.
Thing it's just a i hate to
say and i don't i'm i'm a religious person i don't mean
to not i don't mean for this to sound like
a a non-religious viewpoint but doesn't change that much like unless it's a
(38:52):
legal contract it just doesn't just doesn't change that much for me so yes i
get that there are other things that mean more to me than that than that particular
this part so i get that Anyway.
Well, all right. What are y'all doing this week? To live the life you love?
Well, I'm going to the beach for two days. Three days. Oh, yay. Sounds so good.
(39:16):
And then I'm getting back into, we just started rehearsals for the show that
I'm doing at school this summer.
So it's just not the best time of the world to be going out of town,
but. You'll enjoy your family anyway. I will.
And my son's going with me and he's going to have the best time.
So that's what I'm doing.
And then I'll be back at the end of the weekend. And then I have to like,
there's just, I have a lot of work coming up. It's good work.
(39:39):
I have the most fun job ever, but it's, you know, it's just a lot to do in the next little while.
Well, I have both my children home for just a little bit. My son is home.
So I'm going to try to enjoy that.
And then looking forward in the next couple of weeks to doing the vacation.
That was a bomb out last year. because of the airline's debacle.
(40:03):
But we'll see if I actually make it where I'm supposed to go.
And that is what I'm looking forward to.
I love that my daughter is home. I'm enjoying working on the preparations for
the rehearsal dinner and stuff for the wedding.
And I'm taking an art class, a painting class. And it is a little stressful
(40:24):
because I'm learning all this technology.
I'm learning how to do Photoshop again. I haven't had to use it in a few years
and it's changed a little bit. Trying to remember how to do that.
I'm learning how to use an AI tool to create some reference photos.
And that is mid-journey. And that has been a lot more fun than I expected it
to be. Like it's a huge rabbit hole.
(40:45):
It's called Mid Journey. I'll show it to you after this. It's just,
it's a rabbit hole. I can go down and create.
Anyway, it has been a lot of fun.
So I'm looking forward to that. That's tomorrow night. And then this,
our new adventure that Beth and I are going on.
Oh yeah. Where we have agreed to, to committed to a space in a new art venture.
(41:08):
That Bonnie named. apparently i did
actually what i did was i asked chat
gpt for good names for an
art studio and then presented the 50 or so names that came up with to the group
and they chose one of them but i like our yeah room name too yeah so anyway
so we've got so that's coming up and it's very it is in my head i'm like it
(41:32):
is not the right time i'm not prepared for this this is not exactly what I need to be doing.
I am not advanced enough in my career, blah, blah, blah.
And then I remember that just like having a baby, it doesn't matter. You're never ready.
And this opportunity has presented itself.
And so we got to go for it. Sometimes the universe just tells you.
(41:54):
Yes. It's true.
Sometimes the universe just goes, this is what you do right now.
And all of a sudden I have got way more art spaces, studio spaces,
that i can physically use in a week we discussed that we discussed that how
many art spaces do you actually need bonnie apparently three i need a magic
(42:15):
so well all right ladies i would clink if it oh there it is all right ready
yes have a great week cheers,
thank y'all for joining us for champagne sunday see you next week have a good week.
Music.
Music.
(00:28):
All right, ladies. So tonight we're talking about the fabulous question,
now that we are single, does marriage, again, have to be our goal?
I would say no. That's a hard no for me. It does not have to be.
I think, you know, luckily we are blessed to live in this day and age.
(00:51):
We don't have to get married in order to support ourselves or our children.
We can earn our own money make
our own decisions have a credit card since
1974 i just heard
and i haven't i haven't checked the facts that women could not get a business
(01:14):
loan until the 80s 87 or 80 isn't that crazy not with that without a co-son
yeah yeah goodness so So we've come a long way, ladies.
I mean, I just can't even imagine being held under those constraints, even at 53.
You know what I mean? I can't imagine someone telling me I couldn't do something.
(01:37):
I don't think after divorce, if you've been married, I don't even know what
it's like for short-term people.
But after 21 years of marriage, I don't feel like that that is a number one
goal for me to get married.
And I will tell this story. I don't know if I've told it before.
If I have cut me off but after I
got divorced I talked to my daddy sweet my
(01:59):
sweet daddy his baptist deacon for years and Sunday school superintendent and
I called him and said daddy I just don't think I want to date I don't think
I ever want to get married I think I'm kind of ruined for that I said what would
you think if I just had like a friend a companion there was a big big,
long pause on the other end of the phone.
(02:21):
And I was thinking, there's my sweet daddy, 1953.
I don't know how he's going to take that. And he said, well,
I think that's a great idea.
And I was like, I was the one going, did he just say that?
I think, you know, things have changed. And now that women can support themselves
and have jobs, and there are a lot of us out there. Well, you know,
(02:44):
there's a whole new line of thinking on, do you have to get married?
Yeah. Now you have a partner. Your partner should be bringing more to your life
than you are already providing yourself.
That they should be adding to your life, not sucking out of it.
I guess really is kind of what that's saying.
(03:04):
And I think it's a really new concept. And I'm not sure the men my age have
really caught on yet. but I don't think they have because I think a lot of men
and this is just my personal dating is.
Want to look at you and say, if you're even in their age range,
which that might not happen, say, what do you bring to the table?
(03:26):
And I want to look back at them and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, what do you bring into the table?
Yeah, it's a different mindset. You know, I think it's a whole different way of thinking.
Well, and I think from our experience, at least.
Our collective experience. Yes, our collective experience.
Marriage doesn't equal commitment. It just doesn't. In our experience,
(03:49):
it equals contract, but not commitment. That can be broken should one party
decide and not have to tell you. And you can be committed.
Like, I am, again, I have been with my partner for a while now,
and I feel I'm in a committed relationship.
I don't really feel the need to be more than in a committed relationship.
(04:12):
I don't know if I'll ever feel like that. But that doesn't mean necessarily
to say, like, if the person I was with, if that was valuable to them, then I might.
But it's not your goal. But for me, it's not a, no, I don't have,
like, some fiery reason to do that.
I have some friends who are in domestic partnerships or civil unions.
(04:38):
And that gives you a lot of the same kind of rights to eat. I think that's the
biggest thing is the rights to each other.
You know what I mean? Like if you want to legally be your next of kin.
That is a bigger issue to me.
I think right after I was divorced, I was still stuck in the mindset that I
(04:59):
was supposed to be married.
You know, I grew up and that's all I ever wanted was to be a wife,
to have that other person who felt like the other half with me and to have the family unit.
That's all I really ever wanted for the basis of my life.
And so when I first divorced, I felt like I needed to start dating.
I needed to try and find that again.
And I did. There was one person that I was like,
(05:21):
okay, hey, I can totally see myself in a marriage with this person because I
believe that person truly understood me and got me and cared and loved me in
a way that I would have treasured for the rest of my life.
Now, it turns out that was a farce and it was not at all something I should have believed in.
And after that, what I have experienced since the end of that relationship is
(05:47):
that I really like being with myself.
I am, for the first time in my life, don't feel like I have to have another person in my space.
I don't have to have anybody else. That is no longer, for some reason,
that one relationship broke that as a goal for me.
Okay, let me ask you this question. And this is to you, Lauren.
(06:11):
Bonnie and I grew up, we're closer in age.
And so I think in our collective generations,
you had the Disney princesses getting married and you had the Prince Charming
and you had, you didn't have as many options as far as careers, really.
(06:31):
It was just starting to open up for my age group. And there was an emphasis
on finding the right man and finding the right neighborhood and first starter
home and all those things that seem to be a problem.
I don't know that your generation, because you're younger than us,
actually grew up with that.
(06:51):
I think you grew up with higher expectations for your kids. I will say,
like, my parents, they were divorced.
It was very, I had a bit of a tumultuous upbringing.
They're wonderful people individually, but it was a riot.
But what they both did was promote education, like getting a good education, get a job.
(07:17):
Like, neither of them ever said, my father or my mother never said to me,
you need to get married. Well, see, my parents never did either.
My parents put education at the forefront. I did it to myself.
Yeah. See, I think the same way. I had very lofty educational goals,
and my parents definitely brought me up to be very independent,
be an independent thinker, know how to do a variety of skills.
(07:40):
And they made sure that I knew how to do everything by myself.
But at the same time there was an undercurrent of
this is what's supposed to happen somebody's wife
yes you know and we put money aside
for a marriage and we want it was you know it was never
said it was like this unspoken expectation not necessarily by my parents but
(08:01):
by i think it's about society like i felt like that was what was supposed to
happen so i think our age difference yeah i don't i don't it's a different thing
and i didn't feel that nearly as much i actually had a reunion with with my college friends.
We talked about this maybe on an episode with my college theater friends about a month ago, I guess.
(08:21):
And we sat down and I haven't seen some of them in 15 years.
And one of my friends looked at me and she goes, and many of us don't have kids
or we just have one child, like most of us, or we're not partnered at all,
or everybody's kind of very doing their own thing.
And she looked at me and she has one, she has a one link and I have a one link.
(08:41):
And she said, I think that it's wild that the two of us have children at all. And I said, no, I know.
She was like, I would never have guessed that you and I would both have kids.
And we just didn't. That wasn't on my radar. Because when I was that age,
what was on my radar was I've got this theater career.
I've got this stuff that I'm doing. You know, I didn't really that wasn't really my goal.
(09:06):
And I mean, let me let me state like I love my child.
I wouldn't change a thing about my life. But it was just a surprise.
It wasn't what you grew up to do. No, it wasn't at all what I grew up to do.
And I wonder if I would have had more of Lauren's attitude if the career I had
chosen to go into had been art.
Yeah. Instead of something, I mean. If you had fed your soul.
(09:29):
Yes. And granted, being an English teacher fed my soul in a lot of ways, but it's not the same.
It's not the, I was able to be creative, but it wasn't my creative passion.
And so if I had turned that somehow into a career, I wonder if my goals would
have been, if I'd have focused more on that. Yeah. I have no idea.
But I would just say in that to say that I think now that I am single and I
(09:53):
really like being single, my views of, I don't want to say my worth,
but sort of my, I guess the undercurrent of my worth.
Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah. really my word, but my expectation of what
my life is going to look like is radically different than it was at 24 or 30.
(10:16):
I would say, despite the fact that I got married and had a child,
I don't know if at any point in my life I would identify myself first as a wife and mother ever.
You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, that's not, those are not my identifiable
things. I'm Lauren. I'm an artist.
I'm a, you know. Right.
But those are things that happened to me also.
(10:40):
See, and I gave up a lot of my identity. Yeah. To be a wife and mother.
I did too. To put a hundred percent into that.
I gave up dental school. I gave up a lot of my dream of who I wanted to be as
a person, like a working, functioning, productive person.
I gave up a lot of that. And that was important to me.
(11:04):
And it's still important to me to be a good mother. But I just think the wife
part and the whole, I won't say the bill of goods that I was sold,
But it kind of feels like that, that you will get married.
And I had the whole dream of the person that I'm married to would be as attached
to me and devoted to me and loyal to me as I was.
(11:28):
And I think I don't want to say that because he wasn't, it ruined me.
But it did sort of tarnish that whole.
This is who I am and this is what I'm doing and this is what I did. and I did a good job at it.
It kind of tarnished a little bit of how I felt about the life that I had built.
(11:51):
And that was centered around my marriage. It was centered around marriage and
the person that I married.
But now my life is more centered around me, my job, my house,
my children, of course, my friends.
It's more art and my art, but it's more of me, like the essence of me.
It's not the total package of me yet because I haven't gotten,
(12:14):
point i i'm working on it i feel like i had
some lost years you know what i mean of not quite being
myself and trying to actually we talked
about this a little bit and i think we talked about this at one point we're
talking about supposed to's yes but i think i functioned a long time for a long
time in this like what i thought lauren was supposed to be doing or you know
(12:37):
this this and i'm i'm a square peg like i i if i can't do my own thing i'm so
uncomfortable it makes me It's so uncomfortable.
But when I can just be myself and be myself, I'm great. I can do whatever.
But it's just certain expectations make me feel, no, this is kind of cringy. You know what I mean?
Well, okay. On that kind of note, this is where I go with that.
(13:00):
I am very comfortable with my life. My life is pretty full.
I mean, I have a lot in my life, and I'm embracing my artistic side and,
you know, my friends, And I put a lot more emphasis on my health and sleep and
children spend as much time as I can with them.
I really wonder, this is going to sound terrible.
Do I even have space for somebody? You would make space for someone that you
(13:27):
felt a connection with, someone that interested you.
I agree with that. You know, I mean, I think that just like you will go and
spend money on a new stitching pattern,
pattern and you're stitching a canvas that you really want
to do and you'll find the time to work on it if
somebody in beth can i tell you how i know that
i used to do i used to do every show i
could do to be to not be at home or
(13:50):
like after the show i would do whatever i could to
not be at home and now i'm like oh i have rehearsal that's
gonna mean i can't talk to your person yeah my boyfriend
tonight like that means we're not gonna be able to hang out or like
i'm like okay i'm off work now we can
go like that that's who i want to decompress with
you know right so yeah i guess i
(14:11):
don't have a vision of that yet because i think because you
haven't met the person yet yeah that would inspire that
that's true i am not inspired yes well
that's okay y'all at least knew who you were before
you got married i look back and think i did
not like i got i got i graduated from college
one weekend and exactly four weeks later
(14:32):
i got married like it it there
was actually in one even four weeks so i
mean i got like two or three weeks yeah well i was 23 because it took me an
extra year but you know so it took me so i i i never had that time really on
my own to figure out who i was and what i wanted and what was important to me i was checking boxes and.
(14:56):
Graduate, check, get married, check, move in with him, check,
you know, all of those things.
And so now on this side of divorce, I feel like all of a sudden I am that young
person again with the opportunity to figure out who I am, what I want,
what's important to me, and try and strive and go for those,
what I thought were just impossible goals, wouldn't even think about doing art
(15:19):
and making that a real thing in my life.
That would just be a hobby because I mean, there's no way anybody would pay
attention to me with that because that was, because I never took long enough to think about it.
Well, now I am an artist and I do sell my art and I, you know,
I'm doing fairly well at working on changing it up, but you know, it just, I don't know.
(15:40):
I think, I think divorce has provided me, divorce and having that last relationship
sort of tear down that wall of expecting a family for me to include a man in it.
Tearing that wall down has afforded me this beautiful time to be single and get to know myself.
(16:02):
And I may end up someday with someone, find someone.
And really, I hope that I do, but I want to make sure this will be the only time I'm single.
And I don't want to waste it. I want to make sure I'm exploring everything I
can while I can stay up till three o'clock in the morning because I'm the only
person here working on an art project.
(16:23):
I can leave my room a mess. You know what I mean? But can I tell you that?
With the right person, those things don't matter.
That's true. With the right person, you can stay up till three o'clock in the
morning. And I can explore whatever I want.
Because they know that that's who you are and they're okay with who you are.
Like, that is a wild difference. And I don't have an experience with someone who gives me that.
(16:48):
I've never been married or in a relationship with a best friend.
That's what I think, too. I have not experienced that. I thought they were my best friend.
But really, now what I've come to realize through thousands of dollars of therapy
is that I don't think the person I was married to even liked me.
(17:08):
Much less bothered to get to know who I actually was.
I think I looked good as a package and I checked off his boxes. I agree, Beth.
I think the person I was married to admired me, admired me, but I don't think he was.
Well, I think the person that I married, the man that I married when I married
him, I think he admired how I did things and that I was self-sufficient and I could do things.
(17:34):
And I think he didn't take the time to get to know me.
And when he had to get to know me because we were married and he was living with me.
The extrovert, and I'm good at a lot of things, honestly, this will sound terrible,
But I don't think he liked living with the person that made a lot of friends.
(17:56):
And I don't think he liked living with the person that didn't say,
honey, can you do this for me? I just did it.
I think he liked that he didn't have to pay somebody to come to his house to paint his house.
But at the same time, I feel like he had some resentment that I could do things well.
Do you think it just sort of, he took a hit to his masculinity every time you
(18:19):
did something? thing. Yeah.
My ex told me one time that I had qualities he wished he had.
That's generous that you said that. Yeah. I mean, this was...
Back when things were good. Yeah. But I think when you do that,
when you have somebody that's good at things that you wish you were good at, sometimes it does.
I think after 21 years, there was a lot of resentment.
(18:41):
Right. But like, I'm not... I never thought that about him. Do you know what
I mean? I didn't think that about mine either. And now, like, I'm not...
The person I'm with is just my best buddy. Like, we have the best talks, like the most fun.
And I can't, I had never, I've never had that before. It's very different.
(19:02):
Well, if I could have a best friend who supported me and liked me for me.
And pushed me to do better and be my best self. I would not need a piece of
paper. Yeah. Instead of tearing me down. Yeah. Yeah.
Well, I'm going to say that I might need a piece of paper, but it's more of a religious thing.
Well, I don't feel that need necessarily.
(19:26):
But, I mean, it's just a different, I don't know. I feel in a very different world, I guess, today.
But also, can we just talk a little bit about the fact that we're caught up
on women feeling like they have the role of wife and mother?
Like that that was what you did with your life. Yes. And do we really think
that men ever go, well, I was a father?
I think some people are. My brother is a fabulous father. But do you think his
(19:51):
identifiable thing is like, I'm a father?
In my ex-husband, that is what he wanted.
He really wanted to be a good father. I don't say this out of snarkiness.
It is genuine curiosity.
Yeah. My ex-husband wanted that to be his identifier. He just couldn't pull
it off because he was sick.
(20:12):
But he really wanted, that was the one thing that alcoholism truly affected.
That just absolutely broke his heart and tore him up was that he knew it kept
him from being a good father. And that hurt him.
I will say that my first ex, that I had a very tiny marriage to.
(20:33):
Practice marriage right out of college. He is a good father.
He turned out to be an excellent father and he made that his role too.
He even retired early to be the dad.
But I think there are men out there. I think just like I always say,
there's nobody out there.
And then I see that there are plenty of people out there. I think it's tainted.
(20:54):
My view of that is tainted because that's not what I have in my marriage.
I feel like so many women feel like that's their life. Like that's their identifiable
thing that you did was that you are a wife and mother or, and that that's not
like at the end of your life is that, and I don't mean this negatively or, or.
No, I know what you mean. But that was like, that was their purpose.
(21:15):
But that was the thing you did. That was the thing you did. And how many men
say that the thing they did in their life was that they were a father.
Yeah. And so for so many men, their job and what they accomplish,
I think that probably for some women, but I know that for men,
not even being a provider, but leaving some sort of legacy, leaving some part
of them behind to continue to go on.
(21:36):
And I think children are a part of that and they're hyper-focused on work and
stuff as part of that. And I think women, some of us have that, too.
But at this stage in my life, I'm not done. I guess you're never done being a mom.
But it is no longer my top role. It is, yes, son, I'm so happy you're getting
married. It is, you know what I mean? Like, there's not.
(21:59):
It is not my top role. You're not active. Yes, I'm trying.
You have a passive role. I have a passive role in my children's life.
That's a very good way to put it. So finding that place in this empty nest place
of who I truly am and what's important to me in creating this life around that.
Now, I would love to have a partner that stepped in and was a part of this with me.
(22:20):
But it's just so hard for me to imagine that best friend-ness.
You know, my mom only ever got to be with her soulmate person.
In what her 50s i
mean it's been 10 years or so i guess that
they that they got together and i don't
(22:40):
like they've had this beautiful life together you know this like they do they're
they are best friends and they do whatever they want like and i don't know what
it would have looked like for them if they had raised kids together you know
i've thought that yeah so So sometimes it's,
you can have this hole in a part of your life to, you know. Yeah.
(23:03):
Child rearing, I mean, look, child rearing is difficult.
Raising a child is hard. It is a full-time job. And I can see how in past generations
that was your job, even though you didn't get paid for it and you didn't get
any kind of appreciation for it. It's a full-time job.
I'm over here and luckily I can, I mean, I'm a college professor.
(23:26):
So like I go to work and my kid can hang out in the green room sometimes.
Like he can just be there.
And you're not there for like 10 hours at a time. No, right.
Unless you have rehearsal. Yeah. Unless I have rehearsal. And so it's,
it's relatively flexible, but he came with me today and he's like, I'm bored.
I'm bored. What do I do? And I'm like, okay, I need to make sure that he has
something to do. Well, but at the same time, it's okay for a kid to be bored.
(23:49):
Yeah. Yeah. That's a part of being a kid. I just mean it's frustrating at work. Yes.
I'm not frustrated about it at the house yeah but at work
i'm like all right dude yeah if you're gonna be
in my building like let's do something well my thing
is kind of at almost to the
passive mother overall because i have one
that is going to be a senior in high school and that will be
(24:10):
changing but my main focus in
my life is not my main goal right now
is not to find a partner to be a part of
a couple my main goal is to hang out
and be an interesting person and get educated yeah
as much as i can on all the weird stuff i want to learn before
it's too late for me to learn yeah i just want to keep growing as a person and
(24:34):
keep investigating all the stuff i put on hold for those 21 years i want to
do it and i want to live life to the full and i'm like you know my son is 10
and i'm like okay reasonably i have eight more years with him in the house i need to be like Like,
as focused on what I can do with him as I can. And I do.
I spend lots of time with him. But the fun stuff is just in stolen moments because I work a lot.
(24:58):
But you're making an effort. And some people don't even do that.
I just have to figure it out. But...
I still don't feel, I still don't feel like it's good enough.
You know what I mean? But when we talked about this before, but that's,
it's woman pressure. It's female pressure.
Well, y'all can look on the bright side. I've already been through my Martha
(25:19):
Stewart phase, so y'all don't even have to come. Well, he came to work with us.
Like, my son came to work with me today and he was like, oh,
I'm bored, mommy. I'm bored.
And I was like, look, I have to meet with a student and then just like go to
the green room and do whatever.
The green room is where actors hang out before they go on stage, just FYI.
(25:39):
And that's generally where my son does his stuff if he's at the school with
me. He just kind of chills in there and does homework or reads or whatever.
But today he was just complaining. Well, there's no homework to be had.
There's no homework. There's nothing to do.
And so he's complaining about being bored. I told my boyfriend that.
And he was like, he's got an iPad. Just give him an iPad.
(26:00):
Does he know how lucky he is? I'm like, but it's five hours. or
yeah of just too much whatever so anyway
i'm trying to figure maybe his leg goes up there maybe yeah
just transfer the leg goes over well i think
as far as marriage goes i definitely have a much
different view of what i was i guess really in part of part of my struggle has
(26:23):
been i cannot see my future i cannot picture it well but that's it but i spent
my whole life going i I know what's coming next. I know what's coming next. I don't see mine either.
Well, but I can't say, I know I will be married. That's my goal.
I know, like, I can't picture what my life will look like in 10 years because
I don't know if there'll be a partner in it or not, which truly actually just
(26:46):
makes me focus on my here and now, which is good.
You know, I can, I can, I know what it'll look like if I'm single,
but you know, do I, it's just, it's just been a little bit strange.
You don't know what it'll look like if you're single. I assume it'll look a
lot like this only with more art.
But what if what if something new happens or like you I mean,
(27:07):
you just never know where the day you don't know.
You do not know where the day is going to take you ever.
And if you just walk through like I brought them up earlier, but I went to school.
I was really fortunate to go to college with a group of people who are very much yes people.
And when I saw them a few weeks ago, we just walked into whatever the yes was.
(27:30):
And that is the best feeling of just here's the day. Where does it take us?
And here's what we're going to do. And I like it is a magical feeling to not
give too much to years. You don't even know if you're going to have.
That's true. Like, what if we don't have them? But I wanted to,
you know, my therapist says that all the time. I want to do the year of.
(27:51):
Yes. Yeah. That's going to be my next thing.
And I have done sort of a year of yes in the past and has been really good.
It has taught me that I don't need to say yes to everything because I need to
have protect some of my time for my own things in my house, my own artistic things.
(28:14):
And when I say yes to everyone, to everything, I lose that time.
But when I was struggling to be social, I started saying yes to everything.
And that was helpful. helpful social yeses are
different from work yeses because that's true if you're saying yeses to volunteer
for things that you should actually be getting paid to do no no no no that's
different no no no that is not the year of yes i'm talking about i'm talking
(28:37):
about the year of yes like do you want to have an art studio for a year yes
can you afford it maybe not,
yeah oh by the way we are doing that oh yeah yes we said yes we said yes we
said yeah but like do Do you want to go on an adventure?
Yes. Do you want to learn a new skill? Yes. Do you want to learn about bourbon
(28:59):
and do the bourbon trail?
Yes. Sure. Do you want to learn how to stack a stone wall? I want to do the bourbon trail.
Yes. I want to do the bourbon trail. Okay. Do you want to have a podcast?
Monthly spontaneous things that happen during the month. Yeah. Yes.
Yeah. Do you want to go to Denae on Blanc? Yes.
(29:20):
See? I mean, yes. Yes, I agree with all that. So we're doing those things.
Fun, adventurous, learning things. And part of it also is. But not things that you don't want to do.
No, not learning. Or that you should be getting paid to do. No,
no, no, no. It's not learning.
It's how to enrich your life. Say yes.
Make friends. Yes. And do things you're interested in.
(29:41):
Yes. Because if we're going to meet, let's just say, someone to date out in the wild.
Not artificially on the apps. Which is better because of pheromones.
If you haven't listened.
So if we're going to meet somebody out in the wild, the chances are we'll meet
someone with similar interests if we meet them while we're doing things we enjoy doing.
Yes, which is how I've met every partner I ever had. Yeah.
(30:06):
Right? Yes, agreed.
Saying yes so we're good i did online
segment on that i did the social dating or whatever
it was one time and do you know who they gave me the
equivalent of my accessories and i was
like all right well clearly this looks good on paper and
i'm running away i have met people that
(30:29):
i think are great friends on the online dating but i
have not i just haven't met anybody who's knocked my socks off necessarily
pheromones are real well listen to that
i do want to get my socks knocked off that no
different but in a different way that arthur hey
that's a completely different podcast book that i
recommended a few back how to be happy it's something about how to be happy
(30:52):
anyway that he talks about that he talks about the fact that like online dating
is just an algorithm for you to be similar with somebody and that doesn't work
because you really i mean similar Interests are fine,
but there's some opposite things that need to happen in order for connections to make.
You need to have a little ying for the yang. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yeah. Yep. Yep. That's fine. Anyway.
(31:15):
I love my life right now, but I do want to explore other things that I'm interested
in. I just want to have more money to travel.
I don't. I've got to figure that out. Yes. I need. It is my.
I need a better side hustle. That is my thing that I really want to do. I'm so.
Yeah. I'm so start-crazy to go somewhere, and I just looked at everything,
(31:37):
and I just can't go anywhere until I'm at a certain spot.
I just have to deal with it. Well, and this wedding is knocking me back a little
bit, and I'm still a little knocked back.
Going out of the country last year and it's it's i can't even think about it
because it means i'm not really going to do any sort of those big adventures
but that's a part of life adventure,
(31:59):
well i can do little adventures and i can really enjoy the art process and the
things that i need to do to make that more lucrative for me yeah so i mean that's
kind of what i've been doing looking at it i think i've got a year of sitting
pretty still yeah and that's okay yeah but see See, you know what?
That's my theory. You can do anything for a year.
(32:19):
That's how she talked me into doing the arts. And I'm also coming at it from
a place of extreme privilege where I've been able to go the places that I wanted.
Yeah, that's true. Because my parents saw value in travel.
Yes. And then as a result, I saw value in that. Yes.
So I'm at a privileged spot that some people don't know.
(32:43):
No, that's true. My parents gave me the gift of travel as well.
They gave me the gift of travel as an adult.
We didn't go as many places when I was a kid, but as an adult,
they took my whole family places out of the country.
And it truly, I have the bug.
I got that from my mom, who was a stewardess and took me everywhere.
(33:03):
My dad, or my mother has a stewardess, and my mom took us lots of places.
But my dad saw the value in it, and any time it popped up for me,
he gave me that opportunity.
Well, and I try to push my kids. My son went to Africa. My daughter's going to Spain.
And my other son, I hope at some point an opportunity comes up for him.
(33:24):
But he is really a homebody. He's not interested in necessarily going out as
many places as my other two.
But I really, if it comes up, I want them to do it.
It's always good to see that, how other people live in other cultures.
There's a little veer from the path, but... It was. Okay, back to marriage.
But you don't have to get married to travel. Like, you can travel with your buddies.
(33:47):
Which is normally what... I travel with students a lot.
Well, my daughter and I are the ones who went to Italy together last year. Italy and Germany.
And I've got my sister over there. Yeah. In two weeks to go.
Yeah, and y'all are going. So, I think it's just... Yeah.
And there's a lot of people who solo travel. Well, and I would say,
like, the biggest difference, my boyfriend and I, we are two peas in a pod.
(34:09):
Except he's a stayer and i'm a goer i
love to go and he wants to be home so at
some point like i mean that my a friend of mine actually my hairstylist calls
out the price of admission like yeah everything else is is perfect so like this
is the price of this is what you paid so you know you just figure out other
(34:31):
people to go places with and usually it's my gay husband i do
have one gay husband well but you know but being grown
up enough i guess you know i had to save for a
minute yeah to go to it to go to it and i'm gonna have to save for two or three
minutes to go anywhere else it's gonna be a couple of years yeah if you have
skin in the game it makes it a little yeah yeah it does but but it's important
(34:55):
enough to me to do that all right All right, back to marriage.
Do you have to be married? Not have to. Do you think it is necessary to live a full life now?
No, no. No. Not at all. Can you be just as happy being single?
I think this is kind of interesting because you know what just popped into my mind?
I wonder what a single man would say about that. Yeah. Oh, that's a good question.
(35:19):
Should we have a divorced man?
One we should have a divorce that's an
idea we haven't even talked about that have you yeah
we need to find yeah we need to i got one i
have a good idea i have a good idea actually because i think because it
would be interesting to see i think we should get one of each
age group because i think that's interesting to
(35:40):
me too because even from the marriage thing between our age groups we have a
little yeah would it be different yeah i wonder if it would be different like
from a young person like your age group i love that you're calling me a young
person thank you i'm decrepit it's okay you are not you are not at all night,
(36:01):
what was that nice.
That's like that's like you calling your son in the airport this week Like,
are you going to tell the story? Nope.
All right. So Beth went to go pick up her son at the airport. Oh, yeah.
And she had parked over in the parking deck, and she saw him come out,
(36:24):
and she did her incredibly high-pitched whistle.
And he races. He immediately knew who it was, raised his hand,
and went directly to her. And some man standing next to her was like,
wow. That was impressive. That was impressive.
Well, my friends thought it was terrible when I raced my children on dog whistles.
But let me tell you, it has come in handy.
I do a little. See, I think that's great. And I can be anywhere in the crowd,
(36:51):
and their heads will snap around to see where I am.
See? My mother didn't have to do that because she was a Yankee in Decatur,
Alabama, and all she had to do was say our names.
And everybody's looking at her. You could tell her voice everywhere because
she didn't have the Southeast. She didn't speak in the Southeast voice at all.
She had midwester so how funny that was.
(37:14):
Well, I think we're all pretty pleased with our non-married lives at this point.
Yeah. I mean, that's subject to change. I'm good. And I think.
I'm good either way. Like, I feel good either way. And I think even if I find
a person, I'm not going to be itching to get married quickly at all.
It'll be a long time before I decide that might be even halfway a good idea.
(37:40):
I just can't imagine myself wanting to jump into that again.
Well, I'm not going to jump in. I did that last time. I'm going to test the
waters, wait a little bit, see how it feels.
Well, I'm thinking that they always say that when you meet someone,
you really have to go through every season with them.
Yeah, we talk about that. And I think that I will need to go through all of
(38:01):
the seasons two or three times just to make sure I'm right.
Are you still going to be that way in winter? Let's try again.
All right. What about next winter? Let's try again.
I just don't feel that need one way or another. I mean, truly.
And I'm saying this because I've been with my person for two years.
Because you actually have a person. Yeah.
And so it's been two seasons with a little interruption, brief interruption.
(38:26):
But I don't, I could roll on forever like this or, I mean, it just,
it doesn't really mean, it doesn't really change anything.
Thing it's just a i hate to
say and i don't i'm i'm a religious person i don't mean
to not i don't mean for this to sound like
a a non-religious viewpoint but doesn't change that much like unless it's a
(38:52):
legal contract it just doesn't just doesn't change that much for me so yes i
get that there are other things that mean more to me than that than that particular
this part so i get that Anyway.
Well, all right. What are y'all doing this week? To live the life you love?
Well, I'm going to the beach for two days. Three days. Oh, yay. Sounds so good.
(39:16):
And then I'm getting back into, we just started rehearsals for the show that
I'm doing at school this summer.
So it's just not the best time of the world to be going out of town,
but. You'll enjoy your family anyway. I will.
And my son's going with me and he's going to have the best time.
So that's what I'm doing.
And then I'll be back at the end of the weekend. And then I have to like,
there's just, I have a lot of work coming up. It's good work.
(39:39):
I have the most fun job ever, but it's, you know, it's just a lot to do in the next little while.
Well, I have both my children home for just a little bit. My son is home.
So I'm going to try to enjoy that.
And then looking forward in the next couple of weeks to doing the vacation.
That was a bomb out last year. because of the airline's debacle.
(40:03):
But we'll see if I actually make it where I'm supposed to go.
And that is what I'm looking forward to.
I love that my daughter is home. I'm enjoying working on the preparations for
the rehearsal dinner and stuff for the wedding.
And I'm taking an art class, a painting class. And it is a little stressful
(40:24):
because I'm learning all this technology.
I'm learning how to do Photoshop again. I haven't had to use it in a few years
and it's changed a little bit. Trying to remember how to do that.
I'm learning how to use an AI tool to create some reference photos.
And that is mid-journey. And that has been a lot more fun than I expected it
to be. Like it's a huge rabbit hole.
(40:45):
It's called Mid Journey. I'll show it to you after this. It's just,
it's a rabbit hole. I can go down and create.
Anyway, it has been a lot of fun.
So I'm looking forward to that. That's tomorrow night. And then this,
our new adventure that Beth and I are going on.
Oh yeah. Where we have agreed to, to committed to a space in a new art venture.
(41:08):
That Bonnie named. apparently i did
actually what i did was i asked chat
gpt for good names for an
art studio and then presented the 50 or so names that came up with to the group
and they chose one of them but i like our yeah room name too yeah so anyway
so we've got so that's coming up and it's very it is in my head i'm like it
(41:32):
is not the right time i'm not prepared for this this is not exactly what I need to be doing.
I am not advanced enough in my career, blah, blah, blah.
And then I remember that just like having a baby, it doesn't matter. You're never ready.
And this opportunity has presented itself.
And so we got to go for it. Sometimes the universe just tells you.
(41:54):
Yes. It's true.
Sometimes the universe just goes, this is what you do right now.
And all of a sudden I have got way more art spaces, studio spaces,
that i can physically use in a week we discussed that we discussed that how
many art spaces do you actually need bonnie apparently three i need a magic
(42:15):
so well all right ladies i would clink if it oh there it is all right ready
yes have a great week cheers,
thank y'all for joining us for champagne sunday see you next week have a good week.
Music.
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