#43: Relationship Mistakes: How To Clean Up The Messes You Make When You Love Someone

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Hey, welcome to the Love Shack, a little old place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives and eavesdrop on juicy conversations. And boy, do we have one for you. Today we're going to also uncover the mysteries that nobody talks about but absolutely influences our relationships. If you are struggling in your marriage, just starting out in a new relationship, or are single and looking to do better next time, this is the show for you. I'm Stacey Bartley and I'm here with my co host and lover, Tom. Together for the past decade, we have been teaching and mentoring singles and couples around the world with the sole purpose of helping them to create what we call love for a lifetime and their relationships both with themselves and with others, using sound principles and skills.

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Yeah. And so do you ever feel like no matter what you're doing in your relationship, you just can't seem to get it right? It just can. It continues to be this continuous experience of knowing that you want to please your partner, knowing you want to get better. But the thing at the end of the day is you're having a difficult time wrestling with yourself or you're spending a lot of time blaming your partner for the challenges that you're feeling in your relationship. I got to tell you, being a human being right, is. Is one of the most challenging things we do. The wrestle with ourselves is real. And if we were to really tell the truth, as I like to start all my live workshops with, hopefully we'll be going back to those soon, is if you're human, raise your hand. And if your hand is up, we must tell the truth. That we are really mess making machines at the end of the day, that if there's a way for us, as we're going along trying to figure things out, do better, improve our lives and our relationships, if there's a way to mess it up, we are absolutely going to find a way to do that. So today we have a very special guest that we're going to be inviting onto the show. He's been a mess making machine too, just like me. And just like Tom, his name happens to be Thomas. So bear with me as I try and keep the names all straight. But he's going to come on and he's going to tell us his personal story about how he married, divorced and then married the same person. And he also does this professionally at a local university as well, where he helps young men and women, right, who are just starting out in adult life, how he helps them clean up their messes and go on to live a very successful, productive life as well. And so we're very excited to have this conversation with him when we come back in just a moment after our break to talk about how is it we clean up our messes and our relationships with ourselves and others? What is the best way to do that and what are some tips and skills that you can use in your life right now? Because if you're human, we probably all got a few messes we need to clean up. So let's take a break and we'll come on back with our guest.

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Working with Stacey Stacy has been life changing in a very magical way. I wanted to work with Stacy when I left a long term marriage because I didn't want to repeat any of my relational, how would you say, unhealthiness. I'm so amazed how she has taken her experience and wrapped it into her own program. A program that is designed specially for you for anyone that moves forward with her. She's unique, she's profound, she's, she's magical. She has a love for others that is unmatched. And it would be a gift to yourself to work with Stacy.

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Welcome back, everybody. We're Tom and Stacey Bartley, your hosts of Love Shack Live. Grateful and excited that you're with us. We have an awesome episode for you today along with our engineer, Eric Rider. He makes us look good, sound good, smell good.

Maybe not smell good. Oh no, not smoke.

But anyway, again, great to have you here and we are going to step right into the heart of the matter.

Yeah. Thomas Ragland is the host of what's your Bliss? And he's going to be on our show today, which is a podcast that explores what brings a guest bliss. In fact, I had the privilege and honor of being on his show here just A couple of weeks ago. And that's how he starts every podcast, which I love. Hey, what's your bliss? And off the conversation goes, he does this while also adding in some societal history, some personal history, and some advice on how it is we can all bring more bliss into our own lives. Now that's what he does because he's learned how to clean up messes. I think that he is typically led to this work. This is my own opinion. This is not anything Thomas has said. I can see him smiling in the backstage. Because when we learn how to get really good at cleaning up messes, bliss is the result of that. It's the other side of feeling stuck, a feeling shame, of feeling guilt, of feeling less than. And so, you know, I think it's perfect. In my opinion, when I was interviewing and getting to know Thomas in our meet and greet prior to this podcast is, gosh, it just made so much sense how he needed to come on and share with us how to clean up messes. And now the result of all of that was he was bringing more bliss to the world. He was trying to spread that message and what bliss looks like, what it feels like, and how you get there. And so, without further ado, I want to welcome Thomas onto the show to be with us to have this conversation. And while we're we're bringing him on, I also want to mention he's an award winning keynote speaker and he actually specializes in something I hope we get a chance to talk about today, which is threat assessment and insults. And that's big, heavy lifting, like he's helping people work through some really heavy stuff. He does this working at a university and helping students with accountability. This is his profession. So not only is he good at cleaning up messes in his own life, which is where we'll start our conversation, but he's also very instrumental in helping young men and women who are stepping into adulthood also clean up their messes and doing his best to get them on the right track. He also happens to be a husband and a father of four children. Thomas, thank you so much for being here and welcome to Love Shack Live. It's so great to have you here within the love Shack with us. So let's get started. Let's jump in and tell us how it is that you fell in love with a sweetheart, you messed that relationship up, found yourself divorced, let's go that far in the story. And then let's come back around and tell us how you cleaned it up and ended up falling back in love. We have Lots of questions and stories that we'd like explore there with you. Take it away.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Stacy. Tom, thank you so much for having me. Yeah, I'm an expert at making messes and I think that I'm intermediate at cleaning them up. So we'll try to get to both, certainly. But yeah, I appreciate the introduction and love what you all are doing, as I told you in our pre meeting as well. Stacy, I just think that this is absolutely beautiful and wonderful and what you're bringing to people is, is purely amazing. And yeah, to start with, my story, it's a long one and I will try to be as concise as possible, but, you know, I actually met my wife when we were seven years old. We were in first grade together and we, you know, nothing too crazy then other than her and two other girls during field day where my mother was present deciding to sing Thomas is Cute at the top of their lungs while my mother was present. That was very embarrassing for me, but a sign of things to come. And certainly I'm still cute. So I guess they were right at least on that. You know, I, I actually she ended up moving away for, for quite some time and we ended up back at the same high school in ninth grade and we started dating in 10th grade. That kind of was. We. We were in classes together. Both of us were interested, but both of us were very shy. She really was my first real girlfriend. And it was something where I. I think that I thought I knew a lot more than I did. As we are apt to do when we're teenagers. Right. And young and probably when we're older too, certainly I still feel some of that. But, you know, we started dating in, in sophomore year of, of high school, and I was just, I, I was smitten, you know, and she was, you know, my one priority besides school, which I had to keep making a priority, but she was really my priority. You know, I actually lost a few friends over getting in the relationship mostly because I honestly think it was just jealousy around. Just time being spent. You know, they're used to this guy who spent every second with them and all of a sudden now I'm spending it with somebody else. And I think that there was some, some frustration and hard feelings around that. But really she was, you know, she was really my first everything, my first love, you know, she was my first sexual partner. And it was something that, you know, I, I think that I loved. I absolutely know that I loved her, but I loved her as a teenager, would love another teenager and that's something that took me a really long time to realize that the love has to adapt, it has to evolve. And when you try to be the same person that you were when you first fell in love with someone or when they first fell in love with you, even that can be really hard, and it is not realistic. And so, you know, a couple of things happened kind of around this time. I also, you know, it sounds like, so conceited to say, but I got very popular in school kind of around this time as well, and I really focused on kind of expanding my popularity, growing my friend group. But it also meant that other people were interested in me in. In other ways for the first time. That had never really happened to me before, before my wife. And so I. I think that it was a lot for me to. To handle, and I don't want to take away. Accountability is very important to me. As we talked about, it's what I do for a living. But I do think that I was kind of stuck in this. I'm all of a sudden very interesting to people, and how do I reconcile that, and how do I be what they need me to be and then be what she needs me to be and be what I need me to be? And I think those things were all opposing. And frankly, I didn't handle it very well. There were times where it got extremely messy, you know, where I would be at a party and would end up kissing somebody and I'd feel awful, and I'd tell her about it. I would tell her what happened, and she would stay with me because we wanted to work on it. And, and, you know, I was. I was sorry. So, you know, and I. She knew I loved her and all of this stuff. And at the same time, in the back of my mind, it started creating this. This pattern, right? Like, I. Is there anything I can do to. Where it won't be accepted? It won't be, you know, okay, yep, we'll. We'll. We'll work on it and we'll move on. And it got to the point where, frankly, I took advantage of that. And I got to a point where I. I knew that she was not going to break up with me. There was, you know, and I could just kind of do whatever I wanted. I could be in this relationship, which I didn't want to end. I loved having her. I loved being a part of a relationship. And also I could do whatever I wanted because she was always going to be there.

Right.

And that's problematic.

Well, and if I may, there's A couple of things that I really want to highlight here that maybe some of our listeners don't realize that relationships are always evolving with inside of us, right? Because we as a human being are constantly growing and evolving. And I think what you said there is profound. When you were a teenager and fell in love, right? You were a completely different person in your 20s, 30s, 40s. And this evolutionary process with inside of will never stop. And also, you know, I've had a son that's been very much in your shoes. Your story very much reminds me of. Of my oldest son, Grant, who was in an incredible relationship with a beautiful young woman, younger in his life. And yet he wanted to flex his own muscles to see what was possible. He wanted to see who he was in other people's eyes. And he started to become very popular as the president of his class, you know, and just like you said, gets the attention and those kinds of things. And then you're wanting to explore sight of that. And. And as much as we would like to think that that's not compelling as a human being, it is very compelling as a human being. And we can judge ourselves and we can judge others harshly, but the reality is, until we kind of go and explore where my boundaries are, where that parameter is, where I see myself, who I am and who I am not, I'm going to constantly long for exploring that, and it's going to prevent me from being all present in the relationship now, right? So I think that's an important thing to wrap our head around. I like to say, in love, we evolve and get better at it as we do it. It's just like driving a car. And when do we start counting? Do we start counting the first time I have sex or the first person I kiss? Or do we only count the people we date and have sex with in college? Or do we only count the marriages? But I want, as we talk about each of those points in the relationship journey, I want us to see that each one is teaching me something about myself. Each one is helping me understand myself, love relationships to a better degree. So I love that part about your story, and thank you so much for being so open and honest with us about your journey, because we can all pick up parts and pieces of this for ourselves. If I'm in a dynamic relationship and I have a person that's just loving the pants off me, but I'm longing to be somewhere else, that is a sure sign that you're wanting to explore and expand your own parameter. You don't know what's possible for you. Right. Regardless of what age you are, that's what's happening. And if. And if that's playing out, it's really difficult for me to be all in where I am until I know what the parameters of me are. Right.

Yeah. I think that's really an excellent point around, you know, really, you want to push those boundaries until you can see how far you can go and what bounces back and where you. Okay, well, that didn't work. Or that did work. And this feels good, and this doesn't feel so good. And. And, yeah, I think that you. Like you said you. And that's not something that's unique to teenagers. It's not something that's unique to young adults. I think we do that throughout our life, and we just. We just do it in different ways. We find out how that works in work relationships. We find out how that works in friendships. We find out how that works just in parenting. Right. I think that those are all areas where we try to push a little bit and try to find what makes the most sense. Yeah, we. You know, and then kind of following that, I. There were a lot of pieces that were kind of going around and moving, and we got to senior year, and we decided to go to college together, and we went to college at the University of Northern Colorado. And when I got up there, you know, I was. I was burnt out from being the guy. I was burnout from being the person who wanted to be popular, who wanted to do all of these things. And I really kind of settled into. You know what? I think I'm just going to chill, and I'm gonna. I'm gonna just go to school, not gonna get too involved, just gonna kind of see what I like. Right. I never really took the time to do that. And so I thought, you know, I'm gonna do that. But I do have this girlfriend. I love her. I want to continue to be with her. We're going to the same school. And honestly, that first year, that freshman year of school, my goodness, was it a beautiful time. Especially in our relationship, I feel like we really blossomed. Like, things were really good. We really prioritized each other, but not in an unhealthy way. It felt like we had our own friend groups, but also spent a good amount of time together, you know, living on our own for the first time. So certainly a lot of time that we were able to spend together and just be us and. And really kind of learn and grow in that. And then I said, well, I want to do more things. I want to be more involved. I need. I need some of that. I'm craving some of that. I'm feeling like I'm missing this piece of me, of who I was in high school. And what. What do I want to do? Well, unfortunately, I couldn't just take one part without apparently taking the other. And so, you know, I started to get involved. I became a resident assistant in my. In my dorm. And at that time, like, I was spending a lot of time with. With my staff and then other, you know, staff members from around and ended up, you know, talking to a couple of people and then one. One specifically who I became romantically involved with. And, And I was not romantically involved with her while I was still in this relationship. I would have been honest if I was just as I was before, but I wasn't. But what I did is, for the first time, I broke. I broke it off with my girlfriend. And I said, you know, I think I need to explore other things. And I'm just. I don't have the time to prioritize to you. I have this live in position that I'm constantly doing. And I need someone who understands that, and I need someone who can. Can be kind of around that. And so it got. They got a little messy again as it is. Want to do. We never stopped talking. You know, we tried to be friends. Didn't really work. Times where I cheated on my new girlfriend with her because it didn't work for us to just be friends. And eventually we ended up back together probably about six, seven months down the road. And. But at the same time, I thought it would be great to just keep dating other people without telling any of them that I was dating other people. And to get extremely messy. I ended up in a. In relationships with three different women for over six months. And let me tell you, my brain, my time, and my money have never felt worse. It was a lot to manage, you know, and could have been completely avoided had I been communicative, had I had. I said, look, I. I'm interested in doing it this way, and if you're not interested in doing it that way, that's okay. I'm gonna. I'm gonna find people that are interested in doing it this way because I want to be with several people, and this is important to me, and I am still doing that exploration. But I didn't do that. I said, no, I could manage all of this. And you know what? Frankly, for six months, I managed it pretty well, as well as could be for someone who was managing three Relationships on the same campus. And I say that, like. And I think probably people are like, well, like, God, listen to this little narcissist, right? But. But. But the truth is, like, I was. I was. I didn't think that. I thought I was invincible. I thought I could figure it out, and one day I'd figure it out. And honestly, always in the back of my mind, I was like, you know what? I'm gonna go back to the original.

Right?

I know what that is. I love that. I feel safe with that. I feel comfortable with that. I just like having the attention on the other sides, too. Well, eventually I had to tell all of them. I broke it off with everyone except for my wife, and she took me back again. Now, this is the part where it. It becomes like, okay, now there's concern, right? Because it, again, has now clicked in my head. I can do anything, and it will. And it's never going to, like, there's never going to be something that puts her off of me.

Well, you know, I. I think before we move on to the. The. The wonderful, like, how you turned it around, right? It's important for us to realize. I wish we could have more honest conversations about what you just described, because until we can have more honest conversations about where we are, and, yes, there's going to be the judgment, I mean, I'm sure there are people in their heads, right, going, oh, you naughty little boys, you should never cheat. That's the answer. And as long as we're holding that hard line, we will continue to find ourselves in places where we feel like we've got to do one thing, and yet we're looking like, on the front side, we're doing another. And if we could really give the gift to ourselves and to each other about, this is where I am, this is what I want to explore. This is what I'm wrestling with. And here's how I'd like to approach it. Let's just at least disclose it. It would keep us from finding ourselves in these perpetuating cycles where I start not disclosing on the front side, and then I spin a story, and then I've got to get defensive and I've got to defend that, and then that causes me to show up in a certain way, and then I've got to do more and more and more of. Until finally, you know, the cat's out of the bag and I've got to come clean, right? That's part of the mess that we create. And I want us to see and understand how I'VE done it. You know, I have my own version of, of Thomas's story, and most of us do have a version of this. But in our effort to try and feel like we're good, wholesome human beings and that we don't struggle with trying to figure out who we are and what we need, we put on this front about, oh, well, and the more rule structure I have about it, the more I know that there's some defensiveness on the outside or in the inside, because the more I'm not at peace with just saying I've wrestled with that. I've been there, I've thought about that, I've done that. We continue to spend a story about what the rule structure is, and then I'm not allowing myself to explore who I am and what those parameters are. So I'm not condoning any of the, the tough stuff that comes up as we try and explore ourselves. But that's really the part, right? That's. It's the figuring out of ourselves and thinking we have to do it in a certain container which prevents us from really talking about what' going on inside of us that perpetuates these huge messes. Right. So if you could have come clean to all three girls, for example, and said, hey, I am dating all three of you because I, I love the attention because I love being with you. Right. I know some of you are going to get ticked off, but this is just where I'm at. Maybe I need to explore some other alternative lifestyle for a minute until I figure this out instead of betraying the people that you're trying to develop, you know, relationships with. Right, Right. Yeah. Love your thoughts on that.

Yeah, I, I'm really struck with this idea around. This is we, we don't, we aren't able to talk about it because no one admits to going through it. No one admits to, to the thought process even. Maybe you didn't do the actions that I did. Maybe you didn't act on those things. Maybe you weren't as impulsive as I was. Maybe you weren't as narcissistic as I was, but maybe you thought about it and maybe you didn't have someone to talk to about it. I certainly didn't. I didn't have anybody to talk to, or at least I felt like I didn't because no one would. No one has gone through this. Right? No one is, no one is openly talking about, hey, I did this. Hey, these are the mistakes I made. Because we have this, this idea around self preservation and, and saving Face and, and conforming also frankly to societal standards around love and relationships and all of those things. Things. And when we do that, then it does make those who don't feel the same way feel like outliers, feel like the others. And that's really difficult. And it certainly was difficult for me. And so I think you're, you're 100% right on that. And I think you're right. I think if I, if I had had some of that or if I, if I'd even thought that that was a possibility to, to have that conversation or even to have the conversation with the girls I was dating of like, hey, this is, this is just where I'm at. And if, if, and also frankly some comfort in myself to say, okay, this could go badly and I just need to prepare myself for that rather than trying to control every piece of the process, then if I would have trusted in that, then maybe, yeah, maybe that that lifestyle could have happened or could have been something. It could have been a different type of learning experience. So I think that all of that becomes, becomes extremely important.

Yeah. And I want to point out here that it always starts with somebody you can talk to about things like this that come from a non judgmental place. And if, and most of us have the experience of talking to people about this or finally confessing it and we do feel judged and we're talked to like we are judged and shamed about it, which makes us just shut down and continue the cycle that we're already in. So it's, it's really important for us to find somebody who we can talk to that's not going to judge me, but help me explore what the motion, what the emotional driver is of this for me and, and can I do some other things to kind of get that need met? What are my other options and possib abilities to address this with inside of my.

Well, I was just gonna say, I mean the, the two primary tenets are certainly two of the most primary tenets in our body of work and we talk about them often on our show, are permission and safety. Now obviously physical safety goes without. That's not even, doesn't even come to the conversation. But the ability, safety in our body, the ability to say the good old John Mayer incredible song, say what we need to say without getting our head ripped off. See, that's a much different premise. And like you said, Thomas, that literally is almost a foreign concept for most of us, especially when it comes around love and relationships because we're trying to fit this most dynamic process in our life into these, quite frankly, these very antiquated belief systems. And we're at a convergence here where that's why we're seeing this massive display of interesting human behavior, because they're just flat out not working anymore.

Yeah, yeah, that's. That's really excellent. I appreciate you saying the. The piece around it being antiquated. Not only is it antiquated, it was made up. We just made it up one day. One day we said, hey, religion is going to dictate how we do this. Right? Love had not been dictated by that anytime before the Catholic Church. And then all of a sudden, now marriage becomes the. The contract of love, and it is one man and one woman. Right. And because we have not strayed from that for hundreds of years, any straying from that is the other. Right? It is. It's something to be feared.

And I am just writing a book about that that's hopefully coming out the first of the year called have you Noticed Marriage is Dead. Not because I'm anti marriage, but because not only have we subscribed to the subscription of what marriage is, we've also come up with a list of how it's supposed to go and who you have to be in it, which then shuts this conversation down about, okay, this is how I'm feeling. I don't know what's going on. But here's the thing. We're always going to show up in our lives as good as we feel. So if even. Even realize, even if I have to spin a story out here to address what's going on back here, emotionally, I will do it. Which is exactly what you did. Right. I've got to figure me out. And if I can't do it in open, then I'm going to do it behind the scenes while I continue to present the story that socially we all subscribe to so that I can fit in, be accepted, be loved, be wanted. Right? And if I could bring those two things to congruence, we would all save ourselves a lot of mental health challenges. Betrayal. Right. Disappointment. Right. But it gets messy because society tells me I cannot do that. That is too risky. So I continue to separate myself. So. So tell us the rest of the story.

Yeah. Thomas, you had me on the edge of my seat now, so come on now.

Yeah.

No, it's a good segue. When we're talking about marriage and we're talking about traditional marriage, you know what? What happened is we actually both went out to grad school in Missouri, but we were about three hours Away from each other and, you know, around kind of in that time, we, you know, we tried to see each other as much as possible. We tried to really, you know, kind of make things work and. But it was hard, just hard doing that distance. Even three hours felt like a long ways away when you could only see each other maybe, maybe on the weekends, if possible. But honestly, maybe once or twice a month. I mean, it just felt like a lot. But over the second year that we were there, you know, I had actually. She and I had gone ring shopping right before we moved out there, and I knew exactly the type of ring she wanted and kind of had that already. Finally got it paid off. And, you know, I actually. I asked her to marry me on Christmas day in front of family because I knew that's something that she really wanted. She. She really valued. Our families are very close because, well, we've been together since we were children, you know, so. So it was something. We always did holidays together as much as we could and things like that. So I knew that that would be special for her. And, you know, I. I thought I was ready. I'll say it that way, you know, and we've been together for seven years. Why wouldn't I have been ready? I should have been ready. Right? There's those shoulds again. Yeah. And so it was. It was kind of time to, you know, to do it or to let it go. And I was not in a place of letting it go. Things were going pretty well, in fact, and so it was like, okay, well, it. It's. It's been seven years. It feels like it's time. And then I ended up getting a job in the University of Nevada, Reno. Moved out there, had the worst year of my life, professionally, personally. She did come with me, but at the same time, you know, I was. I was just struggling. I was struggling hard in a new place. And I'd never really addressed my own mental health. I'd never addressed my burnout from my work, from my job. My job is very. It has a high burnout rate because it is constantly dealing with mess. It is constantly dealing with students who are getting themselves into situations where then they need help being accountable. They need help repairing harm. They need. You know, they need to be able to be successful. So you have that piece. You don't want to just kick people out. That's not helpful. You want to help them. You want to help them learn and grow. And I never really took care of myself in. In that process and at the same time, trying to take care of another person and trying to. To get her this dream wedding that she wanted and that I thought I wanted. Frankly, in the middle of all of that, I'm also best friends with someone who I had worked with the year before, another female friend of mine. We started getting very, very close, but I always kept it at a distance. I didn't want to get back into kind of the messiness. I didn't want to get back into all of that. I'm engaged. I'm getting married. I. I want to just be that husband. I just want to be that person. And so eventually we get married, and actually this person happens to be my best man, because my best man. Well, both of my best bed fell out for various reasons. And so it happened that, you know, I had already invited her to the wedding. I wanted her to be in the wedding party and said, why don't you be my best man? You're my best friend. It just makes sense. And so she did, and she was, the whole time, both of us harboring feelings for each other that. That we never really talked about, that we. That we didn't, you know, really try to work through, because it's not going to happen, right? There's. There's again, there's this boundary that's been set, and for the first time, it's been set by me because I've said, you know, this is what I'm doing. And even though it wasn't ever a hard, like, oh, it could never happen, it was very much, this is where we're at. And so I had this, you know, this terrible year in Reno, and I'm trying to do that. We get married in the middle of it, and towards the end of the year, I'm just feeling awful, and I get to a point where I'm completely burnt out, and I finally do something about it, and instead of just moving home, I move back to Missouri, which is where she is, right? And, you know, eventually, I. It gets to a point for my wife, who's still back in Nevada, who says, enough's enough. Finally, enough is enough. It's been 10 years, and enough is finally enough, right? And I'd never had that before. She's never done that. And I never thought it would happen, frankly, I. I thought, it doesn't matter. I'm gonna work through whatever this is that I'm going through. I'll come back and, you know, we'll figure it out.

And if I can, if I can. This is so important for us as human beings, the thing that we don't understand about growing each other is we have to have something to push against emotionally. And when you think about the physical body, it makes sense. So here, if we don't have the ability to hold a boundary, like to say enough is enough, I love you, but I can't continue like this. And we can't advocate for ourselves, we don't realize often how what a gift that is to the person who's floundering. Again, what did I say earlier? We go out and we try and explore the parameters of who I am. That's my first objective as a human being. I must do that. Right? And so if I don't know where those boundaries are, I'm going to start making assumptions. And if you keep showing up and acquiescing and giving in and going along with, I'm going to think that that is always a door that's open for me and all of us are going to, to be culprits in taking advantage of that. But the minute like you said that door shut, I go, oh, okay. There's the parameter, there's the limit, there's the place where I go. If this is important to me and it kicks off a lot of what's important to me, what isn't. In the contrast of my own experience that up to that moment has eluded me, that I've made stories about that is really kind of an illusion. So I love that part of your story because finally your wife, right, says, okay, I got to maintain some self respect for myself. This is not okay. I am not playing anymore. If you say I'm as important to you as you say I am, then show me. Yeah, right. And now I'm done. That, that.

Yeah. And I couldn't, frankly. And she gave me the opportunity and then I tried to take the opportunity a little later after she had given me the opportunity. And guess what? That opportunity is not there anymore because that opportunity had been there and she finally did set that boundary. And I don't want to put that on her. Like she, she thought that, that she could do those things. She thought that she could just, just move through it and all of that. And she wasn't being honest to herself either. And that's something her and I have talked about, you know, in, in being back together, which yes, the story has a happy ending. It's, it's, it's good, but it's, you know, in being back together, we've, we've done a lot of talking about that, of we need to set those boundaries now. When we first got back together. And we'll talk about that in a second. But yeah, it's. When that, when that door finally closed, it was. I mean, I was devastated. And also it was like. It's. It's like. Feels so, again, narcissistic to say, but damn, I was proud of her, you know, I really was. I needed to find that point, because if I didn't find that point, I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you right now. No.

And. And it doesn't it make you respect them even more? That's the thing that's so interesting about that experience, right? When you find somebody who finally says enough, when you know you're taking full advantage of them, that doesn't ever feel good, right? It doesn'. And when they finally go, enough, right? Then I have respect for you. My, my love and respect for you goes up, which is an interesting place to be in because then this is where I see couples in my office that go, I'll do anything, Please, please, please come back. And the person that just shut the door is like, now you want to come back like, oh, hell no. Which makes your story very, very unique, right? Because this doesn't happen much because you've pushed me to the brink. I'm not even willing to look back anymore and entertain the idea of this, right? That, that was 10 years ago or five years ago or 40 years ago. So, so tell us how it is you stepped forward and you were able to convince her to give you that one more chance. And not only her, but, you know, the other thing I want to point out there is, what about your families, right? Because there's gotta be people on the sidelines that are going, are you crazy?

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. And yes, I think there's a lot of. A lot of meat there on that bone, you know. Well, I'll tell you what happened is that, you know, I. I did start dating this other, this other woman, and, and we ended up engaged as well. And it was go. You know, she moved back with me to, to Colorado because I had gotten a job in Boulder and, um, was starting to work there at the same time. Like, I really had not talked to. And my, my wife, her name is Tiffany. I might as well just say it at this point. I hadn't talked to Tiffany in a long time, you know, and probably close to eight months, almost a year. Which, you know, after talking every day for 10 years was quite a bit drastic change for me. But I wanted to give her that space. I wanted her to. I wanted to give her that Time, frankly, I wanted her to find someone who would treat her right because I, I wasn't doing it. And that's the truth. And like, that sounds really like, oh, yeah, sure you did.

But that's the truth.

It really is. Like, I wanted her to have that because I clearly couldn't do it for her. And I still want her to have that happiness. I still want her to have that love. And I wanted to give her the space to be able to do it, you know, and, and so I, I did, I, I kind of let her do that. And, you know, another year went by and it started to feel like, well, I, I'm not feeling the best. And I'd had this relationship that was, I knew it was ending. We were at the, at the breaking point. The engagement was a last ditch effort to save it, really, you know, that old story. And I knew that that was not, we were not in a good place. We were not right for each other. It wasn't, wasn't right at all. But certainly time and place, all of it just kind of, we were always better as friends and it just, we just completely ruined that, you know, aspect of the relationship too. And so, you know, I actually reached out to a couple of her friends, one that she had been living with, and I said, look, I, I don't know how to start this, but I have never stopped loving her. I have never stopped thinking about her. I, I feel like I've done a lot of growth within myself being in this other relationship, but also just like recognizing I was going to, I was going to therapy, I was, I was really taking the time to really get to know myself too. And, and I never shook the thought of her and what that could be and what it could be if I actually did it right. Once I came to that point of actually, no, I do care and I want to show that I care. Well, how do I do that? I didn't feel like I could reach out to her right away. I felt like I needed to know, to repair some of those, some of those external relationships first. Because I felt like if I can repair some of that or at least start that repair process, I have a better shot because if I just go to her, then it's like, then it's her and I both battling those same things, right? And I don't want to, I don't want to necessarily do that. So I started with, with a couple friends and said, like, this is what I'm thinking. This is where I'm at. This is what I want to send to her. And I sent a couple people like this a very long email which I'm sure she felt like was out of the blue. And I ended up sending it to her and just saying like, I never stopped, I've never stopped loving you and I would like to have an opportunity. I don't know what your situation is right now. I don't expect you to even respond to me, but this is me kind of throwing it all out there. And she did respond a couple of times. And me being in the business that I'm in and the type of work that I do, I'm also very adept at social media and figuring things out. And I figured out that she would be moving home and I knew when she'd be moving home. And I had it pretty much figured out when, where she'd be moving to, which was back to her grandparents house. And one day I just went down there. Actually the day after her birthday, I went down there and I bought her some flowers and I just showed up on her doorstep and, you know, tried the old romantic comedy way and it was just like, dude, I don't know, I don't, you know, thanks for the flowers. I don't really want to talk to you right now. And even though we had communicated a little bit again over email mail and it had been good and honest and raw and vulnerable and all of those things were good, you know, it was still like, I don't know if I'm gonna do this. Okay. Well, a month goes by, we end up helping the same friend move, move his house. And I mean, he kind of set it up that way, but we, we ended up helping him. And then we, we talked for about five hours that night and really just talked through things. And, and at first she was like, you know what? I, what I'm really not into, like getting into a relationship with you. And frankly, I feel like I am entitled to go explore myself and explore being with other people and sleeping with other people and all of this. And if you actually are true and honest about wanting to be with me, guess what? You have to deal with it and you just have to live with that because that's where it is now. She's setting a boundary that I never could. Right. And, and I was.

And she's disclosing where she's at. That, which is again what we've talked about already. Yeah, that good for her. That's awesome.

Yeah. So, you know, and it was so, again, refreshing. It was never something she would have done before. Right. And it was again, another Piece of like, okay, that evolution is not just real for me. That evolution has been real for you, too, and it can be real for this relationship. And I agreed to every term she had. Why not? Yeah. You know, and I said, look, if it ever gets to be too much, I'll be honest about it, but if that's what I have to do, if these are the, the trials that I have to go through, this is what I want. You are what I want. You are who I want to be with. And we started spending time together, and eventually it was like, okay, yeah, we're. We're back in it. And we started dating again. And then she proposed to me. Wow. And, yeah, it was. It was really great. And we had a much smaller wedding with 300 people at our first wedding. We had 20 people at our second wedding. Much better. If you're thinking about having a large wedding, don't have the small one. I promise it'll be much less pain on everybody. But, you know, you asked about the relationships with, with the family, and that was hard. That was hard for me to rebuild. You know, my family, whatever, like, they, they love me. Right? So. Great. And they loved her. So. Yes, we'll. Of course we'll allow her back in. We. We like her better than you, but, you know, my, you know, her family, it was a lot, lot. It took a lot of time. A lot of just being there, a lot. And a lot of dealing with, frankly, like, abuse and harassment and, and things that I knew was going to come with it. And again, I was willing to go through that because she was it for me. And, you know, and a lot of that came down to me being very open, as I am now, about everything that I had done and, and being, and, and, and what I learned from it and how I grew from it and how those things aren't important to me anymore. And there's only one thing that is. And it was her. And so it, you know. You know, it ended up being like. Like I said, it took a little while, but. But not as long as I thought it was going to take, you know, and we ended up back together. We've been married six years now. The second time around.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

Well, and. And probably the same principles that. That you're. That brought you back together are the same principles that you cling to, to continue to do day to day to day to day. Right. Because just because you've been years doesn't mean you're guaranteed tomorrow. So as we land this, unfortunately, I, We've got to Bring our conversation to a. To a close here, which, gosh, it's been such a great conversation as I knew it would. Thomas, let's give some three takeaways. What are the principles that you know now, looking back, that you would tell people who are perhaps anywhere in that journey that you just described to us? Thomas, what would we leave them with to help them navigate just a little better?

And I would just say, what would. Would the Thomas then like to hear now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, I think it's. Obviously, communication is at the core of it, but you got to start with yourself. You got to start by being completely honest with yourself about what you're doing. You can't sugarcoat about how you're feeling or about what you're. If you're into the point of actually doing things that. That might be problematic or concerning, then, or. Or against the norm, because maybe they're not problematic. Right, Right. You need to be honest about yourself, with yourself, about what you're doing. And you don't get to, you know, pretend you're someone else to yourself. Don't lie to yourself. You know yourself. You don't lie to two. Two people. You don't lie to yourself and your therapist. Okay. You don't need to do either of those things. All right, so that's the first part in. In that second piece of that is that communication with the other person and. And being not unafraid, because it's okay to have the fear, but it's recognizing. Realizing the potential repercussions and accepting those. Because if this is the life that you want to lead, that's okay. And it may come with repercussion, but. But the only way to find out is to have that communication. Because if I had sat down back then and said, look, I love you, and I do want to explore these other options, and if that's not possible, I understand, and I will accept the consequences of that. And I will have to choose at that point what is more important. And as long as I have that boundary, I know that that boundary exists, and I can work within the parameters of it, or I can say, no, that boundary doesn't work for me. But to. But to not have that conversation, to not allow myself that communication, that's really what caused a host of those issues. And the last thing is really just having. It sounds almost cheesy, but. But it's. It's just having faith. And. And I don't mean faith in. In necessarily even the spiritual sense. I mean faith that, like, you are doing what you need to. For you. And it's okay to be, quote, unquote selfish. If there is something that you need, it's okay to. To seek that. And again, going back to tie it all back together to. To each other, there may be repercussions that are beyond. Beyond the scope of just yourself. You may have to think about other people and you just have to be okay with what that is. But you have to have faith in yourself that you are again, being true.

To yourself, which is the toughest part. Right. That's the hardest work we do is overcoming the doubt that we have with inside of ourselves that I'm doing it right, that I am enough that I can go do be. And, and I'm going to just. I'm just going to leave us with this exclamation point. We show up as good as we feel. And if there's something emotionally right. That's happening inside of you, you will match that. That's our driver. That's our energy. That's what will. Will predict the way that I'm going to show up in my life. So. Right. My. My cautionary tell would be, don't divide those two things. If that's really the truth for you after sitting with it, then disclose it and own it. That's your best way through. Would you agree?

I would 100 agree. And on and on the kind of ending note of that, it's. You have to understand, going back to what I said at the beginning, which is that teenage love, that teenage relationship isn't the relationship we have now. It's not the people that fell in love then. Right. And you have to understand that it is adaptable and it can be adaptable in ways that work for both of you. If there are things that are outside of societal expectations or all of those things. If you have the conversation and you. And you have that preemptively and you're not trying to do cleanup for what you've done the last six months, you know, you are able to have that conversation effectively and maybe, maybe it doesn't work like I said, and you have to be ready for that, that potential that it is not going to work the way that you want it to. But if you. But you have to understand that your relationship has to evolve. It has to adapt. And it can be in ways that don't make sense to other people. As long as it makes sense to you, who cares?

Yeah. I so agree. Well, gosh, if people want to get in touch with you, Thomas, where would you drive them?

Yeah. I think the, the easiest way to do that is to email your bliss podcastmail.com y o u R B L I S S P O D C a s t gmail.com that is the, the Gmail that I use primarily specifically for my podcast. What's your bliss? Available on all major podcast platforms. And if you're, if you're wanting to check out specifically the, the podcast again on any podcast platform. And then also we have. I'm part of a podcast network called Anything But Credible. You can go to Anything but credible dot com, find all of our podcasts there. You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, just search my name. You'll, you'll probably be able to find me. Actually, you probably won't. And that's because I work in threat assessment and I do a very good job of hiding myself. But if you can find me, feel free to read that.

Thomas has been a true pleasure. Have a beautiful week. Thanks again for being on right here inside the Love Shack and sharing your story with us has been awesome. We're going to take.

Thank you, Tom.

Thanks.

We're going to take a really quick break and we'll be right back for follow some Fun. We got a giveaway coming up for those of us who are on the fun list. So stay tuned. We have a winner coming up.

Here's what one of Stacy Bartley's clients says about working with her.

Working with Stacy has been like life changing in a very magical way. I wanted to work with Stacy when I left a long term marriage because I didn't want to repeat any of my relational, how would you say, unhealthiness. I'm so amazed how she has taken her experience and wrapped it into her own program. A program that is designed specially for you. For anyone that moves forward with her. She's unique, she's profound, she's, she's magical. She has a love for others that is unmatched. And it would be a gift to yourself to work with Stacy.

To book your 30, 45 minute or 60 minute session with Stacy, go to stacybartly.com checkup.

Yeah. Thank you to Thomas for having the courage, number one to share that story.

What a gift to all of us.

Who, you know what we're making machines.

And that was an incredible messmaking machine story. So it's time to now follow the fun. So pour your face.

Yes. And, and follow the fun. We error the first month or the, I'm sorry, the first episode of every month we give something away. And today we are going to give away a set of our conversation cards.

But wait, if you're watching and if you're watching, here they are. And if you're not watching, if you're listening there, you can go to our website and you'll see our conversation cards for connection right there.

Yes, well, and this happens to coincide with our follow the fun moment. So I'm trying to decide. I guess we'll do the giveaway first. So, Eric, just so that people know this is very random, we need you to choose a number between 1 and 100, please.

Oh, it's very random indeed. So let's do 27.

27. So that's 15. 20. Our winner today is a K hute H u e t@yahoo.com I'll be reaching out to you via email to let you know that you have won some conversation cards. And congratulations, it's great to have you with us and on the fun list. For those of you who aren't on the fun list, you can get there from our podcast page, stacybartley.com forward slash podcast. Join the fun list and you can also enter to win prizes that we give away each and every month of the show. So our follow the fun moment is built around our conversation cards as well. I want you to pour a glass of your favorite beverage. I want you to sit down and prepare to share yourself.

I have a perfect card.

And if by chance you find the situation a place where you don't know what to share, we got you covered. That's what the conversation cards were designed for. All you got to do is draw a card. So we're going to show you how it works today so that you too can ask this question to somebody in your sphere of influence and create a little bit of connection sometime during the next week. So, Tommy, what's the conversation card question?

Incredible question. What is your guilty pleasure?

Oh, okay, I'll answer first. My guilty pleasure is I love to pour myself a beautiful glass of wine.

Come on, you stole mine. Now I know.

And sip it while I dance, you know, or write or do just about anything else. Put on some great music, listen to some good tunes and explore that wonderful.

Okay, so after that, I would say my guilty pleasure is sitting on our wonderful couch in a non rushed manner, which doesn't happen too often. Right now where our coon dog is is sleeping and reading with uninterrupted.

I love that.

I like to do that early in the morning.

Feel guilty about laying on the couch and just taking some time to yourself. Tell us about that.

I Know, it's.

It's a. That's a. Let that be a episode. That's an episode in. Of its own.

A guilty pleasure. Right. It's something you feel like you shouldn't be doing.

I know, yes. Because I. There should be something else. But no, it really is some. At times, Stacy will sleep longer than me. I like to rise. Not as early as I used to, but still. Probably the first one.

And.

And we live in a cute, awesome little house. It's quiet if. If it's. If it warrants it. A blanket and just. Yeah, just blissing out.

Allowing yourself to kind of scroll through the social media or.

And actually. Or even, you know, diving into. We were like, reading three books right now at the same time. So one of those.

Well, I would say you could probably give yourself that. I give you full permission. Here's the card. Question is, what is your guilty pleasure? Have that conversation with somebody. Pour your favorite beverage, ask that question and share about it. Tom and I could. I could. I could go on and tell him more.

But these are really fun. I mean, we developed these because Stacy would often encourage our private clients to, like, look, you have to start talking with each other. Most people come to us because they're not communicating. They're not talking. So. And they'll say, okay, well, I know, I understand. I need to do that logically. But I don't know what to talk about. And we heard that so many times. So we say, okay, we've got that covered. We created this. There's some really thought provoking. They're family friendly. It's all good. So they're. You know what. And so you put your electrical device. Electronic. Excuse me, devices down, look at each other and draw a card and share. It's literally that simple.

Yeah.

What would you say your guilty pleasure is, Eric? What's your guilty pleasure?

On the spot.

You know, we're out of time, unfortunately.

See?

Oh, that was very convenient.

Well, listen, as we land this episode, as always, we love to leave you with a song. We love to leave you with something to feel. Now that we've talked with you and used your logic and your thinking, today's song is K. John's on the Ocean. I love this song because it says, my ship is coming in. What's on the horizon? I have no idea, but I see it, I feel it, I want it. I'm compelled to go there. So may we all remember that. That regardless of what your messes have been, there's always a place where we can clean them up and we can purchase pursue that horizon and that ocean. Our ship will come in at some point in time. Until we see you again, it's been great to be here with you inside of the Love Shack. We're Tom and Stacy Bartley, the host of Love Shack Live, together with our engineer, Eric Rider. Thank you so much for being here and spending some time with us inside of the Love Shack this week. I look forward to being here next week.

See you soon.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to staceybartley.com podcast Love the Show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack Live with Tom and Stacey Bartley.