Mastering the Art of Relationships

There is such thing as loving people in this world. There is such thing as people you can trust. There is such thing as people who have your best interests at heart. There is such thing as people who are willing to be on the same team to you. There is such thing as people who actually see your value and know that you deserve love. When it comes to romantic relationships, it's not luck and it doesn't just happen overnight. It is 100% a skill. It actually requires effort. What is up everybody? Welcome to the non-traditional relationships podcast. We're going to be talking about romantic relationships. And just to start off, I know that this could be a sensitive subject. And I know that there's a lot of strong opinions about romantic relationships and relationships in general. About what's right, what's wrong, what's good, what's bad. And so I understand that not everybody's going to agree with what I say. And I understand that this podcast won't be for everybody. But I do know that we all experience similar problems and similar pain when it comes to romantic relationships. And the thing that I want to start off by sharing when it comes to romantic relationships is that it's not luck and it doesn't just happen overnight. It is 100% a skill. It is something that needs to be practiced. It's something that can be learned if you have zero knowledge. And if you feel like you're so far away from being able to understand how a healthy relationship works, it's still something that's achievable. And the reason why I know this and I can say this with 100% certainty is because I have been able to do it for myself. I did start out with a very poor foundation for my relationships. I didn't have very many good role models. And I was in and out of abusive relationships all the way up until I was 20 years old. And fast forward to now, I'm out of point in my life where I am far from any abuse. And there's no way that anything like that could ever happen to me because I don't tolerate it. And to be able to say that is something that I never knew that I'd be able to say. But it is something that I have been intentionally focusing on in practicing for just about a decade. But I really, really want people to know that it's not just about finding the right person. It's not just about right place, right time. Like, yes, things like that can play a part and make a positive or negative impact on your romantic relationship journey. But it is a skill in a sense where if you've never cooked a meal before and you don't know how to use a frying pan, you're not just going to be able to wake up one day and be able to cook a meal like Gordon Ramsay. The reason why Gordon Ramsay is so good at cooking is because he recognized it as a skill. He started from nothing. Obviously, we all start out as children having absolutely zero skills. So at some point, whether he started when he was five years old or started when he was 30, he just decided he wanted to start learning about cooking. He started doing it. He started to really practice it, study it. You know, he made mistakes. And then by going through all the mistakes, learning all the lessons, like having the intention to really create something positive and grow like in a certain area, it applies to literally any skill and it also applies to relationships. But I really don't feel like it has to take 10 years. And obviously, I understand it's not going to be the same for everyone. We're all at different levels. We all have different understandings and beliefs and experiences. And we all grow at different paces. And we all have different learning styles. So I'm really just, I'm not expecting to please everybody. I'm not expecting everybody to be able to understand what I'm saying. But I know that I've heard many people in my life, like on the internet, through podcasts, through YouTube, whatever. I've heard people talking about relationships. And it has been extremely helpful for me. Going out there, actually doing the research, actually trying to figure out what it takes to have a healthy, peaceful relationship. Actually going out there and trying to figure out what it takes to become a better person, to become more patient, more kind, more understanding, more confident. Like it actually requires effort. It actually requires you to be disciplined about it. Now obviously nobody's perfect. I understand that people slip up and that we fall behind and that, oh, we made a mistake. But there's literally no excuse, especially now in the 21st century, that people should be out here living without the knowledge of how to have a healthy relationship. We have the internet, which has infinite resources. And yeah, sure, it might be hard to navigate through everything. It might be hard to know who to trust on the internet. But now we also have AI. And if you have not put in any effort to use the internet or to use AI to intentionally, like try to figure out what's going on in your life with your relationships, and be like, what is the problem? Like if you're not actively doing that, you're not going to get any better at your relationships and your romantic life is not going to improve. You have to do the work. So now the problem and the reason why I feel like most people aren't doing this, like I want to just say, like, it's not 100% your fault. But at the same time, you do play a part and you 100% have a choice as to how you want to move forward after hearing this podcast. We always have a choice in every single moment. We have a choice about what we focus on. We have a choice about what we prioritize. We have a choice about the actions that we take. We have a choice about the words that come out of our mouth. We have a choice about how we handle conflict, how we handle problems. We have a choice about whether or not we're honest with ourselves. We have a choice about whether or not we are willing to challenge ourselves. All of these things are things that are within our power, things that we can do, to start making changes in our romantic relationships. And at the same time, I do recognize that things are going on in the world around us in our romantic relationships and outside of our romantic relationships that make it difficult for us to learn. So like, for example, the fact that our traditional education does not offer relationship guidance of any sort. As a matter of fact, some of the relationship skills I learned from school and from teachers are blindly obey authority. Don't ask questions if it's not related to what I'm talking about. My needs are more important than yours. I had some good teachers. Trust me. And I didn't grow up in any place super crazy or negative. But it's just the subtle beliefs that were projected onto me through just the culture and the way that people grow up. And the fact that there's not classes that are teaching us about relationships and it's not anywhere close to being a part of the core foundational things that we learn in school, that's a fucking problem. And that's something that's happening out in the world that you can use as an excuse or you can use as a reason to be mad at the world or to be stuck where you are. But again, you have a choice. Same thing with our parents, right? Or the kind of environment that we grew up in. Like we all have experienced some kind of pain in our life through the way that we grew up. We have all experienced problems in relationships. And maybe in our romantic relationships, we never had a very good example of what a healthy romantic relationship looks like. Maybe we've witnessed abuse. Maybe we've experienced abuse directly towards us. And one way, shape or form. Right, you've got all different kinds of mental, physical, emotional abuse. You've gotten neglect. You've got manipulation. You've got control. You've got shame, blame, guilt. We all have these difficult situations growing up. And maybe you're still surrounded by people that are like this. But I really just want to tell people like there is such thing as loving people in this world. There is such thing as people who are willing to be on the same team as you. There are people who will actually be patient with you. There are people who actually forgive you for making a mistake. There are people who actually communicate with you in a way that doesn't try to bring you down. But the thing is, if you're not also doing the work to be able to provide that same thing, then those people aren't going to stick around for very long. Because as a person of someone who really tries hard to create positive relationships in my life, I'm not going to tolerate bullshit. If someone is disrespecting me or trying in any way to manipulate me or abuse me, I'm going to see that shit coming from a mile away and I'm going to call it out. And I'm not going to let myself get walked all over. But I think a lot of us are stuck in these situations where we're getting walked all over and we maybe don't understand exactly what's happening. And I've been in many, many, many of those situations. And so that's kind of like the main thing that I want to talk about. Because again, I understand that we all have different situations. I understand that we all have different perspectives and different opinions about what is going on with their romantic relationships. So there's not like one specific lesson that I can go and just like start talking about that, everyone is going to click with. So all I can really do is share with you my relationship experiences, specifically my romantic experiences. And hopefully by doing this, it'll teach somebody something about relationships. I really want to help people grow. I want to create like a safe place for people to come and to be able to reflect honestly and realize like, hmm, okay, what can I actually be doing different? What actually is the problem? I really, really, really want that for people. I want people to wake up. I want people to start experiencing more people. or love. I want people to start respecting each other a lot more than we do currently. I know that there's people that need this kind of truth and directness. I know that there's people out there who need just a little bit of help and that's literally what I'm here for. So I have a million and one stories. I have a hundred different topics and I have a lot of different romantic relationships that I've experienced in my life that I've learned so much from. I've made so many mistakes and so that's what I'm going to talk about and that's what I'm going to share. And if there's somebody who's listening that maybe you kind of like what I'm saying but you don't fully agree or maybe you're not fully understanding what is going on in your life with your romantic relationships or you have a specific situation that you want to ask me about or a specific topic. I am 100% willing to address that and to talk about that. But in the meantime, I'll just be sharing my story. I'll just be starting from where I started and show you how it got to where I am. And then yeah, for anyone who actually enjoys that and who wants to just keep listening more, then I appreciate you. And that's what we're here for. I'm excited to keep doing this and to see where everything goes. It is going to start out pretty heavy because again, I'm going to start kind of from the beginning of my story, which was a lot of abuse. So I'm going to tell a little bit about that. But there's there's some lightheartedness in there. For sure. There's going to be some jokes for sure. There's going to be a lot of teaching points for sure as well. But yeah, if this sounds like something that you want to keep listening to, thank you again for listening and I'll see you on the next episode.