Two Hot Takes - 70: Unresolved..

Episode Date: June 16, 2022

Two Hot Takes host, Morgan, is joined by guest co-hosts Lauren Rolfe and Justin Thunstrom! This episode features a variety of stories that triggered some unresolved feelings.. and the first one just sets us off. From crying, getting heated, and tangents galore this one is a doozy y'all. Partners: Bombas: Bombas.com/THT  Credit Karma: CreditKarma.com or Credit Karma app ! Hello Fresh: HelloFresh.com/tht16 Promo code :THT16 Apostrophe: Apostrophe.com/THT Promo code: THT Our SubReddit to Submit Stories!!! https://reddit.app.link/twohottakes Merch: https://fanjoy.co/collections/twohottakes Get your own "What's in the Box?!" at https://www.patreon.com/TwoHotTakes Full length Video episodes available on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TwoHotTakes

What's up everybody, I'm Mike Wilson with Any Hour Services and if you've been thinking about replacing your old water heater, Any Hour Services is here to help and save you some money. Whether you're looking for a new tanked water heater or you want to see what upgrading to a tankless would cost, the plumbers at Any Hour Services can show you what options are available and right now you can save $400 on a tanked water heater or $1200 on a tankless. Call Any Hour Services and schedule a free estimate today. Google Any Hour Services or schedule online at AnyHourServices.com.

No one helps more homeowners than Any Hour Services. I've had a lot of therapists on recently and I've just felt like very composed and I just wanted to just fuck it up so I have the party animals. Oh, the stand is playing a good part in that. It says I'm just watching it go down just like a boner after sex. Wow. Really? They just start.

No. Just kidding. I just have been so, like you guys don't understand. Do you watch that happen, by the way? I don't think I've ever seen it slowly deflate. Sometimes. Yeah, because we typically jump in the shower after like because of coconut oil and like we just like to freshen up.

You do do that. And I just stare and at his dick, I'll, I typically go pee first and he'll just stand outside the shower waiting. I just like. Because it's cold, dude. You can't get in when it's like superior cold. I just stare and I'm like, okay, there it goes. There it goes.

All right. Let's, let's get into the damn thing. Jeez. So you're pissing them off. We're off to a salt set. I'm mad. I'm already traumatized. So today's episode is unresolved.

I don't know how these stories will make you guys feel, but when I was reading them, I just kind of felt like I need updates. I need to know more. I feel unresolved. I don't feel good. Great. Love that. Justin came in here today and he's like, sometimes I just feel really, you know, worn out after

an episode because it just makes me so mad at some of the things that people do. Yeah, it's fucked. Yeah. And then Morgan's like, the episode's called unresolved. He's like, no. Well, and hey, listen, the what's in the box available now is a little bit. All sales guy. It gives me a little bit of that feeling of like, okay, I know a little bit what's in

the box because we, we chose what's in the damn box this time, but I know that candle right there. Still. Could be yours. Could be yours. I like that. I want one. It smells so good.

We should do that thing live where it's like, if you call now within the next 10 minutes, not 15.99, it'll be 9.99 and you'll get an extra one. QVC style, baby. Yeah. So we'll see how this one makes us feel, but I have, I've really reigned it in recently on, on the past couple of episodes with the therapist. I've, I felt like I need to be very emotionally intelligent on my best behavior. And so then why did you wear an empathy shirt today?

Because the Mayfair group sent it to me and I just wanted to wear it, but you're trying to be crazy today. Do I have your name on it? No. Oh, I thought it's had your name on there. I don't have a Y in my name. Oh, always. Empathy always.

Wow. I don't know. Empathy is one of my top five strengths. According to the strength skill test I took in college, undergrad, University of Minnesota. Yeah. Go and go for a skumah. I'm ready, you guys. I'm ready.

Okay. I'm going to be the most unhinged out of all these stories. It's me. Can I give an early hot take? Uh-huh. I think on the therapist episodes though, I do, I mean, my perspective is from the one that I was on. There is something to always have been doing these stories and you kind of come to this

conclusion as a group or as, you know, two people on an episode. But there was something about that episode that I feel like forever will change my thinking when it comes to certain conflicts or problems in life because she actually gives, I don't know if it's like, you can call it the correct response, but it feels like this is the best way to attack this versus us all being like, well, I think this and I think this. That episode, no matter what those problems were, the advice can be applied to so many things. So I think, I think there is value in that that's so different and that's why I loved

it. I haven't watched it yet. I need to. You'll love it. It'll really resonate with you. But let's, let's get into this and hopefully you all don't feel as unresolved as I did. Oh, I probably will. Let's dive in.

Let's do it. I guess. You guys, I can't wait to tell you mine. I feel like I need to like sneak it in whenever I'm sure there's something said. Yeah. So this one is, I'm just like, there's no, I'm just going to shut the fuck up and read. Amitya, shut the fuck up, bitch. Stick to the stories.

Amitya asshole for telling my niece the family secret. I 35 female had two older sisters growing up, Jane and Kim. Kim got sick and died, but not before giving birth to my niece, Laura, 18 female. It had been a year after Kim's passing when Jane and Laura's dad, Tom, 42 male confessed to dating and were now engaged. Everyone was surprised, but no one was vocally disgusted as me. I accused them of cheating. Jane and Tom explained that this wasn't something they had planned, but there was no cheating.

I knew that Kim would want them to be happy. Convenient since she's, you know, dead. I did not attend the wedding and was upset at how everyone else was so accepting of the relationship. But the thing that hurt me the most was how Jane and Tom intended to completely erase Kim from Laura's life. She was barely two when Kim died and they decided it would be better if Laura thought Jane was her mother in every sense of the word after the adoption was finalized.

Tom got rid of any items that would suggest he and Kim were ever in a relationship and made his family swear to never tell Laura the truth. Jane expected everyone on our side of the family to do the same, but I refused and as such I was denied access to Laura. It hurt, but when I thought about all those times Kim cried knowing that she wouldn't live long enough to see Laura grow up, there was just no way I could honor the lie. They even had Laura's name legally changed to something that Jane liked as Kim picked out Laura's first name.

I distanced myself from my family over time over this, but my parents always tried to get us to reconcile, citing that they didn't like this arrangement either, but accepting it was better than not being a part of Laura's life at all. I just couldn't do it. Growing up Laura had known of me, but we never really interacted. Apparently she's interested in studying a field that I work in and reached out to me through social media. The last time I saw her in person she was seven and I started to tear up at how much

she looked like Kim. We would talk from time to time and eventually Laura asked why I wasn't around. I tried to keep it vague, but Laura knew that there was more to the story as I didn't seem like the person I was described to be. If we had been talking through DMs like before I probably wouldn't have done it, but we were video chatting and something about looking directly into her eyes broke me and I confessed to everything. Before Kim died she and I made a series of videos for Laura to watch at her big moments

and I told her that if she ever wanted to watch any of them I'd send them. Laura asked me to send some and then I heard nothing from her for days. Recently I got a call from an enraged Jane and Tom, berating me for ruining their family. After Laura watched some of the videos she confronted my parents who confirmed everything. Laura has moved out and currently not speaking to anyone and no one knows where she is right now. Everyone is angry at me. Am I the asshole? Oh my god.

Are you okay? Heartbreaking. I know. Don't make me fucking cry. This is the first one, bitch. Oh my god. Wow. Tom's dad.

Yeah. That is a crazy story. Yeah, fuck Tom. Holy shit. See like, I just don't even know how this is like, this guy, this is like, he's crazy. I don't know. Imagine finding out, 18, like you're about to go to college, you're your whole person, you've had this whole life.

Can you imagine finding out your family has completely, that's almost like being kidnapped. Like you were kidnapped and then put in this insane other universe family. They erased every image of your mom. They changed your name. Why would he ever be cool with that though? I don't get it. Was he in a, was it, did he actually love her? I don't know.

It sounds like she's suspicious that they were cheating before she even died. And so maybe he was just wrapped around her finger. I mean, look at the, look at the episode of father knows something we did where the girl from Boston, literally her dad is ghosting her because of someone he married. Like ghosting her blocked her on everything. Like that's her dad. People do terrible things. This feels like a different version of the our father thing.

Oh my god. Do you watch that yet? You should. I have a DNA episode coming up and like there's a story that's really that vibe. This guy was a fertility doctor and he would replace the samples from couples that he would replace it with. His sperm. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. So this in a sense. I've seen the preview. Yeah. So this would have the same like emotional effect on a kid in the same sense as like, but this is even more so because the family like. It's on purpose. Yeah.

This is horrendous. This is honestly. This is like Truman show. Oh my god. Yeah. But it's worse because she didn't even get a chance to know it. You know what I mean? It's different when you go through adoption and they don't know when to tell and whatever,

you know, but like to know that your mom wanted you to know who she was so badly and record her eyes out and recorded these videos so that you could know her. That kills me. And I also, I was with some close friends, some of our close friends in Arizona and they had just told me a story about one of their friends and it reminded me of that, which is why I also got emotional because it's so sad. But one of their really close friends who I had never met, but she passed away recently. She had cancer and she was dating her boyfriend for 10 years.

And whenever she got diagnosed, he ended up breaking up with her, moving out and then moving in with a girl that he had just met like and within three months, moved in with her. And then he would try to ask people how she was doing while she was sick and in the hospital and try to like send her notes and stuff. Come back. How could you do? I just don't get it.

Well, this, this is kind of, it was kind of interesting. Her parents were holistic healers, so they didn't believe in going and getting, getting a regular checkup. And so if they would have been able to catch it earlier, if she were going to regular catch-ups and like she would have been fine. And so he was so mad at the parents saying it's your fault. And so it was constant fighting between the parents and him, but it's like whenever she's like, she's in a situation where it's like, my parents let me down and the love of my

life just left me. It's like, she's like, and she dies that way. And it literally just like broke me in that story. See, but why can't you separate? In that situation as the guy, I don't care how mad you are at the parents. How can you separate from- I completely agree. I completely agree.

There's, at that point it's like, these are the cards that have been dealt. There's no going back. Like the parents fucked her over. And there's no going back. And again, not on purpose, right? Yeah, no. Like they thought they were doing the right thing, but- It's the same as people that don't vaccinate their kids against like chicken pox or measles.

And that shit's coming back. It is? Well, chicken pox has been around still, but like, I'm going to fact check myself in the moment. I'll never forget my oatmeal baths when I had chicken pox. Really? Yep. You never had chicken pox.

You got the chicken pox? Yeah. And I was a kid. Oh, wow. I kind of remember thinking I did, but- I thought most kids got chicken pox when they were kids. Am I wrong? Can we pull up a picture of an oatmeal bath?

If he was just my community. Oatmeal bath is- Oatmeal bath is- It's just we're both like having our own conversations with ourselves. Oatmeal bath is literally what you want to do. I want to do a milk bath. It's actually really good for sunburn, too. Oatmeal baths.

Yeah. I apply the aloe direct. So the only that has been completely eradicated is smallpox. And polio was super, super, super close. And there's been a bunch of people with like the anti-vax movement where some of those ones that were like so close are starting to come back. Like, there's literally kids in modern day that are getting polio, which is like, I mean, it can be crippling.

It's just crazy. So there's a couple of those that have started to come back. Just wait until the ancient superbugs start coming out from- We are not going to talk about the permafrost melting because I will get too fucked up over this. The monkey thingies. Is that what you meant? No, the ice melting at the poles has a lot of millions of years old superbugs.

Oh, God. We're fucked. That our bodies have not evolved to cope with. We can't even handle COVID. Me and Morgan just had end of the world conversation. I told her that somebody told me that the world was going to collide with another- The Milky Way Galaxy is going to collide with Andromeda within 10,000 years. And then I looked it up.

We fact-checked. We fact-checked. It was like 50 million. I was like tomato. Five billion. Five billion. Yeah. We have some updates on this story.

Okay. Yes. Back to the story. Not updates, but edits. Edits because I keep seeing this, so let me clarify. One, my parents talked about Kim and had pictures of her in the house. So Laura knew who she was. She just didn't know that Kim gave birth to her.

Two, again, my parents only went along with it because Tom and Jane threatened no contact unless they did. I'm upset with what they did, but I understand why they did it. So that's why I still talk to them, which I will just say, the parents, like your daughter just died and you're now going to be stripped from your grandchild, her last living, breathing part of her. I would go along with it too in that moment. You have to.

You're dealing with two psychopaths. You have to. You're not going to win. No. They're crazy. The most on hinge. Three, when I said that the last time I saw Laura in person was when she was seven. It was in brief passing.

I was coming to visit my parents' house and watched her get in the car as I was pulling up to the driveway. I didn't actually speak to her. Also, what did they expect her to do, run up to a seven-year-old and be like, Kim's your mom. Yeah. Kim's your mom. Yeah.

Then they'd think she's crazy. Yeah. Four, during her last few weeks of life, Kim and I made a series of videos together so that Kim could leave special messages for Laura for important events. Kim also wrote letters for Laura too. Tom got rid of all the letters and got rid of all the final cuts and backups of the videos. That's so sick. But I still had copies that he didn't know about.

Good. I honestly forgot about them too and only found them when I was moving and saw them in a small box. Oh, they're like just like hearing it again makes me want to cry again. I can't imagine wanting to keep that from you, your child. What is wrong with this man? He married this woman. He loved this woman.

He had a child with this woman. You're going to destroy those precious legacy time capsules. That's what that's called. I do this in OT. I used to do this with oncology patients. It's called legacy building. If you have children, you write a card for them for every birthday that you can. Write them a note to open on their wedding day on the birth of their first child.

Why would you fuck this dude? This is so bad. It's horrible. I've been talking about, I've been getting rid of stuff and it's so hard for me to get rid of sentimental things. This is why I'm a hoarder. Yeah, me and Morgan were just talking about this. Hoarders unite.

Yeah. But I'm really trying to be more minimalist and very clean and it's just like, there's certain things that people have given me that I'm just like, I can't get rid of this. Yeah. Even though I don't use it, it doesn't even sit out, but I'm just like, I can't. See, that's different. That's different than hoarding. Hoarding is when you get a bunch of random shit and you just keep it for no reason.

Oh, I might need this for something. I might need this. Morgan brings home all these little things and puts them on the desk and I'm like, listen, dude, is this what our house is going to be like? Your stuff's going to be on, like these two guys here are going to be on a shelf somewhere? No, I'll get rid of them. No, I know, but that- For the next people that order boxes after this episode, these party animals, there's

five of them, so you better be quick. These party animals will go in the boxes. I will get rid of them. Yeah. Like where hoarding comes in. Justin wants to talk about his relationship dynamics. No, but I do keep stuff where I'm like, it's a shirt from eighth grade and I'm like, well, what if I have like a 2008 themed party I need to go to?

Like I do keep stupid shit. What if I have an eighth grade reunion? There's a chance. I'd be the best dressed one there. Anyway, I think that's a lot different than hoarding because when things actually have a meaning to you, that is a lot different. That is not just something that is stuff that's sitting around. But it's also like anything, when my mom gives me a gift, even if I will never wear this

dress that she got me, it was just so cute that she just was so thoughtful to think about me and give me a dress. I think that's fine. And I'm just like, I don't want to get rid of it, even though I haven't worn it yet. So you're like, put yourself like in this position then, like you can't even throw away like a thoughtful, well-intended gift. It doesn't even matter if it doesn't even fit you. Now, can you even rationalize doing something like this?

No, you can't. It makes me so, it hits me so deeply I can't even, this man's going to burn. Like I'm sorry, this might be, I know there's been bad shit, there's been slug people feeding people slugs, but like this might be the one that haunts me for life. I just, again, I just don't understand it. It just goes so far beyond rational, regular, good person, human thinking that I don't want to get it. Honestly though, a lot, not a lot, but sometimes when you see stuff like this, it can be driven

from the partner. So it's like, yes, he's the one making these calls and doing these awful things. Like it's his biological daughter that he's, you know, was left with once his wife passed. What is this girl saying? Is she like threatening him that she won't be with him unless he does XYZ and he was so vulnerable because his wife just died that he just wanted to cling on to someone so badly? I mean, it doesn't matter regardless. There's no excuse, but who knows what else was going on behind the scenes.

Where do your loyalties lie? No, it's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard. It's not okay. No, there's no way to devil's advocate this. No, and I'm not. But I'm just saying like there might be more that was happening rather than because you were like, how could he do this? What was he thinking?

I can see that. But then he's super fucking weak to have someone control you that much to the point where you make a decision like that. So the whole thing's fucked. So number five though, yes, Jane and Tom had two bio children together. So what if they were already like sleeping together after her death and she got pregnant and that's the reason that he was willing to do all this? Not justifiable.

This man, again, I want to, I want to, I don't even know, I'm so disgusted. Yeah. So, but again, like, and the fact that he got rid of them, it would be one thing. If he put them in a lock box, safety deposit box, tell her on your death bed, more fucked up, but it would be one thing, but destroying them, not even giving the option. That makes me so fucking sick to my stomach. Thank God that she had copies of some of it. Number six, unless they changed their minds, Jane and Tom had every intention of never

telling Laura and didn't think it was a big deal since the family medical history would still be the same. What does that supposed to mean? Because they were sisters. So same, same medical history. What? People. This is delusional.

So OP has not given us an update at all. No update. This was posted 11 hours ago. This is one that I'm going to be refreshing, stalking everything. Someone commented something and it was deleted, but it, based on the response I'm seeing from OP, it seems like someone was commenting something basically implying like, you're just pissed off. You didn't want her to have a mother figure or something because OP responds, when did

I say I didn't want Laura to have a mother figure? So they were basically implying like something along the lines of like, this is okay because Laura still got a mom. Hmm. They should be friends with Tom and her. That's just fucked up. They could do both. Do you not realize that?

She could still have a mother figure and she could still look at her as her mother, but also know that her biological mother loves her very much. She could have both. Exactly. That's so stupid. The story. Yeah. This really cuts deep.

Though I will say. Oh, is there more? So I'm just going to read one comment. It's like, you're the asshole, wasn't your place to tell your niece who her bio mom is. That falls on her father and your sister. Fuck no. Good job and destroying a family because of your opinion. Fuck you.

Where are all these crazy ass people? And so OP responds and quotes that falls on her father and your sister and OP says, except they were never going to tell her. Yeah. No, that, that. And so someone responds and goes, and like a totally different person, and this really makes you not the asshole because you promised Kim, you'd give her the videos, which honestly her husband probably promised her probably like, I love you sweetie.

I'll give our baby for your videos. What if he didn't though? I think that's why she went to her and was like, please, like give her the videos because he was being an asshole even before she died. Maybe. Maybe that's why she had backups. She already had a feeling. Yeah.

Which would maybe highlight the cheating theory and make that like a little more valid. Like likely then, not valid. I honestly feel like I need to take a break to cry. I'm so fucking sad. I will say though, I am the one thing I'm taking from this story is it would be a lot different if we ended this story and it's like, she still doesn't know. Should I tell her? Yeah.

Versus she told her, it happened, she did the right thing. And now Laura is taking the right steps. Now she realizes who she's surrounded by. Now she realizes the lies. So it's heading like, it feels that there's justice happening. It feels that the right thing is happening now, which is more settling than if it's like, I don't know if I should tell her, do I do this? It's like, no, you already, you made the hard choice.

You made the right decision. Yeah. The only thing that like I'm actually really concerned about though is the fact that Laura like ran away. No one knows where she is. I would do that. But also like, she's only 18, she's still a little baby. If she's safe, like this is something that could be so soul crushing, like this could

ruin your whole life. No, finding this out in this, like she needed to find out, but finding out anything like this in any way, you are going to be so lost. It's actually interesting you say this because I was talking to one of my friends about this. She was saying that she feels like she's almost painfully self aware. So sometimes she's like ignorance would be bliss to be a little less self aware in certain parts of me. And she's like, I've thought about that.

Like it is going to be self aware and I'm happy that I've been able to do that. But what's better sometimes. So it's an interesting topic, you know, like she could continue to just move along her life being so happy, go lucky. But it's like she would be living a specific, a type of lie, right? Yeah. Or rather know the truth. Oh, for I would rather have the truth, but yeah.

But you never trust anyone again. You just feel like, wait, are you actually this person? Are you actually my friend? Are you actually my loyal boyfriend, girlfriend, whoever? It's legit. The Truman show. Yeah. Yeah.

You just you question reality. That is a total mind fuck. Yeah. It's so bad. Well, if you're out there, Laura. I know. We love you. Do we want to know the top comments?

Are we scarred? Oh, I thought we did them. No, those were OP's responses. So top comment. Oh, what is the overall vote, by the way? Not the ass. Okay. Well, you read one off that said you're the asshole.

So I was just waiting for it. It is so new. There actually isn't a vote on the post yet. But I mean, I'm watching the upvotes go up in real time. Like a shit ton of people are on this right now. Is this one that was sent over to you by a listener? No, I found it scanning today. I did see Justin so impressed.

Yeah. No, but I already have seen people post it in the Two Hot Takes subreddit. So thank you guys. Like this was an amazing find. But as of right now, there's 810 people on the post right now. Top comment. Not the asshole. Taking away every bit of her mother and pretending she never existed.

Taking away the name her mother gave her. Those are asshole moves. And then the most awarded comment. First off, they completely erased that girl's mother from her life. A mother who was not in her life at no fault of her own. Secondly, and I'm saying this for the millionth time. I didn't even know you could up your font on Reddit. It's upped.

It's bolded. It's big. 8 billion people on the planet. All caps. Stop fucking your siblings, exes, partners and spouses. Jesus fucking Christ. Not the asshole. Laura deserved the truth.

And what the family did was nothing short of outright cruelty. Agreed. Some of these comments just fucking hit. They hit. That's why it's got the most awards. I wish I had an award to give. I don't. I have zero coins.

But I hope Laura's okay. And like I said, I will be stocking this one. If you've ever had to deal with a plumbing problem, you may have felt the pain of realizing you don't know any plumbers. Whether you're trying to stop a leaky faucet, fix a running toilet, replace your old water softener, or install a tankless water heater, the plumbers at Any Hour Services can help. All you have to do is call Any Hour Services or schedule an appointment at AnyHourServices.com. Help with plumbing maintenance and repairs is closer than you think.

Call Any Hour Services or schedule an appointment at AnyHourServices.com. No one helps more homeowners than Any Hour Services. Stocking. Stocking. Stocking. I could lead in with stocking. Stocking. Is it time?

Is it time for my story or should we keep going? I could lead in with stocking. Just waiting for the right word. Tell your story, Lauren. Lauren rolled up to my house today and she goes, I'm just so excited for this episode because I have a really great story to tell and I'm just so excited. Well, the thing is that it's not that insane. I mean, I think it's insane, but I don't want to hype it up too much.

It's just so perfect for two hot takes and get it going. It's also sad, right? Today we're three hot takes. The two is really having a moment back there. Well, yeah, because it's three. Yeah, it's glitching out. It's like three. We should put a little piece of paper with a three on it when there's three of us.

That would be a good idea. It's too late in the game for that one though. So I don't know exactly how I want to tell this story. I haven't practiced it or written it down the way that these Reddit stories are all nice. No, that's better. This is completely brand new information that was just shared with me through FaceTime with one of my friends, Kayla. She is incredible.

She's one of the coolest people that I want you to use her real name. Yeah. Okay. Well, I asked her and she said that that's okay. That was really nice. Good job, Lauren. Yeah. Consider it.

Yeah. Actually, honestly, you'll understand why I want to use her name at the end of the story. So anyway, Kayla, Kayla's lesbian and she was dating this girl named Allison. And every time that I would talk to Kayla, it would be this story about there's these certain things about that Allison's doing that's making me feel like she's lying to me. Like she would post pictures or she would see like a picture of her and another girl and she would say something like, oh, that's my cousin. Oh, God.

And just random things like that where it started getting fishy and fishy. And like they were dating for months long. So what just happened today after all these lies and they've been on and off because this girl has been like, it's been crazy, the things that she has said. And some of them I'm not going to say, however, some of them I will. But so this girl, Allison, we got their receipts, guys. This girl, Allison, Kayla is no longer going to be dating and love that for Kayla. Reason being is that she just met somebody.

It might actually, I don't think it was today. I think it might have been a couple of days ago. She met somebody and she found out that she also was dating Allison at the same time. But not only that, this girl who was dating Allison, she knew about Kayla. But the reason she knew about Kayla, that's my cousin Kayla. No, not cousin. Allison said that she was working as an interpreter. She said that she knows level six sign language, which apparently doesn't even,

I don't even think that exists. I think like the highest levels five or something like that. I don't know. This other girl that, and I can't remember like if Kayla knew who she was at this point, but Kayla and this other girl met. So apparently she's been dating Allison. Okay. And she knew who Kayla was.

Let's say her name's H. I don't know her name, but she knew who Kayla was. And the reason why is because Allison told her that Kayla was an intern at a murder case that she was signing for. She was working on a murder, in the court of law, she was signing during a murder case and there was an intern, which was Kayla. And Kayla became some crazy stalker towards Allison. And so she made H block Kayla because Kayla actually, I think, Oh, that's so smart though.

Cause then she can never get a DM. Hey, I think we're dating the same person. Yeah. Right. Okay. So, but you guys are smart. I'll give them that. Wait for it.

They put it on, um, on social media. Apparently Allison does not have social media. So they put it on social media to see if anybody else has been. Oh my God. This is West Elm Kayla ball over there. It has been six different people and the cycle of lies. She has told different occupations different. She tells all this crazy trauma that has happened in her life and that consistently is happening.

And they're all different and there's this like cycle. And so out of all the six people that they've found so far, Kayla has dated her the longest, which is why she thinks the lies started getting so bad because she started getting confused with all of her lies. So anyway, um, that is pretty much the punchline. Just crazy. But she has said things like to all these six different girls, she said things like, um, I own rehab facilities. Um, I, um, I own like, uh, I can't remember what she said, but something with sign language facility.

She said she owns schools. Um, she'll like every other week she has somebody who is in her life who just died and it's all these things where it's just, it was such a web that all of them coming together and communicating about it was just. That's crazy. Mind blowing. And to me it's like for the past however many months, like months and months I've been hearing about Allison and Kayla having all these question marks about all these things she's saying. So then to hear today, this TikTok about this girl showing who Kayla is and how her girlfriend said

that Kayla was an obsessed crazy stalker intern. I'm like, holy shit to hear the lies on the other side of things. Did she not know? She really didn't know. None of them knew. You have to. None of them knew. I will say you have to be.

So is this an actual TikTok? Can I have the link? Yeah, I'll send it to you. Yeah. So, but now she knows this girl knows actually now. Yeah, they all know now. So all of the girls that were dating Allison. So it's basically like the Tinder swindler except for the fact that there's no reason behind it that they can think of.

They don't know why she did it. Must be mental illness. Well, yeah. And that's the thing, but like what? Because she has said some like crazy like trauma things to each of them that it's like what is she looking for? Attention. And even to the point where they're even wondering if she's actually lesbian because she's also the stories that she has said about her. And that part of her life also don't really add up.

That's crazy. So it literally reminds me of this story when I was in high school. There was this guy, a J name, Jeremy, Jeremy Boyer, I believe. And he snowboarded up at like Spirit Mountain in Duluth with us. And my friend Katie, like my best friend in high school, like started dating him and he on the chairlift would be like, do you guys want to hear my new song? And he would have like these songs downloaded on his phone. This was back when you would like, obviously you could steal songs off the internet with like Lime Wire.

Like I don't even know if YouTube was around back this at this time. It was like 2010. I don't know you guys. It was old, but it was harder to like track down lies at the time. That's what I'm trying to get to. So he would show us all this music. He's like, yeah, I'm in a band. I'm in a band.

Like this is my song. This is my song. Well, we were listening to the radio one day and we heard this song come on. And it was his song that he has shown us on the chairlift wasn't fucking him. He stole this small like indie bands music and literally was parading around. Like it was again. Jesus. Crazy.

That to me makes more sense though. Lying to like six different people. He was doing it to every girl though. He had a ring. He had a roster. But it's like he was at least like he was using it to get girls, right? Like she didn't need these girls already liked her. She didn't need to make up these lies.

Do you know what I mean? Like there was no real good reason behind it. Some people's brains just love to sabotage them. I will say, I will say though to have that many people and be dating them at the same time. You do have to have some weird kind of smartness. Yeah. Because it is to not, yes, eventually the web's tangled. But to keep that all separate at first.

You have to be incredibly intelligent to keep that going. Because it is not easy to, and especially if your story is different. They're all different. Yeah, they're all different. You have to be so smart that when you see that person, you lock in and you know exactly what you talked about. You know exactly the conversations. I never did that. But I will say when I was dating in New York and I would have a series of dates within a certain amount of time trying to meet people.

Yeah. And I would go on date number two. I would forget exactly what the conversation had led to and where our conversation went as opposed to another one. And I would come to it, but I can understand how if you have, and that's just between probably two or three, right? To have six and you're dating them. So you're fooling them to the point. That's a full time job. And that's all that we know of.

That's fine. Who knows who else there is. What if there's a two hot takes listener? I'm sorry. To be at that level with that many people and keep it straight for a certain amount of time. It's crazy. It's like. It is impressive.

I mean, it's not an easy thing. It's bad, yes. But there's something about it that's like, wow, okay, you, I don't know. Well, and that's, and that's why Kayla started really picking up on it is because the, what the lies start getting messy and they started contradicting themselves. Of course. And so then she's like, this doesn't make sense. Right. Because you don't remember like, okay, with this person, I talked about this and this is my storyline here.

And here's this. A lot of people have trouble doing that with two, like in our last story, but to keep it straight for that. I don't know. It's crazy. And I'm not, I don't mean to say that I don't think that she's. No, I know. I'm just pointing. I was going to say, um, it's just that when I was talking to Kayla, like that group of girls were starting to question everything about her.

So they were like, did she even like, like, was she even into us at all? Is she a robot? Yeah. They're like, they just don't know like what is true. And so that's why I said that because they're, they're pondering everything now because what was real from not. Um, but I will say if anyone lives in Austin, Texas, I have a really amazing girlfriend who is now single. It's like Austin land. Is it good movie?

Still scarred. Oh my gosh. Okay. Yeah. I, um, I definitely made mistakes on this episode and it was probably starting off with the best story first. I don't know. I kind of think that if that would have been the last story, we would have been more messed up. Yeah.

I feel like it would have been like worn out and wouldn't have had my thoughts together. I think it was good that you started off there. Okay. Let me know what you guys liked. Do you like getting the worst at the beginning or the end? Walk the dogs, school drop off, meetings from 10 to 3, take kids to soccer, then no time left for a jog. Okay. So this next one, I think I'm dating the man that got me pregnant on a one night stand.

Wow. Spicy. I'm a single mother to a beautiful little girl from a one night stand about four and a half years ago. I had just finished college and had just moved and wasn't looking for anything serious. It also happened just before I left on my two month long post college vacation. I have been dating this man now for four months. He's met my daughter once. They get along extremely well, but I don't let them overlap too much.

I don't want to expose her to passing flings. And though he has mentioned wanting to continue us, we aren't quite serious yet. Prior to last week, he's been coming back to my place because I had a bad experience going to another man's place a couple of years ago. So I went back to his place for the first time. It's the same fucking building as that man. I didn't really recognize it until we pulled into the parking garage and went up the elevator, but I know it is. I recognize the hallways instantly. It also had a very recognizable condo smell.

I don't know why I remember that, but I feel like they use the cleaning solutions that spas use and it smells like eucalyptus and apartment musk. The condo itself is similar, but it's been four years. And I honestly don't remember anything but his room and that he had a red couch and the layout, which I'm assuming is similar for most of the condos. He doesn't have the couch, but the layout's the same. And I'm pretty sure it has the same view from its main window. Before people come for me for not hunting him down, etc. When we slept together, I had just moved to the city after my masters. I never would have found his condo myself because I bust back.

Also, we had been drinking, obviously. Sorry, when you said bust back, I was thinking like bust it down because I bust back. Anyway, bust it down. It's been a week, but I genuinely think it's him now because though they were busy, we met both times at two very similar events. Four years ago, the man had shoulder length wavy dark hair and a thick beard when we slept together. He does have a similar skin tone, kinda Mediterranean. The man I'm dating has short crop dark hair, light stubble and glasses. He is also of Italian background.

They have the same name. It's a very basic American name, so I never connected it together. Also, to make it worse, I likely look very different too. I used to be very thin and suffered from an eating disorder that my pregnancy really helped me to overcome. I've gained 30 pounds that I really needed. I also had short hair that I straightened and I'm half black and admittedly look very different now with my longer curly hair. I've been dwelling on this for the entire week. I don't know what I'm asking, but I don't know if I also need legal advice.

Or if I should cut contact because even if it isn't him, I don't think I'll ever be able to get over this weird feeling that it is. Is there a way to bring this up? Should I message him and let him have the option to ghost me? I'm scared he'll think I'm crazy if I bring this up or that I planned it or something weird like that. How do I approach this? Or should it not be approached at all? It's so fucking mental. I don't know what to do.

Pluck his hair, swab his cheek. Sorry if absolutely none of this makes any sense. Also to be clear, I am stable time-wise and money-wise. I do not need this man in my life. My daughter has two amazing father figures in her uncles who visit every other day and absolutely love their roles in her life and would probably steal her if they could. That's really cool. That was really amazing. You don't feel unresolved?

Well, yeah. I think we're the uncle, right? If we find out that this is the dad, I'm going to start fucking balling. We have edits. Listen, the world is way smaller than you think. It's tiny. A small version is Morgan and I went to this Rolling Stone event. I met this guy.

He supposedly typed in his Instagram. I never found it. We lost it. All of a sudden at another event, there he is. I'm like, I think that's the guy. We reconnected and now we have a session booked and everything. It's so crazy. It's so small.

The world is smaller than you think. I recognized him by his pants. It's just like even tonight at the music event I went to, first person I talked to, oh, so where are you from if you're not from LA? Minneapolis. I'm not surprised that people connect again in these very weird ways, especially if you're still in the same city and you have the same passions and you do the same things.

There's a reason you met the first time. It's not surprising for me to run into people again. No, it's definitely crazy how small the world is, especially when you bring it down to a city and you bring it down to hobbies and you bring it out to stuff like that, tiny parties that you like to go to, whatever. You start to, the friend groups all start to kind of come together. But this though to me, this is the universe and this is some crazy energy in the universe bringing them back together.

If this is the case. True. Morgan knows something. Let's go. Well, but it's also a little bit like how I sort of knew Alejandra and people of all the friend groups and never knew Morgan. Yeah. Even though my past should have crossed with Morgan's many more times than mine

with anyone else in the friend group. Yeah. I mean, we were definitely same place, same time. There's no doubt. Like there's definitely things like that. But I'm just like, when you first started reading, I'm like, how do you not remember what they look like? And then I started thinking about it and I'm like, okay, I understand

because the looks are different and whatever. Yeah. I don't know. People age and like, there's people where like I run into them and they're like, hi. And I'm like, hi. And we start talking. Like I, I never.

You're like, oh yeah, we banged. You know, I am trying to think about if there's anyone who I've slept with that I can't like really remember or like that I don't know who they are. Never knew who they were. And I don't know if I do, but I, what about the guys we met at bean bags in Santa Monica? If I saw him on the street, I don't think I'd recognize him. That's true, but we didn't have, maybe you did.

The biggest mistake of my life. Instantly I felt that it was regret, but you're right. You're right. I don't remember what either of their faces look like. It was quite small. Oh, you've told me that story. Yeah. Well, people really hope he doesn't listen to this.

Listen, people be having some risky one night's dance sex dude. I mean, that's called alcohol for you. Yeah. Sometimes, sometimes we get silly. Well, I understand that, but not me, dude. No, I was just talking to one of my friends today about this. You're a good boy. Who, who, she was like, yeah, this guy asked me at Coachella.

Wait, so I don't get it. Why do you want to use a condom if you have an IUD? Dude. Bitch. HIV, AIDS, chlamydia, gonorrhea, herpes. Let's go down the list, bitch. Literally, I was like, this is a moment where it's like a guy is thinking with their dick. You are not thinking with your brain.

What do you, what kind of question is that? Do people not understand that like IUDs and things don't prevent against sexually transmitted infections? We are very uneducated in terms of sexual health. Sexual education in America should no longer be taught by gym teachers. I mean, I learned a lot from the gym teacher and mean girls. So that's mean girls. Your, your health class wasn't taught by your gym teacher. No.

Was yours? No. Fuck you, Hermantown. We went to the big schools. Hermantown High School. We had big schools. We were in the cities. Your class was dedicated to that, right?

Did you, did you get to roll on a condom in your class? I don't remember. I know I remember hearing that people did that and I was actually like really excited about it. I thought it was super risky. There was, didn't there like any like sexual interactions with anyone at the time? So I was just like, oh my God. There was a class in college at the University of Minnesota where it was like the biology of sex. And unfortunately, because I wanted to be a health major, I couldn't take that one.

I had to take the real biology. I took that class. Yeah, you got to roll the banana and like it was a good time. No, not, not in the University of Minnesota. Yeah. Everyone told me that they got to do condoms on bananas and it was just like a fuck. Hmm. I'm not sure, but we did go over the vagina wall and that was very, that was a cool experience.

You had plenty of practice anyway. I do like putting condoms on. I think it's fun. I like taking them off more because I enjoy wrapping it like a balloon so the semen doesn't like leak out. I just, I said I wanted to be unhinged on this episode and I'm, I'm delivering. I just know, you know, there's, there's two different types of people that listen to this show. And I obviously, I'm just generally rising it to this, but, but there's the people who like our fucking random ass stories that we tell on the side. And there's people who are like, give me the fucking Reddit stories only bitches.

Well, let's go. Here's that. And I, yeah, I was going to say the people, like the second group of people are going to be so pissed right now because we're, we're ready for this. We're ready for the end of this. Okay, let's go. Edit. It's him. Shut the fuck up.

He had the red couch I remembered. So if anyone has any suggestions about how to tell a man this, that would be great. Wait, what, how does she know? She just thinks it's him because of the red couch. Creep on Instagram. You'll find enough info. Isn't it funny how you do? What if, what if, what if he subleased the guys whose place it was entire, entire place?

Like she doesn't know for a fact yet, right? We got more edits, Lauren. Oh fuck. Okay. I sent him this post. I don't know how else to do it. He saw it a half hour ago and has yet to respond. So I'm going to bed.

Oh my God. Thumbs up emoji. Okay, the people that can go to bed with shit like this. God bless you. That's fucking a talent. Dude, I would literally just be up staring at my ceiling blank face, like waiting. I would be pacing. I would be pacing the floor.

Like I, I couldn't sit still. Maybe we did meet before and just didn't know it. Honestly, if your hair looked like the way it did in the videos I've seen, I could imagine that. Yeah. I wouldn't recognize you with your old hair. It was quite different. You guys are so amazing.

Okay. Edit three. I woke up to a lot more comments than I was expecting and I just dropped my daughter at her uncle's. So I will respond to what I can now. I'm getting some flak for telling him this way, but until you're in an absolutely insane position like this, you don't know how impossible it is to broach a topic like this. I'm not a shy person, but this was enough to almost make me contemplate ghosting him,

even though I do like him and I know it's wrong. We've been talking for six months and dating for four. He asked about monogamy two weeks ago. I agreed. With this post, I sent him a picture of me five years ago and told him the event and when, where, and any other small details I could remember. And the sonogram with the date I have on my fridge. He messaged at like 4 a.m. to say, yes, I was there.

I remember you and I've seen the text bubbles popping up and disappearing all morning. I don't have any other update and I'm not sure I will. I clearly only looked for potential partners who would be okay with a woman with a kid in the picture. My daughter is the world to me, but I'm not sure how this cannot be an incredible shock. I'm going to give him time and contact my family's lawyer with a shitstorm I know I've just caused. I do want to have a laugh though at the people who think it's impossible of me to have forgotten what a one night stand looked like.

It was five years ago. We have both clearly changed a lot and we had been drinking. There are people I don't recognize from university who sat next to me in class for a year. Thanks for the help earlier. I'll probably have to delete this, but this has really helped me calm down. I used to journal a lot before I had my daughter. Oh, that's so crazy. I feel like those people didn't have one night stands probably or enough of them to not.

Yeah. But I was going to say dude. One night stands. People don't remember. Oh, I was going to say, isn't it interesting that sometimes you can remember the place more than the people? Well, places are typically a pattern. I'm not talking just about one night stands. I'm talking about like, think about something in the past, whether it's like a day on the lake or an event you went to.

Sometimes you'll remember the space and what the surroundings looked like, more than you remember the people that you met or talked to. So 100%. Yeah, my memory. That's something I... Sometimes it's great. Sometimes... Yeah.

I don't know. Well, that's something I think about constantly where I'm like, why does my brain remember this one? Perfectly. Perfectly. And it's the most like irrelevant thing. And I'm like, I remember this most irrelevant thing, but I don't remember some of the most fun nights of my life very clearly. Like nights that I wasn't even drinking or like whatever, like the excuse could be because that is valid.

I think there's so much stimulation because I've done that before too. I didn't black out at all. It was so fun. And in the moment, I remembered every conversation that I was saying, but then it's like after that, it's like there was almost so much stimulation going on, that it's like, it kind of gets clouded. Yeah. Until someone's telling you directly, then it can kind of like...

Yeah. Do you have any of those childhood, like childhood memories from way back? My first birthday party. You're right. And you definitively can like close your eyes and you're in that moment. It was so good. Isn't that crazy? So many.

Yeah. And then you also can't remember like what happened two nights ago. Literally. Yeah, literally. But I will say with this story, how she went at it in the words of Jerry. You guys, we saw more. She would have been like... Oh my God.

She would ask, how do I approach this? Yeah. Your dad would have been like straight on. You got to go straight to him. And do it with elegance. And do it with grace. But in this case, that's the way to do it, I think. You've got to just be like, listen, this is a crazy situation.

But where are you here? Did you do this? You know? I mean, what else are you going to do? Start being like playing... So what? Clue and like you have to keep finding the random things. I don't know.

You got to just ask for it. Do you want the last final update? No, next story. Yeah. Actually, I think I'm over it. Let's move on. Okay. Just a piss off group number two.

Can you imagine? Okay. Up next. Am I the asshole for yelling? No. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay.

So update. Sorry. New phone. So forgive the formatting. I doubt this will be the update everyone was hoping for. But he bounced to put it politely. Won't answer my calls or messages, though I don't think he actually blocked me. We talked the first few days, exchanged pictures, et cetera.

It's definitely him. He knows it is. Then about a week ago, nothing. I guess I could go by his place, but I don't particularly care to. And I doubt he'd appreciate it. If this is his choice, he can stick with it. I didn't get a choice when this happened, even though it's the happiest accident of my life. But I didn't have the option either.

I own a business and have been debating the opportunity to move, to invest in a small estate in Europe for a few years and have been putting off the decision. He was aware of this while we were dating. My daughter's uncles are even planning on moving with us for the opportunity since they both have dual citizenship like us. So I'm sorry if this is disappointing for lots of you. I do wish him the best, but I think big, insane moments like this are eye-opening. I also think my daughter would benefit from experiencing Europe.

If he gets back in contact, I would be willing to pay for his flights and housing, etc. for him to get to know her. But I don't think that will be the case. I hope you all are well and that it didn't add too much of a downer to your days. But I got a lot of requests to update. Okay. So even though like I'm still like going to cry because I don't know all this is just so emotionally overwhelming.

It's still beautiful to me though because it's she got an answer and she now knows. Yeah. She got an answer and she now knows. And not only that, but you think about the daughter. It's like we've talked about this before when people there. Sometimes people just want to know who their biological parents are. Yeah. Even if they're adopted, they still look at their adoptive parents as their parents,

but they just want to know knowing. Yeah. And so Google the ends of movies. Yeah. So I think that if she, I just think this is beautiful because she was on the path of just not ever knowing. The little girl would have just never known. And now they have an answer.

Yeah. And yes, like he's probably in shock. I would not say that this is the last they'll hear of him at all. That's why I'm unresolved. Yeah. Like he's probably in shock. He's probably going through some type of midlife crisis. Like not even just up his world just got turned upside down, right?

You're a kid that you didn't know about. And now they're like four and a half, five years. Yeah. And who knows? Like she doesn't know him that well. Who knows? Like maybe he's like dipped into depression because he feels guilt or whatever. I don't, you know what I mean?

A lot of unresolvedness here. Exactly. Right? So I would just say that this, and the way she writes is beautiful because it sounds like she's at peace. But I would just say that this is still a good ending because they found answers. And I don't think it's the last that they'll hear from him. Completely agree.

And even if they don't, not every story like this has to end in a big, happy Hollywood love story. You're right. She has two incredible uncles. She's like, and you know, honestly, I, I don't even care if he doesn't want to because she has acts like she has everything is great. There's, she is so settled and it feels like their setup is so settled that it wasn't hinging on anything to do with this guy.

Exactly. So him walking is better than him agreeing. And in the back of his mind, not fully wanting to or something. And half acid. And not only that, if he agreed to do it, but didn't really want to half acid. And she stayed and didn't go to Europe and follow her dream because of that. And now he has legal rights over the kids. So she has to stay some shit like that.

Yeah. Maybe it's all for the best. Right. I would. Yeah. I am in a grievance that I don't think it's the last they'll hear. I do think there is a shawl shawl moment because you find out you have a kid and it's been years, which would like, I don't know.

Can you, it could happen. I guess it could literally, it couldn't happen to you guys. It could happen to anybody. Like you never know. Yeah. We've talked about this like with guys versus girls how like guys could potentially have so many other. So that's literally the timing for me.

I'm four years out. So it could be like, all of a sudden someone approaches the last girl you dated before me. Her name was also Morgan. I didn't date anyone. Well, you fucked her a lot. Okay. That doesn't need to be in here.

We don't need to be that unhinged. I'm having a great conversation right now. I am too. I know. All I'm saying is I would be utterly shocked that I'd probably like push it away very quickly at first because. Yeah. You don't want it to disrupt everything.

You're not instantly going to be like, oh my God. Yes. I'm coming to New York. I, I'm in love with everything and you would like, you would just be like, wait, what the fuck? It's different here because they're dating. I mean, obviously I think we all agree that we think it sucks that he doesn't want to just like jump up and like be, be the role.

Or at least not ghost. Yeah. The ghost scene is fucked up. I'm not expecting him to instantly be dad, but when you go, someone that just told you, hey, we share a child and they didn't just like, it wasn't like I sent you the post and then he never responded. They talked for a week after and exchanged pictures and had more of a conversation. And then he ghosted.

That's where it gets really scumbaggy. And maybe he just needs that time to really rationalize things and come to terms with what's happened. And maybe he was really in shock, but able to still like communicate. I don't know. I think it's scummy, but I'm happy for her. I will say, I don't, you got, I'm actually, I don't know if I've ever gotten you guys his opinion on this, but when I, so I had long left New York, I was living in LA.

And when I met Morgan and we became like it was starting to get serious. Morgan wasn't there yet, but I was there. Right. And so when we were there, I got to this point where I don't know why, but I just felt the need to close the loop with some open-ended. But was it weird that I felt the need to close the loop with some of the people that, yeah, I wasn't dating, but I also what it wasn't just friends with benefits you have. Like I always connect with people.

I always have friendships with people. I can't just show up and like do the deed and leave. Like that's not me. It's more like I would sit down, we'd catch up, have wine, hang out and like whatever. Yeah. And sometimes stuff didn't happen. Like that's the thing, but even still when I, when I met Morgan and it started to become serious, I still like messaged and said, Hey, I just wanted to let you know.

I met someone. I'm serious about them and like I'm so thankful to have known you and I love our friendship. So like stay in touch, but it was more saying like, Hey, Morgan, are you still in touch? No, I'm kidding. It's more like I'm in something serious, but I still like. You're giving them the respect that they're relationship with you. I want to like close the loop to say like, Hey, if I, and I didn't know if there's any feelings.

I also didn't know if that was a thing. So I wanted to close the loop. There's not like this open ended. Oh, I'm like holding out or I'm hanging on hope that maybe this guy will come back to New York or something. I wanted to like, Or he'll fly me out. No,

You know what I mean? I wanted to like, I think that's the most respectful thing ever. Like hearing that is There's no way I needed to because I had already moved. Yeah. And that just shows like the type of guy you are where you did give relationships that like you were friends, but also, yeah, you casually hooked up here and there.

Like you still gave them the respect they deserve. I think it's just like, just give people the decency they deserve. They're people. They have feelings. Be nice. I do think that ghosting is a problem in our, in our generation. Yeah. And I think that it's like people get in their heads that because it's been so long, it's

too late to say anything. Yeah. And it's just not like, yeah, maybe the person will be like, go fuck off or like give you a thumbs up or won't respond. But I promise you it's just, it's just, it's just a good thing to do. It is. And like I, this is like also relevant to me right now. I've just been dealing with so much burnout and really just like trying to keep myself

afloat that like I do accidentally not respond to a lot of people on like text messages lately. Yeah. Same. And that's really, really bad. And I understand that like, um, that's, that's shitty. Like that is so shitty. No one should be left on red. No one should be ghosted.

But like when you're barely, when you feel you're barely keeping your life boat afloat, it's literally the analogy that the therapist gave us last week. Like when you're on your boat and you, you can't keep deploying like planks to other boats to help them. Like I was just like, I'm so focused on keeping my own boat afloat that I felt like I didn't even have the capacity within myself to reply at that moment. And then now it's been like weeks. And so give people some sort of closure because you don't realize like how bad your actions

could affect someone to where that's something they didn't get closure from and affects them for the next 10 years. Yeah. You never know. You never know. And I do agree with that though, like with, cause we were speaking about romantic relationships, but non-romantic relationships. I can be the worst fucking texture.

And so bad, you guys. And it's honestly hard, especially when we talk about ADD symptoms. It's like when I get a lot of different text messages and yet I have a lot of things to do for work. And then I have a lot of things to do for example, my house when I'm moving. It's like I have all these things going on in my brain that almost when I see a bunch of like dots of text messages and I feel like I need to respond to them, but then I get so overwhelmed that I almost like throw my phone to the side and I'm like, you shut down.

Yeah. You shut down because you're so overwhelmed by the, everything. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So that's, that's, that's a little bit more of a difficult one to tackle. Cause like you said, you got to take care of yourself first, but like, I think if you have an actual romantic relationship with someone and you've been talking every single

day, like throughout the entire day and then all of a sudden just bye crickets. Like, come on. Like just, that's where it's like, you got to be a little bit more considerate there for sure. Yup. Well, in a two outtakes fam, no pick me comments. I did not say that as a pick me. What do you mean?

By being like, I was good and I message everyone. No, you're fine. I already got my girl and I'm happy and I'm not looking. So I'm not a pick me. That sounds like a very pick me thing to say. That's more pick me than the original. Wow. The saying, I'm not showing up.

I don't know. I don't even understand what a pick me is anymore. Clearly. We don't get it. Yeah. The last episode we were like, well, I guess. I was trying to make pick me more inclusive and like, I don't know. I don't know.

I got a P though. And then we're doing one, a couple more. I don't know. I'm not going to drink. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Justin's really thinking about this. He's pissed.

Justin is contemplating life. He's literally having the best time. Walk the dogs, school drop off, meetings from 10 to 3, take kids to soccer, then no time left for a jog. When everyone else is relying on you, it's easy to put your needs last. FetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist online. So you can show up for yourself the way you do for others. Find more balance with BetterHelp.

Visit betterhelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's better, H-E-L-P.com. One hour later. Okay, whatever I was saying doesn't matter. Let's move on. Let's get some stories. Okay. We have a trigger warning for miscarriage.

Thank you. Am I the asshole for flipping out at my husband, for lying to my boss and telling him that I had a miscarriage? I, 29 female, found out that I'm pregnant recently. I work a full-time job and I'm fairly busy. Unlike my husband who, 31 male, only works part-time and has plenty of time to spare. He visits his family almost daily. He also complains about how I keep missing events that I think aren't that relevant

because my in-laws literally have a party every week. He told me that his mom has picked up on my absence and said that it's affecting how she sees me and the way I prioritize work over family. I had this conversation with him and his mom a hundred times, but to no avail. Last week, he wanted me to attend his cousin's gender reveal party. I refused because I had to work. He told me to take the day off, but that wasn't possible due to how much work I needed to get done. He pitched a hissy fit saying I'm prioritizing work over family and got mad when I told him

that a relatives gender reveal party wasn't that important to attend. The next day and unbeknownst to me, he sent my boss a text using my phone pretending to be me telling him that I was at the hospital because I was having a miscarriage. I could not believe it and for a minute thought it was a joke, but seeing how my boss responded just confirmed it. My boss didn't even know I was pregnant and I didn't want to tell him or the others until later on. I was seething. I shouted for my husband to come into the room and explain what the hell was going on.

He told me he did that as a desperate attempt to get me some time off work and quote, actually focus on what matters. I flipped the fuck out at him and told him that this was my livelihood he was trying to mess with, but he said I basically made him resort to this and that he wouldn't have to lie if I actually made some time to see and interact with his family and show them back the respect they keep showing me. I yelled at him asking how I was going to deal with this ridiculous lie that he told my boss and he told me that it was easy. All I had to do was tell my boss that it was just a quote miscarriage scare.

We argued more and I told him I wasn't going to his cousin's party after this. He threw another fit about how my job isn't actually the problem and that I was constantly looking for excuses to avoid spending time with his family. He called me selfish and told me to look at the mirror and see who the one is in the wrong. He left to attend the party and I stayed home. He wasn't speaking to me when he got back and didn't even sit with me for dinner. Am I the asshole? No.

I would not have been there when he got back. I do not fuck with trust shit and this is a trust thing and I do not fuck with that. This is so easy for me to be done and I don't know if that's just me but I and I get it, marriage, life, kids, whatever is going on, this forever colors the relationship for me, forever. Seriously. I agree. Yeah, I know and people get mad if we just say divorce because it's one situation, it's so much more complex than obviously.

There's so many things wrong with this situation and I'm not saying get a divorce but I'm saying he needs to get his head on straight. This is an enmeshment one. This is changing. This is not changing. This is the life she will have forever. Okay, well let's break it down to even simpler. The fact that he wanted to lie about something so traumatic too, right?

How fucking despicable. I always... Okay, so for example, when I was really young and I was in competitive cheerleading, practice was very serious, right? Our coaches were... Do or die. Ex-college football coaches and one time I wanted to miss practice for no good reason and I wanted to do this lie.

I didn't know what to say but maybe I could say there was a death in the family and me and my mom are pondering this together. That's literally... Me and my mom were like, no, it's so wrong to even say there's a death in the family because it's almost like you're putting that into fruition. Yeah, it's like putting negative energy out there to save yourself. No, fuck that. That's just weird.

Especially if you're detailed about it. Especially if someone's like, oh, is my grandpa or something like that. Then it's just like there's such bad juju. Yes, it's just not good. No. So from the very start in a very simple form, what the fuck are you doing? And then continue. Well, I just think by the sounds of it, she's still very early on.

I found out that I'm pregnant recently. What if she does have a miscarriage now? Also, I just think I don't understand where his logic was or if this man even has a brain because how are you going to explain a baby or something down the road? Just being like, oh, is a miscarriage scare. But still, you're going to steal her phone and text her boss because you're sad she can't go to a gender reveal party? That was the second thing. Stole phone, texted somebody pretending to be her.

Dude, that's my part. This is the most deceptive. That's the part, yeah. This is deceptive as fuck. And then we get to the rest of it, which is the reason why he's doing it. Selfish. His reaction to the miscarriage, just from what I know from this story, would be like, oh, now it'll be easy to tell your boss if it was a real one.

Yeah. Like the boss is going to believe you more now. And also you'll be able to come to more family events. So this is a win-win. This is the most enmeshed person. And your wife is working full time, but you're working part time. So you have all this time. Like I think the comment too that really kind of threw me for a loop here was like,

I work a full time job and so I'm fairly busy. Unlike my husband, 31 male, who only works part time and has plenty of time to spare. To be honest, it actually does really, for me specifically, change my state of mind within the environment that I'm in. If I'm working my ass off doing something, it's like the way that my brain works is different than when I don't have much going on. You're happier being more productive. Yeah.

And so that's what needs things to do. Right. So that's why I think when you're partnered with somebody who has a full time job and you have a part time job and you guys don't have kids together yet. And so it's like there's a differentiation of like what you're doing day to day. There's a disconnect. Going off the point that you just had, I need to find it though. I flipped the fuck out at him and told him that this was my livelihood he was trying to mess with,

which to your point, it is both of your livelihood that you're fucking with because he's not doing shit. Unless they keep their finances separate. Which, that adds a dynamic value. There's a lot of couples that keep their finances completely separate in their marriage. Which I think is honestly kind of smart. Like have a mutual account. For joint expenses. But also make your own credit and make your own choices with your credit.

Like honestly, I think at some points is advantageous because you can do separate loans that aren't connected or whatever. I don't know. I'm not a finance major. You're not a finance bro. But I just think regardless, she seems like she's the one who's having the most support. And to expect someone to uphold that support and also be at all this, it's impossible. Yeah. It's just the expectations are unrealistic.

But my point of like when you as a human, when we don't have as much going on and the way that we start our brain start to work. Like for example, my roommate in college, who's I love so much. She's literally one of my best friends still. But when she had a really light load in college and all of us had a lot of classes, she would sit in the apartment and just like watch us go in and out and just glare at us. If like one of my roommates like dropped like a piece of like peanut butter on the counter. She was bored. Yeah. And then and then she like dipped out and she was literally like waking up at like 7am and like wouldn't get home until like midnight because she was an architect major.

And like how to be working on projects that took hours and hours. And then she like comes home to like a note that's like clean up your peanut butter. So aggressive. But like my point is, is that like this person is an amazing person. She's like literally one of my favorite favorite people ever. But when she literally had like such a light load, it was like she was so bored that she felt like she needed to be doing something and like didn't know what to like where to channel that energy. Do you think that's the husband in this case? That's what I'm kind of alluding to is that like, why is he being so fucking unreasonable and irrational?

Maybe it's because he's just so fucking bored and that love of his life, his wife is not, you know. You think though that a bored person, I mean, I understand being bored and kind of twiddling your thumbs and you go stir crazy and whatever. But I would never text my partner's boss. Well, again, I'm not saying that any of this is an excuse. That's what I want to make very clear. I'm not saying like, oh, that's okay. My point is just like trying to understand maybe a little bit of the other side. Not even that.

Just kind of like, why is he doing this? Where is it coming from? I'm not saying it's an excuse. Like I'm not saying that like my friend that like her like pointing the peanut butter. I'm not saying like, oh, she had a good reason. No, no, I still think that was dumb. But like my point is that like, I think as humans, I've noticed it in myself where like I start to get a little stir crazy, especially if like the people that I'm closest with around me have a lot going on and I'm not doing something.

Then it's kind of like, you just like have this like, like we are like meant as humans to like do something like we're little worker bees. Like we like to at least have something going on. Yeah. It feels like you're losing value. When you told that story, I was about to say you, you literally like can't falter for the note. I get the fact that we're. I mean, I still can. My point.

No, I'm saying from that perspective though, and especially coming out of COVID, there's so much isolation. And what isolation does is you go fucking crazy. You become not yourself. I feel I honestly kind of without knowing this girl. I feel like the note was written not truly fully by her. It's written by this persona and this, this whole other identity that's created through the things that come with isolation, like depression, like feeling undervalued, like feeling like, like a sense of worthlessness. Right.

And so I feel like the note isn't truly coming from her as a person. I feel like it's coming from the circumstance of what she's been going through because we've, I mean, I've seen people in my life that that's happened to where you, if you start to lack a purpose, you really start to change and you start to almost take down. I wasn't. No, I feel it. I'm raising my hand because I feel it. But he wasn't referring to you.

I'm just saying. I've seen it. And I just think that it's something to recognize and not instantly fault someone for. In this case though, this is extreme because she is taking on. She is like, it's more than just, oh, I'm jealous of my roommate because they're out and they have so much stuff they're doing. And I like, I'm fucked. I don't have shit going on. Yeah.

This is like, dude. You're sabotaging your life and your marriage and being like being in the same household as your child and not being a single dad. Like that's, that's where you're really like, you're self-sabotaging so hard on this one. Yeah, for sure. So I'm saying I understand that because I've seen it. And then the altar side is like, but I fault when you start fucking with someone's life and you send a text message to their boss. But also like out of all the excuses you could have come up with where I can't go to work. I have food poisoning.

I have this. I have that. I'm ill. There's so many easier ways out of it. If you're going to text someone's boss, I'm sick. I cannot get off the toilet. I'm so sorry. No, it was deliberately not that.

But that's what I'm saying. This is so unhinged. I picked this one because I'm so unresolved in the fact I need to know what she does. And the comments, like the comments did not, they came. Like the top comment. They did not. They came. They came.

They came. I don't know. I'm just like, I'm poetry. They didn't. I was going to be like, they didn't fuck around. But they, they really came. They came for this man and like really just kind of laid into it. So.

Yeah. I mean, he's a fucking idiot. So I hope they did. Honestly, I would go beyond idiot. Like this is actually like. Malicious. Gross. Intentful.

Rude. Criminal. I can't think of anything else. Fuck. Despicable. Repugnant. Repulsive. Dicknifey.

We got to end with that one. So the top comment over 26,000 upvotes at this point in time. This man will not be a good father. And it's also the most awarded. Next comment. I really think OP needs to be a single parent and let and let him support himself on his part-time job or go live with mommy. Next comment.

OP is going to be a single parent, whether she stays married to her husband or not. She may as well make it official. Yep. Next comment. At least as a single parent, she'll only have one kid to take care of instead of two. Next comment. That's the best one for me. And that one won't be actively sabotaging her career.

Next comment. But she probably will have to pay him alimony because useless, not the asshole. True. Sucks. Someone does go after that one. Not necessarily. Alimony requirements have specific metrics to be followed. For instance, if he is able-bodied and has shown the ability to work, even if he were awarded

alimony, it would be highly unlikely to be on a very limited time basis because he would be assumed to be able to provide for himself after a certain point. Which that's what I want to get to the bottom of. I want to get to the bottom of the part-time job. But I was going to say also, if depending on what... Okay, we're getting far into it. It hasn't happened yet. But depending on how often they have the child back and forth too, that's not a whole

other thing about alimony. Well... It's like if he only has the kid every other weekend, she's probably not going to pay him alimony. Doesn't make sense. Yeah, because it would justify the decreased child support. Yeah. Yeah, it would balance out a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I feel that. The story doesn't necessarily lead me to the thought. There is a higher prevalence of stay-at-home dads now. Yes. So that could, in theory, if she wanted to stay on her career and stayed full-time, that could justify the part-time job. I don't think this man would accept that though.

No, I'm saying I just think in society that is something. I mean, me and Lauren have had a story. This is like an OG story where this woman's husband was just like a stay-at-home husband like a beekeeper and did like home brewing and he got shit. Super cute. Like people literally asked her, why are you married to him? Like her friends. Well, do you think that's where this crazy insecurity is coming from?

Maybe. Gotta walk the dogs, school drop off, meetings from 10 to 3, take kids to soccer practice, then there goes the extra time for a jog. That's okay. Maybe next week. When everyone else relies on you, it's easy to put your needs last. Therapy is a dedicated time to focus on what you need to be happy. So you can show up for yourself the way you do for others.

BetterHelp offers convenient online therapy on your schedule. It's the same professional service you'd get from an in-person therapist, but with the option to communicate when and how you want by chat, phone, or video call. Go to their site and fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapists any time for no additional charge. Find more balance with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHELP.com.

Okay, next up. Last, but not least. I am with the asshole for blowing up at my fiance for giving my future mother-in-law our wedding coordinator's number. My fiance, Edgar, is my future mother-in-law's only son. She is so attached to him and is excited for our wedding. We have had a relatively long engagement and we're finally getting married soon. I've been trying to keep her involved as much as possible,

but she just kept getting further with her expectations. She'd email me lists of questions about five or six times a week. She'd ask me the same questions over and over expecting a different answer. And when she doesn't get an answer, my future father-in-law will call me and start pushing the same thing. It's made me anxious and stressed out. Edgar says that she just wants to make sure the wedding is, quote, flawless and felt like some of the choices I made during wedding planning are dot-a-dot poor.

She went to our former wedding coordinator and bombarded her with tens of questions and even called her many times trying to change things we've already picked saying all of my choices were based on zero experience and wrong. She even pretended to be me at one point. This caused a huge fight between us. And this caused a huge fight between us. And I ended up starting all over with a new wedding coordinator and completely getting future mother-in-law out of wedding planning process.

Future mother-in-law lashed out at me for it and Edgar said I was being too hard on his mom. Last week, I found out that he went against my wishes and gave his mom our wedding coordinator's contact info. And his mom ended up finding out about all of our plans. I blew up at him and told him he violated my boundaries and betrayed my trust. He said it was no big deal and that his mom genuinely means no harm even if her and I don't agree most of the time.

We had an argument and I went to stay with my dad for a few days. Edgar kept texting me that I was overreacting and that I was being too hard on him and his mom. Am I overreacting? Note, she isn't contributing anything to the wedding except her quote, input and experience. My dad is the one paying for the wedding. He never tried to give an opinion or suggest anything regarding the wedding.

He just told me to have the wedding as I had always envisioned it. This reminds me of Monster in Law. JLo, you there? I also just watched that recently and I hadn't watched it in years. Banger. So good. But yeah, no, you're not the fucking asshole. This is the thing that gets on me for weddings. They're supposed to be so beautiful and so happy and the best fucking day of your life.

That's what weddings were created for. Actually, I don't know the history of weddings. But you don't need me. The wedding day, everyone's like, it's the best day of my life. So while leading up to it, is there always time and time again all these stories of all this drama. The people that are getting married, let them fucking decide between husband and wife,

fiance and fiance, let them make up their decisions, stay the fuck out of it. Yep. I think this one's easy. I don't even really have that many comments. I think... But did you like my comment? Yeah, that's why I'm saying I don't have any...

Oh, let me clarify. I don't have any further comments. I think you have some problems with your partner that need to be figured out before this wedding. And I don't get why anyone would have so much care about someone else's wedding. That just doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand why there's so many hands coming in

to make choices and do all these things when it really has nothing to do with them. I'm not even gonna say it because everyone already knows I'm thinking it. Yeah, I already know what you're thinking. This is not just going to extend to the wedding. This, unfortunately, will be the rest of this person's life. That's what I'm saying.

There's problems with the partner. That's where this originates. Who are you getting married to or what are you getting married into? Oh, Edgar's got some mommy dynamics here. He's got to figure out. See, the thing that I'm concerned about this situation is not the situation at first.

All the things... If he's looking at it, he might be looking at it like it's not a big deal. Whatever. It's just a party. Let everyone have a take at it, like a swing at it. Let's all have fun.

You know, that's cool. Whatever, Edgar. Go ahead. But where I don't like it is that then when she leaves and stays at her dad's, he's texting her, you're overdramatic, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. And that's where it's like,

no, fucking take a step back. If she doesn't want to be around you because she's that upset, reflect. Just think about it for a second. Before you just come at her saying, you're fucking dramatic. What do you think that's going to get you? Is that going to give you a better relationship?

No. Manipulation? Are you going to be happier? No. Is she going to be happier? No. So what are you doing? Because that's Edgar.

Edgar has been so enveloped. As if we don't know him. Because that's Edgar for you. It's Edgar. That's all they know. They only know to defend their mom or their dad or whoever that emotional incest is with. That's all they know.

So Edgar has been trained very well to defend mom. No one can speak up against mom. No one can disrespect mom. But I will say it's kind of like the therapist episode where it's like, how do you even point out enmeshment to someone? You can't. They need to realize it on their own accord.

And maybe losing OP will be Edgar's awakening. True. I don't think it would. I really don't think it would. Me either. I think a lot of times they just end up finding someone who puts up with it. 100%.

No, literally. And I agree with both what you guys just said. What would happen if she were to leave him? Then who would he cry about it to? His mom. Exactly. And what would his mom say? Didn't like her anyway.

She wasn't good enough. She wasn't good enough for you. She wasn't good enough for you, sweetie. You're perfect. You're a king. And so he's going to continue to live on his high horse. That's Edgar for you. Imagine at that age going and crying to your parents

about something. I'm sorry, Justin. Listen, I 100% do that still. So fuck off. I do call my mom crying. No, I call my mom crying. No, I'm kidding about the fuck off part, but I definitely call my mom crying.

Not in the context that we're talking about here though. But I would. I know, but it's not. I do it again and again. So then you're being hypocritical. No. Okay, so explain it then. There is a difference between calling your mom for support

versus letting your mom cross boundaries and be so implicated. You just said he'd be going running to mommy. It's more of the fact that because he has her as a mom who has already raised him to be this way, then instead of her being like, well, let's reflect on some of the things that like went wrong that you could do to improve your next relationship,

that you could do to save your relationship because of how his mom is. She is just going to be like, you're the best fuck everyone else. Whereas I think the difference is, and I don't know if you could say this about your mom, is that like when I talked to my mom, my mom is like such my hype woman,

but she also is like, okay, well, what else is going on here? Yeah, like what else is going on? Let's talk about you. Let's talk about like what you're really going through. So she's way more of a supportive person rather than just being like, everyone fucking sucks and you're the queen.

Well, I also think a big, big, big difference here is our moms aren't our demise. Edgar's mom is the one creating Edgar's issues. True. That's true too. His mom is the one sabotaging this wedding, sabotaging his life. The act of going to a parent with emotions

is not the point that's the problem. It's the situation that it falls within. Yeah, I mean, that's everything. That's life. Like there's, yeah, like we are all going to need support in our lives. If you find that from your parent. I know, but I was just saying from when you said,

who's he going to go? Because Edgar is enmeshed. It's the whole context within that this, this situation is happening. It's the vacuum of the situation. And it's just, it's kind of unfortunate, right? Like it's not, it's not anything Edgar. Edgar, honestly, like from what I've understood

based on the therapy episodes, like enmeshment is a form of abuse. Like Edgar in a sense has been abused. I told you before, I'm pretty sure on this podcast, but I'm not sure. No, but one of my friends, she, her husband, his sister was, is a meth addict. And it's so bad that it's become almost,

no, not almost, it's become meth induced schizophrenia. Yeah. So she has a little boy and she started this YouTube channel and she'll create these videos and then she'll have her little boy in there. And she will be like, you're the only man that I will ever love. And, and he's this tiny little boy and he's like,

you're the only like girl that I'll ever love. And it's just, he doesn't know. And she's taken advantage of a child and. Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. There's, and there's a lot more to that story, but that can come on another episode.

I am very unresolved in this though, because I want to know what happens with the wedding because this was posted 18 hours ago. And there are some comments from OP top comment. Welcome to your new life. Expect her to help organize every aspect of her son's life in the future. If you are lucky,

you might get to have some small bit of input as a concession, but it looks as if you are marrying two people. Next comment. This comment 100% tip of the iceberg. Next comment. Yes. This is a trailer. Do you want to see this film?

And this one is long, but the most awarded. If you're not prepared to leave and he's not prepared to learn to set boundaries or understand why that's important. People do learn to live with spouses like this. They cope with having their wishes disrespected, their lives controlled.

They learn to lie. They learn to evade. They learn to lean more heavily on their social support systems to make their friends a refuge from their romantic relationships and normalize the idea that a romantic relationship should be this stifling, stressful thing that requires a refuge. It's a pretty common predicament. And I'm sure you could make a long list of people in your life

who have made it if you sat down and thought about it. Before you commit to that life, sit down and think about all of the huge decisions that come up in the course of a marriage. Ones where you know your own wishes about your own life would be disregarded. Your child's birth, their health care, their education, financial issues like who works,

whose career gets prioritized, major purchases, budgets, escalating exhausting health care decisions you'll have to make together about both your parents' care as the age and then your own. Consider too that you are not just making this decision for you. If you're bringing children into this dynamic, it will cast a long shadow over their lives.

You will want to ask them to be your confidants and co-conspirators at an inappropriately young age because you entered into a marriage where you can't communicate directly with your spouse. They will resent that, but still internalize that dishonesty and disrespect are central components of a family life and have dysfunctional or romantic relationships of their own.

And that's without even getting into whatever decision mother-in-law wants to make about their upbringing. Ones you'll have to either accept or lie convincingly about and get your kids to do the same. It's not the worst life in the world, plenty of people do it, but make the decision with clear eyes. That's so true and such good points.

I mean, when I was... Holy shit! When I was dating Jeff, he made this comment, it was lighthearted. He was like, our kids are going to play every sport and I'm going to be there for them every single game. And he's like, basketball, baseball, football.

And I was like, what if they don't like sports? And he's like, they will. And I was like, you're not going to force them to do things they don't want to do. And it's one of those things where it's just like, if you have somebody in your life where you know it's going to be a fucking nightmare

to add more stresses and complications, because it's only going to get more, right? If you can't figure it out, just the two of you, and then you add other things, it's just an uphill battle. And this is a joke, right? He was just messing around, but it was the first moment that I was like,

holy shit, I need to think about that when I'm dating someone. What do we want for our children? Like, yeah. Are you, like, you don't even, yeah. It's important issues. I think on the same token too, it's very hard when you're dating

and you're meeting a bunch of different people. Yes, you start to kind of figure out, okay, here's what I like and someone here's what I don't. So then when you meet someone, flags will pop up really quick and you'll be like, okay, cool, save time and move on, right? But there's also this aspect to figuring out, I'm totally beyond this story.

I'm going off of what Lauren said. I'm just saying there's also an aspect to that where if you try to find someone that checks every box and is perfect in every way and fits like a puzzle piece to you, perfect, perfect, not like, oh, he's perfect, but like perfect, perfect, you're never gonna find it. I don't think there's,

you're never gonna find true perfection where you can ever find someone that's like, no, of course not. There's zero flaws, sure in your honeymoon phase, there's like, yeah, there's no flaws. Not in friends, not in parents, no. But go through an entire life with someone and tell me you're not gonna find some flaws or something.

Agreed. You find someone that matches with you the best that you can and that checks enough of the boxes to where the ones that aren't checked don't matter anymore. It's a balance of finding all of the pluses but also the pluses outweigh the cons and I think it's just, it's so crazy because I think you can be in a relationship

like a couple of the past stories and think, oh, you know, I'm unhappy and these small issues start to become the biggest issues and define your entire relationship and then it takes these people going and messing around with other people to be like, oh, fuck. I didn't realize what I actually had because I was with them and I nitpicked the small things

instead of realizing that when you meet someone else they're not gonna have all these things that you loved about the last person. I just think it's so crazy in life. So I actually just had a conversation with one of my really good friends, Zach. We were catching up on the phone and he had broken up with a girl a few months ago

and we hadn't caught up since then and now he's dating a new girl and he was talking about, you know, he's dated a lot of really incredible women in his past and it's when he realized it wasn't right it was very hard to break it off because he saw all of these really amazing qualities about them. It's always the potential that keeps us sticking around.

But what he said is that his dad gave him this advice and he was like, my dad doesn't always take his advice but he has really good ones. And he said that it's not about how many boxes that they check in your life. It's about how many that they don't check that are the most important to you. And that's exactly why he was like, I knew it was hard

and I knew it was gonna suck but I knew that I needed to break up with this girl. It's just crazy, it's crazy but it's also crazy to figure that out and to know like, okay, they clearly don't do this and that's enough for me to walk away. It's just, it's crazy to also come to that because when you're in something

you might not even see it that clearly. Yeah, I'm sitting here, I'm like, I wonder what boxes I don't check. Just like out of curiosity, but we all have those. I'm just like, that's good dude. Like you said, it's all about the potential, right? No, it's not about the potential because the potential is not real.

And the funny thing, oh sorry, did you? I just want to finish this one off with one of these other comments. There's two other ones I want to read and I know I'm really diving in the comments on this one but I think they're really doing this story justice where one of the other comments and something we really haven't even touched on,

he already broke her trust and went behind her back to appease his mother. He'll do it again, it's just a matter of time. The only thing we want in this life when we're like, not the only thing, eat your words. But one of the big things we want in a partner is a partner that will have our back, a partner we can trust.

What are relationships without trust? There's not a lot there, like you're constantly worried about cheating and this, that like we need trust and he's already deeply violated that. She went out of her way to fire one wedding coordinator to hire another and he just nonchalantly gave the mom the number

after knowing her struggles, after knowing the boundary. No, that's why I said in the other story when the guy texted the boss, that's when I said that was it. So the next comment I do want to read which is another red boxer. I don't get the red boxers guys. And it's got a light bulb.

Red boxers? Yeah, the red boxes. Well, the red boxes are like... Oh yeah, boxers. So this other one, OP needs to sit fiance down and tell him in no uncertain terms that this wedding isn't happening

unless he can demonstrate that he is sold separately. I'm an only son and my mom can be a bit overbearing at times. This isn't that. Future mother-in-law has repeatedly and willfully steamrolled OP. Fiance needs to put his foot down and tell his mother that she's no longer involved

in the wedding planning, that his first loyalty is to OP and that there will be zero tolerance for disrespecting OP's boundaries going forward. He needs to mean it and he needs to be prepared to back it up by cutting his mother out of their lives, including as a future grandparent.

If he can't do that, then he'll never be ready for marriage and he should just move back in with his mother so she can take care of him forever. And got a little petty, but like first two paragraphs were solid. Yeah, it would have to be very, very convincing. The thing that's kind of confusing

about mother and child dynamics is that whereas I feel so confident that my mom truly wants the best for me. So going to her for advice or like let's just say what my mom would do if she wanted to help plan a wedding. I do not see her being invasive. If I told her to back off, she'd back off.

If I told her like my husband's feeling like frustrated, she'd feel super bad. You know, she wants the best for me. So it's kind of hard because it's like it's in that situation. I'm not like, oh, I need to pick my mom or my husband. It's like, no, my mom has my back.

My mom wants what's best for me. Your mom has healthy boundaries. Exactly. But if I had a mother that didn't have healthy boundaries and then I was dealing with that, then it would be so fucking confusing because it's just like, well, I love my mom. She's raised me and she loves me so much unconditionally.

But I also love this person that I'm with more than anything and I want to build a life with them. So that must be so mind fucking for people whose parents don't like cross early, you know, don't respect those boundaries. That's a mind fuck for sure. And it's all you've ever known. Yeah.

You think it's normal. Yeah. And also, I would just like to say to you, sorry, sorry. One last thing. Wouldn't it be fucking nice if we didn't have to just go on dates and be like, what's your favorite color?

If we were like, if we were like, hey, is your mom overbearing? Let's just save some time. I think it is so, so, so essential to meet your in-laws as soon as possible. It's essential. It's essential on anything. Like, hey, like if your kid didn't want to play football

and said wanted to be an artist, how'd you feel about that? You know, I'm going to start doing that on first dates. Cue to the card game. What's your fucking color? Cue to the card game. So. It's like the card game we played the other night.

Oh. It literally, those expose all of that. That makes you get to the nitty gritty. Which that we're not really strangers. Yeah. No. It's one from best self-co. It's, so it's from best self.

And we did like the date deck and it, it asks you those intimate questions. Yes. It goes from step one where it's like, what's your favorite color to like, it's literally what you were saying. Yeah. What would happen if we were going to get married

and blah, blah, blah came in and they did the XYZ and then it gets like, wait a minute, which is funny, which is funny because imagine playing that, that was someone that you're like a month in with. Oh my God. Would you. I felt.

I'm sorry. But also like, I love that idea. At that point you almost worry though, but here's the thing though. Lauren's like, I'm going to put everyone in the test now. No, but here's the thing.

Don't waste my fucking time. If, if you're just early in trying to explore things and see how they can evolve, I feel like people are going to lie. If you played that too early on. I know. Would you not like. You could manipulate it for sure.

Some people would definitely. Yeah. You have to be to a certain level of intimacy. Why do humans do that? Like why do we put on this? Cause you don't want to lose what you got. Yeah. Just be straight up right away.

And I'm not like, we all have our insecurities. I'm not saying that I don't do that shit too, but it's like, why do we have to like put on this perfect little. The same reason you walk around with Gucci purses and fancy bracelets and all this stuff and like people drive fancy cars

before they can actually afford them. I got a really cute new bracelet. Yeah. Why are you so fancy Lauren? You insecure? You know what I'm saying? No, I know. We are all compensated.

I think like at the end of the day, we're, what I don't know what we're all searching for in this life. It's, we're going to go down a rabbit hole here at the end, but it's, it is one of those things where it's like at the root humanness of us,

we're looking for a connection. We're trying to fit in. And for a lot of us, like that status quo, like certain items have status, Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Nice cars.

Cartier bracelet. I mean, you want a Cartier bracelet. Why do you want that bracelet? Why do you want the original Cartier bracelet versus having the vintage cheap ones we have? Well, I think one of the coolest substances that exists in the universe is gold.

And that is because Let's get you a gold nugget versus a $6,000 bracelet. That isn't even worth the cost of gold that it contains. I understand, but I can't. You're buying the brand. Sure. I would take a custom made gold bracelet out of gold. Then let's do that.

Yes. Because it's more about the gold for me because gold is only created through Killa Novas, which is very rare because it takes two stars that are in a binary pair to both go through supernova to turn into neutron stars and not have one end up in a black hole

because then the neutron star would go in the black hole. So you lost the entire audience after star. It takes No, it's rare for two neutron stars. It's not binary pairs are the most common. Our son is an outlier in that case, but it takes two binary stars to both turn into neutron stars

and be big enough to end up as those. And those neutron stars over billions of years have to decay their orbits to eventually collide. That is the only environment that is neutron rich enough to create elements that are as strong as gold, titanium, platinum. That's the only reason we have those elements. And that's why gold is very rare.

So I love things that are made of gold because it's so rare, so cool. I love gold. It's just, it's diamonds aren't that cool. Diamonds are just created under pressure. That's dumb. Diamonds are shit. Gold should be so much more valuable than diamond.

I'm telling you. And that's the thing, but the diamond industry created this like scarcity mindset. Yeah. Like some of the biggest diamonds are locked in. So that's why I want the bracelet. But let's get you a custom made bracelet that is equivalent. That's fine.

Like that's just stupid. All I'm saying is it's not about the status, it's about the element. No, I agree. I actually, I have a friend who's extremely rich and he talks about that all the time. He buys gold bars. He invests in gold because he's like that,

like years and years will go by and this shit will never like, it stacks literally, figuratively. I hope there's like a 1% of the audience or someone that is on track with me. There's at least one person that understood what you said. Because he has, he puts more value in money than in gold. Are you going to be really, I'm sorry.

The reason he buys gold bars is yes, they're a great investment. He does not have the same appreciation for the substance of gold that I do. I would get gold not for, oh, and yes, I would buy gold bars just because I think they're badass, but I would not want a specific bracelet made out of gold because it's going to have a future value.

It's more because gold is a- It's gold. You like the significance. Yes. So let's find you a solid gold bracelet. Yes. That's really cool. Are you going to be really sad

if someone comes on the YouTube comments and fact checks you? No, because there's no fact checking. You're just on. If that is wrong, then they are- Then I don't want to be right. No, then they are uneducated. Wait, I wanted to say something that you mentioned, Morgan.

Like you were talking about humans wanting to find connections. Humans wanting to fit in. And Justin, you were like, that's why people are wearing Gucci purses and stuff like that. So I actually was listening to the audio of atomic habits when I was driving back from Arizona. And one of the things that he was mentioning is that they did this study on monkeys.

And I don't remember it perfectly. Like I'm listening to an audio, right? But basically there was this monkey, this group of monkeys, and they found a way to eat ants that was extremely efficient. Right? Yeah. We're able to eat more ants per second. Yep.

They put this monkey into another group that ate ants less efficiently. And instead of continuously teaching the other monkeys how to do it more efficiently, he just tried to fit in. And that's what he did to how they did it, which was less efficient because he would rather pick fitting in

than being more efficient. I mean, there's so many animal studies and like some of them are very, very cruel. Like this one, it's like it's another monkey study. And it was, there were five monkeys in a box and they put a banana on the top of a ladder. And when one monkey would try to climb the ladder, they would spray the other monkeys with a hose.

And so it got to the point where when they tried to climb the ladder, they would beat that monkey up. And so they kept slowly exchanging monkeys to the point of by the time every single monkey was replaced, those monkeys didn't know why they beat the monkey that tried to climb up the ladder, but they still did it.

And that, I mean, that speaks volumes to a lot of our political climate things. Yeah. I mean, everything. But I think about a less like gruesome one that like is more positive. And I think about Rat Park. And Rat Park is another study where they would get these rats

like juiced up on drugs and like keep them separate and like all this stuff. But when they gave the rats a sense of community, even when they had access to drugs, they chose to remain connected to the other rats. They chose a sense of connection over drugs. Yeah. Like that speaks volumes.

We are all, we just want to be connected with each other, which makes so much sense too, with having only two main political parties in the United States. And then the United States constantly making everything into a war or a team. Are we all exhausted? I'm exhausted.

But we're almost out of memory. So we're going to leave this whole train of thought unresolved just like the fly. Actually it's kind of perfect. Yeah. Sayonara. Adios. To Mars.

Bye guys. Bye. The thought of my sons growing up without me inspired me to quit smoking. I talked to my doctors and then I threw away all my cigarettes, ashtrays and lighters. I started exercising instead of smoking. Staying away from alcohol when I was first quitting was key.

I kept on trying, learned something each time. Do whatever it takes. No matter how many times it takes. We did it, so can you. For free and confidential help, call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or visit www.waytoquit.org developed by CDC. When you love someone, seeing them struggle

with their mental health can be one of the hardest things in the world, especially when you know they need help, but don't know where to turn. That's why 988 Lifeline is here. 988's train crisis counselors are available 24-7 by phone or text to provide you with the resources and support you need to help the people you love. No one should have to struggle alone.

Call or text 988suicideincrisis.org or call 1-800-QUIT-NOW or call 1-800-QUIT-NOW