Woman Evolve with Sarah Jakes Roberts - Wrong Lanes Have Right Turns w/ Michael Phillips

Episode Date: February 23, 2022

W.E. know the brothas ain't tryna toot their own horn, but...their perspective has been what the girls NEEDED! This week in the driver's seat is author, education advocate, and pastor, Michael Phillips—better known as Dr. Anita's husbae! He pulled up on SJR, explaining how to partner and have dominion, where we anchor our pain, & why men emotional tanks be on E. Life's tension & trauma would land Pastor Michael in the wrong lane. But after avoiding a near collision, he went 0 to 100 real quick—in the direction of his faith & family! Make a right turn today when you swing by MichaelPhillipsBook.com + Get 10% OFF your first month of online therapy at BetterHelp.com/Evolve.

God can't bless you for ten to be or who you compare yourself to. He can only bless you and the lane that was created for you. I feel that for somebody. You don't need no itch, it's a tea you need boundaries. What? I don't need your lights, I don't need your elevation. All I need is a God party for me that's there all things, all things, all things. Child.

I am so excited to introduce you to my co-host today. I know you'll love him because you already love his wife V, Dr. Anita Phillips. Our guest today is my friend, fellow author, preacher of the philanthropist Michael Phillips in his book, Wrong Lane's Have Right Turns Recently Released. I can't wait to dig into that. And to also pick his brain about what it's like to be

with a powerful woman and also to be a man on a journey to becoming better. You might want to grab your fella and have this playing just somewhere in the atmosphere. It's going to be one that blesses both of you. Family. I know. How are you? I am good. I am good. I'm I'm on this road. There's nothing quite like it. How's it been pushing the book? You know, it's a learning lesson, especially trying to do it, you know, in the middle of this very increased knowledge of the stuff. So you get real innovative. When stuff starts getting canceled, or moved, or shifted, or switched. But for my first time out,

very happy for everything. Very much so. It seems like you didn't allow to love and support. Oh, all day long. I can't, I have the words for the amount of support I've gotten for it, certainly from your dad and the whole TPH family. And then of course, this thing is resonating for a lot of different people, which was kind of shocking to me, not that it wasn't, but in the way that it

is. People from all different walks and backgrounds just being vulnerable enough to talk about how this book is really resonating with them, that they had similar experiences and so forth. So that's good. Okay, so let's address the elephant in the room. You are the spouse, the partner, the co-creator with the Dr. Anita Phillips, our therapist and our head. And you all have been at this thing called life for a mighty long time. Yes or no? Yes, four minutes, 25 years of marriage together.

It's been an amazing journey and we've been at it for a long time. Okay, so I have questions like, does she therapy you all the time or or do you make her take her therapy? Had off like, how does that work? Because she therapy, it's me all of the time or I have it. I don't know. Maybe it's a complex I have. He tried to therapy me, but I won't let her. I won't let her. But she's a pretty smart cookie that one. So somehow she still feels like how to doing it. But it's always a delicate thing when she brings the therapist into our thing because I don't want to hear that.

Right, that's not, don't do it, don't do it. What a year that. So, you know, she's learned over time how to drop those nuggets of well-being into my decision making mostly. Nuggets of well-being, I love that. Right. I have a question for you. So, you all have been married for 25 years. Obviously, we know Dr. Anita as just a brilliant woman, a brilliant, powerful,

anointed woman. And yet I am sensing, first of all, I think people should know that you all are a power couple. Like you all have raised these amazing children and it is not by happenstance. You both are so intellectual. you're brilliant, you're creative, you've got strategy, like to see you all together and to see what you all have produced together, is just a testament to two powerhouses coming together. And yet I wonder because we're in a generation where women are more educated than men,

they are graduating at higher rates, starting businesses at higher rates. What is it like to be with a woman who was walking in the fullness of her power without being intimidated by it? Is that possible because a lot of women fear that it's not? It's absolutely possible, number one, it's possible. Number two, y'all gonna do it anyway. So whoever the man is, he might as well get over it, right? But it's for me, let's just speak for me. The reason it's possible is because if I can

take it this way, we were both created to have purpose, right? And we were both given demean. And it would be the fevery of me to rob the world of the gift of a person. And so her demean doesn't end or begin when mine starts. They are separate in and of themselves. And so she had that before we got married. The key thing is how do you dominate together, right? How do you have that to mean together? And it comes with support. It comes with support.

It comes with understanding that she had her own unique purpose before she ever found me. And as a matter of fact, part of my role as a husband is to help cultivate that support that and manage that. Man, okay, so I wonder could you give advice to a woman who's maybe listening and when she first was you know Mary to her husband her first got connected with her partner She wasn't walking in her own power. She wasn't walking in her dominion But she's been coming to Womnie Ball. She been reading the books She didn't go on a therapy.

And now she's ready to walk in her own power, but she's connected to someone who's never seen her exercise power in that way. How can that woman introduce to her partner this transition that has happened in her identity? Wow, that's such a phenomenal question. How much time we got right here? That's gonna have to happen, I think, over time, right? And it's going to have to happen between that couple in a way that will bring understanding

to the benefits of allowing that woman to walk in her demean, walk in her power. Right. It oftentimes we don't see how amazing it could be if two individuals are actually single. Right. So let's think about it this way. God said it wasn't good for a man to be alone. Right. He didn't say it wasn't. He didn't say it wasn't different than to be single. It's too separate big. So singles simply means that you are unique, that you are whole. Right. And oftentimes when we

go into our relationships, we go into them and we believe hoping that this person will make us whole because our soul is always looking for some way to anchor to. Right? And so because of that, then, we don't step into our own uniqueness of who we are and our own power and our own dominion and our own purpose. And so we live our lives preded to the end of this that we are relationship with.

So I think that part of the benefit of allowing your spouse, not wonderful, amazing creature, God, partners for reason, and the benefits that you're going to receive when she steps into the fullness of her she is immeasurable. And so it only helps you. It hurts you. It hurts your future. It hurts your family. That doesn't have. Yeah. hurts you, hurts your future, hurts your family, if that doesn't happen. I love that. I feel like it's such a rich revelation, the idea that it's only going to hurt you if you don't allow her to step in the fullness of who she is.

But I think what's really resonating is you mention how important it is for a person to have their own sense of their unique identity and purpose before getting into a relationship so that their relationship can multiply, not decrease, subtract or divide, but multiply. And you said something about our souls always looking for something to be anchored to, right? And I'm wondering if we could like go back in time to your life, like what was your soul looking for? And maybe some of your most challenging or just random days, now that you're looking back in hindsight, what was your soul craving? You know, most of us don't know what to do with our paint. Whatever that might be, whatever we've encountered

or expand over the lifetime, when it happens to us traumatic events, we store that paint. We don't know what to do with it. So that's why we try to anchor ourselves to something to hold something out of our sense to be able to deal with some sort of stability. And so for me, the way I dealt with my pain was through power. And what I mean by power,

I really mean the negative power to have power over a pervert, or how I dealt with my pain. per how I dealt with my pain. It's how I anchored my soul because what I went was control so that I wouldn't have to suffer again. And the problem with that is that you don't handle suffering, suffering handles you. You don't get to control this matter of fact. We don't suffer because we're in any particular situation. We suffer because we all try to control that situation. Because we just want out. I just want out. So for me, for example, my father, it was just horrific for me.

And the way I held that that tension and that trauma, along with many other traumas in my life, was I needed power, right? I needed power over my environment, control over my environment. And I'm still kind of, you know, dealing with it today to the point where, you know, I'm constantly trying to figure out who's around me, what's my surroundings, who's in the rub, stuff like that, right? Because I want to control my space, my environment, so that I can avoid any negative thing happening to me, but that's not life. And so to answer your question, the way that I angered my soul in the negative was trying to attach it to power, powerful people, becoming a powerful person, thinking I can control all the outcomes of my life. And guess what,

that don't work. Well, obviously, you found a way to go from there to where you are now. And I think that this is something that we should really focus in on because there are so many women who want to see the men and their life come to a place where they're no longer trying to control everything or they have certainty about themselves and they have space for healthy relationships. Like I have found that many women are dating someone

because of their potential, holding on to someone because of who they believe they can become, but that person hasn't yet learned to do the work. And it seems like you learned to do the work. Yeah, that was a journey though. So, you know, I don't want everybody to come in or the story at the end, right? You know, it was a journey for me,

like it was gonna be for any man, or for any human being, right? And so, for me, I had to get out of the pool. Well, I was just trying to survive. To survive all you have to do is endure. But to drive, you have to evolve. And if you're going to evolve, then that requires the process of disorientation

and discomfort and development to the point where you really try to figure out who you really are and what you really want to do. So I got married very young. I was, I mean, if my son came to me right now, my dad would get married. I don't know. It would be like, yeah, bro, bro, but you know, not we not know that, right? But I like that. And he noted in me down the age I was when I got married. So if he came to me at 21 years old, like your problem get married,

I couldn't even imagine that, right? But that's what I did. At 21, I had no clue as to who I was. And so I think Dr. Nita will probably align with the women who married the picture of someone, right, who they could become, but she had no clue who I would be. And so I think that I had to learn,

I had to uproot the anchors that I had used to attach my soul to in finer, different police anchors. And for me, it was in my faith that allowed that to happen instead of flinging the emotional threads onto unstable things, right? And so, this is the work that's necessary for every individual. And from us to talk about men in particular, it takes a long time for us to become vulnerable enough to share those emotional threads with our partners because it exposes us at a level that we don't know how that's going to come back at us. So for example, if I had a moment when I went from straight hood to all of a sudden saved, right?

And when I got saved, I was like, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, like I was, you know what I mean? And my whole world changed. So, you know, Dr. Nita was falling in love with this hood, you know, all of a sudden, it gives us life to the Lord. And my character's changed, and my characters change and my minds that's changing. So everything was a scripture. And that's a for everything in my life was a scripture.

And I tried to, at one time she had an inflammation, I tried to give her a scripture and she's going to be mad, I'm telling the story. But she was like, boy, don't buy one, handle scripture right now that it is she completely shut it down. You know, it was like maybe 15 years before I shared another scripture. Wow. Wow. At that moment, that's all I had to give at that moment.

And so when a man is trying to give you what he has, I mean, if that's all he's got, but that's what he's trying to give you, and you shut that down, then it becomes, okay, I can't be vulnerable here. I can't offer value here. And if I can't do that, then what am I doing? What am I doing? And so in a lot of relationships, the reason why a lot of men aren't, maybe to the point of how women sees it,

the reason why he's not growing or developing in front of you is perhaps he can't be vulnerable enough to do so. And it's an important thing to really think about. One of my favorite things about the women connected to Waumani Valve are the variety of businesses you all have. Whether it's cosmetics or apparel, writing books or helping others build their business through business coaching, you ladies are out here doing all of the things. Okay. You're bold, strong and brave, and you should have a business checking account that's as brave as you are with novo business checking. Novo is powerful, simple business

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Sign up for your free business checking account right now at novo.co-evolve. Plus, woman-evolve listeners get access to over $5,000 in perks and discounts. Go to novo.co-evolve to sign up for free. Novo.co-evolve. Novo platform ink is a fine tech, not a bank. Banking services provided by Middlesex federal savings, FA member, FDIC, terms and conditions applied. You said something, you said I can't add value here. And that really resonated with me because I instantly recognize the need

to add value. And if I'm not able to add value, then I'm insecure about my identity. I'm insecure about who I am, whether or not there's any worth in our connection. And I know that that is definitely something that women struggle with as well is wanting to add value, especially when you feel like you're coming from a place of deficit, right? Like I can count all of these reasons why I don't add value. And the one thing that I do think I can add is being rejected. And it creates this incredible toxic cycle of needing someone else to validate your journey. And I can see how that has shown up in my life and the life of so many people that I know as well. Yeah, we all want to be validated. We all want to have a birth and when we don't get that validation, when we don't receive that

those critical elements to shape your identity and development early on, and you become adults without it, it leads to a lot of shallow relationships, a lot of shallow experiences, because that person can't really feed that person, right? They're gonna come to identify with that and link up with you at some point.

But it has come from, I like to say this way, in common, there's always an inside job, right? And so, and so when you start thinking about your worth and your value, that comes from that singleness that I'm talking about, that you were put on this earth and this planet for that purpose, that consciousness that I'm talking about, that you would put on this earth and this planet for that purpose, that reason, and that's where your power resides, right? And no person on earth can really validate that for you as much. However, when you do the necessary work of evolving, which I love, that platform and that title, I'll leave it to you off. When you do that necessary work of evolving,

you become aware of your value, whether it is recognized or not, and then so being aware, you'll be very careful when you offer that out. Yeah. Yeah. Who you offer it to. And because it's valuable, what you guys bring to the table is incredibly powerful. Incredibly powerful. I'm going to hit him myself, but it's just incredibly powerful. What would they bring to the table? So when you hit the words, wrong lanes have right turns.

I'm sure that it is already like so many things going off in your mind because it is the name of the book that you recently released. But I am wondering, can you give us that you recently released, but I am wondering, can you give us a funny example of a wrong lane turning into a right turn and a defining memory of when a wrong lane turned into a right turn? Sure. So, a funny story about wrong lane turning to a right turn. I have plenty of those. I have plenty of those, right? So here's a funny story. So I was scared to get married, terrified to do so because I was never monogamy in me don't even match.

That's just okay. It's like, what are you talking about, right? And so here I am. I got 21. I went from 0 to 100 real quick in the opposite direction, right? You know, a different world in a different lifestyle. And now I'm terrified that I'm going to mess things up. So I literally try to jump in the wrong lane and ruin any chance

of getting married. That's how terrified I was. Because I was afraid I was going to fail. But the joke is that 25 years later, here I am. Here I am. And it turned out to be very good, right? It's really incredible. I thought that was pretty funny.

But I had pretty more graphic ones. I didn't know how to do that. What's on this show? You ain't got my friend calling me. Listen, you said something though, like afraid of messing it up. How many men do you think straight away from commitment, from marriage, from fatherhood, right?

Because they're afraid of messing it up. And I'm not talking about people who haven't had children yet. I'm talking about absent fathers afraid to mess it up. People in relationships, but emotionally unavailable because they're afraid to mess it up. Like do you think that masculinity and the way that men have been projected onto as far as the roles that they should play has played a part in men really feeling like, I'd rather not do it at all or not show up, then to mess it up. Absolutely.

It's difficult to defeat an enemy that has taken shelter in your mind. Oh. And for most men, their greatest enemy is themselves. And the reason is because to be honest, in this culture of punishment that we have, in our society, we are currently told there's going to be a penalty if we mess up.

There's going to be a price to pay if we mess up. And when it comes to the game of life, messing up somebody else's life, it's really not nothing. Any man really wants to do to be honest. Not like he's just straight trite. If you just straight trite, okay, that's all right. Whatever you be, all right.

Okay, all right, that's not what we're talking about. But for most men, we don't want to mess it up, right? We just want to ruin anybody's life. And we don't usually don't have templates for what success looks like as a husband and a father. And we don't know. Now, to some degree, that excuse that I don't know what it means to be a husband or father. It's kind of a cop-up because You know regardless of if you have an example of a good one or not you still got to do it yourself Right you still have to do stuff. So I can answer your question. Yes

Most of us are afraid and the problem is we can't say it to y'all because we have to beat our chest and say, I'm a man, but to be honest, I'm really afraid that I'm going to ruin this for us, that I'm really going to just take your life now, that I'm going to make a catastrophic mistake and not be a good father. And that's a frightening thing. And so what would it look like if men were just able to say in this culture, I'm scared. I'm scared. And what I just said though might not sound profound to anybody. It's really, really deep and powerful.

And then could have space to say I'm scared. Because I know what that comes from. And that's most of it. One thing I love about Womany Ball is the community and safe space we've built with one another. I receive countless messages with personal stories ranging from experiences with anxiety and depression to advice on how to settle family conflicts or work through self-esteem issues. I don't have all the answers but I refuse to leave y'all hanging. Your mental health is too important to me.

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communicating in less than 24 hours and anytime after that. Again, that's better help, h-e-l-p.com slash evolve. evolve. Okay so this begs the question if a child believes in their father if a woman believes in her man even though he feels like he could mess it up why isn't the belief in them enough to bring out the greatness in them or does that just add more pressure? It adds more pressure. Right? Yeah, so it's going to add more pressure because again, now, okay, that's more elevation for me to worry about the distance of the fall. If I don't meet these set of expectations, then I'm gonna let everybody down. Now, again, that's work that we have to do on our own

as men to really process that for ourselves, do that work on our charities. But we also need a place to lay our heads to have that conversation about that journey, right? Where we can just be vulnerable. Where there is no expectation. Where you don't even have to say, I believe in you. It's just the matter of, can I be just afraid in this space for a moment without any help

or support of thinking it or resolving it, but just to be able to say, I don't know I can do this. And I will tell you, having people in your corner, whether the mother or the child to say, we believe me, is everything. Every man wants that, right? Every man wants to hear that, every man wants to know that. And we need to go out and accomplish something, just as the way we built, right? And you know, kill something and then minding back, build a table, be like, here, this is what we did.

It's the way we built. And so as we're trying to do that, the the trepidation around failing in front of y'all, it's not a friendly proposal, right? It's not a friendly proposal. Because if we fail once, y'all baby I got you you know that we we do a twice is like three or four times and it's a problem right it's a problem so the high mistakes are high and this mystery between men and women in relationships, it's just that mystery. I was going to say, why are you so complicated? We can't say I believe in you. We can't say you ain't nothing.

Like, what we going to say then? We don't know what to say. We just got to sit there and be quiet. Should we celebrate the wins? The small wins should we highlight the small wins? Like, oh, look, you went and applied for a job today. No, can't do that. That's probably can't do that.

What can we do? How can we support men who we see? Like we see them. We see that life hasn't been easy for them. We see they've had a lot of wrong lanes, a lot of people who let them down, a lot of people who drop them. And there's a woman who's saying,

I want to be in it with you. I know you're not perfect. I know you're not going to do everything well. And maybe there are moments when you're afraid, what role can a woman play in creating space for the little boy, the brokenness to feel safe enough to come out, but also encouraging that adult man to be a part of healing the places

where those wrong lanes merged. So let's go back. One, I think you guys can do a whole lot, right? And many women do, right? For a man to articulate wherever he is, right? Whatever space he's in, and to be able to share that with his spouse or his other, it's an incredible thing. Part of the onus is on the main, right, to be able to, first of all, articulate. But I'm going to give you guys a real powerful tool in helping your me. It's called listening. We listen all the

time. We just have something to say back. Thank you very much. So, so, so, so, so, so, you're going to have a thought. You're going to have something to share. You're going to do that. And, and sometimes it's better to receive those thoughts and doses than it is to get them all at one time, right? Because you all don't know what. You're going to remember the whole conversation. First of all, with notes. Verb, verbatim.

Okay. You go ahead and fire page, document everything that was there and so forth and so on. So, you know, it's about really, and when I say listen, I didn't mean that you heard the conversation, I mean, to really listen. Most men are telling on them, so, because they're telling you what's really at the root of it, because then I'm just going to come out and say all together, right? Again, that's that process of being vulnerable enough to be able to share parts of you that are, you know, downright scared. And I tell you this, my thumb was born.

My goal was born. I'm not a kid. Because I can tell you what I had on to the tea. I could tell you the rum color, everything. I remember it vividly. I had on a Tommy Hill figure shirt pair of polo jeans and polo boots was like back then it was like everything, right? That's like having, it was like having a deal, right?

Like that. And, and I helped Michael, and I said to myself, man, I gotta get my stuff to that. I was so concerned with passing down to him, my past troubles. And I was still dabbling with all lifestyle and my, and my, and my past troubles. And I was still dabbling with old lifestyle and my new choice. And I was maybe what, 22, 23, 24, around there. And I'm juggling, trying to move forward my life and really get rid of everything that I came out of.

And then Michael Cromes. It wasn't a conversation. I could have a look at any of the factors. I wouldn't even know how to have had the conversation. I wasn't mature enough to be able to articulate all that I was dealing and views were. All I knew was, bear down, go make something happen, you're all right. That's all I knew. And it took a long time to develop as a man and say, this is what it is,

this is how it feels, and this is what I think. And so, if you don't listen, as we brought a talk through some of that stuff, and if there's always a comeback or a clapback, you know, then it's the same way you guys want us to listen without fixing anything. It's the same for us. I hope that's helpful, but it's really the same thing. I just need you to listen. I don't need advice. I don't need, I don't need a data boy. I don't need that. I'm a self-star.

I'm going to get up and get it. Need you to listen. And so sometimes men go to different places to get that, right? If you're not healthy, ego is not healthy. You'll find some really awful places to go get it. And so what you really want is a male, the healthy male ego to be able to articulate to you where they are once up. And you know, that only can happen to listening. Yeah. So you said the birth of Michael was kind of a point in your life where you really challenged yourself to get your life together. Do you remember the first time you realized like, man, my life is low key together.

Like I'm doing a lot better than I was before. Oh yeah, definitely. It was, we had moved from Ohio. We were, I had this huge job opportunity. Massive promotion. And we decided to, I decided to, you know, after a church instead, which, you know, still sometimes the family. Oh, thank you.

But, but, a few years later, I had built this house from the ground up for my family. I, you know, I was just really for my kids. And, you know, my family, and I want them to have this environment, you know, this loving environment. And I remember that we were living in a three, like a two-day room apartment or something, I don't know, two or three day room apartment. And my office, our office was a clubbed,

of the apartment. And so I had this house built in the ground up and my kids don't want to leave the apartment. Like they are upset that we are moving. I'm like, well, hold on, you got your own space, your room. This is like 8,000 square feet. You know, like you got you get out of the movie theater, you got that., you got, you get, you got a movie video, you got that, and they didn't wanna leave. As a matter of fact, the first week, I think I moved in there by myself, but they were still getting stuff out of the apartment.

And the point I'm making is that we had already created the environment. We had already created this space, love and support for our kids. It wasn't helpful. It was, it wasn't even already created. When I, I first always met, because you know, I spent this money. I was looking at it.

I was sacrificed, I was labored, I a built state for the ground up. And then I realized, you know, they're grieving their home. We've created the space for them that they come to love in all these memories. And that's how I knew that I was really headed in the right direction in my life because I could see it reflected in my children. That's a good word. That's going to help somebody who's feeling like, you know, I got to get these kids out of this situation. I need to do this. I need to do that at the end of the day. It's the inner environment that you create for them that lasts. And I think

about that with my own life, like my parents, we had, when we transitioned from West Virginia to Dallas, and my dad was able to do a lot of different things for us, but he always talks about how now that we're older, he looks back and we're not talking about any of those things. We're talking about the memories that didn't really, he didn't think at the time would mean that much, but they do, they really do add up.

Yeah, they do. It's those moments, those moments become the real memories, right? They become the things that you really hold on to. I would give anything to get my father's brown cat like it'd be uncomfortable in the back seat, you know, because I was the youngest child. They always put me in the middle of the head.

But I would give anything, anything, just do that and ride across the country a little bit. Right now, and I wouldn't care where we ate, I wouldn't care where we stayed, just a little bit. And so, we, you know, as adults, you know, an F-man, you know, to keep the conversation in the same roomhouse. We keep thinking we got to do all this stuff and it's not about our doing, it's about our being. You know, God can create human, human, human, human doing to create a human being. And but we get so lost in what we got to do that we don't see the power and just be Yeah, who we are created to be and

Yeah, my my kids help me to realize like you know what man? You don't okay It's gonna be all right I love that's gonna be all right That's like I mean it's the embodiment of what you're talking about in the book wrong lanes have right turns Obviously, I mean your story is so layered like we haven't even skim the surface of it and That you experience but I think that people need the hope of The right turns right we need the hope of where things can land in of the right turns, right? We need the hope of where things can land

in relationships and marriage and our faith life. And so if you're listening to this, like if you think that he has said something about his story, like, no, nothing, okay? I'm talking about the kids watching. I'm talking about pushing, okay? I'm talking, you have no idea. I'm just telling you right now,

this finished product is going to be such an incredible testimony for everyone about what can happen when we move the anchor of our soul to something that is more profitable. And okay, but we have an advice question. So we need this wrong lens have right turns energy because we don't know where this advice question is headed and we're going to need it, okay? No, no, no, no, no.

Okay, so it says, hey, so recently I got into this relationship with a guy that I never thought I'd look at twice. He's very passionate, loving, and caring, and treats me way better than any other man has treated me. The part that has me concerned is that even after praying consistently about him before I even got into a relationship with him, for some reason my sister and parents feels like he's not the right fit, but I never got a no or indication from God not to move forward with it. My sister then asked someone questions about his past and let's just

say it seems as if he's not over his ex and maybe using me as a way to get her jealous. What do you think I should do? Continue to seek God and wait on a direct note to this relationship and end it. Or should I disregard all hearsay and focus on what my boyfriend is showing me about his character and let God do the rest? This is that perfect question for you. for you. Listen, okay, that's a lot right there. That's a lot right there. Their party perspective is extremely important when it comes to our relationships, right? Because oftentimes, you'll have a level of confirmation bias as it relates to the person

that you're with. In other words, you won't see what they see. Right? Because you're looking for what it sounds like to me is that you're looking for the information that confirms what you feel more than what somebody else sees. So sometimes it's important to take a moment and just think about what somebody else sees and maybe look for that, right, so that you can have this point of reference because nobody shows you everything.

Okay. 25 years talking here. Still looking, still finding. Yeah. Like what? Like what? What? Nobody shows you everything and people change over time. Okay.

So what you're getting right now, it sounds wonderful, sounds great, not to discourage, but be open at least to the possibility that the people close to you. Who love you? Might see something else also. I totally agree with that. One of the first things that I was going to ask for you to at least consider within yourself when you sent this advice question is like, how close are you to your parents and your sister because they know you and presumably they know you. Now, if you're not very close to them and you don't care about them, that's one thing. But when we say things like, my friends don't have to like, my family doesn't like, have

to like him. I like him and I'm just going to tough it out. You're isolating yourself from wisdom that can really help you. And it's not really true if you're doing life with those people because at the end of the day, you're going to have to walk this thing out and you don't want to lose your friends or your family members because you've chosen someone that they see some character flaws with or issues that could ultimately come up for you. And so it sounds like there's probably something

in your spirit already because the way you wrote the question makes it seem like you a little shaky on it yourself, this I ain't even going to lie to you. It's not like you a little shaky on it. And it I ain't even going to lie to you. And I'm like, you a little shaky on it. And it sounds like you trust their opinions. And so I say, you know, just like my brother said, like you want to make sure that you are seeing the full picture. And that often happens through our friends and family offering a perspective. We can't see. I will tell you this. When I got divorced and I was dating again, I made a commitment to myself.

Like I wanted to be with someone who my family enjoyed, who my family liked being around, because I'm not gonna disconnect from them. Like I'm going for Thanksgiving, I'm going for Christmas, I want my children to be around my sister and I don't want to live in a war zone. And that was something that was important to me. So making those priorities clear to yourself

and to your partner from the beginning is really important. So yes. I'm saying, well said, well said. Where can we get the book? Because, okay, look at it. I'm gonna ask you something. Okay, listen. Sure, sure.

We may not put more pressure on boo, but can we buy him the book and just slide it to him? Like, can we see him in a wrong lane and not say anything in the passenger seat? We'll just stay quiet, but can we just slide him the book to read? Is that possible? Can we read the book and quote it? It like it's our own. What are our options here? Listen, a wise woman builds a house, right? So you guys, you guys know how to build, right?

Listen, a wise woman builds a house, right? So you guys know how to build, right? You guys know how to build nothing. And so when I say, not only do you know how to build, you know how to care, right? You know how to incubate things and produce something much larger than what you receive, both positively and negatively, right? So you guys have an uncanny way of being able to help us to grow and to move forward and

to develop. And I think you can slide book, I think you can drop that head, I think you can drop that nugget. And here's what the real thing is, all you got to do is say this would make me happen. And I swear to the legal to do that. It ain't hard. You know what? If you say you know what would make me happy. You know, if you take five minutes and just read this right here. I promise you, I promise you, I think she is just going to be like, okay, all right, because really that's what we want. That's all. Wow. That's all. Yeah, it sounds like that's like confirmation. And one thing I know I can do

for sure that I won't miss up. That sounds like clear instructions. So thank you for this, brother. Thank you for spending the time with us today. It was a blast. I hope I was helpful to somebody and add us back out. You could work one as well, a platform. And thank you so much for having me on.

My love was left to the whole past, get my love to a real everybody. Oh, thank you. I will. You take care. Good luck out there on the road. You got it. All right thank you. Thank you very much. Bye. Bye bye. Michael thanks for hanging with me in the squad today. You are such a gift and this book is going to help so many people. All right so because I know we got fellows listening to, I want you to know that you can go get your copy of his book, Wrong Lane's Have Write Turns Y'all. I think I like having this sprinkle of male perspective

on the podcast. What about you? Shoot me a DM or email us at podcast.womenevolved.com with your feedback. And while you're in our inbox, go ahead and shoot your shot to be my next co-host or drop me an advice question that's been lingering in your spirit. Our mailbox for advice questions or to be my next co-host is always

open. So drop us in line to let us know what you enjoyed about this episode, previous episodes, what you want to hear next. How can we spice this thing up for you? We love hearing from you. Hala at your girl. I see you next week. you