Don't Blame Me! - Boyfriend Lied About His Age

Episode Date: July 24, 2023

After catching up about driving experiences, the weekend, playgrounds, and fantasy house hunting, and the SAG-AFTRA Strike Meghan and Melisa give advice on: fitting into workplace culture trying to make it work with your boyfriend And then run down the state of Don't Blame Me Buy our merch: https://store.dftba.com/collections/don-t-blame-me Follow Us! @meghanrienks instagram.com/meghanrienks https://twitter.com/meghanrienks @sheisnotmelissa instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa https://twitter.com/sheisnotmelissa @by.meghan.and.melisa https://www.instagram.com/meghanandmelisa Affordable Therapy By State (Curated by Crissy Milazzo): tinyurl.com/y64kwdnf Need Advice? dontblameme.show Domestic Listeners Call: [phone] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hi hello gorgeous truck just drove by do you like trucks depends on who's driving it but i'm more of a sport car gal you don't say i like an old truck i do not like and like don't give me a new truck you know you they don't they don't make them with the hemis in them anymore remember that truck got a hemis in it a hemis yeah like it's something to do with the engine i don't know what it is but it would be it was a whole commercial like for a while they'd be like that truck got a hemis in it and these big trucks that were loud oh i don't like noise then what kind of truck do you like um even old ones are gonna make noises yeah but i i like looking at them from afar and then in my hypothetical world the old truck i would have similar to like the old bronco i would

have is not a gas guzzler is not bad for the environment has seat belts is totally safe and isn't too loud so you want an old one the old body type but then put a new engine in it an electric engine. Give her a young energy and a hardened old body. I have seen those people that redo the Broncos and I've seen the pink ones. Oh, bitch. Oh, bitch. When I tell you literally all I do

is send months those pictures and it's like $175,000. But it's so cute. And he keeps reminding me that these cars are not up to like the safety things that you would want. If they've gutted it completely and put in completely

new, brand new stuff then yeah it is but you know if it's just somebody working on a car then no but the gutter like they've got it they've started gutting um old mustangs too oh yeah and just putting in where they're plugins but they have the old body type usb yep fuck yeah yeah could pimp my ride i actually like my ride my car's pretty cute it is it's so fucking dirty i am gonna make mine is mine is caked on mine's well mine has been to the golf course multiple times a week for months oh by the way i moved one of your trash cans so i could get my car parked in but then i was like looking around and i was like where the fuck do i put the trash can so

then i just put it back so i re-blocked myself in okay because i just wasn't sure where it went i have to still use directions to get here as well as to get to my own home that's understandable because there sometimes there's like you know different ways to go depending on traffic i don't know how to go to most places when i i don't want to go anywhere when i was like trying to go where was i trying to go i was trying to go somewhere oh i was trying to go to a meeting and then i accidentally started driving like my memory and i was so you know how to get here but like if you think about it my body knows my brain does not know that's why i'm with everywhere though yeah when i'm going somewhere i always use my gps highway whatever's fastest but when i'm

leaving i love to take a scenic route if i'm not in a rush and my and so i turn it on so that i avoid highways and yesterday i was leaving little poppy's birthday party and i did the scenic route i was in some canyon i don't know what fucking canyon i was in it was scary as fuck and i had my top down too so i'm just cruising looking over the whatever like mountain cliffs i'm coming through i and i eventually ended up in cheviot hills i don't know where the fuck you were yeah but it was it was an adventure i had fun it was like fun where it was like a little bit of fear in there kind of fun yeah a little bit of fear fun with high stakes uh-huh but i eventually got here well the scenic route that mots and i took on the way back from we went to target because

we needed to get uh cool weather sheets because i can't find where i put my other ones and so we bought some new sheets before laundry um and he was like let's take the scenic way home and it's evening i'm totally fine with that i'm like okay sure we have our our marinated pasta that is ready to be ready to be boiled and then we'll eat that so like there's not much of a worry about making dinner and he takes the gets on the wrong we're driving finally get onto the freeway after we've taken our sweet time gets onto the wrong freeway but i don't totally notice except i go doesn't feel right and he goes i definitely got the wrong one we go another loop we have another like okay well you know it's just a scenic route gets on the freeway a different freeway to get to where

we're going get takes the wrong freeway again like veers off into the other thing but thank god he did that because Melissa I found where we have to move I found the most beautiful we as we were driving it was like it looked like Marin it did not even look like LA and I was like it's just a gated community are we allowed to be here and he's like no there's like no no gates when I tell you these homes it's this little road it's windy there's all it's like blanketed with trees on either side full-on arch the homes grab some binoculars to see past the giant fucking driveways nice silence you right down the street gorgeous well as soon as we were there was no cell service there too which i was like rich people they're like don't fucking steal my wi-fi as soon as we

got out of that little that we cleared the brush I immediately went drop a pin and then I went on Redfin and Zillow and Mons goes we have to live here how much do you think these houses are and I go a casual seven milli why did you not send this to me immediately because I needed to be next to you when we eat our lunch and then I'm going to show you the pictures of these homes it's going to be a little bit harder for me to find one that I want because granted hardly any are going on sale because yeah it's a coveted a coveted area you probably got to get home on the secret list with the real estate agent yeah i'll have to just like reach out to like the pizza gate foundation one of those things okay crazy and just the area was like so fucking cute and

then the other side of the street is like we have to go back when it's light out because i was like what was there it wasn't other homes it was it was like the end of it was the end of the earth Like, it wasn't, like, a drop, but it was just, like, what I assume were, like, more trees and grass and greenery. And the whole thing, there's a whole, like, hidden park and shit. Like, it was just beautiful, and it was not a gated community. Interesting. And, like, I love driving through expensive areas of L.A., and I think a lot of people are like, oh, Bel Air, Beverly Hills, Brentwood. No, no, no.

you have to go to the palisades and pasadena yeah to see these gorgeous homes well all that to say we say these are all fantasy worlds we're living in because we are not the hollywood elite we're not in the one percent and also like if we afford these seven million dollar homes we will also be building uh either a tunnel or some like a zipline system from your house to my house so we don't have to i think i love a zip line do you yeah like what kind what kind of time you're holding on to or like a ski lift i fucking hate a ski lift you're fine holding on well you're harnessed we're not going purely monkey bar strength okay i don't like the monkey bar so it's the first time i ever got the wind knocked out of me and i fell into those wood chips which i don't know why we

had those and i was like i'm so sorry rebecca my teacher i'm gonna die time in the 90s early 2000s the wit because they thought that it was absorbing heat but it was just giving everybody splinters they're like it's cleaner than sand and more painful and more painful they hurt so bad and i have so many questions because california my whole life we've been raised fires fires always having fires why would you surround that i didn't even think about that for you school with kindling to set it aflame yeah that's true can i tell you about the greatest swings that ever existed okay so when i lived in texas at our school i feel like texas would have good fucking parks we had swings and i've never seen them anywhere else i don't even know what to look up to find

them but they were they were orange and they were made out of metal and they kind of like you remember those like bouncy horses that people had but imagine that but just like metal was no like horse thing in it and then they had handles on them where you could instead of moving your legs you would move the handles with your arms and you would go like so hot like it was like a machine that you were using and they would swing so high and they were so much fun i've never seen them anywhere else so if anybody that's listening knows what i'm talking about i haven't seen them since i was nine years old but like do they continue to exist and if so where we need adult playgrounds a hundred percent agree we used to have a swing that was something like it kind of

looked like a pendulum sort of thing so instead of like a seesaw where there are two people on either side it would be like the swings were coupled together so you would go one direction the other person would go the other direction but it would be like in groups of two and so you'd be like swinging like this and so like it became like a an activity to do with a friend it was so oh yeah i love that the the orangey things too they also had like somebody could get in the back of it as well so it was there would be like single ones and then double ones wow god i could go for a swing i could go for a swing too i had a i had like a really janky old like swing set in my yard that was like other i wanted a trampoline so goddamn fucking bad first of all if i jumped on

a trampoline the entire house like my entire yard was surrounded by blackberry bushes i would have gotten real cut up worse than wood chips and that just would have never been allowed also because it's on a hill so like yeah if you went you you had a far to fall but i had this like old rickety little swing set if you are someone who's like listening to this around young children this is your opportunity to pause i remember finding out that like santa wasn't real and also naturally it's me so who is listening i guess we do have people that are parents yeah so but why would you let your kids listen to this no i know so i said i gave an opportunity if it was like you're like i'm just gonna pause okay especially in the background if you heard the words like santa kids

ears might perk up and actually i think i figured out that the easter bunny wasn't real and then i immediately did some deductive reasoning and i said so then therefore the tooth fairy is not real and santa is not real and i took this memory of me on my swing set like it's as if i have like a bird's eye view of like me like my little knees together on the swing set like sad swinging but now i need to get a swing set yeah you can't get an adult swing see but that's not what i want and if like moth's ever suggested i'd be get your head out of the gutter this is for my i'm healing my inner child you perv oh um i do guess we should probably introduce us and the show oh yeah ever did. Now that you know so much more about us. My name is Megan. My name is Melissa. And

together we are a candy coated chocolate treat. And we are also a rapper who must give me like a life story of Eminem last night because I was like asking some random questions. Have you ever seen 8 Mile? No. Well, this is Don't Blame Me where we give you wonderful, amazing, life changing advice. And we answer your voicemails and we listen to your voice memos. But we only have two calls and we want to shoot the shit so we're gonna do that we're gonna shoot the shit and then we'll get into like how you call and all of that stuff before that but i do want to say acknowledge that you know wga has been the writer's strike has been going on i forget this comes out first yeah now we're on you're specifically on together we're together we're

yeah so sag um after is also on strike um there's also a lot of rules as a producer that i have to follow too so i'm basically like double strike dude yeah i'm so glad that you're organized and put together mentally because i'm struggling i had to like i had i literally spent all saturday reading all the rules and regulations because there's things that i have going on both pot like under podcast there's a lot of rules for podcasting and then there's a lot of rules for other forms of media as well that i had been working on and now some stuff with the podcast have gotten canceled we can't talk you know we usually talk a lot about like pop culture and things we can't talk about anything under a strike company yeah so any you know we usually

talk about what we're watching we can't talk about what we're watching unless it's reality tv or soap yeah so melissa was like perfect opportunity for you getting to soak so i'm like okay um but you know like we could talk about housewives if we wanted to to talk about love island if we wanted to but i just yeah but just out of solidarity for everything yeah it's hard but it's even harder if we like oh you know i mean like certain things so maybe we will talk about that kind of stuff if we are if if i suddenly start watching a soap opera maybe that'll be what we do talk about but it's brutal yeah but i also think like because wga is also striking and that is under the soap opera stuff that it might also be frowned upon too but i've seen other like soap

writers talking about soaps but they're they are striking for the most part um except for the ones went five core uh but the actors for soap operas are under a different yeah they're in sag but it's under a difference not under the t they're under uh daytime tv as opposed to tv theatrical so it's different and they renegotiated their contracts last year so you know we do talk a lot about that stuff we've we've done full episodes of our other podcasts about some things and we will not be doing that as long as the strike is going on and demands are not met. Which I will be talking

about it in this week's episode of But Am I Wrong? When you hear our demands, they are It's the minimal. They're literally the minimal. There are things that people are like, wait, that's not a thing already? And I go, no, and they're willing to just not in order to

whatever they think their long game plan is. Yeah. Literally asking for minimals in both of them. Not even like not big things like nothing that's going to make anybody a millionaire no actors are not asking for a livable wage no that's never been the thing it's most most most sag actors actors 95 of sag actors uh do not make a living acting but it's a matter of not spending money and not even breaking even or recouping it yeah so um there's that so yeah it's gonna the show's gonna be a

little different for for a while and if you hear any weird cuts it's because we accidentally slipped up and but we're we stand in solidarity and uh we won't be doing it no because no one is fucking coming for my health insurance yeah i'm so fucking afraid i'm accidentally gonna help you anyways so what did you get up to this weekend i explored our beautiful city on scenic routes i i my cousin gave me these sunglasses that they're really cute they're pink sunglasses but the lenses have a slight pink twinge to them and some streets for some reason are pink when i'm in them so it's a delight i've noticed that like it's some newer paved things but it also depends on how the sun hits it and buildings too and so it's like a little treat while i'm driving is that there's

a little pink twinge to some things like a non-threatening visual shrooms effect yes that's so i was driving through the hills on saturday uh-huh and once i got around the curve by like where afi is you know the whole street was like pink and then it switched again but like as i'm driving they things turn pink and it's cute wow so that brings you know it's a small thing to bring you a little joy yeah that's like adorable i want to do that i was obsessed with um i don't know if you remember like so 3d movies uh-huh were is it a specific thing no okay okay so you know how they're used to be the only 3d glasses i ever remember are the plastic ones but i know the paper ones were a thing by the way i recently discovered that 3d movies have existed for a very

long time yeah like before we were born melissa when i tell you that blew my fucking mind so when it was kind of like when you would go to a concert and you would keep like the wristband on or something like that kids at my school if you went to like a 3d movie you would punch out the lenses and like wear them to school like the plastic ones yeah interesting a lot of the things we did were interesting to say the least oh i told you this before i was hanging out with my nephew yesterday and i was showing him songs and we you know go back and forth he's very into 20 trucks right now first of all there's one 20 trucks song there's 20 trucks it's like a blippy kind of style like children's music and they have like a video thing that accompanies it

and if you're a parent or you're someone who hangs out with like a young child family member you're a daycare worker or something you if you know there's one fucking 20 trucks truck song when i tell you it is so spooky it's the spookiest song i've ever heard i go this song has bad vibes apparently the video he can't watch because it's also spooky and his mom was talking about i go i know exactly what's your song you're talking about because he showed me it but anyways when it was my turn to play a song i picked party rock anthem by lmfao and we're dancing and he just looks at me and he goes a party for rocks and i was like exactly so i also played him telephone by lady gaga and beyonce he loved it doing a little telephone finger but if anyone has any suggestions

of other songs that conceptually have like an object or something in it that a three almost four-year-old would know so fast car has been one that i've gotten him into we've done getaway car he loves a car but i'm trying to find ones like that so i can get him into it he also loves watermelon sugar but he pretended he didn't know it and i was like you've been my god you've been playing this fucking song because you were a baby and you love this song and he was like i don't know if i know this song and i was like you do know this song they play so you go no i know this song and i go i know you were lying oh and then i taught him and i was like do you know what we say when our favorite song comes on and he was like no what do we say and we go this is my jam and so

then he goes this is my jam and then i made his dad go in the room and he did it he was dying and then i go and when it's one of our a song we really like but it's not our favorite song we go that's a bop so then he would go that's a bop my favorite thing ever is just like getting him to say things like what one of my ultimate ones was i would just talk in a british accent like and saying like oh london baby and then he goes london baby and it's just fucking adorable i love it i'm obsessed but yeah me and my niece who's weeks younger than him like two weeks i think she's not into anything that you just said but she loves like comics and things like that but she's also into this thing of like she hated talking to me on facetime oh like she just doesn't like facetime

but then when i started doing yeah when i started doing weird voices she's drawn to it now and so now i have to talk to like she runs over so i can do my weird voices and also we pretend like we're like biting each other and she loves it and go that's so fucking yeah cute oh my god i love when they get into just like random things he's also has never ever like read any of the comics or anything he had one shirt on and his parents also don't know any of this and so a lot of it's like hand-me-downs so he's never read any of the comics his parents are not into comics and he has a shirt with like all of the characters from the avengers in the comics and they were like could not even name who they were and they were like oh well maybe when uncle monson and i can come over like

they might know and naturally i was like step aside i got this and i like pointed them all out and then he got uh he's now in his comic book era which again he's in his comic book outfit era not the entity of the comic books um and then he got a batman one and it had all of the villains on it and was asking his mom like who what are their names and she was like oh i don't know and he goes that's okay aunt megan will know i think i might write a graphic novel have i i had a graphic novel era of like that's what i love to read it it'd be so fun yeah i know well depending on like what kind of style you're going for if it's like matches like my i need to be like my artistic integrity anyway you know post-modern renaissance cubism um impressionism

is kind of like my impressionism i'm sorry cubism didn't get the last no i could see cubism I'm obsessed. It's so fucking weird. Yeah, I could see that beat, but Impressualism, no. It's a mix of them all, you know? Alright, let's take a break. Okay. help them build a life? How did they adapt as the world around them changed? With Ancestry,

you can search select historical occupational records for free for a limited time and discover the stories behind the jobs in your family tree. You've got questions. We've got ancestors. Search free until August 31st. Visit ancestry.ca for details. Terms apply. I should take this moment to promote our Patreon because we're looking stunning. Specifically, this blue on you. Thank you. I'm obsessed. Thank you.

With your storm hair. Look at you. You would be a rainbow. Storm, sunshine, and flowers. Anyways, should we? Oh, I should tell people how the calls work. So we're going to listen to some of your voicemails and voice memos. I'm so sorry I've been ignoring you, video.

I've been looking at you. So if you want to call in for an upcoming episode, you can leave us a voicemail at 310-694-0976 or international listeners you can send us an audio message at meganpodcasts at gmail.com so same requirements for both voicemails and voice memos you have to be ancient or over have your parents permission we do ask that you let us know your ages if it's someone else is involved in what you're telling us include their ages it's all anonymous so use fake names or just yeah just use fake names and you only have three minutes from the time that you hear the beep and that might sound stressful but it doesn't have to

be stressful you just write everything down before you call write everything down you want to say pull out the timer on your phone or an hourglass and time it out practice a few times make sure you're under that you include all the relevant information because we can only give you advice based on the information that you give us so having the stuff that's like the most crucial and important that drives the plot forward that's how we can give you the best advice and then finally just read it on the voicemail or in the voice memo then bob's your uncle which what the fuck does that where did that come from i don't know would you like me to look it up i'll look it up later okay so um we're gonna have a little chat after you know this we're sandwiching you

with social time yeah but the next one will be kind of like a look to the future what so you meant it was something we already recorded in the future no okay okay we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna talk about our relationship and where we see this going yeah that's it yeah we need to talk shall we get into call number one yes give some advice hi megan hi melissa i'm calling to ask for help on how to manage fitting into workplace culture so for a little bit of background. I, right now, am a healthcare student on my third rotation of fieldwork slash clinicals, and right now, I am out of sight for eight weeks, and, you know, I'm working here full-time, and we were having lunch today, and we were just having regular lunchroom conversations with co-workers,

and we started talking about Taylor Swift, because one of the other people that worked at the site went to the Taylor Swift concert and someone asked what's the big deal about her what songs does she sing um why is she known for being famous all of these things and I was explaining things and I asked what their favorite or who their favorite artist was to try and like make common ground about oh I listen to this person you know to relate to music because music is very relatable and they answered that their favorite artist is Kanye and I instinctually didn't even think about I didn't have time to filter myself, say the person who said slavery was a choice. And they say that Kanye's wording was wrong, but they agree that slavery was a choice,

that people could either go into slavery or they could die. And I was appalled by that statement. And after that, he tried to justify it by saying people who were celebrities who were really great at their field, but they did terrible things off or out of their line of work like get a path for their actions because they're great and so i want to know as a student who's only there for eight weeks how do i navigate this environment after an immigrant interest action like this thank you so much love the podcast as always and you guys are the best bye well you report him i think you report him because he's working like this person's going to be

working in health care and i don't think that that is bigotry is not like a difference in opinion when you were taking care of people. But I don't think they were saying it as bigotry, though. This is what I think that this is what they meant, is that Kanye was saying that they either had to go into slavery or they would die. And that was their choice, is that they chose the lesser

of the two. Because that's why they said that. And then if that is the case, then it's not bigotry. It's like a loophole. Yeah, it's a loophole because they said Kanye's words were taken out of context. And that's how they... And I agree with what he said, but

this is the context that this is how i interpreted it it's like they're evolving and getting smarter yeah because like no you're right that that like yeah because that like my instinct is to say like report this person because yeah this doesn't that that's like a not okay thing to say but i have it used to be complicated but not anymore a complicated thoughts about like kanye west yeah a lot of people did i love like his high school dropout album is one of my favorites it's great and there were things that i would excuse excuse until the point where i could not excuse anymore and it started with the slavery as a choice thing and it's hard when you start looking at a lot of musicians who they are behind closed doors most of them suck yep and it is hard where it's like

Like, if you look at most people and I used to be like a firm line of like, I cannot separate art from the artists. And now the more that I learn about most people, I'm like, most of these people suck. And if I continue to do that, there's not there's no art left. Yeah. And it's a catch 22. And I think you just kind of have to figure out where your lines for this are. i am like a heart like i do not listen to kanye anymore there are some other people that i know that they've done terrible things and i still listen to their music and enjoy their music but like if you look for example you look at most rock stars from 70s 80s 90s that people exalt

as like the greats most of them had relationships with underage girls and you take you take away most music when you look at that and it's just hard and so i think like navigating this is going to be you just have to like separate people like you've got to do it the same way that like you've got to sit i mean like you were talking about taylor so she's done some things that are not great yeah and you there's a line that you probably have for her that you're like if she wherever to cross this line then I'm out but like she's kind of towed some of them and so like where's your line and I think if you're like working with people going to school with people you just have to separate them not get to know people yeah and just take them for who they are

in a professional sense and that's it yeah I agree I was gonna say I think you need to categorize people so like I have hard lines with so I'm not going to watch something that is currently making money if you have been abusive I'm not going to do that yeah if it's something that a someone who worked in behind the scenes later on years years later a piece of work that is very old i don't know like 30 years old or something that i've watched prior i've already seen something comes out finding out that someone who was a behind the scenes person of that was awful if i like the thing i might watch it again i'm not paying money to go see that thing ever again and i'm not going to actively seek it out if i didn't love it that much that first time the thing

that i will never do i will never defend or justify something that i am like listening if it's specific like music that i'm listening to of being like oh well this is why i i could still listen to it other than like yeah i i don't want to know about their personal shit because like i don't fucking like it and like i might disagree with like some people's uh takes on certain things i mean i've i can talk i've talked about it on here i know i think i talked about it but am i wrong. I've talked about my Instagram. Like, I don't agree with Matty Healy and the shit that he's done. I do believe that what he thinks he's trying to do is a good and progressive and political thing. And I truly believe even if you don't intend to be a bigot, you can still be a

bigot. I don't think he's seeking out doing that behavior. I think he is a white man who is accidentally being a bigot, thinking that he's not. But I'm never going to defend it in the sense that I'm like no no no you misunderstood what he said because I'm like whatever his intentions were behind it like the result and the outcome is the same and how people feel about it is what matters and like it's not okay I know nothing about this man other than when this stuff came out and so to me he's just a bigot exactly and so like that's one of those things that I'm like this is someone who like the music am I following someone as a person no zero desire to know anything about this person at all. Old music that I grew up listening to that I've

totally loved, still really love that music. That doesn't change. Am I going to be actively paying money? No. Do I hope that this person changes their ways? Without a doubt. But if I then defend behavior that I also do not agree with, but I can... Whatever you're looking past or ignoring i'm never going to defend it because my hope is that they'll everyone will just do better but if i defend it then i am i've justified it i'm not separating the art from the artist if i'm defending it right and that's how i feel about your classmate is you cannot use the argument defending the art from the artist when then you justify right what they said and what they did so that to me is not separating the art from the artist so i would put him in a category

of like this is someone who like i don't fuck with unless we are assigned on a project together and this is someone who like i do not engage in conversation with i we're in a group of people i'm gonna be talking to the other people if he's around and he's there i don't feel an obligation to be cord i don't have an obligation to like ask how their weekend was or maybe you do feel like that's what you would make you feel more comfortable in like having those social interactions so to me some people just like show show their hand and I go cool know which box to put you in but the question I would follow up with for you caller is who are you close with in this class and what is their response to that what was their reaction to that because this doesn't seem like

this is a person who you're really close to but like people you're close to in your class that those to me those are more important boxes and more important people to put in different boxes so you know i would hope that you have someone who can be like afterwards they can turn to you when like he walks away being like oh my god i fucking hate that guy like that was like literally you know i mean so like knowing where you stand uh in your relationships with other people because he's not important at all but not letting that interaction be like oh i can't be friendly with anyone but outside of class too there's going to be people that you work with and also people that you care for that you're not going to agree with and so this right now is the

perfect time for you to just like learn that like you have to separate your professional life from like your personal feelings too yeah especially and i'm knowing where you live especially where you live you're gonna have to do this a lot yeah and like it's a great exercise in redirection And I say this is somebody whose grandmother got Lou Gehrig's disease and she turned into a person who said horrifically horrible things. And I was a kid and I just remember like, oh, the goal, it was always we're redirecting, we're redirecting this. And so it's like there are there are things that people can say or do, and especially in a line of work that involves a health care line of work. people go through different things and it's redirection for you know the well-being and like the the best outcome for the people you're caring for but also for your own sanity right so that

just is uh you would think like that and i could understand the disappointment i'm like thinking like music to me would be like a oh this is not a hot topic that is going to be like wildly controversial necessarily so it can be a little jarring that you didn't it's not like you like presented a controversial question you know yeah he also needs to learn how to shut up read a room yeah like people should get embarrassed more do you know i mean like we we should all have a little more shame like well we hope that was helpful on to the next hi megan and melissa i'm 24 she her and my boyfriend is 30 he him first here's some background about our relationship we met in august 2020 almost three years ago in college both as undergrads. He went back to his bachelors after

a lot of anxiety and trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He was super anxious about being older in college so he lied about his age to everyone at college including me until about four months into dating. We had a rocky relationship over the past two and a half years. He wasn't sure what he wanted, wasn't sure if he loved me and would distance himself emotionally from me. We broke up I think three times in the first year. Each breakup would last about a week and then he would come back saying he's made a mistake. In January 2022 we finally broke up again or we broke up again and I said that it was final. He ended up begging and a month later we got back together. I fell back in love with him in April 2022. Now we've been long distance since last summer because

I moved to Boston for grad school and I like the area for my field. I've been working full-time while going to grad school and he moved back home with his parents because he still had one online class to finish and take his licensing exam. His initial plan was to get an assistant job for about six months until he got his license and then look for a full-time job, most likely near me. When he went in for the interview, they ended up offering him a full-time position in his field. He took the full-time position to get experience while finishing his degree and signed a lease to get out of his parents' house. We live over four hours away and it's usually more with trust. Last month, I went to Europe with my family for two weeks,

that we didn't end up getting to talk on the phone every day like we usually do because of international phone plans and time zones. He hasn't been doing super well mentally, so I made the drive the weekend after I came back. He ended up casually mentioning that a girl at the bar kissed him when he was talking about how it's super hard to make friends and people at bars just want to hook up. He instantly saw that it hurt me and explained how he instantly pushed her away

and how she was super blocked out and came out of nowhere. I know he goes to bars sometimes, because there's not much else for him to do in his area and I don't want to be controlling or tell him how to live his life. I also asked why he didn't tell me right away because he wasn't sure why. He said he never should have said anything and I reminded him again that I'd much rather he be open and honest with me about everything right when things happen rather than lying or not telling me the full story. It's been about a week now since he mentioned this and I'm not really sure what to do moving forward. I love him a lot but it hurts so bad to think

about him getting kissed by someone else and then thinking it would be better not to say anything to me at all and we've talked about it in the past how I really think that not saying the full story is similar to lying which I hate so much love you both so much I'm not sure what to do and I've been listening since before season one before Melissa thank you bye I got caught up on the fact that he lied about his age when you were 21 years old to start when you started dating him I got caught up as soon as you said i'm 24 he's 30 we met three we started dating three years ago in college and i went no but he was and he was lying about his age that and we got to that and i was like already out i'm farther out like i am miles miles away from this camp me too i am in a different i'm

i've taken an international flight i am on an iceberg with penguins and they are saying i'm taking you to the farthest place on earth i'm so i'm not even in the dugout in this camp of yours he has he lied to everybody at the school because he was embarrassed for his age i don't know there's i feel like it's like there's no set age for college that tells me that he was doing things that he shouldn't have been doing yep yep he didn't want 18 year olds to know how old he was if this man had shame about his age in the sense of like i should be more accomplished where i am he moved back in with his parents afterwards so he's not he's not so shameful or so feeling so bad about like where he is in life that he's not going to not that i think he should think that's

the right move but i'm just saying like if if the the the character assessment is the reason why he did that was because he did not feel like he was supposed to be where he was supposed to be at at that age there's no living up to that but that also tells me that he was doing like typical college age things and not just going to class and going home he was going out to like events and parties and things with people that he should not have been partying with yeah like if you're going to lie about your age be like oh i really like i i should be like farther all of that kind of stuff if it's i should be farther along in my life then he should have been an apartment that he's racking up debt for because he's like i have to i have to i have to fit in with my peers but

instead of that it's i can't fit in with my peers so that i'm going to lie about my age that doesn't make sense i'm disgusted that doesn't make any sense so disgusted that's not what you do you do not if you do not fit in with your if you're not where your peers are in life you pretend to be where your peers are you don't lie and say you're younger like that's not and i'm friends with a lot of straight men and this is an issue with i mean it's an issue with women as well but like it's specifically an issue with this like macho manly culture of like oh well like you know getting the promotion getting like the getting the girl like getting the having the faint whatever it is like there is this set idea of being a man and a provider and all of that stuff and the amount

of people who will just go through the motions even if i know people on fucking especially in la on like minimal assistant salaries who like we're just racking up to keep up with that that's what you do you don't go down because to me where is his friends right because people you can't do like people would call him out and would be like what the fuck are you doing like that would be embarrassing to his peers but it's because he does not align with his peers and he's specifically trying to be younger because he wants to assimilate with younger people which is hooking up with younger people and i cannot imagine myself 27 years old just hanging out with college kids like even with like our age gap when i was i was not i would not have been hanging out

with you at that age like that doesn't make sense we did not become friends until like in life experience that's the difference because i'm like i left college early and so like i've friends i'm friends with a lot of people who are older than me and like we met because we were in the same life stage and we're we met through work and those things and it's also because my social life matched up with my professional life like i was at the same place socially as a lot of other people who are older like me that like and also i'm not saying that as as a good thing like growing up too fast is not a good thing but i can acknowledge that like that's why i i i did that but i did not make myself hanging out some younger and four months into a relationship

to admit that that is so icky i'm assuming you've already slept together or at least like had some sort of physical intimacy at that point and like i do not think specifically physical intimacy is okay if you are withholding information from me that you think might change my mind that i'm going to participate not just physical any type of intimacy totally but like there's just something about that that feels like well i already got it yeah and it's like ew like if you thought there was going something that was going to make me not want to be with you and you're withholding that information from me you're removing my agency and i just i i can't stand that because he also does not know that if he met you and introduced himself as like hi i'm 27 that you

would have been like oh no i'm not interested right he waited until you were already emotionally invested in this to tell you and that is messed up especially because men already know at 27 that they can make themselves enticing to people in their late teens early 20s without having to they don't have to lie about their age like they can do that like to me that makes it like now you're going after 18 year olds right because it's even younger so i'm just going to say right now like there are this is there's not a green flag in sight this entire thing is riddled with red flags and the reason why you're at this crossroads that you're at now is not like a miscommunication it's like this is the wrong dude like this is him this is the wrong dude and like there's no shame

in we've all dated the wrong dude we've all been with the wrong dude we've all dated and gotten back together with like we've all been there it's at this point maybe even considered a rite of passage but you can't make the wrong dude the right dude right so there's no amount of communication there's no amount of effort put in on your end that makes up for the difference and there is no if you saw the potential in him or and the other thing that i think in this it's like you're you've seen the improvement but when you start as a gutter rat a small up into a a a musty opossum is is an improvement like when you're starting from like this man lied about him like you can only go up from there but you're never going to like reach a level of relationship like respect

and honesty and be in a place where it's just good good like you've had to work for so for so long at this and i also would not call these like wasted years or anything but like even the fact that you said you had your final breakup in january 2022 and you got back together a month later all the previous breakups have been a week and you said in april by april you were fully in love with him so you're back together in february and you agreed to get back together and you weren't even in love with him until two months after that wrong person wrong person wrong person and like you are in the best situation he's got a new job he signed a lease in the city you don't live in and you are loving the city you're in that's where you're going to grad school and

that's where you like want to start your professional life this is a the cleanest break you could have so like just break up end it i promise you your experience in grad school and your experience just starting your professional life is going to be so much better because this is also the kind of guy if this happened to if you did this to him it would not be a oh well i just i shouldn't have told no no this is an emotionally immature man who will continue to do this and also just casually bringing up in conversation like it's really hard to meet people i will also say i as someone who has does not drink alcohol who has quit drinking alcohol i do not like the vibes of someone going to a bar by themselves to meet

people that to me is just not a not a energy i am cool with when this person has lied about their age to meet younger people thing it's so like age thing that just if you told me someone else who does that and then they made friend and it was like oh i went i went to go they were like playing a sports game or they had a trivia night or something and i went to the bar and i made some friends but someone who is not making friends but just keeps going to a bar by themselves as their social activity by themselves but is not making friends there i don't want to like say something that will upset you but like so turn this off if you're not ready to hear it but like yes making friends is hard making drinking buddies is not that hard if he is going

to a bar at least once a week and he is not making any friends it's because he is hitting on women that's true he's not there to actually try and make friends like mox goes and golfs he like like he meets new people literally he literally golfs with people he like meets them golfing they get randomly paired up and he like texts them and they like go golfing all the time like it's and that's not a drinking activity so like there's a lot of activities you can do that aren't bars if you're going back to the same bars and you're not making any friends there why do you keep going yeah that's true it's like i just don't none of this adds up to me and again if this is something he did not want to tell you casually being like yeah it was really hard to make

friends like some girl just kissed me he wanted to tell you and not because he felt guilty and why is he like talking to a girl about hooking up at a bar that's drunk and she and he's saying oh she was blackout drunk then why were you talking to her and he's telling you this because he's not guilty he's he's telling you this to gauge your response for how much he has to hide and how comfortable he can get and seeing how riled up you get too and if you'll stay and how far he can push it because people who do bad things some people do them because there's a lot self-loathing and they don't want to get caught some people do them because they like to piss other people off or they some people like to feel desirable or they like to piss you off and then

they like to earn your they like to win you back sorry to me this guy screams someone who wants the ego boost of fucking you over and winning you back because every single time he wins you back he knows that he's got to go bigger after when to break your trust again and he usually doesn't have to work as it just becomes you're gonna stay like you're gonna stick it out through this shit and he's he's waving the red flags himself in front of your face yeah so and i know yeah just get out and like i do not fault you at all for going through all of this and like it doesn't mean that you are like have a destined to have a bad picker but like you picked one guy who's who's not the guy and you can't make him the right guy and i say this is someone who

picked a lot of duds yeah yeah you need a big break from dating well good luck and get out yeah all right we're gonna take another break and we'll be back real canadian superstore has everything you need this back to school season save on lunchbox savers like ziggy's sliced deli meat products for always 375 and get life brand pure vita shampoo or conditioner for eight dollars each at real canadian superstore when you're ready we're ready with a whole world and more all right we're back let's talk about the future of the show let's talk about the state this is state of the union state of the you never read the clickbooks did you no oh god it was at the end like every day like in her diary she would like state of the union like in shrugs

out caprice that's great so we're gonna mix up the show we're gonna figure it out how we want to do it i wrote down some notes this is my first time i'm sharing with melissa and also the first time i'm reading this back so who knows what i even said were you in a dream state when you were doing this maybe okay but just before you start reading those we've been getting less and less calls i think one thing is that like we don't really advertise the show either so no new friends but we are in a moment right now when we are inviting new friends in we'll let you sit with us yeah so um you know maybe we should start picking up promoting tiktoks yeah that's a good call i also think that i do look at the our audience as is i go i'm happy for a lot of you

not having problems happening like stuff happening in your life like i'm seeing the growth and the evolution but i think i will continue to like you know we're not going to start to get back on advertising but i think i mean we talked about this before so these are i was thinking like something to kind of like keep in the same theme is gossip that other people have heard that like you know we like i've heard something something something or whatever leading us to essentially what would you do slash hypotheticals in an advice circumstance but what i thought would be funny is doing it in a sense of like under the guise of like asking for a friend so maybe we're not you're not calling in or right like asking about it for a specific friend but along the lines of

like wow what would I do if I was like in this situation and in like an asking for a friend way because I mean we know that there are people who want to call in to the podcast but sometimes like the details or they feel like it's really revealing about who they are especially if they have friends who've listened which we love when you recommend us to the friends so something along the lines of like changing a bit of the information and saying oh it's not about me what would you do about this because if someone called us in now and was like oh this is what someone else is going through we'd be like no it's your own advice or you know like if you were saying it was something like in the world i have a friend who is uh with someone and they

have a baby together but she went to a concert and he didn't like what she was wearing and I don't know like how to be like exactly that kind of thing yeah so something that it opens up that like bigger conversation it doesn't have to be like would you still love me if I was a worm which is like you know some of my favorite open-ended questions to ask no but like so along the lines of like okay what would I do in this or how would I feel about it and in that sense because I think we you know when we don't have to have someone exactly tied to it it's a good thought starter because also a lot of people will talk about certain things happen in their life that then they go oh that reminds me of this podcast episode and now we can just keep them in

our arsenal and then I was thinking we could start doing we did for a not like a lot but like themed kind of shows like a broader umbrella of something where it's like back to school like something a lot like we've done back to school once when but again our audience isn't as young as it used to be yeah but you know that might bring in you know new listeners we've done when we have mots on every year we do the valentine's day relationship ones we've done just sex only yeah but like if we pick something that was like slightly more niche and if we broadened the so like not about calling it necessarily about like personal things but it's like something about furries or like something like very very niche and it's like does anyone

have any story like any stories of this or any like gossip you've heard whereas like it can be like through the grapevine so it goes game of telephone like i have no idea if this is fucking true but i heard this like i remember i'm in middle school i heard about um this girl who would masturbate with a popsicle and like now that i'm older i'm like no i don't think that happened because like so sticky you could have put it in a uh a condom and did it but it was very cold those kinds of things and like thinking about like i love what like i used to i ask moms all the time like like do you remember like some like the like scandal like high school things that like you talk and like talking about them with like a different lens it's like wow that's like

so it's interesting and it's funny and it's like a low stakes kind of hot gossip sort of a thing yeah i remember there was one at my school where this girl that was on my cheer squad with me people were saying she was having sex on a motorcycle and i was like how whose motorcycle but how yeah like literally a motorcycle in a garage does is it a four-wheeler like a four-wheeler in a garage i could see that yeah but a motorcycle you're gonna you're gonna fall over you're gonna you're gonna break something yeah so like stuff like that i think is especially if we do themed things like if other people like who like anyone have any stories about this isn't this and we can also always lead those into okay so if this was us like what we do in this situation and what would

we say to do i was also thinking for themed episodes we could do a a character in an entity is going through something or a choice or something like a book yeah and then we could use that as a jumping off point for you know things that we would say to that to give them advice or whatever or things that they relate like that would relate to other things that either we have gone through something like it or callers to give kind of a and also even like if it's like and then if it's something that's like kind of old and like like and like not telling us the outcome and us saying and giving the advice that we would tell you to do at that time and then calling back and be like okay this is what i did i was thinking about that one book that we mentioned on same

experience with quadruple penetration yeah um but what was that girl's occupation a mob princess what was she i don't know but i like that wasn't weren't they like protecting her she had like a bodyguard yeah which again i i just i wonder what the salary is like for a full-time bodyguard that's why it's like if you're a mob princess it's a lot but who's paying the mob does the mob have like a they well the mob takes care of their own everybody else in the community and so everybody pays a little fee okay and so that's oh that's how the protection yeah you pray for protection hmm so they make money they also usually are like running guns and drugs and things like that too gotta keep the lights on yeah do what you gotta do mob how you got a mob

um and then the last one is something that we've talked about forever which is asking professionals for advice on things we know absolutely nothing about and i don't think it has to be like therapy no but like certain things and whether that leads into like themed episodes for like what other people are calling in about or writing in about um but i also wonder i was gonna say we used to on when we were doing those bonus episodes for stitcher then we would have some experts on and one time we had a woman on that makes sex toys and it was a great episode but a lot of people we actually need to find that and bring it out facts there's probably like some things in our vault that we should bring out and probably need to listen to them first but yeah but yeah some

people we've have definitely been canceled yeah since but yeah but that was a great episode i really enjoyed that i was gonna ask like about what do you think about opening up to not just being calls yeah i'm fine with that because i think people will be more open to sending dms and things yeah so we've like historically been like emails only emails only and like we've opened it up on dms in like time crunches for but am i wrong and stuff and that's like a very easy medium for that so like i think like obviously still people being able to call being able to you can send us voice memos in yeah your uh messages make but like if you dm does you can send us a voice thing make sure you click the thing where it's like keep in chat so that it

doesn't go away so i'm like we're open to like all of that and kind of expanding it to like make it easier and also those formats of like if people want to be more anonymous about certain things and so people from like their life don't know because like we've said people have done before like a voice changing app but especially writing it down and like i mean sending it in like a dm or an email i think opens up for some of that stuff and i think and this is i like got this idea when we were doing one of our last patreon live streams where it's like if there is like information you need to change for privacy but it is crucial in like that like we know so the advice that we're giving is not going to like an audience wouldn't be like well why would you give

this advice or whatever but like if you're like no no i know it would definitely factor into it being able to like sidebar it to us and like sending a follow-up like just so you know this is this but i'm gonna switch it to this or this or something like that and then you know this i can discover maybe i'm thinking that this is giving me the vibes that this might mean this and it goes oh my god that person didn't say it so clearly they didn't write anyone out but like we just came to this conclusion or this this this hypothesis like this uh concept on our own that does change the advice so those are all of my ideas that i wrote down those are great ideas thank you yeah because i also think like what would you do circumstance and situation if we

had a even other times if we had a and like said what it was going to be for the upcoming episode ahead of time us being able to have our own like what we would be doing in that situation and then other people like submitting it or writing or calling in or saying what they would do and i also think especially if we did people who it was like their own stories or their own lives and it was not like this had happened way prior then either in like the next episode or at the very end of the episode we have them send in like oh no this is what i ended like this is what i did and so it's like oh okay yeah interesting to see like how we all would have gotten there great you know great great great and it can be kind of like the voice isn't sad because it's

reality but and the writing would be song what the voice the tv show the voice oh right yes i thought you meant the voices and you said the voice is inside and i was like you're like girl are you okay let's just cook those pot stickers um no i was gonna say um and then we could have an ongoing feud and we could be like the voice coaches who are like they've got wins yeah they're usually fucking all of them i don't i just feel like blake shelton i know that's what i'm talking about but him and and alan levine give me fucking energy oh you are not alone in that sentiment i promise you there is fanfic yeah there's a lot of sexual tension there those are great ideas good job megan thank you i also think we should open it up to having guests on again oh i'm so down

we're uh very specific about who the guests are so like share people with us that you think match our vibe they may not be on right away we might have to do some digging you know and make sure that we actually like them but send us some ideas too i've got we've have we have a whole list of people that we were always like let's have this person on literally some of the people who we had one the person who was the top of our list after i wrote that list we became mutuals after that you had a meeting with them after that then i became mutuals with them on literally every platform and then we like talk and i'm like oh i guess manifestation's not no i there's been a lot of things that we have manifested that have happened accidental manifestation yeah which

i call a happy surprise some might call an accident happy surprise surprise also we should try to get that person on again because things have slowed down so they're not going to be out doing interviews and stuff you know what this is our time to shine guest wise it is it really is and we can share their misery yes they can go on podcasts but they can't be promoting anything so this is a perfect time everybody's schedule is wide open wow good call but i think that that's a good start like audience if you have ideas or things and we're gonna we should post this on our y'all here if you're just listening to this you'll hear it after the people that are part of our patreon that we've already posed the question to yeah so we obviously want to keep like the same

broad concept of like giving advice we're not trying to like pivot to like an entirely different niche but something that just opens up more opportunity for you know like collaboration expanding growing growing our our brand as like podcasters because the truth is like podcasting isn't the same as it was before yeah and we're just we're just changing up we don't want to go away this is things like we don't want to go away we still we love working together we love having the community that we have we made we've made friends from the community that we've built and you know we did go on lockdown pretty much of like we're not letting anybody else into this friendship because it was special like it i mean and it still is special but

we were protective over the people that we had like formed these relationships with at the end of the day this is a business yeah and i think like we are also i specifically am like much i know a lot more to like what to like look for and how to be like i think we've also fostered like a really great community that like i don't and i don't want to say this in like a patronizing way that like we felt protective over people but like the podcast is very personal like people share like really personal things but i also think that like we've fostered a community who's protective of each other yeah and so i don't think that we need to be so closed off in that sense like i don't think that like we need to like i have faith in like the people that

we let into this space but also the audience as a whole of like caring for their own and knowing that like you know if we if we mess up we fuck up like just tell us and like we'll fix it or fix it do whatever we need to do yeah and like it's been a lot of what this podcast has been and i think there'd be something nice about the world has just changed and since the pandemic has happened and so we've always used like media kind of like as an escape but in the last couple of years like there's a lot of like hard shit that people are going through and I think like bringing back advice and gossip in fun ways that is not so heavy so people who listen to this as a comfort it's it's still it's still that it's still a comfort and also people can not just use it as a escape

but also can be going through tough times in their lives but then I don't want to talk about it so then I'm going to call in or write in about something else and be able to like actively participate in it as is not like oh i'm gonna wait until i'm in a better space and then ask for advice on this like rough thing that i'm going through i'm still like obviously like open up to like talking about like harder topics and things that are happening with people but um yeah being able to have a little more control of making sure that each episode's not like super heavy for people and i think that shit does happen in the pandemic yeah there was a time where the episodes would get really dark and we were like we can't do yeah because it's not good

for our mental health um and i i don't want to as someone who we've we're still in the midst of the pandemic and like still dealing with the effects of that like i would never want people to hey stop calling us in with like hard sad shit you're going through and i think we all wanted the world to kind of like just go back at a certain point and it's not there so i think we need to adapt and change yeah for this to make it so like it's a it's a fun experience for everybody and it'll have bright moments sadder moments but also just like a hopeful and like the least cheesy way possible yeah you know because like advice should be hopeful not like you're doomed you know so yeah we're real and the thing is like we've gotten really comfortable and now we've got to get a

little bit uncomfortable again i love being uncomfortable i don't know physically i physically hate it i will rip my bra off speaking of uncomfortable have a bra on no but i'm sweating so let's wrap up this episode so i can turn your fucking ac on yeah i'm feeling my eyebrow sweat okay um so yeah also we'll pose the question like most said it'll be on our patreon um but also you can head on over to our instagram if you have you can comment on like the last picture but you can also just slide into the dms if you have ideas too so we'd love to hear from you and or if any of these things that we brought up sound like your vibe yeah all right have a good day goodbye Don't Blame Me is a production by me, Megan Rinks.

And me, Melissa D. Montz, plus Diamond Imprint Productions. Post-production sound and editing by Coco Lorenz. Production assistance by Melanie D. Watson. And music by Giacomo Picasso and Ryan Hunter.