Don't Blame Me! - DBM: My Parents Hate That I’m Single

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

This week Meghan and Melisa are giving advice on: Update: Staying in a relationship while going to different colleges (June 10, 2024) Unblocking your family after a fight Getting out of going to college Making a great living but hating your job Finding out your parter swiped right to men on Tinder Follow Us! instagram.com/meghanandmelisa @meghanrienks instagram.com/meghanrienks https://twitter.com/meghanrienks @sheisnotmelissa instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa instagram.com/diamondmprint.productions Need Advice? dontblameme.show Domestic Listeners Call: [phone] Affordable Therapy By State (Curated by Crissy Milazzo): tinyurl.com/y64kwdnf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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think welcome back to another episode of don't blame me yeah i'm so excited megan are you excited i'm so excited i'm mostly so excited because as perfect timing would have it my ac seems to have come back on love it just now so this is a podcast where you can also watch the video version and if you're in the video version going megan why do your lips look a little funny mosquito bit one it's not as bad as it was no but it's so hard to rub like this together this before it was really bad before um and uh unfortunately it's very easy access to itch so if you see me doing that enjoy it yeah that's exactly what i looked like it's true um and yeah so this is a podcast we give you wonderful amazing life-changing advice and if you want to write in you can

send us an email if you want to call in you can send us a voicemail at 310-694-0976 and international listeners you can send us an audio message at meganpodcast.gmail.com but you can also write into that same email for the voice memos we ask that you keep it under three minutes long as well as the voicemails and then for the written version 300 words or less and then for everything you have to be ancient or over have your parents permission and uh please let us know your ages you can let us know your pronouns if you would like the whole thing is anonymous so make sure you use pseudonyms for people and because it is anonymous and because we don't have like follow-up questions make it as coherent and like in line with the story as

possible so we can follow along give examples and you know tell us if you're sensitive we'll keep that in mind we just want to help out yeah first up we've got an update so the original writer there had just graduated from high school they were struggling to come to terms with if they should stay with their girlfriend even though they're going to different colleges if they should stay together during the summer also if they should confess that they love them or should they prioritize their personal exploration here's the update hey guys thanks for responding little update she actually broke up with me on sunday she was really stressed about leaving for school and knew that we loved each other and wanted to end it before we actually said it she didn't think

she could handle a long distance relationship which I completely understand I'm now having a really hard time getting over this because I never actually got the chance to tell her that I love her so now I'm just stuck with that I'm also having a very hard time getting excited about going to school because all I can think about is how school is the reason we had to break up i'm sorry yeah i think it's a very valid response to like feel not excited about school because of that because it feels directly correlated but i promise if you give the effort into trying to have a good time at school it will happen and i say that as someone who like did not want to fucking go to college and like was miserable when i like committed to being like i'm gonna have a

good time I did like you know like I had fun doing that and I I think that like sometimes it just takes like going through the motions of what you're what you do to like have have fun even if that's like not what you want to do in the moment it's not fun in the moment sometimes we just need that distraction and to get out of our element so I don't think that you need to like pretend it never happened or like try and get over it as fast as possible but I think sometimes it's good to give yourself a timeline of morning a breakup and maybe you give yourself until like the day you move in and you're like yeah i'll be sad about this and then i'm gonna that's when i go on to the next step of the grieving process where i'm like focusing on myself and like yeah because

now there's so many possibilities that you're going to be open up to because now you don't have to you know i can go to this party because i don't have to stay in and have a virtual date with my girlfriend i can you know talk there's so many more people like you're gonna meet and enjoy so many people and a lot of times during college people do grow apart and it might have been harder if y'all broke up later rather than now yeah and most people i know who broke up in college with like a long distance high school relationship it got really toxic before they broke up because it's just it's hard yeah the communication's just not there like physically like it's just impossible to do and so things just tend to get like they just end up

getting kind of like petty and shitty you're in a new environment this is the first time you're really away from home you're going to be around new people you like this is like your first real like step into like adulthood for yourself too and so like there's just a lot of changes happening and so having one less variable can make things easier yeah i agree with that so sending you love you will get through this i promise it will get easier it just sucks right now that's that's allowed to suck best of luck in college that's a lot let's get into advice now here's the first write-in hey ladies i'm writing to you fresh from my family's fourth of july shit show i 26 she her have been estranged from my family for various reasons they're controlling overly opinionated

the list goes on and on i usually just show up for family gatherings i'm not close to my parents aunts and uncles but i am with my siblings and cousins so my extended family came to florida where i live for vacation and we had a huge barbecue since they're in town so the liquor is flowing heavy somehow my love life comes up i am single and going through my hope period I was in a super committed relationship for four years. Once I got over the breakup, I decided I wanted to take some time to enjoy my freedom before I got into a serious relationship. My parents hate that I'm single. They act like I'm on the verge of becoming a spinster. So anywho, they all ganged up on me, telling me I need to take life more seriously,

and my parents brought in my aunt and uncle to fuel up the fire. It was a whole mess. I got pissed and blew the fuck up. I told them exactly how I felt about them, and then i stormed out of there since then i have blocked them all now that i've pulled off i'm wondering if i should unblock them blocking them seems so permanent even though it really isn't please let me know your opinions i appreciate your help and love the pods i don't think blocking is permanent at all no i block people all the time and then unblock them yeah and you can unblock someone be like oh my phone wasn't working like it's not like they get a message being like so and so has blocked you like i i think that blocking is like similar to

uh muting or unfollowing or like whatever like you are more muting than anything else where it's like you're doing it for your mental health and no one else has to know and then you can unblock them or unmute them or whatever you do to be like okay cool i'm ready for this now but i for all they know if they're trying to text you or call you you're just ignoring them and you would already be ignoring them anyway wouldn't you yeah and to me i want them to know that that they were blocked because when you text them it doesn't go through it like turns green i believe if you have an iphone i don't know what phone you have but like i block people and i want them to know that they're blocked for the time being it's a physical reminder to them that they did something that

they fucked up and i think it's okay to like for them to know that they've been blocked and then like unblock them because they're i'm sure they've probably been trying to send you messages you don't even have to like formally say i've unblocked you just the next message they send respond to it or if they call answer the phone if you want to but also if you want it to like go through and then let them know that they've now been unblocked and now but you still don't want to talk to them you you also have that option puts the power in your court and i don't think that you'd be like i don't think it's wrong that you're doing this and i you're doing it for your own mental well-being what they did was completely fucked up yeah and weird and you're 26 and you're

in a long-term relationship for four years so from 22 to 26 like no yeah i think you match their energy so like i think like if they want to be pissed about it then they have to grapple with like what led to this behavior which was and what made this behavior okay which was their behavior like their behavior co-signed your behavior so i think like if you think they're trying to apologize or they're trying to like communicate in like a mature way then i would unblock them and then turn notifications off so like if you if they call you you're not see it doesn't you're not being bombarded with it like it kind of just like silently adds to your text or silently adds to like voicemails or whatever. And then, you know, you can decide at any point what you want to do

moving forward with that. But I don't know when you get to a point of like blowing up and like you're just like so enraged. I think it's better for everybody to like remove yourself from the situation, which you did, and then remove the situation is also how they contact you, which is your phone. Like, I think that's totally fine. But it's also, yeah, like we said, not permanent. All right. Next one. Megan and Melissa, I am so excited to finally have a reason to call and be old enough to call i am 18 as of two months ago well welcome fresh fresh to the 18th welcome to adulthood i use she her pronouns so i've told a pretty big lie i promised my parents i was just going to take a leap year and travel this year i'm going on a tour of europe starting in august

and super excited so anyways i have no intention of going to college i made the choice after touring gynecologist and realizing it just wasn't for me. I knew my parents would never go for it. They are wanting me to go where they are legacies and met. I have no clue how to get out of it. I guess I have a year to figure it out. Holding out on them while they're paying for everything makes me feel weird. I am also afraid if I tell them they will cancel the trip. It's a catch-22 situation at best. Incredibly selfish on my part as well. What would you do? I want to make a grown-up choice but I know I'm acting immature I'm looking forward to hearing your advice I say there's no here's the thing you're taping taking the gap here you are going to

explore Europe and a lot can happen in the next year you might decide you could have been gun ho about going to college and taking a year, go on this trip and then be like, I do not want to go to college. You can still be in the situation you're in now where you don't want to go to college. You'd take this year, go travel Europe, and then you come back and you're like, you know what? I actually do want to go to college. A lot can happen in a year. It could be you come back, you don't go to college, you start working or whatever. And then in two years, in five years, in 10 years, you might decide that you want to go to college. Like things change, they evolve, you change, you evolve. I say, go explore, use this year to figure out like who you are as a

quasi adult while mommy and daddy are still paying for everything. And then come back and then share your thoughts. Also, if they want you to go to the same college that they went to, was it just that particular college you don't want to go to or do you just not want to go to college as a whole yeah i mean i agree first of all don't say goddamn fucking word before you land on american soil don't say a goddamn fucking word because you're right they will take it away and like i don't think you feeling guilty is bad like feel guilty but like don't look like i'm the wife i'm like having fun but like don't fucking say a word to them until you get back and i agree with all of that and i will say like i am like if my i didn't i went to college i did not graduate i didn't even

want to go to college I was like so fucking stressed about it I had like one of my first panic attacks like the first night that like that like that I was there and I was like I can't stay in this place so that like now looking on it though I'm like oh there are reasons why I was like so petrified I had like no accommodations I was not being I was just like raw dogging ADHD and like that is like a huge the biggest catalyst for my social anxiety it's like when I'm not medicated and I also was just like I'm so bad at all of this so like I knew now I know all of these things which made it feel like there was such a huge barrier that I was like speaking a different language than everyone else like it felt like I had everyone else had taken all these courses to

like know what to do and I was like I'm missing something like there's something that's different with me and I just don't know what to do about it and so now older and like knowing myself and understand understanding myself more i'm like i have always said like oh college just wasn't for me but i'm like okay there could have been a way that college could have been for me if i had gotten these accommodations if i had known this about myself or even i already knew about myself but like if i knew that this was contributing to that if i did all all these things or whatever that like i think education can be for everybody depend with when you have the right tools and you have the right, you're in the right circumstance and in the right state of mind. So if my kids

came to me and they're like, I don't want to go to college, I'd be like, okay, cool. What do you want to do? And if they don't know, then I'm like, okay, cool. We're going to give ourselves a timeline and we're going to figure that out together of what you want to do. We're going to try different things and do all of those other things. But I think that it's underestimated what it's like to watch your peers collectively go do something and you not have that and like not know where that's going it's very hard to start when you're the only one starting so regardless of what you're going to start like if you decide after Italy you're like I don't I mean not Italy that's sorry I'm just I'm projecting if you decide if you decide after you go to Europe

that you're like, I really don't want to go to college. I think the best way to approach that is to be like, this is what I want to do instead. Or coming up with like, knowing that like, okay, I don't want to do this. So if I can't come up with things I want to do, let me make a list of all the things I don't want to do. And let me try and figure out what it is that I am interested in and what I would enjoy pursuing. Because without that there, the issue or the reason why you don't want to go to school turns out to like not just be the school like if you can't if there's no starting if there's like i don't want to do any of it then it's like okay cool let's figure out what what what the lack of motivation there is from let's figure out what this is and like

sometimes it's like maybe it's not mental health maybe it's not something like that maybe it's just like i just don't want to fucking work and it's like okay so what's the job that you'd be the least miserable at or if you don't want to work maybe you would enjoy not working and going to college for four years like yeah there's just like there's so many options but you just have to pick one. And if you can't pick one immediately, which is fine, then like eliminate things one by one by one. But I think your parents will have a much better reaction response if you let them know what you want to do as well as you let them know what you don't want to do. So if you don't want to go to college, I think you need to say what you do want to do because not everybody needs

college. But if you are not going to college, you are basically trying, you're opting out of like the hand-holding process of adulthood a little bit earlier. So there needs to be some drive there and some decisiveness and decision-making that you have to kind of do independently versus through discovery and classes and school and like school counselors and all of those resources. And it's fine. Some people are more individual, individually motivated versus group motivated. That's how I am. I'm not like a decision maker in a collective. Like I have to sit on things on my own so that's fine but there's a skill set there that even if you don't go to college you have to develop to be a member of this late stage capitalistic society yeah i think you

know like if you don't have a plan college a great way i'm guessing they'd probably pay for college too a great way to figure things out i went into college as a physics major shortly after became biology major i was also pre-dental didn't do took a dental class my senior year and was like nope and now i'm a writer producer podcaster so like you have time to figure stuff out and i'm still figuring stuff out a couple weeks ago i was just like i'm quitting i'm gonna become a baker yeah she's gonna buy a dehydrator but yeah no it's a great place to figure things out and like i always want to make sure when like i've been like i didn't go to college like i did not have a good experience at college for me it was like my circumstance i think i could have liked college

in a different world but also i still went to college because i didn't have anything else like to fucking do and so then my mission became i don't want to go to fucking college i have to figure out how i can find something else to do that i can like make money and like survive off of so i can drop out of college and like if that's what you want to do also fine but like there has to be something there maybe you become a travel blogger while you're on your european excursion and then you start making money and then you come back and you're like,

I'm going to keep going. People love watching expat content. Well, now we're going to take a break. This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most.

Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. Hear that? It's your money calling. it wants a promotion elevate your savings with the scotia high interest savings account always earn high regular interest rates that grow the more you save and invest conditions apply visit scotiabank.com slash hisa to learn more scotia bank you're richer than you think. And we're back from our break and it's time to get into the rest. Hey, Megan and Melissa. Oh, sorry. Hey, Melissa and Megan. This is just, it's almost Leo season. I just automatically put myself at the front. I hope you are well and enjoying life. Thank you. I am hoping to get

your epic advice. So I make a great living, but I absolutely hate my job. The income is legit the only reason I am there. I'm in a nice cushy place, single, and literally have nothing to worry about. I say this not to be a brag, but just to give insight. I have a passion for photography. I like nature as well as family photos, individuals, you name it. On top of that, I'm good. I know I am. I live in a small town and commute 45 minutes to a bigger city for my job. I would love to pursue photography full time, but I'm scared as fuck. It was a huge step to take. Plus, I have grown accustomed to my lifestyle. I didn't have the best upbringing, so I worked really hard to get where I am in life. Is it stupid for me to step out on this and try something new? With living

in a small town, finding a photographer is as easy as breathing. The difference is they take pictures and I treat it like an art. Once again, I'm not bragging, just providing insight. After COVID, I feel like being a photographer was really easy. A lot of people lost jobs and didn't want to go to their other jobs after being in lockdown and it became a popular pastime. Now it's overtaken my community even if I stepped out and did it full-time I'm worried I will get lost in a sea of other photographers I'm 30 and use she her pronouns I'm also a Leo thanks for your help loves I think depending on how cushy your job is can you do on the side because right logically you're right like a dime like photographers are a dime a dozen and if you're in a small town and

like what you would most likely be shooting is probably like family stuff I don't know how much those people are caring about it being art versus it's going to go cheap price yeah so it that's just it's like such a saturated market that i think you you could really enjoy it i think that you would it would have to be you'd have to be okay with taking a downgrade in your lifestyle temporarily but possibly permanently and there's a whole lot of other stuff there that like can be affected by it and i also think that like as somebody who monetizes all of her hobbies it changes how you feel about them like and i promise you that and then you have to find other hobbies like you will have to find something else to decompress you from this hobby because this

will then become a job and so while that's not bad per se i recommend people who like have like a hobby that they love and they want to switch things up or whatever if that's the road do want to take and you want to go into a creative world i personally think having multiple passion projects that some bring in money sometimes others don't if they flip they go back and forth and all of that that's kind of the only sustainable way to make a living and keep your sanity and like still enjoy the thing you're doing like you kind of have to diversify like what you do um and that's why like some photographers do weddings for a couple years and they stop and then they do other kinds of photography and then they work in house and then they do weddings again and then they stop

and then they it's kind of us you kind of have to be on your toes in that sense and that's not necessarily a bad thing at all but it's just i would recommend trying that first as a hobby because it's going to be so different than your current job yeah i just talked about how i was like i a couple weeks ago i was like i'm gonna quit it all i'm gonna become a baker and then after i um calmed down from those thoughts i also was going through other things mentally but um i was like this is my hobby that i enjoy doing do i really want to monetize my hobby when i monetize pretty much every other part of my life and if your job is cushy just show up there for the paycheck like i don't see anything wrong with that most people hate their jobs show up for the

paycheck do your photography as a hobby or like megan said a side hustle like it's okay to not it's okay like not to like your job if you're not liking your job but also getting paid that sounds like fine because all it is for you is a paycheck and you're not invested in it really when some people get overly invested in the outcome of their jobs like just do that and enjoy your photography and like if it if you do it like as if you decide like you know i do want to monetize it start off as it being your side hustle on the weekends because that's when most people get pictures taken anyway so do that and just see how much money you can make and see like if i did this as my full-time job is this something where one like i'm okay for a few months

not living the lifestyle not a few months it could be years a few years not living the lifestyle that I'm accustomed to am I going to be happy making this amount of money as I build up my clientele and then like is this really what I want to do because right now it's just an it's an idealistic like I'm better than everybody else so people will want to come to me but like we were saying before they probably just want to go to the cheapest thing yeah and like ask yourself would you be willing to change your style your craft like how you go about it to fit what the market in your town wants or would you be willing to move to where the market for what you want to do is photography requires a lot of travel and there's a lot of people who are like fantastic like

editorial and they take like graduation photos they take like and it's just like is your passion going to be fulfilled by what the demand is in your area and by what you're going to be doing i like that's a big one and i will last thing i'll say nature photography is the hardest to break into like that's the one that most people monetize yeah i was gonna say that's one that's most people just like passion project like there are it's like it's like the guy who does the coming soon to theaters like there are so few published nature photographers like the magazines and they will use the same ones a lot of them are doing videography as well and you'll have those paired together and then you'll have like some who are like famous photographers uh ansel ansel

adams yes and he came from like he's also like an environmentalist and all that stuff he also is dead he's he's very old he's born in 1902 i'm not saying like this is a man i know no but he's um like a west marin kind of yosemite like very norcal everyone has like a ansel adams like photo in their house or a calendar or whatever so those are there is just such a there's so few and i would say uh if you live in utah and you decide you want to become a photographer you have to move out of utah utah produces only two things photographers and competitive dancers also models who was the model from utah lucky oh first of all he definitely did photography there's no way that man did not do photography at some point because i was like nars from germany but uh yeah there

is just like so that that's just like that's a market that is so highly saturated i think like there i don't know about any other city but like that's one that i would say if that's not your style and your vibe i would move because that's there are so fucking many and if you're in such a competitive area with it the pricing is going to also be super competitive you're not going to be the go-to in that sense but i also think you could like soft launches by like offering to do business like company portraits and like doing that for the company and then maybe doing it for like some other places around or whatever even just offering for free to like photograph local businesses and like that kind of that kind of stuff and get your

name out there that's just like slightly different than what other people are doing you can come from a corporate side which a lot of people if they did if they haven't if they only started off in the creative field they wouldn't have access to those connections but yeah i know people who do like surfing photography and like extreme sports photography who like i met because they were doing corporate photography like it's there are there there's only so many gigs you get in your lifetime career that are the ones that like you dreamed of as a kid a lot of the other ones are just to pay the bills and right now you have a job that pays the bills like melissa said so and it pays bigger bills big bills big bills oh you can also be a youtuber yeah but they're also all photographers

too like aspen takes photos like everyone does and like here's the thing we're we're eloping and it's gonna be cheaper for me i haven't booked them yet but like it's gonna be cheaper for me to find a fucking bitch from utah fly them out and have them take our photos than it is for me to find someone who lives in the state the entire state of fucking california they got to keep those prices competitive yeah anyways this episode is brought to you by Accenture when your advertising operations fall out of sync everything else follows Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics, and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access

better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more at Accenture.com slash Spotify. When you're a mid-sized business, you need every competitive advantage you can get. Like an AI solution that works for you, not against you. SAP Grow is built with AI embedded at its core, working across every system. And it's ready to go from day one, so you can hit the ground running. Bring it with SAP Grow. AI Cloud ERP for any size business.

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hello my favorite girls hi i am a little sensitive so please don't go too hard on me i'm 21 she her pronouns i am in a relationship with my boyfriend going on three years and we have a one-year-old daughter i know i know i shouldn't have done it but i went through his phone. It was just right there and I couldn't help it. He literally gave me no reason to do this. I was just being nosy. Since I've never gone through his phone, he clearly didn't delete anything. I found Tinder on his phone. You'd think that would be the worst. Oh no, it gets way worse. I clicked into the app and he was mainly right swiping, except the right lingo, to men. He had not interacted or responded to any DMs, but this was very disturbing to me.

He has never shown any indication he might be interested in men. Do I bring this up to him? Do I pretend I didn't see anything? I am all over the place. He keeps asking what's wrong and I just keep saying nothing. Please tell me what to do. I am clocking so hard that you're not telling us how old this man is. I'm going to guess that he is older.

You've been together for three years. So that's 18. Feels awful convenient. right and you have a one-year-old so i don't believe that he gave you no reason to look through his phone i think you're feeling guilty that you saw this and that like you wish you didn't see this and like sometimes it happens you look at things like you can't unsee it and like we always say if you're going to go through someone's phone be prepared to see what's be prepared that anything's going to be in it and that's why like i firmly believe there is nobody

on this earth who goes through somebody's phone without a reason and it doesn't mean that this exact person gave you a reason but it may be like the previous relationship you had there was cheating there was whatever it is like it is just not behavior that someone does if they're not looking for something whether it's looking for an out of the relationship they want to get out like there's something there so like I think you need to unpack that with yourself like there's a reason and then there's also a reason you clicked on it there's a reason why you opened it there was like all of that and I think you can't pretend you didn't see any of this but actually no here you can't you've got I think you've got two options you can pretend you didn't see this and you can

say hey this has been fun I don't want to pursue a romantic relationship with you anymore I just want to co-parent I want to be single do my own thing thanks for the memories like you're great but I'm gonna do me breakup that's one option and then I think your only other option is hey I am ridden with guilt I looked through your phone but again I would like reflect on why you did this because i i just i personally just do not believe that there was like nothing and again it doesn't have to be from him but there i assume there's there's probably something um i looked through your phone and i saw that you had downloaded tinder and i opened it and i want to have a conversation about it and i want to take the back seat for this because i obviously i'm not you i

don't know this like i just am like looking to like listen and hear about like what's up and then stop talking and then have him explain this to you but i think that's especially if you're saying he gave you no reason to i think like that's the most you can do because like you put yourself in a bad fucking situation when you obtain information that goes against the relationship parameters you've set i mean seemingly this is cheating like seemingly this is not oh we have a like we're allowed to both be on tinder and swiping on like regardless of the gender of the person who's they're swiping on when you discover a betrayal in a way that isn't that is like admissible in court or whatever like it's just kind of one of those like fuck found the evidence

in that in that way and so i think like you have to kind of own your shit that you did but like it doesn't change the fact what you you found and i think like in the scheme of things i personally i'm never gonna be someone who's gonna say oh tit for tat whatever i find in your phone is not gonna be like me looking through your phone if i find something bad me looking through your phone is nowhere fucking near as bad like we can't use it well you shouldn't have looked through my phone it goes that's sure how i got the information was not great but that information and itself with that betrayal that betrayal is much larger than snooping through someone's phone but i and because the only other thing is that like if you do have a reason to look through his

phone to be like i was concerned about this and i looked at your phone and i found this and like what's up but if you're looking to get to the bottom of it and again this is something that i have a hard time with you have to shut up and let them talk because like i'm very good at communicating my feelings and i sometimes find that like i will use so many words to try and get someone else to communicate how they're feeling when in reality all i need to do is stop talking this was something similar that i went through this was before dating sites so or dating apps dating sites existed but dating apps but i found um some information in an email that let me know that it was it went further than what yours was yours is just some swipes

with no actual communication mine was actually a trip that they went on together him and this man and uh for me it was different because one we didn't have a child together but two he took it a step further and then he wasn't out in any type of way which i'm guessing your boyfriend isn't either but he wasn't out in any type of way and i knew how the way that he grew up it would take him a while to come out and so i just kind of ended things with him quietly and then he eventually came out and i didn't say about what it was and he eventually came out on his own accord years later but this is a different situation but i know the feeling that i know the feelings that you have and you said that you had a feel like something was off and that's the thing is that there was something

off in our relationship and i had a feeling i also was told some things but wasn't working as it was so yes this was a catalyst to break up when the relationship this was like oh now i have a pinpoint to the reason why this isn't working yes i would i he knows that something's up so you have to you have to talk to him i would say hey you left your phone open to tinder it's fine yeah he's been lying to you you left your phone open to tinder and i saw that you were swiping on these guys like is there anything you want to tell me or my friend saw you on tinder he's a guy what's up yep either way he shouldn't be on tinder yeah that's the that's the issue there how you got the information if you have to lie if he's someone

who's gonna be like well you should be looking for my doesn't if i wasn't looking through your phone that doesn't mean that if i didn't look through your phone you still would have been doing this it's not like those things are it's not like a domino effect yes so i i love i love when melissa finally agrees with my sometimes lying is fine yeah in this case i think sometimes lying is fine especially because there's a baby yeah and so i would be like like you or you know the thing that megan just said and let him explain himself maybe he'll be like i thought that tinder had a BFF feature like Bumble, and I was just looking for

some new bros. And then we'll be like, that is definitely a lie. You're a liar. I don't want to be with you. But, maybe he's curious. Either way, he's a liar. It doesn't matter. But, what you do is that

you can decide, like, you know, I still want to stay with him, or I don't. That's up to you. Yeah. And honestly, maybe he actually is around your age and he didn't have time to explore other things because y'all have been together since you were 18 yeah and i think like i'm someone who like i don't like lying but i also understand why people lie and for me it's like i'm not someone who they're i'm not going to give

everybody a second chance but there are some people who i will there are some people who i like there are people who've given me a second chance not everybody but the people like there are those things where like relationships are ebb and flow in that sense and for me what counts the most is when the people i'm in a relationship with friendship whatever it is when we care about each other and we show that equally like when that we're both invested in that and sometimes both being invested in that like is repairing something like sometimes that's like talking through something with your friend or whatever but like if i know i'm not that invested in a friendship and there's something comes up,

that's when I'm ghosting. That's when I'm ending it. But like if something else in a friendship that I really care about, like it's a sign of love when someone wants to kind of work on that. So I think like you have to ask yourself, like, is it like Melissa's situation

where something was off in the relationship and even if you couldn't necessarily realize that that's why you were looking, but like you're looking for an, like there's an out there that you're like, okay, this explains why it's not working and why it's not going well. to work and why that we're trying to fix this hasn't been working um or is it like really this

is so totally different this is so not like so out of left field this is not like your relationship has been perfect everything's been great otherwise and all of that then like you know i think there's few things i don't think that relationships can be worked through i don't think i think it's more about if both parties want to work through it and they're invested in working through it so give him an opportunity and a chance to say what's happening but I'm not I'm out when someone doubles down

on their lies regardless of who they harm when someone like protecting themselves at the expense of me and then specifically at the expense of like if I was you like the expense of my kid like if we can't be honest about this

we can't move through this and we can't like work on this and figure out what's going on but I think the best thing to do is whatever you can do to preserve having a good relationship with him doesn't have to be romantic it can be a friendship and if it would be better to just like Melissa did end it without the conversation about this like you're the only one who knows that but yeah and I would just I cannot stress enough that I would not ignore this because it will not only eat you alive it will fundamentally change your relationship with him like because it you will then be hiding

something and that will affect the relationship as well and it'll eventually boil over and it'll be bad you want to go into a conversation like really self-assured confident in what you know what you what you're going to say and like willing and able to listen not with as much you don't want to go into it like burning fiery mad or with a ton of resentment so whatever you can do to get yourself to that point and then think before you speak in the sense of like i'm a person if i'm again fighting with someone or whatever i'm like if we can't be nice to each other in this and if our shared goal is not like to conclude this like figure out and understand each other better take a step back take a step away from that and yeah and i wouldn't tell i

wouldn't like if you have a therapist i'd tell your therapist but like i would not like share this with anybody before you have a conversation with him except for us yeah well we're anonymous and we're the best we're your favorite your favorite girls and you know what you and your daughter are some of our favorite girls too all right well that's the end of this episode feel free we haven't had anybody write in for don't blame them in a while so i just want to remind y'all what don't blame them is that's when y'all write in and share your thoughts on the things that were asked of advice in the episode so please you can write in you can call in in the same way that you do for don't blame me oh yes well we hope you enjoyed don't forget to leave

a review and uh stay tuned for the rest of the podcast we have coming out this week on tomorrow we have c next tuesday where we catch up we talk we talk about the two things that have happened in television both scripted and reality that have rocked our worlds gird your loins and then on thursday we have an episode of but am i wrong and friday we have fisting friday we read the results of last week's episode all right i'm wishing all of you wonderful air conditioning i wish that for you megan specifically it's it's fine it's coming it's fine it's blowing all right well have a great day and see you tomorrow bye 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.