Don't Blame Me! - My Life is Falling Apart

Episode Date: November 14, 2022

Meghan and Melisa give advice on: Life plans goin awry Breaking up with a partner who has depression When to stop drinking Accepting a gift after dropping out of a friend's wedding Don't Blame Them: Braiding a student's hair Buy our merch: https://store.dftba.com/collections/don-t-blame-me Follow Us! @meghanrienks www.instagram.com/meghanrienks https://twitter.com/meghanrienks @sheisnotmelissa www.instagram.com/sheisnotmelissa https://twitter.com/sheisnotmelissa @by.meghan.and.melisa https://www.instagram.com/meghanandmelisa Affordable Therapy By State (Curated by Crissy Milazzo): www.tinyurl.com/y64kwdnf Need Advice? www.dontblameme.show Domestic Listeners Call: [phone] International Listeners Send a Voice Memo To: [e-mail] … with as much detail as possible under 3 minutes! WeI'll do our best to share our wonderful words of wisdom. If you're under 18, please get your parent's permission. Advice is for entertainment purposes only, so you can't blame us if we screw up your life. I kid! Our advice IS AMAZING. Want to WATCH this episode as well? Become a patron! https://www.patreon.com/dontblameme Join the Facebook Group! https://www.facebook.com/groups/dbmsecretgroup Support the show: https://www.patreon.com/join/dontblameme Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hello welcome back to another episode of don't blame me and if you're watching the video you can see me megan and then you can also see melissa you're just gonna pretend you weren't mouthing along to everything i said how can i pretend when it's being recorded you went off script so then i had to stop the first few things you always say fyi everyone this whole podcast is scripted we memorize it we so good yeah we actually like we don't write the script either though no even the call is fake yeah no we have someone like outsourced they like write my lines they write your lines they write like the bits for us they write like the inside jokes that we like saying right now yeah this is like we're breaking the fourth wall like yeah but but we're

not we're not we're still on script exactly it's crazy line line welcome back what we're hearing in our headphones is actually them feeding things to us producers are like they're also like laughing they love that and they're like okay take it from let's go back to one and then if i have to pee i'll be like can i yeah no one gets that unless they work in the industry okay well it's a funny joke if you work in the industry 10-1 on this podcast if you're wondering what this is we give wonderful amazing life-changing advice and you might be wondering how we are qualified because you look at us and you go beauty and brains and one of you has a butt it's real thick and one of you is really tall that's what she has you have long what's the word graceful legs i'm gonna say like

the old lady here like gams or whatever is gams your whole leg you got some gams yeah the whole leg like hip to foot i also have a broken toe and a poorly healed other broken toe wrap it no it's okay right now i'm not walking oh yeah that's it's the walking where as soon as as soon as you let me know i need you to get the little splint you get that on amazon can i get that at target maybe you can also just get like like a popsicle stick and just put it right there and then wrap it around a very tiny popsicle stick like break it oh splinters so all of that being said we're qualified because when we were both born out of the same vagina clearly three like might call them witches came and they were all in like their primary colors these like cute little

old ladies and they gave us these blessings of magical powers yeah and then there's a poison apple but i don't really know where that falls in the lore this isn't frozen this is uh spindle you're going that's what i'm saying am i i think i'm complaining too mixing snow white and whatever that bit sleeping beauty whatever my name is aurora yeah you're mixing the two okay so yeah spindle spindle and so she was they banned all of them from wherever they were yeah and then but then she well aurora found it and touched it and then it happened drama and then drama ensued you know what i think we should bring back thimbles i love the word well you can play monopoly you but no just like the concept of like oh when i'm sewing i need to put this like metal cap on my

think that was impressive if you watch the patreon where you can see the video version you know we both always get those random chills of our spine that was actually i think that might have been your number one yeah you need to get your iron checked it's iodine iodine fluoride are this in the same field i mean they're both chemical elements but no because fluoride's for your teeth iodine is what you drink when you have to go get an mri yeah but it's also like something that you should have a balance of in your body body which is why some salt is fortified with iodine and i don't use salt that much so oh that would make sense i'm a salty girl you know how i know i'm a salty girl or i like slept weird last night and like i

didn't get enough blood flow my left hand i woke up it was so fucking swollen not my right hand just my left hand could not get my ring on this morning it's fine now totally fine my hands are numb every morning because i sleep on top of him like under my pillow i don't sleep face down ass up i do naked i don't uh-huh and i can't you're asking for those ghosts i want she's a suit i don't know why no i know you do it takes me seriously i you know sadly i know how serious you are like i i know um and ghosts and aliens and uh anything supernatural really and the funny oh that'd be so hot think about it i'm on it i i i regret asking i regret asking move on move on think of a half man half horse well here's the thing i hate horses yeah i hate

i don't know horses have like huge fucking dicks a lot that's what i'm saying the lower half is horse so no i don't that's too much horse that's like it's too much horse percentage towards man like and also like the man is so far away from the horse like from me when that is happening like i'm getting all horse and i'm getting all underside of a horse and like but you're it's not really underside because the top part is still man the top chest is man how fucking flexible is this man and how small is this horse spot that's what i'm saying like you're gonna have to like no I don't want hooves I don't want hooves in the bedroom I really don't and I can't repeat I can't stress enough they're taking you horsey style

or hanging off the thing just like a broken horse but also horses are covered in hair but like centaurs aren't from the waist up yeah but do you know what catches I'm sorry if straight if a fuck ton of straight men can't wash their ass if you combine that with a horse that ass has never even been washed there's no chance there's no there's not even a small percentage oh make sure they bathe before you're gonna wash your centaur in your bathtub also the whole straight men thing is white straight men well yes i also have a theory about that which i was gonna think centaurs fit into that so they might wash their asses i need an i need an i need a non-white centaur because i mean i guess that is true where does where do a centaur fall on the spectrum of

white supremacy where where what do they identify as who where were the centaurs were you clopping around that's so fucking funny but yeah i think it's yeah it makes sense to me it makes complete fucking sense also because like and it's funny because like in specifically in the black community we have something like when you go take a shower like you're told you're like said like did you wash your ass like like or you say i'm going to wash my ass like that's a a slang for like i'm going to take a shower yeah so like we're very specific that asses are getting washed well and also like white people don't use like washcloths i know like that's not that's like a foreign i know kind of thing like and like i remember one of my best friends growing up was

jamaican her mom like you know what that like we would go in the her pool and we would like rinse off afterwards she was like no no get your ass in the fucking shower and would throw and she was white but like she was like she spent a lot of time in jamaica but even with that i was like i was like oh okay yeah this is this is something that you do because it's like but like when when you coddle straight white dudes that much like no wonder why they don't think their shit stinks you cut off their foreskin and so they they literally think that they don't have to do anything because like it's just par for the course if you're not circumcised you'll get at least like one and one shitty infection and then you never you never like you never do that again and then

those people actually like bathe more and like clean themselves yep no cottage cheese no well no cottage cheese but also no mac and cheese packet smelling dicks yeah oh anyways so if people want to call in what do they do well it is a call-in advice podcast which i don't even know if i said at the beginning you did great um you can call in that's exactly what you do you leave us a voicemail at 310-694-0976 and international listeners you can just send us an audio message at meganpodcast at gmail.com you have to be 18 or over have your parents permission we ask that you let us know like your ages if you want to let us know your pronouns it's all anonymous so if you fake names for people that you want to use that's helpful for us to follow let us know their ages if

you're about a relationship how long have you been together give us as many details as possible so we can give you the best advice because otherwise you have to fill in the holes and we might we said we're great giving advice we didn't say we're psychic though i do think if i tapped into it it's there but you only have three minutes to do all of that so we advise that you write everything down you time it a couple times see where you're falling if you need to add more details you've got extra time or less if you're under three minutes and you have more details include them then we just ask you to read that out loud when you record the voicemail or you record the voice memo if you do a wonderful fantastic job you might get a diamond they

come few and far between these days though because it has to be like above and beyond at this point because everybody's like doing well so i have to raise the bar i will say though on where we had the the call with the girl who her friend was like a pathological liar a lot of extra time and i would have wanted more examples yeah a lot of people again the timer doesn't start until after megan's voice is gone so don't press start until then because i would definitely just be paying attention to like what it said on my phone yeah so those are the instructions may the odds be ever in your favor and it's all anonymous so you get as freaky deaky as you want give us the goss we love drama we love drama and hey we're in a post-vaccine world so tell us about you getting

fucked in a barn yeah where's that girl do you think she's still in the barn no i don't think she's i think she stopped listening i think she did too and then left us a bad comment about choices yeah you know we're not ashamed to say we do play favorites though for letting into the facebook group so we've had a couple people who are in our patreon we're like oh i'm not in it we were like oh you get to skip right to the front of the line so if that's the inner circle if that's something that it's really uh something you want i'm just saying i know what god i can you know you know smooth over the security yes they're telling us that we can do that great perfect hr is cool that okay legal legal is fine yeah um and the

writers of the show cool yeah got it great okay cool so yeah we'll just go into the maybe we should get britney spears headsets for this cool i can do it i'm again melissa i'm 19 and my pronouns are she her i've always been labeled as someone that's had it all together i was mature for her age child that got along with adults always took care of myself got great grades kept everything organized and had my whole life planned out basically from the moment i started forming thoughts. Now, not so much. I messed up horribly when I picked the college I wanted to go to, and ever since, I feel like my life is falling apart. I realized early on that I hated the school and everyone there, so I came home. I enrolled last minute to Online Community

College and got a job. I made a ton of new connections through work, and I started going to the gym. These things sound great, except during the past couple of months, I started experiencing severe burnout. I spent all of high school working hard to get perfect grades, and and now I can barely open my computer to look at my schoolwork. My job went from being fun and refreshing to feeling like an obligation that drains all of my mental and physical energy. The gym was great with a great break from stress. I said, now I can't even talk myself into driving there.

I don't like being back home. I don't like feeling like I'm just existing to pass time, and I don't know what to do with myself. The life and career that I spent 15 years dreaming about don't interest me anymore. I just want to feel a genuine connection to something again, and I don't know where to go from here. I'm looking into transferring to another school for my junior year of college so I can get some semblance of a college experience but none of the schools I'm looking at feel right I don't want to

fail and I don't want to get stuck in my hometown with nothing to show for myself please help I can really go in on this one as it was call was happening I go thank god we have two people with two different life experiences giving advice here because we have a trouble in class detention kid and then we have a gifted kid so as the gifted kid take it away okay so I also was someone that had all these plans and stuff for my life much like you like very involved with a lot of things around town having a job also when I was in college and just like you know things things seemed like they were going great and they weren't and uh yours yours kind of you know hitting that slump before mine did i was 21 and i was almost done with college and in a degree where

i studied biology in a degree that i don't use anymore i don't use at all and it it was not true you answer random questions i have all the time that's true um no it's and that's my favorite thing is having questions and then like you just answer them it's great that's true but since you're 19, you have, you have a little bit more flexibility here. I was stuck and I couldn't get out because of my major, but like I crashed. And when I crashed, I crashed hard to the point where I didn't leave my apartment for a few months. I felt very lost. Like you said, like I was president of a couple of clubs and I just like stopped doing that and stuff. And that was my first bout of depression. And when you're the person that always has the answers and always

people always look to you to be right. And people always look at you as the shining example for everything. Then it is tiring and you don't know it until you're going through it. And I thought that I had to be perfect for everybody else. And I wasn't being perfect for me. And I also realized that there's no such thing as perfection. It gets tiring. You cannot plan out every part of your life. You cannot, no matter what path you're on, there's just not like, you have to be flexible. People would see me as kind of like a role model for their kids. And because of that, I felt like I had to be perfect all the time. And that's why like people say now, like, you're such a great role model first of all i'm not you you don't get on my tiktoks um second yeah that's a quick way to

find it i don't want to be somebody's yeah it's a lot of pressure they it's a lot of pressure and they expect perfection yeah so i want to tell you that like it's okay like you need you can take some time for yourself you can slow down like there again there's no such thing as perfection So you do not need to strive for that. If like you're in your degree and you decide this is not what you want to do, don't do it. I was taking classes like for fun. I was taking writing classes and I took an acting class. I took a lot of classes that were like in the fine arts department.

And I went to my to my advisor and I was like, I don't I don't want to go to dental school. I don't know what I'm going to do. and she looked at my transcript and she's like you take all like these communication writing all these classes like for fun what if you looked at that as a career and i said i'm supposed to be a doctor i'm not supposed to be you know i'm gonna hollywood like i'm not holly weird right i'm not supposed to be in the arts it's just like okay just like look into it so i did and i came out and worked on some student films and i really loved it so i think it's just about finding something that you love and it doesn't necessarily have to be what you're studying in school just

kind of look at the things that you like things that you enjoy and if like going to school and doing that and you figure that out great if not take a lot of schools now when I was in school they didn't but now they offer this as a degree it's like you can just kind of get like a degree in everything where they have I forgot what is I think at the University of Arkansas I believe it's called like a university degree like that's what it is and it can be in everything if getting a degree is important to you then see if they have something where it has more of a broad expect where you can just learn about a lot of things and if you're not going into something that's specialized as a career most degrees don't even matter like what you get your degree and it

really doesn't matter you can also go to most grad schools with whatever undergrad degree you have as you take whatever the prereqs yeah the prereqs and then like let's say if you're going to law school you got to take the LSAT or whatever as long as you can get those to pass it then it's really whatever yeah so as somebody who was not a gifted kid and didn't have that experience at all and someone who failed regularly failure is inevitable but it's also a muscle like nobody likes to fail nobody is good at failing the first time nobody regardless if you're gifted or regardless of or if you're not like it's because society we've put this huge pressure even if you can't live up to it and if it's a standard that you can't achieve so it's something that you need

to practice and you need to not be afraid of because when you don't let yourself fail and you don't like seek out failure like you need to seek it out to get comfortable with that feeling if you don't do that the stakes are too high for your like literal everyday life like you're for your fucking own body and you're like cortisol levels like when you're so afraid of like misstepping or doing something that could be perceived as wrong or or again like a failure like you're going to not do anything like that is a that's an immobilizing feeling and I think like honestly like trying anything I think like a great way to like just kickstart failure is you know you don't have to do it in like an auditioning for a like an acting role or a

school play or a community theater but even just taking a dance class or taking a class for something that you've never done before that you're not automatically going to be good at and if you are automatically good at the first thing go cool putting that in my cap for later and I'll come back to it but I'm not doing another class of this like you need to seek something out that you're not good at and it doesn't matter that you need to like then become good at it it's you need to fail and then you need to show up again and then you need to maybe fail again and then show up again like it I promise you as somebody who like auditions for things it's the first fucking audition I went on I bombed it it was horrible and I would have never gotten the

role but I was devastated devastated now I'm like okay some I'll be more upset with with others if like the project and that writing is good it's like a bloody nose it's not convenient it's not my favorite thing ever but like I forgot about it 20 minutes later like I've moved on it doesn't halt my life and you have to also figure out what makes you happy and again I don't relate to the like perfectionism in like the success and like everybody else besides like I was really hard on myself but it's wasn't so like linear and obvious but I've had to like even now I like I had this like realization a couple days ago where I was like what do I do that makes me happy that I don't place like value on my performance of it like what and like what do I what do I do that makes

me happy that I don't try to monetize that I don't try to make a part of my career that I don't give myself a pass or a fail in my active participation in because like then it's not making me happy then it's a test and i'm i'm setting myself up that i'm allowed to be happy if i do well but if i don't like but then it's like what the fuck are we quantifying like this is happiness so i think you need to also figure out what makes you happy and i mean again this was me like three days ago i had an existential crisis listening to a taylor swift song and i go oh my god so i'm still i'm like trying to think of those things too and that changes as we get older and things that once made us happy before that we liked before you're gonna change your interests are going to change your

friends are gonna change your relationship like everything is going to change and that's a good thing like and if it makes you feel any better not only are there so few careers that you can actually have that can be your dream from a child that can come to like total fruition through like schooling and not just sheer luck and privilege but also a lot of people who are in those career paths that have dreamed of that since they were like a little kid and all of that a lot of the time people felt like they got too far along and they might not actually it might not actually be their current daydream like what your dream was and your plan that you had when you were 10 sure there are people whose plan was to be a doctor when they were 10 and now they're in their

40s that dream might have actually died when they were 20 but that's where they are at that point and that's just a personality thing some people's personalities and whether it's their upbringing or just like who they are to their core they're able to compartmentalize and just be like okay power through like that's okay and other people can't and so don't try and make yourself those other people because like if you could if you could fake it if you could do it would have already happened right like this is this is who you are and i think this is a really great indicator for you maybe even just an insight of i don't know what the specific field was or what that whole plan was but if it was something really like rigid and analytical or mathematical or like something

like science math or whatever maybe it's representative that you actually like something that's a little more fluid a little more artsy like something that's a little more creative a little less black and white or if it was something like creative and artsy maybe your brain is craving some like very black and white analytical thinking so try and based on what it was that was the goal and the end game see if you can deduce what you might actually be interested in from there right and also the end of the plan is like death so like when you make a plan no no well like when you make a plan of like this is like how my life is going to map out and all the stuff that i want like there is no like destination or end of anything so like it's okay well it's not the end

of college because it's not getting a job but it's not about getting your first job it's getting a promotion that's getting your second job and that's being missed and it's having kids and that's all of this it literally just like doesn't end and you can't reach that goal post because again like it just ends when you die like it will it will only ever end when you die and then you're not giving yourself time to actually enjoy your life yeah yeah too many steps i do want to just touch on something for calling things failure for you like work as the like same failures for me it doesn't like i don't like the word failure i always see like them as learning experiences or i take something but do you the feeling of failure yeah i'm like okay i didn't get that

but like i learned this from it and i can take that to the next thing that i do i think that's the aftermath of something that you didn't succeed for me that's like if i do an audition and i absolutely bomb it like you know same thing with like a test if i failed the test i'm like okay well here's what i wasn't good at on this thing and all of that like it is like a learning experience but i don't think like for to me like a failure is not a state of being or like a you either succeeded or you you failed like because it's a passing feeling as a result of something that then i have to you know learn from me that's interesting yeah like even like your example of like you take a dance class yeah bad at it i'm like but did i have a good time did i move in it

like i did something i was even able to do it how long have you been like that always oh that's impressive that's very very impressive i think and like people are like you're so easygoing and stuff and it's like i just like i take experiences and i take something from it if that was in like your specific field or something you were interested in would it have that would you have the same feeling like if you when you were like a pre-dental kind of stuff like if it was like a dentist thing or biology thing versus like a dance class thing would you have like well I had a good time because I was there and it was like a fun experience I mean like when I was like there's class there were some classes I wasn't good at and I was like well I'm just not good at that thing but

I can take something from this and then you know use it for something else or I know that isn't for me yeah no that's ridiculously impressive that's very very very impressive I have a hard time with like if i'm not good at something the first time i do it i'm like i don't i don't want it i don't like doing anything that i'm not good at i don't like doing it but it's still like an experience for me no that's that's how it should be like that's very very like i have to push myself to i mean certain things i love enough that like i mean auditioning and act it's like a toxic relationship like you keep going back for more but for other things that i'm not like immediately good at I have to push through for that but that's very impressive or I'll do something that'll make

me better at it yeah that's very impressive I literally will give up like two seconds and it's kind of like like with with um gymnastics I wasn't good the only thing I was really good at is like tumbling and so I knew that like I would never be like a gymnast gymnast but like then I took the tumbling into cheerleading yeah were you do you think that maybe it was you had like obvious like skills and things that you knew you were good at in multiple like fields and avenues so it didn't feel like everything was all in one basket yeah yeah that makes more sense to me then because then it's like you are aware that you're well-rounded do you know what i mean yeah i used to say i was a jane of all trades yeah your parents put you in a bunch of different stuff

growing up yeah yeah that's yeah that's important that's yeah and also because we moved around a lot so we kind of had to do like what was there and then what was seasonal at the time yeah when you're exposed to a bunch of other different stuff that you can also not that you can reinvent yourself but like you have to also know yourself well enough to kind of like pitch yourself to new schools to like fit in and like assess the bigger picture of like the lunchroom who's here who am I going to sit with and like getting being able to read people you also have to know yourself pretty well um maybe that's the key we just as children need to move around to uh new schools and be in lots of different extracurriculars. Okay. All right. Next call. Hi, Megan and Alyssa. I just

want to say I really appreciate the podcast and all the help you both give us. I've learned a lot from just listening and decided it's time to call in about our relationship. Basically, I feel like we should break up, but we live together and he's really struggling with depression right now, so it doesn't feel very good to him. I'm 25, she, hers, and my partner, let's call him Rob, is 28 he him I've wanted to call in for a while about a relationship but I feel like I know what you're going to say and I've been scared to hear the answer we've been together for about a year and a half and have already broken up twice I broke up with him both times because I felt like I was taking care of him and he wasn't investing in our relationship the way I needed we're in

couples therapy because when we got back together I demanded it before we moved in together this past August 2022. I've been in therapy our whole relationship and he has recently started. After listening to the call about how it's a trauma response to be taking care of someone else, I realized that's exactly what I've always done in our relationship. I'm a therapist myself and I have a lot to give in our relationship and I feel like he only takes. What triggered this call was that we have opposite schedules and barely see each other or spend time together anymore. Even when we're home, he chooses to spend time alone, like tonight when we have planned to hang out, I cancel plans with my friends to hang out with him, and he just plays video

games and checks them out. I went to bed upset and briefly mentioned it when he came in to say goodnight, probably because I didn't say goodnight as I usually do because I was pissed. I've been working on talking to him more when things like this come up because I have OCD and an insecure attachment style in relationships. I never feel satisfied with our relationship. I always come back to him because he changes when I tell him what I need, but only for a small time, and it goes back to normal. He's very depressed right now and going through a lot of his own trauma processing and work burnout.

I've tried to be there for him, but I know it's starting me down because he can't give me what I need. My friends and sister all tell me that he doesn't treat me well and that I should break up with him. It's different friends from different groups that all feel the same way. I've just always seen potential in him, and as my therapist pointed out, I really struggled and missed him when we did break up. I know we have put in a lot of work and tried really hard, but at what point do you guys think I should walk away? I don't feel right leaving him in such a low place because he doesn't have many people to support him. He just got off his toxic family. We also live together and our lives are so intertwined that I feel stuck and don't know what it would even look like to break up,

but I know I'm not happy and haven't been for a while. My God always tells me that this isn't the right relationship for me. I just don't know how I wanted to pull the plug. I really do love him and care for him deeply, but our relationship hasn't felt right for a long time now. I'm pretty sensitive, but I know I need to hear the truth from you. Please help me figure out where to go from here. Love you guys, and thanks again. I'm glad you called.

And let's just say first step, you called knowing what we were going to say. so you can add us to the list of the countless people who have told you that you need to break up with them right you could use a little glitter gel pen with our names right there this is i mean you know how many red flags this is like as somebody who like loves couples therapy and i think it's great if you've been dating for a year and you've already been in couples therapy and you've broken up twice and couples therapy was a like a rehabilitation for like the issues in your relationship versus two people who independently go to therapy and then decided that they wanted to which you know i'm not here to judge anybody but like that's very like a new

age la thing of being like oh like let's go to couples therapy the first like we're both like that's like you know you're 40 years old like and you're doing a lot of intentional things like this is it was a response to issues in your relationship yeah and I think that you're viewing that that time and like money and energy that you put into it as like an investment into the relationship versus an investment into yourself and that like you don't want it to be like a sunk cost but this is like what you were saying before like this is the example of a learning experience and not like oh i'm going to avoid these relationships in the future but i think like he served his purpose which was also you know teaching you what you're attracted to in

relationships and like what you're like oh i tend to like want to take care of people and it's able to pinpoint these things that you've noted that you need to work on in yourself but you already broke up once and you missed him and you got back together and you literally twice oh no but you said the last time that your therapy you would you were really sad and you missed him now you've gotten that part out of your system and you specifically said like he'll change but then he goes back to normal like so this is who he is and you know that you know that he doesn't even want to spend time with you you cancel your plans tonight sounds like you're calling us from the closet well i know because you said you went to your room so i'm

guessing you didn't want him to hear because he's in the other room playing video games you called us when you're supposed to be out on a date right now yeah he is a grown man not your child is not your responsibility to take care of him you can care from him from afar but at the end of the day you have to worry about you and this is not healthy for you i also don't think it's healthy for him like if you think about it you're like well I don't know what's going to happen if I like leave I don't feel right leaving him do you think that he wants you to stay for that like if you weren't if you're not into the relation to be if you think you told him hey I want to break up but I'm gonna stay because I think you're like emotionally like on unstable right now do you if

if do you think that he's gonna be like good I want you to do that that's manipulative or he says I don't want you to do that like you're I understand like you're you're concerned for him but like why aren't you worried about the concerns for yourself who's who who's thinking about you exactly I kind of like this is this is for anybody in a relationship like something to ask yourself and it could be in friendships too like why are we together right now not like the potential or like what we had in the past why are we together right now yeah what's his answer gonna to be because i love you okay then how are you showing me that you love me like what what are you doing i i'm trying to invest and do things for this relationship what are you doing for this

relationship and then for you why are you still here because you're scared because he's in a depressive state and you don't want to leave him because he doesn't have family around but what what is that doing for you and when is that going to change like when does that circumstance at what point are you going to be okay with that circumstance is it when your mental health is plummeted like so do you do you see that as a necessary evil to like you need to get to that level before you can you have to get to rock bottom before you can help yourself and prevent that from happening i'll also say that like depression and mental health is like obviously a very like shitty thing and tricky thing to deal with alone also in a relationship and i don't want

this to come across for people who like are like dealing with depression or have a partner dealing with depression but your partner shouldn't be able to eradicate your depression but your partner should not be a source that you need to escape from that is like a major factor contributing to your depression like your partner all relationships in your life should be the bright spots right they shouldn't be the same part of the dark spots like my favorite fucking part i mean i love that when we get through the pod on tuesdays and we i have human interaction but like every night my favorite part of the day is when moss comes home from work it's like the slate has wiped clean if i had a shitty day or if i was mental health wise like was not feeling great

like he and I both have like our favorite time mentally like I am the best when we are spending time together that's how a relationship should be and of course there are times where like you don't need to put on a happy face for your partner if you're dealing with a lot of stuff like you're allowed to be depressed you're allowed to like feel melancholy feel sad and process those emotions and feelings but if your partner is not a bright spot and that bright spot doesn't have to pull you out it doesn't have to pull you out but like if it's sucking you down or it's just still a pocket of darkness that's a problem there because that's not the right relationship and regardless of your mental health state if he's at a point where there is not there are no bright spots there are no

interactions there are no tv shows there are no songs there's like absolutely nothing he can't be in a relationship and he needs that that it needs to be like you need to talk about like a serious whether it's a medical leave of absence and like an inpatient or an outpatient facility but like if the things that you love yes some things don't bring you joy anymore diminish it but again like if it's not like a couple shades brighter with the things that you love that will only bring you down because then you're going to start viewing yourself as this like happiness suck too because him not wanting to spend time with you when in all of like but in all of this shit like you're not intentionally you're going to start feeling like his poor mental state and his poor

outlook is the result of you and your presence i firmly believe as a depressed person that like i do take onus and responsibility to make sure that i don't make anyone else feel like my state is the result of them like it's my responsibility no matter how shitty i'm feeling that i if some person if the person thinks that they did something or it's their fault i it's my responsibility to immediately reiterate that it's not that because i don't want to pull you down with me and if he wants to do that that's a that's that's not poor mental health that's manipulative right and also when i'm in a depressive state and somebody like how do i say this i hate when people i hate when people feel like they need to be around me to fix me too and i don't like i like

there's no feeling that i hate more than that like people that think that they have the ability to fix me and again so like if he's like working on himself and then he also like wants to be in a relationship with you what is he doing to keep you as far as like a relationship yeah yeah good mental health is not like a destination and so when it's like oh I want to fix this that's also my stubborn ass like kicks in and I'm just like why do you think that this is something that can be fixed and like if we can't coexist with like my bad or my dark days or whatever then like that's a then this isn't gonna work like i can work i work on managing it but if your goal is eradicating all of that like that would be great magic wand but that doesn't that

doesn't exist and i can get into like a stubborn like tug of war of that yeah and i would think it'd be hard no offense i think it would be really hard to have a partner who while you're dealing with mental health stuff who's a therapist i think that'd be really hard for both parties yeah so you need to break up with him you said like i don't know how i even do that because our lives are so intertwined you just do it yeah if you think he's a danger to himself or others then you report that he cut off his toxic family don't call them like don't do that like there are professionals for a reason is the system perfect no you also know that but this isn't working yeah so there's only so many options that you have and it's gonna suck but you end it you find a new apartment or you

move in with a friend or a family member and you create a boundary where you're like I care about you but this relationship is not is no longer serving me and it's not working for me I wish you all the best also not serving you yeah and I wish you all the best but you're not available for late night calls you don't continue to be in contact like you need a clean break and again if he is a danger to himself or others you call and let someone know but if he if somebody gets broken up with getting dumped and broken up with does not create like suicidal ideation that's not there so it's not your responsibility to halt your life and to change everything in this case to fix somebody who if his mind goes to really like really hard dark places that's not for you to take

care of that's for professionals to take care of because that's not because you broke up with him that's because he's struggling with other mental health issues and that's above your pay grade even as like a therapist but also like as a partner yeah like it's never the result of that and like i know that you're you know that because you're a therapist but i remember like younger like people would threaten to harm themselves over breakups all the time and it was like you know it's a very scary thing and then you get older and you realize you're like oh somebody who is like doing well mentally doesn't do that like that's actually not a consequence of a breakup like that is something that's an indicator of a much bigger issue that i shouldn't feel responsible for if

something were to happen right but i'm sorry and i hope we were sensitive enough but you know here i knew what what you're getting into you acknowledged it yeah all right let's take a break wow we're back hi Megan and Melissa I am 20 almost 21 and I use she her pronouns and I'd like advice about choosing to no longer drink alcohol. I live in Canada so our drinking age is 18 but also just in general people start drinking much earlier than that. I've always been fine with drinking and going out with friends and I don't have a dependency on alcohol or anything but the last time I was drinking I didn't have a good experience. It was Halloween and my friends and I were going

to go dancing so I had a few drinks with the rest of them and while we were waiting in line to get in this guy as well as a few of his friends butt in front of us and when my one friend confronted to him about it and said like, why are you doing this? He called her fat as well as said homophobic things to her. And for me as a lesbian, this sort of startled me because you never really prepared for blatant homophobia when you're just out to have a fun night. And as the more time passed, as we waited to get in and with him being so close, the more I was overthinking the situation and it felt like I was going to have a panic attack so I needed to leave. A few of my friends and I went home and I sort of had a small breakdown in the bathroom about what he said

and the next day as I was thinking about what happened more I wondered if the alcohol had made the situation worse for me. I've never had that reaction before with drinking. I've never been stressed out like that usually. It just makes me more bubbly but I know that you Megan have stopped drinking and I would just like to know your personal experience with quitting as well as like how to get go about doing so especially with me still being in university and having drinking be a very big part of the culture I've also been listening to you guys since I was 15 since the very beginning and I absolutely love everything you guys stand for and the messages as well as I'm loving the new episodes basically every single day

it's what i listen to on my walk to school so it's great i love your voice yeah you sound like you would just be like i don't know you would be like the the um like really happy like gopher character in an animated movie like tv show or movie like just like really sweet and i just like loved that this is like two different things yeah i don't like you saying like you don't want to feel like that when you're drinking or you don't want to feel like that and that kind of thing hasn't happened to you before it happened you haven't experienced someone being blatantly homophobic either yeah and so those are two different things that happened and even if you weren't drinking you still could have had those same feelings yeah so i'm alcohol kidding i mean

alcohol is a depressant so emotionally uh especially the day after you that's like you know that darkness kinds of kind of sets in and alcohol can also increase anxiety but like melissa said this was an anxiety inducing such inducing situation because not only was it like blatant homophobia and fat phobia but from the seem like seemingly he just cut you in line right and was fat phobic and homophobic and then you can't do anything about it and so then he was just standing in front of you and then you're about to go into like the same club or bar that he's going into like there's no resolution there like that is a really if you think of it like a bottle that you're shaking like you're building up building up building up to like there's and he's just

standing there like that's like an explosive kind of feeling that that's there's no resolution right So there's no like, I think there's like an emotional response to those situations where like you kind of have to be the emotional release. That's like sometimes people cry when they fight. So I don't think that alcohol made the situation better. Right. But I like Melissa said, like, I don't think that you can say that you wouldn't have felt that way if you were sober. so if you don't want to drink anymore you know both i rarely drink maybe once or twice a year you don't really drink at all yeah um so that's a choice that you know you come to on your own if this is what you want to do but i don't know if like this incident is a reason to like it doesn't have to be the reason why you stop yeah i think like you said like they're two really separate things so i think that like if you want to evaluate your relationship with alcohol i think in general you don't come to that conclusion without a big reasoning like that's not

really the first thing anybody else thinks of but also you need to do that in parallel with recognizing that like this can happen again when you're sober and not putting all of because i think that will actually make you have a much worse relationship with alcohol if you put the responsibility on avoiding those feelings and those interactions on not drinking so if they happen when you're sober that can then you know then you're like fuck it i'm gonna like go on a bender right so that you i just i don't it's really important when you're not whenever you're viewing alcohol is that like you really you really you don't give it that much power it needs to be like a I think a process of this and like you don't have any dependency so I think that like

I will be very honest like I did not quit drinking in college like or like I quit I talked about in my book but like I really like quit drinking started off kind of like accidentally because I had no friends and in that when I realized that I wasn't going out like I realized how much I relied on alcohol when I was no longer in situations because I was underage. I couldn't buy alcohol. So when I'm no longer have access to alcohol, that was a really hard time for me to be like, wow, I have a problem. Like I have this is an issue for me. So that was not like a powerful choice that I made. It was kind of like a shitty, harsh truth of like a side effect of like an other like really rough life period that I was in. But it also like was not all at once. And I think

especially when you don't have a dependency on it i think like it's really good to just take steps back to evaluate because if you just stop drinking as like i'm just not going to drink anymore abstinence it's kind of like sex educate abstinence as sex education like you don't know why and you also don't know like well why aren't you drinking like what's what is your relationship with alcohol how does that make you feel like there is no reasoning behind it so there's no really reason to stick to it either because it's not about like your values or your morals or about knowing yourself it's just kind of like all or nothing and that's just not a healthy relationship to have so I think like it's starting off just by being like I'm not going to drink for a month

and I'm going to and I think especially like for university stuff I'm not going to drink for a month and I'm still going to be social doesn't mean you have to go out to parties but if you punish yourself and not hanging out with any of your friends then it becomes well now I have to drink to have friends yeah so like it it's a lot of work to involve that you you need to again if you make alcohol so enticing that it's tied to the only time you listen to music the only time that you like are dancing the only time you're doing all these other things that make you happy hanging out with people that you really like then you start to think that that's alcohol not those individual aspects and then life without alcohol means life without friends life without music life

without all these other things which is like what the fuck it doesn't have to be that you have but you have to replace that and like supplement your life with other stuff yeah because like my decision it came to like a lot of meetings that we hear have here um in hollywood there's so much alcohol at all of them and it's free yep and i did not want to be sloppy like some of my peers that were around me and i was like i'm just not gonna drink like i'll be like like today i don't want a drink yeah and i didn't drink it at one party and i was a lot more present and i had more fun yeah and then and also the next morning i didn't feel like shit and so it was kind of just like okay and i did like the next time i went out i didn't have it so it was just like something i

came to on my own that i was like oh i actually have a lot more fun i'm more present i can be more social I remember things better and you know I don't feel like shit the next day so I'm just not gonna really drink yeah I think the whole thing with like I mean I'm not a fan of alcohol like in general also like society wise like it's a carcinogen like it literally causes cancer it wrecks our brains and it's scientific yeah it's scientifically proven and like I'm very passionate about it now and about how like I'm going to be really honest with like my kids when it comes to drinking about like, you know, I was one of those people. In Toronto, every arrival is a statement and nothing says it better than this. Cadillac Optic was the number one selling

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for the Cadillac definition of luxury. First time I drank, I was like, this is who I'm supposed to be. And like when people talk about addiction and it's like there's some people who have that switch that flips in their brain. Addiction runs big in my family. But like when I'm like 15

and the first time I take a sip of alcohol, it's like I'm meeting my true self for the first time. that's a really big red flag and i'm gonna tell my kids that that it's like that's not true like that's a lie and that's also a lot of self-medicating that happens and our whole drinking culture is like really fucked so i want to say all of that to begin with because i'm not pro drinking i think like yes some people can have a healthier relationship with alcohol than others but alcohol is not i don't like the word healthy but in this case i'm going to use it alcohol is not healthy for anyone and like it's way worse for other people but it's not good for anybody

but the biggest thing especially at your like being like 2021 you need to make sure that you don't do is you don't push yourself or put yourself in situations where you're abstaining to the point where then the result is binging right because binging on alcohol and blacking out that is a much much more slippery slope than the casual a couple of nights of drinking because no matter who you are no matter how often you drink there is an innate shame of blacking out and binging and then shame is something you keep to yourself and becomes quiet and that becomes like the cycle of then not telling other people when you're drinking not knowing your own limits and then hiding your own drinking and your behaviors around alcohol and that's you need

to eliminate shame from this because shame makes you hide and that's where addiction or unhealthy relationships that's where they thrive right so like melissa said like one night that you choose not to drink and then maybe it's another night after that but a don't set too large and lofty of goals for yourself without even knowing why you're setting them or and you're not setting you need to be setting them because you're like oh i feel a lot better when i don't drink and i'm actually excited to do this and this doesn't feel like a boundary i have more fun exactly like it needs to be like a it's just kind of a given and that's what's going to happen and then also keep this to yourself like i'm all for sharing things with other people but the peer pressure of alcohol

is especially in college but honestly at all ages like i think i it started being a lot less when i knew people who started having kids that's when people started like giving me less shit but like that kind of people feel really fucking threatened when someone else is not drinking because they think it means that they have a problem and that's their own shit but this needs to be a choice that you are making without the influence of other people telling you that you're fine that it's whatever that's so fun like whatever it is you can confide in a couple of people if you want to and you trust them but don't also set goals that make you feel like you have you're doing you're upholding them to to please other people or that you are doing something that

doesn't maybe feel right for you in that moment afterwards also it's not all or nothing and i also think that like you don't have to have a dependency on alcohol or being like you know chemically being having dealt with like addiction or alcoholism to know that like you enjoy your life more without it and I think that like you just need to give yourself opportunities to like fall in love with your life and who you are sober and not viewing it as oh I'm no longer drinking because that will stop me from dealing having being in these certain situations yeah and i think also now for me when i do drink it's because i want to just taste something yeah i want to i enjoy the taste of like whiskey and so i know i know i enjoy the taste so like i might be

somewhere and they have like a good whiskey and i want to like see how it tastes but i'm not drinking to get drunk yeah that's not the goal and that's the like legitimately that is the only real healthy relationship that you can have with alcohol that's it like it's for the taste it's not to loosen up it's not a social lubricant it's not for any of that it's i want to see i want to this taste and see how this pairs with this food like that's literally it yep that's it it's like salt it's like salt and food and that's fucking it okay not for you but do they mean in the sense that like no one wants you're not just like chugging you know the fucking like little girl with the raincoat and the umbrella like this is adding something here and it's not i can't it can't be too much

but also probably not even salt because you put salt in everything but like like yeah maybe like garlic or maybe i mean like we put a lot of things or like saffron where it's so fucking expensive that you like one little thing every once in a while like a tiny little bit not even a pinch just like a little whatever the little yeah a little little yeah i guess it's a string i don't know i don't know i don't either it might be yeah i mean it's a plant right or maybe it's like caviar i could go for some caviar right now of course you pop it on your italian like something somewhere like a michelin star gelato like it's something that is like this isn't a part of like not only is it not part of your day-to-day it might not even part of your week your month or your year

so she's fantasizing about it now i'm thinking about caviar but i think everybody should reevaluate their relationship with alcohol but i do think that like going too far in the extreme of immediately being like seeking out resources when you haven't actually you are not dealing with dependency that of um sobriety specifically and like alcoholism and all of those things that content is written for people who are dealing with like diagnosed alcoholism and like addiction substance abuse and like chemical components of what that does to your brain and so when you go really far to that extreme there's actually not a lot of resources that you're going to relate to and then that can give people a false sense that they have a fine

relationship with alcohol so i think it's about re-evaluating it as a process not as like a cut and dry yeah yes or no thing yeah because like the answer can still be no but it's about why is the answer no okay next call hi megan and melissa i'm 24 she her and the other person in the story is 25 she her so basically i was the maid of honor in my friend's wedding don't worry she didn't pee on me it's not like that it's just a whole different level like type of drama she basically like tried to leave her party the night early like an early because she didn't want to drive in traffic the next day and she didn't want to like help clean anything and i told her that it was rude to leave when all her guests were there and she was leaving

at like 1 a.m so she wasn't even leaving like in the middle of day she's in a bad mood she just didn't want to drive in traffic the next day because it was a holiday weekend and no one wants to drive in traffic but okay so she like did that and then she was just like rude to me i could go into all the other details of this but that's not the point of this call the point of this call is I dropped out of her wedding we ended up getting in like an argument because she said that like I was a bad friend and then I accused her of being a bad friend because the only time she would contact me was for to talk about something for her wedding but like she didn't really value our friendships and I feel like she couldn't tell me anything about myself we've been

friends for over 10 years like that's why I was her maid of honor and like basically it just like all blew up and it was really stressful and it felt like a big friend breakup so because I dropped out of the wedding but I dropped out seven weeks before her wedding because I don't want to be in someone's wedding you have to write a nice speech about someone if they're not they don't value me as a friend and then they're going to be disrespectful of like my parents house that we stayed up up north and all this stuff so I dropped out of the wedding she's married now it's like two weeks after her wedding I am at my parents house and my parents got a wine basket from her thanking them like for letting her use the place up north like for her bachelorette party

because I didn't charge anyone for it or anything and I got a message from UPS saying I'm also getting a gift basket so I'm just gonna assume it's also from her but I don't even know what to do like I don't know my plan was to never speak to her again I didn't go to her wedding my parents and go to her wedding haven't talked to her since like seven weeks before wedding that I dropped out so beginning of September so yeah I don't really know what I should say my plan was to never speak to her again because the whole situation blew up it just felt like a breakup but yeah I love your advice I'm a Leo she's also a Leo center of attention long time listener literally been listening since the first episode so I'd love to hear from you guys and I can give you more details

that's the best song for another time candidly i would love more details yeah because right now i feel like she was under a lot of pressure from her wedding and you were there as part of the bridal party and it doesn't seem like you tried to make things easier for her with the wedding stuff going on yeah i think we need more details because like she wanted to leave okay that's not for me that's not that wouldn't have been an issue so for me my feel i i don't know if this is what the caller was feeling but like for me i feel like if i planned a bachelorette party and then the bride wants to leave at like 1 a.m to beat traffic i would be like wow you'd really like i might internalize that of thinking that like you didn't like this to

the point where you would rather drive home now at 1 a.m when this is like kind of feeling like oh this might feel like you might have felt like she really didn't have a good time and didn't enjoy that and like there's a lot of work that goes into like planning that kind of stuff but that's also like we don't know your friendship and how those dynamics are we don't know your friendship how the dynamics are was everyone planning on staying maybe she just didn't want to sleep there yeah and that's like I think that depending on a friend of mine I could know if someone did that if that was passive-aggressive if they were like I didn't have a good time versus like I just want to like I would not be offended if some friends did and I would definitely like

feel a little offended if other people did so like you know you know your friendship more how many people were there yeah did everybody have a bit yeah I mean I think it's I think wedding stuff is just is just hard and like no one kind of wins yeah me and my sister melanie got in a huge fight the day before her wedding yeah she pissed me off and every time i think about i'm still mad about it but we're great that's because there's just if you've known somebody that long you might have similar feelings no totally i just think also like bachelorette parties i think if something is really important to you about your wedding then and you have like if it needs to go a certain way for you to have a good time and you're not

just there for the experience of it like within reason I think then like you you need to be at the steering wheel of it but I think if you have really specific expectations and if it doesn't meet those expectations like you're going to be devastated or it's going to like there's a lot to live up to I don't think it's fair to put it on the other people who aren't getting married and so i think that like if she was being super unreasonable and like you felt like so under appreciated not only as like the maid of honor that you were like bending over backwards but it was that she wasn't even appreciating everything that you were doing and then on top of it was like being a really shitty friend and viewing you as like an employee essentially that you didn't even

feel like you were doing a good job that's i could see why a 10-year friendship would end for that but yeah i would love some more examples you said that like she was being a bad friend and then she said that you're being a bad friend i yeah i'd like to like what both of the reasonings you had were but yeah because i would be like if we're having trouble in our friendship or it doesn't seem like she's respecting me then i would say hey why don't we go out to dinner and we're not going to talk anything wedding yeah you know something like that i don't i just it seems like a lot of miscommunication here there's also like weddings do bring out the worst in people and like to what you were saying about like planning things i don't want anyone playing anything for

me like yeah because i'm very specific about what i like me my birthday every year yeah i'd actually you know i'd probably let you plan something for me but that's just because like you're very perceptive you know what i like and even if you didn't know what i like you're bougie and but i yeah but you're also like i think it has to be like you have to have a certain level of like we have comparable taste so i know that i kind of like like for your birthday i pick like five restaurants yes that's what i was literally thinking of that specifically know that you can eat these foods and you like these foods and and like you like an ambiance and a vibe that like I know that like your bottom of the barrel is more than enough for me like do it like it's that

kind of thing where I go I know that like you have within a threshold like but I also have a lot of other friends that like I know we we are similar enough that I know that like I wouldn't be asking you to plan something that you wouldn't enjoy and also that would then be like really hard for you to put yourself in my shoes yeah like I think that's the like if you're gonna have someone else planned for you i don't think it needs to be someone who knows you so well i think it needs to be someone who you pretty much have a pretty similar baseline of what you enjoy because you're asking a really fucking big favor from someone yeah and like you know what if you have to go out of your way to search for something that is so out of your wheelhouse that's just

so much more work but i will also say i think when you feel like someone is being a bad friend to you it's really hard to be a good friend to them so i think there's probably truth in like what you both said and like I've said that like when I've had friends who I'm like wow I feel like you're being a really shitty friend I can look and be like yeah I don't think I've been a good friend because I think I'm I'm reacting to the behavior I feel like I'm getting but you might be giving that behavior because you feel like you're reacting to behavior I gave first like whatever that is it happens I'm not gonna lie to you I think seven weeks from the wedding dropping out of the wedding i don't think it was the wrong choice to make it's mean it is mean i

don't think it means it's unwarranted or it wasn't again it wasn't the right thing to do but i think like you know acknowledging the fact that like i don't think you should have gone to the wedding i don't think you should have stayed in the bridal party but that was in her eyes it's not hard for her to paint you as a villain yeah i think brides get so snippy like yeah weeks before days before they're so snippy like i have never been in a wedding where the bride would just felt like she felt like everything was just coming down around her and the last few days i mean like seven weeks everything to them is just like about the wedding like that's all they think about and if you're not saying like this friendship is not working for me right now and not and you're not

communicating that things do not feel equal and you feel like you're doing more for them then let them know yeah it's not it's not going to get better closer to the wedding also like it's not going to get better closer to the wedding like it's just not and like i mean i've lain the wedding industrial complex with like you have all these people telling them like this is the biggest day of your life like you're the most important person over and over again and even like family members like all like everybody has a say in all of that and so when you're not with that like you have to know that like you're actually that you're the only voice yeah you're the minority there and so like you will become like othered in that situation and you know for the some people like

you can it's it's not to the level of extreme that it was with her and you can just deal with it but then other times like you can't but i don't know i mean you're talking to people who are massive ghosters and I don't think that if someone sends you a gift basket like if you can reflect on the situation you're like okay I didn't tell you all the details but like I know for a fact that like she was up like I was doing everything I could and she was like impossible to please and she was like such a like so horrible and so mean and like I like tried everything that I could and like I wouldn't wouldn't give up a 10-year friendship if I thought that like she valued me at all and like i'm so hurt and all of this stuff if that's the case eat the fucking gift basket and don't say

anything right like i i've had people who i stopped being friends with who like have like you know dropped by a care package and shit and i'm like a gift and just like yeah like it's that's on them like their their goal for that is to be seen yeah and like i'm or she might realize that she was being a massive cunt yeah so i think that you need to you need to reflect on like what is it that you want here like you don't have to forgive her like the gift basket is not like if this doesn't compel you to like miss her and feel like you do want to like rekindle or see what how this can work but like it'd have to be a pretty fucking good gift basket if she treated you like shit yeah i actually don't even think like it would have to be like nine edible arrangements

what else a massage uh-huh one of the salon one with the salon the the meat thing that we like when we're talking about oh a sausage yeah with like a really nice like one of those crackers that kind of looks like a mini loaf of bread caviar apparently fuzzy socks a winning powerball ticket mine said over there i lost somebody did win really yep yeah you don't have to do anything you don't but like really if you if you're over this friendship be over it and enjoy your basket if you want to still be friends enjoy your basket and then you know reach out yeah because a 10-year friendship like I think it's you know you don't want to end that lightly I don't think you did end that lightly I don't think it's something that you kind of just throw

away from like one sort of incident but um if this was super out of character i think that like you know giving yourself both like the opportunity to like grow and potentially see if there's a relationship moving forward but just eat the sausage all right we're gonna take another break we back no ghost no ghost we're back though i was about to say don't turn me on megan i'm complaining to hr hr yeah just put it in her file yeah i'll get you another binder i know there's so many pages yeah it's overflowing all right time for don't blame them now don't blame them everybody if you didn't know

is when one of you a listener will call in with your own advice pertaining to a call we had on a different episode so maybe if it's a your it's your profession so you know you have some intricate knowledge or you've dealt with it personally or you've been in close proximity to it you just have some fun facts or just strong feelings and you love the sound of your own voice which welcome to podcasting hi megan and melissa i'm calling for a don't blame them for actually today's episode called feeling misled on a date I'm calling regarding the caller who called about braiding their students hair and I just wanted to call to reiterate what Melissa said I am a fifth grade teacher and I would never consider braiding any of my students hair simply because I just would

never touch any of my students I understand that she feels like maybe this family has some backwards view about femininity and masculinity but honestly that is not a hill that I'm willing to die and willing to let my career die on because of something like this like Melissa said i think that you're in the wrong for touching the student at all and i don't know whether that student's parent was mad because it was a braid and it was feminine or if they were mad because you touched their child um you did not have consent to touch that child and i just wanted to call and kind of reinforce what melissa said here because that is just something you don't want to get yourself into, especially because you get in a lot of trouble. I don't know what the

policy is at your school, and I don't know how strict they are on it, but honestly, your rule of thumb should just be never touch a student. You just never know what the student can say about it, even if it has good intentions. You just don't know how a student might take the touch, even if something simple and innocent you just never know I'm really concerned about this especially because at my school actually my mentor that I work with or one of the mentors I work with he is under investigation right now for something very simple like this where there was no ill intentions but because students see things and maybe see it out of context they might take it the wrong

way and it could be your job on the line and I just don't want to see any actual good teachers get in a sticky situation like that but I just wanted to reinforce what Melissa said and don't trust students ever please even if you think the parents are in the wrong in this situation it's just something you shouldn't do don't ruin your career over something like this okay bye you were so close yeah I mean there was a first red flag when you said you don't know what a student can say about that like here's the thing yes dude like yes kids brains aren't like fully developed but you can't use the same analogy of men in the workforce saying they're not going to hire women because they

don't know what the woman's going to say about I can't talk to women at work because I don't know what they're going to say about it like yes kids brains aren't fully developed you know they're they might be projecting certain things like yeah kid might you know have some issues at home and might take an innocent touch as something meaning more but your arguments started to then dabble into not believing yeah person who's been touched yeah so yeah i don't think it's it's about like yeah don't touch a student because again like the it's not to prove a point about like gender binary this there's no you don't have much to stand on when you're touching a student no matter how innocently but it's not that you don't touch students because like people are

going to think it's not innocent like that's not the that becomes victim uh blaming and then you're not believing children specifically and that's a that's really bad yeah yeah so just don't touch people anyone you touch adults with consent but don't touch children yeah and even like you've got policies at school that like i always like those videos of like kindergarten teachers that like i'm sure they've got like they get parents signed off signed off on like you know we do on the first day of school or the day you walk through it it's like do you want to high five do you want to do a little dance do you want to and it's like giving people agency for the kind of relationship they want to have and also no there's no precedent for the next day so like

you get to choose yeah consent to something every single day and like that's done with parent approval as well as like school board approval and you know those outlines are there for a reason and they're not i don't mean to be callous they shouldn't be there to protect teachers from persecution or accusations they should be there to protect students yeah so i just think that like I'm a little alarmed about you talking about your mentor and that's really that's really alarming not believing kids because you it becomes people's not believing kids because their brains aren't fully developed and they're weaker and then that leads into not believing other people that we deem as more fragile and weak and that becomes women and people who present

femininely and people who are shorter people who are small like it just and then the other side of it is that people who we view as having power or are loud or confident can are also just aggressors so that's like a really slippery slope but i feel like you've already slid down okay all right well yep that's it that's our episode we hope you enjoyed if you haven't left a review go do it and go subscribe to the feed so you can hear all of our other podcasts we have obviously this one don't blame me and then tomorrow we have our little extra episode see you next tuesday where we catch up on the weekend what we did some fun things the weekend as in saturday and sunday yeah but then if you want to hear us actually talk about the weekend minus a couple letters on

thursday yes we did bring up the weekend on this week's episode of but am i wrong that goes up on thursday and then we read the results from but am i wrong on friday on our fisting friday so if you're still listening at this point go comment on our instagram the ghost emoji because melissa wants to have sex with ghosts because she's a little nasty we're an alien yeah whichever one you prefer who would you like to set melissa up with merman would you fuck a cent comment on ours what percentage of horse versus what percentage of man yeah okay uh to the review oh yeah i could not thrive without this podcast from page w 1026 five stars eminem never fell to make me laugh give me indirect tough love and overall comfort if you've ever needed advice on anything you are

in the right place also if you're new start listening from the beginning and listen to all the episodes you won't be disappointed love you guys that's so nice it started season two but whatever yeah i was about to say i mean if you're gonna i what i would recommend start with our most recent episode maybe what maybe that's like three or four and then go back to season two and start but like i would like yes the growth is great and like how we've changed our advice has changed it's great but like i need you to have a barometer of where we get to first before you're like i don't know if i agree with i'm we weren't problematic we just like and we learn more shit and like you know we're we go to therapy like we like we've grown up and learned on the

podcast and we've also learned a lot i mean like as two straight cis women we've learned a lot through the podcast as well that like we change the terminology we use and like you know our own experiences like after that one time that we said that you know using tinder as an app to make friends in a gay relationship and we said that is sketchy and then we were promptly educated and it was like no that's not true we were like we stand corrected apologies and everyone's like you're straight as show i'm like i it it is i mean our bad sorry yep that's that's what it is and like you know there's there's growth there's growth that comes but also definitely make sure you don't ever skip over the cammy crawford episode because yeah it's iconic anyways that

is it we hope you all enjoyed and if that review prompted you to leave a review follow that voice listen to that gut feeling that instinct you know what that is that is your manifestation and in order to manifest your hopes dreams and all of that money this is a part of it we got to leave a review there's like steps to take yeah you know yeah come on it's my ethical scam yeah uh-huh that's what i said uh-huh yeah for sure for sure okay we will see you all soon next time bye don't blame me is a production by me executive produced by melissa de monts and diamond and print productions edited by coco lawrence post-production sound by chris henry production assistance by melanie d watson music by ryan hunter and giacomo picasso