The Jordan Harbinger Show - 62: How to Get over Your Significant Other’s Colorful Dating History | Feedback Friday

Episode Date: June 29, 2018

Jordan (@JordanHarbinger) and Jason (@jpdef) are back to banter every week and take your comments and questions for Feedback Friday on The Jordan Harbinger Show! If you want us to answer your question, register your feedback, or tell your story on one of our upcoming weekly Feedback Friday episodes, drop us a line at [e-mail]. Now, let's dive in! On This Week's Feedback Friday, We Discuss: Hollywood: gross as it ever was! Do you ever feel threatened or outright disgusted when you think of your significant other's "colorful" dating history? If you've got a cleavage-staring problem, you might benefit from the eye color drill and this listener's feedback. Does crowdsourcing the work of creative professionals devalue their time? How do you express empathy and support for someone who never follows your advice -- even though the consequences usually prove such advice is consistently sound? You can't force old friends you care about to make positive changes in their lives, but do you have to put up with them if they're unrepentantly insufferable? How do busy people find time to relax? Why on Earth would you get into a workplace relationship? How do you do Internet research on people you'd like to meet without feeling like a stalker? Where do you draw the line to give the benefit of the doubt by reaching out and giving, versus spending more time trying to engage with someone who doesn't care? Recommendation of the Week: Bluegrass Covers Spotify Playlist Shoutout to American Dream University! Have any questions, comments, or stories you'd like to share with us? Drop us a line at [e-mail]! Connect with Jordan on Twitter at @JordanHarbinger and Instagram at @jordanharbinger. Connect with Jason on Twitter at @jpdef and Instagram at @JPD, and check out his other show: Grumpy Old Geeks. Sign up for Six-Minute Networking -- our free networking and relationship development mini course -- at jordanharbinger.com/course!  Like this show? Please leave us a review here -- even one sentence helps! Consider leaving your Twitter handle so we can thank you personally! Full show notes and resources can be found here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This episode is sponsored in part by Conspiruality Podcast. You know how I'm always talking about critical thinking and spotting manipulation? Well, there's a podcast that's all about dismantling new age cults, wellness grifters, and conspiracy mad yogis, basically the wild overlap of spirituality and misinformation. It's called the Conspiruality Podcast. The hosts, a journalist, cult researcher, and a philosophical skeptic, dive deep into how this stuff spreads, from Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's dystopian vision of the future to how former leftists get pulled into far-right conspiracies.

An interesting episode to check out is called Speaking Truth to Goop, where Jen Gunter breaks down the pseudoscience behind the wellness industry in a way that is super entertaining and eye-opening. It's sharp, funny, and makes you a lot harder to fool, which, if you listen to this show, you know I'm all about that. From exploring cults to analyzing our cultural and political landscape, the Conspiratuality Podcast will help you stay informed against misinformation and resist fear tactics.

Find Conspirality on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever you do. get your podcasts. Welcome to Feedback Friday. I'm your host, Jordan Harbinger. I'm here with producer Jason DeFilippo. Here on the Jordan Harbinger show, we love having conversations with our fascinating guests. In fact, this week we had Todd Cashin talking about how your bad or negative feelings can actually be helpful. So in other words, happiness makes you worse at certain things and anger makes you better at certain things. That's kind of cool. That was really fascinating. And he's a real psychologist, not some sort of self-help guy that's like, it's okay to be angry. So we had a lot of science and a lot of practicals. And we had, I guess he'd call him celebrity fitness trainer,

although that seems cheesy. He is a really rad dude, Sean T, talking about, well, a lot of stories from his life what he's learned through this crazy journey that he's been on. And frankly, the dude's just really positive and fun. And I had a really good conversation with him as well. So that's what you can enjoy this week, or that's what you may have missed earlier this week, if you haven't checked out the show. Of course, our primary mission is to pass along these guests' wisdom and our experiences and insights to you. In other words, the real purpose of the show is to have conversations directly with you. And that's what we're going to do today here on Feedback Friday. You can reach us at Friday at Jordan Harbinger.com. If you can keep them concise, that makes things

a lot easier for us. I always feel bad when somebody writes like six paragraphs or four or three, and we just can't do it. You know, it's because those are the generally the most serious problems, but we just can't do it. So if you can keep them concise, I'd rather have to ask you for more detail than get too much. Does that make sense, Jason? Oh, yes, it does, definitely to me.

Yeah, yeah. So I just want to make sure that people out there, you know, I'll ask you for more if I need more, you know, but I probably don't need the whole backstory. Because generally, there's three or four lines. It's like Dr. Drew and I were talking about. There's three or four things that people say, and you go, this is 99.9% chance this is what's going on.

The rest of it is just kind of filler or smokescreen or fluff or not important or not relevant at all, in fact. And so that's kind of what we want to avoid if possible. And I just got back from L.A. where I did interview Adam Carolla and Dr. Drew. And I got to tell you, Jason, you moved back to L.A. Hollywood is just even grosser than I remember. And Beverly Hills is just even more weird than it's ever been, I think. I'm going to stay on this side of the hill, man. Definitely.

Yeah, you need mountains between you and whatever's going on over there. Because I'll tell you, like, Hollywood, I just, it was just gross. I mean, they were literally like needles all over the place. I mean, it's never, it was never nice when I lived there, but it seems worse now for some reason. And Beverly Hills was a trip, man, because that's where the podcast, one studio is, so I usually stay around there. And I just, you'd see, just stuff you see there is funny as heck. I was in a Starbucks. This guy walks in.

He's got like a Mohawk that's true. very small. So it's almost like just the top of his head has hair, but it's like straight up, kind of like a spike. And he's got all these crazy light up gloves on with LEDs, like he's at a rave. And he's got a backpack with an anime character on it. This is an adult, by the way, like an old, guy older than me. And he's got all these crazy clothes on. And he sits down and I'm like, okay, cool. You know, Beverly Hills, not the usual deal. And I've seen him around there for whatever reason. And he goes and sits down at Starbucks, sits next to me, busts out a laptop, an external keyboard, a giant mouse, another monitor that's like a portable setup deal,

and he just starts gaming hardcore. Like at Starbucks. At Starbucks. Yeah. And I'm like, you know, good on you. You know, if you live in a place where you can't do that or like this is your pre or post work ritual. But it was just such a, I was like looking at an alien setting something up in a Starbucks.

It was like a full spread. And I thought like, you know, props to you for just not giving any. shits whatsoever about like spreading out on three tables and then you see a guy who walks in and he's clearly 65 years old and his girlfriend is 25 maybe or 30 and is like a supermodel and you just go that's that's like a you know Paul McCartney or something or some some like equally like if I knew anything about who celebrities were I'd be like oh there's that guy because they kind of look familiar and you're like, oh, it's a guy from the voice or something, but I don't know, no. Yeah, that's the thing about Beverly Hills is when you see somebody and they kind of remind

you of somebody, it usually is that person. Yeah, I think, I can't remember who it was. I think it might have been Mike Rowe said something like he was at some cafe and a guy was like, hey, I love your stuff. And he's like, yeah, thanks, man, you look familiar. And the guy's like, I don't know. And they were talking. And it turned out to be like the guy from Metallica.

Oh, nice. Oh, I grew up listening to Metallica, and he's like, and so he then he felt dumb. And I'm like, well, at least if celebrities feel dumb not recognizing each other, I guess I don't feel dumb not knowing who they are. Yeah, yeah. There's no shame in that. No. In fact, it's kind of nice because if I knew who everybody was, I'd have to question my life choices. That's for sure.

You mean you don't wake up to TMZ every morning? No, not by choice. I don't, no, we have a cable box and it's not even plugged in. And people go, why do you have that? and I go, because it came with internet. Yeah, it makes the internet cheaper. Exactly. Ridiculous. All right, Jason, what's the first thing out of the mailbag?

I'd like some advice on an issue that I've had for a while and won't seem to go away. My beautiful new brides, haem, colorful history with men. Colorful. She was in a loveless marriage before me and had an affair with a neighbor. She told me about it shortly after we started dating. She owned it and didn't really make excuses. After her divorce, she had a pretty active, quote-unquote, dating life, which included random hookups and flings.

Whenever these thoughts cross my mind, I become disgusted with her and I feel threatened. Somehow her promiscuous past correlates to her cheating on me, no matter how irrational that may be. The problem is, I was no saint during my single days. Lots of one-night stands over here, I tell you. She's a wonderful, loving woman that means the world to me, and when I feel this way, I sometimes take jabs that can be hurtful. Do you have any advice on how to change my way of thinking? Help.

Hopelessly hypocritical. so hopelessly hypocritical don't feel don't beat yourself up about this too much definitely the jabs that can be hurtful thing that can cause a problem i'll get to that in a minute but one thing i want to dispense with first you got to make sure that you're worried about her quote unquote colorful past and not kind of questioning her ability to stay faithful because look you're you're going to have all these issues with any girl that you're with having been with other guys like what What was your ex-boyfriend? Like, that's pretty normal in the beginning in the honeymoon phase.

But you need to make sure that you're not secretly more bothered by her infidelity than you might be letting on because that is something that I would question initially for a while until further trust was built. Again, after the honeymoon phase. But you're married. Literally honeymoon. Yeah, literally the honeymoon phase. So I'm not sure how long they've been together. I'm not sure if she got married, that loveless marriage before, was she really young? you know, and then she had to get all this stuff out of her system after that.

That's all kind of normal and goes away over time. I had the same thing happen with me. You know, I met Jen. And for the first few months, I was like, I can't believe. And she and I both were like that with each other. And I asked Susan Winter, who you might know from the show, a good friend of mine, she's one of those like super soul Oprah love and relationship coaches. And she was like, yeah, completely normal.

Don't worry about it. Linda Carroll also, you know, I bow. bounces off her and she was just like, yeah, completely normal. Everyone goes through this. So this has to do with the honeymoon phase of the relationship. It'll flare up here and there, but it always goes away. If this lasts more than a few months, just like an erection after four hours, go see a doctor, namely a therapist, and figure out what's going on because this stuff, to be very clear,

always has to do with our own insecurities as men and as humans. it is inherently unreasonable, although it is hardwired. So you're not being unreasonable, you're not being, you're not wrong, but you're also not right. Does that make sense, Jason? Like, it's your biology, like, kicking at you, but you can't stop it, but you also can't go ahead and act on it because what are you going to do? Shame your wife because she met guys before you, she knew you existed. That's ridiculous, right? This all has to do with mate retention strategies.

It has to do with reproductive biology. We'll get David Buss on here talking about this at some point because that kind of stuff is pretty interesting. In fact, DeWena Wells talked about this a little bit with her jealousy episode. So if you haven't listened to that, go back and check that out. What you have to be careful of as well is not allowing this to affect the way you treat your fiancé slash wife. Because once you're a girlfriend, if you're listening to this and you're applying this to yourself. Because once you start punishing her for things that she did months or years ago, that's when things start going downhill. She's not some whore because she had a boyfriend before you or even a hookups before you, right?

And guys will often feel that way, even if we know better because it's just emotion-based reasoning. And often this stuff will mask itself like, oh, I'm just in a bad mood or I'm short-tempered or you're picking on her for something else. Like, ah, you're always late, but really you're just like, you're a whore, right? Because you're like, you're mad about it. And you can't do that. Even though the underlying reason is that you're jealous, you might not even notice it yourself. you might be mad up the issues. Oh, it's leaving the damn dishes in the sink.

Like, you've got to be careful you're not projecting or transferring. And since we know logically this stuff is silly, we often won't admit this to ourselves, which then has the further effect of camouflaging the real problem and making it harder to solve. Does that make sense, Jason? Absolutely. Yeah. Like, oh, I can't possibly be mad about this dumb thing. So I'm going to pick something else that seems more reasonable for me to be angry about and be angry about that.

And she's like, why are you so mad that I let me? left the recycling bin lid off. And you're like, because it's a horrible person. The old toothpaste tube transference. Right, the toothpaste tube transference. You know, you always leave the cap off the toothpaste. I want a divorce. It's like, wait, what's happening here?

What's the real problem? Because we don't want to say, I'm jealous about your high school or a college boyfriend because I'm massively insecure, but I'm not normally. This is just a thing. You know, it makes us feel dumb. It's your biology tricking you into making yourself feel bad. and then it can really screw up your relationship. So what I will say is just get through it by realizing that this is your feelings and you don't have to listen to them in this case.

But make sure you're not also dealing with some unresolved stuff with her infidelity. Like make sure you guys have hashed that out and that you're not actually worried about that at some level. Sounds good to me. Oh, and by the way, for the guy with the cleavage staring problem from last week. The booby snatcher. The booby snatcher, yeah. Hi, Jordan. did the cleavage guy mention in his letter if he looks men in the eye? He may have an issue with

looking people in the eye in general and with ladies he finds something else to look at. If it's the case that he doesn't look anyone in the eye, he can work on that. I know I'm not often comfortable looking people in the eye all the time, so I will look near their eyes, like their forehead so as not to be off-putting. Hope this helps him and thanks for everything you do. Thanks. Focus on the forehead. So I'm going to weigh in here as well. That's a great idea and a good observation. If you are having trouble looking people in the eyes doesn't mean you have to be looking at their cleavage but if you're having trouble looking people in the eyes for any reason like you're shy i dealt with

this for years i remember my friends female friends generally in high school going hey i just got to tell you this jordan you never look anyone in the eye it's a little weird and i go yeah i'm like shy i can't do it and they go yeah you know it's weird because a lot of us girls were talking about it and all these girls like you but we all pointed out that we think that that's weird and I think if he fixed that, you'd have like a million girlfriends. And I went, great, crap, I cannot fix that, right? So, because it was like, great. It's kind of like saying, hey, if you just learn to fly, you are going to be so much better at basketball.

Like, okay, great, thanks, you know, just jump higher and be taller while I'm at it. So what we've come up with in the meantime, now I wish I had this in high school, but I came up with this, you know, friggin 10, 15 years later. This is the eye color drill. what you do look people in the eye just long enough to get their eye color so instead of you thinking look them in the eye which seems sort of intimidating and then you end up going oh no I have psycho eyes I'm staring at their eyes just look them in the eye long enough to get their eye color and then you can look away and that's just enough for people to notice that you've looked them in the eye in a friendly normal non-threatening way and then you can move on with your life and what you'll find is

that by getting people's eye color and just noting it oh blue eyes did that you'll start to be less intimidated looking people in the eye and your eye contact the amount of your eye contact will become more normal until you can start looking people in the eye without going is this too much is this not enough oh my god what are you thinking crap i haven't been listening to what they said because i'm looking at the eye crap i'm still not listening you know that was what was going on in my head just note their eye color and then you can look all over the place uh looking down makes you look a little submissive but don't worry about that yet just note the eye color and get on with a conversation and people won't think god you never look me in the eye it's so weird

My dad's a salesman. And when I was in high school, he taught me how to look people in the eye because I was a, you know, shoegazer and I would never like talk to him. And he's like, this is what you do. And the trick he told me is just like, look at one eye. And after a couple seconds, look at the other eye. And you can drift back to the other eye. And you can just look off to the side for a second. And go back to one eye, go to the other, lather rinse, repeat.

And that will give you the, you know, the illusion that you're, you're not staring them down. You're still, your eyes are moving, but you're still making eye contact. and it's not in a forceful, creepy way that's going to turn them off because he's selling people, so he needs to look at them, but he needs to do it in a way that makes them comfortable. And that's the trick that he taught me. Ah, interesting. I like that one, too. So you can do both of these. Try both. Give them a shot. You're listening to The Jordan Harbinger Show, and this is Feedback Friday. Stick around and we'll get right back to the show after these important messages. Thank you for listening and supporting the Jordan Harbinger Show.

To learn more about our sponsors, visit Jordan Harbinger, Thank you, www.com, slash advertisers. And don't forget to check out our Alexa skill. Go to Jordan Harbinger.com slash Alexa or search for Jordan Harbinger in the Alexa app. Now let's get back to your questions on Feedback Friday. All right, next out of the bag. Hello, I'm a fairly new listener, and I love the show and respect you as a person. Uh-oh, that doesn't sound good.

That never starts the beginning of a nice letter. I'll tell you that. I was listening to Feedback Friday and noticed you had an ad for a crowdsourced design service. Well, I'm not here to tell you how to run your show. I would like you to know how a professional designer might perceive sites like the one you were advertising. You wouldn't ask any other professional to work for free. So why do creative professionals time get little to no value? I just think it's a service built on exploitation, more akin to gambling on the creative professionals part than a fair business transaction.

Keep up the good work, no free rides. So I'm not sure I agree with this. If I don't use the work because it's not what I want on design crowd, for example, I don't pay for it. If I like it and I use it, I pay for it. So using crowdsource design, it isn't getting work for free. It's having people audition for a job just like any actor, a singer, a performer. If you want to sell me your work based on a portfolio, that's fine. But why not give me a choice as to whether I feel you can do the work that I want, right?

I've hired loads of designers who had great portfolios. only to find out that the one I saw that I liked was a collaboration they did, or it took a lot longer than what I paid for. So if I want that kind of design, I got to pay more. Or they're just not inspired to do what I want them to do. So now I've paid them, but I don't like what they do, and I'm out all that money. With Design Crowd, I can see if the designer is even interested in the project and interested in the design. I'm not doubting that great artists might resent something like Design Crowd just as professional voiceover actors like myself. we don't use voice one, two, three, and we kind of resent that as well because it makes our job

harder in terms of the competition. There's more competition out there for the low end. And what this has done has made the landscape more competitive, of course, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's done so in a way that actually makes it, quote, unquote, impossible for good designers to make a living. A low end project on design crowd can be a few hundred bucks, but a higher end project can be something like 700 bucks and I just I don't believe maybe I'm delusional here I don't buy that 700 bucks isn't enough for a designer to want to create something for me I'm just not sure I believe that it just seems

like that's a lot of dough for something that might take the better part of a day depending on the design I mean I guarantee you the design I picked did not take a whole day or even half a day because they did the the initial design on spec what's more once I find a designer that that I like, I bookmark them and they do a ton of other work for me down the line because they've essentially already got the job just like any other designer. So in that respect, something like Design Crowd brings clients to new designers so they don't have to market themselves and they get clients they otherwise would not have had. And I didn't mean to turn this into a sponsor spot for Design Crowd, but now it kind of just doesn't make sense not to tell people how to get started

with them. So shamelessly, DesignCrowd.com slash Jordan is where you can do that. But I'll tell you, we paid over 700 bucks. I do understand no free rides point here, but I just, I'm not totally convinced. See, what you're not addressing here, Jordan, is the work of all the other designers who spent their time working on your project only to have it rejected. For every one designer that you are picking, there are probably, you know, 50 other designers who spent, you know, a couple hours trying to woo you. And that's not a portfolio review. That's them working for you for free to then get picked. And there's a huge agreement in the professional design community that spec work or it's called speculative work is pretty evil and unethical.

But here's the deal. No one is forcing those designers to join and pitch on the jobs on the site. So some of them are using it to hone their skills and some are using it to build a portfolio of paid work when they do get picked. But I agree. It's not an ideal situation for a pretty tough, crowded industry. But what it comes down to for me is that if you feel like the site is unethical, don't use it.

I have a few links in the show notes that will talk about the spec work situation as it pertains to designers, but it's like, I don't take Uber because I don't agree with it, but people like to drive for Uber every day. And it's one of, I look at it as that situation, but I can see the argument from the professional designer's point of view that people are working for free and actually not getting anything back. Because a lot of times their work will just get stolen because there are no contracts in place between you and the people who are pitching because a lot of people's work does get, you know, they do get stolen. Like someone will pay for the lowest, option on the site and say, oh, this guy is going to do it for, you know, $20.

This guy over here would have wanted $100 for it. So I'm going to take the $20 one just so I pay the site. And then I'm going to take the design from the $100 guy and just use that or have it redone by somebody else for cheap. There's a lot of that going on. That's crappy. Yeah, like if I took the, because I was going to say it's watermarked, but if I took the watermarked and I was like, hey, can you do this but for like $50?

Some designer would be like, yeah, I don't have the right plug in to make it look like it's wet and I'm like I don't care and they're like cool here's the 80% version of that for one-tenth of the price and they're like great thanks yeah see that's crappy that's a lot of that going on yeah I never you know I just I guess I didn't think of it like that yeah if you're stealing you're you're a jerk but I just feel like a lot of the designs we got were they clearly had this sort of template and then they typed my name into it and then they maybe like ran a filter over it and they're like hey if you want a nicer version of this, buy it. And I would imagine that most of them took a few minutes to do. That's what a lot of people have done. They started to automate the process because they're

not going to spend a lot of time because they do get ripped off quite a bit. Yeah. But it's a slippery slope. You know, when you find somebody good on one of these sites, you do definitely bookmark them and keep them and use them again in the future because they match your style and your, you know, design aesthetic. Yeah, I agree there. And look, I won't do, I'll do voiceover auditions a bunch and I don't get picked. But they don't take my work and then steal it, though. You know, that they wouldn't do. I would sue them.

Yeah, that's the unique nature of design. Since it's visual, you have to kind of see it. And once you see it, you can copy it. Oh, interesting counterpoint there. All right, next up. Dear Jordan and Jason, I've been with my husband for about 10 years and married for six. At the start of the relationship, I had really low confidence and self-esteem. I didn't really know myself, and I put him on a pedestal.

I considered him my Yoda, and he genuinely helped me become more purposeful, introspective, and independent, but always made me feel like I didn't quite match up to him. A few years ago, I finally decided to take control of my life and quit my job to pursue something more meaningful. I desperately wanted to move to another city that had more opportunities for the both of us, especially in the long run. When I got a job there, he encouraged me to go and assured me he would follow. But six months in, he still hadn't looked for a single job. He said he wasn't sure there was much opportunity for him there. and he didn't feel confident banking on my skills and my paltry salary. Eventually, I quit that job and returned home.

At this point, I started a business. He supported me financially, but constantly doubted me. I taught myself everything about business from scratch, consuming every book, course, and podcast, including yours. In the process, I grew even more, but somehow my husband went the opposite way, being stuck in a dead-end job where he's grossly undervalued. It's now been two years when my business has started to take off. I'm still not making enough money to take a salary, and I'm still financial.

supported by my husband, but things are looking up. My business partner moved to the city where I was before, and I travel there a few times a month. I'm trying again to convince my husband to make a move, but he's still resistant to change, even though he knows it's a good opportunity for me. Plus, he hates his job, has alienated himself from all our friends as no interests or passions or no concrete reasons to stay put. I know he's depressed, but he doesn't believe it and won't seek help. He won't read, listen to podcasts, or do anything to let outside perspectives in because he believes he can think away his problems. I feel horrible saying this, but I don't know how much longer I can stick around.

I can't respect him because he won't help himself or let anyone else help him. And this constant turmoil is affecting my work, which affects my relationship with my business partner. My career is important to me, and I don't think our marriage will survive this time around if my husband doesn't make an honest effort to move. Am I being horribly unfair to him? Signed, desperately seeking a male perspective. Yikes. This is such a tough one because this just does not look, this does not sound good. This can be a huge problem. First of all, you need to get a marriage and family therapist ASAP. If he won't do that, and even if you will, frankly, I mean, you're going to have to lay down the law. Therapy is not a choice for him at this point. You have to be very frank in your feelings and your intentions. It's unfair to surprise him. by just leaving or filing for divorce randomly, waking up one name me and like, I don't love

you anymore, you're a loser. You're like, don't do that, right? He needs to know you're there to support him. But if he won't do anything to make his life better, your patience is going to run thin. It already is. And in the end, clearly you care about him. I admire that. So lighting a fire under his ass by telling him that long term, you're not going to stick

around if he doesn't at least work on the problem. You're actually doing him a favor. You're not going to say, look, if you don't get happy immediately, I'm leaving you, right? But you've got to say, look, if you're going through a hard time, you know, I'm here to support you. But if you're not going to support yourself, if you're not even going to try to fix this, if this isn't even something that interests you at all in getting handled, you know, that's something that we're going to have to figure out because I'm not, I'm not down for that. I'm not down for this.

I'm not going to stick around with somebody who's depressed and complaining all the time and won't lift a finger. When I was in college, this is a similar situation, but not nearly as severe. I had a roommate, great guy, happily married with kids now to a great woman, great family, everything. I love this guy still. He was terrible with women. I mean, he was the worst that I knew that was actually even still interested at all in trying. You know what I mean, Jason? Like, there's those guys that are bad, but they're like, I give up.

And then there's guys that are bad, but they're like still chasing. He was that. And he would go, I like this girl. what should I do? She has a party tonight. I didn't get invited. I'm going to show up. She has a boyfriend.

I'm going to go there at like 1 a.m. and tell her that I like her, even though it's at his house. And I'm like, don't do that. Here's 11,000 reasons why that's a terrible idea. And it's going to be a disaster. And he was just like, don't do that. I don't know.

I need a second opinion. And then everyone in the house is like, don't do that. Here's a thousand more reasons why this is really bad. And he would leave anyway. and our roommates and I are like, count down to when he calls us because he's getting his ass kicked

or like, you know, got locked out and his keys are in the house and like they're, you know, they won't let him back in, you know, just all these disastrous things. And every time he would come back and go, that was not a good idea. I should not have done that.

My situation is so much worse now. It's never, and he would never follow our advice and he would always do this bad, just horrible, horrible things. Like, I'm going to confess my love for this girl on Valentine's day and send her three dozen roses

and a bunch of chimes. chocolates in front of all of her friends, but she doesn't know why exist. Like all kinds of stuff like this. Eventually, he just, and he never listened to our advice. Eventually, we said, you're not allowed, every time he would pipe up about some girl, you're not allowed to ask us for advice if you're going to ignore it and then go do the opposite and make it worse. And eventually he stopped asking us for advice because he would do this bad stuff.

And then after a while, he would go, you know what? you guys have always been right about this. Can I ask you advice? And we would go only if you were going to apply it. And he's like, I promise I will. And then he finally started to listen because we just wouldn't suffer it because he wanted to hear what he wanted to hear. This again, not the same situation, but you need to be very frank because you need to tell

him, look, I can't support you if you're going to constantly shoot yourself in the foot by neglecting yourself, neglecting your needs. because I'm being our relationship and myself are also being harmed inside of what you're doing. And he probably does not realize this because he's in the middle of it right now, if that makes sense. Like he is in the thick of it. And so he can't see what's actually going on. And it probably sucks. You know, there's no chance that this feels good for him either.

So I have empathy, but I also don't think you need to sacrifice yourself for somebody who's just not going to take the problem seriously enough to do something. something about it. Yeah, I feel bad for him because he supported her financially through this whole process of her building her business and then, you know, at the very end, then he's still got these problems and then she's going to cut bait and run because of just his issues that are fixable. Everything there is fixable. So, yeah. She's in his tough position for sure. What I will also say is bear in mind that as soon as you bring this up, what he's going to do is say, I can't believe it. I supported you this whole time and blah, blah, blah, blah. Like, he's going to come after you. with that. So be aware that he's going to try to make you sound ingratful somehow or something

like this, right? He's going to, that's going to happen. That is going to happen. So you have to be careful with that because don't be surprised when he goes immediately super emotional about this, because that's, that's going to be the first go-to and sort of point of drama. So be prepared for that. We'll be right back with more feedback Friday after these really short, but extremely necessary announcements. Thanks for listening and supporting the Jordan Harbinger Show. Your support keeps us on the air. And for a list of all the discounts from our amazing sponsors,

please visit jordanharbinger.com slash advertisers. And if you'd be so kind, please drop us a nice rating and review in iTunes or your podcast player of choice. It really helps us out. And if you want some tips on how to do that, head on over to jordanharbinger.com slash subscribe. Now for the conclusion of Feedback Friday.

All right, next up. Hi, Jordan and Jason. I'm having some issues with a friend I re-engaged with after losing touch with after high school. When our friendship restarted, we were both on the same page, jobs that we loved, but we're having a hard time with our egotistic bosses and living the single life on our own in Los Angeles. There came a point where we were both fed up with the bad bosses, moved on to different companies, and also stopped dating guys that were emotionally unavailable. We were at a good place where we were constantly building each other up. As life threw curveballs at us, I feel like I've adapted a better mentality by being more self-aware and stopped with the pity parties. As for my friend, I feel like she's been spiraling into this bad habit of in consideration,

overthinking, regularly throwing pity parties, and has an unhealthy dependency on others to make her feel better or sway her decisions. She's constantly making up scenarios in her head about what ifs, creating an emotional roller coaster for herself, and anyone else who gets involved with her day-to-day thoughts. She also doesn't take into consideration on how she's always late or overbooks herself and disregards how another person would feel for her doing so. When confronted, she laughs it off constantly, rolls her eyes and says, That's just how I am. A few days ago, she mentioned she saw her doctor and has been recently diagnosed with anxiety

and depression. She was prescribed meds, but is scared to take them because she's paranoid she'll get dependent on them. Having been diagnosed myself a while back, I advised her maybe, be taking them would help her chemically get back on track and reassured her that I'm here for her. I know I can't necessarily force her to get to a point where she actually starts facing her directly, but was wondering if there were any tips or strategies to help or motivate her. Any ideas on how to approach her with my concerns, especially if she puts up a front towards me. It's been almost four years of this and I'm not sure if I should cut this friendship off and fade away or really

continue working on it. Anything would honestly help. Love the new show. Sincerely concerned friend. Yikes. Okay. Four years. That's a lot. That is a long time, yes. That is a very long time to put up with anything like that, frankly.

That is, ugh. All right. So, man, what I would do, first of all, I admire how you care about your friend. That is so nice of you. Not even, not nice. That is so admirable, caring, and supportive of your friend. you that that sort of demands that I acknowledge that. However, you cannot force people to change at all. You don't have to ditch your friend, but it seems like you need to set some boundaries here.

In fact, it seems like you already have because your friend stopped dumping on you, which is great. Being dependent on medication sucks, but so does being an insufferable person. You can't really say, well, you know, she's on medication, so I have to deal with all this terrible thing that she's dealing with. And I understand she doesn't want to be hooked on meds, but at some point, what's hurting her more here? Her mindset, her depression, you can get on the meds, work on yourself, and then wean off of them with the help of a doctor. This is possible and should only, to be clear, be done with doctor's supervision. You can only give people a hand, but if they won't take it, that's on them. You are not required to suffer with your friends or

family. You are not. Encourage her to see a therapist, not just a pill pusher, by the because otherwise she'll get a doctor that's like, yeah, here's some ad event, see you later, and then she'll just be on those things forever. You need to see a therapist who will prescribe, you know, a month's worth, along with real therapy and then try to work through it so that she doesn't need them. That way she's going to get real help, not just medication. So you're going to help her get the tools and then apply them, or the doctor or therapist will help her get the tools and then apply them, more importantly.

And if she won't do this, you should just limit contact with her, unfortunately. I'm sorry to say, but again, you don't owe it to anyone to go down the same toilet that they demand they flush themselves into. It's not necessarily her fault that she's depressed and has anxiety now. It only becomes blameworthy if she has other options and will not take them. And even then, I have a lot of sympathy for folks like that because you can't read the label when you're inside the jar, but you are not required to stuff yourself inside that same jar, regardless of how much history you have with someone. All right, next up. Hi, Jordan, Jason and Jen. I'm struggling with taking time for myself. I work 60 to 70 hours a week, and on top of that, I'm working on self-publishing a book. I work out every day for an hour, which definitely helps, but I find it hard to sit back and relax. And when I do find time to sit back, I can't relax. I even feel guilty because I'm not being productive in ticking off items on my to-do list. You all strike me as people who stay very busy. Do you have any advice on how to ease up? Thanks again and keep up the good work. Kind regards.

Max can't relax. All right, Max, so here's what I got for you. Yes, we keep very busy. Do I have advice on how to ease up? Not so much. But you don't have to sit still to relax. That's something that took me years to realize. You do not have to sit there and do nothing to relax.

Find an activity that you enjoy, like walking outside, listening to podcasts and reading audiobook, something like that. That's what I do. I walk around outside. I read. It's show prep, but it's still relaxing enough. And it's also just productive enough that it's, doesn't give me the guilt that I would have, say, sitting on my couch and playing some iPhone

game for three hours, which I also do sometimes, right? Or a little Xbox or whatever. You know, there's some guilt attached to that type of thing. But if you need to relax during the day, go for a walk, get some reading done. Also, documentaries on Netflix do the same for me. Try some of those. That's what we have the recommendation of the week always is usually a documentary. that kind of stuff really it keeps me engaged enough where I feel like I'm getting something done but is relaxing enough for me to recharge a little. I'd also say buy a big old dog. You really don't have a choice but to take time for yourself and the pooch because you've got to go out for walks.

And you get a damn fine companion in the process and you can listen to audiobooks while you're out for walks. And even better get two dogs so they can keep each other company when you're stuck at work. That's how I relax. All right. Next up. Hello, Jordan and Jason. Over the last month of Feedback Fridays, it seems like there's, there's been a lot of issues relating to relationships that were formed at work. I find myself yelling at the podcast app.

Why on earth did you get into a workplace relationship? Because it seems like a huge risk. That being said, I'm really interested in dating someone I work with, but have resisted the urge to pursue it. We're very flirtatious, share a lot in common, and I'm pretty sure the interest is reciprocated. But my job is great. I'm paid well, have a recent promotion,

like my coworkers, and get many benefits from working there. At what point does it make sense to say to hell with the risks and just go for it? I'll probably have many more jobs in my life, but if I truly think this is someone worth dating, could I be holding myself back? Thanks for everything you do and would really appreciate your feedback on dating in the workplace. Thanks, I don't date coworkers? So literally never do this. No, no, never.

It is not worth it. If you can't resist doing it, then fine. But chances are this is going to blow up in your face. You could date successfully for a year, even. And then it blows up and now you work together. There's plenty of fish in the sea. There are plenty of jobs. If you're cool changing jobs, go ahead and risk it by trying to date someone at work.

Just be damn sure that you're making the right decision. Or, you know, just don't do it at all. That's my advice. You can always make friends with them. You can keep them in that sort of circle for a while where you're furthering your relationship with them for a while. And that sort of allows you to test things a little bit. But once you start dating someone at work, man, it's just, you know it's. a bad idea. You've seen it shake out here on the show. You've seen it happen to your friends. It's just

never, ever, ever, ever, ever a good idea, period. How many success stories have we had on Feedback Friday about dating in the workplace? Yeah, right? Count them up. Come on. Count them up. You don't need any fingers. Sheesh. Don't do it. Next. Jordan, first off, I've been a long-time fan of your show and have been listening to you for years. I'm not sure how a podcast makes money by giving all the free advice that you do on your show, but just know that you have added an immense amount of value to my life as well as many others. Keep doing what you do best. And a little aside here, we make money by our valued listeners checking out our awesome sponsors at Jordan Harbinger.com slash advertisers. True story. Back to the letter. After listening to the interview with Alex

Benayan today, one of the things he mentioned to get a mentor was to do some research on them and see what value you can bring to them, i.e., they see themselves in you or just might be going through a rough patch like divorce and could use some uplifting component to their lives. Do you have a good way of going about this. I know we can Google and find out a lot about people nowadays, but the captivating stuff might be harder to find, like what their favorite hobby is or what might be going on in their lives. How would you suggest finding some of these things out without coming off as a stalker, especially when it's a cold approach? Devoted listener, scared to be a stalker. So I would talk to them and pay attention to their work. Ryan Holiday had a great example

of this. He was interested in Robert Green's work, the author Robert Green. I've been on the show, a friend of mine, really great writer. And he was just paying attention to him on social media, paying attention to his work. And then I think somewhere somehow, possibly on social, he had found that Robert Green was having trouble with his Wikipedia. Somebody was probably editing things or putting in misinformation or whatever. And he said, oh, I know how this works. I can help you with it. Robert said, great.

You know, so he figured out how to solve this problem for him and handled it. And, you know, look, even I was having a ton of. a damn trouble with my Wikipedia. Some jerkface editor started getting into an edit war with someone else on my page and then they tried to delete it. Then they ended up like keeping it after all those debate. This is a pain, right? So find these pain points come up with a plan to solve those pain points and then propose that plan to the person. That's what Ryan did. And you just basically have to be around long enough using critical thinking skills to find what it is that is causing that person some pain points or creating an issue and then solve it. That's how you initially generate

that trust. So you don't have to say like, I want to be mentored by you. That'll get people to run the other way. But if you say something like, hey, I heard that you're having trouble with this. Maybe I can solve this for you. That is so much more useful. But you have to be careful. Make sure you're only offering something that you are fairly competent with because what you don't want to do is go, oh yeah, I've heard of Wikipedia. I kind of know how this works. I'm going to handle this for you. And then you go and make the problem worse or you fail to solve it because that's the trick with something like Wikipedia. go, oh yeah, I just wrote a new article for you and I didn't cite anything and I didn't follow the guidelines. And then it gets deleted and I'm like, you know what? Don't ever, you know, get away from me. You just made this so much worse. So you've got to be careful with that, but the opportunity is there and most people won't even see it. That's the best way to do that.

So it requires a little bit of time. It requires a little bit of skill and critical thinking, but it's very doable. It is very doable. You just have to figure out how you can add value. And sometimes that takes a little bit of sniffing around. All right, last but not least. Hey, Jay and Jay. A while back, I volunteered to help a connection out with the project. I met with their team and they seemed excited for the services I was offering. These services typically cost into thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars.

But soon it was quite apparent that they didn't know what they wanted. After a few frustrating months, they barely had things in order, but I had moved on to keep my sanity. This ties into my problem, but first. More recently, I've been checking in with weak ties, a key takeaway from level one on Advanced Human Dynamics.com, where some of my connections, will happily re-engage while others will flat out ignore my messages. That Facebook message red indicator is definitely a double-edged sword. I definitely want to assume the best-case scenario rather than the worst case,

but this is where the problem lies. Where do you draw the line to give the benefit of the doubt by reaching out and giving versus spending more time trying to engage with someone who doesn't care? Thanks, gents. Give or no give? So that is quite frustrating. Not to mention, that's just rude. You know, if people aren't going to reply, I don't get why people do that.

Just freaking say yes or no. It's not that hard. Someone's taken the time out of their day to reach out to you. Yuck. I mean, come on, people. Get it together. Those people, I'm going to go ahead and say those aren't the kind of people who are going to be a really good contact for you or relationship for you if they cannot even be bothered to reply. Now, granted, some requests are so dense that I just ignore them, but it's so rare.

It's so, so rare. The problem is you can't scale this way. If you're sending messages and you keep hitting them up and you keep hitting them up, just move on and cut your losses. However, if the connection was good in the past and then fell off, I would just call it out. I say things like, hey, I can see my message has been read. So if what I'm offering isn't useful to you, I'd love to know that as well. Or perhaps there's another method of communication you prefer instead of Facebook Messenger. What that usually does I've found is get people to go, oh, I'm so sorry.

I, you know, I saw this last one while I was driving or, yeah, you know what, I've really never used Messenger. Can you just email me? That is a way to get them to feel like the a-hole that they're being for just ignoring your message. Or genuinely, if they maybe didn't see it, but if you followed up two or three times and they're not answering you, but you can see they read it, call it out. They don't deserve any sort of free pass for ignoring you. And if you want to know what Jared's talking about to re-engage those dormant weak ties, check out advancedhumanidynamics.com, We have a course there where I teach my methods for systemizing outreach, how I keep in touch with thousands of people regularly, how I develop and deepen relationships with influencers and just my friends, family, those around me. That's how I've kept my network going and how I've developed, in part, how I've developed my network over the past 10 years, advancedhumandynamics.com slash level one.

And that'll be linked here in the show notes as well. And it's free and there's no like, oh, if you want the real secret, click, you know, we don't have that. It's just a free set of videos. So enjoy that. Recommendation of the week. I found this fun whimsical playlist on Spotify called Bluegrass covers. Jason, this is kind of funny because it's a little, it is a little bit ridiculous in some ways, but that's what makes it really fun. It's good for kids.

It's funny. These are bluegrass genre music covers of things like Snoop Dog tracks or like, oh, man, you name it. It'll be like hip-hop, R&B, top four. and they're all played on the banjo and the fiddle and the singers are kind of really, really just into it and funny. I like it a lot. And I really, really recommend this for walking around, working, relaxing. It's just a fun way to get some stuff done.

And you're not listening to danceable stuff, really, but you're really enjoying the music, but it's not enough to keep you, it's not enough to distract you from what you're actually trying to do. So I dig that. Bluegrass covers. It's a Spotify playlist. Now, I used to listen to a band called Iron Horse. I found them because they did a Metallica cover album called Fade to Bluegrass,

which was one of the best albums I ever. I listened to it on the Muni when I was working at Technorati in San Francisco. I listened to it every day. It just put me in a great mood. And so if you're looking for a good band who does metal covers, and they do a bunch of other stuff, but Iron Horse is the band. There's another YouTube video that I'm going to put in the show notes called ACDC's Thunderc by this band called, Stephen Seagulls, it's awesome. It's just a lot of fun. It always puts a smile on my face to hear

metal done to bluegrass. I don't know why. Yeah, because it's totally, the juxtaposition is what does it. It is funny. Yeah. All right, hope you all enjoyed that. I want to thank everyone that wrote in this week. Don't forget, you can email us Friday at jordanharbinger.com. Get your questions answered on the air. We're happy to keep you anonymous. We always, always do that. You don't have to ask, you know, we always, always, always keep you anonymous. A link to the show notes for this episode can be found at jordan harbinger.com. Quick shout out to American Dream University. This is a charity I work with to help veterans readjust to civilian life, get things moving

for them in their businesses. If you're looking for a good charity to support, check them out, American DreamU, the letter U.org, American DreamU.org. We'll link that in the show notes. I'm on Instagram and Twitter at Jordan Harbinger. It's a great way to engage with the show. And where are you, Jay? Tell them what to find you.

I'm on Instagram at JPD, Twitter as JPD, and you can check out my other podcast, grumpy old geeks, and all those links are up at my personal site at jpd.me. Keep sending in those questions to Friday at jordanharbinger.com. Remember to keep them concise, if you can. It makes things a lot easier for us. Share the show with those you love and even those you don't. We've got a lot more in the pipeline. We are very excited to bring it to you. And in the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you listen. And we'll see you next time. This episode is sponsored in part by What Was That Like Podcast. If you're looking for a new show to add to your rotation,

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