May 30, 2026
Brian Austin Green and Amanda Kloots Are Honest About What Divorce Taught Them
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RSS Feed TV host Amanda Kloots has gone through a divorce and experienced the loss of a spouse. In her chapter two, she’s discovering dating for the first time.
Amanda sits down with Brian Austin Green for an intimate conversation about what divorce taught them and how they navigated dating without bringing their previous relationship baggage with them.
Email us at: IDOPOD@iheartradio.com or call us at 844-4-I Do Pod (844-443-6763)
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00:00:13
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, this is Brian Austin Green and here we are. It's another episode of I Do, Part two and I am so thrilled today to be joined by a really incredible woman who I've been lucky enough to be friends with now for years. And she is fantastic. She's a television host, she's the founder of the supplements brand Proper. She is a mother, She's an incredible mother. Please join me in welcoming Amanda Klutes. Okay, So we were just talking about grief and the hard things that you go through in life and how those become this amazing catalyst for change. Like I've been through so much terrible stuff, Like I went through the divorce, I went through this uh neurological thing that I went through that I told you about that. So it's like all of these things where looking back on it, when I was in it, it sucked.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: When you're in those moments, you go, this is terrible. Yeah, what what purpose does this serve? Why am I going through this? I can now look back on all of those things and go, I wouldn't change any of them, as hard as they were. And I mean I, of course I'm speaking for myself. Yes, because I'm sure for you that's a that's a very different statement than it is for me.
00:01:37
Speaker 2: Nobody.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's those fucking it's the catalyst.
00:01:40
Speaker 3: My first marriage divorce, and that was the first time I ever like went into therapy, and I hated it. It was like talk therapy in this like room on thirty third in Madison Avenue, and it was like a couch and the therapist.
00:01:58
Speaker 1: What did you go into into therapy for?
00:02:01
Speaker 3: I think initially because I was thirty two Brian going through a divorce and everyone told me you should go to therapy.
00:02:10
Speaker 2: So I was like, oh, I guess you go to therapy. I'm going through divorce. I should go to therapy, Okay.
00:02:14
Speaker 3: And I actually really liked the woman. She was great, she really helped me. But I think I went like six times and then I was like I'm fine, I'm good, And maybe I was at the time, you know what I mean, Like I think in a weird way, I was because you know.
00:02:31
Speaker 1: What you were going in there for at that point, or were you just going because people told you you should.
00:02:37
Speaker 3: I think I was just going because people told me I should. Once I was in there, we started talking more about like my marriage and why it collapsed and how I can move forward.
00:02:49
Speaker 2: But I really.
00:02:51
Speaker 3: I didn't even let myself. I don't think learn from that therapy too much, you know what I mean. After six times, I was like, I'm good, and then I was, you know, fine, But since losing Nick and being on this journey now, I'm like literally doing so much work on myself. And I really don't think I would if I hadn't gone through that hard time for sure. And I know that sometimes people don't do that, you know what I mean, Like they don't go to the therapies. It's hard, right, It's hard to crack yourself open.
00:03:29
Speaker 2: That's not easy.
00:03:31
Speaker 3: But I am so fascinated by it and fascinated by how each one kind of leads to another and opens up different parts of yourself that you didn't even know you needed opened that I find it so fascinating.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: I feel like they're different stages of therapy. I think. I think a lot of times people go to therapy the first time because it's you feel this like release to just sit and point fingers at everybody that ever did anything wrong to you, and you're like, oh, I feel so much better. I hit a pillow and I did like I did those things, and I yelled and I got it all out, and yeah, oh I feel great. But then therapy gets hard because you have to get to a certain point. Truly, if you want to grow with therapy, you have to get to a point where you go, Okay, I've done all that. Now let me point at myself and go, Okay, what do I do? What things from when I was a kid? What things the red flags that I collected from these previous relationships and experiences and things. I don't want to carry those with me anymore into anything new with somebody else because they don't deserve those. Yes, but that's the work. That's the hard part to me. Okay.
00:04:43
Speaker 3: So I'm going to be very and I love that I get to talk to you about this today because this is my recent development with Amanda and how I can try to use this in forward movement with dating. Okay, So, since eighteen I moved to New York, I was taking care of myself. Then I started working on Broadway. I was taking care of myself. My first husband. We were so young, so poor. No one's taking care of anyone. You're just surviving.
00:05:12
Speaker 2: Then you get.
00:05:13
Speaker 3: Divorced, I had to take care of myself again. Then I start dating Nick again. We're so poor, we're both actors. We really, you know, don't have any chance to get our footing. And then I lose him, and again I have to take care of myself. Now I'm taking care of myself and my son. So I am innately a very very independent I'll just do it. I only trust myself. Why should I trust somebody else. They're gonna let me down. They're gonna let me down there. I know I can trust myself. I'm safe within myself. I know I can do it right. However with and this is where I need your advice. This therapist was telling me, like, okay, now, enter in a man. A man wants to be needed, wants to be desired, wants to help his woman, wants to be the hero. And I don't let him because I'm so used to doing everything myself and I need to try to find that balance. But it's really hard for me to trust that somebody will do it. And guess what, the second you let me down then inner, Amanda, it's like, see, I couldn't trust you. I'm just gonna have to do it myself again and it's so bad and so like that's my new crack in me that I'm really trying to fix.
00:06:34
Speaker 1: It's not first of all, it's not bad like what you to me. One of the things that's always impressed me about you is that you grind. You always have all of these things going that I know you've done on your own, and it is incredibly impressive because for anybody that feels like, God, I'm really tired and there's a lot going on, I don't know if I can commit to so many things. You, to me are the proof of like go fuck yourselves. You're being lazy, Like get off your ass and go do it what you're talking about now, in like trying to crack that pattern. That's that's a tough one because that, to me, in my opinion, that is that's that kind of blind trust that you need to go into something with. And I always, I always try and equate things back to my first relationship, and it's a that's an odd thing to say, but whenever I think of my first relationship, I was the most open at that point. I just loved like I had never been curt I'd never had my heart broken. I had like I had never felt let down by somebody that I I'd never loved that way before. And that is my reminder when I go into new things of going okay, as hard as it is, like do I want that experience? Do I want that feeling again? If I do, I have to go into stuff that way. Yeah, Like I have to put my guards down and my wall and I have to I have to admit that like those red flags and those things didn't come from this new person. This new person doesn't deserve any of that being put on them because they haven't done anything to deserve those things. But it's hard, it's so hard, Like it's really that is that like conscience, that conscious living thing where you have to sit in every moment and go, okay, here it is, here's the thing coming up. I don't want to do that anymore. So this is it's it's about choosing who you want to be compared to who you are. Who you are is who you've been made from past experiences and relationships and struggles and things. But you the only thing I think you have control over is the person you choose to be.
00:09:18
Speaker 2: Do you think that this is why relationships?
00:09:22
Speaker 3: As we get older are tough because you know everyone's coming in with their baggage, and it's really easy. Like it's super easy for me to when something goes wrong, not fight for it right because I know I can take care of myself.
00:09:41
Speaker 2: I have you.
00:09:45
Speaker 3: At my own job, I have my own money, I have my son, so like I can abort and I can be like I don't want to deal with this, But like, if you really care about that person, you have to put all of that aside and like trunch through the mud again with them, And that's tough.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: You have to decide what you want, Like do you want a relationship with someone where you share your life with them? If you do, yeah, you have to live consciously in those moments if you don't, which is totally fine. Yeah, Like if you make that choice of like, you know what, I'm gonna go it alone for a while until I meet somebody where I really feel like I don't have to put it any work because they're already on a path that our paths are similar and so it works. But you have to decide on your own what it is you want, even of course it is I know, and believe me, it's not lost on me. That it's for me to say it's it's easy for me to say it's not easy for me to do.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, none of this, none of it.
00:11:09
Speaker 1: Is easy, Like it's not. I you know when people talk about meditating and they talk about it like it's so easy, and I think that's the thing that is so hard for people outside of it is like, Okay, well you make it sound easy for you, but it's not easy for me. And it's like, well, you need to stop putting pressure on yourself for the situation to be the same as somebody else's experience, Like you need to live consciously in it and find the thing that works for you you. Meditating is just a stupid example, Like I could never do it. You know where my meditation is dy gardening, those things where I'm by myself and I'm doing stuff. I work out way more things in my own head at those points than I do trying to sit I can't. I can't do it. I cannot sit still garden and I like I'm all about which is it? Used to There was a part of me a while ago that was like this is embarrassing to talk about. Yeah, I love I love being on my own and doing those things now. It's actually it's really amazing that I get to share those things with Sharnas. So it's like, but that has been the experience with her.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: Like I was, Yeah, tell me a little bit about.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: There's nowhere in a place. I mean, I was newly divorced. I was nowhere in a place ready to actually be in a relationship.
00:12:41
Speaker 2: How newly divorced were you? I don't think I know these deals.
00:12:44
Speaker 1: I was a year and a half, but I mean I was. It was a fifteen year relationship. We were married for almost ten years.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, that's been a long time.
00:12:54
Speaker 1: A year and a half not a long time. I was in I was back in what was our family home before with the kids. Like I really had found I had really figured out how to handle having the kids on my own, and I was I was really feeling confident with it. I was good. I was like, oh, this, like, I can take care of three kids, I can be in the house, I can do the thing. I'm good, Like I've got this. There was nothing that worried me at all. And then my business manager was up at the house and I made her coffee and we were talking and she texted me as she was in the car driving back to the office, and she was like, I have a client that I think you should meet. I was like, this woman is not a matchmaker a gay She said, I have a client that I want you to meet. I was like, okay, like it was. It was intriguing just because I just never expected it, yeah at all. And then she ended up texting Sharna with the same thing, I have a client that I want you to meet. When I'm with him, here in my mid me of you. When I'm with you, you remind me of him, like I think you guys are. So we were both kind of intrigued. Sharna had been single for five years at this point wow, because she had been in these relationships that were failing in very similar ways. So she intelligently realized, like, I'm the common denominator in all of this. So I want to go in and I want to figure out what I do, what like why my pickers broken, what I'm looking for that's wrong, what you know, and what I should be looking for. I want to really find confidence just in being alone and being myself. So she did a lot of the same things that I did. She was much more in a place of like ready for a relationship than I was. We ended up having coffee and we talked for like six hours. Six I've never done that with anybody.
00:14:51
Speaker 2: Wow.
00:14:51
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, there was nothing sexual to it. It was during COVID, so it was kind of like you had to sit outside on the patio and it was that weird thing remember when you'd go and they'd go, Okay, you have a half an hour, and then you have to get up because we have other people that are waiting to sit down. Remember all that weird stuff. So we did. So we did that. We were like that was really amazing. And I was supposed to be at work and I ended up being late. She was supposed to be somewhere and ended up being late because we literally never even looked at our watches.
00:15:21
Speaker 3: When we were sitting You talked probably about anything and everything.
00:15:24
Speaker 1: We talked about our strong points as far as like what we had learned just in life. We talked about the things we were terrible at. We never put on the facade of like trying to be the best version of yourself you can be to impress somebody. Never and we did that, and then we were like, oh, we should do this again, and so two days later we went and had breakfast somewhere near her, and it was We talked for another four hours and the restaurant thanked God didn't kick us out, And it just like it was. It was this thing that I never saw coming because I really, at that point in life, made a choice of I am never again going to be so concerned about what somebody else thinks about me that I'm not myself that I turn those qualities off, and then I get lost in a relationship. But it's a it's there's there's a fear to it. There's kind of a blind trust in it. That's not any like, it's not an easy thing. I can't imagine for I can't imagine for you because you have made such a life of being independent and being fine on your own.
00:16:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's a hard thing to It's like it's beautiful and it's tough all at the same time, do you know what I mean?
00:16:52
Speaker 2: Like I love my little life with Elvis. I love our house.
00:16:57
Speaker 3: I love when we sit on the couch together and watch something on you know, a movie or something. We are this little pair and I love our little life. But I grew up in a family with five kids in you know, my mom and dad are still married fifty two years now. It's like I love having a partner and I love having a family, but now I'm so used to the opposite that it's hard to think of like going to that way now, you know what I mean. Like as much as I'll romanticize living in a house with somebody and having a bigger family or a combined family, I love my life how it is now too. So it's a really weird battle that you know, I play in my head.
00:17:49
Speaker 1: Ye told not to be the bearer of bad news. But the life that you're living right now is not going It's not a sustainable life. You and the and the partnership that you have with Elvis. He's going to grow up.
00:18:04
Speaker 2: No, he's not, I know.
00:18:08
Speaker 1: But I mean I know this because I have a twenty four year old and I now have a four year old, and I like kids. You have a certain amount of time with them where they're they are your partner and your best friend, but then they get to a certain point where you're not their best friend anymore. I know, they have new friends. How old is Elvis now?
00:18:26
Speaker 3: He's going to turn seven in two weeks.
00:18:30
Speaker 4: I know not to I know not to on that at all, but like, I have an almost almost ten year old, and it had like he's right at that age where friendships at school and all of that start taking over.
00:18:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just become way more important than they were before than his entire life has been. You up until this point, you've been his partner through it all, but he's been your partner also, And I think that's the difference between your kids being your partner and then your partner being your partner, your spouse like you, because that person is your partner through all of it. It's supposed to be through life. Yeah you're not. You're not worried about like, oh you're going to grow up or like that doesn't happen.
00:19:18
Speaker 3: I know you're right, and it's and and no, thank you for saying that, because I of course I think this way too. And I'm like, I know Elvis is going to, you know, keep getting older and not want me around as much.
00:19:33
Speaker 1: It's not that he's not going to want you around, it's that he's going to in a different way, different way, in what is truly a healthy way, Like you want him to be a healthy adult.
00:19:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: Want him to have an amazing relationship with you, which you've absolutely laid the groundwork for that, and you've bust your ass to do it, and fucking bravo to you for doing it. But then also you want him to be an adult that can function on his own because you I want him to be a good husband and a good father. And what that takes is then that's going to take all of his attention with his family to do that. Yeah, you know, and he's got to know in his mind and in his heart that you are always there, so he doesn't need to put the same amount of work into the relationship with you that is just there. Yeah, but that drastically changes things for you.
00:20:27
Speaker 2: I know, I know.
00:20:39
Speaker 1: How has it been dating for you since Nick, since you moved out here with Elvis. I'd like to walk us through that a little bit.
00:20:50
Speaker 3: It's well, in a weird way, I started dating for the first time at forty because my first marriage was very young. It was sort of like my first boyfriend too, and then that marriage ended and I met Nick right away, So for the first time, like dates, so.
00:21:07
Speaker 1: You didn't have to date, you were right.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: I never had to really date because again I was like in Broadway, I was in theater, so like the single men are rare, and I you know, so I didn't date in college because it was a musical theater school and so yeah, it was like bam bam. And so I'm now forty, single mother widow dating for the first time, Brian.
00:21:29
Speaker 2: In this city. I mean, welcome to the world.
00:21:33
Speaker 3: Like I was like, Yace, Yeah, you know, what is it? Like, I will say, like, sometimes it's really fun. Sometimes you have these like mini micro relationships and you're staying out till two o'clock in the morning having a blast, but then you know your mom the next morning, so you feel like you're living two lives.
00:21:54
Speaker 2: But in a weird way. It's fun.
00:21:56
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's super depressing, you know. Like I found Rayah the most pressing thing in the entire world. After six months, I got off of it.
00:22:03
Speaker 2: I couldn't do it.
00:22:04
Speaker 1: I've heard nothing but horror stories about Ryot.
00:22:06
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, everyone I met was a nice guy. I never met anyone that I had more than one date with, but it was but it was so depressing to me, like clicking on people, like I felt like I was grading people just based off of this video that they were showing. It made me feel like an awful person, like rating somebody when I'm a very like in person, chemistry person, I'm not somebody that like I have a type.
00:22:34
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't have a type.
00:22:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that made me feel like just crap, like rating somebody being like, oh, you're good enough for me to start talking to It felt weird. And then I think I would get so excited about a person if we had like good banter or something, and then when I would meet them in person, it was it wasn't what I had expected, and so I would leave feeling super depressed. And then on top of that, I leave depressed going they weren't who I thought. And then I would be like I shouldn't have to be doing this right now. I had it, figure it out. I was married, I had a husband, Like I why am I back in this pool in this situation, Like it's not because I'm a crazy lady, Like I am a normal person and I shouldn't have to be, you know, in this dating pool.
00:23:22
Speaker 2: Again, like had it? I had it. So it was like all this layers of emotion.
00:23:27
Speaker 1: I frustration, frustration.
00:23:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then again like some some highs of like this is exciting and fun. And I will say, now I'm at the point where I've learned that all of this dating has just taught me so much about myself and I love I love that. Like I look back on each of these, not the one dates, but like the guys that I would see, you know, for a little bit or have three month relationships with, they all taught me something Like For instance, like one guy was just like all we did was have fun in life, laugh and I was like, oh, you know what, Like I really need to have fun and laugh in my life, Like that's a key. One person was like the first dad I ever dated. I was like, oh, I really love dating a dad. Like he just gets it, like you know what I mean, Like that's a layer I think that in my life I kind of need now, like I need to date somebody that's.
00:24:20
Speaker 1: A father that understands it.
00:24:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, that gets it.
00:24:23
Speaker 3: So Like it's cool because I used to hate dating, and believe me, I still do in a weird way, but at least it's like shown me like these puzzle pieces that I need for my puzzle, you know what I mean. For Amanda which I didn't know at forty because I didn't have the experience, right, and most people get all that experience in their twenties and thirties, but I was married.
00:24:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I get it. Yeah. Yeah, So it's like, yeah, there was tons of things where it's like, God, I didn't experience any of this when I was younger, and now at this a I'm going through this like this doesn't.
00:25:02
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's at this age with kids, with kids and trauma.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: I had four kids. All of a sudden, I was single. I was like, oh my god, how am I going to do this? Okay, you know what I need to I'm so sorry, I have to do this. I need to stop this right here. We're gonna have to make this a two parter because this conversation is just way too good for one. So let's do that and then we'll see people next time.
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, this is Brian Austin Green and here we are. It's another episode of I Do, Part two and I am so thrilled today to be joined by a really incredible woman who I've been lucky enough to be friends with now for years. And she is fantastic. She's a television host, she's the founder of the supplements brand Proper. She is a mother, She's an incredible mother. Please join me in welcoming Amanda Klutes. Okay, So we were just talking about grief and the hard things that you go through in life and how those become this amazing catalyst for change. Like I've been through so much terrible stuff, Like I went through the divorce, I went through this uh neurological thing that I went through that I told you about that. So it's like all of these things where looking back on it, when I was in it, it sucked.
00:01:10
Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:01:10
Speaker 1: When you're in those moments, you go, this is terrible. Yeah, what what purpose does this serve? Why am I going through this? I can now look back on all of those things and go, I wouldn't change any of them, as hard as they were. And I mean I, of course I'm speaking for myself. Yes, because I'm sure for you that's a that's a very different statement than it is for me.
00:01:37
Speaker 2: Nobody.
00:01:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's those fucking it's the catalyst.
00:01:40
Speaker 3: My first marriage divorce, and that was the first time I ever like went into therapy, and I hated it. It was like talk therapy in this like room on thirty third in Madison Avenue, and it was like a couch and the therapist.
00:01:58
Speaker 1: What did you go into into therapy for?
00:02:01
Speaker 3: I think initially because I was thirty two Brian going through a divorce and everyone told me you should go to therapy.
00:02:10
Speaker 2: So I was like, oh, I guess you go to therapy. I'm going through divorce. I should go to therapy, Okay.
00:02:14
Speaker 3: And I actually really liked the woman. She was great, she really helped me. But I think I went like six times and then I was like I'm fine, I'm good, And maybe I was at the time, you know what I mean, Like I think in a weird way, I was because you know.
00:02:31
Speaker 1: What you were going in there for at that point, or were you just going because people told you you should.
00:02:37
Speaker 3: I think I was just going because people told me I should. Once I was in there, we started talking more about like my marriage and why it collapsed and how I can move forward.
00:02:49
Speaker 2: But I really.
00:02:51
Speaker 3: I didn't even let myself. I don't think learn from that therapy too much, you know what I mean. After six times, I was like, I'm good, and then I was, you know, fine, But since losing Nick and being on this journey now, I'm like literally doing so much work on myself. And I really don't think I would if I hadn't gone through that hard time for sure. And I know that sometimes people don't do that, you know what I mean, Like they don't go to the therapies. It's hard, right, It's hard to crack yourself open.
00:03:29
Speaker 2: That's not easy.
00:03:31
Speaker 3: But I am so fascinated by it and fascinated by how each one kind of leads to another and opens up different parts of yourself that you didn't even know you needed opened that I find it so fascinating.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: I feel like they're different stages of therapy. I think. I think a lot of times people go to therapy the first time because it's you feel this like release to just sit and point fingers at everybody that ever did anything wrong to you, and you're like, oh, I feel so much better. I hit a pillow and I did like I did those things, and I yelled and I got it all out, and yeah, oh I feel great. But then therapy gets hard because you have to get to a certain point. Truly, if you want to grow with therapy, you have to get to a point where you go, Okay, I've done all that. Now let me point at myself and go, Okay, what do I do? What things from when I was a kid? What things the red flags that I collected from these previous relationships and experiences and things. I don't want to carry those with me anymore into anything new with somebody else because they don't deserve those. Yes, but that's the work. That's the hard part to me. Okay.
00:04:43
Speaker 3: So I'm going to be very and I love that I get to talk to you about this today because this is my recent development with Amanda and how I can try to use this in forward movement with dating. Okay, So, since eighteen I moved to New York, I was taking care of myself. Then I started working on Broadway. I was taking care of myself. My first husband. We were so young, so poor. No one's taking care of anyone. You're just surviving.
00:05:12
Speaker 2: Then you get.
00:05:13
Speaker 3: Divorced, I had to take care of myself again. Then I start dating Nick again. We're so poor, we're both actors. We really, you know, don't have any chance to get our footing. And then I lose him, and again I have to take care of myself. Now I'm taking care of myself and my son. So I am innately a very very independent I'll just do it. I only trust myself. Why should I trust somebody else. They're gonna let me down. They're gonna let me down there. I know I can trust myself. I'm safe within myself. I know I can do it right. However with and this is where I need your advice. This therapist was telling me, like, okay, now, enter in a man. A man wants to be needed, wants to be desired, wants to help his woman, wants to be the hero. And I don't let him because I'm so used to doing everything myself and I need to try to find that balance. But it's really hard for me to trust that somebody will do it. And guess what, the second you let me down then inner, Amanda, it's like, see, I couldn't trust you. I'm just gonna have to do it myself again and it's so bad and so like that's my new crack in me that I'm really trying to fix.
00:06:34
Speaker 1: It's not first of all, it's not bad like what you to me. One of the things that's always impressed me about you is that you grind. You always have all of these things going that I know you've done on your own, and it is incredibly impressive because for anybody that feels like, God, I'm really tired and there's a lot going on, I don't know if I can commit to so many things. You, to me are the proof of like go fuck yourselves. You're being lazy, Like get off your ass and go do it what you're talking about now, in like trying to crack that pattern. That's that's a tough one because that, to me, in my opinion, that is that's that kind of blind trust that you need to go into something with. And I always, I always try and equate things back to my first relationship, and it's a that's an odd thing to say, but whenever I think of my first relationship, I was the most open at that point. I just loved like I had never been curt I'd never had my heart broken. I had like I had never felt let down by somebody that I I'd never loved that way before. And that is my reminder when I go into new things of going okay, as hard as it is, like do I want that experience? Do I want that feeling again? If I do, I have to go into stuff that way. Yeah, Like I have to put my guards down and my wall and I have to I have to admit that like those red flags and those things didn't come from this new person. This new person doesn't deserve any of that being put on them because they haven't done anything to deserve those things. But it's hard, it's so hard, Like it's really that is that like conscience, that conscious living thing where you have to sit in every moment and go, okay, here it is, here's the thing coming up. I don't want to do that anymore. So this is it's it's about choosing who you want to be compared to who you are. Who you are is who you've been made from past experiences and relationships and struggles and things. But you the only thing I think you have control over is the person you choose to be.
00:09:18
Speaker 2: Do you think that this is why relationships?
00:09:22
Speaker 3: As we get older are tough because you know everyone's coming in with their baggage, and it's really easy. Like it's super easy for me to when something goes wrong, not fight for it right because I know I can take care of myself.
00:09:41
Speaker 2: I have you.
00:09:45
Speaker 3: At my own job, I have my own money, I have my son, so like I can abort and I can be like I don't want to deal with this, But like, if you really care about that person, you have to put all of that aside and like trunch through the mud again with them, And that's tough.
00:10:14
Speaker 1: You have to decide what you want, Like do you want a relationship with someone where you share your life with them? If you do, yeah, you have to live consciously in those moments if you don't, which is totally fine. Yeah, Like if you make that choice of like, you know what, I'm gonna go it alone for a while until I meet somebody where I really feel like I don't have to put it any work because they're already on a path that our paths are similar and so it works. But you have to decide on your own what it is you want, even of course it is I know, and believe me, it's not lost on me. That it's for me to say it's it's easy for me to say it's not easy for me to do.
00:11:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, none of this, none of it.
00:11:09
Speaker 1: Is easy, Like it's not. I you know when people talk about meditating and they talk about it like it's so easy, and I think that's the thing that is so hard for people outside of it is like, Okay, well you make it sound easy for you, but it's not easy for me. And it's like, well, you need to stop putting pressure on yourself for the situation to be the same as somebody else's experience, Like you need to live consciously in it and find the thing that works for you you. Meditating is just a stupid example, Like I could never do it. You know where my meditation is dy gardening, those things where I'm by myself and I'm doing stuff. I work out way more things in my own head at those points than I do trying to sit I can't. I can't do it. I cannot sit still garden and I like I'm all about which is it? Used to There was a part of me a while ago that was like this is embarrassing to talk about. Yeah, I love I love being on my own and doing those things now. It's actually it's really amazing that I get to share those things with Sharnas. So it's like, but that has been the experience with her.
00:12:29
Speaker 2: Like I was, Yeah, tell me a little bit about.
00:12:33
Speaker 1: There's nowhere in a place. I mean, I was newly divorced. I was nowhere in a place ready to actually be in a relationship.
00:12:41
Speaker 2: How newly divorced were you? I don't think I know these deals.
00:12:44
Speaker 1: I was a year and a half, but I mean I was. It was a fifteen year relationship. We were married for almost ten years.
00:12:51
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, that's been a long time.
00:12:54
Speaker 1: A year and a half not a long time. I was in I was back in what was our family home before with the kids. Like I really had found I had really figured out how to handle having the kids on my own, and I was I was really feeling confident with it. I was good. I was like, oh, this, like, I can take care of three kids, I can be in the house, I can do the thing. I'm good, Like I've got this. There was nothing that worried me at all. And then my business manager was up at the house and I made her coffee and we were talking and she texted me as she was in the car driving back to the office, and she was like, I have a client that I think you should meet. I was like, this woman is not a matchmaker a gay She said, I have a client that I want you to meet. I was like, okay, like it was. It was intriguing just because I just never expected it, yeah at all. And then she ended up texting Sharna with the same thing, I have a client that I want you to meet. When I'm with him, here in my mid me of you. When I'm with you, you remind me of him, like I think you guys are. So we were both kind of intrigued. Sharna had been single for five years at this point wow, because she had been in these relationships that were failing in very similar ways. So she intelligently realized, like, I'm the common denominator in all of this. So I want to go in and I want to figure out what I do, what like why my pickers broken, what I'm looking for that's wrong, what you know, and what I should be looking for. I want to really find confidence just in being alone and being myself. So she did a lot of the same things that I did. She was much more in a place of like ready for a relationship than I was. We ended up having coffee and we talked for like six hours. Six I've never done that with anybody.
00:14:51
Speaker 2: Wow.
00:14:51
Speaker 1: I was like, wow, there was nothing sexual to it. It was during COVID, so it was kind of like you had to sit outside on the patio and it was that weird thing remember when you'd go and they'd go, Okay, you have a half an hour, and then you have to get up because we have other people that are waiting to sit down. Remember all that weird stuff. So we did. So we did that. We were like that was really amazing. And I was supposed to be at work and I ended up being late. She was supposed to be somewhere and ended up being late because we literally never even looked at our watches.
00:15:21
Speaker 3: When we were sitting You talked probably about anything and everything.
00:15:24
Speaker 1: We talked about our strong points as far as like what we had learned just in life. We talked about the things we were terrible at. We never put on the facade of like trying to be the best version of yourself you can be to impress somebody. Never and we did that, and then we were like, oh, we should do this again, and so two days later we went and had breakfast somewhere near her, and it was We talked for another four hours and the restaurant thanked God didn't kick us out, And it just like it was. It was this thing that I never saw coming because I really, at that point in life, made a choice of I am never again going to be so concerned about what somebody else thinks about me that I'm not myself that I turn those qualities off, and then I get lost in a relationship. But it's a it's there's there's a fear to it. There's kind of a blind trust in it. That's not any like, it's not an easy thing. I can't imagine for I can't imagine for you because you have made such a life of being independent and being fine on your own.
00:16:40
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's a hard thing to It's like it's beautiful and it's tough all at the same time, do you know what I mean?
00:16:52
Speaker 2: Like I love my little life with Elvis. I love our house.
00:16:57
Speaker 3: I love when we sit on the couch together and watch something on you know, a movie or something. We are this little pair and I love our little life. But I grew up in a family with five kids in you know, my mom and dad are still married fifty two years now. It's like I love having a partner and I love having a family, but now I'm so used to the opposite that it's hard to think of like going to that way now, you know what I mean. Like as much as I'll romanticize living in a house with somebody and having a bigger family or a combined family, I love my life how it is now too. So it's a really weird battle that you know, I play in my head.
00:17:49
Speaker 1: Ye told not to be the bearer of bad news. But the life that you're living right now is not going It's not a sustainable life. You and the and the partnership that you have with Elvis. He's going to grow up.
00:18:04
Speaker 2: No, he's not, I know.
00:18:08
Speaker 1: But I mean I know this because I have a twenty four year old and I now have a four year old, and I like kids. You have a certain amount of time with them where they're they are your partner and your best friend, but then they get to a certain point where you're not their best friend anymore. I know, they have new friends. How old is Elvis now?
00:18:26
Speaker 3: He's going to turn seven in two weeks.
00:18:30
Speaker 4: I know not to I know not to on that at all, but like, I have an almost almost ten year old, and it had like he's right at that age where friendships at school and all of that start taking over.
00:18:48
Speaker 1: Yeah, they just become way more important than they were before than his entire life has been. You up until this point, you've been his partner through it all, but he's been your partner also, And I think that's the difference between your kids being your partner and then your partner being your partner, your spouse like you, because that person is your partner through all of it. It's supposed to be through life. Yeah you're not. You're not worried about like, oh you're going to grow up or like that doesn't happen.
00:19:18
Speaker 3: I know you're right, and it's and and no, thank you for saying that, because I of course I think this way too. And I'm like, I know Elvis is going to, you know, keep getting older and not want me around as much.
00:19:33
Speaker 1: It's not that he's not going to want you around, it's that he's going to in a different way, different way, in what is truly a healthy way, Like you want him to be a healthy adult.
00:19:43
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you.
00:19:44
Speaker 1: Want him to have an amazing relationship with you, which you've absolutely laid the groundwork for that, and you've bust your ass to do it, and fucking bravo to you for doing it. But then also you want him to be an adult that can function on his own because you I want him to be a good husband and a good father. And what that takes is then that's going to take all of his attention with his family to do that. Yeah, you know, and he's got to know in his mind and in his heart that you are always there, so he doesn't need to put the same amount of work into the relationship with you that is just there. Yeah, but that drastically changes things for you.
00:20:27
Speaker 2: I know, I know.
00:20:39
Speaker 1: How has it been dating for you since Nick, since you moved out here with Elvis. I'd like to walk us through that a little bit.
00:20:50
Speaker 3: It's well, in a weird way, I started dating for the first time at forty because my first marriage was very young. It was sort of like my first boyfriend too, and then that marriage ended and I met Nick right away, So for the first time, like dates, so.
00:21:07
Speaker 1: You didn't have to date, you were right.
00:21:09
Speaker 3: I never had to really date because again I was like in Broadway, I was in theater, so like the single men are rare, and I you know, so I didn't date in college because it was a musical theater school and so yeah, it was like bam bam. And so I'm now forty, single mother widow dating for the first time, Brian.
00:21:29
Speaker 2: In this city. I mean, welcome to the world.
00:21:33
Speaker 3: Like I was like, Yace, Yeah, you know, what is it? Like, I will say, like, sometimes it's really fun. Sometimes you have these like mini micro relationships and you're staying out till two o'clock in the morning having a blast, but then you know your mom the next morning, so you feel like you're living two lives.
00:21:54
Speaker 2: But in a weird way. It's fun.
00:21:56
Speaker 3: Sometimes it's super depressing, you know. Like I found Rayah the most pressing thing in the entire world. After six months, I got off of it.
00:22:03
Speaker 2: I couldn't do it.
00:22:04
Speaker 1: I've heard nothing but horror stories about Ryot.
00:22:06
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, everyone I met was a nice guy. I never met anyone that I had more than one date with, but it was but it was so depressing to me, like clicking on people, like I felt like I was grading people just based off of this video that they were showing. It made me feel like an awful person, like rating somebody when I'm a very like in person, chemistry person, I'm not somebody that like I have a type.
00:22:34
Speaker 2: I don't. I don't have a type.
00:22:35
Speaker 3: Yeah, so that made me feel like just crap, like rating somebody being like, oh, you're good enough for me to start talking to It felt weird. And then I think I would get so excited about a person if we had like good banter or something, and then when I would meet them in person, it was it wasn't what I had expected, and so I would leave feeling super depressed. And then on top of that, I leave depressed going they weren't who I thought. And then I would be like I shouldn't have to be doing this right now. I had it, figure it out. I was married, I had a husband, Like I why am I back in this pool in this situation, Like it's not because I'm a crazy lady, Like I am a normal person and I shouldn't have to be, you know, in this dating pool.
00:23:22
Speaker 2: Again, like had it? I had it. So it was like all this layers of emotion.
00:23:27
Speaker 1: I frustration, frustration.
00:23:29
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then again like some some highs of like this is exciting and fun. And I will say, now I'm at the point where I've learned that all of this dating has just taught me so much about myself and I love I love that. Like I look back on each of these, not the one dates, but like the guys that I would see, you know, for a little bit or have three month relationships with, they all taught me something Like For instance, like one guy was just like all we did was have fun in life, laugh and I was like, oh, you know what, Like I really need to have fun and laugh in my life, Like that's a key. One person was like the first dad I ever dated. I was like, oh, I really love dating a dad. Like he just gets it, like you know what I mean, Like that's a layer I think that in my life I kind of need now, like I need to date somebody that's.
00:24:20
Speaker 1: A father that understands it.
00:24:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, that gets it.
00:24:23
Speaker 3: So Like it's cool because I used to hate dating, and believe me, I still do in a weird way, but at least it's like shown me like these puzzle pieces that I need for my puzzle, you know what I mean. For Amanda which I didn't know at forty because I didn't have the experience, right, and most people get all that experience in their twenties and thirties, but I was married.
00:24:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know, I get it. Yeah. Yeah, So it's like, yeah, there was tons of things where it's like, God, I didn't experience any of this when I was younger, and now at this a I'm going through this like this doesn't.
00:25:02
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's at this age with kids, with kids and trauma.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: I had four kids. All of a sudden, I was single. I was like, oh my god, how am I going to do this? Okay, you know what I need to I'm so sorry, I have to do this. I need to stop this right here. We're gonna have to make this a two parter because this conversation is just way too good for one. So let's do that and then we'll see people next time.