How Do You Pick Right Relationships? | Facebook Walk With Reid And Allison
Reid: Hello Facebook! It’s Reid Mihalko from https://reidaboutsex.com/
Allison: And Allison Moon from http://girlsex101.com/
Reid: So one thing, let us know if you can hear us. I think I fixed the mic. I’ve I realized why it was low the other day and today we’re going blackberry picking. Hence, it’s to inspire the topic how do you pick the right relationship? Which sounds silly but I think it
Allison: This way?
Reid: it’s going to make sense. No, we’re going this way. So again, we’re on the train tracks
Allison: Not on the train tracks. We are next to the train tracks.
Reid: We are next to the train tracks and it’s noisy because the BART just went by. So can you hear us and where are you listening in from? There are blackberry bushes a humongous ones. Hang on. Do you see all that green there? Those were all blackberries and so we’re going to….to eat some and to pick some and then I’m doing low carbs right now so I realized ah blackberries have a lot of carbs.
Allison: No…no…no
Reid: But actually they kind of don’t ‘coz they’re filled with fiber.
Allison: Yup.
Reid: And fiber is not a carb. It’s not an effective carb. I think it’s the lingo
Allison: Oh, wow. They are ripe.
Reid: Look. Look. Look it’s the blackberry cam
Allison: It’s not that all the blackberry
Reid: See? See? Hang on. I can’t get in. It’s all…they’re…they are all protected. There you go. Is that it? Can you see? Can’t see them yet. Gosh, darn it.
Allison: Here
Reid: Here you go. Oh, wait, no? No? Where can I show you? I have to show you the blackberries. There we go. Here we go. Here we go. Now, ah! There are thorns. Can you see them? Goddamn it.
Allison: It’s the camera
Reid: Well, it’s like I can’t…oh, here we go…here we go. I should have brought gloves. I’m sorry. Can you see them now? Can you see the blackberries now? They are here. They’re looking delicious. Sun-ripened and warmed. They can hear us. Okay, that’s good.
Allison: Good.
Reid: Alright. So, we’re going to start picking berries here. We’re probably going to wash most of them.
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: They’re…they….they look a little a
Allison: Hubble pee?
Reid: A little maybe they’ve got like a
Allison: Hubble pee
Reid: No, don’t say that. It’s not the right word. Animal critter pee dust from the highway. So, I just realized this is not going to look great at all. This is going to be a horrible film because it’s just us picking things. One of
Allison: We don’t have that move very much at this time.
Reid: Oh, there’s a spider on it or a ladybug. Alright, let’s…alright let’s stand in the shade
Allison: Okay
Reid: And give advice and then we can eat things. Alright here and there! So what kind of advice do you have for picking a good relationship? How….how did…how did you know to pick me?
Allison: Well, this is actually a kind of a deeper cut. I was hoping to work up to this but since you asked, I find that having a type can help with dating. Having types can help with dating. It can help to build profiles if you’re going to date online, talking specifically about what you’re interested in but I find it’s best to not hue to carefully to the type because oftentimes, the real good stuff comes in packages you don’t necessarily expect.
Reid: Oh, maybe like a berry bushes by the railroad tracks?
Allison: Sure.
Reid: Sure.
Allison: So, in my….again, I talked about this the other day but I was a lesbian for many…many years before I met Reid. Reid didn’t make me not a lesbian but I did start to reevaluate my what I consider to be my type which was women because I found a man who spoke to my soul and heart in a way that not really any man had before.
Reid: Yeah but….okay
Allison: What?
Reid: But that’s a that sounds like it’s less about gender and more about relationship like the kind of relationship that I was looking for and my life values and the things that I wanted to create and experience in my world and then also my roommate habits. We’re all a good fit for you because if…if it had been a woman or you know somebody who is gender queer or something like that who fit all of the nooks and crannies of what was a good fit for you
Allison: Yeah but that doesn’t mean…
Reid: Than…than it would’ve
Allison: that’s it’s not a gender thing in that if I had…if I had hued to what I thought was the only gender I liked, I wouldn’t have given myself permission to fall in love with you. So your gender was incredibly important and at the same time if….if I found a woman or somebody of gender non-conforming person of any identity that had all what you had, if you that if the package of you have just happened it could be in a different form, I probably would have fallen for that person too but the fact is, I had to overlook what I
Reid: Oh.
Allison: consider to be my type in order to give myself permission to fall in love.
Reid: Got it. So you…so it….it…the…the point that you were making that I was not picking up because I was being distracted by delicious berries is that understanding that you might that you have a type so that you can step out of the “this type only” and be open to more?
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: That was the…the thing that you’re communicating.
Allison: Yes.
Reid: Got it. Okay.
Allison: Yeah and again like everybody who’s mono-sexual is going to find that to be a thing that they want to do and I don’t I’m not saying that every lesbian or every gay man has to like consider people of other genders in order for…for…for love to exist. I’m just saying that I think it’s helpful sometimes to….to realize that the types that we assigned to ourselves aren’t prescriptions. They’re usually just descriptions.
Reid: That’s a bumper sticker wordy right there.
Allison: Is it?
Reid: No.
Allison. No.
Reid: Okay.
Allison: So let’s [Inaudible 00:05:58]
Reid: Let’s get some more berries and talk some more because we’re out of berries. Here’s some right here. So, for folks who have heard me talk about dating your species, so the thing that I would kind of talk about is one, like knowing your type because again, if you found if you found me in somebody who was like a queer dyke or something like that.
Allison: So…sorry can I just
Reid: Like
Allison: speak and keep the metaphor going all of it more?
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: I think you need to be a little bit choosier baby.
Reid: Choosier than my…oh you’re thinking I’m picking bad berries?
Allison: I do.
Reid: Why? I’m going to eat most of them.
Allison: Some of them are not good. Look at that one.
Reid: Oh, you’re right. Uh! That one is not good. Alright so how do you be
Allison: I’m going to pick here.
Reid: how do you be choosy?
Allison: Be both….be choosy and open.
Reid: Yeah. How do you be choosy? I’m getting into bushes here. Relationship advise while Allison Moon is picking blackberries. So one of the things to understand if you’re not limiting yourself by type but you know what is a good fit like what is….I’m going to give you the selfie stick. Like how do you know when somebody is right for the picking?
Allison: If you tell again they don’t come willingly, they’re not the right one.
Reid: Yeah. Make sure it’s all consensual. But I well I mean I guess like let’s see let’s see if we get how far we can take this berry metaphor
Allison: This is terrible.
Reid: No, this is hilarious.
Allison: Yeah
Reid: But the idea of being like, if you’re trying to fit somebody in to make them a good fit for you, maybe that is the definition of they’re already not a good fit.
Allison: Yes. The whole notion of like if they love me enough, they’ll change for me is damaging and I think it’s a Hollywood trope that has been that ultimately has made a lot more headaches than it has solved. I think most of the time when you find somebody I think that they should be ready to wear so to speak. Not necessarily something that needs a lot of work in order to fix them, to mold them to be your person.
Reid: So move-in ready?
Allison: Yeah
Reid: Move-in ready or you buy the relationship right off the rack?
Allison: Yeah, I mean there’s a lot of growing together that happens in relationships but ultimately if somebody has fundamental aspects of their personality that…that don’t work for you and they don’t want to change them, then I think that’s….that’s a thing that doesn’t fit. It’s like trying on a dress or a pair of jeans and saying like “oh, these will be great when I lose 20 pounds.” It’s like well then they’re not the right….the right jeans for you. If you have to lose 20 pounds for them to fit, that’s not the right fit.
Reid: Okay, we’ve adjusted this metaphor
Allison: Right there.
Reid: Where? That’s far away.
Allison: You can get it.
Reid: What if I fall? No, come back. Alright. So now….now we’re back into the metaphor. I hope this was fun for everyone ‘coz I’m just…this was just an excuse. The blackberries
Allison: I’m going to get those…’coz those are the ripe ones. Sometimes you need to extend yourself
Reid: So, oh wow. She just kind of ashamed me. Berry-picking shamed me, ladies and gentlemen. Now, I’m just going to say Allison moved closer to the berries so that she was not precariously perched over a thicket of thorns. So if I had failed, it would have been very painful.
Allison: It’s amazing blackberry picking. It’s so…so rewarding.
Reid: Well, yeah. I guess I’m…I’m I think
Allison: What makes love rewarding is sometimes it hurts but it’s a good hurt.
Reid: Wow. I’m just…I’m failing everybody because of my greed for blackberries. So…so here’s….here’s…here’s my advice around this and I’ll read the comments to everybody who’s being really patient with us right now. As we’re distracted by food. I really think that like putting in the work to find if your relationship is a good fit, to have the difficult conversations with each other to figure out you know and get clarity on what it is you….you really want out of a relationship? Like what’s your intention for being in a relationship at all? Because a lot of people…again, I pardon that we’re trying to I’ve been working the hell out of this metaphor, some people wait until they’re starving and then they eat all the unripe fruit and then they complain that it tastes sour. That was good. I pulled that one out of my butt. Whereas like if you if you can again if you’re starving you know you need to eat something, right? But sometimes you can last a little bit longer than making poor food choices.
That doesn’t mean it’s…it’s comfortable, it doesn’t mean it’s easy but if your relationship life, your dating life has constantly been making these poor decisions, then can you find better advice, better tools and skill sets so that you can start to turn that around? So that you’re not going berry-picking starving. So that you can wait it out, you can take care of yourself and take care of your needs while you’re waiting for the right relationship to come along, the right person or the right time or the right group of people. But again, if….if you’re just waiting and building up your ability just too fast so to speak without building up your…your skill sets for what’s a good fit, I don’t know how you pick the…a better person the next time. Are you just constantly you know picking what’s in front of you versus doing…doing the work to really find what it is that’s a good fit? Train! Hohoh! Wow, this is like an action-packed day today.
Allison: [Inaudible 00:11:58]
Reid: So, we are by the train track so no surprise. Yeah, so these…these ideas of getting clarity about what is a good fit for you, when is it just a little extra work that you do willingly because sometimes relationships take work versus you are you’re making a mistake and are you dating people or investigating relationships with people who’ve also done this kind of work and inquiry so that you can have a real adult conversation with them about their wants, needs, and desires because I think part of the challenge is, since a lot of us started trying to have relationships when we were younger, some of us older but you know we learned about what our needs were as we were we were having the relationships and so we discover what works and what doesn’t works while it’s happening and the challenge is, I think for the people who had several relationships, you don’t actually start turning people away who you know are a bad fit, you just double down to commit to working harder on the next relationship but what you did was you still pick somebody who is a bad fit and now you’re just committing to working harder to make it work rather than realizing oh, you know I shouldn’t you know like for me, I shouldn’t date people who are monogamous. That’s horrible. That’s a horrible idea. It would be like if you are allergic to blackberries, why are you picking blackberries? Why are you picking blackberries while starving? Of course, if you’re hungry and this is the only thing to eat and you’re picking them, you will eat them. Nobody has that much willpower. So, is this making sense?
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: Yeah.
Allison: And I was just going to add I think what you’re saying, the whole fasting metaphor and the whole starving metaphor makes sense. I think that one of the things that people asked me for a long time about when I when I found you like why what made it work so well was that I….I had a bad breakup at the end of college or mid…middle of college and
Reid: [Inaudible 00:14:19]
Allison: I had to relearn how to do everything alone. I said I had a partner that we did all the things together. Go…going to movies to get….why…why aren’t we going there?
Reid: Do you want to pick more?
Allison: Yeah.
Reid: Or is this enough? Okay, now she’s into it.
Allison: Jesus.
Reid: She don’t want to come out and pick the whole bunch and now she’s into it. Alright, go.
Allison: So
Reid: Go pick.
Allison: I had to relearn how to do things like…like going to eat alone at the dining hall or going to movies alone and it was really painful and really horrible and I hated it and but eventually I relearned how to do all these things alone which I considered to be a kind of training ground for adult relationships because when I met Reid I was very happily single. I had a recent breakup but I it wasn’t a good relationship that we needed to keep going and so I was fine being on my own. I wasn’t starving, I was well fed by my life, I had friends, I had hobbies, I had a career that I really loved so everything was great. And so when Reid walked into my life, it was just extra. It was just a thing that I wanted to add to my life but if he didn’t like if he if I…if he and I weren’t a good fit, either one of us could have walked away and I wouldn’t have felt like I needed to cling to something that wasn’t going to work.
Now, I know that everybody’s got their different experiences with loneliness and with the…the need of human contact and I think that that’s all perfectly valid but I tend to tell people when they’re looking for relationships to get really good at being alone and foster a very rich life outside of romantic relationships because when the relationship comes, if it if it does come, you’ll just be adding something great to an already wonderful life and if it never comes then you’re living a wonderful life anyway. You’re already going out and doing the things you would want to do. So when people say like “I’m waiting to travel the world until I have a partner to do it with.” Why the fuck don’t you just travel the world now and meet other world travelers on the road? If you’re waiting for your life to begin to find a partner that is willing to share it with you, I think that you’re putting the cart before the horse. The horse before the cart? Cart before the horse. I think you’re doing things backward.
Reid: I thought you’re on both.
Allison: Yeah. So, I think you’re doing things back things backward. I think you should create the rich life that you want to live and romance and love will often find you. Doing the things that you’re having a wonderful time doing which I think tends to also make you more attractive to people. Is if you’re having a wonderful time living a vibrant life, that’s attractive, that’s sexy.
Reid: But you can also live a vibrant life and still be lonely.
Allison: Oh, absolutely but I think filling your life with things and people and love of different kinds can help and yes you might want somebody in your bed at night but I think it’s a lot less lonely if you have other wonderful things going on.
Reid: Alright. We’ve got a ton of these. What do you think? Was this fun? Was this a good idea? There are so many blackberries here. Show them.
Allison: So many blackberries.
Reid: Oh my god.
Allison: We barely even picked a tiny percent of them.
Reid: My fingers were purple.
Allison: It’s like a metaphor for love. There are so many blackberries in the bush.
Reid: And if you try and you get hurt a little bit or you get you bite into something a little sour, don’t give up. Don’t give up because over time, they will ripen and then I don’t want to say that your…your hands will toughen and you won’t feel the pain anymore but maybe you can get gloves. Yeah, why don’t we get gloves?
Allison: No, it’s better this way.
Reid: Why? It hurts like hell.
Allison: It’s better this way. If the pain is
Reid: It’s a metaphor
Allison: part of it.
Reid: Oh that’s bullshit. Get some gloves the next time you pick blackberries. If you can wait until they’re ripe, learn how to judge a good one from a bad one and then make sure you wash the pee off your relationships. Alright. Where can people find you?
Allison: http://girlsex101.com/
Reid: .com
Allison: .com or on Twitter.
Reid: https://reidaboutsex.com/vulcan V.U.L.C.A.N to get a free video on the inverted Vulcan technique and then if you’re coming to sex geek summer camp, time’s running out. Get register soon https://reidaboutsex.com/campFAQ. Thank you, everybody. Thank you blackberries. Mwah! Chao!