Mom Is My Emergency Contact Podcast

Oops I Did It AGAIN! The Cycle Of Toxic Men Ep. 1

• Lisa

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Ever had a moment when you finally saw the red flags waving wildly at you, but only after you'd already taken the rollercoaster ride with a toxic partner? Bridget and Lisa, your navigators through these tumultuous relationship waters, have been there, and they're ready to share all about how they found their way back to shore. This episode is a life raft of sorts, packed with their personal tales of slipping into—and eventually breaking free from—the grasp of toxic relationships.  They're diving headfirst into the truth behind our attraction to unhealthy partners and how to spot those red flags before it's too late.

If you've ever felt that gut-twisting anxiety and mistaken it for butterflies, you know the body can act as an early warning system for detecting toxic individuals. They are unpacking how to listen to these physiological cues, and the role they play in both identifying harmful presences and the journey toward healing.

RESOURCES

Book: The Body Keeps The Score 

Hosts:
Lisa
Bridget

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Speaker 1:

So how do you feel about our first episode for?

Speaker 2:

today I couldn't stop laughing, like my belly aching Seriously. What about you?

Speaker 1:

Like during the edit, I was like, damn, the shit is good. Why can't I stop laughing? And I felt like we're being very honest with our experiences. We are getting a lot of male hate from our TikTok.

Speaker 2:

We are Bring it on. Let's spell out the male so it is identified for our listeners. We mean male M-A-L-E. But we love it. We love it. Keep it coming. I know.

Speaker 1:

I'm like these guys don't know that this is not our first rodeo. Like you're not insulting us, you're actually helping the algorithm. Do you understand that? And this is amazing.

Speaker 2:

Jimmy, you're just, we're feeding off of it, thank you.

Speaker 1:

I mean seriously. Tiktok did send our TikTok page about we've removed some comments because of the anti-bullying laws. I'm like, no, keep those comments.

Speaker 2:

Just keep them on.

Speaker 1:

So, yes, this is all going very well. So today, and I know that the first episode we kind of did like what are the topics that we're going to be talking about? Right, and one of the topics that we laughed about was oops, I did it again.

Speaker 1:

This is obviously dating a speaker of toxic men. And why does that happen? And how can we recognize the red flags? How can we break the fucking cycle? And we're going to be talking all about that. So, before we go into that, many of you may not even know who the hell we are.

Speaker 2:

Just strange voices on the internet. We're celebrities?

Speaker 1:

No, we're not. Well, we thought we'd introduced you to us, so maybe, bridget, maybe you should go first.

Speaker 2:

Sure, sure, I'm Bridget. I have been known as a badass. Previously. People called me sassy badass. That was my TikTok handle. That's right, yes. And then I kind of grew out of it and I grew into Coach Bridget and I am a successful co-parenting coach and a custody and divorce coach and I help individuals that are going through what's called a high conflict custody and divorce. So I am a survivor of some domestic abuse, sexual abuse, all the things, and I help individuals get out of toxic relationships and I teach them to kind of identify some of these signs.

Speaker 1:

Bridget, you are a badass. Well, thank you. Thank you, yes, you are Okay. So my name is Lisa and I own my own business called Ella Go. I'm a running life coach. I coined myself that A running life coach. I empower women through fitness, health and everything in between, and I always say the in between part is the mental health part, the emotional part. I used to be a therapist, a former therapist, although people have said once a therapist, always a therapist. So that's where I get that, where I like to empower women and through fitness, and putting those two together is just, you know, amazing because it helped me through my own trauma and I'm hoping it can help other women. I do have a separate podcast from this podcast called Ella Go, which I started back in 2020 during COVID, and but that podcast is going to talk about, you know, fitness, and I bring in personal trainers, nutrition coaches, weight loss and just like the mental health part of being a better version of ourselves. So that is me in a nutshell.

Speaker 2:

And you are very empowering. Let me just tell you, every day you empower me to be better, so thank you.

Speaker 1:

Bridget, stop. I didn't pay her to say that, maybe. So we also wanted to talk about how we're going to do these episodes. Obviously, we're going to share our stories and give you, the listeners, insight and how do you fix the shit Like you're listening to it and we're not. And keep in mind, we're not going to stay here and be like, oh and this happened and this happened. We want to let you know also how we fixed it and how.

Speaker 1:

What are the ways that you can get the resources that you need to become a better version of yourselves? You know us being single women, single moms. You know we want to share our story because, girl, you ain't alone. We're like 100%. So we want to give you that support but then also share with you ideas and how we were over, we're able to overcome some of our struggles. Okay, but we are going to have a special segment called the Lifetime Movie Special segment, and this comes from a little personal, you know, story and experience for me Lifetime movies special segment. Let's talk about that, bridget. What is the Lifetime Movie Special segment? What do we do with that?

Speaker 2:

We want our listeners to kind of share their stories with us, and it can be completely anonymous, but we want to hear your. We want you to spill the tea. We want to hear all the drama. Oh yeah, we want to know the story. We want to hear about the toxic relationship. We want to hear what it is that you might have learned from it If you didn't learn from it, what it is that you're still struggling with. We want to know all of this stuff and we're going to share it. We're going to share it with other listeners and we want you to write in right. Think of it as what was that? That column?

Speaker 1:

in the movie Dear.

Speaker 2:

Abby. Yes, you're Dear Abby, oh my God, I'm old. We're now. We're now, dear Bridget and Lisa, yes.

Speaker 1:

Oh my God, that's right. Yeah, that's perfect. That's exactly what it is. Dear Bridget and Lisa, you share stories and it could be also your crazy ass stories from working like at a job and the shit that you had to do, or the single mom hustle and what you did to hustle, and you're like share. I can't believe I did that. Like just share your crazy ass stories with us. We're going to share it on the podcast live and discuss it, and it could be anonymous. Like Bridget said, it could be anonymous, and the way you are going to send us those stories is you can reach out to myself or Bridget on our TikTok or Instagram sites DM Do you call it DM on TikTok or what?

Speaker 2:

is it? We call it DM on TikTok? Still, I'm pretty sure, yeah. So DM us, dm us.

Speaker 1:

And the way to get a hold of us. It'll be on the show notes, so you'll see our tags, so that you can reach out to us and let us know your story. Okay, so that is going to be a special segment to these episodes, and I can't wait.

Speaker 2:

I know.

Speaker 1:

So let's get down to it. Let's talk about today's episode, which is the whole theme of breaking the cycle of toxic relationships and being in this like again, again. So, bridget, I'm going to start with you, like, let's talk about have you been through this? Like, are you like shit? That has just happened again.

Speaker 2:

I got got Gosh why am I, in the husse of? Well, been through a plenty of toxic relationships, and you know I've been, I've been married twice, but I was married to two very unhealthy individuals and following that, I've had healthy relationships but I've also had some fairly toxic ones and I recently ended another toxic relationship. I didn't see it at first, right, you don't see the red flags until after, right. My mindset is always 2020. Girl, let me tell you, I, like you, can have the girlfriends telling you I think you're being manipulated, I think there's some emotional abuse maybe going on and you're not seeing it. I'm like, no, no, you justify the behavior, you are trying to just defend them and you don't see what's going on until boom, like you hit the wall and it's like, oh, oh, he cheated on me. So I guess that's reason enough. And there's that, there's that, there's that. So yeah, and then you know you come back to square one.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, definitely, I resonate with this. I've only been married once and I would say after my marriage I had a normal relationship. I probably would say that was probably that was my best relationship, for sure. And then I had two back-to-back toxic relationships. And the crazy part is this I waited after my first toxic that I said, you know, when you hear the shit that you hear on TikTok and you listen to or see the Lifetime movie specials and you're like, oh, that was that Damn you know, and it took me about a year to heal. And then I kind of just said, you know what I'm just going to like, do the single mom thing, single woman thing. And then I think, what did I say? Was it four or five years? And then I'm like, okay, let me date again. And lo and behold, the next relationship I decide to be in is another toxic relationship and I said what the fuck?

Speaker 1:

But I will say this they never lasted more than they never even got to a year. So I feel like, okay, you know, I saw something coming, but yeah, so it is a feeling of for those of you who are listening, it kind of gets you to that point where you're like, holy shit, I did this again, I did this again. And many of you may not even say I did this again. It may be like, oh, all there is is not great men out there, the pool is dirty. I used to say the dating pool is dirty, so we're also going to talk about that too, because there's a difference between someone saying this happened, what's going on with me? That's what.

Speaker 1:

I do I just happened and where other people would be like, oh, they're all bad, all men are bad. And then that's that they're putting that generalization that men, all men, because of their cycle, all men are bad, which I don't believe. They're all bad. I mean there's women narcissists and women toxic women. I mean I have guy friends. They don't tell me their stories so, but for me it was like, okay, what's going on with me? So we can both say we had the same type of experiences with these cycles. Do you feel like, when you go through the, oh again, oh shit, oops, I did it again. Like do you feel like it gets better, like do you notice it earlier on? Or do you like, oh shit, the last one lasted a year and this one only lasted six months, or whatever Do?

Speaker 2:

you see it dwindling. I don't think that there's necessarily a difference in terms of time, but I have gotten a lot smarter at how I identify it and I am less emotionally reactive. I don't give them supply, I don't give them that emotional feedback that they're looking for me for. I'm just like okay, it's over, that's it. I know how to disengage, I know how to completely remove myself from that person and that is tremendous growth, right, tremendous growth. This last relationship that ended. I was seeing that there's, you know, this person's trying to still hold on and I'm like I don't really need to continue to communicate with you. Block, right, block everywhere. Email. I had to like oh yeah, like everywhere, there's no need for me to continue to have any kind of communication. And then bless his little soul, or bless his little heart, as we say here in the South. He matched with me on a dating, like maybe a month and a half after. Oh God, it was horrendous, and I had to block him from that. Like it's just the algorithm, dude, what did you not understand? Wow?

Speaker 2:

Holy crap, yeah, yeah. And so I I mean I blocked him everywhere and just I don't give him supply at all. And now I think he's gotten to the point because he knows not to fuck with me. Yeah, that he's just not. He doesn't reach out at all. So there's level of toxicity with individuals and it's also of like how you've carried yourself throughout the relationship, the communication boundaries and all of that. I think that's really helped me at the stage of my life. Nobody is ever completely immune to toxic relationships, to narcissists. It doesn't matter how much healing you have done, but you get better at recognizing the patterns of behavior and I think that's what's really important and being like, okay, pet on the back, you're doing something good yeah.

Speaker 1:

You know, I'm actually glad you just said that You're actually making me feel good, because I'm really, really excited, because I'm really hard on myself. And the first one, I totally was like I knew something was off, something wasn't right and I was like, wow, you know, if I brought up anything, he would get upset and ghost me for a whole week and I would be like am I in the relationship, am I not? What's happening? And he would do this all the time and I would be in limbo and I did not. I do not like being in that place. That makes me, that gives me anxiety. So obviously it got to a point where I was just like, yeah, this is not working, I don't feel good with this person and I left. But it was hard leaving. It was like did I make the right choice? I even like thought to myself, maybe I didn't make the right choice until I found out that not even a month later, he already was moving in with another woman. I was like, okay, that was toxic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, they move on before they really. And the relationship Look at they're already looking for grooming somebody. Yeah, yeah, oh always.

Speaker 1:

Yeah so Knowing. So that first one I didn't know. That was like my first taste of what that was. So the second time the funny part is the second time I said you know, going into the dating pause, like, okay, lisa, you got, you got healed. You know you're gonna go for someone that you don't normally go for. Yo, you're gonna go for someone you're not gonna look for looks, you're not gonna. You want someone different? Okay, maybe, maybe different would make them less toxic. And Unfortunately that didn't happen and it's sad. I mean it's. It's funny because it's like here I am, I was just going for personality, like I wasn't going in for personality, so apparently my personality is toxic. So, anyways, I'm dating this person and Same thing this time around.

Speaker 1:

I would say why is going on? Why are you acting like that? Why are you mean? Why are you like demeaning and why are you disrespecting me and like, first of all, everything was so great in the first two months and now you're like a jerk. And I still stood up for myself.

Speaker 1:

But yeah, you know, I was still being hopeful and I think someone said to me and I think this is what happened. I don't know if it was you that said this or somebody else, but I Try to see the good in people. I'm trying to see the good in people. I'm gonna say, you know, and I even remembered, as I'm going through this relationship, that relationship, I said, you know, I don't know if this is gonna last. And then I said, okay, let's do a pros and cons. I actually did a pros and cons on a piece of paper and I said I'm like, what are the cons that I don't, what's the cons with this person? And it was all. It was a long-ass list. And Then I said, what are the pros? It was literally five things. I'm like, oh, that's not good. Like what am I doing? And then every time I would see this person, I would say this is toxic. Like what the fuck am I doing? I said, well, maybe I'll wait until the holidays, maybe I'll wait until, and Nothing changed.

Speaker 1:

It got even worse until a big bomb dropped and I found out that this person wasn't very Truthful and I will say for me, I am angry that I got got. I'm like, again, I got got again. And but this time around I will say I noticed the red flags, like they were like a walk in red flag, and we'll talk about this in another episode of why we, why we stay, because that's another whole episode. I mean I can stay. Why we fucking stay? But the point is is that I'm not in it and but I do feel like I got got for sure, because it's like I, I thought I healed, I thought I learned. But, as Bridget said in the first episode, some of these people are really good they're. They're really good hiding who they really are. They are like Oscar winning performance you know, uh-huh, okay, we both can talk about that.

Speaker 1:

We had we, we both discussed that, we had this whole cycle, men, and I will say you know, I'm telling you the red, the red flags, right? So we said in the first episode how Our body Tells us. If, even if our mind is not telling us, our body may may be telling us. And I think the first time around my mind wasn't telling me, but my body had a shitload of anxiety, like something's not right. The second time my body was like bitch, we fuck up, like get the fuck out, and my body was like I know, but this bitch is not listening, so Bridget.

Speaker 1:

I mean, you talked about some of the body size. You said that you, you gain weight.

Speaker 2:

Right, yeah, I gain. I gain weight when I am in an unhealthy relationship, when I'm in a toxic relationship, I gain weight. My body gains weight. I like I'm like what the fuck is going on. People are like oh no, that's like you know. It shows that you're in love and you're happy. Like what the fuck? No, and another thing for me is just like anxiety. Sometimes, trying to go into, like difficult conversations, you try to avoid them or dodge them Because you're afraid of their reaction. It's the feeling of walking on eggshells. None of this shit is healthy.

Speaker 2:

Your body is telling you bitch, run, you don't want to right, like you're trying to justify it and think, oh well, you know, the communication Maybe isn't the greatest. You know I've paid for couples counseling at one point, trying to improve. Oh yeah, oh yeah, mm-hmm. Thinking it was that. And I mean when I tell you they're good, they're good, they're really good, but like the body keeps the score and if we're not paying attention to it, I also was like I was having really bad breakouts. I started to break out, I got rosacea. I started to get like breakouts on like my upper arms, like my armpits. I'm like, okay, maybe it's hormonal, maybe it says the minute that was gone, I, I solved it.

Speaker 1:

She had a dose of ozempic.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Like my skin was crawling with their toxicity apparently.

Speaker 1:

Listen, I know men, my male friends, some of my male friends that have been in toxic relationships, and I can tell the difference in their body and they, you know, I had a friend who looked like he was half dead. He wasn't eating, he had like really dark circles under his eyes, you know, and I'm like what the fuck is wrong with you? Something's wrong. So it's anybody who is in these situations. And you know, I will say, for me definitely the anxiety. Every time I met with a toxic individual I had so much anxiety and I didn't understand it and I will say, the first time around I mistook my anxiety for butterflies, like I thought, oh, I'm getting butterflies because I'm so excited about this person. No bitch, that was my bias and get the fuck out.

Speaker 2:

Those were my fantasizing of the butterflies. Those weren't butterflies, those were cockroaches.

Speaker 1:

I don't know what the fuck they were, and they were like crawling all over me. So it was anxiety for me. And then, when I would go home from visiting that person or being with either individuals that I was involved with, I felt more calm and I'm just like, wow, that's. And I think the second time around I did listen to my body because I said, okay, why am I acting like this? You know, why am I feeling so much anxiety? And I think I said to you well, in the first episode I shared, I had that rash and it went away the minute I wasn't in this with this individual.

Speaker 1:

I do want to backtrack a little bit, because you were talking about the mistakes. You know how do you learn from your mistakes or learn from the first time around. I will say that cutting people off was something I learned the second time around like block, like cut communication, like done, I don't want to hear from you, I don't. The minute I found out how that they were toxic and they were lying, I completely like this is like for real I just was block on the phone, block on social media, just, and keep on blocking because I did not want any of that negativity.

Speaker 1:

Now, I didn't do that the first time around with the, you know, with the other individual. But this time, you know, I was able to learn from that. But, like I said, the rash the minute that I was no longer in that relationship, the rash was gone. So the body knows, the body knows. If you're not making the decision, the body fucking knows. So what would you say, bridget, as far as you know, listening to your body, because I think some people don't sit still to listen to it, or nor do they want to listen to what it's saying to them.

Speaker 2:

No, and what I tell everybody that I speak to is that our body knows before our brain can catch up. Right, and you know, getting into a good mindfulness practice, a good meditation practice, is really helpful. And also just movement, right, like if you maybe you're not a runner, maybe you walk, but if you can get into some kind of movement practice and practice mindfulness, during that time you'll allow those thoughts to just kind of flow in and be like oh, oh, okay, oh, wow. That doesn't sit well with me, right? And another thing I was going to say is we talked about, well, I was healed. Right, I've been really healed, I've healed after this relationship. But are we ever really healed? We're constantly healing, and if we're holding off to go into another relationship, thinking that we haven't healed enough, we're gonna wait for the rest of our lives, right? So we're always in this active state of working on ourselves, working to be the best version of ourselves, and if you're not learning something new about yourself or for yourself every day, like that's the day that you die, right?

Speaker 1:

Mm, that's good.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you should constantly be working to learn something that improves you and it improves your life. And fuck what people say, fuck what people think about you. If somebody is impacting your peace and if it's a toxic person from a relationship you can block, you can unfriend, you can delete and you owe nobody. Goddamn explanation for a single thing.

Speaker 1:

You just do it yeah yeah, you said it.

Speaker 2:

It's protected.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely, and you said a couple things. So the first part is yes, it's a healing journey. It's a healing. You're never healed duh ED healed. It's your healing and you know I have to remind myself of that I'm still healing, you're still, I'm still on a journey.

Speaker 1:

And the second thing I wanted to say is I think that some people will think, or maybe some women may think, that I want to be successful in a relationship, and successful may look very different to different people, because you could say I had I mean, I could say I had a successful relationship. We're no longer together, and then someone might say, well, how's that successful? It just didn't work out, but it was a successful relationship, it was a healthy relationship. It didn't work out and it was amicable. In fact, I still talk to this individual to this day as a friend. I have one of those too. Yeah, successful, that was a successful, healthy relationship. So don't feel like, if you're not, that you need to be with that person because it's gotta be successful. It's not worth your peace, it's not worth your sanity. So what do you think, bridget?

Speaker 2:

You know, it's really easy to get into the I hate all men phase, and I think we've all been guilty of it. We've all been guilty of falling into that. I have. But not all men are the same, right? Not all men are the same. And if we can really look inward and say, hey, in these toxic relationships, there's also a common denominator here, and it's me. And there's a reason why I am getting into these toxic relationships in the first place.

Speaker 2:

It takes two people to be in a relationship and if we can go backwards, there's a strong likelihood that you have childhood trauma, that there's something that you've experienced that has made you to believe, or conditioned you to believe, that this is normal love, that this is a normal healthy relationship, and in actuality, you now recognize that it's not. So we've gotta go back and heal those parts of us in order to have a healthy relationship and you can work on those things and be working on those things, but understand that it's also men aren't to blame completely for all of these things, right? There are good men out in the world, just like there's good women out in the world. It's a matter of how we go about looking for them and taking our time. Pace yourself, pay attention to the pace of a relationship, right, take your time with dating. I do really love the three month rule that people talk about. Have you heard about the three month rule? Yes, so the three month rule is, you know, not getting serious with anybody. Don't be exclusive for the first three months. If you can avoid being intimate for the first three months, try that. I mean, sometimes I think that that can be hard, but try to not be exclusive with that person for three months.

Speaker 2:

You know, during the first 90 days of any kind of getting to know somebody or a relationship, we're still seeing who that person really is, and after the 90 days people tend to stop dating and we're starting to see that they're more comfortable with us. And that's when any toxicity might start to come out more. Pay attention. People are telling you and showing you who they are. You just have to look out for it and don't justify their behavior. Right, if somebody tells you well, you made me mad because of X, y and Z. No, no, no, no, no, no. You are not responsible for anybody's emotions. They are right. And so if we take a step back and we can really see that, hey, I'm not responsible for your emotions. I understand that you've got upset or you've got angry. However, that is not my fault and I really don't like to be spoken to that way, right? But if you pay attention, those behaviors will start to come out after the 90 day mark sometimes before.

Speaker 1:

A friend of mine always said you're meeting their representative, you know, and sometimes it comes out very quickly, other times it takes time. Another friend said to me you know, you really know who someone truly is. When you get in a fight Like when you get in an argument fight that you'll see their true colors of who they really are. Now you know. Even if you do that and you still stay like I said we're gonna talk about that on another episode because obviously that is important to talk about but Bridget did hit it on the nail when she said and this is hard the common denominator is you Like the common denominator is me, and when you are self-aware and you can stop for a second and be like not to put blame on yourself, not to say, oh my God, there's something wrong with me, more of okay, what can I do?

Speaker 1:

How can I make this? How can I break this goddamn cycle? How can I I don't like the word fixed, but how do I break the cycle? And you know, for me I always say therapy or life coach. You know, bridget talked about meditation when you can actually sit still in your feelings, they're gonna tell you, they're gonna tell you what's going on, right, but do that journey, go on that hard ass journey, because you are worth it. It's that self-care. You know everyone talks about self-care and it's not manicures and pedicures. Well, it's going to a therapist.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, doing the hard fucking work EMDR therapy. I did that for eight months and that saved my life. Yeah, yeah, it is the fastest way to heal from trauma. From my personal experience and I recognized a lot of my childhood trauma I can say amazing things about EMDR therapy. So if our listeners haven't tried it and that's their experience give it a try. It's not some weird voodoo-y thing. I've heard people say it looks so weird. No, it's really like try it. Try it. It will really help you reprocess a lot of your childhood memories, and we all have had this probably a similar experience where we have a hard time recalling events from our childhood, and that's because our brain is intentionally trying to protect us from some traumatic memories.

Speaker 1:

If we can reprocess them.

Speaker 2:

We can then change some of our narrative of how we've seen ourselves, of us not feeling good enough and all of those things right, and it's a really important thing for us to not bypass that step.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

So I mean, we talked about the cycle, the toxic cycle, and knowing what those signs are. The body's talking to you. Gaslighting is a word. If someone's like I'm sharing my feelings, I'm telling you how I feel and then I'm being told that's my problem. That's not good. Why is that my problem? I'm telling you you're a piece of shit. Why is that so? You know, if you are, those are signs.

Speaker 1:

Okay, you are telling someone how you feel, and I talked to somebody recently and interviewed them, and Bridget and I are actually gonna go through the episode that we interviewed this woman who focuses on attachment theory and she said that you know, a healthy relationship is when someone actually is listening. They don't have to agree with you, but they're listening, they're respecting your space and they're gonna say, oh, okay, I'm sorry, I didn't think I was doing that. I don't wanna make you feel that way, but when you say this is how I feel and you're like that's on you, honey, that's on you, how is it on me? That's some toxic shit. That's a red flag.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's a uh-uh-uh. That's not a red flag, that's a red paddle, that's a red brick. It's a red brick in the face. It hit you on the face. So like, know the signs and like, when I was telling you about my pros and cons and when you could do a pros and cons even, I mean even something stupid like that and I was like, and it was very superficial pros, oh, they do this for me, they do that once in a while they do. And then you gotta say to yourself is that a healthy relationship? You know, so they drive to the grocery store for me and everybody can do that that's the bare minimum.

Speaker 2:

That's bare minimum Hands down.

Speaker 1:

So listen to your body, know the signs. And then Bridget talked about don't go into this. All men are bad and, yes, she's right, we all, you know, we all been through that. But I'm gonna say to you, if you're going through this and I said this to myself and it took a while, it took some really deep soul searching to come to this point where I could say you know what? I'm not gonna make this bad relationship take away who Lisa is. Lisa wants to give love. Lisa wants love. That's not. This person is not going to take that away from me. I'm just gonna do my healing, learn a little bit more, you know, see the signs and get the fuck out. But I'm still gonna be who I am. Don't let that experience change to loving, caring individual that you are. You could still be loving and caring, but just be smart.

Speaker 1:

And I remember one therapist said to me a friend of mine, and she said you know you could love that person but leave him over there. Like I love, I care, I care of toxic for you. You could say I care about you, but you stay in your house, don't come in my house, okay, we just keep that distance, you know, if you still care about them, but keep that distance. The common denominator part for sure being self-aware and getting the help that you need. And you know I am getting like Bridget said we're learning, we get better at it. I can honestly say I never stayed for a year with these individuals and I remember my mother said the last one, my mom's like do you know, you ain't gonna stay that long, for you don't deal with shit like that. And I'm like when she said that to me, I was like she's right, I don't. You know, I don't stay for that shit. You know as much as it hurts to leave, as much as it hurts that you still care about them. You are more important than anybody, yeah absolutely.

Speaker 1:

So we're going to leave you with this. Okay, don't be so hard on yourself. Okay, listen to your body. The body knows, sit still in it. Learn the signs, learn, learn about what toxic toxicity or toxic relationships look like. Another thing someone said to me, bridget, was that they said you should write a list of the characteristics and personality, that of a person that you want to be with you know, like what are not.

Speaker 1:

And then what are your deal breakers? Like, write it down and do it at a where you're not with somebody, like what are your deal breakers? And then, when you're with somebody, you're like I don't know about them. And then you go, you open the book and you're like, oh shit, that's a deal breaker, that's a deal break. No, next, that's a deal breaker, that's a deal breaker. What the fuck am I doing? And again, let's emphasize it's not all men. Women are toxic. I know, I know stories of friends where their mothers were narcissists and I know that hurts.

Speaker 1:

That. That hurts like I can't even imagine. So you know, it doesn't even have to be a toxic. You know, when we talk about toxicity, it could be anybody, okay.

Speaker 2:

Anybody, it knows no gender.

Speaker 1:

No social economic status, no size, no color. No, it doesn't. It doesn't. It kind of involves it All shapes and sizes.

Speaker 2:

I have a check to the opposite of what you're attracted to.

Speaker 1:

I won't divulge that. I think I'm going to add a couple of resources. I will add some resources to the podcast show notes, even some podcasts that we know of that could be helpful to you as well. So I think that's it, Bridge.

Speaker 2:

What do you think?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think so too, Until next episode make sure that you listen to the podcast we are on now. We're live, we're on all podcast platforms. We're on Spotify, we're on iHeart radio, we're on Apple podcasts and if you listen to it, please leave us a review and subscribe so that you will get notified every time we have a new episode. But don't forget, we are going to be going on Tiki Taki land and promoting our show and talking about the lifetime movie special portion of our show, so that you can send us your stories and we can discuss them on the show.

Speaker 2:

All right and make sure that you share. You share this podcast with somebody that you think would enjoy it just as much as you are.

Speaker 1:

Just know, you're not alone. All right, thank you for listening and until next time. Bye, bye, that's it, that's it, that's it.