I met a guy on the golf course one morning. Turns out he was recently divorced. I asked him when he knew the marriage wasn't going to work. He said, "Walking down the aisle. Walking down the aisle...and I just kept walking!"
The next day I'm on the same golf course and get sent out with another guy. He's in town looking for a house to buy. I ask why he's relocating to Los Angeles. He says he just finished building his dream house in a very exclusive part of Dallas, when he met and fell in love with a woman not willing to live in Dallas. As I look at him, he shakes his head and says, "I hate L.A. But what are you gonna do?"
I don't know; pick from one of the 100,000 available women in the greater Dallas/Ft. Worth Metro-Plex. It's just an idea. I'm spit-balling here.
That's when I knew I wasn't the only one with a broken picker.
My Grandpa was married four times. My Dad was married five times. I've been divorced once. I come from a long line of Broken Pickers.
I was married for almost nine years to a good woman and we tried. It was our best effort and yet it still ended. After my divorce, I spent a couple of years lost, hurt and confused. I started asking my buddies, then strangers about their relationship choices.
The answers were different, but the stories were the same. It didn't seem to matter if you were a man or woman, what your sexual orientation or race was; the answer was the same: our pickers were broken. Some of the stories were funny. Some were sad. Most were both.
Most people have at least one story about a bad choice. Not just a bad one-nighter, but a real "I should have known better. There's a month/a year/ half my life I'll never get back" story.
That's where I got the idea to do a podcast; interview people about their worst relationships. (Check it out at mypickerisbroken.com and on iTunes)
As luck would have it, the woman I'm engaged to, Pamela Georgette, is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She could add some professional insight for our fellow broken pickers.
I'm a comedian, she's a therapist and this will be the second marriage for both of us. What could go wrong? We know...we've got a list.
One of the recurring themes our interviews found was that picking a partner would be easier if we learned to trust our gut -- our intuition -- our inner voice -- whatever you want to call it. I call mine Frank.
In the old days, Frank would send up a warning flare, "she's crazy," but my head would say, "but she's hot." Then six weeks later, I would have to sneak out in the middle of the night and change my cell number. I should have listened to Frank.
Now I listen to Pamela.
Here's what she had to say about trusting your gut:
This "gut feeling" or intuition actually has physiological basis. Our brain and our gut originate from the same tissue and remain connected by the vagus nerve. They are communicating in the subconscious and sending information to our conscious. Nature has given us our gut feeling as an important tool for survival. However, we are socially conditioned from an early age to utilize reason rather than trusting our gut, especially if there is enough time to analyze the situation.
We can learn to trust our gut. Just like anything else it takes practice. Becoming conscious of when your intuition is right will give you the proof you need to build that trust.
Here are three ways you can begin to practice trusting your gut feelings:
It's just that easy, right? No, of course not, be gentle with yourself. Keep trying; you'll get better at it.
How do we know? We just trust our gut.
There are MANY people who felt that lingering doubt when they said "I do", and subsequently, went on to have great marriages. They grew to really love their spouses. And there are MANY people who trusted their "gut" (whatever that really means) and ended up being miserable in their relationships.
The converse is also certainly true.
Making any important decision takes time, reflection, tons of information, advice, patience, and FAITH (i.e. moving forward even when you don't have all the answers). And a marriage decision is no different. Ultimately, a marriage will succeed or fail as a result of the CHARACTERS of the people involved, not their physical attributes.
It's the same thing as 'gold fever' that drives people to search for gold in insane conditions and environments.
...so much for these losers, you should stay a comedian!
I hope I live long enough to forgive my parents.
east - joke for cheer-up (got "-" for up?), mind it, i'm partly british during colonial year any way, but just got couple of blonde hairs only, bye there.
My parents died, we inherited quite a bit of money and my then wife started a Dance school business. Seven years later, all of my inheritance was gone, a good portion of my 401K money was gone and I'm over$ 100,000.00 in debt too. Then my wife decided she didn't want to be married any longer.
Now we are divorced and she got the other half of my 401K money! My picker is broken!