Never Been In Love

All right. Hello. Hello, everybody. Welcome to another episode of gay men going deeper, a podcast series by the gay men’s brotherhood, where we talk about all things, personal development, mental health, and sexuality. I am your host today, Calen Brechin and we are going to be talking about never have I been in love with our very special guest host artist and entertainer Tyler Boyle.

So thank you so much for being on the show today. Really appreciate it. And I think this topic is going to be a very popular, because there’s definitely a lot of gays that I know who are like, am I broken? I’ve never been in love before. I’ve never like been in a relationship and all that kind of stuff. So how about you go ahead and introduce yourself to everybody.

So hi, everybody. I’m honored to be here. My name is Tyler Boyle. I have never been in love. I was what a lot of gays call a late bloomer or late to the party. I am 38 years old and I didn’t come out until I was 32. What I realized is when I realized I was gay, I dove into researching why I have the science part of my brain.

Why, why, why, why explain it, explain it, explain it. And then what happened similarly is when I entered the dating world, expecting it to be very straightforward and very heterosexually minded heteronormative. I was in for wake-up call and I stumbled across a few things that I found helped me to take easier steps forward in this crazy dating game, because the dating scene ain’t pretty,

sometimes it is a mental and emotional cluster. Fuck a Saurus. But on the bright side, there’s some really great ways that we can maintain our integrity during a really, really challenging, but really exciting experience. Yeah. All right. So I’m going to back up a little bit and let’s unpack some of this stuff because you let off with like, I’ve never been in love.

I never been to, but we need to clarify. You have been, it was just with a woman, correct? Correct. Okay. So before you came out, you were in relationships with women and you were very like under you understand and knew the heteronormative world and the way of things over there. And it wasn’t until you came out that since then,

you’ve not David dated a man or fallen in love with a man. So yes, Yes, that is bang on. And I just had a really great conversation with my ex partner from my mid twenties, just this summer. And she’s like, can we address the elephant in the room? I was like, okay, here we go. And she was obviously wonderful about it.

And I expressed to her that, you know, I was in love with her, but to anybody out there listening who can relate, it’s a very different kind of love that you feel when it’s not with your romantic partner. It’s, it’s, it’s lacking the fire. It’s lacking the desire. It’s lacking the sexual desire on top of that. And so,

yes, it’s love, but it’s a very different flavor. And I’m looking for the fireworks and the spiciness and the chocolate covered strawberry moments, You know what I mean? And the toes curling and I know. Right. So I totally get what you’re saying, because that’s like, for me, that’s like the friendship love. That’s like, ah,

I love my friend. I love you. Like we could, we could have, I, I wouldn’t want to say intimate moments, but like friendship, intimate moments of like, you absolutely love being around each other. You’re cuddling. And like maybe you watch movies and you hang out all the time and that does have its place, but that’s not a romantic,

like sexual connection kind of love. That’s like the very much like, this is nice. I love you. Don’t touch my penis. Like it’s very different. Yeah. Yeah. For me though, interestingly, for me, it was feel free to touch my penis, do touch my penis, but I didn’t even know what was missing until the first time I was with a man.

I was like, oh, okay. That’s that something, Oh, this is what it’s supposed to feel like. Yeah. Interesting, interesting discovery I’ve made here. Yeah. All right. So that happened when you were, you said 32. So I was dating my last serious relationship with a woman was my mid twenties. And then I came out to my best friend just after that and swore her to secrecy,

but didn’t open my mouth again about my sexuality until I was 32. I started dating guys in secret at about 29 ish. Okay. All right. So let’s dive in there a little bit because the whole conversation is like never have I ever been in love with a man. So let’s jump into kind of the conversation of like your foray into the gay dating scene and what the big differences that you notice between,

you know, your kind of heteronormative past life and this new world that you were getting into. And let’s talk through that a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. That’s actually a, a really great point to discuss because it is different. W w w in my life before coming out dating was a lot more organic going to a dance locally without having to turn on an app on my phone and hitting on somebody and having it turn into something,

having people pursue me or me, them in public being set up with any number of people, rather than the one gay friend that they have being set up for chemistry and compatibility, rather than convenience and exclusivity like the exclusiveness, or I should say elusiveness of having, you know, every pot of person as one gay friend, you should really meet Thomas.

Wow. You guys would get along. And then you sit on the date with Thomas and you go, wow, There is nothing here. There’s Nothing, there’s nothing here. So it’s, it’s a lot more organic heterosexually speaking, especially living in a small town. I live in a town of 600 people, very small town, one stoplight, no grocery store,

no liquor store. And in order to meet people, it has to be an intentional effort rather than organic. So shout out to all your rural gays out there, trying to make a, make a go of it. We got a lot of them too. Right. So there’s positives and negatives to living in the city or living in the country. And the grass has never greener,

but it, it was a lot easier to find dates as a straight man than a gay man. Okay. Okay. So when you did start dating and it was like, you know, people like I have that one gay friend, you’re like, great, thanks, Jan. When did you, I can only assume you started to eventually migrate over to like the apps and like the dating apps and like,

there’s, you know, that app that shall not be named. And then there’s like the other ones where it’s like, you might actually find a good date on where it’s like the hinges and the tinders and all of that kind of stuff. How was that experience for you? And was that kind of jarring? Okay. Super jarring. Because the only reason I ever heard of that app that shall not be named was because my straight friend who has more gay friends than I do,

and I love her to pieces. She told me that I have to get on this app because it’s basically gay Facebook. Well, say that, hold on a ticket. So I, after my very first unsolicited butthole pick, I realized I was, I was in never, never land. This was not a real place. This is not gay Facebook.

So anyway, I learned very quickly what that world was like and what it does to my personal self-esteem what dating does to my self-esteem and how to keep, keep my head. Right. Yeah. Because when you’re on those apps, like this is, this is a little tastes are for everybody out there. We do have a dating app podcast episode coming soon.

So we will be unpacking a lot of all this, but when you’re in the dating app world, especially if you’re on that hap that shall not be named it’s it. You really, really have to be in a good space mentally for yourself. Because if you’re using that as an attention seeking attention grabbing, and you need the validation, then you’re going to be in for a hard,

rude awakening. But if you can approach it from a distance and with like a giant heaping pile of salt and just, it is going to be what it’s going to be sometimes, you know, you can meet great people, but you need to have your head on, right. In order to be able to approach it and say, okay, this is what it’s going to be for me,

because I don’t believe the apps are the things that, you know, have anything wrong with them. I think it’s the intention in which a person uses them. And that goes for any of the apps, you can use Tinder, just the same. You can use hinge, just the same. It’s the intention in which you go at it. Some apps do kind of have a better energy around them.

Like hinge is where I’ve had probably more success in regards to dating, because I find that people on there have genuinely put in time and they genuinely actually want to get to know you as a human, as an individual first, but Hey, that is what it is. So when you started actually going on the dates and actually figuring stuff out, what was that experience like for like a new Gabby?

Yeah, indeed. It was very confusing because of the, as you, as you put, you didn’t say, oh, the intention behind it, right. I didn’t realize that there requires a little bit more intention to what I am specifically looking for in heterosexual culture. I found that it’s a little bit more prescribed that, that people are looking for a similar thing.

Gay culture is much more nuanced. Like imagine me with no gay friends, small town, 600 people navigating tops, bottoms vs. Power tops, power bottoms, otters. I just learned of trunks. I like Open relationships, all of that stuff. Yeah. Right. And so navigating that on my own was, was a significant learning curve. So God bless urban dictionary.

And that was, that was my gay best friend really in navigating all of this, it was, it was confusing. Oh, goodness. Yeah. That would be a wild ride. And that’s what I say. Like, I didn’t have like growing up, I came out when I was 19, so I did come out decently young, but I came out after high school.

I didn’t want any of that BS or anything. And so I came out at 19, mostly to friends and then 22, like everybody knew in the world. And so these apps and all these things weren’t developed, there wasn’t even an iPhone back then. Cause I think that came out in like 2007, I wanna say. And so like I had done a lot of my own kind of soul searching and I had kind of figured out who I was.

I’d gone out to the bars and the clubs and, and all of that. I hadn’t had a relationship yet, but I had already kind of done that personal work. But now with these apps and kids, it’s like, they don’t even have the opportunity to kind of take that time for themselves first to figure out the stuff on the inside before they jump on these apps.

And then all of a sudden they’re thinking, oh, this is how I’m supposed to be. This is what I’m supposed to be because everybody else is doing it. And it’s like, no, no, no, no, no. Just because everybody else is doing it doesn’t mean that you need to do this. You don’t need to send your, you know,

Dick pics or whole pics or all these other things, or go on a first date and sleep with somebody on the first date, because that’s how it is. No, absolutely not. I don’t like to sleep with people on the first day, even the second, maybe even the third. Like if I really like you, I’m going to take my time with you because that’s going to come eventually later on.

And so I want to dive more into this because this is a lot about what this conversation is going to be about is that you actually have voices that you call them. The voices in your head that kind of are about this kind of well-roundedness and who you are and all these, you know, things that are going on inside of yourself when you have this experience.

So let’s jump into that conversation and figure some of that out for everybody who’s listening. Yeah. Yeah. So, so it is a confusing space. It is a confusing place I wanted after I realized exactly what you just identified, that I thought I needed to be something else and jumping into these dating apps because that’s what everybody else was doing. I thought that that was me.

And I really started to lose my own sense of self. That sounds dramatic. So I’ll just say my integrity. That’s, that’s the truth. I started to lose my integrity in what I was looking for and my behaviors, because that’s what I thought it was. So as I started to notice my behaviors, I realized that in dating, there’s like four voices in our heads that speak to us during our dating lives,

that influence our behaviors. And when I’m dating now and there’s something going on in my dating life, I can attribute it to one of four voices. And it’s almost like, because I get to blame it on these external characters I’ve created. It helps you take a breath. It helps you get off the crazy train, amen to anybody who feels me on that.

Because once you jump on the crazy train and it exits the station, if you don’t get off before it takes off, it’s an avalanche of negativity. And so attributing dating to these characters has been kind of helpful for me in navigating the dating world and especially navigating it with my own integrity. I love what you just said, because you just said, it reminds me a lot of Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote eat,

pray, love, but also big magic. She talks about her creativity and her genius. And how after writing a book like eat, pray, love. It’s like, oh my God, like, what do I do after this? Like, I can’t do another eat, pray, love. Like that’s never gonna happen. That was a once in a lifetime kind of a book.

So how do I even show up to the show now? And she talked about how back in the ancient days, you know, people who had a genius, it was outside of themselves. It wasn’t a person was a genius. It wasn’t inside of them. It was somebody who had a genius. They worked with a genius and it put all that pressure of performing and showing up outside of them that it was just kind of like,

all right, I am the faucet. The universe is the water. All I need to do is turn it on. And that genius that’s outside of me. That’s the water. That’s where all the good stuff comes from. So if I have an off day, okay, I have enough date. My genius didn’t show up today because when you take that pressure off of yourself,

it allows you to show up more authentically and just kind of relaxed and enjoy the ride, as opposed to like putting all this pressure on yourself, to perform, to show up, to be all of these things. And it sounds like what you did is you kind of took all those things and put them outside of yourself so that you can go, Hey,

I’m just being me. I’m doing what I know I need to do. And I interact with these things that are kind of outside of me. So let’s walk through them. What are those four things? So the first one is six. I like to call him six because he’s six and a half. He is basically the character that I’ve created to describe all of our triggers.

Our triggers are often attributed to our past. Anybody that’s done any type of self work knows that, that, yeah, right. It there’s a line. If you’re hysterical, it’s probably historical. And so when I was getting triggered, triggered trigger, trigger, trigger, like, what is this? This doesn’t even feel like me because you get so lost in the dating world.

And you start doing these behaviors now that you’re like, I’m a grown-ass man. And I’m acting like a damn child. It’s because you are literally, so that acting like a child is our, is our six. And that is our triggers, right? Six is also the one who makes us wall low in a feeling like if we get rejected or ghosted,

fricking ghosted, we stew, right. I find anybody who’s not watching. I just got a big eye roll anybody. When we get rejected or ghosted, we can stew and hold a grudge and cry and kick our feet and feel like a piece of junk because of six. That’s not, you, you are not that thought you are not those thoughts.

You are not this grumpy complaining thing, but after it sticks for so long and you get on that crazy train, you’re like, is this who I am? Am I really that week? We’re going to talk about who would say, who in our mind would call you weak? But I might really that week, am I really that fragile? Like I thought he had done done the work six is also the one who is our loneliness.

When we think of a, of a very strong established person, we automatically, especially on Instagram or something like that, we look at them and go, oh, their relationships so perfect. They never feel loneliness. So whose voice does, does that sound like? It sounds like the voice of a child, somebody who hasn’t done the work. Right?

And so this character of six, I don’t care if he’s six, he’s a little jackass and he really, really affects a lot of our behaviors. But if we can notice those actions in those behaviors and, and catch it and go, oh, that six, the second I can dump that on this external character outside of myself, it kind of lets me go,

oh, this is just a part of me, but it’s not me. That’s just a thought, but it’s not true. Right. Six is also the one, obviously, because he’s a child that plays games. I can just imagine the amount of people who just heard that line and almost drove off the road if they were driving, like, right.

I’m so sick of these games. I’m sick of these games, but who plays games? The other person six. So if we can also look at these other people and go, that sounds like his six, it’s almost like, they’re not so bad. I’m like, oh, they’re acting like a child because they are. And I do it sometimes because we all have a six,

right? We all have mommy and daddy issues. Yup. Right. We all have that wounding. When we all, we all try to work through it. Six is also the one for that same reason that needs closure. Right. He goes, did I? Well, does that mean he doesn’t like me? What did I even do? Let me reread my texts.

50 million times guilty. Oh, the insecurities come up. And it’s just like a never ending tumble that goes on and on and on and on and on and on. And I get completely what you’re talking about. I actually have a photo. You can’t see it behind me, but it is hiding back there somewhere of my child self. Because when I did a lot of the therapy,

like my kind of like intensive therapy, when I was going through it, I needed to make sure that I had that visible so that I could remind myself when that kind of shit happens. I need to like be more compassionate because he’s just reacting from that childhood state of all those means and insecurities and all those things that happened to him. And it’s true.

When you take it outside of yourself, you can be like, okay, I see you. I recognize you. It’s okay. We’re safe. I’m the one driving the car. Now you don’t have to drive it by yourself. And that’s it. I’ve got the rain step back, step off. And you just actually segwayed very beautifully to, what do we do with when we notice a thought is a six is from our six,

what do we do? And the first thing, and you guys ain’t go like it. The thing is, this is where you gotta do the heavy lifting where you got to do the work and therapy. I can’t say enough. I think we’re entering into a day and age where therapy is a lot more common. More people are okay with talking about the fact that they have a therapist,

a therapist, a counselor, a life coach. These things are so important to addressing your six. You gotta do the work and therapy is so, so beneficial in these areas to help you notice things. Because the other thing to help help you out is to notice your own triggers, notice your triggers in dating and write them down so that when they come up,

you’re like, oh shit, I know exactly what’s happening here. I’m about to get triggered a F because of this and this for me, my, one of my big triggers is flakiness. Whole loved Girl. You speak My language. I cannot, I cannot, I will not. I cannot. And you get, I, and this is, this is my six.

You get one damn chance because I have booked my Saturday for you. Sweet thing. And I am not giving you another Saturday. You know what I mean? So, but I know that’s one of my triggers and I know, okay, I just got triggered. What am I going to do now? Because six is going to ask you to do something.

So for me, I need to right away seek validation. So what am I going to do? I’m going to text a friend with benefits. I’m going to text my ex. So notice your trigger. And they’ll notice, notice what you do about your trigger. That’s how you babysit your six cause he needs it. The next thing is, you’re not going to like it either.

Don’t wallow. You cannot wallow in your feeling. So if you feel like junk and feel super anxious and triggered, you have to do something about it. Get out of your house, go for a run, do something active, walk in nature, hug a tree. I don’t care what works for you, but you can’t wallow and sit in it,

even though that’s exactly what your brain is going to tell you to do, because you’re either experiencing anxiety or depression as a result of this trigger to get rid of your six, you cannot wallow because that is what his child, this child within us wants to do. So listen, the reason I know those things to those people that are listening, it’d be like,

oh my gosh, she’s so well, no, I’m not. I’m a hot mess. But the thing is, is I am working on it. And I want to share these with you so that we can hold hands and get through this crazy life of ours together. Oh God. I know. You know, because my, my old trigger was I needed that outside validation.

And so I totally understand that whole ghosting situation. It’s like, well, what is it? And it was because I didn’t have the confidence built inside of myself to know within my side of myself, that it has nothing to do with me. This person not showing up this person like ghosting and everything to do with them, because I don’t do that to other people because I hate it being done to me.

And I look at it just like a simple respect thing. Even if I’m not going to date you or go on a date with you or whatever with you, I’m just going to be upfront and let you know. But it takes a lot of confidence and a lot of work to get to that place where you can do that with kindness and compassion and people are going to be triggered by it because they’re going to fucking lose their shit and you’re going to go cool.

Awesome. You know, I just, I said my peace have a great day, but like the work you gotta do to get there, you got to Listen to it. Isn’t that crazy. So I’m going to break down what you just said in, in just like this, the mini paragraph, because this is so crazy to me, it does take work and courage to exhibit or portrayed display the golden rule,

do unto others as you would have done unto you and not in a religious way, but in the seriously, let’s get our shit together way. Yeah. If you don’t like being ghosted upon, don’t do it. But we sometimes don’t have the strategies to tell that guy or the heart to tell that guy it’s really not working out. Right. And isn’t that crazy Hurt his feelings.

It’s like, well, you’re going to hurt his feelings way more. If you just go some it’s, if you do it with kindness and compassion, the other person’s response is none of your responsibility, because this is their responsibility. The way they respond, their emotions, their triggers, all that. We are all responsible for that for ourselves. So you telling your truth with kindness and compassion.

I always have to remind people, kindness and compassion that is you’ve done all you needed to do. That was your job. You showed up, you did your job. It’s now the other person’s turn to go, okay, this fucking sucks. But I respect you because you told me, and more often than not now as an adult, I do get that more response of like,

you know what? I respect this. I don’t like it, but I respect it. Whereas when we were younger, when I was younger in my twenties, it was a lot of just the whole bullshit, back and forth people trying to figure all of their wounds out. It was, it was a hot, hot mess. It is. ’cause it’s,

it’s it is this strange dance of triggers, tripping over other people’s triggers. And it’s, it’s like trying to navigate blindly, the most traps that you put down, the most traps that he’s put down. And you’re both walking blind through a room together. And it just turns into this hot mess. You snap, you snap your toe on one, freaks you out.

You step forward, clumsily, six more snap on your feet. They happen to be his, and then you snap over here and step on four of yours until you’re both rolling in agony on the floor being like, I don’t even wanna know what our original problem was. All I know is that I’m pissed. And it’s, it’s a very difficult thing to navigate when these things start to make you feel crazy,

right? Cause dating sometimes make you feel, makes you feel crazy. Oh, totally. And I want to track it back to what you said about how it’s so important to work with a therapist, life coach somebody, because don’t know what you don’t know. All you know is you’re having these experiences and that it’s messy. And you’re like, I don’t know what’s going on.

You don’t, you’ve not been taught. What’s been going on. So you need to be able to learn that and navigating that with a professional in some regard helps exponentially. And I’m just going to throw it a little, a little, a throat, shout out to inkblot therapy. I think it’s inkblot therapy.com or anyways, you can Google it. I’ll put it in the show notes,

but that’s where I found my therapist. It’s very affordable. It’s Canadian, it’s all online. And it’s absolutely fabulous. And navigating those things with a professional will change your life exponentially. So some of you out there might be thinking, you know, therapy’s too expensive accounts, too expensive, $40 for half hour, Or go through your family doctor and have them refer you to short term,

a short short-term arrangement of six weeks. I had done that a couple times when I was experiencing some pretty significant anxiety issues in my mid twenties, there there’s always a solution. So don’t make excuses on me. Find, find the solution. Yeah. It’s always the, it’s always the child’s health making those excuses. Yes, sir. You got the hang of It.

Yeah. Oh yeah. I know. I’m well versed in this. I mean, this is the work I do. I would hope my welfare, so, okay. Let’s continue on down this journey. So you, we, we’re now kind of working through therapy. Where were we? We had six And now we have, we have, and she’s such a bitch.

We have Ida and Ida is an idealist. Ida is the person who makes excuses for somebody douchebaggery ignores red flags. She’s the one that you’re sitting across from somebody on a first date and quickly without even cracking a smile. You envision your wedding to this person. She’s the one that sets. Are you laughing at me? I know all the items I know.

Oh my God. I know somebody. Yeah. And listen, and I have, I have done it. I have sat there straight faced. I probably looked bored and I had laid out the flower colors of the flowers at our wedding, what my, what my tux was going to look like. And that is Ida. When we ignore red flags,

make excuses for douchebaggery get overexcited about something, which just sets us up for disappointment. And that’s why it was so sneaky because she feels like excitement and dating sucks. So anytime you can feel excited, relish it. But know when it’s Ida know when she’s setting you up to have your, your heartbroken. This line blew my tits off with, in terms of dating.

One of my friends said to me in dating one plus one does not equal to two impact that we’re talking about how things seem straightforward. And we expect people to act like the way we act and when they don’t, it doesn’t make any sense to us. But we always go into a dating scenario expecting it to make sense. But one plus one does not equal two.

And it’s Ida who says this is going to go swimmingly. And that’s not to say everybody, be careful and make sure you go into dating with a pessimistic attitude. I’m not saying that at all. What I’m saying is just be aware of when we’re overexcited and overindulgent, and, and thinking too far ahead. But especially when we’re ignoring red flags that we know we shouldn’t touch.

For instance, one of my friends was dating this guy who exhibited a, B and C broke up with him after a long-term relationship within four months was with this guy who exhibited ADHD to notice your patterns. We’ve got to notice our patterns. The other thing crazy about Ida, and a lot of, a lot of you will relate to this is she is a drug addict.

Wait for it. Not the way you, that you think it as a drug addict, because studies have shown that the first time you’re in love or when you’re deeply in love with anybody, the sensory receptors in your brain, that activate when you’re high on cocaine, activate in the same way. When you’re in this type of love, therefore in the same way that we chase the dragon with drinking or drugs or whatever it might be,

you are Ida is chasing the dragon and comparing it to our deepest love. Well, you’re not Richard, but you haven’t dated Richard in eight years. And why? Because he was your biggest love dump and in passionate about this. So I’m speaking very loudly, but I’m not throwing you shade. The reason as I said that I’ve identified these things, because these are me.

This is me hot mess, Tyler Boyle over here. Right? So that, that is our blessing. Ida. She’s the one who interrupts our intuition. When we sit down on a date and go, Ooh, I don’t know about this guy, but we ignore it because boy is he find a look at she’s the one that interrupts that intuition. And that’s our Ida.

Yeah. Or even, even if it’s like, he’s like find enough and like, everything’s good, but you’ve just been single for so long. And you just want that? Huh? She’s an addict. Oh, I hear that. I get that. That’s amazing. I love that. I’m so I’m enthralled. I want you to keep going. What’s the next one?

Who’s up. Who’s up next. Who’s up. So the next one is very ex like self-explanatory, he’s our demon. He’s our negative. Self-talk he is our insecurities. He’s usually our triggers. He’s just the one that gets in the mix late and starts throwing garbage at us. You suck. You’re not enough. You’re not hot enough where your abs or if only I was a few pounds more,

I could at least fit into dad bod category. I came out too late in life. These are things that put us down. When you hear the voice in your head, that’s putting you down. Then that’s usually our demon speaking to us, right? He’s the one that gives us our nasty stories and his best food. His buffet, his Ambrosia is rejection because any form of rejection,

it’s always our own fault That It feeds it. And he adores it. He loves watching a spin yeah. Bags over the shoulder and goes, see, see, see, this is why we don’t go out. Because every time you go out, you want to ask somebody and you talk to them and then they were jacked you or see, see,

this is why we’re on Instagram. And every time we go, we try and like somebody or do something. And they don’t like us back or they don’t talk to us back CC That’s him. And he, he is also the one that holds grudges, right? Holds grudges to that guy that you met at the bar that said he was going to text you.

And he never did. You don’t know why he didn’t text you. Yeah, he could be an asshole, but there could be a million. And one reasons, for instance, I had somebody’s hair flip. I had, somebody wants to tell me that he couldn’t possibly date me because it was too intimidating. And so many words, because I was out of his league.

That’s why you never texted me. Keskin the fuck I was. I was in, I was totally in, I had no idea that that was the narrative, But I know. And that’s the part that drives me crazy about the stories we make up in our heads, because this is one thing that I used to do that I’m very good at distancing myself now from is like,

we make up such insane stories in our head and I refuse to believe them. Now I go off of facts and if there’s no facts and I catch myself going on these tangents, I go, whoa, whoa, whoa. I want the hard facts. I don’t want none of this. Bullshittery that you were trying to feed beyond what the facts of where this is true.

If I don’t have those facts, then that’s it. Because, and then it goes back to what I said. So much of it is often the other person’s story. It’s nothing to do with me. It’s all the other person. It’s their insecurities. It’s their shit. It’s their six. It’s their Ida. It’s their demons. Let me, let me add to that.

So there’s a line. I think this is also a biblical line. I am not, I am. I’m not religious just for, just for the record. There’s a line that helps me distinguish when it’s my demon talking to me and that line is, am I going to lose it? Probably that line is, has left my mind right now. We’re going to come back to that.

I’m going to come back to it. It comes in fresh. Oh, there it is. It’s the truth will set you free, right? The truth will set you free. So if I’m thinking a thought that is negative or thinking of thought, that’s literally giving me an anxiety attack or making me feel sick. I go, does this thought feel freeing?

No. Then it’s probably not true. Or it’s not for me to unpack because it doesn’t set me free. So that’s a good way to identify when it’s your demon talking to you. If you can’t distinguish, well, this is just me now and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Does that thought feel freeing, feel freeing. No.

Then move along because it’s not true. And that’s the thing. Six Ida and demon do not speak the truth. Every one of them is Elia. Oh my God. I know our minds. We ah, it’s so crazy. How many people believe their thoughts simply because they have them just because you have thoughts does not make them true. Truth and facts are facts,

emotions and feelings are emotions and feelings. They don’t necessarily mean that they’re factual or that they are true. You can have them, you can feel them, but it doesn’t mean that what’s going on is the truth or that it’s factual. And that’s where people don’t necessarily vibe with me sometimes because I’m a very analytical, very logical minded person. So when I deal with things,

I deal with them very straight on and people think I’m a bit blunt sometimes, or maybe like cold, but it’s just, I like to deal with facts and I don’t, I don’t get all into the mushy gushy of it all because that’s just stuff that’s made up in my head. It’s all these things we just talked about. I deal with like,

what’s in front of me right now. What’s the facts. What’s reality. Like what’s actually happening. So That’s beautiful to hear because it means you’ve done the work and I’m listening to you and I’m going snap because that ain’t me. So I am somebody who gets wrapped up in the stories I do. And I just have to continue to do the work.

Like if you’re finding that your demon is really, really in your head a lot, how do we overcome that? You’ve just identified a one. Root is what are the facts? Right. I also live by something. I call dating integrity statements. No, I’m not even lying. I will show you, is it right beside me? Yes, it is.

I will show you my journal where I literally, and for those of you listening, who can’t see it doesn’t matter. I’m going to read you a little bit of them. Look in my journal, have what I call dating integrity statements. And those are the things that I kind of live by in order to ensure I am not triggering myself or giving my demon food.

So for instance, I’m looking for somebody 50 50. If I find that I’m doing too much texting or I’m the one reaching out, it ain’t 50 50. So I need to be prepared going into a dating situation and know that that will be one of my triggers. Honor my integrity statements to walk away. If, if that’s, if that’s, if 50 50 is something that’s not happening and I’m going to,

I take that, but I’m going to take that somewhere first because somebody might take that and go, okay, well this guy’s not doing a fuck it. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. First we need to give opportunity for that person to not read our mind, but to actually communicate our needs. Okay. So we need to,

we need to jump on that one. So I’m not, I’m not lying. I literally jumped down the down. The science, evolutionary psychology, social psychology relationships, psychology to understand why I was having so much trouble with dating. And one of the, one of the most crazy things that we experienced is our confusion in this world and how that affects how that affects our entire physiology,

right? It affects our brain. It affects our heart, our heart beats faster, all of this stuff. It can literally make us squirrely sick and finding ways to work around how dating affects us is, is so important. We have to be doing the work at the same time in order to one date with integrity and to date, to a really great end result because sometimes people aren’t self aware enough to even know what they’re looking for.

And so they’ll take anything. And that causes problems later in your relationship, right? So one of the things you need to know in all this, this research that I did and nobody’s fully fully said, it is, this is all the relationships started to point to one key for a really great partner. And that’s just what you identified communication. If you meet somebody in,

you’re sitting across the table from them and they have integrity and are very communicative or are very straightforward, listen, I’m not looking for something right now, but I like you. I’m interested. That kind of thing. If you find a good communicator, you have found somebody very, very special because communication is one of the biggest indicators of a long-term healthy relationship.

Yeah. Oh yeah. That’s why I find guys who I have dated have run from me very quickly because of that. They, they use the words or they’ll use the language around intimidation. But what I take that as is it’s, I’m very good at communicating. I know what I needed and I know what I want. And if you’re not at that place as well,

it’s not going to be a balanced relationship. You need to have equally done that work. And you need to have equally gotten confident enough to communicate your needs because that’s so important with the relationship. I come from a divorced family where there was communication. And I refuse to repeat that in my life cycle. And if I have kids in their life cycle,

I’m breaking that. And so communication is my be all end all, when people can’t communicate, I’m like, this is ankle work. This is, This is the T the Realty communication. We’re all looking for it because the thing is, is if you get into a relationship with that person, it’s a such a good indicator of success, because they’ll say rather than playing a game and giving into their six,

there’ll be direct. And they’ll say, you pissed me off. Here’s why, here’s how he felt. How can we fix this? Let’s move on. That’s me, everybody not watching. I’m going to myself. Cause that’s me. And people are like, what is happening right now? And I’m like, I’m telling you the truth. Yeah. And,

and w w another way that we can kind of help with our demon, another way that we can circle away from those, those crazy spinning thoughts is to have one liners that you hear from friends, or one-liners that work for you to get your mind, right. Crate, crazy train. Before it leaves the station, right? Like some of mine are,

I guess he didn’t like chocolate chip cookies is not stupid, but it works for me. And it means this I I’m a chocolate chip cookie. Maybe I’m a white macadamia nut. Maybe I’m a date square. I don’t know. But we all have our preferences in what we’re looking for. And when you boil it down to something as simple as that is,

you’re just not his type of cookie. It’s like, oh, that’s really fine because I love chocolate chip cookies. And somebody is going to love my chocolate chip cookies. Right. And so boiling it down and having that type of line helps me get off the tray, crazy train. Oh, better. This ended now than later, when I’d get really hurt,

that makes me feel better. Right. So these, these type of lines that have worked for you in the past, or good advice from somebody, write them down and then go back to those when you’re feeling like junk. And it helps you get off the crazy train, because hopefully that will, that will hit the eject button from the train because you’re like,

oh yeah, just not a chocolate chip cookie. He must like this one. Right. So that’s, that’s another way to get the demon out of your head. It’s fully. And that’s the way people are like, I’m a red head. Sometimes people just don’t like red heads and that’s okay. I don’t even like red heads. So that’s like,

So I get it. All right. So there’s one more part to all of this. And I’m really excited to jump into it. Cause what is that last part? This is the most important part. And unfortunately it’s the quietest part. And that’s our, that self capital S self capital S self is our intuition. When we sit across from the table from somebody and go,

I can already tell, he reminds me too much of this. Or this is a, an identical to my, to my last partner. Or he says something shady to the way during you’re like, that’s okay, because I was in your head, right? Our capital S self is that tiny, tiny, wee voice. And he, she, the,

or they are the one in our head who helps, who activates our intuition. They are our positive self-talk. They are our aha moments. Those moments that I was just talking about with these lines to get off the crazy train like that is those lines either came from a friend, a single friend, don’t ask dating advice from somebody who’s not single my personal opinion.

We can unpack that in another podcast for an hour on its own stick to your single friends. But once you have have that line, like dating is just practice for the one. Well, that’s kind of, that’s kind of, that’s kind of nice, right? Ourself is the one who said it. And unfortunately, our self is the quietest voice in her head,

but here’s the T ourself is the only voice in our head that tells the truth. It’s the only one, the other three are liars. And unfortunately, it’s just so hard to hear because how many of you have been stressed or anxious or depressed and say, I drive myself nuts, wait a minute. Does that implying? There’s somebody else in there.

So yeah, it is. It’s, it’s, it’s our higher self. It’s the way that we’re supposed to show up. It’s the way that when any of you have met somebody that you really resonated with that made your, your heart and your genitals, all warm and squishy, the yourself is the one who made it very easy, where all the games disappeared,

where you could be your self right now that the dating advice I’m not going to give you is just go and be yourself. I have a problem with that advice that we don’t have time to unpack, but ourself is the one where we’re showing up authentically where things are easy, where communication is happening, where there’s compassion, where it is a freeing thought.

Like I remember I was spinning about this one guy and I was like, it’s a storm out right now. I bet you, he got stuck in traffic or something like that. It’s our self is our intuition as well. And sure enough, that’s literally true. So listening to those freeing thoughts, those thoughts are ourselves. Now, all four of these voices are important because each one of them have a role in protecting us or helping us learn a lesson.

Right. But let’s listen to the lessons as they come forward. And let’s try to listen a little harder to that self, Big time, big time. I love it. I love all of what you just said. And it’s so important because we can very easily misconstrue either six or Ida or the demon as our intuition as ourselves, but specifically, and especially if you’ve not done a lot of the work,

if you’re just kind of letting life happen to you and emotions are happening to you and all this stuff happens to you. That to me is a very clear indicator that that is you’re still living in those other areas when you’re happening, when you’re having life stuff going on, and you’re thinking of yourself, and you have the self thoughts going on, the big self thoughts going on.

That’s when stuff is happening for you. That’s the thought process. If you’re still thinking things are happening to you, that’s six Ida and the demon. If you are having things that are happening for you, that is your big self, because when something happens for you, you can take a step back and you could go, okay, might not be great.

Might not be a fun experience, but what can I learn here? What’s going on here? What can I see here? That’s going to help me not have to go through this again in the future. Because a lot of my belief, my personal belief is that life is just one giant school. And we’re here to kind of learn the things that we had,

like Alec Hart picked before we came here. And it’s like, it can go any which way. But like, we’re like, okay, I want to experience this and this and that and the other. And we will continue to learn those lessons or to try and learn those lessons until we’ve learned it. And that goes back to when you were saying,

you know, this person broke up with XYZ, goes to the next person. And they’re exactly like XYZ it’s because they didn’t take that break. They didn’t take that time to step back and take a breath and go, okay, why did this happen for me? And what can I learn from this? And actually integrate that before I move on to the next thing,

because you’re never going to get perfect. You’re never going to be perfect, but you need to have that leg time, which is it’s the same in our coaching membership. We have a week where there’s nothing that goes on because it’s an integration week because you can’t just keep learning. You need space to take a step back, to breathe, to integrate,

to learn and physically get it in your body before you run off and do the next thing. Yeah. You touch on something super important. And this will kind of be my last thought because it connects to all of what you’re just saying. And I’ll all of what we’ve talked about is to those of you out there in the dating world right now, remember that there is a difference between chemistry and compatibility.

There’s a huge difference. It, well, in the guy, world, I guy air quotes. We, we say, what head are you thinking with really one’s chemistry and one’s compatibility, right? And we’re looking for both a beautiful blend of both in a really successful relationship, because if we’re just going off chemistry, we’re ignoring the way that they’re compatible and we’re ignoring those red flags.

So we have to find a bit of both in order to have a really, really successful, healthy, happy, long relationship. If that’s what you’re looking for. I fully fully agree with you. Can I get a gay man, gay Man. Awesome. This has been an absolutely enlightening and magical conversation because there’s going to be so many guys out there,

listening guys, girls, everything, where they’ve never been in a serious romantic relationship with somebody they really want to be in it with. And I think a lot of this is really going to help them kind of figure out their own stuff. And even these things, these concepts, it’s not just dating. It can go towards life as well. You know,

I’m, I’m in the midst of writing a book right now and throwing up book proposals and all that, these same things come up for me in that regard, oh, who am I to do this? Where, you know, the confidence stuff comes up. I, that comes in and six comes in and he’s so scared. And the demons like,

I’ll see, they’re not responding. You’re not good enough. Like it can be attached to so many different areas in life. And I think that that’s so important. And I’m so grateful that you took the time to come and join us on the game and going deeper podcast today. Tyler, if people want to know more about you and all of the good stuff,

where can they find you? You can find [email protected]. All, all my socials are listed there on the contact page. For those of you interested in exploring meditation. So you can find information at dream walkers, meditations.com. Both of those are kind of my passion projects on the side. I’m so happy to have shared these thoughts with you today. And you can reach out to me on my website.

Let me know what you thought and offer, offer me more. I’m always, I’m always willing to learn more about other people’s experiences and developing these ideas to help as many people as we can in this crazy dating world. Amazing and good. And I know that you are a member of the gay men’s brotherhood Facebook group, the free Facebook group. So if you’re listening to this and you’re not a member of the free Facebook group,

when this episode comes out, you’re obviously listening to it. I’ll give you a shout out in when we post it into the group so that anybody who wants to talk and also chat to you in there. Does that sound like a good plan? I love It. Yes, sir. Awesome. All of the information that we just talked about, all the links will be in the show notes for today’s show.

So inkblot therapy will be there and all the websites that Tyler just talked about will also be there. It has been absolutely amazing. Is there any last words you’d like to leave the listeners with No, go out there, crush it date with integrity. Remember the golden rule, which is do unto others as you would have done onto you. As we approach the dating world,

make the, the, the dating space in place a lot happier, a lot easier to navigate. Amazing, magical. Awesome. All right. Well, if you’re listening to this on apple iTunes or something like that, give us a star rating. We’d love to hear from you. Also write a little comment below. We’d love to read the comments and we might read them out.

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you can also find all that information at mission road. So thank you all for listening and or watching today, have the best day ever. Peace love rainbows bye.