Not the Way It Was

Transcript

You want a s'more? No, I'm good. I was asking for you.

Seriously, if I wanted one, I'd make it. You ever watch The Sandlot when you were a kid? My mom didn't really want us to watch it because you know that scene where they go to the fair, the carnival, and they have to chew on tobacco and they end up getting sick and everybody throws up over everything and yeah, my mom was like, I don't want you seeing, you know, I don't want it.

Glorifying chewing tobacco. Use your kids. You shouldn't be watching that.

And then, you know, no, it's disgusting because people are throwing it. So anyway, it was, uh, it was a little bit of an act of rebellion, maybe, to watch that movie. For me.

Yeah, well, when she, you know, figured it out, she realized it's actually a good movie. So that was, that was a thing, I guess. It was a little campfire thing, you know, s'mores, and anytime I am at a campfire, anytime there's s'mores involved, I start thinking about that movie.

All right, what movie did you watch a lot when you were a kid? Really? I did too.

Baby, I love that movie. Hell yeah, game. Tell you what, after we get done with the fire here, let's go inside.

We can get out of the smoke-smelling clothes and we can get cleaned up and then we snuggle up and we watch it. If it's not on Netflix, I'm sure it's only like a couple bucks to rent on Amazon, it's fine. So, you're awful quiet right now.

Anything on your mind? Yeah, of course, I'm happy to hear it. Take your time, sweetheart.

I understand. I don't think I'm in trouble. You just, you know, seem like someone's troubling you and I want to know if it's anything that you want me to listen to or if I can help somehow.

You know, I'm always happy to. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah.

Well, we call them the bad old days for a reason, right? But what about it's on your mind? Well, no, I guess what I'm asking is why, like that stuff that you're talking about, that was quite some time ago.

And why is it troubling you now? Baby, I'm not saying you can't think about it. I'm just wondering.

Okay, this is not me criticizing you for thinking about it. I'm looking for insight. I want to understand like, what was it that brought it to your mind? What is it about it that's bothering you? Because I thought this was stuff that we'd, you know, already resolved.

I thought it was ancient history. So, yeah, I'm a little bit surprised that it's coming out now. You know, not upset or anything, just a little bit surprised and caught off guard.

And I'd like to understand you better. Yeah, I can understand that. Okay.

I see where you're coming from. No, I can't say I share your concern there. Hold on a second.

That doesn't mean that I'm saying it's invalid. Okay, I'm not invalidating you at all. I understand your concern.

But, you know, you and I have talked, I mean, this kind of gets to the heart of what you're talking about. You're talking about all the conflicts that we had, all the rough times, the misunderstandings, fights. And they happened early in our relationship, right? And, well, we talked about this a lot of times.

It took us a while to get our heads wrapped around it, that you and I are very, very, very different individuals, right? Our brains are wired very differently, and not just, you know, different people differently. It's like polar opposites kind of thing, okay? And what that means is that a lot of times I'm gonna see things through different lenses than you are.

And it can bring a different perspective, but it also means that sometimes I'm not gonna share your concern, even if I do understand it, just like you won't share all of mine, okay? And, sweetheart, I do understand you. Look, a lot of the stuff that you read online says that the beginning of your relationship ought to be smooth sailing.

It's the honeymoon phase. And a lot of people are gonna say, if you don't have that, then clearly you're just incompatible, right? And you ought to just, even if you care about each other, you just say, it's not gonna work.

We're too different. And you just walk away, right? You just turn and walk away.

And you find someone that you're more compatible with. And for us, it was pretty much feet to the fire right from the start, wasn't it? No pun intended.

It was. It wasn't fun for either of us. I mean, when things were good, they were so good.

But they were frequently bad. And both of us wanted so desperately to be understood by the other. But both of us were also blind to the fact that we weren't understanding each other.

And it led to a lot of conflict, didn't it? You know, there's several reasons that we stuck together through that really difficult time. I think some of them were really good.

Well, we clearly loved each other a lot, right? We clearly loved each other. We wanted to adore each other.

We wanted to make each other happy. We had a lot of things in common. We were very compatible as friends.

There were some less healthy reasons that we stayed together too. Exactly. We were both going through some really challenging circumstances.

And we were very codependent on each other. And there was a lot of toxicity there in our relationship. And both of us brought it.

Both of us brought the toxicity. And yeah, the common wisdom would have been that we should have just walked away from each other, cut our losses. And I think also both of us kind of fell into the sunk cost fallacy.

You know, they talk about in business where we've already poured so much of our money and our resources into this failing project. We're in too deep. We can't walk away now.

We need to invest more and invest more and invest more. And the fallacy there is the costs that you've already incurred, they're gone. You can't recoup them.

So wisdom says don't throw good money after bad. Cut your losses and invest in a new project that actually will work. And we both fell into that sunk cost fallacy.

I think neither of us wanted to walk away. We'd invested so much of ourselves. We'd put so much time, so much heart, so much energy in.

And neither of us wanted to lose all that. Yeah, but sweetheart, that's not something you need to get down about. Because the same thing applies here.

It's a sunk cost fallacy. We put in that time. We put in that energy.

We put in that effort. We made the choices that we made. Those are now in the past.

We can't undo them. We can't change them. And if some of them were made for the wrong reasons, that doesn't change the fact that we pulled through it and got where we wanted to be.

And we can enjoy what we have now. We can enjoy where we are and where we're going. See, the past is full of weight and heaviness, and it doesn't need to weigh down the present and the future.

It can be behind us. And that's why I don't share your concern. I understand where it comes from.

But I don't think that the past is a. .. it doesn't need to determine our future.

We determine our future. And where we are now is a very happy, healthy place.