The RelationShop crew discusses relationships seen on reality TV (90 Day Fiancé, Married at First Sight, etc.) and throughout Pop Culture in order to provide good relationship advice that works.

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Hello. This is the relation shot where we analyze pop culture. Thio give you relationship advice. That works. I’m Toya and I have Eric and Jason. It was like toys like Hello, E. Anyway, I have a four questions. Send those into the relationship at power 77 radio dot com And you know what? I did remember one thing. We have a question right from Jason. Do have a question. Actually, the questions not from Jason is from Tony Tony from Dallas. Alright, What Tony ask is my wife and I are going through a divorce.

Asked about that, Tony, uh, we have three kids and my wife and I are friendly and trying to divorce without using attorneys. Do you think this is wise? I’ve always heard that attorneys can make things mawr complicated. Uh, the age old question Age old question. I don’t know if attorneys necessarily make things complicated. Attorneys are just there to look out for the interests of their clients. Eso When the other spouse makes things complicated, they’re gonna they’re gonna match them. So I mean, obviously, if you and your spouse are on good terms, I’m just I’ve rarely seen it goes smoothly because people are inherently selfish and vindictive.

And I mean, if they can, God bless them. Go for it. I would I would probably consultant, attorney just tohave have some wisdom as to what stuff I need to be thinking about the dressing so we don’t go sideways. But, man, if you could pull that off God bless you both. Absolutely. But this situation is gonna be like, you know, it’s kind of like, uh, revealing a will. Family members also start turning on family members. You know, this is one of those things where you can have a great relationship going in.

But when you start dealing with kids, money and this this that, you know, like I said it is, sometimes it doesn’t go well. And I would protect my There’s a part of me that would be like, if you guys can get along that well, why couldn’t you say marriage? Exactly. Yeah. Somebody was selfish enough in the marriage, too. Put the other in a position to say, I can’t do this any longer, right? No matter what appeal came or whatever else. So I think a lot of times that’s pretty indicative.

You may be smooth right now, but you start talking about money and co parenting and time with the kids. And who could move where and who can’t move where and pretty quickly whatever you found in the marriage is going to raise up. And I would probably say, You know, just you don’t have to go into it thinking, Okay, let’s get a new attorney. Thio Asar is going in on bad terms. I mean, just approach it with your soon to be ex that you know what? Let’s get an attorney just to make sure we understand everything.

It make sure there’s there’s not any things that were missing. And if you approach it on a on a calm term instead of ah, well, I wanna protect myself term that way you’re not raising up walls and creating hostilities before they haven’t. That’s true. They could see a mediator to that zoo. Always preeminent strike to see if you can do it with the mediator. That would be cheaper. And there you go. Give it a shot. Tony Tony, thank you for the question. And if if anyone else has questions, send those into the relationship that power 77 radio dot com.

And what are we getting into today? We’ll talk about friendships today. How friendships impact your relationship. You do know that everybody says you’re the sum total of the five people closest to you kind of thing. So that means I don’t care whether you think so or not. Every friendship you have that’s close, that you spend any time with has an impact on your relationship, positive or negative. So we’re gonna talk about two categories. Friends of the same sex, your boy. If you’re a guy, your girls if you’re a girl and then we’re gonna talk about opposite sex friends, which would be the opposite of what you are.

So that’s pretty self explanatory. But sometimes you just don’t know eso. We’ll talk about same sex if you’re dating and same sex if you’re married and then opposite sex. If you’re dating and married, that makes sense. Eso Lett’s category number one is your dating or your single you’re not yet married on and what do you do? Or how do your friends of the same sex? So Toya your girl so you could be talking about your girlfriends and Jason, You’re a guy so you could be talking about your your boys.

How do they impact your relationship? Positive and negative. Well, I will say with me, for most women, it’s like, Well, what is he like? You know, how much working are you gonna have to put in E O? They want to know. Do you really are You really have to work on this dude. You know what I’m saying? Like, does he have his stuff together? Is it gonna be bringing? Yeah, bringing something to the table? That’s how girlfriends are. Like they’re gonna come together. Tell me about this guy.

First of all, they’re gonna know, like, if he makes you happy because they could tell about how you’re talking about him, how you bring it up, right? And then after that, it’s just like, Well, huh? Let’s Let’s meet him. Tell us more about him. We wanna make sure it’s all about a protection thing. We wanna make sure that you’re not at the point where you’re just desperate to take whoever and make sure that it’s a guy that we we know you could be with, You know, so friends or just kind of their toe be that extra I that extra air.

Just pay attention, cause when you’re in the relationship, you don’t always see everything. But your friends may see other things. It just kind of let you aware of it. So, you know. Okay, let me understand your question. So you’re asking me how they influenced me just in my life or in my relation? You’re dating. We’re talking about relationships, Jason. This is the relation shop. How’s your life? The relationship about Wanna shop? Yeah. We could do a separate show on that. Okay, well, things you didn’t know about Bubbles Bubbles.

Yeah, first of all, why? They call you bubbles. That’s the first question you don’t wanna know. Well, okay, so influencing my friend. You know what I mean? So I had two sets of friends. I had my poker buddy friends, and they didn’t really care. They would just like hanging out, you know, keeping me from They just want to know. Did you get something that those friends Wait a minute. We’re talking about, like, the top five. The top five way. Then I had my community friends. Those are the friends that I could go thio and you know when we’re having issues.

So yeah, those are my huge friends. Those are the ones that are obviously in a relationship scenario dating that I bounce stuff off of. But I only put people in that circle that I know I can, uh I know they’re going to speak some truth in many world. I like it or not. So So, yeah, I have two categories. So when you when you’re dating when you’re dating are are your close people Are they all single and dating? Or do you have some married one sprinkled in there?

Who’s the voices in there? Yeah, mix. Yeah. Eso as a guy where they were they really interested in? Hey, man, is this the kind of quality girl? How you treating her? What? What What did they care about? You know, it depends like so I even had a mix of ages in There s O. Some of my older friends walk me through like, you know, Have you thought about this future like making me think ahead, right? And so they’re they’re pointing out qualities and saying this quality right now, good or bad, here’s what it looks like Five years into marriage as a mother as a wife, 20 years in s.

So I tend to lean towards the older ones. No, I mean, not the younger younger was REM or just listeners and, you know, could kind of walk you through. Yeah, a motion e at the time. I don’t know, but yeah, typically lean towards the older, The older buddies. Yeah. Talk about enough of my heart well back. You know, man, that was so long ago. You know, like when I think about it like, jeez, that had to be, like, 2000 and three when I was in that place. You don’t even talk about so long ago.

I’m gonna roll back to the early nineties. Yeah, I got married in 89 1st, but at that time eso hailan was at the top of the charts. Might as well Joe eso here. The truth is, and we’ve talked. I’ve talked about this before. Like I’m not the same Toya that I was back when me and my first started dating. Right? So I wasn’t really in church, you know, I really wasn’t. I knew there was a guy, but I was more of a check. Mark Christian so I kind of did what I wanted to do. Honestly.

So, like when we were dating? Yes, I had friends. But I really could care less about what they thought about who I dated. And I probably didn’t even share very much. It was more of Yep. This is my man. Yeah. I mean, it was done, but the toy of today If I were dating, it would be different where I wouldn’t have more of the community and all of that, because it would have really helped. Early on in our relationship, I would have been a better person to date.

I would have been a better communicator had I thought, outside of my own selfish desires, you know, eso That’s my truth, you know. But I wasn’t even there. I was just like, Hey, I want a man period on you cut. You want e? That’s just what it waas want a man e don’t I want my friends to support me when I doing when I don’t, I’m doing e want unconditional support. That’s good. So I would say this for for single people dating with with your friends because sometimes the tendency is Wait, wait Wait, wait, wait.

Why do you get out on this? What about your experience? What about my experience? Great. E No. Yeah, I got married not long after you. I was 20. So I was thinking, Hey, dude, she’s hot, e like her. That’s like that. That’s all I got that wasn’t like, is this is God in this none of my friends, Because all my all my buddies, I don’t You know, you apparently had a bunch of older friends. I don’t know if that’s what you did out East Texas, but my buddy were my buddies, my buddies 18 and 19 Eso I saw your mullet.

My buddy, my buddy have bullets to So they were like, Is she hot? Do you like her? You in some that that was their input If we’re being really eso, you know, But I think one of the keys is because I saw this all the time and and actually I think I saw itm or if I had to generalize mawr with girls than guys But where you find a new boo and you spend all your time with them and stop hanging out with your friends. Eso Pretty soon you kind of push all your friends aside when the relationship doesn’t work out.

Now you try to go back and get your friends. So I think if you’re single your same sex friends to people who know you who have been with you make sure you’re still spending time with them, make sure they’re part of the dating process. Like Toia said, they they have the ability to see the blind spots that you’re overlooking and be another set of eyes for you. So I would say that Don’t don’t ditch your your friends that you’ve had um they’re set eyes for you. So now let’s move into married.

Same sex friends. So what does this look like now? I got married and toy. You got all your girls that you hung with all the time. Jason, you got your guys Summer 19 somewhere 52 that you hang out with him, Play poker with eso. What do you do once you’re married with your same sex friends? Do you spend the same amount of time with them? What’s their input? How do you hang out with them? What do you guys navigate that? Well, of course it is God first, then my husband, then my gun on and then everybody else.

You say God first, but they don’t spend any time with God. You don’t know what e going on some people s o Okay. So, honestly, though, with my girlfriends, it’s really cool Because, like, honestly, I feel like all of my closest girlfriend, because I’m only speaking about the closest ones, right, So they know my heart. So they already know, like, hey, you know what? Is your husband okay? Like, hey, when can we hang out or whatever and not even a pressure type thing. But it’s just more of I guess we do more of couple things more.

So, um, but if we if there are girlfriends that really just want girls to hang out, I think it’s just an understanding that we don’t even talk about like it just doesn’t happen that much. But we’re all okay with it. We still talk on the phone. We still text, you know, So we’re still there for each other, but away time like and honestly, most of them are married, so it’s kind of a mutual understanding with everybody and eso. It kind of makes it easy, I guess. All right.

So you guys just all made the transition smoothly. Pretty much mad when toy couldn’t hang out like she used Thio. And they all got married too. So you’re all in the same Because, honestly, it’s weird, because all of my closest friends, I guess everybody was kind of dating or they were believers, you know? So they knew, like, Okay, your husband is first, like, you know, that was that was kind of it. We’re still close, but, you know, luckily, Ahmad, he loves the fact that he probably wish I would hang out with girlfriends more and leave him alone.

Hey, hey. Probably feels that way, but, you know, well, sorry. You need to get out more A. Yeah. I mean, no Mayan, I mean case. All right, So the first time I got married, I was 19 years old, so I mean, really the dynamic change where I wanted still play Madden with my buddies, all right, Like that. Right? But fast forward to now. I mean, you know, honestly, we we bond so well and all that that we obviously we have our issues from time to time, but you know we have.

We have our friends, like, you know, don’t get a big head, Eric, but I would consider your friend probably way needed it. But you know, I mean but I do know we have those friends and our hip feel. Love thio. Alright. See if he talks about about show. Remember that. I’ll give you a five minute reprieve. Sweet, sweet. But no, I mean, we have our friends that we know we can count on to go to, and we need Thio. But yeah, that’s so I mean, really it czar dynamic now, which looked a lot different than when I was 19.

You know, growing up helps. Yeah, I think Toya hit the nail on the head and it worked out well for you because it sounds like all your other friends were moving in that direction. I think when you get married, uh, if all your same sex friends or still single guys or single girls, you need to start making some shifts because they don’t. They’re not gonna value marriage the way you value marriage because they’re not in that space. And so if every time I wanna go out with my friends were going to the club because they’re single.

That’s not gonna work that well for my marriage. And when I’m struggling with my wife and I go to them, their advice is not gonna be Hey, man, I know what this feels like pushing plug in. They’re gonna be like, Dude, you should be out with us, man. You don’t need that headache. She don’t appreciate you that uh, right. And so I think you You still we still need outside friends? The other mistake we make is we ditch them all on behalf of the marriage, and oftentimes our spouse can meet all our emotional or relational needs.

You need some other good friendships to do that. So I would say you need to start making a shift where the majority of your same sex friends need to either being serious dating or married relationships because they’re now valuing the thing that’s most important to you. But you can’t ditch them all because you need that support as well. Eso let’s slide into the rial topic that people want to know. How do we deal with opposite sex friends, dating or marriage? Is it the same and are they different, you know?

And I figured you needed a little help with this one. Okay, way. Help! Need a little help. So I came up with five things because you know what? You mentioned you the blinds. So we all got our blindsides, right? Uh, so, you know, you might think thes thes situations You’re in with your opposite sex friend and married might be all right, but there are five things you need to watch out for. Okay, when you do that five little signs that your friend maybe a little more than a friend.

All right. Don’t start out easy. So if you find out your friend is a little too touchy Feely e believe you, sucker. Yeah, Ugo got their hands on you all the time. They wanna tell Huggy Huggy huggy. Okay, so we started out. Like if your friend always dresses up to see you. Oh, say, does putting on the cape you’re looking Good thing this old thing, right? That’s exactly if your friend would rather come over to talk instead of texting Call. Oh, Okay. Can I call you? Actually, I’m on your porch.

Let’s talk. Why is it all the women voices you’re doing over here? What you’re trying to You don’t know what that voice waas. That may have been a prepubescent Barry White. You don’t know. All right, well, that was a great Barry White. All right, now we get really a little bit. If your friend constantly talks bad about your spouse or your ex and said I wouldn’t have treated you like man that zio say he’s just a friend. Alright, Alright, Alright, Alright, Alright, The last one. Oh, baby.

I’m sorry. Sorry. I really had a flat nineties flashback back when toy was in sixth grade, right? Yeah, Probably. Right. All right, Let’s let’s hurry up and kill this thing off so you don’t swing anymore. Last one. All right. If you hide your friends text from your spouse because you know she would get mad or he would get mad. That’s probably not what we’re looking. That’s what we’re looking for. So there you go. There’s some flags to watch. You see, I was round Fowler. I mean, I felt the love from you earlier.

I didn’t going on you on the top five. Yeah, that’s good. Four minutes and 22 seconds. So just just Nobody’s watching. All right, so let’s talk singles. I’m single. I’m dating on. Is it okay for me to have friends of the opposite sex? Dead silence? Yeah. This is three persons Lett’s to find something a little bit first, Like friends. Like Like, let’s get to levels. So, friends that I hang out with quite a bit and a best friend. No and no. So I’m dating. I can’t have any friends of the opposite sex.

Yeah, so to me, how I find him a wife. That’s what I’m saying. I got a friend of the opposite sex, and she became more than just a friend, but Okay, let’s clarify this, though, because dating today is totally different. Then what Dating was like when we were all dating, You know, you all are. So we don’t have to be faithful. Okay, let’s Let’s go have a serious thank you dating relationship, okay? And you’re you’re focusing on this one person. I’m only dating one person. Okay, there we committed to each other that six months. Okay?

Way. Love yourself. You’re married without the ring. Basically What? Nah, that’s the I haven’t even got engaged yet. I’m just dating. Alright. Alright, so we’re dating, but it’s serious. Alright. Toya Cariou, Um eso and Iook for that. Then I will say the friendships with the opposite sex. All right. Y’all shouldn’t be like meeting up one on one. All right. The phone conversation shouldn’t be hours long. It should be kind of surface, you know, Like, let’s say it’s an old friend from college or whatever you know? Then it’s like you’re not just gonna cut off your friendship, but your friend needs to know you are in a serious relationship and that this is just friend like a You’re really just catching up.

Happy birthday. Merry Christmas, my friend. I used to date. Now that’s not You don’t need to be keeping in touch with them. We’re just friends. We dated way back in college. We’ve been friends for 15 years. Unless unless y’all getting and we never hooked up again no one on one conversation and she’s in a relationship to Yeah, okay, So even more reason y’all shouldn’t be having any one on one conversations. Y’all should literally just kind of be like acquaintances where she listens way better than my guy friends.

Heck, now that’s my guy. friends mistaking me at that place. It is a mistake. So don’t do it. Because next thing you know, you all are going to be thinking about the past laughing and talking. And then you’re gonna be sharing things with each other that you should be sharing with people you’re dating, and you’re just it’s just gonna go down a bad road and it’s not gonna happen overnight, But it’s going to happen, so just don’t even do it. Y’all should just be seeing each other.

If a big group of friends getting together and y’all are bowling or y’all at a house party, that should be when y’all catch up like that’s it around a whole bunch of other people. All right. Toy is right. Toy is right, but But she’s got your cheating already. I’m going to step back a little bit before then. What? That’s because you know Toyota. Yeah, that’s it. She’s e o. All right, So we’re talking e don’t know where Ugo Alright, We’re talking about a dating relationship that is serious.

Like you like this person. You want thio basically pursue over time. So why are you spending time with the opposite sex when you should be spending that time learning about the person you may want to spend the rest of your life. She’s been my best friend since we can. Our families were, But how are you going to get to know we’re like, sister? If you’re talking to your friend that way instead of talking to the person you’re dating, how are you going to get to know that person you got?

All right, tell your girl up, Peter Pan, Move! All right, So you’re saying friendships air okay of the opposite sex, but should not have a best friend because that may impact your dating relationship growth. Listen, if this is a red flag, if the person you’re dating on Lee has or mostly has friends of the opposite sex and their excuses, I just get along better with them. So it’s a woman. Girls, they’re so catty. I just get along better with guys. Three guys saying I just always got along.

I had two sisters and a mother. I just always get along. That’s a red flag because I want to know why you can’t build a relationship with people of the same sex, and I do believe that your best form of accountability is going to come from people of the same sex, not opposite sex. So let’s move into marriage now. I’m married. Can I have a best friend of the opposite sex? It better be your spouse, that’s all beside my spouse. And then that’s a hard, no hard No, no, no gray wiggle room. Nothing.

Nothing in there’s no wiggle room. What if my wife, my wife really likes her? They’re close now. She’s been a family friend. We never never dated. We never Nothing. We just She’s just a friend. No, Just like just like you hear people say all the time like, Oh, that’s such as a work wife. No way. No. No way. We’re not even going. We’re not even gonna do that either. You know, like no life we’re not doing sticking it in the category would talk like that work wife.

They didn’t work. Wife. We’re not We’re not way. Oh, we oh, with she has a business car. The Oh, Okay. Okay. So no, no, best friend. What about just friends of the opposite sex? Like we’re just cool. I mean, we’re all in life video, so I don’t know What if me and Lisa wanna go catch lunch Thio and she gets something todo Yeah, you know, I don’t Okay, I’m gonna I’m gonna bring in the old intimacy words. So we’re dealing with some intimacy. Here s so basically, here’s what we’re talking about when you when you deal with it.

In fact, you know, my first marriage, part of what made it go south, was I’m not trying to throw anybody under the viewer in it. In your 19. Well, that’s part of it. Thea. Other part of it is there were there. Basically, we spent somebody spent a lot of time on chat rooms. I won’t mention names, right? But what tends to happen is some of the things that were being shared in chat rooms and things like that with other people. That was intimacy. That was conversation that was meant for me.

There wasn’t inappropriate. Don’t get me wrong. There was no inappropriate. But it’s just building that intimacy. So if you’re expressing your feelings or sharing your feelings with somebody who’s not your spouse, you’re denying them that intimacy that is rightfully theirs. So there you go. That’s my tape. very fair enough. What about you, toil? I’m actually given example over here. So my name Let’s hear their name. When? When, uh, with me in a mod first started dating like his best friend was a lady that he went to college with.

This’ll was his best friend, right? And they met at Grambling State, right? So But I never I still actually have not met her face to face. But when me and him started dating like they would, um, they would talk over the phone a little bit. But the more serious we got in our relationship, the more that kind of just decreased over time. So where then just turned into, like, text messages or all of that and then, like, group text where I’m on there and I’ve had conversations with her over the phone.

So it’s never been like where I felt like they got something secret going on that I’m not a part of. You know, it was always like me coming in, and she was really like a sister. But instead of me feeling like, oh, they’re doing sharing things that I don’t know anything about, It was never anything like that. so I don’t want people to feel like it can’t happen, because sometimes it does happen. But it decreased. It was never Have you seen a picture of her? Yeah. You look OK. Here’s the okay.

Because sometimes let’s be honest. Sometimes you’d be like, Oh, that’s her. No, I’m cool on then. Other times you’d be like, That is not your friend. I don’t care what you thought she was, but that is not your friend anymore, right? I’m just gonna say that, You know, I never felt like it was something going on or anything secret. So let me ask you that she wasn’t attractive. That’s basically what that sounds like. E. We’ll never say that. Uh, on. And then also, here’s one more. Okay.

I went to college with a guy, and we’re not just with the guy. You know what I’m saying? We were friends way friends, right? And he got into a serious relationship with someone. Me and him never dated. We were literally just friends. And when he got into the serious relationship, his girlfriend told him, Do not talk to her anymore. And I had never met her. I’ve never spoken to her before, but, you know, and he was just like, Look, I’m sorry. We just can’t talk anymore. And I was like, Oh, I was like, Okay, well, good luck.

You know that that was cool. Like I respected it because I was just, like, a no problem. She saw in your eyes. She saw Old Toya in the eyes, and she was like, I did not like him like that. I just want to put that out. Really? Complement. E said, you know, she thought you were hot, right? So maybe so, Maybe so So but anyway so But I respected it. And, um, I knew why she said that. I was just, you know, she just didn’t want her, uh, serious boyfriend to be friends with the opposite sex.

So I was like, Hey, I totally get it. No problem. Enjoy your life. No, I think that’s with because what you’re saying is one of the things that it can cause insecurity and doubt in the relation. Especially if one of the people has ever been cheated on before me hypersensitive to it. So, yeah, I think they can always cause insecurity and doubt. I think like Bubble said it robs your marriage of emotional intimacy that you should reserve for each other. And and let’s be honest, it’s oftentimes way easier to go talkto some other woman or some other guy than it is your spouse because you’ve been in conflict.

And so we love the path of least resistance. And and then you don’t have to do the hard work of reconcile in the relationship so that you can have that intimacy. You just go find it somewhere else. And then pretty soon you find yourself in, and I always believed I don’t care if we’ve always been friends. Nothing’s ever have. It always has a potential under the right circumstances, with just the right emotions, a little bit of whisky, whatever it might be to turn into something physical. And I think we’ve got to protect our marriages at all costs.

We’ve got to set boundaries that air tighter than what we think, and I think friendships is one of those areas. You need to surround yourself with people off the same sex who are going to fight for your marriage and your relationship, and you’ve got to minimize friendships with the opposite sex because it will undermine the unity in the marriage. For sure, you kind of watered down my profound statements when you start with like, Bubble says, Come on, you’re making the assumption they were profound. Aziz, Jason said.

Did that make it? So what? So what makes you feel good, man, Whatever makes you feel. All right. Thank you so much for joining us today. And if you have any questions and those into the relationship at power 77 radio dot com Gonna sign off English. Bye bye.