#13 Mark Gets GHOSTED + Your Intuition VS Expert Advice: WHICH To Use & When?

In this engaging conversation, Mark Rosenfeld and Teal Elisabeth discuss personal updates, including Mark's recent and unexpected experience of being ghosted in online dating. They analyze the dynamics of online conversations, emphasizing the importance of communication styles and texting strategies, and debate the value of emoji's before Teal gives Mark an intimidating challenge. The discussion transitions into romantic gestures, with both sharing personal stories that highlight the significance of thoughtful actions in relationships. Finally, they delve into coaching insights, exploring the balance between trusting one's intuition and seeking external advice, ultimately encouraging listeners to develop their own skills in dating and relationships.

Takeaways

Ghosting can happen to anyone, including Mark, and getting attached to outcomes can lead to disappointment.
Effective communication in online dating requires effort and thoughtfulness.
Texting strategies should reflect one's true personality, BUT this is hard to actually achieve (Mark and Teal debate this)
Romantic gestures often hold deeper meaning than grand displays.
Coaching should empower clients to trust their intuition.
It's important to balance personal insights with external advice.
Learning relationship skills is a continuous journey.
Being vulnerable in communication can strengthen connections.
Quality time and presence are vital in romantic relationships.

Chapters
0:00 Introduction
0:34 Teal's Big Week
1:34 How Mark Got Ghosted
12:30 Teal Challenges Mark's Texting
21:28 Sam's Romantic Gesture To Mark
26:17 Spencer's Sheepy? Romantic Gesture To Teal
28:54 How Teal Asked Spencer For Words Of Affirmation
32:43 Your Intuition VS Expert Advice; WHICH To Use & WHEN
44:19 Want Personal Help? Book A Call!

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 0:34 Teal's Big Week
• 1:34 How Mark Got Ghosted
• 12:30 Teal Challenges Mark's Texting
• 21:28 Sam's Romantic Gesture To Mark
• 26:17 Spencer's Sheepy? Romantic Gesture To Teal
• 28:54 How Teal Asked Spencer For Words Of Affirmation
• 32:43 Your Intuition VS Expert Advice; WHICH To Use & WHEN
• 44:19 Want Personal Help? Book A Call!

Transcript

[Speaker 1]
How I recently got ghosted online, the best romantic gestures we've had from our partners, and when to follow your own intuition versus taking advice from a trusted source. We'll see you right after this. G'day and welcome to The Tinder Project, the podcast where a straight Aussie man attempts to survive 365 days dating online as an American woman.

I'm your host, Mark Rosenfeld, Australia's dating coach for women. I'm here with my sidekick, self-love coach, Teal Elizabeth, and together we have one mission to make meeting good men fun and easy for you. Let's give it a go.

Teal.

[Speaker 2]
Hi, Mark. Good to see you.

[Speaker 1]
You majestic beauty. You, how are you?

[Speaker 2]
I'm doing good. It's been a fun, magical week. Good to see you too.

[Speaker 1]
You've had a big week, haven't you? You've had wedding anniversary and birthday, Libra birthday in the same week.

[Speaker 2]
I know. I feel very lucky. I love the fall.

It's the best time of the year.

[Speaker 1]
You know, everyone here says that, that they're like, just the fall's amazing, Mark. Wait until the leaves change. And I'm like, I'm already cold and I still want to wear flip-flops.

We have an issue.

[Speaker 2]
You're in Chicago. Is that right?

[Speaker 1]
No, I'm in Jersey.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, wow. Totally off.

[Speaker 1]
Not even close.

[Speaker 2]
How do you not know this about me, Teal? I'm slightly hurt. We're still getting to that phase of our relationship, Mark.

The listeners and I are still getting to know you. We haven't made it to that phase yet.

[Speaker 1]
I am somewhat of an enigma. I go online days and days after each other as a complete enigma. So I get it.

[Speaker 2]
But I think more importantly, what we really want to know is what's been happening with you this week. I heard you got ghosted as a woman. Ouch.

I need to hear about this.

[Speaker 1]
I got ghosted. I'm a little sad. I was a little disappointed about this one for a number of reasons.

So we've been going through the month and we've been applying a bit of an interesting strategy this month, which is we're not sending any first messages. Now, first messages can have validity. We were sending them last month and it was interesting that we were more active and doing more last month, just in terms of when you start the conversations as well as letting the guys start them naturally, there's more conversations happening.

So it felt like there was a little bit more going on last month. I'll have some actual numbers for you next week. It seems like from not starting the conversations, we have about half the time investment and probably still three quarters of the results.

So I'll give more details on that next week. But I was in a conversation and this conversation I was actually excited for. The guy's name was Paul.

I've given him a slightly fake name there. We'll call him Paul. And this conversation I loved here because this conversation, I was looking at this in front of my clients and we're almost 90 days into this and that's not even including the warmup, almost 90 days in.

And I thought this conversation is the epitome of everything that I love about online and everything that it should be. It was brief, it was effortful, it was detailed, it was efficient, it did what it needed to do, and it was right where I wanted it. But you already know the ending.

So I said, what happened? Because after about four days, I'm going to show you the conversation in a second. After about four days, we were unmatched and I didn't know what hit me.

To be honest, this stung even as a guy, even as a guy online. But do you know what? It was interesting because I got attached to the outcome and I made the same mistake that my clients make, which was I was looking at this conversation, not that I necessarily wanted to meet the guy.

He seemed like a lovely dude, but I didn't particularly want to run into him. It was more the fact that I thought this is like the perfect conversation and I can't wait to show this to everyone, including you guys on the Tinder project as to how it should look. It's just one of the cleanest.

Obviously, we've had tons of successful conversations, but this one was so clean and so simple. And I thought, gee, isn't this great? And then logged in the next day on about day four and it was gone.

So that means he unmatched, unfortunately. Now that could be because he met someone, it could be because his subscription ran out, could be because he just changed his mind, could be something creeped him out in the last message we sent. As I say, I'll show you the conversation in a second.

So I immediately went, ah, bugger it. Maybe I won't show this conversation or I thought maybe I can show it. It's still a good example.

And then I went, maybe it's not. No, now I have to hide it. And after a couple of days, I realized, you know what?

This is actually a great example of it can happen to me too. So here's me as a dating coach. I do this for a living.

I'm very good at it. I spend a lot of time doing it. And guys, even when I'm doing it, the conversations that you think are going well, it's a crap shoot.

It can happen. And I got attached to the outcome again, not because I wanted to meet the guy, but because I thought this is going to be the best conversation as a simple demo. I then really wanted it to work out and I wanted the phone call to come through and it didn't.

And then I spent about 24 hours going, ah, muck it, kind of in a bit of a pit. So then I had to slap myself and realize what I was doing because I was doing the same thing that essentially my clients were doing for a different reason. So I'll show you the conversation to you because you're probably curious.

[Speaker 2]
This is super interesting. I'm really glad that you're using this as a demonstration that yeah, it can happen to anybody and that you're not perfect.

[Speaker 1]
It can happen to literally anyone. And I got attached to the outcome and I got smacked in the face for it too.

[Speaker 2]
And I think that was the biggest takeaway, right? Yeah. Getting attached to the outcome.

[Speaker 1]
Yep, definitely. So we have the conversation on screen for those who were just listening. The conversation is three exchanges.

So the man comments on a photo and asks an opening question. We respond. He then responds quite nicely and we give him a second bigger response.

And then the third exchange is basically him saying, yep, I'd like to get off the phone and us giving him the number. So I'll zoom in a little bit and just kind of, uh, just kind of map it out here. So basically the first exchange, he commented on the photo and then asked us a question.

It was quite a good question. I thought it was, uh, the question showed a little bit of thought. It wasn't, um, it wasn't the most spectacular question ever asked, but I thought it was cool.

He said, have you ever explored immersive art exhibits in NYC? Now when the guy behaves as you want him to behave, and this doesn't just apply to online texting, this applies to every aspect or length of time in the relationship. Um, you want to give him a reward for it.

And the best reward is your feelings. So in this case, we gave him a fairly detailed answer. It was about nine or so lines.

It had four emojis that had a couple of feelings words in it. And basically we answered his question with a very bright light. So I basically, if he asked 10 women that question, I want to be in the top one or two answers that he's receiving.

I want to be the person that he says, wow, this girl's got great energy. I think she's the most interesting out of those that I'm messaging. I'll ask her another question.

And you know, if it's worked really well, because the next thing the guy says will bloat to match a similar size to yours. So if we scroll down past the answer here again, for those that are listening, if you can imagine, he's asked a two line question, we've given a nine line answer, and then I just mirrored the same question. What about yourself?

His next response is actually even bigger than ours. So it's probably about 15 lines, this one. And basically he has responded to the things we've said.

And he's asked a follow-up question because we mentioned, I think we lived in Vegas. So he sort of asked about that. He said, how long did you live there?

And do you miss it? So how long did you live there is a fairly superficial question. That's a straightforward answer, but do you miss it?

That's a big self-disclosure, open-ended question that gives us a big chance to shine. So the guys now ask three questions, two in this second exchange here, and one at the beginning. And three questions is really good.

That's what I want. Three questions, two exchanges. So at this stage, I'm thinking, yeah, okay, this is going really well.

I decide that what I'm going to do is I'm going to respond to his points, kind of half answer his question, and then kick it to the phone call by saying, hey, there's even more where that came from. It would feel so nice to hear from you. So as I scroll down, you will see now this is a bigger message.

It probably takes about seven minutes to write a message like this. It was about 20 lines. But I was happy to do that because I knew it would basically be the last message.

Remember, this is only the second message we've written. So I'm happy to put in a little bit more because I know I'm engineering it to be the last message. So the first half of the message is basically just responding to him.

We talk about something he said, oh, I love the Omega Mart. And we spend four or five lines talking about that. And then we talk about the thing he mentioned in Denver and say, we've never visited, oh, sorry, we have visited Denver and I love visiting friends and stuff there.

We haven't asked follow-up questions there. We've just related to what he's saying. Now we get onto the question which had the juice, which is how long did you live in Vegas?

And what did you miss about living there? So our response at the bottom here was, oh, I missed so many things about Vegas. I'm just about to head back to work, but would love to share more with you.

I should have put there, it would feel so nice to share more with you. I'm not a huge texter. Would you be open to calling me instead so I can tell you in real time?

Channeled a bit of teal here. Always feels so nice to hear a voice. Now this was quite early in the exchange.

Obviously, we've only had two exchanges here, but I just felt the energy was good enough. We could pull it off. And I got the exact answer that I was looking for.

Absolutely. I'd much rather call than use this app. Haha.

Real voice is always a plus. What's your number and when should I call? Bang.

Perfect. That's what we're looking for. We didn't even have to give him a time.

He was setting up the time. I went, yep, that's great. Oftentimes, you will sort of give the time and the guy will either say, I can call you then or I can't.

In this case, the guy's actually asked for the time. So I'm like, great. We're organizing a date here.

This is perfect. Now, the one thing I didn't do here is because I only log on once a day, I did not get back to him till the next day. So my response was 24 hours later.

Thanks. Feels so nice to hear you say that. We said, I'm and dropped our number and I have around 7pm tonight free or the same time tomorrow either works for you.

Added a feeling excited to speak onto the end. And I thought I had a slam dunk. I said, yep, this is going to be a perfect demonstration for the Tinder project.

Unfortunately, that was that. Logged on the next day and the match was gone. And I haven't had one that blatant in a while.

So I just thought Teal, it was a really good one to say, look, here's me, here's everything going the way it should guys. They're internet strangers at the end of the day. Like his mom could have been just diagnosed with cancer or something.

I hope he wasn't Paul. She wasn't Paul, but we have no idea. His ex could have just returned.

Another woman he met could be five days ahead of you. And he's only dates one person at a time. It's so easy to take this stuff personally.

And it's really not, it can happen to anyone. And if you get attached to the outcome, like I did, you will get, you will get burned on here. And you've just got to remind yourself, Hey, once I've met up with someone, once I've gone on a few dates, then I'm going to give myself permission to get to get attached and maybe not necessarily even attached to the outcome at that point, but start to be really curious.

And of course you're going to feel more legitimately hurt if the person just disappears, but don't do it at the internet level because it's too random. It's too much of a crap shoot. You've, you've got to keep your feelings out of it when you're at the superficial stage.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Thank you for sharing that Mark. I think this has been really helpful for the listeners.

Good.

[Speaker 1]
Do you have any thoughts Teal? You're so brief in your summary today Teal. I was expecting you to hit me with like, why'd you do that Mark?

Why'd you do that?

[Speaker 2]
Well, I don't want to poke holes in your strategy. I mean, you've got the strategy here.

[Speaker 1]
Fair call. I'm taking that as support. So I'm going to, I'm going to appreciate that.

[Speaker 2]
I will say one thing as I'm reading through these exchanges. If I were in your shoes, I kind of felt like yours, your texting was a little eager and over the top. If we're going to be honest.

[Speaker 1]
Nice. Yeah. Nice.

[Speaker 2]
And, but I'm not, I don't want to poke holes in, in your strategy and your approach because you, you've got a very specific finesse that you use that is really good at converting. And I think that, that it works really well. But I just noticed in this specific snippet of conversation, I was picking up on, it felt a little bit overly excited.

[Speaker 1]
It was more interesting. I'm going to take that into account. I'm going to keep an eye on the ratios of, of lines from the woman lines to the man and just see if anything changes there.

Generally in my experience, as long as you're not driving the conversation, it's okay to do that. It's kind of like giving yourself permission to shine. And I think in this particular case, if you're shining with energy, that is genuinely something you enjoy talking about, it should come through in the messaging.

And that's sort of the goal here is to go, okay, if I was hanging out with my best friend talking about this stuff, what would I be saying? Kind of show up like that. And yes, that may be more than his, especially in the first exchange.

But generally speaking, I've found that's the way we want. We don't want to direct it towards him. That's kind of the difference that I perceive.

We just want to shine with it ourselves. And then it starts to wind down if he doesn't reciprocate. But I'm going to keep testing that too, because I think you bring up an interesting point there.

So thank you for that.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. And not even with the lines, more just with the, the exclamation points and all the emojis and the capital letters and the extended the words, obviously you're wanting to make it feel very engaging. Maybe that's I'm not the personality of who you're emulating.

And that is a very specific personality and it's not my personality, but yeah.

[Speaker 1]
I think text can get just so dry. And unfortunately that's the big pitfall of online is I don't think, I honestly don't think if we don't do those things, I don't think we sound like ourselves as in, to be honest, even you from knowing you, I think you sound dry over text than you do from chatting to you. Touche.

I find when I chat to you, you have this brilliant, bright energy that doesn't necessarily translate to when I text with you. It's not right or wrong. You're not hitting on me.

And obviously we're not trying to impress each other, but there's a difference. So I don't know if you would change that or shift that a little bit when you were dating. But I think this is one of the things that a lot of people struggle with is how do we actually make our text voice sound like our real voice?

Because 98% of the time in my experience, it doesn't. And if you don't extend the vowel, show a caps lock word occasionally, say something, share an emoji here or there, just, it feels very dry in an environment that's already predisposed to being very dry. But I am open to feedback on that, Teal.

So I think I'm going to test that.

[Speaker 2]
This would be a good, I love that you're open to just having a conversation about this super candidly. And I would be curious maybe as an experiment to try still leaning in with the feeling messages, but without all the extra fluff.

[Speaker 1]
Like an emoji-less month.

[Speaker 2]
An emoji-less, caps, cap locks month.

[Speaker 1]
Just to be clear for the listeners, there was one word that was cap locked. Teal's making me sound like I yell at everyone. One word, guys.

One word. I'm not yelling across text. I'm using specific points to caps lock and show a bit of enthusiasm on a couple of individual words.

I mean, I could try an emoji-less month. Gosh, that's going to be a challenge for me.

[Speaker 2]
It just feels- But it's the energy. See, to me, because this is where, okay, we get to disagree on this, but it could just be personality. He's like, good.

Finally, something we don't agree on. For me, if I am connecting over text message and I want it to be sincere, not just logistics of when we're going to connect and talk and record our next episode. For me, it's about channeling the energy of how I feel into the words and letting that carry it through rather than needing to overdo it with the emojis.

But I guess, like I said, I think it's just a different variety of the same approach. One is showing it more in a more visual way and one of it is showing it more in an energetic way through the words.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I mean, my paradigm on this is that words don't count for much if they're not attached to tonality. Because if I was to say, for example, what's a random phrase here?

If I was to say, I'm great.

[Speaker 2]
The changing leaves in the wind.

[Speaker 1]
I love the changing leaves of fall. That's much better than I'm great. You're so creative, Teal.

I love that. If I was to say in different tonalities, I fucking love the changing leaves of fall. I love the changing leaves of fall.

I love the changing leaves of fall. I love the changing leaves of fall. You can change the meaning so much.

That probably wasn't the best demo. I know there's some fun sentences where you can do that that they have on the internet. That probably wasn't the best demo.

But changing the tonality changes so much, not just of what you're emphasizing, but of the entire meaning of the communication. And so that's where I think the purely written strategy falls down a little bit. Because if we're going on dates, we feel someone, even if we just listen to someone on the phone, we hear what they're saying so much more when we hear those inflections.

And when we hear which part of the word is emphasized, which tonality up, tonality even, tonality down at the end and how it starts. And I think I've always gone by the theory that it gets lost a lot in text. Because without showing some sort of tonality extension where the peaks are, perhaps an emoji to show feeling, it becomes very hard to get that communication across.

So I think I hear what you're saying in terms of like, let's just speak purely from the feelings. I would postulate that just based on human psychology, it's just really bloody hard to do that. And even if you do it well, compared to what you could do, if you're adding in those little extra feeling notions and clues throughout, this is how to listen.

This is how to hear what I've written down. I just think it adds so much that the pros outweigh the cons.

[Speaker 2]
Well, I think this would be a great experiment for you.

[Speaker 1]
I think this would be an interesting experiment actually. You got my brain juices flowing now. No, this is cool.

[Speaker 2]
Can you get the same conversion metrics without doing all the extra postulating? Because for women that are not emoji texters, that may not feel authentic to them to be that way or to text that way. And reading it as I saw it, I'm like, that's not how I would text.

But I agree with you, there is a lot that gets lost in translation. And for me, I very much encourage at least send a voice note if you can, as you're starting to get into it so that they can hear the voice. Because you're right, text is just so dry.

But I would be curious to see how it goes.

[Speaker 1]
I'm not even sure how the personality would land the same. So I'll give this a shot. I said this to a client the other day because she had the same objection.

She said, Mark, I don't really text like that. And I said to her, where are you most yourself? Like this you that you're emulating here, where are you most yourself?

And she said, well, probably when I'm, I guess when I'm either in the shower or around my best friend. And I said, is that how you are when you meet men? And she said, no, I'm much more shy and reserved when I meet men.

So I said to her, she was thinking she should be texting the way she shows up when she meets men, which unfortunately was a shy inhibited version of herself that she'd identified with. So I said to her, I need you texting like you're hanging out with your best friend. And that became like she wasn't identified initially.

And it was challenging for her. And I know a lot of those listening might say, wow, you know, I don't really put my energy across over text. I say do it and practice doing it because it is a real world dating skill.

Perhaps an experiment will prove me wrong here. I'm very open to receiving that. But yeah, in my experience, if you don't get that energy across, it's really hard to do it and to stand out in a way where the guy can feel your emotions without it.

[Speaker 2]
I, I'm going to disagree with you. I want to, I want you to prove me wrong. Because I just know from my own self, I was on dates a lot when I was online dating and I never used emojis and I never used all the extra stuff and I got plenty of phone calls and plenty of interesting.

[Speaker 1]
Okay. I'm going to check that out tail.

[Speaker 2]
Like I said, it has to come from that same confident energy still. We're not coming from a shy reserved place. That's very dry and held back.

We're still coming from that sassy, witty, confident place, but just without the extra.

[Speaker 1]
Without the extra. You're killing me too.

[Speaker 2]
I love the extra.

[Speaker 1]
Okay, cool.

[Speaker 2]
I'm going to have to figure out how I do that. I did.

[Speaker 1]
I did. I wrote a whole book on this. I wrote a whole book on this.

And look, I, I will say that occasionally I might go a little bit overboard by like 20%, but, um, I'm definitely one of those that says if we go over by 20%, as long as we're not leading the conversation, it's better than going under and not having the energetic connection there. But I like what you're saying. So I'm open to experimenting on anything.

[Speaker 2]
I think there's more than one approach is what I'm saying. I think your way works and I think my way also might work.

[Speaker 1]
I like that. I like that. Okay.

I will have some fun testing this. Shall we move on to gestures to you?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. I would just say listeners, I would love to hear any of your feedback. So if you want to DM us on our Instagram at, what is it?

Tinder dot project.

[Speaker 1]
Tinder dot project.

[Speaker 2]
At Tinder dot project. We'd love to hear your feedback on this as we kind of butt heads a little bit on these topics and hear your thoughts and hey, we may even give you a little shout out on the next episode. So let us know your thoughts.

[Speaker 1]
Please do. Teal, we're going to talk romantic gestures today.

[Speaker 2]
Yes. Can you share yours first? Cause I'd love to hear yours.

[Speaker 1]
I sure can. So, um, Sam, my wife, we met, uh, initially we met back in 2018. I won't go through the whole meeting story, but obviously being from Australia, um, her being from New York, big geographical incompatibility and still probably the biggest incompatibility that, you know, we've had to work through and continue to need to figure out in our relationship.

Um, hasn't been easy, still brings its challenges, obviously visiting family and stuff. So we met, we, uh, kind of had our first date a year later. We went on a holiday together and there was definitely a couple of times where we actually had moments where we decided this, this couldn't go ahead because of the geography.

Um, but we said, okay, we're going to give this a shot. Let's try it. So on Sam's first trip to Australia, um, I sort of planned out a whole, whole like holiday for her and that Brisbane Northern beaches, um, North North coast, that, that type of place.

And typically we do these at the end of the year. So my aunt actually had this beautiful, um, I guess you call it a vacation house down on the bay in a place called Iluka. Only the Aussies might've heard of it.

No one else will have, but just think this beautiful kind of quiet beachy town, you know, 500 residents. Um, it's got a little bay, you can take the boat out on it. It's very, very cute place.

And there's sort of a walk to the real beach, um, around, around from the bay. So this was somewhere we used to go every Christmas. And I still have memories there from when I was there with my grandma, um, when I was there with my mom and all three of her siblings at the same time, just kind of going there for Christmas every year and just kind of hanging out there.

It was, it was just like a very special place to me. Um, and so I took Sam there and actually the aunt was selling this, I think in the followup year, I think she was selling the house that year. So it was kind of the last chance, um, to visit with, with Sam.

So very, it felt very fortunate that I could organize this as part of the trip. So we went down there and we went out to, basically I took her down to the beach and I still remember we, we had this day there where I was so tired. I think we passed out in the sand together and just kind of fell asleep.

And I didn't know that Sam was doing this at the time, but she sneakily kind of went around and collected a few shells from the beach. So a handful of shells maybe, and these are not shells with animals in them, just kind of used shells from, from the beautiful Aussie beach. Um, and, and I didn't know that she'd done this.

I think I might've realized that she grabbed a couple or something, but she basically took these and she said, I don't know what I'm going to do with these. But, um, she, I didn't realize the extent of it as I say, but she said, I think I'm going to do something with these. I don't know.

So that was it. I kind of just, just kind of left it. And, um, Sam went home and this was, uh, at the start of, I believe it was start of 20, uh, end of 2019 when Sam visited.

Anyway, so Sam left, um, and that was kind of that. I forgot about it there. Um, and next the following year, is that right?

Into 2020, I think that's correct. Sam came back and she said, Mark, you know, at this point the house had been sold. So I didn't really have the, um, you know, I wasn't able to go there anymore.

She said, Mark, you know, I know how much that place at Iluka meant to you. I know you spent so much time with your family there. Um, I wanted to give you something to kind of show, not just a nice memory of us, but also what it meant to us.

So she basically taken the shells home all the way back to America, somehow got them through customs, even more spectacularly, brought them back to Australia, got them through Australian customs, which is a whole impressive effort in itself. Um, and she made me this, and I thought this was very cute. So it was a little decoration, um, a shell design, cute thing.

And you can see there we are at Iluka beach, just in front of the house. It makes me a bit emotional actually, looking at this. There we are just in front of the house.

And for those that are listening, so if you can imagine, um, it's like a little sort of almost a photo frame. That's a big, a big square sort of shape. It's got all the shells in it.

And then a photo of Sam and I at the beach, um, standing in front of the beach house. And then a photo of the beach where we were lying down and these cute little ropes, beach ropes around it. Um, so yeah, this, this really meant a lot to me.

And this was a very, very special memory. We, as I say, no longer owns this house or has that area. Getting a bit emotional.

Um, so that, that's been with me pretty much ever since. And I brought it back to America. So every one of these shells has done three trips, uh, over the Pacific.

And now it just kind of sits on our bookshelf downstairs, a little, little memory of a very special time together. That's my romantic gesture to you.

[Speaker 2]
Oh, that is so sweet.

[Speaker 1]
Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
And, and like you and I were reflecting, you know, usually it's kind of the man that does a lot of the initiating of the gesture.

[Speaker 1]
I had to think about this one a little bit. Yeah.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. That she was able to really go out of her way to, to make that for you.

[Speaker 1]
What about yourself, Tael? Are we good? Do we get to hear yours?

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Well, so Spencer's a very unique person. I love him so much.

I would say the most romantic thing that he's done is actually our proposal. But you and I were talking about that. We actually want to save that for a whole nother episode and talk about our proposal story.

[Speaker 1]
Oh, proposal episode. Yeah. I like that.

[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Just for some fun. So I'm not going to go into my most romantic story.

It's a really, really good story. You're making me wait. It involves being in New Zealand and yeah, a sheep and a lot of other things.

[Speaker 1]
Sorry, what? A sheep? I'm imagining like the dog with the collar, you know, the dog walks up with the collar, but instead Spencer somehow cured a sheep and just said, babe, I know that men usually propose like with a dog and the collar, but we're in New Zealand.

I want it to be one with the people and one with the nature. So look at Baba's collar here. I love you so much.

[Speaker 2]
Will you marry me? No, we're going to save that for another episode. That was the most romantic.

[Speaker 1]
Did the sheep stay where the sheep lived or did the sheep leave its home and travel with you somewhere?

[Speaker 2]
No, no, no. The sheep had a guest appearance, a short guest appearance. But what I want to say.

[Speaker 1]
Trailer for next episode. How Teal got proposed to by a sheep. Fill in the rest of the details yourself.

Just imagine that.

[Speaker 2]
Okay. You're taking it too far.

[Speaker 1]
I don't know where to go with it. Where else am I going to go with this? You said your proposal was very romantic and involved a sheep.

I put two and two together. Sheep had a collar, ring was on the collar. What else could I think?

Come on guys, where else am I supposed to go with that?

[Speaker 2]
What I wanted to say was other, you know, it's interesting because my husband's not really big with words. He's not overly eloquent. He's never been one to, you know, go out of his way to compliment me and just flower me with adoration in the form of words.

He's much more about being there and being present and being, you know, honors his word and spends a lot of quality time and is just fully devoted to me in that way, which to me is probably more romantic than any amount of words could ever be. And I think that is very, it's very underestimated, you know, having someone that is there, that is, I can rely on, that I can trust, that I can fall back on. He is my rock through and through.

Um, but I did find I am, I am a woman and I do love to hear the words and I need to hear the words. And for a long time I felt very uncomfortable asking for that. Um, because I knew that wasn't his strength and his forte, but at the same time, I'm like, I can't live my whole marriage and life feeling devoid of, of that, that nurturing, loving words of affirmation.

And so I kind of started sharing that over the years that I really, I would love to receive cards from you. He wasn't writing me cards. He wasn't, you know, expressing big, long things.

And I started sharing that with him and he's like, honestly, babe, I just don't know how to, I don't know what to say. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm blocked. I do love you, but I'm blocked.

And I said, you know, babe, at least in the beginning, just you can find love songs and just write down the words of love songs that resonate with you. That would be enough. And so for the first few years I would start getting cards and it would be some of our favorite songs in the lyrics of the songs.

And every time now that I hear it, that I hear those songs, I think of him and I think of him saying those exact words.