Speaking and Communicating Podcast

Welcome back to the Speaking and Communicating podcast. I am your host Roberta. If you are looking to improve your communication skills, both professionally and personally, this is the podcast you should be tuning into. And by the end of this episode, please remember to subscribe, give a rating and a review. Today, I have the pleasure of being joined on the show by Collette Gee. She is a relationship expert and an author.
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And she's here to talk about how, as a modern society, despite being liberated, we still have to connect with the human DNA part of us of needing to connect with each other. And before I go any further, please help me welcome Colette. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so happy to be here and that we finally connected. I'm so excited. I know this is gonna be a very heated conversation.
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So give us a bit of your background. Okay, so I'm a dating and relationship expert and helping men and women to find love, repair their relationships or get over a breakup. I'm an author of a new book called Finding Happily No Rules, No Frogs and No Pretending and a few workbooks that I've written to help clients or other people that need it. I'm a mom, I'm a wife, I'm a grandmother.
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I'm here because I really, truly believe in the sanctity of relationships and marriage and love. It's interesting you say that because I feel now, especially in us in Western countries, it's almost like marriage is replacing this, I'm ambitious and I want to be free. Is it supposed to be a substitute or can we still be ambitious and career driven and still be married?
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You have to recognize that marriage too is a relationship, but also it's a contract. And we make business contracts, we get a contract for our car lease and our contract for the place we decide to live. And we have all these contracts going out there, but we fall short in American culture, especially to make a contract with the one that we say that we love.
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And why is that? I think that some of the challenges is that people are not really knowing how to make those connections or there's a lot of propaganda that's telling them, you don't need to get married, you don't need a man, you don't need this, especially if this message is promoted to women of color. But I disagree with that. I think that it does require a lot of work on ourselves.
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before we can go into a relationship with someone else. And many of us don't wanna work on improving the qualities of ourselves to make ourselves ready and prepared. We'll go out there and get all the skills, the tools and the requirements that we need, the degrees and everything for that great career to make that money, to buy that house, to buy that car. But when it comes to improving the qualities of ourselves in order to make for ourselves as a better suited partner, some of us fall short to do that. It's too much work.
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take me as I am, you know, but it's like, well, who is it that's coming into the relationship that this individual should take as you are? And who is it that you're inviting into your lives? During the civil rights movement, a huge percentage of the black community was married. And that's when things were tough. Who started this whole, I don't need a man rhetoric. I feel like somebody went out into one of the communities and put this lie out there, you know.
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and whispered it into the ears of women, you don't need a man. Who is this person that made up this lie? Because you're absolutely right. During the most challenging times of our lives, even black individuals from the African diaspora that were living on plantations desired deeply to get married. And when they were coming off of those plantations, they desire to keep that marriage. It was something, it meant something. It meant that we are connected. We are a family. We are a bond.
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And then somebody went into the community and whispered, you don't need a man. And also I believe what happened is, I'm not referring to all families, but as the woman became more liberated, that became its own message itself. But in the black community, I believe also that black women and black men, it was harder for us to survive. And so then comes in the help.
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the social systems or social programs to help us that said, well, we'll help you, but you got to get rid of your husband out of the house. He can't live here if we're helping you. That was a requirement? Oh yes, that was an absolute requirement. So if you are married woman and you have four or five kids with your husband and you're both working very hard in the home, and then you think, well, let's just apply for some social help so that we can pay this mortgage to this.
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home that we own or, you know, just get a little help to get up on our feet. And then they come into your home, the social service and says, well, you will help you, but he can't live here and he's your husband. Well, then he moves out of the house or he's sneaking in and out of his own house to spend time with his own family because he can't afford to take care of and support his family. So that is when I believe that that became even more of an issue.
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in the black community, the separation of the black man and the black woman in the home because of social hardships. Sounds to me like it wasn't a whisper at all. That was very clearly stated. Very clearly. If we hop on over to other groups, you know, European women, they became the liberated woman. You know, I can go to work nine to five like him. And why did this happen? Well, when you have
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husbands that are controlling the money in the house, being abusive perhaps to their wives, not making things equally. She has a brain, she has a mind, and yet she's completely and utterly dependent on her husband for her survivability. Women got tired of that, and they felt like they wanted to have a voice in their own lives. But can we have it all? Absolutely, yes. We had it all before this construct in America.
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Does it exist primarily so in other cultures and countries? Well, here's the thing, when I was visiting London and France, they have more this whole thing now where you don't have to get married either. It's like, this is my partner. So you can live in London with a partner and get the benefits of being married. But still, that is a contract in itself because the law sees you as commonly law married.
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So it's still not the same in the States. In the States, I think it's eight plus years that the law will see you as common law and not even in every state. So you could shack up with some man in America of 20 years and have built this life together and not be married and not get a dime of what you and him put together into that and have to fight in court to prove that what you've earned together and built together, you deserve some. It's ridiculous.
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Chadwick Boseman. Oh yeah. They hadn't gotten married yet. What happened? Cause you talk of marriage as a contract, which it is. What happened with the wife and his estate because they weren't married. Not yet. They were engaged to be married, but he died. Before that. And so the marriage contract didn't exist. It's the same with DMX, I think. Really? Yes. I didn't know that. He hadn't married his fiance at the time.
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and then the whole thing of the estate. It's the same with going to the hospital. They want a next of kin because there's an emergency and they need to make a decision. Do we pull the plug? Those kinds of situations usually require that you be the spouse. Yes, yes, absolutely. In America, you cannot make very important decisions on your own life, even if you've been sharing your life with this individual, unless you are married.
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So that's just the law that we're talking about. But value wise, I think it's something to be said about our society when we make the decision to marry the person that we claim to love and respect and want to spend the journey with while you can, because sometimes marriages don't work out. And I'm not saying that anyone should stay in a bad marriage because that makes no sense either. But what I am saying is that
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if you're dating this individual, what is the purpose of dating this individual? And this mantra, I don't need to get married, I don't need a man, I don't need this, outside of the propaganda of who it benefits for you not to be married, and who is controlling who does and who doesn't get married. But I think marriage is extremely important because...
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It's a commitment and it creates and builds values and a foundation within our society that says that we are all connected, that we are family. We can bring up our children in a certain type of way to make these valuable connections because you're only as strong as the weakest link or your strongest link is your network.
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and your network is the people you marry and the people you build a family with and the people that you wind up building community with and your extended family. And when those things are broken, it's very hard for us to build a very strong and sustainable society that works. It's so ironic, especially with this podcast, we talk about connection. So the word connection is thrown around a lot. It's because that's who we are.
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But what is the sphere that we have in connecting with another person so much that we marry them? Why do we always leave the store open of, I don't wanna get married in case it doesn't work out, I can just break up and move on to the next one. Like a checklist, swipe right, swipe left. It's horrible. They call it a dating site or dating app for a reason. If they were a marriage site, they'd go out of business. So they...
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don't benefit you to actually get you married. Granted, some people do meet somebody and they do go on to be married. Good for you. Very small percentage of those individuals when you think about the mass number of individual users out there of these dating apps and dating sites. But I think that it gives us this illusion that I can just keep having these virtual dates, these instant dates. You see this image, you imagine what life would be and then, oh.
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swipe on, you know, it's ridiculous. Tell us a little bit about your personal life, your journey when it comes to marriage. Before the show, I was sharing that I had been married multiple times prior to the marriage that I'm in today. You know, I was in an abusive marriage and very violent relationship with my husband, my first husband, and then that led from one.
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tumultuous relationship after another. And I stopped at this point and decided that it was time for me to make a marriage contract with myself and build up this loving, meaningful relationship that I had with self because I hadn't cultivated that ever. And I was in a bad relationship with myself, which allowed me to keep inviting and keeping these bad relationships around. So when I got myself to a place where I felt whole,
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and complete, I was ready to open myself up to receive love and to share the love that I had to give. And that's when I met my husband. What was different about that is I made the decision to approach him. Whereas before I would just wait and see who is going to approach me. But instead I'm like, I've chosen
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everything else in my life, even the bad stuff that happened. So I'm gonna get to know this guy. I get to choose who I want and how I see my life unfolding. And it was the best choice that I made. A very powerful choice that I have no regrets in. He's my best friend. And I based these choices on our values, especially our spiritual values, something that my other marriages did not have. They were not interested in God.
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prayer, meditation, or any of the personal development stuff, but that was who I was in order to fit into this mold with this person that just wasn't fitting. And so when I started to look for the qualities of the man and the characteristics of the man, I closed my eyes and said, what does love look like? I didn't have a visible image of it. I just knew what it was supposed to feel like and what it looked like in the terms of the qualities of that individual. And that's
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what my husband and I share. We have a large family together because he was previously married as I, and we have four kids each, they're all grown. We're both grandparents, and we get to live a really good life together. Before meeting him, I started my business, and I was like, I wanna share this wake-up call that I had within myself with other women. But I started helping other men because they were my first clients, and I thought.
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this is good, let me fix some of these guys out here so that I can prepare them for the lady, right? Been traveling around the world, spreading this message that we can find happiness and love and create meaningful relationships and marriages beginning with ourselves. Not that we have to even be perfect. No, no, but sorry. We are perfect in our imperfections because of all the stuff that I carry with me from my past.
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It made me the woman that I am today. No one else is like me. I'm absolutely unique and I can walk with this story and all of my experiences and share that with others. Just focus on what makes you happy and what really is gonna make you feel good about yourself. Of course, that begins with the conversations that we're usually having with ourselves.
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There's a movie Hugh Grant acted with Sandra Bullock where he says, nobody wants to be with the saints. Saints are boring. So we're not asking anyone to be a saint, but be yourself. If anybody's listening and think, I don't believe in God, does that mean my marriage is not going to work? When I say God, I am talking about creator.
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If you believe that life didn't begin with you in some other realm or some other form, then that is a choice for you to have. But I truly believe that I was a spiritual being before I became incarnation. And as a human incarnation, that is one with creation itself and co-creating this life that I refer to as God.
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Now call it whatever you want, call it the mana, the energy, the sun, raw ocean, I don't care what you call it, but it is a higher source, a higher energy, a higher power other than ourselves. That too is what is lacking. If you truly believe even in science that energy cannot be created nor destroyed, then that is your belief. You are energy then. We give it a name, Allah, God, Jehovah, whatever the name is.
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name it and claim it and become one with it because that too is missing from our society. And I think that that's what makes so many of us feel so isolated and alone and why the conversations that we're having with ourselves and one another are so disconnected. So look beyond just yourself. Back to you attract what you are. So how did you realize that attracting those first two marriages that were toxic?
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who you were at the time and then you can just tell us how you started to work on yourself. We are who we are trapped. And so if I'm with a man who's violent and abusing me, then I'm a victim, right? And if I'm with a man who's cheating on me and lying and stealing my money and using drugs, again, I am powerless. I am a victim. Because I was a child that grew up with parents that got divorced very early, became a foster care kid.
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and then was raised by my grandmother, then the story that I had about myself before I recognized that this was my story was that I was an abandonment, unlovable, and that was the story. So I'm unlovable and I'm an abandonment waiting to happen. And so that means anybody that chooses to love me, why would they do that when my parents weren't there or nobody else was there? So I'm unlovable.
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when am I gonna attract if the story that I have about myself, and it's not a conscious conversation that I was having with myself, but an internal dialogue, very low grade voice that was very loud. And I said, well, I'm unlovable. So a man comes along and said, Hey, I'll unlove you. I'll unlove you real good. And that's what happens. So when I realized that the relationships that I was allowing into my life have more to do with
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my choices. And please, ladies, gentlemen, that have been victims of violence, this is in no way victim blaming or saying that it is your fault that someone beats on you or you wind up in an abusive relationship because it takes two, right? And no one has the right to inflict violence on anybody else. But what I am saying is who are we being? Who was I being when I got into that relationship? Unlovable, undeserving, unworthy, ugly, a victim and a fool.
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And so I decided that if I keep getting into these relationships and I'm praying and I'm asking the universe, God, family, friends, everybody, why, why do I keep getting into these relationships? What's wrong with me? It was the right question because it wasn't what was wrong with me. It was why was I making these choices? And I didn't realize that they were choices that I was making. I started to build a relationship with myself, beginning with this.
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mirror exercise. It was affirmations, you know, looking in the mirror, looking into my own eyes. I cried. I mean, wet because every positive affirmation I was telling myself sounded like lies because the story I had been telling myself for so long was you are ugly, you are skinny, you are black, you are undeserving, you are unworthy, you're a victim. Here I am telling these positive affirmations, you are worthy, you are loving, you are lovable, you are deserving. And it's like, you're a liar. You're a liar.
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And I remember going to church and asking my pastor at the time, you know, I've been doing these affirmations and I'm telling myself this positive stuff, but it feels like I'm lying to myself. And he said, well, you've been lying to yourself all this time, telling yourself these things that were not true. So it's going to take time before you believe your real truth. And I just kept up with it.
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and weeping and crying, but holding on and being there for myself and staying committed to myself, forging a contract with myself, communicating with myself in a compassionate and loving way until one day I believed it. And I started to walk in that. It was a journey. That journey took me to the place that I am today. So I don't speak like ladies, man, get your stuff together and find somebody, just throwing that out there.
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frivolously, but because I know coming from the worst side of it, one of the most extreme sides of it, to a place that I believe that we can all get to, which is a very loving, meaningful, happy and committed relationship with ourselves and our perfect partner. This lying to yourself, you had been telling yourself these stories for however many decades.
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So the first time you did affirmations, it was so brand new, bizarre. Obviously it wasn't going to take a week for that to go away and be replaced by this new stuff. And it's not an ending to this. I still have to tell myself, affirmations do the forgiveness process. Go in and say, who do I need to work on forgiving right now? Do I need to work on forgiving myself? What do I need to release and let go? This is my daily.
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practice. It's not like one and done. I'm healed. I'm good because it took years to get there. It's like if you start going to the gym and you work out, it doesn't feel good maybe until 15 minutes in, right? But you do it because it's something that you need to do. If I had a choice, I would rather eat chocolate cake and brownies and cupcakes and donuts and all that good yummy stuff all day, every day. Why can't we just eat sugar and sweets and be good?
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But we have to add in some healthy stuff, not because it always tastes good, but because it's good for our bodies. So affirmations and personal development work is a requirement for the mind and the spirit in order for us to be able to go out into the world and transact with others. You mentioned forgiveness and the most important one is the forgiving yourself, which a lot of people forget.
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When we're on this healing journey, we think, yes, I must forgive Colette, I must forgive Roberta. But what about forgiving yourself for all the lies you told yourself? Thinking, I should have known better, I should have done better. How did I get into this situation? A lot of people forget that step. Absolutely. The first workbook that I published is called the Forgiveness Process Workbook. And the
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first person that you forgive in the workbook before you even do any forgiveness on anybody else's yourself. And it is the most challenging part of the workbook because it's so easy for us to forgive our lying, cheating partner. It's that coworker that stole that job, somebody who stole my mail, you know? But the hardest person that we have a time forgiving is ourselves. We're so hard on ourselves. So many of us.
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have so very little compassion for ourselves. We are just constantly telling ourselves the conversation, many, oh, I was so stupid, God, why that so stupid doing this or doing that? And we don't realize how many times a day we may call ourselves foolish or stupid or dumb. And so when it's time to forgive ourselves, and not for any reason, just to get into the process and the habit of forgiving so that you can say,
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Okay, so you made a mistake. I forgive myself. I didn't get that job. It's okay, I forgive myself. So that relationship didn't work out. So, all right, I forgive myself. But until we can learn how to forgive ourselves, we can't even really fully forgive others and release them from the bondage that some of us have people held up in. You know what I mean? Mm, then you said you and your husband, you share the same values.
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Does that mean you are both ambitious and you want to make lots of money so that what brought you together? Talk us through that. Well, that's probably was something that we had secondary, but our values, we're both very spiritual people. We practice the same faith. We both believe in being social justice activists for the same.
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causes out there. We actually met volunteering at an agency where we were helping the same people and were politically on the same side of justice. And we have those same values. We believe the same rights are right and the same wrongs are wrong. And we believe in living from a space of being a good person and not being a person who's malicious or manipulative or a liar or a cheater.
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So those values, those are very important to us. And we share the same intellect. We are both avid readers. We can spend hours and hours reading books and bookstores and just spending time around books. And we both are creative. So we both write books and scripts, values and similarities and beliefs. Because our belief systems frames our values and those values become part of the core essence
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who we are. Not all beliefs should be the beliefs we keep. Some we need to discard, but the true values and our essence of our being is that thing that says, I want to be with the honest, loving, happy individual who's spiritual, who believes in treating others really good, fighting the good fight, working for right and just. And that is who my husband is, and that's who I am.
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When you are dating then, what questions do you usually ask to establish if that person shares the same values as you do? I think just by learning about what types of extracurricular activities outside of work they're involved in, because even if a person works in, let's say, social services or as a teacher, we sort of look at these people like, oh, or, you know, I used to be a nurse before the business that I run now.
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And people would say, oh, that's such a good thing, but that doesn't mean that I have good knowledge because I do that for. I think you have to find out what people's extracurricular activities are. Outside of work, what do you do for fun? What are their spiritual beliefs? Political affiliations or values? There are questions to find out, what someone finds is just and right.
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And I think in the beginning, it's important for us to observe. When you first start dating someone, it should be doing things that you enjoy. So if it's the arts or bookstores or things, and observing this person in those fields to see, you know, how do they respond to this? There's a lot you can gain out of going to look at a piece of art and observing what a person responds to that piece, because art is so subjective.
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One of our first dates, he said we talked for eight hours on this date. He says, I've never talked to anybody for eight hours in my life. So we talk a lot. And in that talking, it's all about our values. What things we believe are important. And I think finding out what's important to people takes investigation and digging. And I think a lot of people are very afraid
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afraid to get in there without seeming like, well, if I start asking all these questions, it's like, Hey, I'm like Barbara Walters in this, I'm interviewing you because are you going to make the cut here? Because I'm not letting anybody up in this space anymore without knowing what their values are. That's where we have to put those standards up and really do the investigation by asking them questions. You know, what's their thoughts on education? What are their thoughts on
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race or identity, any of that stuff frames your values. And are they the same as this individual's because that's who you're really marrying, cultivating a relationship with. And in addition to that, my brother used to say to me, you must observe how they treat someone who can do absolutely nothing for them like a waiter, because he would say, sis, on the day he's mad at you, that's exactly how he's going to be. I've also learned though,
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that sociopaths, narcissists, psychopaths, some of them learn very well how to behave in public. Charismatic, abusive men or women learn how to be and operate very charismatic in public. So not every person that keeps themselves in high standards in front of the crowd is necessarily going to keep themselves in high standards behind closed doors.
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notice those things because yeah, what you just mentioned, that's very key. And I have a close friend who just divorced her. He would put on a good act in public. And that's why when she started telling other people that were close to them how he was treating her, they found it very hard to believe. Right. And they have been operating throughout the world and society for years.
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under the guise of this costume, they watch people, they model and mirror behavior. This is how I'm supposed to act and behave. So how does one identify whether they're with a narcissist? This is why getting to know somebody, asking the right questions. When we cultivate the meaningful relationship that we have with self, I wanna break it down like counterfeit money.
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When a banker or teller is learning all about money, they learn how it smells, real money, how it looks, how it feels. They know real money. They study real money. I mean, there's nothing you're gonna get by them that's gonna tell them that fake money is real when it is not. So when we are really forging a healthy, loving, meaningful relationship with ourselves, and when we truly recognize how to identify those values
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qualities that matter most, that is one with love and only love, then we will spot a fake when we see one. No matter how well hate acts in public. Because you'll know it's a fake. Love is always and only going to be love. It can't occupy hate. So if anything inside feels amiss, that gut of ours, that feeling, that thought that we ignore is telling you something. So observe.
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Do we sometimes mistake that God for, oh, that's just the fear because I've been hurt so much. I should give this a chance. You don't owe anybody any favors. I say this to women and men all the time. If you got a feeling that this person is not treating you the way you feel that you deserve to be treated.
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and you're treating yourself with high regard and respect and really have good values and things. And you've been working on yourself and cultivating a good relationship with yourself and you're treating this person good and you don't feel like you're getting the reciprocity you deserve in that relationship. You have a choice to say, this is what I don't feel like I'm getting. What do you think we need to do to work on that? And if your needs are not being met,
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then your choosing to stay there is a choice. But do you think that sometimes we always look for red flags? But that's also good because if my red flags are projecting onto somebody my past trauma and abuse, then I'm not ready for that relationship. So whether or not it's true or not true, it's true because you're not ready. And why get into a relationship with somebody when you're still in that space?
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So that means that you need to continue to do the work because then if you're questioning and saying, maybe this is my stuff and it isn't about this individual's and maybe it is, maybe it is not. But if those are the questions, that means keep doing the work. There is no right or wrong in that because if I'm still bringing my baggage and we all have it, so it's nothing derogatory about it. But if I'm bringing my negative baggage, my issues, my trauma into this relationship and I'm projecting all of this stuff,
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onto this new person in my life who has nothing to do with this stuff, then I'm doing both of us a favor because they're not ready for my stuff, but they got theirs all sorted out. I still have work to do. Meaning do not move forward until this thing is resolved. That's a very different take on what you usually hear. Please give us just three top tips on how to start working on ourselves to attract the best mate. The first tip.
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is to forgive yourself and forgive your past partners because we talked a lot about forgiveness and the power of forgiveness is liberating. And like I mentioned, I have a workbook available on Amazon if you wanna get that. The next step is to use some positive affirmations and that could be you doing some mirror activities or exercises and talking to yourself positively, lovingly, using some physical techniques like hugging yourself, patting yourself on the back.
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Really get into that power of affirming the truth that you now speak, which is the positive loving conversations that you need to have with yourself in order to replace any negative stories or loops that you have going on in your head. And thirdly, I would say be open to receive love and to share your love with others. Don't look for other people to save you or that they need to love you up.
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Our life here on this planet, I believe, is to share the love and our lives with other people and them to share their love and their lives with us and us to, you know, create a loving and meaningful society. So just look to be open to receive the love, but also to share it. Words of wisdom from Collette G. Now please tell us where to find your book.
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All of my books can be found on Amazon, Barnes and Noble's, Nook, iBook, Kindle, all that stuff. It's Finding Happily, No Rules, No Frogs, and No Pretending. But you can visit findinghappily.com and find all the workbooks and my books available there, and also all my social media handles, or just reach out to me direct and say, hey. Okay, findinghappily.com, that's your website. Are there any other social media handles you want to share?
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Oh, sure. I'm on Instagram, Finding Happily. I think that's the only social media I have left. FindingHappily.com. Thank you so much, Colette. This has been wonderful. I've enjoyed our conversation immensely. Thank you too, Roberta. Thank you. So you heard it yourself from relationship expert and author Colette Gee. on how the most important relationship is the one you have with yourself because you are
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attracting who you are. Thank you so much for listening. Don't forget to subscribe, give a rating and a review.