Is It Her?

RISK!

Two men share deeply personal stories about the emotional toll of relationships and the struggle between being present in love versus feeling abandoned. Brad Lawrence

Key takeaways

• The emotional weight of being in a relationship can be overwhelming, especially when one partner is consumed by ambition and the other feels abandoned.

Main topics

• Relationship failure during law school
• Emotional isolation in urban life

Notable quotes

"We're going to be one of the 20% that survives. We're going to do it. We're going to be fine."

Conclusion

Ultimately, both storytellers come to realize that emotional health isn't about

Transcript preview

Speaker 4 (0:01) On this episode of Risk, you'll hear Brad Lawrence. How could this plan go wrong? And you'll hear Christopher Moncayo Torres. Boyfriend, healthy Speaker 2 (0:09) relationship, proposed engagement, didn't work out. Speaker 4 (0:13) And me, Kevin Allison, on the show where people tell true stories they never thought they'd dare to share. Speaker 5 (0:33) The Speaker 7 (0:34) city moves fast, but your vibe, that's different. Sharper, smoother, more alive. Speaker 5 (0:44) The new Speaker 7 (0:49) Honda City isn't just made to drive, it's made to feel. The new Honda City, all new vibe. Speaker 1 (1:01) Welcome to the I Can't Sleep Podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep Podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention, and then your mind lets you drift off. Speaker 1 (1:35) Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster. Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison. Then your yoga teacher says that sex traffic children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals. But it's all okay. The Great Awakening is what is happening. Speaker 1 (2:08) Every week on Conspirituality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family, and wellness gurus down the right-wing cult spiral in a search for salvation. Did you ever wonder what it's like to live alone, hidden in the woods, not speaking to a single soul for 30 years? or wander the desert, uncover a hidden well, and dive to the bottom of the deepest waterhole for 2,000 miles. The Snap Judgment Podcast takes you there with amazing stories told by the people who live them with an original soundscape that drops you directly into their shoes. Snap Judgment. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 4 (3:20) All right, folks, this is Randy Sharp behind me now, and we're calling this week's episode, Is It Her? Two men sharing stories here that brought to mind for me that being single is hard, being in a relationship is hard, and going from being in a relationship to being single is hard. Speaker 4 (3:46) But for now, these gents will dig deeper. This is Brad Lawrence, a member of our team here for many years, at a Risk Live show in New York last year. The story we call 20%. I Speaker 3 (4:26) recently just kind of passed a certain milestone. Last year became the year when New York became the place I have lived in longer than any other place in my life. That's right. 22 years in New York City. The first year that I was in New York City, you would not have guessed that I would have lasted 22 years. The first year was not great. There was a real sort of failure to thrive that first year. I had moved here to be an actor with a girlfriend. A girlfriend was going to Columbia Law School. One of us was obviously much more sort of prepared than the other one. And we got up here. And moved into Columbia Housing. Before we even moved, we were packing up our apartment. We lived together in D.C. And we're in the bedroom and we're packing things up. And she stops packing this box. And she looks at me across the bed. And she has this wide-eyed, very vulnerable expression on her face. And she says, Aya. I read this article that said that 80 % of relationships don't survive the first year of law school. And I looked at her and I was like, sweetheart, that is not going to be us. We are made of stronger stuff. We have a good relationship. And we're going to be one of the 20 % that survives. We're going to do it. We're going to be fine. And I said this to her because I thought that she was looking for reassurance. What she was actually doing was citing precedent. She's a very good lawyer. Very successful. She's doing great. And also, all that literature was correct because we got to Columbia Law School and within two weeks, all right, if you are dating someone and they're like, I'm going to go to law school, just pack. Don't wait. Just pack your bags, be out the door, wave to them as you go. Because within two weeks, it should have turned cold. It was just not going well. She was spending all time at the law library. And then she'd come in from the law library and talk about how she just works so hard. And they all just work so hard. And lawyers like to talk about how they just work so hard, just work so hard. And I'm working two jobs. It's fine. Fine. We just work so hard. But like then even that conversation kind of came to an end. And when we weren't actually actively arguing, she just kind of come in and sort of see me and be surprised that I was still there. And it was not good. It was very icy. And I was lonely and miserable because I only had one other friend in New York City. And he lived in Prospect Heights, which is an hour from Columbia's campus. Right. But at a certain point, I began to sort of feel like the problem we had in the relationship was that I was there. Speaker 3 (7:10) You know, that like my presence was kind of the biggest obstacle to a happy relationship with this woman. And so I came up with a sort of this plan that I thought would help the relationship, which was to not be there. My plan is that I would go like take the train down to Prospect Heights as much as possible and just drink with my friend Mike. and just be out of the apartment and out of her hair and not annoying her and not distracting her. I just go down and drink with Mike and complained to him about how sad and lonely I was that this relationship was falling apart. And Mike would just sort of sit there and listen. He let me do this. He was a very good friend. And I would just drink with him until like midnight. And then I would act the second part of my big plan to save the relationship, which is I would then get on the train to go home. Like an hour back up to Columbia's campus because I thought for some reason I thought it was very important to the relationship that I be there, that I like sleep in the bed and be there when she wakes up in the morning. Let's recap my plan for saving this relationship. Part one, don't be present when she's awake and in the apartment. Do, part B, stumble in the middle of the night drunk. How could this plan go wrong? And Mike would argue with me every time. He'd be like, dude, don't get back on the train. Like, this is ridiculous. Sleep on my couch. You're drunk. It's an hour. Don't get back on the train. But I was like, oh, no, I need to be there. I thought the relationship's going to work. I should be there when she wakes up in the morning. I should, you know, this is important. And I would stumble off to the train. But I'm also staying later and later at Mike's because I am so miserable and sad and lonely that I'm staying longer each time and getting drunker each time. So it goes from like going back at midnight on the train to going back at one in the morning on the train to two to three. And I'm getting home later and later. And I am just sort of so. so sad and dejected because this relationship actually is very important to me. We've been together for seven years. I really wanted it to work. I loved her very, very much. And I was really trying very hard, but I just, I was, I didn't over my head. I was out of my skis, whatever metaphor you want to like get in there. I was all of them and I was just failing. And it was, I was just sad. And I would ride the train. back up there and think about how I was failing to make it in New York, to live up to like the optimistic hopes that I had had when I moved to New York, that I was going to come here and be an actor and it was going to be great and that we were going to be this stellar couple. And that wasn't happening. And the relationship was falling apart. And I was just sort of getting more and more sort of sad and feeling sort of so abandoned and alone. And I would just ride back on the train, staring at that black and speckled formica floor of the subway, thinking about this. And I'm doing this like 3 o'clock in the morning one night, and I'm so out of it. But then I look up, and I see about two-thirds of a train down, I see this girl. And she looks like a woman who used to come into the coffee shop that I worked at in St. Louis. And she wasn't necessarily a friend. She was like a friend of friends. Like we had the same friend circle, but she was on the opposite side of that circle. And in fact, when I knew her in St. Louis, I didn't actually like her much. I'd had a couple of conversations with her at parties and gatherings. And she was one of those people who like, she thought every conversation should become a debate. which is not really my vibe. And I was always kind of like avoiding her, but you know, whatever. But now here I am on the train and I