 This would be a great time to lean into our Q&A section of our talk for those who are familiar with my work familiar with my My my channel my podcast everything. This is time for Q&A. This is your chance to ask me questions directly Simply write the word question then post the question thereafter or you can purchase a super sticker super chat There's a little dollar sign the chat box all the monies go from the super sticker super chat goes to a scholarship Fund in the name of my son Connor Asley. That's a picture of them right there And that's one of them right there. He's my son who passed away almost four years ago And in his honor, I've started a scholarship fund to Help to freight to to promote things like the Hoffman process Insights seminars and also to help defray the cost of personal development for those in need So before I take questions and I see we already have a few that come in I Have a personal share with everyone and that is recently I had a Someone posted a comment on one of my videos And they said Jonathan your personal life is not exactly a role model for a relationship Nirvana And I posted this on my community page and I want to share with my response because I had I also wanted to share with You a personal reflection on this But here's my response to this person How much of my personal life do you really know? With that said, I'm here with that said I'm here to say that the dating marketplace is a mess and I'm experiencing many of the frustration all folks experience This makes me human and that's why and that's what I'm modeling being a human Plus I encourage personal development self-help and spiritual work as an antidote for the chaos and I do my best To live my life from a spiritual perspective And let me say this I'm not even close to perfect and some days. I'm cynical some days. I'm upbeat Some days. I'm downright righteous While I'm not perfect I know my mission is to be a wake-up call for many humans in the dating realm at the same time I have amazing relationships with so many people and I do my best to be happy to be a happy and fun person in my Personal life and for the record. I feel like I live a blessed life which feels like nirvana to me Well, I wanted to share that with you everybody is in the days after posting that I Had an interesting awareness And I wanted to share this with you role modeling what I believe some of you might be Experiencing and you can let me know in the comments if that's the case so I Got married in my 20s Followed the blueprint. I was supposed to follow was married for 12 years New her. I think a total of 15 years and we got a divorce and after the divorce I was Ridiculously dysfunctional because I'd lost my quarter million dollar a year job and I got wiped out in the market clap crash of 2008-09 and my life for the next deck half decade was absolutely dysfunctional Well Not quite half half decade, but for at least two or three years before I found my passion being a dating a relationship coach And a few years of date later after beginning my journey in this profession. I met a woman and We went on to have a six-year on again off again a relationship I'm not proud of the fact. We were on again off again. I Do believe we came into our lives to each other to heal one another and I was she accepted me in One of my darkest deepest places in my life. I fact ladies I wouldn't recommend what she did and that was to choose me because I wasn't in a good place fact I was so desk I was so depressed and financially You know bankrupt But I was actually living with my mom and dad in a retirement community at age 40 And this was after living in a two million dollar home prior to my divorce Why I'm sharing this with you is that relationship Wasn't a role model of anything other than just me being human and that relationship ended in 2017 and As I've reflected on the five or six years the five years since then why haven't I been able to attract a relationship? And I want to share with you all publicly Because what I'm doing my best to role model is vulnerability authenticity and transparency So six months after she my relationship ended I lost my mother to cancer She was 88 years old and while that didn't overly affect me That certainly was you know, partially. I was a bit emotionally consumed by that and Then six months later. I lost my 19 year old son to an accident and That brought me to my knees on so many levels and The idea of being in a relationship while I wanted companionship while I wanted connection while I wanted sex I certainly wasn't in a position to do that because I was and I was also I didn't even feel like working in 2018 and 19 I Was probably at a low point my professional life of still helping people in the dating mating and relating realm but emotionally I was going through chaos and So I put my attention to writing a book two months after Connor passed away again My book what the heck itself love anyway, and I immersed myself in this book as a way to heal myself and during that time I'd done the Hoffman process during that time. I'd done insight seminars in the last five years What I also realized is That what was happening here in the United States was highly affecting me from my ability to really lean into a relationship with anybody and We were we are divided here in the country from a political perspective and that divide Hurts me deeply And I'll be just be candid with you I cannot stand Ideologies that are are are separate from one another whether you're on the right whether you're on the left Whether you're vaccine or no vaccine whether your mask or no mask the last four years in particular and with the with the COVID as well It's made me very difficult to feel safe with human beings because there's so much rigid Ideologies political politics identity politics People that are so overly sensitive that God forbid you didn't call them the right pronouns you lose your job over it and This hurts me deeply And it's made it very difficult to want to lean into trusting another human being On an emotional level and I suspect I'm not alone with this I feel like I am definitely not alone with this because folks I'm a I'm a I'm a centrist or I don't moderate or whatever it is I I just believe we should do our best to try to find solutions rather than sticking to our individual Ideologies, that's just how I operate because that's what love would do and that's how love would respond And yet the same time I've created a very small world for myself Meaning I even people that are close friends of mine have had difficulties wanting to connect with them because the Ideologies are so rigid to one side or the other and this has made me very nervous Putting myself in the dating realm because there are people that their ideologies are very very clearly stated on the dating apps And I just don't know if I want to go down that road So why am I not in a relationship? I certainly believe the last four years of my life between Losing my mother losing Connor and what's happened here in the United States and and certainly globally has made me less trusting of people And I don't like that. I don't like that. I'm not feeling trusting of people I know this is my own issue, but if I really looked in the mirror after reading that comment It's because It doesn't feel safe anymore. There's no real Tribe it didn't you know, it was someone once said it takes a village And I don't believe if it feels like whether we're in the tribe our village our community It feels so isolated these days and it's certainly COVID didn't help that for so many of us that were you know That worked from home by ourselves and so I Only share this just as simply to state That no human being is perfect in the minute We put any individual out there who has a public platform like I do and some capacity of being perfect You're setting me up for failure because I can never live up to perfection. I am ridiculously Imperfect my communication my speech sometimes my my thinking my thoughts my judgments my resentments my guilt my shame I am riddled with flaws I'm not even perfect in the dating realm And so all I can do is have love and compassion for myself Because I do my best to live on under the the four agreements if you're not familiar with the four agreements I'm pulling out this book right now. Do your best be impeccable with your world word. Don't make assumptions and projections of others is Perceptions of people of others is just they're merely projections of you And so I invite you all the reason why I recommend all these books over and over again because Look at you may not be as fucked up as I am believe me I have got shit in my childhood that I mean has put up walls and armor and even in my adult life that has walls and armor And hopefully you're not as messed up as I am But I spend every day peeling the onion every day to try to be the best version of myself And that's my invitation for everyone because we cannot be dependent upon romantic relationships to solve our Individual desire To want others to love us for us to feel good about ourselves. Is this sinking in is this resonating? Please let me know I'll come back and read the comments later