 Come to Out of the Comfort Zone. It's a lovely Tuesday afternoon and I'm your host, Arby Kelly. We're here on ThinkTech on Spectromosia 16. Now I know whoever you are, wherever you are, one thing that makes you universal, just the same as everyone else, is that you love someone. Or you at least want to love someone, want to be loved. Now the trouble is, these most personal, most intimate relationships can often go sour. And when they go badly wrong, they go very, very badly wrong. Which is why today I'm excited to announce we have a relationship expert. Stephanie McNeil is coming on the show. She's here with me now, popping into the studio. And she's here to share with us all about relationships, toxic relationships, how to recognize when you're in one, and how to get out of one. Thank you for coming here, Stephanie. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. All right. Well, let's get started. Let's just get started right off. So could you tell our viewers a little bit more about your story and how you got started? Well, I wish it was an easy trip to where I am now. It's been a lot of trials and tribulations. But I basically started off my life in a family where there was a lot of discord, a lot of arguing that was going on. And that became my internal mode of realizing what was comfortable. And so I learned that love was a really uncomfortable thing. It caused anxiety. It was painful. It just wasn't a comfortable place to be. So when I had my first major relationship that I was still looking forward to, I don't know why. I was like, high school kids, we all want to be in a relationship, but I don't know why. But I was the only one who wasn't dating, and I felt something was wrong with me. So I finally found this guy that I thought was great when I was 19 years old. And he started off wonderful. He started out really, really well. And I was like, all right, well, I'm going to do things a little bit differently from my parents. And after a few years, we were living together, things kind of started to go south. And I was someone who was a caretaker, I still am, and I wanted to be supportive of him. His father got sick. He got cancer. He started getting worse. He started becoming abusive towards me. And I said, you know, I feel badly. His father's sick. I need to stay with him. I need to stand by him. It's going to get better. Things just got worse and worse until one day at probably three o'clock in the morning, he came home drunk and accused me of cheating on him and took my phone and went through all my phone contacts, got to one of my friends and said, what were you guys doing? And we had been out. I had actually invited him to the place we were at. And he said, you're both lying, took my phone, threw it across the room, it shattered. My friend was smart and called the police and the police came and they picked him out, threw him out of the house. And one of the police officers stood back and he said, this is supposed to be the best time of your life. You need to get out. And I was 27 years old and I said, okay, you're right. I completely agree with that statement. And I started the process of getting, of breaking up with him. He harassed me. He stalked me. He was crazy. I was afraid I would see a truck like he had and I would be in another state and I would get freaked out. So I spent some time working on me. I thought it was enough. I did some dating. I kind of really didn't have much of downtime between being single and dating. I just kind of went right into dating, even though he would call up people and harass anyone I dated. And I started dating pretty quickly this new person. And I felt really comfortable with him because he was a friend of a friend. And things moved really fast. Right away he wanted to move in. He wanted to start a more committed relationship. And I was a little bit uncomfortable. But I thought, you know what? I'm just not used to healthy relationships. Maybe this is actually how it's supposed to be and I just don't know any better. I agreed. I said, okay, you can come move in and we'll start, you know, getting ready for getting married. He was already talking about marriage at very early. And at this point I was 28 years old. And I had this internal clock that said, hey, you got to get married. You got to get married. You want to have a family. You got to get married. And 28 felt old. I'm 40 now. So I like that was a ridiculous thought back then. But, you know, like, you know, what you're thinking in your 20s. So he asked me to marry him. We got married I was 29 years old. And we had this beautiful wedding at a place called O'Heaka Castle, which I live in New York. It's one of the places that celebrities go to as a destination. Like it is a gorgeous, gorgeous place. And he wanted, you know, everything to be top of the line and perfect. And it was for the day. It was probably one of the most beautiful days, beautiful experiences I've ever had in my life, had family from all over the country and my mom's family from Europe. I mean, people came from all over for this wedding and it was a beautiful, beautiful day. It was like a princess. That night, when we went back to our hotel room that was in this castle, it was a suite. It was a beautiful, beautiful place. And we got back to the room. I was wearing a corset of dress and he went to the bathroom to run the tub and he started to undo my corset dress and it was kind of like nonchalant and I was expecting this to be this very romantic easing. And, you know, kind of already feeling like, all right, this was a little bit weird. We go into the bathroom and picture just a beautiful, like Italian, French marble, just from head to floor. Like it was just beautiful, beautiful bathroom. And I go to put my foot in the tub. And when I do that, a little bit of water comes out the side and goes onto the ground. And he says, what are you doing? What's wrong with you? Why did you just get water on the floor? And I was like, honey, relax. There's a drain right there on the ground. I'm sure that that's there for that to happen in case there's water. Let's not let this ruin the night. Well, that was the wrong thing to say. So for the next four to five hours, he chased me around the suite and I was naked. So just picture, I'm naked on my wedding night, running around this suite, hiding in different rooms, locking the door, he's banging on the door, telling me he wishes he could throw me out the window, throw the wedding ring, says it's the worst mistake he's ever made in his life, threatening injury, cursing at me, yelling, screaming, and I have this thought in my head, okay, I'm gonna run out into the hallway. I need to just escape this man. And then I'm like, I'm naked. I can't even get to clothes. I can't get anywhere. And he also knew the people at the hotel and I was worried about what people would think and I just felt trapped. And so he kept chasing me around. It was just craziness for hours until he finally chased me back into the bedroom, which had this beautiful four-post bed and he threw me against the bed and started strangling me. And as I was laying there getting strangled, I remember looking at him and thinking, oh my God, this man that I married, I chose this man and he is going to kill me on my wedding night. This must be the best day of my life and he's going to kill me. And I started to feel my arms get weak and my legs get weak and I stopped struggling because I couldn't push him off anymore. I couldn't do anything. And thank goodness, he came too and all of a sudden he just got off of me, walked away and I just curled up in a ball and started crying. And I said, what am I gonna do? I married this man. I mean, this is the worst mistake I've ever made in my life. And so he basically said to me, he came back, apologized, all the reasons why I should stay with him, we're now married. And I'm thinking, I just had all these people come from all over to come to this wedding. I was embarrassed. I felt shame. I was regretful. And I said, I'll go on the honeymoon with you. He says, I promise it'll never happen again. If it does, then we can get a divorce. Well, if it was that easy, I wouldn't be on the show right now because things would have been happily ever after. But that's never the case with these kinds of situations. I accepted it. And for the next five years, I was spit on, pushed, woken up in the middle of the night, lights were turned on, I was threatened, I was cursed at, I was told to shut up and that nobody wanted to hear me because no one cared about my opinion. I mean, all of these things that started to just really, really demoralize me. And I got to the point where I said, I have thrown him out a bunch of times, police were called to my house. I mean, it just became the second fourth. It was really toxic and really awful. And I finally decided one day after he sent me a really nasty text message. And he said, I said to myself, you know what? I'm done. So five years of hell, I said, you know what, I'm done. I made plans with a friend of mine to go live at her house. And because I knew that he would be crazy, he wouldn't accept that I was getting a divorce, that it was real. And so I went to her house and I lived there for a few months. And I finally was able to go through the divorce. And it took me about three years of really working on myself. I mean, I really had to between therapy and taking a long time and doing all that until I finally just rediscovered who I was and ended up after all of that, finding an amazing man I'm now remarried. I'm actually pregnant with baby number two. So she's due in October. So we're pretty excited. And I think all the time had I not made the decision to leave, I would still be with that man. I would still be, I had a crying place. I had a place that I would go at a dock. I live right on the ocean. I would go to the dock and I'd cry. And that was my place that I would go to a few times during the week when I would see that he was home or a bad fight would happen. I don't live that anymore. And so really my big push is to help women rediscover that life purpose and reclaim who they are so they can live this life. So everything that I do is really, I come from a place where I know, I know how hard it is, I know how difficult it is. So sharing as much information as I can about how to get out and what some of the warning signs are has just become, that has become my purpose in my life. And that's so powerful. It's so deeply embedded in our culture. I mean, you just turn on the radio now and you'll hear songs about people beating each other, about meaningless one night stands, about unhealthy codependent relationships. All of that is the new normal on the radio in our movies, on our TV shows. And so people have this deep longing for that healthy, loving, happy relationship. But they have zero idea what it looks like, how to find it, or when they've found something that's not it. So what are some of the flags that people need to look for in these relationships, whether it's in their partner or in themselves? Well, the biggest thing that I think we really need to be careful of what I speak with clients, because I'm also a transformational coach now, other than an author, is that self esteem is a really huge issue. And what I find when I talk to people is that they're looking for their other half as opposed to looking for their other whole. And I've always been this strong independent woman. And I thought, hey, I can handle it all. And again, I've always been a caretaker. I've always been that one, I can handle everything. Don't worry about me. Well, that wasn't the case. So here I was drowning and people didn't even know how badly I was drowning. And I'm sure some of your viewers can understand what that's like. We think we can handle it. But the reality is that when we have low self esteem, when we're looking for somebody else to complete us, we're looking for another, we're attracting another broken person. And until we can really be confident in who we are and know ourselves and really live our own life. I mean, I spent from the time I was 19 until I was 35 years old in relationships. And they were all bad. They were all terrible. And I never took time for myself. And even in between, oh my God, I'm gonna be alone. And that alone, that word alone was such a scary thing. And I had to be in a relationship. I had to find someone. And after I became single from my ex-husband, I was like, being alone was awesome. It was so freeing. So when you're looking for someone to be your knight in shining armor to come and save you, when your boundaries are off, I didn't know what a boundary was. I didn't realize that you could actually tell someone what you wanted and have expectations so that's a follow-through on it. Because that's not what I had experienced when I was younger. And it wasn't what I experienced in any of my relationships. But having healthy boundaries and healthy self esteem are probably the two biggest things that I see as patterns that a lot of people like me have followed over and over again. I absolutely agree with that. And I grew up in a really healthy family. Like I had loving parents that we took really great care of their kids. But even I growing up with everything I saw on movies, with everything I heard on the radio, I thought love is supposed to be like really hard. Love is supposed to be uncomfortable. Love is supposed to be almost dangerous. Like that's what you see on the movies. Yeah, yeah, they're supposed to be shouting. If there's not shouting and throwing things then it's really not love. And that's such a scary idea. Like now that I am like you, I'm in a happy, healthy relationship. Now I look back on those teenage ideals of what love was, I thought it looked like. And like I'm scared to death. I could have ended up in a relationship like that. And for you, if you, like for your children, you're now having child number two, congratulations by the way. But if you'd stayed in those relationships, you would be raising children in those relationships. And just like the problems that started in your family growing up, you'd be passing them on to the next generation. And that's something I see a lot of people doing is they stay in these unhealthy relationships knowing they're unhappy, knowing they're possibly even unsafe. And they're passing that cycle on to their kids. So it just keeps going. And that's what it is. I think a lot of times as a female, we feel that we need to stay for the kids. But the reality is that that is the worst thing you can do. In fact, leaving for the kids is actually a better answer because you're teaching your child that this is okay. You might be upset about it. Your child might hear you talk about it. But again, that becomes their, what they see as other relationships. So now when they get into another relationship, they think that that's normal. They don't understand that not all relationships are like that. So the better thing to do is to leave that relationship and really work on you so that you can be strong and independent and not need to rely on someone else. Because that's another thing too, is that if you are not whole and complete, you continue to rely on other people for everything. And you don't wanna teach that to your children. You owe it to yourself and you owe it to them to be your best version of yourself and not allow anyone to treat you badly. Because you don't have to be a victim. And I think for a long time, I just kept waiting, someone come help me. Someone come save me. And I realized in the end that I was at my own knight in shining armor. It was me that needed to save myself. But I didn't realize that until it took me 15 years to figure that out. That is brilliant. And that's something I'd like to say over and over. You are your own knight in shining armor. You are your own fairy godmother. Now viewers, you're going to take a teeny tiny break, but we will be back in just a second and teach you more about how you can be your own hero. See you in a minute. I'm Jay Fidel, one of the hosts of Asia in Review, which is broadcast Monday afternoons on thinktecawai.com. We cover, we study news and politics in and affecting Asia. We work hard to bring you the most interesting subjects and guests who will raise your awareness. Please join us Mondays every week on Asia in Review on thinktecawai.com and also on YouTube and iTunes. Thanks for watching. We'll see you then. Aloha, Xie Xie and Sai Jian. When I was growing up, I was among the one in six American kids who struggled with hunger and hungry mornings make tired days. Grumpy days. That kind of days. But with the power of breakfast, the kids in your neighborhood can think big and be more. When we're not hungry for breakfast, we're hungry for more. More ideas. More dreams. More fun. When kids aren't hungry for breakfast, they can be hungry for more. Go to hungeris.org and lend your time or your voice to make breakfast happen for kids in your neighborhood. Welcome back. I hope you had a fabulous break. Now, I'm here with Stephanie McAfeele who is a relationship expert. She survived her own toxic, dangerous relationships and she's here with me today to talk to you about how you can make sure your relationship is healthy and safe. Now, it seems like sometimes when people get into this cycle, it seems like they're afraid to leave and it seems like they want to stay. So can you help me understand why some people choose to stay? That was actually one of the more frustrating things that I had to deal with. People would say behind my back, then the little tidbits of what was going on in my life that I enjoyed drama. And the reality is it's not that I enjoyed drama in any way, shape or form. It's that I was so used to living that and trying to placate my partner that that had become the norm. You know, it's one of those things that I always give this example when I talk about an unhealthy relationship. When you start a relationship, they don't call you names on the first date. They're charming. You know, my ex-husband, he was a salesman. He was very good at being like, he could sell himself and he was good looking and he knew the right things to say and all those things. So it sucks you in. And then so you get used to this level and things are good. And then when things start to go bad, you're like, okay, well, it's not always like this. It's not gonna always be this bad. Look at how good he was before. So we can go back to that. So you kind of keep having this hope. So if you, again, this example that I give is you take a frog and you put it in a pot of water and you slowly heat it up. It's gonna stay in there. If you put that same frog in boiling water, it jumps right out. It's the same thing with us in relationships. If they were calling those names on the first date, you'd be like, later, I have no interest in you. That's obvious. I don't care how big yourself the theme is, you're not gonna accept anyone to do that on the first or second date. But what happens is that heat slowly turns up. And as human beings, we are really good at acclimating to whatever happens to us, which is good and bad. Because especially if you're someone like me, I thought once you get married, you stay married because you need to support your husband because that's the promise you made in front of God and your friends and everything else. So I need to support him. And even though it was killing me, I mean, literally, who knows what could have happened if I would have stayed. It was killing me. I was staying because I needed to support my husband and I needed to help him through everything that he was going through. And that had become my normal. Someone saying to you, you enjoy drama, the reality is that's just what you're used to. Your level of, you know, another thing to think of is I just was anxious all the time. And I didn't realize that I was really anxious all the time. I meant a happy relationship with my best friend. There's a calmness that I never understood and which is why the name of my book is Being Love Shouldn't Hurt because to me, love was anxiety. It was discomfort. And once I really felt in my heart that love was this comfortable, calming, peaceful place, I never wanted to go back to anxiety anymore because I didn't know what it was. So once you started to really look within and focus and say, hey, you know what? I'm building my passion. I'm doing the things that I love and I'm calm about it. And I'm not gonna let anyone else take my serenity away because I mean, I look back, I actually ran into my ex-husband. We didn't have a conversation, but I saw him. I was out somewhere and I saw him. And I could feel myself, the anxiety and not just the energy from him for anybody who's into energy work. I'm a Reiki level two practitioner. So I sensed that. And so I was around him. I sensed this nervous, uncomfortable energy and I look over and he's there. And I thought, wow, I can't believe that I used to be okay with that because now things are just so calm and relaxed that I could never go back there again. What really is about the self work and about feeling it, really internalizing it, yoga, meditation, any of those things to just calm the mind and calm the body. Now there's one thing you said that really struck me that viewers might not realize just how serious this is. So you mentioned that you could have died. Like you might have died if you'd stayed. And viewers, you might be thinking, oh, she's being dramatic. But on average, like roughly speaking, three quarters of women who are murdered are murdered by their spouses or boyfriends, all right? So that's actually a huge thing. That's a very serious, very real possibility. That's why in crime shows, the first suspect that they always interview is the spouse or the boyfriend. So if you are in a situation where, yeah, maybe today he's hitting you, but it's one, it's not going to get better. Two, it is going to get worse. And that's why it is so important if you want to live, if you want your children to have healthy, even like potentially happy lives, you've got to take that step of getting out. And like you were saying with that, finding your serenity, finding that safety, like my husband is the safest place to be. If I have a bleepity, bleepy day and I come home and I'm like, rawr, he is the safest place to be because he will hold me, he will soothe me, he is there for me. I don't have to be afraid of him. And you shouldn't have to be afraid or intimidated or embarrassed or ashamed in your relationships either. So Stephanie, what are some of the action steps? Oh yeah, go ahead. I was just thinking, your home should be your comfortable place. The world is filled with craziness and stressful things. When you go home, that should be like Superman's fortress of solitude. Like that's the place where you go to, to recharge, to relax, that's calm. And let me just add to what you said before, one of the biggest times where those murders take place is when the victim tries to leave. And so for me, I had a place where I knew he didn't, he wouldn't find me. He wouldn't be able to find me where I was. And that was very important to me. So finding out like if you go to a, if you have a friend's house that you can go to, go to a shelter, I know that sounds really scary. But you know, for me, when I was first going and getting help, I actually spoke with a hotline for domestic violence. And I said, I really said this to the woman that I was working with. I said, well, he just strangled me. And she looked at me and she said, you realize he could have killed you much more quickly from being strangled and being punched. And it was like that aha moment where I was like, oh, I guess you're right. Because I never had black and blue. I never had any broken bones or anything like that. The other things were more emotional. And then just, I mean, it could have been 30 seconds. That night, you know, I think sometimes I have almost this feeling of he did kill me and here I am now in heaven. And that's what, you know, I get emotional thinking about it. Because again, like had I not left, that could be exactly where I was. And luckily he didn't kill me. I'm here and everything is amazing. But, you know, it could have been that quick, like you said, so it's definitely not dramatic. And anyone who's feeling like they're not sure if it's healthy, go with your gut. That's one of the biggest things that I think we've put to the side is I knew for all of those relationships that they were bad. I knew that I should leave. My gut was telling me there was something else and that I shouldn't be putting up with it. But all of these should have been, I don't know, and insecurities and all these things kept coming up and kept me trapped there. And you don't need to be stuck there because there's a whole world out there that's amazing. And one of the things you said in your story that really struck me, you said you just had this giant wedding and you'd had all your friends and you were embarrassed and ashamed. And I've seen that in some of my dear friends who have had this type of struggle where they're embarrassed to ask for help. They're embarrassed that there is a problem. They think they are the one at fault, not the other person. And now what can I do to make things better? And I know you started to ask me about tips. I mean, definitely some of the things to look after when you are trying to leave is I put some money to the side. Every paycheck, I was actually the one who made more money, which is not normal. Normally, it's the perpetrator that is making more money. I happen to be lucky and make more money, but I was paying all the bills. So whenever I could put money to the side, I put it to the side. I had a bag in the back of my car with all of my important information that I was ready to just leave at any point if I needed to. So no contact. So when you do make that decision, make sure that they cannot contact you for any reason because they are going to say all of the sweetest, nicest things to get you back. And then don't be fooled because no matter what they say, it's gonna all go back and worse than it was before because every time you allow them back into your life, you're telling them without saying it that what happened is okay. And for the amount of times where I was like, no, no, he gets it this time. They're not going to get it. You waiting and trying to explain to them how they're being so bad, how it is so uncomfortable, they're not going to understand. And a lot of times that other person will go jump into another relationship to try to make you look bad. And they call it, you know, there's gaslighting, there's all these other things that people do. But they love to try to make it look like, oh, look, it was their fault. Because here I am in this happy relationship. Well, I can tell you from my experience that every person my ex-husband has dated has contacted me to ask for help of what they can do to get away from him. Every single person. Wow. So it is not you. You need to work on you. And part of codependency is we want to help everybody else. And a lot of us are codependent. That's why we stay in these kinds of relationships. And that's not anything that's wrong with you. It's actually you're a helper, you're a caretaker. But it's time to start working on you and to remove yourself from them, empty them. And they can work on themselves and take care of themselves but it's time for you to take care of yourself. That's brilliant, Stephanie. And I think you're absolutely spot on. Where can people go to learn more about your journey and to start finding some of those resources to get out? I wrote a book. It was actually a number one new relation codependency. And so super excited about that where I share more details about my story. It's called Being Loved Shouldn't Hurt. And so you can find that on Amazon. I also have a Facebook page, Being Loved Shouldn't Hurt. But I also have two private groups that you might be interested in. One of them is again, Being Loved Shouldn't Hurt. And the other one is called Codependency and Healing Support Group. And there both is a lot of information that's going on and actually something really cool that I am pre-launching a new program. So I will be having a webinar Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. And if you are interested in learning more of, I give out six specific tips that I use in my recovery. I'll be sharing those with you over those three days. So if you join Being Loved Shouldn't Hurt, you'll be able to click like on the events and you'll be able to get a reminder of when all of those, because I do a lot of different interviews and a lot of great content. So please feel free to join the page and you can see everything that we're up to. All right, viewers, if you didn't catch that the first time, you wanna go to Facebook and then search for the group, Being Loved Shouldn't Hurt. And there you'll find Stephanie's event, you'll find more of her information and you'll be able to see some of her awesome videos. And I hope you do that. And if you have a friend where you're not sure what they're going through, where maybe you're a little bit worried or you just feel like something's off, send them this information, send them this episode so they can get the help they need. Thank you for coming on, Stephanie. It's been wonderful to have you here and I hope you'll join us again soon. See you, viewers. Thank you so much.