Strengthening Bonds: Love, Friendship, and Resilience in Marriage with Scott and Shate Hayes

It's Therapy Thursday!!

When you think of marriage, do you picture a best friend by your side through thick and thin? Scott and Shate from the Love Haze podcast join us to unravel the threads of love, friendship, and healing in relationships. As we wade through the seasonal stress and the pursuit of personal and professional growth, their insights shine a light on the importance of a strong relational foundation and the resilience required when life tosses challenges our way.

Having someone to laugh with and lean on is more than a mere comfort; it's a necessity in the dance of marriage. Our conversation takes a deep dive into the evolution of family roles, the art of maintaining personal growth within the partnership, and the power that lies in approaching your spouse as your best buddy. With personal stories, the transformative journey from past relationships to present understandings, and how that shapes our shared path forward is revealed.

This episode isn't just about the love-struck highs; we confront the sobering realities of pursuing parenthood, the boundaries needed for personal development, and the toil of unmet expectations. While we navigate these complexities, we also celebrate the Love Haze community, a beacon of support for Black men facing life's hurdles, and offer a resource for anyone grappling with darker moments. Join us as we honor the strength found in unity and companionship, and remember, adversity doesn't have to be faced alone.

Scott and Shate Hayes
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Transcript

Candace Fleming: 0:05

Hello and welcome back to another episode of Essential Mental Yelling, where I am your host, candace Fleming. Joining me today is my lovely co-host, wonderful, beautiful, magnificent mother woman and lovely person of this show, janet Hale. Hello.

Janet Hale: 0:27

Hello everyone, Hello.

Candace Fleming: 0:30

We also have some guests joining us today Scott and Chateau, who also have their own podcast and they are going to, and it's called the Love Haze.

Janet Hale: 0:42

Yes.

Candace Fleming: 0:44

And they're going to bring some love and joy and healing to us today as well. So if you guys would please introduce yourselves to everyone, hey, what's up everybody.

Scott Hayes: 0:56

My name is Scott. I am a licensed clinical social worker, shady baker, lover of all things black, and I am happy to be joining you all today.

Shate' Hayes: 1:10

And I am Shate' Hayes, as Candace said. I'm one half of the Love Haze podcast and I teach career and business skills for a living. Excited to be here. Talk about healing and all things I'm super passionate about unlocking human potential and career fulfillment. So excited to be here and chatting with you all today.

Candace Fleming: 1:30

Hey, thank you. So how well, before we jump into our topic, how was you guys's week?

Shate' Hayes: 1:37

Listen, I had the whole week. I was like is it Friday yet? And I do this thing every year around October where I get senioritis and I'm just like ready for the year to be over, I don't want to work anymore. And so it got really real this week where I'm like why am? I still working Like I want to just hibernate. So I made it. I'm not gonna complain. I'm gainfully employed and also I want to sit down somewhere.

Candace Fleming: 2:05

Suddenly get there. How about you?

Scott Hayes: 2:08

Mine was much of the same. I am gonna complain, but I'm gonna get my life together on the back end of it. I give myself permission to feel the way that I feel and press forward. But you know this is the time of year for my clients when I work in a substance abuse and mental health program, so even those folks who are not really ready to be in recovery is cold outside, so they just coming into the program and they're there and you know like calls an oruckus and so there's some behavior stuff all the time every day. So I'm just ready for that part to be over. So, but we been okay. It's been a good week yet and still that's awesome.

Candace Fleming: 2:50

How about you, janet?

Janet Hale: 2:52

You know for me I could. I can really relate to the the working we're at the end of the year for for me, where I work, we're going through the auditing part of things and if anyone's been a part of an audit you're watching everybody kind of lose it. And I'm thinking I'm not in the lose it. You know I don't get caught up in that, I refuse, I try not to anyway, but I do put aside the time for it because I know that we need extra time to take care of it and we're talking about Shante' what's it Shate', about the working and having to go to work, and for me it's.

Janet Hale: 3:37

I had to find different language for that for me, and the reason why I needed that for me is because I have to go to work. I got to go to work, I have. You want to put it. It sends out for me something negative towards what I'm going to have to do today. I'll find myself saying I get to go to work today Because I need to take that energy with me when I walk in the door.

Scott Hayes: 4:04

Absolutely.

Janet Hale: 4:05

And so when I and I and I heard Scott talk about what he, what he does is work with the substance abuse population and mental health and how dealing with adaptive behaviors and different things of that nature, and understanding that, no, we're not coming in for to get clean and sober, coming in because we're cold, we're going to say whatever you want us to say until it's warm enough for us to go back out there, and so, and it's all real, like everything that's happening is real.

Janet Hale: 4:38

So, you know, just trying to, not just trying enjoying this this season, not just the Christmas season, but the season of my life, you know, just walking in, I'm like rock with this thing, and so that's where I'm at All right, I love it.

Shate' Hayes: 4:57

How about your weekend is?

Candace Fleming: 4:58

it's been pretty good. I'm always looking forward to the day when I don't have to wake up at 6 30 to get my daughter ready for school. But that doesn't end in December, so I look for a year like that means we're getting closer to get up time again. That is the one thing that is difficult for me.

Scott Hayes: 5:20

The morning's like the sun comes.

Candace Fleming: 5:23

The sun comes up and my body is like wait. The moon comes up and my body is like let's turn up yeah.

Candace Fleming: 5:35

Yeah, so the morning's we've. That's one thing that I now work. I love coming to work. I have a really great place that I work at, and so it makes the days pretty easy. Actually, sometimes I'm like it's Monday here yet, so I've been definitely blessed and fortunate to have that and to look forward to that, but the week has been pretty good. So we are going to give people what they want. We're going to jump into solution based conversation while still giving them some of the jeeps. So you guys are a African American married couple who have navigated life, and one thing that we kind of talked about in our last podcast was love leading, and you guys have navigated it through love and letting it lead the way, while also putting in the work to get to where you are today. Can you tell us a little bit about where you are and how you got here and then take us back through a little bit of the journey? Okay?

Shate' Hayes: 6:53

where we are, how we got here. I would love to hear your thoughts on this. I will start and say we are forever a work in progress. So, even you saying that we have navigated, we are navigating like actively still, you know, navigating and learning new things every day and being continual students. You know of ourselves, of life, of the lessons that it teaches us. So I think that's probably the number one thing you have to still have a teachable spirit.

Shate' Hayes: 7:25

You know there is, no, I don't think there is a world where you have everything figured out, or I don't even think that there's a world where we completely heal from everything. You know. I think you recover, you bounce back, you learn how to live with things, you learn how to let things go, and then you experience another thing that you're going to have to bounce back from figure out how to let it go. I don't think the work is done, like when the work is done, then we're not here anymore, we transition, and so we're just always, I don't know, being students of each other, being students of ourselves, being students of like life and like what's happening, and like students of our families, and so we just try to honor that in the best way that we can keep God at the center of all of it. Yeah, I don't even know what else to say about it staying therapy.

Scott Hayes: 8:15

Yeah, I think you know where we are as Two people who really love each other and consider each other teammates, who are Doing life together, who are. Have this started that? You know? This is, this is my person, this is my teammate and we are, like she said, actively navigating together.

Scott Hayes: 8:38

But we kind of have the pleasure of learning from each other along the way, being habitual and perpetual students of the journey, and I think, for me, a good part of where I am is that I don't I don't view this thing as something that some goal that will ultimately reach, yeah, but that we get to Take incremental steps towards, you know, the life that we desire to have together, and so there are small wins, there are lessons and they, there are ongoing opportunities for us to grow together and just Learn how to, I think, along the journey, light, be better to each other and be each other's solace and in safe space and even brave space.

Scott Hayes: 9:29

You know when we need it, and there was a time in my life where you know where I would come up against the trouble and I would give myself permission to react in a negative way because it didn't go the way that I wanted it to go and I'm just in a much healthier space now and just appreciative for, you know, having my friend that I can talk to about what it is, what it is that may be difficult for for me personally or for Us in the moment, and having a space where I can say what it is that I need without like falling out About it and just say this isn't working for me, you know.

Janet Hale: 10:04

Yeah, now Go go ahead, go ahead me, we and it kind of goes back to last week's podcast and the journey that we take um, especially when you're in a relationship of marriage, and how, in my opinion, there the Soul journey is self-discovery. However, it's good when you got a partner, see, because we're both discovering our best in ourselves. We're bringing our best to each other and that's always such a beautiful thing. And then when.

Janet Hale: 10:48

I was listening to you, I was like oh man, I want to jump in here so fast, I know Candace is watching me. And then Scott said something that struck me. He said he talked about trouble and how he used to react to it. I guess be more reactionary Towards me. And when you said that, I thought about mmm, the word trouble, and I put it, put in place the word lesson, because Whatever it is that we're dealing with, in my opinion my being is a lesson in it.

Janet Hale: 11:28

You know what I mean. Anything I go through, I'm always even if I'm I didn't have to fit a tantrum throughout and you know I'm flowing all out. Whatever I do, I'll go back and say well, what was the lesson in it for me? What was I supposed to give from that? And I also agree with you too were never. I don't ever want to Feel like I know it all Mm-hmm. I don't ever want to get to that stage and I want to continue to learn you know, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, okay, Candice.

Candace Fleming: 12:00

I do think, too, that we're forever learning, and it's like when one thing you get it together.

Shate' Hayes: 12:07

You're like all right.

Candace Fleming: 12:08

I've got to figure it out and it's like life come and be like oh, you have to work on but, with you being a licensed clinical therapist guy and you having schooling as well, should say, does that ever get in the way of the marriage or the relationship or the friendship, because you know so much Psychologically on why people behave the way they do and it's like, does that ever get in the way of being a know-it-all Sometimes, or are you able to separate your wisdom from psychiatry, from the person?

Scott Hayes: 12:49

Absolutely, in this season in my life I'm absolutely able to separate, but it is because of like hard lessons that I had to learn around Not being able to do so, like early on in my career. You know, now I'm going into my 24th year as a social worker and what like 15th year as a clinical social worker and I used to think particularly when I was I was married previously that because I knew what was in the book, that somehow I was immune from experience in that. And the one thing about you know being able to teach stuff or being able to help people you know Navigate through their own personal journeys of healing, is that you get to be impartial and you can give advice from a place and guidance from a place of like this is what the theory says, this is what you can try, this type of stuff. But when it comes to my relationship, I'm not able to be impartial because this my wife will want to do what I want her to do. Right, that's gone. You know be, that's the answer for me. But if I'm not able to be impartial, then I can't bring my expertise to a situation Because you have to maintain that impartiality and my wife is who. She is right, and I also who.

Scott Hayes: 14:04

I also am who I am and there are parts of me who that don't want to have certain discussions, that don't want to be called on, my stuff that doesn't want to be, you know, pushed into an area where I'm called to be the man that I say that I am even when it doesn't feel good. Right, and that part of my humanity I denied for a really long time. I was like I know this stuff, I can do it, listen to me because I'm the expert. And it just didn't bode well with me and it took some some Major fallout in my life before I realized that I have to show up and operate a lot differently as it relates to my personal Relationships, even with, you know, my family, you know I'm not able to be the person anymore that my, my mother and my sisters can call and say hey, call Scott, he's a social worker, he'll know what to do.

Scott Hayes: 14:55

I can't those my people, I can't intervene in y'all stuff. You know, because I want, I'm gonna try to get my, my sister to do what my mama said, because I love my mother and I want them to fall in line, but I can't use my expertise to do that for them and even with setting boundaries and stuff like that, with them, it, the boundary, just has to be the boundary. It can't be within my expertise. It's just that I am here as your brother, as your, as your sibling, as your son, asking for this thing, because this was important to me.

Janet Hale: 15:35

So the fellows who listen to this podcast, as I've been in recovery for many years, right and so a dr Bob says this, and it's somewhere in the literature about dr Hill thyself, because you know we can know all these things, right, you know about the theories, you know I'm like, you know, you know about the education part and career thing and all of that. However, when it comes down to us, personally, is when we must. That's what we find our humility.

Janet Hale: 16:12

Because, guess what? We know, the theory and everything. Yeah, we got to deal with the soul of the man or the soul of the woman. We get to that part of it. Now see, that's when you get to the work part in my yeah, and so that's what I was hearing is I listened to you guys talk and I got all excited. I'm like writing down things, um, and then when you were talking about the family, cause, cause, because they know your profession and so you know we're the expert and we need to call you, and how, even if you're not a social worker.

Janet Hale: 16:45

But as we evolve, our roles and our families change. They will change because if we're changing, guess what? I Can no longer play that particular role in this movie, right, I am now someone, so his husband, and that's my new role. Yeah, that's my most important role, right, and the same to you, the opposite. So I thought about that, um, and Also the, the control, where you're speaking about having I wanted to do it. I wanted to do what I needed to do it. No, you know we always want to do one?

Janet Hale: 17:25

Yeah, of course, but guess what? We're our own people. The only people we could control this move, I think, is in allowing people to grow and watching them grow and not getting their way, because sometimes we just messing up other people's growth, we just Messing around in it and they're they, they just like. I wanted to know, you know anyway, so y'all just excited me All right.

Candace Fleming: 18:01

So I hear you guys really Call each other partners and friends a lot, which is awesome. Where you guys did you guys build a Steady foundation first, a friendship, to be where you are today? Or if the friendship Harder to maintain Now that you are married, because I find that people put more expectations on the marriage and the spouse, opposed to the friendship and the partnership which then the love kind of grows out of and you have this Partnership from that love there. So how do you guys, did you guys come in with a steady foundation as a friendship?

Candace Fleming: 18:50

Do you continue to foster that friendship? And then, what is your take on Friendships and relationships? I know those three questions.

Shate' Hayes: 19:01

Yeah, that's. It's a good question. I would say, from my perspective, we didn't like. It wasn't like we had met in real life and then had a friendship and then, all of a sudden, we started dating. So, in terms of that being there first, that that was not our journey. We met online and I was even like, oh, I don't want to meet anybody online.

Shate' Hayes: 19:24

I was on an app for like two weeks and happened to meet him and then got off and we exchanged numbers and one of the things that I do remember from him early on was his authenticity and then his he was a conversationalist. So we met on an app where the woman had to reach out first if we like each other and I really liked that because I had tried apps before and you get like overwhelmed I was always overwhelmed with how many messages you get from them and I like it, and so this one, I was like, oh, I can choose who I speak to and then, even after you spoke to the person, they like expected you to, in my opinion, carry the conversation as well. So I will, yeah, speak to you first, but I need for you to give a little in the conversation, like can you go back and forth, and so he was. He was literally one of the only ones that was able to do that in a really authentic and real way. And then I will say I think our friendship, in my opinion, has been growing.

Shate' Hayes: 20:18

Like, as our partnership grew, I didn't ever feel like the marriage was separate from our friendship or from us. To me, marriage is a partnership. We had so many conversations before we got married and I was like what do you want? I'll tell you what I want. I always knew I want a partnership. I don't want, yes, you're going to cover me and be the head of our unit, but I also have my own thoughts, my own, my.

Shate' Hayes: 20:43

My grandmother says, and I will always say this my grandmother says one is a whole number. So I can't complete you, you can't complete me Like we are. We are doing life together and I want your thought partnership. I want to be a contributing member of this, this unit, what we have going on here, and I think, yes, I can't separate the partnership from the friendship. She is my very best friend and that doesn't mean that we don't get on each other's nerves and we don't disagree and we don't like fall out a little bit, but when I'm going through something like I want him in on it, I want to hear what his thoughts are. I I'm, so he has a really good way of like maintaining his like cool and you know, like just kind of not being emotionally charged and saying the thing. And I am like emotionally charged like all the time, like I don't, I'm just feeling everything. I'm a creative, I'm an artist, I'm sensitive about my shit.

Shate' Hayes: 21:36

You know, so like I'm just always feeling everything, and not that he doesn't feel anything. But he has such an amazing way as my friend of either like challenging me gently, pulling me off the ledge. Sometimes he'll jump on the ledge with me and be like bet we about to jump, you know, like it's just, he's my person and so I can't. I cannot see a relationship like the, a separation of our partnership and our friendship, and they are like one in the same to me.

Janet Hale: 22:06

I totally agree, but you don't say something else.

Scott Hayes: 22:10

Yeah, for for me, you know, I had an opportunity to be married before and what I knew about marriage in that first marriage is much different from what I know after being in that relationship, and I think that relationship really showed me who I was and what I needed. So I went into that first marriage thinking that I took on the the the Steve Harvey book of how you should be married. I thought I was to prototype, provide, protect and pronounce Right and I was supposed to take care of everything and my wife wasn't supposed to want for anything and all of those things, and it was not a guide for who I was as a person. It didn't resonate with my spirit and I was there doing those things that were not true to who I was. And I ended up presenting the person that I was with and what I yearned for in that relationship was partnership, and so on the back end of divorce and on on on the back end of initially starting therapy, what came out in those sessions was I needed someone who was my partner. I did not have an overwhelming need to feel like I was the leader of the household, like I was a boss, and I was a person who was going to be telling my wife what to do and I covered her by means of finances, and that means meant that she fell in line with whatever I said.

Scott Hayes: 23:36

I yearned for partnership. I yearned for not necessarily 50, 50 partnership as it relates to finances or anything else, along for a thought partnership. I'll yearn for someone who cared enough about me to say, hey, there's something different going on with you to be to have love enough for me and familiar enough with my spirit to know that something is off with me and to partner with me and say, hey, this is a space where we can have this difficult conversation about whatever it is that's going on with you. And that's something that I did not have and I don't think it was necessarily the fault of the other person. I think the other person just like found a person that the person that I represented myself to be was what she needed in that moment.

Scott Hayes: 24:21

And I think in that partnership I really I didn't know what I didn't know. I was going based on what I had learned from my own father, who was emotionally absent and just provided, and what I read in books, and what I had to do was like take up, basically a crash course and like learning my own self and learning what it was that I needed. And you know, when we met on that app, one of the things I led with was that I wanted a partnership that I was looking for, you know, someone who would allow me to be a work in progress, knowing that I have to reconcile the books on my own relationship with myself every day and try to figure out what adjustments I need to make. And so those are the things that became very important to me and then, you know, based on that, those things match for us, and then we were fast friends and she'd been my best friend ever since, and so that is what we base our relationship on.

Scott Hayes: 25:18

Moving forward, it is that, no matter what I can talk to my friend about it, like this is not only my partner, this is like this is my partner. You know what I'm saying. We drinking buddies. You know what I'm saying. We turn up a little bit. We got this much. Turn up going to the club, we get that thing the best 25 minutes of our lives and have a drink, and we ready to go home and get in the bed.

Scott Hayes: 25:44

But you know that is, we operate in much the same way and it works really well for us and that is. That is something that I would. That's the type of life I would build with friends that I had in college and that kind of thing, and it's my friend and you know. But, but we get to do it, so I like it.

Candace Fleming: 26:04

You mentioned that you were married before. Do you think that if you had the same tools that you have today, your first marriage could have maintained?

Scott Hayes: 26:16

I don't think so. I don't. I probably wouldn't have even married the person If I have been able to actually verbalize and understand that I was a man who was entitled to like have my needs met as well, like the signs were all there. They, you know, lady, broke open me multiple times when we were, you know, coming out of college and and early in my career, and I just beg to be in that space because she had told me she had daddy issues and like every man left, and I was like, not me, I'm a social worker.

Shate' Hayes: 26:49

I'm going to be able to fix it.

Scott Hayes: 26:51

And what I did was I stepped into that social work role and I was just there, no matter what she did. She would break my heart and she wouldn't pay a bill. I would just jump in and I would save her, and those are some of the lessons that I was talking about. That I learned about being able to separate my profession from who I am personally, because I did those things in the vein of like saving this person as her social worker and her husband. But then I resented her in my personal humanity because I wanted her to be better. And what I've learned, even about, you know, working with my clients, is that you can't want it more than they do. You can't want somebody's healing, recovery, sobriety, any of those things more than it. If you work harder than them, then they'll lean on you to do that work for them and then, when they fell on their own, they'll still blame it on you.

Shate' Hayes: 27:36

Overfunction.

Scott Hayes: 27:37

And I overfunction in that relationship. And it was still that you know when things would fall apart. It would still be like, well, it was your fault, because you gave me this lifestyle, like you've always paid the bills. Like what do you mean? You can't take care of this, like you're not enough man because you've always done this thing. You made me accustomed to this lifestyle and now you're not doing it. So I learned to not show up that way anymore in relationship and not to and when we don't communicate what it is that we need in relationship, friendship, partnership with family otherwise you don't get to expect the thing that you haven't told people that you need. And that's the responsibility that I had to take in the failure of that relationship. I came in acting like a superhero and then all of a sudden I went to therapy and was like, actually I need this other thing. And after 10 years I probably was like I don't want to do that.

Scott Hayes: 28:29

It was like you've been doing this. I want you to keep doing that. I don't want to have to. I don't want to go have on. I don't want to think about what you feeling. I don't want none of that Like. I want to come home and eat and go to bed.

Shate' Hayes: 28:42

Well, I well okay, I want to say something real fast.

Candace Fleming: 28:47

Um, so, just based off of some of the things you've said, honesty, communication are definitely important, and that is easy to fall into um what you've been doing, a routine without expressing what you don't like, because you've been there so long and it's kind of like ah, do I? I mean, I've been letting it go this long. So definitely one thing expressing in the beginning if something bothers you, to say something about it, so it doesn't become a habit that you try to break later, like you were saying.

Candace Fleming: 29:22

You learn later, like well, I want something different. I need something different, and you may have even noticed it earlier on but how do you change the status quo of a relationship of?

Shate' Hayes: 29:32

what it's been.

Candace Fleming: 29:34

And then um, this is a question, I guess. Um, how do you grow and build together when you're changing or your journey is looking different?

Scott Hayes: 29:50

I think for me, it is like given your spouse the permission to become. You know, at the end of the day we're all becoming, and there are things that you know she take it at the beginning of our relationship that I really liked a lot, I really wanted to give her the feedback that I wanted that thing to stay right, and there are things that I wanted her to grow into that I preferred, and it hasn't always gone my way, but I'm still giving her permission to become the best version of herself, whatever that looks like. And when I signed up for this partnership, I signed up for, you know, a person that would be willing to grow with me. So I have to afford her those same opportunities and, you know, when things are not happening the way that I want them to, I have signed up for a partnership with a person who's able to have the conversation and can try to meet me or can say, hey, I can't do that part. But this is, you know, maybe another compromise that doesn't compromise what it is that I'm trying to become.

Scott Hayes: 30:51

And you know we can't, we don't get to, you know, tell people where to stop growing. You know we have to accept all parts of them and and I will admit that sometimes that's difficult because you was doing this thing Right here that I really. Can we keep that right, can we keep that part? And sometimes it's not always Feasible, other times it is, but at least we get to have the conversation. But I don't want to ever be a person who stops her from becoming yeah, and he said something before too.

Shate' Hayes: 31:23

I agree on the note that I Believe it is all of our. You know, you mentioned Janet before self-discovery. I think we are all, hopefully, always on a journey to become the highest versions of ourselves, and so it was always important to me to have a partner who was concerned About his own growth. I didn't want to come into a situation where I have projects. I'm like, oh, he's good this way and let me, let me help him fix these other things. My mother also said something about my grandmother.

Shate' Hayes: 31:56

My mother always said who you marry is like that's who they are. So if you're wanting someone else or something else, don't marry that person, thinking you're gonna change them. So I knew early on. I said to myself Do I want to do life with this person if he never changes, although I do want someone who is growing but if this is who he is, is that enough for me? And I'm not. I can't go into this, the relationship saying, oh, if only they do this and maybe someday he'll do this or maybe someday he'll be like this. It's like no is. Do I like this person as he is and then can I trust God that God will help him grow into whoever he's supposed to be able to come to become, and so that was my perspective going into our marriage and then Then, growth is important to me.

Shate' Hayes: 32:42

I'm gonna always be trying to grow and improve and do better and learn more and read books and get them into or get a coat with all those things. I'm so grateful that he's the same way, and he said something before. It was like we're also not gonna be growing at the same rate and so we have to be able to. I Think that's also part of the like being the perpetual student, like as I'm growing and I'm learning, like, oh, I'm a little bit different, he's also learning the same thing and vice versa, and so it's you know, you, you have to. I think that's also a part of the like growing, not growing, a part thing. You know if, if, all of a sudden, you know he's evolving and then I'm no longer interested in learning who he is or not Interested in the things that he's interested in now, like that, that is how you start to do that, versus like growing, you know, together.

Janet Hale: 33:31

So Matt can't, I wonder. The thing I thought about. There's a few things Getting in these relationships the social worker and marriage, his client. And I'm gonna fix you. But one of the things that I've said, and I believe this to be true, is when a man truly loves a woman, he will do whatever it takes to make her happy. When a woman truly loves a man, she would do the same, and if we're both doing the same thing, guess what it's called a good thing. The other part I thought about was build a bear, and then Candice and I have talked about when we meet a person and when you first meet them Okay, is this somebody that I can deal with where they are right now? Your potential I see potential of a BMW. That's one of us. I think that's a good thing. I think that's a good thing.

Janet Hale: 34:44

I think that's a good thing. I've seen potential of a BMW, but you on the bike okay wait a minute. Let's get out of that, right? Yeah, just learn to accept people for where they are, and this is something I can accept. Yeah, it's just a nobody right now, because anything above that is a bonus. Yeah, on both sides of it, and so you know, I think about that. The red flag someone, one of you mentioned the red flag. She wanted to leave you there, scott she wanted to leave all the red flag.

Janet Hale: 35:15

I've been there. I didn't see the red flag. My red flag, look it would be red, but my mind it was yellow. It was yellow Sometimes, you know, but then when I finally take a real good look at it, the thing was on fire. Mmm, you follow me? Yeah, because I was. You know, I don't want to see the red flag. You know red flag is always there. We all know we see that red flag Mm-hmm, but when it's on fire I'm like, oh man, so it was on fire the first day.

Janet Hale: 35:46

I changed the color. So I just think it's good for us to be able to Our self-journey Learning about ourselves, learning what's acceptable and what's not acceptable, mm-hmm, learning what we need to change. I Like when you talked about your marriage and saying, though it's not all that one person's fault, mm-hmm, and it didn't work, and I truly appreciate it the part about I don't know that I would have married that person. Probably not, probably not, because you know more. You know, as we grow, we know more, and it's like okay, like you said, the red flag all the way reflect.

Janet Hale: 36:24

She was really throwing out those flags, man. She was. You know I had a bag of them, but anyway. But it's good that you know that now. It's not a bad thing, it's a learning thing, right?

Shate' Hayes: 36:36

Yeah right.

Janet Hale: 36:36

You learned a lot about yourself, right.

Scott Hayes: 36:38

Yeah.

Scott Hayes: 36:39

Yeah and just my, my background and how I dated, even in college, like how I was socialized by my uncles, by friends, by my dad, like the way that I grew up. It was to kind of be a chameleon. You know, whatever you like, I can do that. You know. You like the movies we go into the movies. Like flowers, like our flowers. You like poetry going to to a poetry slam, like art, we're going to do that.

Scott Hayes: 37:03

So, whatever you needed me to be, you know I pop my collar. I'm a player, right. You know I can pull anybody and I could pull anybody, but it wasn't. I never had conversations about what it was that I enjoyed, right.

Scott Hayes: 37:19

And so when you don't put it in the atmosphere what it is that you need in relationship, you don't even give people an opportunity to show up for you.

Scott Hayes: 37:31

In that way, you advertise yourself as a person who doesn't need anything and then you don't get to turn around and be upset that you're not getting it, because you're meeting people's humanity. People don't absorb by osmosis what it is that you like. You have to put your stuff out on the table as ugly as it is, and a person gets to opt in or opt out and fear, that fear of rejection as a man just had me saying, hey, actually I don't need anything If you just show up in this space and let me love you, baby. I got you, you know, and that wasn't what it was, that wasn't my truth, but I was just socialized to believe that that's, that's what it was and that's what made a man a man. And you know, we got bodies and all that kind of stuff, but there was no soul and no, no structure and no, no substance to a lot of those relationships.

Janet Hale: 38:21

All right.

Candace Fleming: 38:29

One of your lower moments and how you came out of it. In our marriage, or before the marriage, just in your relationship, your partnership, your friendship, you're beginning to now shit. Yeah, I.

Shate' Hayes: 38:48

Will say in my perspective. Like I said, we've had disagreements, we've had moments where we shut down and I'm not talking to you for a little while. We've had all of those and they never felt like Low moments. The low moments haven't been against each other. The low moments have been circumstantial for us.

Shate' Hayes: 39:07

And so we've been on a journey to parenthood since we got married and it's been a very challenging, emotionally draining, financially draining, spiritually testing Journey and, thank God, one of the first things we did when we got married was get a therapist because we wanted to be able to be in sessions like maintenance, not wait until we got into crisis, and I Thoroughly believe that's one of the one of the reasons I'm not gonna say it's the only reason, but one of the reasons that we have been able to not turn on each other and Stay together, be on the same side of the table against this circumstance.

Shate' Hayes: 39:50

I think our friendship is part of that, is 1000% God, like it is it has been. When I say our faith has been shaken and tested and broken and rebuilt in that, in this giant that we have been facing together, and so we've had more, I'm trying to see if we have had any anything that I would call any peaks. We didn't had a whole lot of alleys, like a whole lot of alleys, and the summer has been the biggest one and the longest one, and so, yeah, like the all the things that help us through every other challenge, that we have got therapy each other. There's just how we've been able to, you know, just keep taking step after step, because we're, like, actively still navigating it.

Janet Hale: 40:36

What makes this summer such a challenge, if you don't mind it.

Shate' Hayes: 40:42

It was. It was the moment where we had said, okay, we have been trying all of these things. Scott, at this point, had had like four different surgeries We've had, we've paid thousands and thousands and procedures and medications and Attempt after attempt, and like, okay, this thing didn't work, we're gonna try it this way. This doctor didn't work, we're gonna try with this doctor, we're gonna. We had just done everything that we in our human power knew to do, even so much as saying, okay, we're not gonna do anymore, but then we're gonna muster up the faith and the courage to do this. One other thing, and we always said that we wanted to be able to say that we tried everything that we could. And so this, this Last round of treatment and this last procedure, was that thing.

Shate' Hayes: 41:23

It was like, okay, we don't know what else to do after this thing, and so we did it and it didn't turn out the way that we wanted to, and it was just the one of the most devastating, spirit crushing Experiences, because it's like, how do you find hope and faith after that?

Shate' Hayes: 41:40

Like, where do you actually, where do you actually go and look for it? And so when you like you, I didn't even know I had that many tears and like, just when I thought I was fine, we'd be in church and I'd be sobbing again. It was just like grief is grief. And so, yeah, that has been very, very hard. And we have friends that kind of tease us and say, oh, y'all just newly wed, it's because we are friends and we get along so well and we love each other. And they're like, oh, y'all still honeymoaning or whatever. And I'm always like, no, we have gone through a lot of life, we've had a lot of loss together in the years that we've been together and we've just been, I think, blessed enough to choose to do the work and not turn on each other.

Janet Hale: 42:29

But yeah, Stay on the same side of the table. Exactly, I love that, yeah.

Candace Fleming: 42:35

I was going to say. I love that when you speak, you say my perspective, so it identifies that this is the experience that you went through. Like it may not be what Scott is going through and that right there probably keeps relationships from the clash and thing because it is. This is what I experienced during this time, even if that wasn't your intentions.

Candace Fleming: 42:59

Like what happened and where it hit me and then to be able from there to go. Why did that hit me that way? And then the other thing is when you said the loss, that's happened the expectation that you thought, but I've been able to challenge my own brain to say, huh, ok, so this didn't happen here.

Candace Fleming: 43:20

That must mean I've got something else that I need to do before this can happen and I actually have a friend who they got married in, I think, 17 and didn't have a baby until 23. But there was a lot of back and forth and just doctor visits and a lot that they were trying to get to and a lot of failures and then a lot of people who were getting pregnant in the interim and it's like you want to be happy, but it's like I also want to be happy for me that whole thing, and I know how difficult that can be watching someone else go through that and get into the other.

Candace Fleming: 44:04

Actually, I know two people who've gone at least five years on the journey, doctor visits and everything but even been told this won't happen.

Candace Fleming: 44:14

And then miraculously, it does happen because it is about the timing and things happening in the timing they're supposed to. And then even saying, like you said to God, I don't know why it hasn't happened yet, but I know that I'll know when it does. If it does, why it didn't. When it didn't? Because you would have gone through that journey and said, well, this happened during that time, this happened during that time, and I know these things couldn't have happened if that had happened during that time. Just challenging ourselves and that mental thinking of something else better is happening or we'll have in the absence of what I'm desiring.

Shate' Hayes: 44:58

So I mean that's good, that's a good perspective.

Janet Hale: 45:03

I thought about something we can this month's day and we were doing the podcast around that time and we were saying happy Mother's Day. And then Candice was like well, we need to say happy Mother's Day to mothers who are trying to conceive and have not been able to. We have the desires to be a mother. Let's give that to her. And I just thought wow how thoughtful.

Janet Hale: 45:31

I mean knowing that that's what they want and then allowing them a space in that day, and so when I listened to you guys speak, it just made me think of my wonderful daughter and her thoughtfulness. It comes to things like that, that's beautiful, that's beautiful I love it Well we are definitely at 45 minutes.

Candace Fleming: 45:56

I don't know how this is going to go fast, but are you accepting the client's thought?

Scott Hayes: 46:06

So I'm not doing private practice at the moment. I have a couple of folks who are trying to talk me into doing private practice and I'm still entertaining. You see, I'm a wife looking, so I am right now I'm just doing group sessions for men. I actually have one tomorrow. So I have a group that I've established called man to man, and it is where we basically have a process group where men get together and we provide a safe space and a brave space for men to come together and talk about the things that we experience as men, really just kind of providing a space to help men understand that we are all entitled to experience every level of our emotions, and not only that.

Scott Hayes: 46:52

We want to be masters of our emotions. We don't want to just understand that we experience all of them. We don't want to let our next decision be guided by whatever it is that we're feeling, and so I try to do that group once a quarter. So the next one is tomorrow, december 10th, and so we'll see what the new year brings. It sounds like it's going to be some private practice in ball my wife got anything to do with it but we're starting with the group sessions. Is that in person or online. It's in person here in Atlanta.

Candace Fleming: 47:22

Where can people sign up for that group?

Scott Hayes: 47:26

So it's on our website. It's thelovehazeco.

Candace Fleming: 47:33

And how do you spell that?

Scott Hayes: 47:36

It's V-T-H-E-L-O-V-E-H-A-Z-Eco.

Candace Fleming: 47:47

Does it cost? Is it free?

Scott Hayes: 47:49

So it costs $35. But of course, the people who we're involved with we have a large community and of course Black women are anchoring that thing and have purchased probably about four tickets extra, and so I have tickets that are available that have already been paid for. If there's anyone who's interested and just wants to join the crew and anybody can always reach out to us and just say hey, I ain't got the dough, I want to be in the spot. I wouldn't deny anybody. We want every man, every Black man, to have access to these spaces.

Janet Hale: 48:21

I know we have to go because Kansas is going to make me the title Love Haze. Where did that come from? How was that birthed, if you?

Scott Hayes: 48:30

don't mind. So it was actually birthed during the time when I was going through the divorce and I established this IG page where I could transparently talk about the things that I was experiencing and what I perceived to be my own failure as a man. And so I pledged. I'm a Q, and so during the pledge process we go through a little bit of hazing and so I felt like that's what life was doing to me. At the time I felt like life was kicking my behind and I did not understand. So I now felt like that's what love was doing to me. So the love haze was was birth there.

Candace Fleming: 49:04

Thank you, thank you, thank you for that. Now you could you tell us a little bit about your podcast.

Shate' Hayes: 49:11

Yes, the love haze. We talk about the unspoken, hard parts of life. So we process out loud Most people experience in silence, and we do that so that people know that they're not alone. We often say it's like the love letter to our younger selves when we were going through a lot of different things and thought like something was wrong with us, because primarily, folks weren't really talking about the things that we were experiencing, not because they were foreign experiences, just because people are private or you know, like you might have sort of heard or known that somebody had gone through it, but all you saw was the before and the after and you don't know what that middle looked like.

Shate' Hayes: 49:48

And then you're over here thinking like, well, is something wrong with me and why am I feeling this way and why is it happening to me this way? And it's like, well, we aim to really just say it, like this is what's hard about this kind of situation and this is what you're probably feeling and this is how you can navigate it. So we really want to just unite, you know, our people. We want our people to feel freer and change their mindsets and disrupt cycles and behaviors and the patterns that no longer serve them so that we can just we can be free, we can be healed and free.

Candace Fleming: 50:16

That's awesome. And where can people find the podcast? Give us all your where can we find it.

Shate' Hayes: 50:23

Yeah, absolutely so we are at. Like Scott said, our website is thelovehazeco, and our Facebook and IG is at the Love Haze as well, so it's a play on our last name also. So when you're looking for us, it's H-A-Z-E, not haze, as in H-A-Y-E-S. We will say, though, in the new year, we've been entertaining like potentially evolving, what we're calling the podcast, but you'll still be able to find us at those places, and you might just see a new name in 2024. Yeah, all right, perfect.

Candace Fleming: 50:55

But they can get to the podcast from the website.

Shate' Hayes: 50:58

Yep, yep. And then we just wish on every platform, so Spotify, apple, I don't know all the things. What am I missing?

Scott Hayes: 51:05

Yeah, if you just want to see our beautiful faces, or YouTube, spotify for podcasters, google podcast audio and video yeah, the biggest thing for us is that we want to build community, and I always say that I want to be what it is that I didn't have when I was going through what I was going through, and so you know, I found out in the middle of divorce that I had so many friends that had either divorced already or were entertaining it and chumped out, and people who just felt like they didn't have a safe space to say the thing.

Scott Hayes: 51:42

I found out that my parents had separated and entertained divorce after I had signed the papers, and I was comparing my relationship to theirs the entire time, feeling like a failure, and they were like no, you guys shouldn't, you shouldn't leave, we stay. I was like you never said that, though, so I thought I was the odd man out, so I made a vow that no one would ever go through what it is that I went through without knowing that they had community somewhere, and so that is what we hope to build community for folks to experience.

Janet Hale: 52:11

And it's working the generational habits you know because, we know secrecy the whole. You know your auntie is really a mother, but nobody's gonna say it until you're a girl or something, and now we're evolving, yeah absolutely you know into honesty being organic. Let's get to the root of it, even if it hurts a little bit.

Scott Hayes: 52:39

Yeah, absolutely, let's just get to it.

Candace Fleming: 52:42

So I'm done, candice, we always want to make sure that we cover anybody who is going through anything hard, suicidal ideations or anything. You can call the national suicide prevention lifeline at nine eight eight. You can also text it at nine eight eight for free and confidential information 24 hours a day, throughout the US. You can always find me at Candice, where you can email me at Candice Fleming at essential motivation dot com. C, a, n, d, a, c, e, f, l, e, m I N G. At essential motivation dot com, facebook. Essential motivation Instagram is such a motivation LLC. You can go to essential motivation dot com. I mean we're also starting up some mentoring programs so you can check that out and in 2024 we'll have more of that coming. So check that out. Like subscribe and check out the love haze podcast. Hey, let us know. If you end up doing that, I'll put it on my website as well. From resource Awesome.

Candace Fleming: 53:58

Well, as you guys know, we love you. We thank you. Thank you so much for joining. Thank you guys for listening. Remember to always love hard, forget often and laugh. Thanks, guys, thank you for having us. Thanks.

Scott Hayes: 54:12

Thanks for coming Bye.