Redefining Love and Marriage with Deshaun Jackson

Full transcript

Hello and welcome to Health and Fitness Redefined. I'm your host, anthony Amen and join us today. We have a fun episode for all of you. We've talked a lot in the past about marriage and things to do to stay healthy while you're married and all different aspects of it. Today, I think, let's talk about the opposite sex, and we've got the perfect guest for it. So, without further ado, let's welcome to the show. Deshaun Jackson. Deshaun, it's a pleasure to have you today.

Thank you for having me on, anthony. I want to thank your listeners, viewers, for tuning in.

Yeah, I feel like they're going to greatly enjoy this show. Now I want to mention this because I had to look it up. I'm too honest, but 675,000 people a year end up getting divorced, so that's a huge number and I like to talk to all of those people personally. But before we do that, let's first find out a little bit about you and how you ended up in these situations and how that's impacted directly with your health and fitness track.

First let me introduce myself. My name is Deshaun Jackson. I'm a lifestyle coach. I'm a registered nurse that specializes in psych and mental health. I'm a physical therapy assistant, a father I was a husband. I'm on my third divorce, just finalized last week, been I'm on my third divorce, just finalized last week. I'm a student. I'm just. I'm a lover of working out and wanting to help people. So I'm here to kind of share my story. I got to ask the obvious question first, which is how do you have?

time.

So I have found that I get very good at juggling and I have had to get very good at managing time, life and in the end, when you do that you were especially if you have a purpose or a goal you realize you are sacrificing some of those family times, some of the personal time for the goal and the purpose. So you realize you juggle and you make sacrifices.

I love it. How long have you been in the health and fitness field?

So lifestyle coaching I am still a baby, relatively new, just started this year. I have been working out for the consistently for the last 10 years and been using that to help my mindset to help, they say working out because it's a physical act, but you're also working out your emotions and your bad thought processes too, so I've been using it for a decade or more.

I gotta say for those listening to audio, he's got huge delts. Just gotta just point that out. Sorry, just noticed right away, but love it, let's talk a little bit of. Let's backtrack for you, right? So you said you're going, you just finalized your third divorce. The scroll through back to the very, very beginning of young Deshaun Jackson, who's starting to date and ends up falling in love, getting married. How is that? Walk us through those stories.

So growing up, I seen my godparents and they were married for they died married. It was the most beautiful encapsulation of marriage I've ever seen and I had a big impact on me. So I remember being young, wanting marriage, and my first marriage in my early 20s. You want to be married, but in our young age we don't always act married. So there was that dichotomy of being unfaithful and cheating and but wanting this idea of what a marriage was and going through that divorce. I remember specifically it just crippling me, crippling me emotionally and how, just being on the floor just ugly crying, going through that and not wanting to feel like that again. And you know, fast forward, slightly single for a little while, go into my physical therapy, assistant, education, end up meeting my second wife, getting remarried, and I think I found it, I think it is just a one. This is everything I've been waiting for and it was. But you realize as you get older and go through life that people come with their own issues and she struggled with alcoholism and you know, for a long time I think we thought we could work with it until it just became the elephant in the room and very difficult to deal with and so we ended up getting divorced, just finished my physical therapy assistant career, as I ended up into my third marriage and had been married for 10 years. Physical therapy assistant, graduated, ended up shortening time up, going to my nursing during COVID, and then I know, during these last 10 years with my ex-wife, this is what I've been waiting for, this is what marriage should be, this was everything. And again, condensing time five years together, three years married, so eight years monogamous, and then the last two. We decided to jump into the lifestyle and that kind of changed the dynamic drastically.

What does that mean? You jumped into the lifestyle.

Other people call it poly swingers, open marriage, multiple definitions.

Gotcha, and you think that was the nail in the coffin.

Were there other issues? Yes, did going into the lifestyle change, the dynamic?

yes, absolutely yes, you hear it a lot and that's I'm glad you're being open, talking about this, because a lot of people don't, and I I've heard from multiple people, when they started doing that kind of thing, something about the marriage, whether it's trust, whether it's just not knowing if you're the one person that they ultimately love, like things like that kind of teether it apart and never really works out in the long run. Is that, is it truth to that?

Let me add on top of what you're saying. Let me add a caveat, yeah, because I think not to say what you're saying isn't incorrect. But what makes marriages last? I don't care whether you're monogamous or you're in the lifestyle, it's the people that make it work. Marriage as an institution is beautiful. What messes up and why people divorce is because the people can't make it work. So I've seen monogamous marriages can't work and I've seen lifestyle marriages can't work and I've seen it in reverse those in monogamous that make it last forever and those in the lifestyle that make it last forever. So again, I've never tried to say that that dynamic is necessarily what plays out. I think in any situation, if the two people make it work, they make it work. If they can't, they can't. So I don't want to necessarily say that's not a theme, but the theme isn't that they went from monogamous to the lifestyle. The theme is they couldn't make it work. Who knows if they were going to make it work monogamously versus had they stayed in the lifestyle or not. So I see what you're saying. I'm not saying it's not true. I don't necessarily like to draw that comparison.

No, no, I understand. I appreciate the clarity. I just don't know. I'm totally naive. I'm married, monogamous, 100% Been with my wife a long time prior to marriage, so that's actually what I wanted to ask. So what do you think is one of the biggest reasons? Is then that has led you to end up getting divorced for a very reason, like cause, at some point it takes two to two to tango, right? So I would personally guess and this is in, please tell me if I'm wrong but I think it's expectations set prior to getting married and I think that's one of the biggest things. But you've talked through it.

So let's talk about the expectations because because I do feel that is important in working with mental health what I feel like I've learned is that people come with heavy, heavy, large expectations and in my, my experience and what I teach now is you need to come with 25 percent 25 percent expectations of the individual that you're with because just in reality, they're not going to live up to them. If you have them higher than that, they're going to fail, they're going to disappoint, they're going to fall short. And if you don't understand that and can't accept that, then you're going to either internalize it or kind of attack them in some way, shape or form. So I do think expectations is a huge factor. And then I've had to look internally and say Deshaun, you are a common denominator in these marriages, you are one out of the three, you are a common denominator, and what adjustments do you need to make to make sure that this doesn't happen again? So that's kind of what I've learned. And another thing I love the way and I'm going to butcher the Bob Marley quote, but in essence he was talking about everybody's going to mess up on you, but you have to find the ones. You're worth. They're worth, you're worth accepting them, for Nobody leaves a marriage because everything is going well. We tend to leave when things aren't going well, and who are you going to accept when things aren't going well? There's a person out there.

I believe that you're willing to accept their faults more than anybody else. Yeah, and I want to clarify expectations. It was more don't be like me. Or maybe be like me, I don't know, I'm not perfect. Date one you're going to ask my wife do you want kids? What do you want to do when you retire? Where do you want to live? What state do you want to grow up, growing in and doing? And are you OK with me doing this path and projection? This is who I am. I didn't hide. I date one. It's like take it or leave it. This is who I am and it never changes.

That's authentic.

That's authentic right there, absolutely do you think that's the reason? Because I want to go, I want to go back to a stat and I was just looking pre-show and we both shocked together I always thought 47 of marriages and then divorce. That was actually previous five years and they're down to I think it's what is is it like 23%? So we've managed to really cut that statistic down in half. I think it's related. I think there's a relation and I think the relation if you go back prior, where the divorce rate was like 1%, 2%. I think it was a scared straight tactic. I'm talking like 1910s, 1920s. You can't get divorced. That's the person you're with. You met them, they, they won. You met day two, you're married, go figure it out, which is great to an extent of like you get to learn and grow to each other together and you learn to pick up each other's flaws early because you know there's no other option out of it. So you make it work right. Then it came to a point where we're going to my parents generations who my parents are in their 60s. So they were that 47 because people were rushing into marriage. You still had that date for six months, date for seven months, get married, and then at that point it was okay, it's okay to get divorced, it's okay. So people were like, oh, screw this and jump ship. And then it got. I think it's okay to get divorced, it's okay. So people were like, oh, screw this and jump ship. And then it got. I think it got, finally getting to a point where people are getting married way later in life and are dating way longer, and I'm case in point of this. I dated my wife for seven and a half years before I proposed, and that's a long time, but I wanted to make sure we could make this work. We lived together Like I was like we're living together. Before we get married, I need to know if we work together.

It was valid.

I want you to work through that and if you think there's a relation to what I just described, to yourself or to other marriages, so when it comes to our parents' generation, another thing I want to add is women also became more financially stable.

They were able to support themselves more often and once finances is off the table as in, I can support myself, I have more options, whether I can stay or not in undesirable situations. So I feel that's played a factor and in my opinion, in this generation we have devalued that. In a marriage, of whatever form you decide to take it, it requires sacrifice versus people thinking that my needs aren't being met so I can get out at any time. I think that is a more prevalent type of thought process I see and hear of. Versus seeing my godparents when I was 44. So watching them when I was younger, it was all sacrifice. It was all. You know. My godmother watched my godfather grow up. He was an alcoholic for a while. My godmother struggled with mental health. They had two teenage sons that passed away in a car crash. At the same time, I watched them push through everything that easily could have divorced broke them. So I think that sacrifice has been devalued in this current. When problems arise people don't want to deal with. You know, if one spouse cheats versus the other, one constantly takes and pulls their love away, like I'm leaving, I'm going, I'm leaving, I'm going. People don't want to deal with and push through these issues if they're hard and difficult and it's going to take you six months or a year to work through them.

So you think it's not wanting to deal with hard issues Like we? This actually ties into perfectly to our last episode. You don't even know that because it's not aired yet.

Yeah, I do. I do think that we have devalued the sacrifice, the hard struggle my grandma taught me growing up. She said, deshaun, there's going to be times where you tighten your belt and it's times of lean, and then there's going to be times where you tighten your belt and it's times of lean, and then there's going to be times where you loosen your belt and you have a little bit more. But you have to be able to adjust to these times. They're going to happen to you regardless and I feel like during those times where you have to tighten your belt, we struggle to stay committed through those times.

I'm going to throw the gym as an example in there. There's times you go to the gym and you're like you're walking, like I'm the man, let's go. We squatting I'm probably not squatting nearly as much as you are, but I'm putting up like 225 for five. I'm screaming around, I'm pumped, psyched, whatever. And then there's times I show up to the gym and I'm like I don't know if I could do the bar today.

Yeah, working it out. Yes.

Yeah, I'm just going to go and move and then I'm going to feel even worse because I had the most pathetic workout in the world. But you know what? I'm still going to come back to it tomorrow.

Yes, yeah, I think, when things get hard and we have to make these tough choices, are we going to stay with the person who struggles to stay committed? Are we going to stay with the person who might be struggling with mental health during and we don't? We struggle with that. That's my opinion. So Should we? And that's a valid question too. Some people, when they come to a point and decide that they're done and it's time for them to walk hey, you know who am I to argue with that? I do say that if you decide to get into a marriage, understand that it does involve sacrifice. It does involve taking yourself out of the equation for the other person.

Yeah, I'm going to. I'm going to go back to the setting expectations thing which I was talking about earlier. My I told my wife. I said I'm not. I'm not a divorce person. I was like that's why it took me so long to propose. I was like I need to make sure. Just to add a little fun caveat to it. I think a man's head proposing is getting married. I can see that. To a woman, it's during the wedding day Because a man's making that decision. Am I committing now? Am I putting the ball in motion At the wedding day?

because a man's making that decision. Am I committing now?

am I putting the ball in motion and at the wedding day the woman's saying, okay, this is it going forward, just it's a fun little yeah like that okay, I can work with that. yeah. But in order for me to come up with that decision and move forward with it, I had to like stress to her. Like it doesn't matter good times, bad times, really ugly times. Like I ain't're going to make this work, and that's why I dated you for so long. I wanted to make sure it could work. And if we made a throw of the shit and made the movie we were just dating, we'd stay together. Being married is going to be a cake and obviously we'll have our ups and downs, but I think what keeps our foundation together is that I always stress like you know, it doesn't matter how bad things get. We both know we love each other and at the end of the day, if you know that deep down and we fight, we bicker like every other couple in the world, but deep down in their stress, even when we're fighting, we love each other. Like we know that that there's no, there's no option for one of us walking out the door. We're figuring this out because there's there's no other option. This is it. Let's figure it out together.

I have three married couples growing up that I look back on to see my godparents being one, my best friend, their, their parents being another. And I didn't have to be in their life every day to see what they went through, to be in their bedroom, to know that life happens to people. They went through stuff, they dealt with problems, but they didn't get to 20 years, 30, 40 by quitting. At some point somebody decided to say I'm not giving up on you, this is worth it and I feel that there's value in that. And you don't get to when you see those old couples walking together and you're like, oh man, that's so beautiful. Somebody decided to say I'm not quitting on you no, you're like oh man, that's so beautiful.

Somebody decided to say I'm not quitting on you. No, you're right, I think you nailed it on the head. It's someone has to sit there and think I'm not quitting. I think that's a personality trait. When I talk about people I think and I'm going to go back to the last episode are weak. I don't think we've learned to deal with sacrifices, don't forget. I think the gym is the best place to learn sacrifice. You're going in to commit to someone that's doing what's hard. You have to do it. Often it takes a significant amount of time and effort to show up and you ain't going to see results for years Sacrificing short term. For the long term, and we know that. Tashauna, this is a fun question. Every time you look in the mirror, do you think you look like you looked 10 years ago?

Oh, I move side by side all the time. Yes, I can go back five and see the difference, much less when I first started. But I'm talking about the mirror.

When you look in the mirror, you see that same little person. You're like what's all the point, boy? I still see it look like I looked when I was 20. That's what we suck at unless we look at an actual image of a picture. But at just that point you don't see it. Until you see it, you have to see it from a different perspective. You can't look in a mirror, you have to go look at photos.

The best way I heard you say what you're putting is the people that climb. Oh my gosh, I'm going to say K2, because I can't think of the actual mountain, but the people that climb K2, you get to the top. The best view is when you turn around and look back down and see all the progress that you made. It's like holy shit, I came from there. This is where I started. Yeah, yeah, I mean look at Mount Everest, look down, yeah, so I said K2.

It's like K2 is still a mountain. So you're good, but you're right. And then it kind of goes into entrepreneurism right. To be an entrepreneur you have to learn. You're gonna fuck up time and time and time and time again and you're gonna always be at the bottom. It's gonna take years and you're never gonna see progress. You're always gonna want more and there's gonna be times you're gonna hide in a hole and think what's all this worth? I have to leave my company. But you build that resilience to keep pushing forward, to keep doing more and then over time you see it seven, eight, nine years later. Look at this podcast. All my listeners I'm sure the ones that listen now didn't listen on day one. So go back. Those episodes got three, four views, like that's it. But you keep going and going and going and going and lay a foundation and get better, and get better and get better and before you know, just becomes easy to do it.

The same way, a marriage could become easy I can even apply it to a slightly different dynamic. When I was going through nursing schools during covet, and it was hard for me. I I didn't fit the. It's a predominantly Caucasian female profession. I'm an African-American male. I didn't fit the dynamic. I remember being having to ask plenty of times for help when people would go to study. They usually weren't asking me um, so it? It was humbling to the point that I'll always remember that sacrifice. And if when I, when I started nursing program, it was so hard in the very beginning, if I would have given up, then we wouldn't be having this conversation now. I failed two of the programs, two classes during the programs that pushed me back a year. If, during that time, I would have given up, we wouldn't be talking right now. So you have to keep pushing through. When you fall over, get back up. The way I like to describe it, it's like a baby. You ever seen a baby learn to walk? They fall over thousands of times. You ever see a baby just go? You know what? Fuck it. I'm just going to scoop my butt along the ground for the rest, no, they get back. They pop back up like they didn't even fall. That's the type of mindset we need.

Yes, but I'm going to add to that Okay, and this is the most important part about that analogy, which I think it's important to see Baby falls. What does the parent say?

Ooh, are you okay?

Get ooh, are you okay? Or you know they get back up or encouraging yeah, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going. When we girls, adults, and we fall, there's nobody there telling you to keep going, like you might, unless you have a good marriage, which I do my wife says get up and start, keep going. Like yes, I can't tell you how many times during COVID I was like that's it, closing the gym, stopping the podcast, like there's no point, like we're, we're done. And she's like Anthony, you want to do this. And just the reminder of like just do it, okay, fine. Like I needed that right outside voice to help, and I think that's a huge foundation of marriage. You need that person to be like no, no, I'll deal with with the situation we're in now. Like you go do that. You can't give up. This has been your dream. Don't let some stupid government tell you that you know you have to be closed. For as long as you were closed, like keep moving forward and keep going forward. And that ultimately, 25% of gyms in the state of New York are out of business and that's a true stat. So that was a hard thing to get through.

There's science to support behind what you're saying. So this is not a quote, because I'm not going to. I don't want to butcher it. So in paraphrasing it goes in looking at a mountain, if you're looking at it with two somebody next to you, it looks 20 or 40 percent smaller than if you're looking at it by yourself.

So there is that when you're looking at a bench press and you're working out with your brothers, you're like that encourage me, we're going more, we're going more, but no're going more, but no. So, deshawn, I want to give you the opportunity to talk to men, women currently going through a divorce or thinking about it. They just kind of had that first thought, like is it worth staying in this marriage and is it worth going forward? What would you say to those people if they had an opportunity to talk directly to them?

First, I'd never encouraged anybody to initiate divorce, unless you know, in certain circumstances, obviously you do what you need to for yourself. The mark divorce has played on me is I've had to use it. It's been my opposition that I've had to push through. So if, going through a divorce, you find yourself struggling mentally, if, going through a divorce, you find yourself struggling mentally, physically, get up. Get yourself a coach, change your mindset. Do positive, talk to yourself positive, love yourself, go to the gym, work out, step outside of yourself, find groups of people who you can engage with. It's absolutely crucial. Divorce it's one of the most common instances that happen on the planet. You're not the only one going through it, and what happens is when it does affect us. We tend to internalize and feel like, oh, woe is me, woe is me. You do not have to internalize the divorce. It can A either your perception. It cripples you or you use it to motivate you. But in the end, it's not the divorce that's crippling you, it's your perception.

Love that. And then, what about for you? For number four, what is your plan to make sure it sticks? Is it going to happen Like? What? Are you going to go into differently?

So through the next marriage, if there is a next marriage, how I've said that this would play out at this point right now, today, if you're asking me, um, I remember. So I'm assuming you and your wife live in the same home and don't? Nobody has a second home. Well, for me, in this third divorce, I've said I could see the value in both of us having an established place and then us coming together when we choose still married, married. But if, in the end, what I noticed about divorce, what makes it so, one of the things is some person leaves and has to start over again, that process is easy. So if that's going to be the case, that plays out God forbid then I'm going to establish myself and I want them established so we can come together as much as we want and however we define our marriage marriages up to us. But if we were to walk away, we were both established individuals and it's less stressful on each other.

So but the idea that if you both live in separate homes, to both sell your homes and then pull it together to find something right in the middle from both where you both currently live, absolutely.

Absolutely.

And then you're both starting from that same exact, equidistant from your life point, and you say, all right, now we're going to do it together and we're going to grow this house together for ourselves.

Yes, yeah so.

I love it. That's a good one. I love it, that's a good one. It just makes you take a sacrifice and don't do it alone, but do it together. And I think we're going to have one last point, because this is I love this study. It was awesome. People bond through adversity. Oh, yes, oh, it's one of the biggest known things. You take a group of people, throw them on a desert island. Someone's going to end up married afterwards, even if it's only for like a day. There's going to be things that are going to happen. You're going to be like holy shit, they're going to be fighting for their life.

We do TV shows on you all the time.

Yeah, look at Titanic, look at those things. Adverse situations create a bonding because you both have that realization. Look what we did together, look what we survived together. And that becomes a glue and you say we say to ourselves well, I only got to x situation because I was with y and that y has been the person is. That means I can go through other situations. But it's not so much that it was the person that got you through, it was the fact that you were willing to let somebody help you get through. And you can take anybody and say okay, you know, you guys can get through anything adversely together, right, as long as you understand that you have each other's backs. And then it doesn't matter what comes along. You can say we have, at the end of the day, push comes to shove. I got you, I don't care how much I think you're wrong, I don't care how much you smell bad, I don't care how bald you are, anthony. No, my wife has never said that. At the end of the day, I got you. We're going to help each other out and we're going to push through this, even if we just disagree on the fundamentals of it, because that is what marriage is about Two people pushing together as one.

Absolutely, I love it. I love it.

Awesome, deshaun. I want to ask you the final two questions. I ask everybody. So the first one is if you were to summarize this episode in one or two sentences, what would be your take home message?

One if you are going to get married we tend to get married based off the good qualities, all those good things we see in the beginning that we love and we enjoy things we see in the beginning that we love and we enjoy make sure you are including the qualities that you don't like, because that partner also has those qualities and those will show during your marriage too. So we always tend to take an accurate inventory of all the things that they do well for us. Make sure you are accurately inventorying all the things that might come short you might be a little annoyed by, because those things come present and might change and grow and develop over time too. Yeah, the second one Don't be afraid to fail each marriage with so much love on my heart, not feeling jaded or like I can't trust people or it's not going to work because my first one didn't work or my second one didn't work. I still believe in the Institute of Marriage in and of itself and that when two correct people find themselves, it can work.

I love it. And then the second question how can people find you, get a hold of you and learn more?

All right. You can find me under my name Deshaun Jackson D-E-S-H-A-U-N-J-A-C-K-S-O-N on Facebook, or you can find me on Instagram under the PsychRNFit P-S-Y-C-H-R-N-F-I-T on Instagram, or you can email mernfit at gmailcom.

Love it. Thank you, deshaun, for coming on. Thank you, guys, for listening to this week's episode of Health and Fitness Redefined. Don't forget, hit that subscribe button and then join us next week as we dive deeper into this ever-changing field. And remember fitness is medicine. Until next time, thank you.