Can we pls drop the struggle love? the LSW and her partner w/ Kerry Suttra

✨

[@lovelynn_96]

This was the most respectful, non-judgmental, humanized conversation I've seen on YT by amazing black women by far. Thank you so very much, Khadija! I love you so very much!!❤ Also thank you for introducing me Ms. Suttra as well b/c she's incredible!!❤

[@juiceycru]

TRULY! Literally the type of DEEP, NUANCED, and INSIGHTFUL conversation I’ve been craving to see more of. While still being homegirls and just vibing with each other. SO REFRESHING!

[@Monochrome_11]

You, KennieJd and "psychology in settle" are the the only way i will ever consume content from the "lachey cinematic universe"

[@ashannaandrews9320]

Dr. Cherie Types gives a lot of great insights as well from the perspective of personality types. Her videos fascinate me! So insightful!!

[@Ms.Fragrance868]

This. I haven't watched that show except the first season. I'll give YT my views.

[@goldenglowable]

Psychology in Seattle, I’ll check it out

[@BlackQueenA1825]

Steph Anya does good videos too (although I did disagree with one of hers for the 1st time this season). She does couple overviews after the season is over

[@kyrabarr2846]

I think that deep down inside women accept struggle because they don't feel that they are fully deserving of a love that loves them completely. They feel that they have to continue to "prove" themselves to just get the bare minimum and that's why struggle love is glamorized. I also have observed that when women live in environments where they watch their mother go through difficulties in her relationship they believe that her "struggles" are the norm to be accepted.

[@kerrysutra]

Love this comments! It's very hard to unlearn the ways that we are socialized to love our partners. Comments like these let me know that the tides are changing. for the better!

[@fredaowusu-agyapong]

All the time they accept struggle . I see this with family members friends..They don't leave until it get worse. Like I don't understand

[@kyrabarr2846]

@@fredaowusu-agyapong When someone doesn't feel as if they have any other options, or they're in a abusive dynamic where someone also uses affection as a way to keep them controlled, women can stay in unpleasant situations. The abuser isn't an abuser all of the time. There are times where the abuser can be very loving and very attentive, and that's why it's important for women to learn and recognize The Tell-Tale signs early ,so that they can get the help that they need to make a safe exit. Also abuse isn't always physical it can be emotional. When a person self-esteem is so low, just getting the bare minimum seems like so much in their lives.

[@cinnamonthecat9661]

I love when yall talked about how you dont want to date your dad, and don't want to be your mom. I'm the same. I am trans masculine and in a struggle wife dynamic with my current partner, and I am very much aware of it and trying to dig myself out of the hole. My mom was a struggle wife, and I don't want to be this way anymore. I'm with a trans woman who was taught to be a man & she is still trying to deconstruct the patriarchy from her mind, her mother was a struggle wife too, but her mom enabled the man, and taught my gf to respect the man who abused her. So now she has subconsciously adopted habits that attribute to a struggle wife dynamic. We are even shifting and evolving as time goes on, 5 years ago I was anxious and she was avoidant. Now I'm healing, and shifting to become avoidant in an effort to escape the emotional labor of the struggle wife dynamic, so she is anxious in response. We are trying to get a balance and accept a queer, anti-patriarchy dynamic. It is such a difficult shift for us to go through and heal from, but I know it will be so rewarding once we pass the hump.

[@lewa3910]

Khadija's camera software acting just like clay, needy and closed off

[@nyfiken1140]

technical issues fixed at 4:30

[@hallehuckleberry]

thank u 😭

[@ricismokes6154]

See you’re an online angel. Thank you.

[@littlelizzymamaliz]

Oh my goodness the way she compared being a woman to a bento box. Meeting the expectations and secretly wanting certain things to burn to the ground just to lighten the load. So relatable. Men have been conditioned to think we actually enjoy free labor. It's unbelievable.

[@raelynbag]

In a world with Elon musks twitter, it’s nice to listen to actually constructive conversations about relationship dynamics

[@EvitaGlez]

This was SO AMAZING. I often wonder about the Gen X’er’s perspective on the climate of the current dating and love life! I don’t have access to older folks who took the non-conventional route to living their lives, so this was so reassuring and enlightening as a poly, queer girl myself. Thank you, Khadija, for your work and art!! ❤

[@brezzyFbaby1011]

These sorts of conversations really help me work through my emotions/feelings towards relationships and those more masculine presenting. Thank you both for existing 🙏🏽

[@kyrabarr2846]

Sadly I've also seen the struggle love primarily is promoted to darker-skinned black women. As much as I would like for that not to be the case it is. Our lighter-skinned counterparts do not have that same pressure on them to accept struggle love the way dark skin women are expected to accept it.

[@Saidwhatisaid11]

I disagree. Especially those falling under pretty privilege. They will be intentionally mistreated, stood up on dates because the men feel like they have more options which may not be the case. It’s starting to balance out as emotionally inept men start to abuse more

[@kyrabarr2846]

@@Saidwhatisaid11 it's perfectly fine for you to disagree with my viewpoints. I'm thankful that we can share. Women suffer under the conditions that we are in whether you are pretty/ attractive, what's deemed tall, fat ,skinny/ slim because most of the standards are not realistic for any woman to hold up no matter who she is.

[@figkolo]

All women are sold struggle love by society, BUT black women in North America are uniquely pressured to stay in struggle love for the preservation of their race and the men of their race. They are constantly told that if they date outside of their race (doesn't matter how melanated the man is) that they are contributing to colonial erasure n oppression, and so must endure their unions even if those unions are oppressive to them as human beings. Lord help you if you're not a "pretty" girl either, then the social pressure is even worse.

[@peacejoylove8542]

The preferences/lighter women definitely do get dogged out though, even the celebrities.

[@kyrabarr2846]

Yes, the lighter skin women do get treated poorly because most of the time. The men that have wanted them for a long time, when they finally do get them, make them suffer​ for all of the relationships that they had prior when they weren't the first choice or were they were treated poorly themselves@@peacejoylove8542

[@parableofthekid]

this is the best i need a whole ass podcast with yall talking together

[@mirithilrose54]

What an amazing conversation! I have so much respect for the both of you and would love to see more. As a fellow gen X-er I felt a deep generational connection to Kerry and wish that at the time when we were younger conversations like these were available to us. But listening to this now makes up for it big time. 💖

[@TreeHairedGingerAle]

I love what's being said here, but I think we're missing a big part of the puzzle when we frame the 'linking of families as a business' as the _beginning_ of the human story when it comes to unions, marriages, and families. A lot of that stuff started as a way to destroy thriving commune-istic communities and establish frankly toxic nation states and monarchies in their place: reinforced by churches (mentally) or by militaries/police (physically); in order to get populations to conform to power-enabling customs, to obey colonial powers by hook or by crook, and to put up with being exploited in all areas of life. Populations were actively FORCED to restructure their societies this way: enduring generations of wars and massacres so that a few power-mad yahoos could feel as if they didn't have to die...they would "live on" in their lineages of diseased power and hierarchies, and were only too happy to fuck up everybody else to do it. Humans are hundreds of thousands of years old. We didn't evolve like all this. Humans are "cooperative breeders", and lived in communities that had "alloparenting" as a helpful custom. It would utterly blow our ancient ancestors' minds to see how we have been brainwashed to approach relationships: as if we were to own and control one another, and treat each other like a thing we won at a fair, instead of as a companion for whom we show up and care for and are supported and cared for by. How much we in turn treat children like property instead of people; how we burden both parents and children with "blood ties" that may or may not even be healthy or _compatible_ for them; and how deeply parents _exhaust_ themselves, struggling without the material and emotional support, and without the childrearing assistance of the community at large. I cannot wait until we all of us wake up and stop carrying on this capitalistic farce of "love" and "caring"...all ultimately to gratify conquerors and tyrants both alive and (most of all) dead.

[@capir0te]

Woah, what you said about not feeling comfortable expressing your sexuality until you were able to express it in a masculine way too, I felt that.

[@insegose8091]

love listening to you both talk about all of this seriously would love more of kerry

[@orangegreen3769]

The “WE GOT CEMENT!” got me 💀🤣 rewatched 3 times

[@TreeHairedGingerAle]

😭 Cement and sharp edges and metal surfaces! And if there were wood chips, they were splintery. 😂 Taking us to the movies to watch Jurassic Park and Aliens and shit!

[@FishareFriendsNotFood972]

Thank you for the great discussion! I was VERY uncomfortable watching AD's suffering, because the way it was framed it seemed to almost invite the viewer to revel in the sacrifice of AD. It felt like suffering porn, of black people, and American society already has waaaaaaaay too much of that. I'm tired of watching black women cry tears of suffering, filmed for a mostly white audience's enjoyment. And it made me question at what point do I, as the viewer, have a responsibility to stop consuming media that profits off of that? I'm not saying we can only ethically consume 'girl boss' portrayals of women devoid of suffering, but Love is Blind created an altered reality designed to exploit traumatized women.

[@beaniesonna3052]

Yes but at the end of the day AD signed up and chose this guy with so many red flags and decided to pursue him. The minute he made that comment in the pods about leaving her if she loses her body during pregnancy, she should have ran. BUT we know, black women just lurrrve black men so they will endure bullshit from them all day! Shame

[@TheDawnofVanlife]

I love this conversation on so many levels, I have not been diagnosed but I have always wondered since my 30s if I sit somewhere or the spectrum. I don’t get social cues at all and often I am direct in a way that turns out to be rude, but I don’t realize it. I might be on the ace spectrum but am queer not aeromantic but tend to be feel romantic attraction to women/femme presenting people on the rare occasion ‘attraction’ happens…but it usually occurs for reasons other than looks. At 45 I feel like it is to late to figure out how getting a partner even works as I gave up at a certain point and it just didn’t happen except for one person I dated for a few months in my mid 20s. Now I feel like a walking red flag because who at 45 has never even had a serious long term relationship. Like it’s not what’s expected. But there were many points in this where I had a moment of giving myself grace and realizing being human is to be flawed and complex and layered.

[@elemeno82002]

really agree. Ppl are used to thinking that having too many relationships or too few relationships are red flags, but it's so weird how people expect others to have had a certain amount of relationships in order to be "normal". It's hard to convince people that you're not weird or wrong just because you had/have social anxiety, and therefore never felt the need to engage with others romantically or socially as much as others do.

[@bedazzledmisery6969]

Number one culprit is media and romantic glamorizations of what's often actually unhealthy, toxic, maladaptive, abusive, codependent and very dysfunctional relationship dynamics. If they can't even be called a relationship. Number two culprit is the fact that there is just a very fundamentally misunderstood definition of love, being in love, how to love and being loving and how to love yourself first. First that's confusing. Everybody in the modern day world right now. How somebody considers expressions of love and what it means to them is often subjective to the end of individual, which is why it's so varied with all of the different love, advice and romantic suggestions that are out there. Even though eventually they do kind of fall into common cliches. It's hard to have a standard for what is healthy expressions and very easy for people to either not accept when there's something that is clearly abusive and unhealthy going on due to them being in love and falling for the trap of believing. You can love somebody enough to change them or fix them in any way. Thing is you absolutely can love somebody enough to have it be something that fundamentally changes them for the better but they have to want to change themselves and have it be worthwhile.

[@toastysarahh]

Is there a place where I can find a list of recommended books/authors? I've listed some I've heard you mention in vids but I need to find more for my personal to-buy list !!

[@gregvs.theworld451]

I would absolutely second a Khadija list of must and recommended reads. Maybe multiple videos re: different topics.

[@peacejoylove8542]

I'm so grateful my husband and I have decided to wait to have children while we both nuture our bond and our union. I have learned so much about how I want to instill in my children, not only emotional intelligence but also emotional regulation. While embodying those same qualities as a living example for them to look up to. I appreciate discourse like this so much! ❤

[@babyteph]

That part about stepping into relationships in our parents’ oversized suits was super insightful! I never looked at it that way.

[@ReshonBryant]

"It's first come first served."-Redhead Jill w/the Mohawk(to me about taking on a new lover) **She said I looked like a buddy of her's from prison🌝

[@Word-Smithy]

This was such a fantastic conversation - so dynamic, and colorful and nuanced. Shout-out to Peaches!

[@mpendamziki477]

the way Kerry described the multiple facets we have within ourselves reminds me of Internal Family Systems. for folks who're familiar with this psychotherapy approach is this similar?

[@Caitrionacake]

would you perchance ever feel like talking about anger more? I'm someone who is and always has been so disconnected from it. maybe because i grew up with a volatile dad so im scared of anger or maybe I don't see as productive, idk been talking about it in therapy but would love to hear your thoughts on healthy anger and anger expression

[@alainaforte9541]

It only took you guys 4 minutes to problem solve 🤩 that’s indicative of the power of teamwork 🤗

[@mariah6782]

These were such fun, interesting conversations the GRACE!!!🩷

[@chomskyjunior]

clays alt sister was everything

[@kaztazable]

Just because she was alt?

[@sophiaisabelle01]

We appreciate your insights. You'll always have our support.

[@animationresof9]

Wow. This hasnt started and I might delete. Khadija is so beautiful i almost teared up. Anyone else?

[@ShdwftheSuN]

Always so insightful! Also very entertaining. I guess what I'm saying is... more inter-generational relationship analysis, please!!! 😁

[@fuldalina7900]

This was so wonderful! Thank you both! @kadija, how did kerry and the other Person end up being your mentor? Ive been setting Intention for a mentor but Kinder lost how. I dort warnt to be rude or ask for too much you know. Die you ask them to be your mentor? Much love from Berlin

[@KhadijaMbowe]

I interviewed Carrie for some thing and the relationship developed organically same as my friend Sonja. Because they’re older than me and I believe time adds a certain level of wisdom for some people I called them my friends and mentors. I I learn a lot from both of them about the kind of “adult” I want to be. Basically anyone I’d want to be a big sister I call a mentor lol and then I tell them after. 😂

[@fuldalina7900]

@@KhadijaMbowe thanks for sharing! I have a lot of older friends actually. So this made me realize I already have lots of friends and mentors 🥲🥰

[@PenelopeAstony]

This was great! I would defs watch more from Kerry, especially smooth Kerry lmao

[@smores_vv]

I'm sick I missed this live! Either way, it's too good!

[@devadiosa]

They love watching struggle love because it makes them feel less dumb for their own foolish Love decisions- it’s like a sad validation of their own misery

[@helo218]

Oh my attraction to fluidity in both men and women 😭 iz really the most I can be attracted to people + all that you said 🫰🏻🫰🏻

[@sojabursche]

Being born in the 90s is wild, but additionally my first 5 years I grew up in an intergenerational house (2 grandparents, 1 aunt + husband, 1 uncle + wife and 2 cousins (8 and 10 years older)), so me and my sister never unsupervised. Then parents got divorced and younger sister and me moved further out of the city with our mother and there we were almost never supervised. Then I went to a school further away and cellphones became more affordable and I was never unsupervised again after that, I was tracked even before phone trackers became a thing. And then the internet went from dial up (which we were not allowed to use except for school) to wifi and I was still only physically supervised, never even questioned what I was doing online. It was so weird going from no unsupervised time, to no supervised time, back to no unsupervised time and this weird limbo of being unsupervised, while I was also always physically supervised. The last one kind of lead to me completely separating physical and mental activities. Tho I am autistic and was never very emotive or anything, through that I learned to be physically completely still and unmoved no matter what I was seeing online. Which is kind of good I’m able to do but also bad because it has caused some additional issues with people misunderstanding me since I kind of have a resting b-word face from chronic migraines and the muscle tightness.

[@LillivvyP]

I just got slapped with some serious awakening. 😬 my poor man over here 😅 I need to read this book

[@RambleMaven]

Ngl I think AD was giving Neurodivergent as well. I’m saying as well even thought I didn’t see it much with Clay, but I’m leaving space for it.

[@SpiritVines]

“White people can also be in to-“ the technology couldn’t save her 😂

[@TM-nb9zf]

Chelsea seems like she thinks you're supposed to " go thru shit" in order to be in a marriage. She's odd

[@raelynbag]

God I love black women

[@tresvegan3633]

I loved this conversation truly. It’s like I got permission to keep embracing myself fully. My husband always told me I’m like 20 different people or made it seem like something may have been mentally wrong with me because of my various moods. It is true that regulation is vital, however there are times when you need to be able to float in whatever emotion you are feeling at that time. With men they only are allowed aggression and it seems like when you’re a women you are striped of your ability to show aggression, unless you are richly melanated like Khadija noted. It’s really really a sad world we live in but coming to these types of spaces and getting filled with so much affirmation keeps me going strong I’m telling you. I strive to be my best self each day but I also give myself grace, each and every single day 🙏🏽🙏🏽💜

[@miroslawamarkowska3637]

I love you girlies, this is a feast for my brain ♥♥♥♥amazing conversation

[@ToniaTameka]

Yeaaassss I throughly feel you on the hip hop girls!!!! I thought I was weird as hell, the overt style was just was too damsel in distress for me. I feel so seen in that, I can only show up with both sides of me.

[@margicates553]

Beautiful talk! @khadijambowe When you shared about finding your sexuality through sitting in your masculine. I felt that. I’ve used femininity and hyper sexuality to appear vulnerable while distancing myself from art/relationships. It’s only in the past few months where owning my masculine, and taking up space has changed everything. I’ve found deeper vulnerability, deeper connection, and an ease in my body that I thought the male gaze had stolen from me forever. Stepping into my shoulder pads and bustier era and it feels good. Also can you attach the link for the contra points video? That sounds like good medicine.🙏🏻

[@LOLmisscrazy]

Came back to revisit this; still an amazing talk ❤

[@chomskyjunior]

i am so happy that this exists on youtube and i came across it

[@kyrabarr2846]

I can't hear the lady with the blonde hair😮

[@katatonic726]

The lady w the blonde hair... IS KHADIJA!!! 😭😂

[@kyrabarr2846]

Thank you so very much I am new to this channel and I did not mean the comment in a disparaging manner 🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🗝️​@@katatonic726

[@heysilly1341]

Y’all need a podcast pleaseeeee

[@priestesstapes]

GREAT video. Thank y'all so much. and to anyone else's ho that's outside, WE SEE EACH OTHA.

[@hersupreme3348]

First of all, you are one beautiful human. Kind of jealous that bleach brows looks so amazing you lol Secondly, I love this discourse

[@Jojo-tf2zp]

Satan really tried you with the Zoom but yall prevailed!! This was wonderful 👏🏿

[@goldenglowable]

I’m so glad you’re talking about Love Is Blind, I need your dose of reality that examines the whole pie 😊

[@null.psyche]

The part around two hours where you're discussing different parts is starting to sound a whole lot like IFS therapy systems lol

[@LocdnessMomster]

Who is on the left in the thumbnail? Is that you? Whoever they are, they're so gorgeous

[@frankensteinlives]

I aspire to have relationships like the one you two have shown in this video, ngl.

[@ReshonBryant]

❤️‍🔥🔨 🛋️

[@Caitrionacake]

loved this! Thank yall ☆

[@Janiceinwonderland]

I am thankful for you both.

[@FocalPointElisa]

Attachment styles... My fave!

[@Aliensanonymous_]

This was so well done thank you

[@DazzOne2012]

Wonderful experience

[@LPM-xg4dy]

Thanks for this convo ❤❤❤❤

[@Zia_theLibra]

46:11 No no, Clay is fine. It's OK. We just can't touch him...

[@SatansRoerhat]

🌼🌼🌼

[@kyrabarr2846]

Yes I can hear you now

[@Ayishanoire]

Yessssss!!!!!! ❤

[@Heothbremel]

❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤

[@persnrandm5533]