Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to 50 First Dates. I'm your host, Jolie Moore. I now know that hindsight is 20 20. This season I'm going to share that wisdom with you. In every twice weekly episode. I'm going to highlight one of my postcards for my take note stories of narcissistic abuse project and the unvarnished truth behind them. A lifetime of gaslighting and abuse are the reasons why my 50 first dates experiment was the unmitigated disaster that it was. I think it was kind of funny, A little bit tragic, but still a mess. Join me as I take on the task of finding out if my future self can forgive that person who lived through abuse and came out of the other side still searching for a crazy, beautiful love story. Ready? Strap in.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Let's go.
Hi and welcome to 50 First Dates. This is your host, Jolie Moore. It has been a minute since we talked. I have been actually, you know what I've been doing not dating.
So this is going to be season two of 50 First Dates. And in it I'm going to talk about the reason that my dating was problematic, but I didn't know at the time.
So when I wrote the memoir 50 First Dates and my editor read it, her thought was that this is a cautionary tale. And she there was something in her response that was a little bit cringe. And I thought to myself, what did I do that was cringy? I was honest. This is what happened. I'm merely writing about it.
But more years of therapy have led me to sort of have a. Have much greater clarity about the problems with my dating life.
So let's go back a little bit. Oh my God. About 20 years ago, I decided to go into therapy because I was feeling really, really super unhappy in my life. I had left the east coast. I mean, I flew above the clouds, saw the sun, moved to la, bought a house with my ex, renovated the house, and in theory everything should have been great. But I was really, really sad and really, really upset all the time and I couldn't sort of place why. So I thought therapy seems like a great place to explore that and figure it out.
It didn't go well, I now know that. But I saw a therapist and basically what she said to me was, this is awful. Now I think about it, she asked me like where I lived and like some sort of monetary issues.
Although this was covered by insurance, so it wasn't like she was asking me out for pay. I don't think actually cost me $25 a session. The rest was covered by insurance. I got 10 or 20 sessions, I don't know.
But she asked me, like, where I lived. And I told her I bought this house and we had renovated it. And she asked me something about my car.
She was in Beverly Hills. Parking is what it is, but I'm pretty good at parking. So I told her about the car and like, and probably the circumstances around the purchase of it. I bought it right after 9, 11.
And she was like, well, everything in your life seems fine. I'm not sure why you're here.
It was lovely seeing you. Goodbye.
That. Oh, my God. If she had been a good therapist, I could have saved like 20 years of agony.
All that said, when I've been writing lately under my other pen name, one of the things I've been sort of exploring are themes of abuse.
I didn't know this at the time when I was writing it, or maybe I did, I don't know, I can't say. But I think I was exploring them to try to explain what my life had been like up until the time I left my marriage.
So all that said, while I was exploring these themes, you know, I'm Googling, like, random advice that therapists would give because I only have the one, the good one.
But I do sort of want to explore, like, what other kinds of things therapists do say to people when they're in abusive relationships. And one of the things that I came across maybe four or five years ago was the idea that.
And this was basically, I think the advice was for people who are trauma bonded. So if it takes like people an average of seven times to leave an abusive relationship, I think the advice was in the vein of sort of getting into the skull of the person who needs to leave. What is really going on. Okay, all that said, the advice was you should take a postcard and you should write down all the bad things that have happened so that when you are thinking about going back or staying or whatever or leaving, that you can reference that and know that all of these bad things add up to, like, you gotta get out.
I don't know. That really stuck in my head. I think I did put it in the book.
But what interested me is I thought, I wonder, if I sat down and did that, could I do that exercise? Because it wouldn't be contemporaneous, like, it wouldn't be at the time it was happening. But if I sort of excavated my memory, would I be able to figure out all these things that had happened? Because I would tell people, this is the problem with normalized Abusive behavior. Sometimes I would tell people stories of growing up or of my marriage, and, like, their face would be, like, horrified. And all I could think of is, okay, but that's just how my life is. Like, I don't understand why your face is all, like, horrified and you're looking, like, creepy over there. Because I'm really describing to you, like, my day to day life.
And I. So, you know, at some point, when enough people look at you and reflect, like, your insanity, you think to yourself, maybe there's some insanity here. I'll tell you what led to this revelation. I was therapy with my second therapist for, I don't even know, a few days, weeks, months. I honestly couldn't tell you. And I was describing my upbringing and describing my marriage. And at the end of one session, she looks at me and she says, hey, have you ever heard of narcissism?
And I looked at her, I swear to God, and I was like, narcissus, as in, like, the myth. And she was like, yes and no.
You like to read and you like to do research. So after this session, why don't you go look that up and then we'll talk about it when you come back.
So I do what I'm told because I was raised that way. So I went and, like, looked it up and I read a couple of books and I came back and I was like, oh.
So, long story short, I grew up with an abusive mother. Obviously you would not know that, or I did not know that initially. To be frank, I actually thought my mother's only issue was her alcoholism. But I now know that people who are mentally ill often abuse drugs to manage their mental illness. So when my mother quit drinking when I was 40, it didn't change. It actually just got worse. And I was like, ooh, it wasn't the alcoholism.
And so I decided to just do this postcard thing because, you know, the thing is, like, I live alone when my son is not here with me, and I obviously work as a writer, so I have nothing but all day to think. And the only time I ever go anywhere is to, like, work out, see friends, pick my kid up from school, go to the grocery store. Like, it's not that complicated.
And so I have a lot of time to think. And being away from my mother and my ex has given me way more time to think. Because every time you do something or, you know, like, it's like memories, like, nag at you and you think, oh, that's not normal. Oh, that's not normal. Oh, that's pretty awful. Oh, that's pretty. Pretty awful or horrible or whatever. So I decided to sort of engage my own little postcard project and I posted them all on Instagram. I'm like halfway through posting them on TikTok, which is its own like full time job, I swear to God. And some are posted on Substack. But I wanted to be really comprehensive about this.
So season two of 50 First Dates is actually going to be me discussing the incidents that led to writing about the postcard. I limited to a postcard, honestly, because it was just easier to like distill it into like a few sentences and. But there's more to it than that and I've really been thinking about how I want to explore that. And this is where I landed. So there are 100 postcards and I think that I'll probably do two episodes a week.
They're going to be short, not as long as before where I discuss those kinds of issues.
For each podcast post there will be an accompanying accompanying post on Substack. So I'm at Xojolymore everywhere, Xojolymore on TikTok, Xojoly Moore on Substack, Exojolia Moore on Instagram, and wherever else one has a social who knows.
And in the next, wow, 50 weeks, maybe I did 52 before I can do it again.
We will discuss all of the things that happened in my life that led up to me being the kind of person who would date the way I did in 50 First Dates. Think of it as sort of a prequel.
So without further ado, let's finish up this trailer, 50 First Dates and I look forward to talking with you twice a week.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: I'm Julie Moore and this has been 50 First Dates, the podcast. If you've enjoyed this podcast, I hope you share, rate and review it on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. It will help others find the crazy, beautiful love stories that I like to share. Also, please hit the subscribe button on your podcast app if you'd like to know how this project started. My memoir, 50 First Dates, is available wherever books are sold. A link is always included in the show. Notes I'm also a romance writer. If you want to know more about my books, please visit joliemore.com for more information. You can also follow me on Instagram, TikTok and Substack @xojolymore. The essays accompanying these postcards are available on Substack. You can also follow me on all social media at the same handle Xojoely Moore. Thanks for listening, and I'll be in your ears very soon.
[00:11:43] Speaker B: Sa.
