Hello Lakers, welcome back to another episode of I'm doing fine. My name is Emily and I’m a peer ed here at the counseling center, pronouns she/her. 

My name Katie I’m a junior here at the counseling center, pronouns she/her, and I’m a junior here at Grand Valley.

My name is Keegan, I am a senior here at Grand Valley and my pronouns are she/her.

And hello again, it’s me Bella, senior, pronouns she/her, and excited for another episode.

So today we have a lot to talk about. We just finished celebrating Valentine’s Day this month, and I hope that went well for everyone. But we’re gonna kind of talk about different relationships and self-care, and kind of how they relate. So first I kind of want to get into everyone’s Valentine’s Day. How did go? What was good about it? Did you celebrate it, did you not? For me I had a good Valentin’s Day. I went out to dinner at Cheesecake factory. Very good food, it was very fun. But it was a low key Valentine’s Day. So I just spent time with my partner, and we just watched movies after that. But yeah, very nice.

Yeah, that sounds really nice. I also had a good Valentine’s Day. Also sorry listeners if my voice sounds hoarse. Getting over sickness. But, I also spent time with my boyfriend. We went out to dinner at a restaurant called Black Rock. It’s known for steak, but ironically none of us got steak. And I just got a salad. We just spent time together and it was really nice.

My Valentine’s Day was good. It was pretty heavy school-work-wise, but it was really nice because after a long day I came home and I had some gifts waiting on my desk from some of my friends. Some plants and candy, so it was really thoughtful and really nice, because it had been a long day, but, yeah so overall I think it was pretty good.

That’s really sweet, and that’s a great point where sometimes holidays fall on days where we have a lot of other stuff to do, so I postponed my Valentine’s Day anyway. I checked out Kirkhof and a lot of the different student orgs were selling stuff, which is super fun by the way, always check out Kirkhof, especially when they have those little like, boutique fairs and stuff. But, I just got a little stuffed animal for my friend and we celebrated on the weekend, so that was special.

That’s so nice. So Valentine’s Day is I think a great time to show your appreciation for someone else. Whether that’s one person or whether that’s all the people in your life. But it’s important to know that I feel like Valentine’s Day isn’t the only time you should be showing appreciation. I definitely think that’s easy to do every day. Whether it be through little activities or just like little gifts or what not to show people that you love them and care for them.

Definitely. I was thinking about this. I was talking to some of my friends. But even like on campus, we see people every day. Especially like when we’re going through Subway or like Pod Store or Fresh or wherever we’re going. And we see people just like checking out. Even just saying thank you or hi how are you, even just showing them appreciation, like in your community around here at Grand Valley. Sometimes we don’t even acknowledge those people, and like they’re working hard, they’re helping us. And I was just talking about sometimes we don’t even recognize them, even just saying like hey how are you we appreciate you just kind of spreads that love and that community with them.

I love that message. And doing that more and more often, making that more the norm. Because, I tend to be a very smiley person on campus anyway, and I’ll just smile at someone and they’ll look at me like do I know you? You know, I like to put out what I like to receive.

I think that was a really good example Katie. I have actually never really thought that way too. You can even be appreciate and spread your love to those who are in the campus community.

And sometimes it can be hard too. And a really good way to build up to where your cup is full enough to be giving to other people, and to spread that kindness and positivity, is also dating yourself and incorporating a good self-care routine. I personally, I live by myself, I’ve lived by myself since sophomore year. And that can be really tricky sometimes when you’re focused on school and you have a lot of different relationships in your life that you’re trying to maintain. But I mean even just going out to eat by myself at a sit-down restaurant, and not caring if it’s a table for one. You enjoy the food the same way. But just reminding yourself that you deserve that love too so that it can be a regenerative source and you can pay it forward.

Definitely, and I feel like it’s important to remember that in order to spread love to others you have to love yourself and take care of yourself. It’s hard to take care of others, your community and your significant others, if you can’t take care of yourself. And with that said, I think it’s important to also recognize that we’re all students here at college. Trying to maintain new relationships here at college, whether it’s with roommates, friends, professors. But it’s also hard to maintain already established relationships back at home. I think a lot of us can agree it’s really hard. We might have significant others doing long-distance relationships, even friendships, maintaining relationships with our family at home and it’s really hard. I mean, us peer eds right now are doing a whole podcast over Zoom and it’s just kind of a flashback to COVID. Kind of how we had a hard time maintaining relationships with others through a time that we couldn’t even make personal interactions with others. We had to, the only way we could talk to others was through Zoom, or through video chats, through calls and it’s really important to make sure that we do little things to show appreciation, to show love. Whether that be sending a text, hey thinking of you, hope you’re doing well. I know for me, one thing I really love doing is sending a Venmo to someone. Maybe it’s their birthday or they’re having a hard day and just saying like, hey here’s ten dollars get a coffee just because I’m thinking of you. Small things like that just to maintain those relationships from afar is really important.

I think that’s really important Katie. And being on the other end of those just because, Venmos just make your entire day. Even if it’s just two dollars to get a coffee, it just turns my day upside down. And honestly with my friends back at home, one of the key things that we’ve done is like, kept in touch over text of course, but then we try to do like monthly Facetime calls. So think just trying to maintain those relationships, while it can be very difficult, like we were talking about, it’s necessary and so beneficial.

All excellent points and that actually just reminded me too of a better way I could stay in touch with my friend who, she transferred, she no longer goes to GV, but she’s still one of the dearest friends I have. She actually told me that it would be easier to maintain our longer distance friends if I turned on the read receipts. She just wanted to know if I had read the message or seen the meme that she sent me. That was an easy compromise that I could do, and, we definitely are way more consistent with our communication no. So, even just if you have to ask, how can I be there for you, how can I show up for you, even if I’m not there. So excellent points.

Yeah, I know with my family, cause I’m living at school not with them, I definitely make sure to have a phone call with my mom, at least once a week, but usually it turns into a couple times, cause we talk a lot. But, with her and my sister, I make sure to call. Just like keeping in touch with the people you love, even if you’re busy, trying to find like five minutes just to check in I think is really important. Yeah, speaking of checking in, and just showing your appreciation toward others, there’s a lot of different characteristics that make a healthy relationship and the counseling center actually has a really cool page that shows kind of all the characteristics of what a healthy relationship should look like. They also have a relationship health test, which is really cool. And also tons of other resources on this page. But, the biggest characteristics that they lay out to make a relationship healthy is communication, so kind of what we’ve been talking about. Keeping in touch with the people you love. Trust and respect, which I think are really important. Making sure that the people that you love and are showing appreciation to feel respected, they feel listened to, and boundaries. So those are the biggest things that make a healthy relationship.

I think those are all really important. And I think like the general theme around all of them is trying to figure out whether it be in a relationship with your friends, your family, your significant other, how you choose to express your love, in the various ways, whether it be through successful communication or some of the other ways that Emily explained. And going off of that with Valentine’s Day and expressing love, is my ultimate favorite topic, I am obsessed, is the love languages. The love languages if you’re unaware of them there are five. Physical touch, acts of services, receiving gifts, quality time, and words of affirmation. There’s also a quiz to take that I recommend you do. Love languages, it can not only be used in other relationships but it also can be used with yourself, because it’s really important to know how you love yourself. I personally do not like to be touched, so I am not a physical touch girly. So that was really important for me to learn about myself, but I also found out that I really like quality time. So that’s my plug about the love languages and how to love yourself but also how to love the others around you.

I think that’s super important, because I think it’s important to know what we like, because especially knowing what love language we really like, is what we like to give to others, so if you really like physical touch, it’s most likely, you’re going to give to others. But with that I like to touch on words of affirmation. A lot of people love words of affirmation, being constantly told good things about themselves, which I think is really important and really is a confident bust. But I think there’s a time and a place for it. I think it can be heavily overused, and sometimes it can be not as meaningful. It can almost be like love bombing. Sometimes I think it’s really important if someone’s really struggling. Maybe you have low self esteem or you can just tell they have low confidence or are just really struggling. It’s important to boost their self-esteem but constantly reassuring and constantly giving them my word of affirmation is not as meaningful and it almost seems like it’s just attention seeking, I think I think it’s important that there’s a time and a place for it and overusing it makes those words not seem as significant or special. I just think that’s a really important point also. So there’s a time and place for each specific love language, so I think that’s another important point.

Absolutely, and it’s a really great reminder to check in with the people that you care about, and hear from them what they need from you in that moment. It can change day to day, and sometimes if you don’t share the same love language, it doesn’t mean that the relationship is doomed or that you can’t make it work. I feel like a lot of the time we’re looking for the perfect match, and the perfect language to express our affection. Kind of like a secret key to figuring it all out. But you bring up good points, where people’s situations change, their attitudes change, and we can’t always expect the picture perfect outcome, and that’s what makes relationships so important and enduring is being there for that person even if they don’t show up how your expecting. And you can continue to nurture that bond.

So we spent a lot of this podcast talking about love and relationships. We’ve went over the characteristics of a healthy relationship, and we’ve also talked about checking in with the people you love and seeing what they need from the relationship. And also checking in with yourself. So I think that kind of brings us to all the kind of Hollywood expectations that we’ve seen over the years, all the movies, all the rom-coms, all the romantic movies, and just how some of those may be showing the characteristics that we’ve been talking about, but a lot of them also probably have a lot of relationships that are not very truthful or very good at showing us expectations. Like realistic expectations. A lot of them definitely are a little strange compared to how relationships work in the real world.

My favorite example is the running through the airport. Like that’s not gonna happen. Like security’s gonna stop you. I hate to break it to you but you’re not running in the airport.

I know and like every Hallmark move is like a big city girl moves to a small town, meets a country guy, they like fall in love and have a big fight and then get back together. And you always imagine that but that’s not, you always imagine it to be that Hollywood type love where it’s like happily ever after but it’s not always like that.

Yeah, I think that it can make it difficult for people when they’re looking to get into a relationship because they might have these expectations of their partners or of themselves that kind of meet these expectations that Hollywood sets up. I think it can be difficult to kind of tell the different when they’re trying to start a relationship.

Yeah, even with like Disney movies or princess movies, I feel like they never really talk, the two people in the relationship, they just kind of get together. And everything is perfect, and that’s not how it works in real life.

We rarely ever see the sequel. We don’t know what’s happening. You never know. But again, really excellent points and while we’re being aware that life isn’t always a movie, we can still indulge in those idealizations, and sometimes it’s good to have that little bit of like, you know what, my partner’s amazing, and I love them a lot, and like to allow yourself to have that idealization while going with them and not expecting them to be a vision, a vision that you had. But, on that note. We did have for peer pics, a couple of our movies that get the pass.

Our guilty pleasures one would say.

I will start with mine then. It’s actually I believe, it’s a British film. It’s called Sliding Doors, and I pulled up the synopsis especially for this. Not the synopsis, I think that’s longer, but the little tagline for what the movie’s about. A London woman’s love life and career both hinge, unknown to her, on whether or not she catches a train. We see it in both ways in parallel. So what I really like with the movie is it shows her life with and without love, and it doesn’t give you a, this is a good ending or this is a bad ending, it just shows how your life can change from the connections you have and, your life will continue to go on, like that sliding door. So that was just my peer pic.

That sounds like such a good film. I’ve never seen that, but it definitely sounds really good from the description you gave. I’m gonna look into that. For my peer pic, this week I have a rom com and then I have more of a sad romantic movie. So my first one is how to lose a guy in 10 days. That is a super good rom com, I think it’s really funny, if you just want to laugh, I think that’s the best rom com to watch. And also my other pic is A Walk to Remember. And that is a Nicholas Sparks book adaptation, so maybe a little cringey for some, but it is a really good story. It’s very sad, but very heart warming, the relationship that’s in it. So, I recommend those two.

I like A Walk to Remember especially just because it feels more raw compared to a lot of the rom coms. There’s just a lot of kind of emotion you can really feel it where I think some of the other ones, they’re fun and they’re cute, but that one really just hits your heart string ya know. But for my peer pics, I have 10 Things I Hate about you, which is your typical high school, there’s a bet involved, you know, will they get together, will they stay together, gotta love that. And then my other one is the Age of Adelaide, which is a little more, not serious but a little more, I don’t even know the word to describe it, but it talks about this woman who stops aging and it kind of shows how her relationships develop and it’s not only just romantic relationships, so I think it was cool that it showed her relationship with her daughter. So yeah, that one’s cute, I like that one too.

Alright so for my peer picks, I am really bad with movie titles. I think my fellow peer eds learned this a couple weeks ago. So, I like the Notebook, I know that one, it’s really sad, Ryan Gosling, it’s just a classic. And then I just like any Hallmark movie even though I made fun of them a little bit ago. They’re cheesy but they’re just so good. And then lately I’ve just been into all the reality shows, like Bachelor right now, I’m really into it, I just like the drama. I know it’s just addicting and it’s just kind of, it pulls at your heart strings, you get attached to certain people and it’s just addicting to watch, so that’s kind of been my rom com slash reality tv show fix for the past couple months lately.

You bring up a good point with the reality shows, cause we’re all like oh reality shows it’s all staged, but sometimes those are the best love stories, like I know y’all remember Jersey Shore. Sometimes the relationships that would come out of that, I’m like this is not what I was expecting but this is premier television. That being said, this has been a lovely discussion with you all, even though it’s been on Zoom kind of going back to the older setup but a lot of fun nonetheless. And again the peer eds wish you a wonderful rest of the month, hope you’re still spreading the love far beyond Valentine’s Day and taking care of yourselves as midterms are coming up. So we hope to catch you all on the next episode and thank you for listening.