So Bob you and I are in person podcasting together first time in 14 15 months. We haven't we haven't we haven't podcasted in the same room in a very very long time and we don't have to talk over zoom. No, you don't have to sit in this very precarious way so that the microphone is close enough but but also you're not bumping the microphone. Right. You could just sit down in my office. I got everything set up and you're in person.

We can actually like touch each other's fingers like you just did right there and everything's fine. Let's get into it. What do you say Bob? Yes. This is the psychology and shadow podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirkana. I'm a therapist and a professor and I am your friend Bob from graduate school 100 years ago and therapist and practice here.

So the first thing I want to say for from burdo from Bob and I is that I want to thank everyone for the emails and Patreon comments regarding our last episode that we I think we called it to therapist crying or something and a lot of people reached out and we're extremely kind to both of us particularly to Bob about his vulnerability and our friendship and our friendship.

And people were with us. People were crying with us. They were feeling with us and it just really brings the two of us a lot of joy and fulfillment and connection to to have you all reach out to us. So thank you for that. Thank you. It was really lovely. Yeah. And if you're curious and you want to listen to the episode, you have to be a patron of the podcast.

This next email and you might be able to hear the puppy whining outside the door. Bob actually got a chance to meet our new puppy in person for the first time and not that many people have come over. And so our new puppy is extremely not used to human beings actually walking through the door.

The joke I said when you walked in is the puppy is wondering why the delivery guy actually came in the house because usually the only humans that come up to the door are delivery people or you know grub hub people and so the dog the puppy was like extremely freaking out.

But anyway, patron Alina says dear Kirk and Bob, why don't we have more models for emotional intimacy and vulnerability and friendship as you and Bob have demonstrated and demonstrated in recent podcasts.

I just wanted to thank you both for a recent podcast where you have been so open with each other personally and have such a wonderfully modeled emotionally intimacy and vulnerability and friendship.

We almost never see this in TV and movies, these experience between friends are usually just a setup that they're on their way to being a couple or having sex or if it's between two men, it's a setup for some homophobic joke.

So Bob, why don't we have more models like this in culture?

Well, well, I probably the obvious reasons intimacy is there's a male model of there's a model of mailness that has to do with stoicism and efficiency and not having softer tender vulnerable emotions even though all humans have their soft tender vulnerable emotions.

I think it's mostly that. Yeah, absolutely. Another email patron Sam from Austria, she says, Hi, Dr. Kirk and Bob, my father died yesterday.

Thing is he abandoned me when I was about five years old. My mother had to tell me lies why he was not visiting me when I was a child. Now I don't really know how to grieve the loss of him.

It feels like I am more grieving the relationship I wish I had. I'm kind of sad, but I also don't care. And then I am sad because I don't care.

I would really appreciate your thoughts on grieving someone who wasn't really there. Bob, what do you think?

Well, I'm very sorry about all of that your father passing, but I like what you're saying about grieving the loss. How did you put it?

Of what you wish you had what you wish you had. Yeah, yeah.

You know, grief is kind of grief is not what we think it often is not what we think it it's going to be grief is kind of like a river.

And the river is going to go the way the river is going to go and the only thing you can do or I can do or anybody can do is just be in the river and we can be in the river and flow down gracefully.

And along with the current whichever way it turns or we can fight it and flow down clumsily and we're going to go down either way.

But fighting it is a lot of storm and a lot of effort and a lot of coughing and sputtering. So I guess what I mean to say is that your grief is going to turn the way it's going to turn and the things that are important to you don't have to be the things that other people say should or shouldn't be important to you.

It's as you said, the relationship that you wish you had had is what's most poignant to you. So I think that you're recognizing that is really smart and maybe that's what you're going to be most sad about.

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