The Jeune Maman Podcast
The Jeune Maman Podcast is an audio-journey of the intricacies of Senegalese-American motherhood. Host Aissatou Guisse reflects on her own experiences and shares those of others around her, with the goal of sharing information, imparting wisdom with the help of guest speakers, dispelling myths, and much more!
The Jeune Maman Podcast
E22: Choosing the Right Partner - It's Better Late Than Wrong!
Happy New Year, The Jeune Maman Podcast Family! And welcome back to a new episode, where I talk about the importance of taking your time, picking your life partner wisely, and navigating in-law relationships! Enjoy!
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Hello, hello listeners, happy New Year and welcome back to the Jean-Maman podcast, where we talk about all things pregnancy, postpartum, motherhood, tips and tricks and more from a Senegalese-American perspective. I'm your host, aisitou Giusei, and today's episode is going to be one of those foundational episodes. I really want this episode to set the tone for 2024. We're heading into a new year with new goals, new reflections, new desires and new efforts. I really wanted this episode to be one of those that really propels you into the new year, especially for my little sisters, for my fellow mothers, for my fellow daughters and friends. This episode is for the ladies in my life, the ladies who are listening to me and the ladies who may come across this message. Here at the Jean-Maman podcast, you hear me talk about pregnancy and motherhood in ways that just assumes that you've already found the right partner. I wanted to take a couple of steps back today and actually talk about that finding the right partner. Before you can even talk about parenthood, before you can even talk about pregnancy, before you can even talk about being married, you have to think about what your life will look like with the person that you choose. Here at the Jean-Maman podcast, you hear me, episode after episode, talk about pregnancy, motherhood, postpartum and all these different things. Before we can even talk about that, we have to talk about partnership and, more specifically, picking the right partner, which is so, so important when it comes to the success rate that you're going to have later on in life, to the success rate of your happiness, of your children. Who you decide to procreate with, have children with, is such an important decision. So that's why I wanted to start out this episode this year with that message to anyone who is willing to listen and is willing to take the advice, because I've been through it, I'm still going through it, and I wanted to just open up the conversation line so that we can talk about how important this topic is and ways to make sure that we set ourselves up for success.
Speaker 1:So my last two episodes have been on the TV show Babel, which is a Senegalese show that runs on Madoady. It also runs, I believe, on TFM, but the reason I wanted to use that as a launching point for this episode is because in the latest episode, the main character's mom says something that is very, very important. She mentions that. Well, let me play it so you guys can hear it for yourselves, and it's going to be on Wolof, and then I'll do a quick English translation for those of you who are non-Wolof speakers. Here goes, so in this clip, what the main character's mom is saying is that it's important to pick the right partner, but it's also important to pick the right partner's family. Now that sounds a little bit crazy because, you're probably wondering, I can't control all of the things that goes on in my partner's family's life. But today we're going to be talking about picking the right partner, choosing the right environment to raise your kids in, to have a family in, and why that matters.
Speaker 1:In our culture, the person that you marry can have long-lasting effects. Well, I don't even want to just keep it to only our culture, right, all cultures really. The person that you marry, their family and the relationship that you have with them can have long-lasting effects, particularly because we're talking about the Senegalese American perspective on this podcast. It's even more relevant when we talk about the family that you marry into your in-laws, your goros. The relationship that you have with your in-laws and your extended family and your husband's family can have those long-lasting effects that I mentioned on your success, your happiness, the success of your children and, overall, your outlook on life.
Speaker 1:So if we stick with the example of the main character of Babel, which is Fa Bintu and her husband Khalil Jam, we can see that prior to moving into the big family house, they were living relatively at peace for two years Now. A lot of their marital problems started happening once they moved into the bigger family house, halle's family house, specifically. Now it's up for debate for me whether the problems were created because they moved into the bigger family house or if moving into the bigger family house just kind of underlined and propelled the issues that they were inevitably going to have, because they really have communication issues. But I feel like the jury is still out for me on whether the family created those issues or they just exacerbated those issues.
Speaker 1:Either way, this isn't the perfect example, but I think it is something that we can use as a discussion point for today's episode, and the message that I really want to get across to you today is to take your time. Take your time in finding your partner, take your time in committing, take your time in merging your lives together and be diligent about it. So what I'm not saying is that you should drag your feet or that you should string people along. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is it's such a big commitment to marry someone and to marry into their family that it's not something that should be taken lightly. In my opinion, it's better to marry the right person later on in life than the wrong person earlier in life. Let me say that one more time it's better to marry the right person at 40 than the wrong person at 25.
Speaker 1:Take it from me I got married when I was 28 years old. Now, was that ideal for me? I don't know. I wanted to get married earlier. It just didn't happen for me. But do I feel like getting married later on in life was such a detriment to my happiness, to my success as a person? No, because I feel like, having waited, I was able to learn a lot of lessons along the way. I was able to make more informed decisions and I was able to gain the maturity I needed to really be successful in a marriage. I can't say that I'm successful in a marriage it's only been three years but I have a lot more tools to handle conflict, a lot more tools to be able to navigate certain situations, than I did when I was 22 years old.
Speaker 1:So what I'm saying is don't drag your feet, don't string people along and don't just be in it for the sake of being in it, but really be intentional in the decisions that you make and the people that you surround yourself with, especially the partner that you choose to create a life with. Don't let society dictate when, how, where and why. Because if you do those things, you're going to find yourself in a predicament where you're picking a partner just because everybody else around you is getting married. You're picking a partner just because that's the right thing to do at the right time and you're not really picking the person that you're creating and building a life with. It's not a small commitment, guys. Like when I tell you that the person that you are going to be married.
Speaker 1:You intertwine your lives in such a way that it's really hard to detangle and not that you want to detangling, but you become so intertwined that if you don't make that decision with a lot of thought, if you don't take the due, if you don't do the due diligence to really learn about your partner, to learn about yourself, to investigate into your in-laws and in your extended family, it can really lead you in a situation where you are a couple of years in and you start realizing what the hell did I do? What did I get myself into and, god forbid, how do I get out of it? I don't wish that upon anyone, I don't wish it upon anyone. I don't wish it upon anyone. So how do we avoid that? We avoid that by doing the due diligence early on, asking the right questions during the work on ourselves so that when we meet the right person, we are healthy and ready to embrace that new relationship, but also investigating into the extended family that we're going to be going into. So this is controversial and I'm not saying that you should meet someone and then you fall in love and then you realize that they have problems within their family and you ditch them. That's not what I'm saying at all. Every family has problems. Every family has different complexities and relationships and ups and downs, so you're not going to find the perfect in-law family.
Speaker 1:The message that I'm trying to get across here is don't ignore red flags and don't skip steps. So the first point of ignoring red flags don't see an in-law like a mother-in-law or future mother-in-law or future father-in-law that doesn't like you and you're like oh, it'll be fine. No, you want to make sure that you are marrying into a family where you're being welcomed and that you're being embraced, and not one where there's so many hurdles that you have to jump through just for them to treat you with decency and respect. You don't want that. So that's the first step of not ignoring red flags. Respect is a must. Respect, it has to be there, and beyond respect, ideally we would like to be welcomed with open arms. We would like to be adored the same way that they adored their son or their daughter that you are marrying. So that's just the first step.
Speaker 1:Now I'm speaking to my sisters here, but it could also apply to men. If you are in love with a woman and her parents don't like you or they don't approve, you might not want to jump the gun and just go ahead and do whatever, because you're going to find yourself doing a lot of backtracking. You're going to find yourself doing a lot of mediating. You're going to find yourself making a lot of choices between two people that you love very, very much, and that's not a fun position to be in. So that's the first step.
Speaker 1:The second step is to not skip steps. In our culture, we have a tendency of two people meeting, falling in love, the in-laws not knowing each other and the marriage still happening. So an example of that I can use myself my parents did not know my in-laws very well when they got married, hamdulu-ra. Things are working out very well and they like each other. But I think that there's a lot of things that could happen that could help avoid future problems in a situation like the one Fah and Khalil are in. For example, if you are dating someone and I know in our culture we tend to skip a lot of steps where it's like but sometimes in this day and age people are so, so different in their upbringings, in their thought processes, in their viewpoints in life that if you just skip all those steps of getting to know each other not only the two people that are in love, but the two families that are going to be merging and becoming one, the important people of course, not everybody is going to have to get along for things to work out, but the important people, the mom and dad on this side, the mom and dad on that side, the brothers and the sisters like there's a marriage of families that happens when you get married, that if you skip the step of people at a minimum, knowing a little bit about each other.
Speaker 1:To me, that just is. It's like brewing problems or potential issues down the line. You want to make sure that you're not only marrying the person that you are marrying, but you're marrying the family and I know that that might also be controversial for some modern thinkers that know you're marrying the person and that's really the person that matters. But take it from me you want a harmonious relationship with your in-laws. You want a harmonious relationship with your families, your husband's family and your wife's family. That makes life that much better and that much easier, because marriage itself is hard with the person that you love. So imagine when you stack on top of that problems that are happening on both sides of each other's families. You stack on top of that judgment. You stack on top of that like looking down on people.
Speaker 1:All those things are realities that a lot of us go through and it's because in the early stages of getting to know one another we didn't make it a point or a requirement to say I need you to get to know my siblings or I need you to get to know this uncle, that's really important to me, or my grandfather is really important to me, I want to introduce you to him. We tend to skip a lot of that in our culture because what ends up happening is the two people who are dating finally do the parent introductions and the parents are all rushed to prove that. I kill you for learning. You can't learn. Gonna go out to the floor by, like you do, all of these things where you try to prove that you're serious and you mean business, that you skip some vital steps that could really be detrimental to the couple later on down the line.
Speaker 1:So I know that was a bit of rambling, but I really want to get the message across that I don't think that anyone should rush into getting married, not for the wrong reasons, not at the wrong time and not with the wrong person. When you do those things, any combination of those things, you're just signing up for trouble down the line and it's only going to make your life harder. On top of everything else that we have going on. And in 2024, in this new year and these new people that we are, these better versions of ourselves, we want to make sure we avoid making the same mistakes that other people made or that we ourselves made in the past. So I feel like something that I want to introduce in this new year is a little bit more story time.
Speaker 1:I feel like I get on these podcast episodes and I just ramble and say all these different things and you're probably wondering like what the hell is she talking about? Well, for this episode specifically, I think it's relevant for me to share a little bit of my background with you guys. I'm going to come to dating. I definitely did date when I was younger, up to when I got married, meeting my husband and getting married. So my husband and I dated for a year prior to getting married. We had known each other for about five years prior to that, just on social media, but never actually talked romantically until one day we did, and then that's the rest is history, as they say.
Speaker 1:But I want to tell a story of someone that I did date and I could tell that the person was not as into me as I was into them, and that was, for me, a very unique situation to be in. Because how do you navigate that? Well, I know first of all and that's where trusting your gut instinct comes into play when I talk about taking your time, asking the right questions, doing the due diligence. Part of that is listening to that voice inside your head that's telling you Oftentimes, especially after a breakup or a heartbreak. We know we can look back on the relationship and pick up on the points where things weren't as squeaky clean as we thought that they were. But I wanted to just share that as a vulnerable moment for you guys to hear that You're not always gonna get it right.
Speaker 1:You're not always gonna be in this perfect scenario. You're not always gonna be in a perfect relationship where everything makes sense and you don't have to deduce anything. Sometimes you have to piece things together for yourself and come down to a conclusion of like this is what it is, it's not going well, I'm not being respected, his family doesn't like me, my family doesn't like him, like there's so many things that you, as a woman, you have to make tough calls on and rip the band-aid off. It's better to go through that earlier in your life and go through the pain and the heartbreak and all of those things than later on down the line when you have made the wrong choice and you have to undo a lot of things that you have done. So that's just a little quick story time.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I was out here just in my emotions and thinking that things were going well when they were not, and I had to listen to that voice inside me that kept popping up and saying are you sure? Are you sure, are you sure before we got too deep in and did the parent introductions and who knows if I had you know who? God forbid, I'm not even gonna think about that, but that's a story that I want to tell it, to just encourage you all to ask yourself the tough questions do I love this person? Does this person love me? Do I respect them? Do they respect me? Do our families like each other? How important are these things to me? I guess that's another thing that I didn't really touch on because I just made the assumption that it's important to everyone. But is your family liking that your partner important to you? Is your partner liking your family important to you?
Speaker 1:You have to determine from a priority standpoint what these things mean to you. What weight are you willing to assign to each of these different factors when it comes to dating and meeting the right person and starting a family, and move accordingly. If you don't care, if your in-laws like you, you know then this conversation might not be very relevant to you. If you don't like your in-laws and they don't care, then it may not be very relevant. So you really have to just use a case by case scenario here, evaluate the situation that you're in and make the best decision for you, but also take accountability. If you ignore it with flags and you're now in a situation where it's not going too well, just be willing to say you know what? I could have done things a little bit differently. How do I move forward and make a better decision down the line? Or how do I move forward and rectify the situation the best that I can? So there's a lot of things to get into when it comes to kind of the decision making, the accountability, the aftermath, all of those things, but taking stock of the situation and making the best decision with the information that you have, but also being willing to seek out information.
Speaker 1:Sometimes we have to ask questions that we don't necessarily want the answer to, because deep down, either we already know the answer or we know the answer won't get us to a response that we don't want to confront. I hope that made sense, but that is all I had for you today in the first episode of 2024. I didn't even talk about 2023. It was such an amazing year. I had over 5,000 downloads on the podcast. I released 20 episodes. It reached like 216 different countries. I don't even know how. Are there 216 countries in the world? Give me just a second. I am having a brain fart right now. I'm gonna tell you exactly what's going on in terms of how my podcast is. Okay, here it goes. I have my backtrack for 2023. So the Genoa podcast was in the top 25% of all podcasts on Buzzsprout. That's the platform that I used to host the podcast. I had 5,400 downloads over 122 countries, 20 episodes and over 600 minutes of listening time. Like to me, that's huge, because the podcast is relatively new it's less than a year old and to have gained the community that I have through the podcast, it's phenomenal.
Speaker 1:So thank you, guys for tuning in, thank you for listening up to this point, thank you, thank you. Thank you for being part of my community, for being part of the Genmama family. I really appreciate you guys and I hope that you will continue on the journey with me in 2024. With that, oh, you're joining. I have the baby here. One of these days I will introduce her to you guys. If you follow me on Instagram, you might have gotten glimpses of her, especially on her birthday. But yes, thank you for being part of the family. I really appreciate you guys and I will give you a rendezvous for the next episode. Thank you.
