This week’s episode offers solid advice from psychotherapist Ken Page. He’s the author of “Deeper Dating: How to Drop the Games of Seduction and Discover the Power of Intimacy.” He also has a podcast based on his book and, true fact, I found out about him through a Dating While Gray listener. You can find out more about Ken and his work at his website.

You also hear a snippet of my conversation with Jeanne Safer, author of “I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics.” Jeanne’s a liberal married to a conservative, and I’ve been wanting to interview her since reading her 2019 book.  As she notes, “I’ve been writing about navigating this divide in my own life for decades. My husband and I have also written about it together and have appeared jointly in the media to discuss our surprising relationship. People are often astonished that the two of us have managed to accomplish a feat that many believe is impossible.”

Jeanne says that since the 2016 election, she’s become the go-to expert on how to make a red-blue relationship work. With the election of Donald Trump to a second term in office, I do wonder how many of these rare unions can survive.

Unfortunately, I had a heck of a time getting in touch with Jeanne. When I finally did, my deadline for the DWG/APM radio broadcast special had come and gone. I managed to get some Zoom tape of Jeanne reading selected passages. But because of the sub-par technology,  listening at length is hard on the ears. That’s why you only hear about a minute of it, nicely doctored by DWG producer Steve Lack.  I highly recommend Jeanne’s book, and her podcast, for more on this topic. Meanwhile, here’s some advice from Jeanne’s book (edited for space):

  • The key to lasting change is realizing that political fights in intimate relationships stem from our compulsion to change other people’s minds so that they will feel and think as we do.
  • Refrain from interrupting, insulting, or otherwise showing contempt for you opponent’s views. None of these either charms or persuades anybody, ever.
  • Never attack another’s resistence or defenses directly, which only entrenches them. Instead, search sincerely for common ground, try to empathize, and mindfully choose not to speak up when it will lead to nowhere.

 

Psychotherapist Ken Page

Life Magazine, May 2011 (Safer website)

Transcript

LAURA STASSI

Hi, Laura here. If you heard last week’s episode, you know I’ve been pondering politics … and romance. That led to “Love Across the Divide,” a Dating While Gray broadcast special with American Public Media.  Last week, In Part 1, we heard from older Americans navigating red-blue romance. Today, in Part 2, we’re offering some expert advice for bridging differences. Please enjoy.

I’m Laura Stassi, and this is Love Across The Divide, from Dating While Gray. Have you noticed how certain words become labels, sometimes worn proudly, sometimes weaponized, like feminist, it’s a noun a person who believes women should have the same political, social, and economic rights that men have. Now I admit, when I started dating after divorce, I was uncomfortable embracing the term, because I thought feminist might also mean a total rejection of gender dating expectations. I wasn’t ready to give that all up. I talked about this with Steve, a retired university professor in Wisconsin. Steve is a feminist, and he shared this experience when he started dating after his wife died.

STEVE

There’s one, it was maybe my second or my third, first date with a woman, and you know, we had a beer and tea or something. We talked for a couple hours, and afterwards we said, let’s get together. So I texted her at one point, shortly afterwards, said, you know, that I enjoyed everything. And I said, I haven’t dated for over three decades. I’m still kind of new to this, and I’m, you know, still trying to figure out the rules and everything else. And her reply was something like, okay, here’s how it works. Boy asks girl out to dinner. Boy pays, then this happens a couple times. Then girl invites boy to her apartment, makes dinner for him, and then it proceeds from there. And then I wrote back and I said, well, I said, that might be one way to do it, but I said, I’m a feminist, and so I don’t like to sort of follow gender rules, so maybe it’ll be a little different with us.

And then about two hours before the date was supposed to happen, I get a text from her saying, you know, I’ve had a long day at work. I’m really kind of tired. Maybe we can do this some other time. So I think it was the fact that I responded that way that she cut off the date, and then about two months later, we did get back together to have a date. We had a couple walking dates. This is during COVID and during those she asked me a question. She said, when you said you were a feminist after our first date, I was curious about that. Does that mean you have more feminine personality characteristics than masculine? And I thought to myself, you know, I’m in my late 60s, and it’s 2020. Do I really have to explain to a woman in her 60s what feminism is?

LAURA STASSI

Weird is another word that’s in the political arena. Democratic VP candidate Tim Walz seems to have started the trend. He used it pejoratively to describe GOP policies, but in Austin, Texas, being weird has been a good thing since the year 2000. That’s when a caller made a donation to their local public radio station, saying it was to keep Austin weird. Now the slogan is all over the city — on bumper stickers, T shirts, you name it. Then there’s woke. I didn’t realize how this word had been misconstrued until I asked Dating While Gray listeners to fill out an audience survey. One of the respondents described herself as a quote, adult human female seeking non-woke heterosexual adult male. I put out a callout asking show listeners their thoughts about the word woke.

CALLER 1

Hey, Laura. To me, woke means being aware or sensitive to injustices. Those injustices are usually racial, sexual, gender, whatever.

CALLER 2

I think that the word woke has been taken to a place that it shouldn’t have gone. People are using it as a put-down, something negative. It’s been politicized, and it’s just, it’s not good period.

CALLER 3

Yeah, it’s fraught, right? I understand the whole when woke was a good term, right? And now it’s become a pejorative term wielded by the right, you know, to batter the left. And I believe in the woke principles. I believe that people who are woke are really trying to do the right thing by every group in society.

CALLER 2

Being woke is more about recognizing, understanding, being aware of discrimination, prejudice, racism, and any other injustice in the world, and by that definition, everyone should be woke. But we know that’s not going to happen.

CALLER 4

I actually loathe the label because it oversimplifies some very complex concepts with a single word. Been my observation that right wingers love simplifying things with a single label. This makes it easier to denigrate complex ideas in one broad stroke rather than engage in discussion.

CALLER 3

I don’t think anybody would describe me as like, particularly woke. You know, I’m a kind of 64-year-old guy who’s been liberal all my life, a little bit of a Marxist.

CALLER 1

Personally, I think it’s good thing to be woke.

CALLER 3

I really want to believe, and I do believe that people on the right and left are not as far apart as they’ve been polarized by the media, and that if a woke person had a chance to explain to a very conservative person, here’s what I believe in and why, that they could have a civil dialogue and maybe even find a lot of common ground in that Venn diagram of, you know, beliefs and ideologies.

LAURA STASSI

Thank you, callers. I especially like that final comment about the Venn diagram and finding common ground. I’m reminded of the expression politics makes strange bedfellows. It means a shared political interest can bring people together when they otherwise have nothing in common. What’s the expression for the twist — people coming together who may have things in common other than their politics? It doesn’t seem like a lot of us want to explore that. According to a 2020 Pew Research report, more than 70% of single Democrats would not consider dating someone who voted for Donald Trump. As for Republicans. 47% said they would not date a Hillary Clinton voter. An Economist/YouGov poll says an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, 38%, would feel somewhat or very upset if their child entered into a politically mixed marriage.

And how about this, from a study conducted in 2023. Half of all respondents would break up with their romantic partner if they switched loyalties. In other words, political affiliations are leading us to not only reject potential dating partners, but also to reject the romantic partners we already have.

For advice, I turned to Ken Page. He’s the author of “Deeper Dating: How to Drop the Games of Seduction and Discover the Power of Intimacy.” Ken’s also a relationship coach and a psychotherapist.

 KEN PAGE

But my dream was always to be a psychotherapist. I remember being 10 years old on the subway reading a book about so you want to be a psychiatrist,  like just thinking, oh my god, what a privilege that would be to hear people’s inside stories.

LAURA STASSI

So I’d like to ask you a true or false question, and the answer is, your opinion. True or false, two people need to be aligned politically to have a deep connection and strong romantic bond.

KEN PAGE

False.

LAURA STASSI

False.

KEN PAGE

Yeah.

LAURA STASSI

Okay, why?

KEN PAGE

With a lot of like, rich stuff around that, and not always false. So, you know, of course, it’s not black and white, but in Venezuela, there are these plateaus that are called to puys. And what they are are these kind of giant, giant mountains, and they’re separate. So each Tapu develops its own entire ecosystem that’s unlike other ecosystems in the entire world. We are kind of like that, and especially those of us who found love later, we have developed our entire ecosystems, and everybody’s ecosystem, what we need to survive is different. What matters to us, what we need to protect, is different. It’s kind of universal in some ways, but, like fingerprints, maybe universal, but really, really different. And so we are all so profoundly different. And this is one of the jarring but exciting things about love, is that each of us is our own tipui. We are our own ecosystem. We are our own language. And in fact, the erotic and the romantic need difference to be able to thrive and survive. If it’s pure homogeneity, the excitement disappears. But how to develop the language of difference? I look at my husband sometimes, and I think, how is it possible that you feel that way? How is it humanly conceivable that you feel that way? You’re someone I love, you’re someone I respect. What? That doesn’t happen that often, but it can happen. And then, you know, we have to have dialogue and at those places where he’s so profoundly different from me, both of us have different survival mechanisms that are clicking in and activating for us, and I need to understand what his are, and he needs to understand mine.

LAURA STASSI

Let’s just take two political parties, the Republicans and the Democrats. And I know there’s a huge spectrum, but it feels like people are now assigning party beliefs to values, and so how can two people who may have different values get along?

KEN PAGE
If the values that differ are around honesty and integrity, forget it. It’s not going to work because that’s a value that is a non-negotiable, a commitment to goodness, a commitment to the relationship. Those are values that that it’s just not going to work if those values are not in alignment, if your values that connect with your political views involve hate and prejudice, there’s going to be a big problem if the other person doesn’t share those hates and prejudices. I think that’s a very, very real thing.

LAURA STASSI

I don’t mean to laugh, but sharing a hate sounds so awful, doesn’t it? I share your same hate.

KEN PAGE
Yes, right. They wouldn’t say it that way, but that’s so much of what people believe and do. The bottom line is this, there has to be a language for bridging difference. There has to be a communication process that couples have to help them bridge difference, and you know, especially around differences in political opinions, it’s just so highly charged. So sometimes, yeah, it’s impossible to get over that divide, and it’s not a good idea. But if there is shared goodness, if there’s a shared commitment to goodness, a shared commitment toward human values, a shared commitmen, toward honesty and caring and toward the relationship. It’s kind of a different story, and a lot of gaps can be bridged. Does it take skill? Does it take work? Yeah, it sure as hell does.

LAURA STASSI

I think some other people would say it’s not that the values are different. It’s the expression of the values. And so getting back to what you said about communication, maybe it’s a matter of being able to communicate what a certain political aspect or a certain issue on the table, what that means to you, and being able to, I don’t know, ask, how would you ask questions about it? You talked about it? You talked about bridging a communication gap.

KEN PAGE

You brought up two different points that I think are really valuable in what you said. You said it’s about how we express it. I just want to really underscore that, that’s huge. And then you asked about, how do we do that? But I just want to really underscore that first point, because that’s like, almost everything is how we express it.

LAURA STASSI

I always tell people I speak in rough draft, so I appreciate that you were able to listen to what I said and get that so thank you for that.

KEN PAGE

Oh, oh, yeah. No, that was great. That was great. That wasn’t such rough draft.

LAURA STASSI

So how do we communicate, or how do we — the bridges, how do we cross the divide?

KEN PAGE
So I’m gonna start off with a really easy one, which is what they say in 12 step programs, say what you mean, mean, what you say, and don’t say it mean, and that, like really, really captures a lot. Say what you mean means, find the words that really capture the truth of what you want to say. Don’t weaponize your words. Don’t create words to get a manipulative effect that aren’t the true words of what your experience is at the time, and then don’t say it mean. You know, be kind which, you know, those are very simple, but they’re really, really hard.

The other thing I’m going to say is that I love and refer to often the work of Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, who are the founders of Imago therapy. And Imago therapy teaches a method for couples to communicate which is demanding and it’s absolutely incredible, very, very powerful techniques, and those techniques involve you sit across from each other. One person speaks, the other person listens, but you very frequently interrupts and says, stop. Let me see if I got that right. Repeats it back, then the other person and says, Did I get that right? And often the other person’s going to say, well, almost, but, and that nuance, it becomes hugely important. And then the person says, is there more? Which is the most beautiful, inviting question. And then the person says, yeah. And they say more, and they begin to really express what’s in their heart.

There’s two layers. There’s the layer of protection, like, am I going to be heard? I better like, kind of fling out these arrows and hope that they get heard. And then there’s a layer underneath. It’s the layer of the heart. It’s the layer of our vulnerability, our humanity, that is tender stuff, it we don’t show that often, that easily. So that question, did I get this right? And then is there more immediately? Just opens up so much possibility for humanity. Then you kind of like, take the whole thing and you say the magic words.

 LAURA STASSI

The magic words – we’ll hear more from Ken Page, after the break.

 BREAK

 LAURA STASSI

I’m Laura Stassi. We’re back with Part 2 of the Dating While Gray election season special with American Public Media, “Love Across the Divide.” We’re picking up with psychotherapist Ken Page. He says in difficult conversations, the magic words are “it makes sense you feel that way, because …”

KEN PAGE

It makes sense you feel that way because, and you actually do that, you’ve got your hand on your own map of the world. You’re not going to take your hand off that map, but the other person has their own map of the world. You rest your hand on their map and speak to the truth and the validity of it, even though it’s so counterintuitive to do that, then the other person feels hurt, and then they get to tell you the deeper meaning of that to them.

LAURA STASSI

I was going to say, are you not supposed to say that unless you actually feel it? So you’re supposed to keep asking questions until it does make sense to you that the other person feels that way.

KEN PAGE
Right, right, right. You may not agree, but you find the way because they’re not lying that it makes sense to them. It makes sense to them given the whole construct of their lives, that’s what you say yes to. You don’t have to feel the same way. And then you’re going to get your turn to do the reverse. But the next question is, how does that relate to what you experienced growing up, to your own pains, to your own needs. How does that relate to the deepest parts of you?

So in all of our like, let’s say there’s a couple with different political views. Like, let’s say fiercely different political views. Okay, they are fiercely protecting and trying to honor some part of them that really does matter that much, that’s the piece that ultimately needs to be heard.

 LAURA STASSI

I don’t know, I’m not a psychiatrist or a psychologist, but just in talking to a lot of people, I think there’s a lot of fear around politics these days. I have to say, I think a lot of it is justified, and I don’t think we can understand other people’s fears if we’re not walking in their shoes. I’m not a gay person, so maybe, unless, if I’m not an empathetic person, maybe I can’t understand that fear.

KEN PAGE

Right. And then you would need to hear it from me. You would need to hear my experiences as a dad with a child growing up in a school that honored our family and how horrifying it would have been to not have that for my child and for me. Yeah, you see, there would have to be dialogue, there would have to be understanding, but the point that you raised is a really great one, and I think even like that could be an instrument and a tool. Let’s say you’re in a relationship with someone who has really deeply different political views and their fiercely held views. What is the fear there? What’s that fierceness about what’s the fear? It’s almost like any time that happens, both parties need to hear what the fear is, because that’s the deeper issue. Is what that fear is, what’s the value that is so basic to them, that feels like it’s being stepped on by the other party?

And then we all have to do some real looking at ourselves, because prejudice, homophobia, sexism, racism, are inculcated in all of us. And no matter what your party is as a human being, it’s your job to deconstruct that. It just is.

LAURA STASSI

Yeah, our job as a human.

KEN PAGE
Yeah, our job as a human. No matter which party or which side you’re on, we don’t get to have an excuse for not doing that, and all of us are responsible, not just Democrats, not just Republicans. We are all responsible for doing that hard, humbling deconstruction work of seeing where we hold prejudices, where we “other” people.

LAURA STASSI

We’re talking a lot about couples who might have differences, and I’m hearing from a lot of older daters who say they automatically swipe left on someone, meaning they, you know, reject them if they identify as a political opposite. Is this a good idea? Because, in theory, you’re not wasting anybody’s time. You believe this, I don’t believe this. Let’s not even go down any kind of road to trying to have a relationship.

KEN PAGE

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the way I think of that is, how polarized are the two people? If they’re extremely polarized, it’s probably not a good idea. But if there’s some flexibility there, if they’re kind of alert to extremes. If they want to find a common ground, then I think it’s worth a try. It’s really worth a try. If that’s impossible, then that’s impossible. And you know, unfortunately, the parties have gotten kind of polarized in a way that it’s easy to associate each party with certain very strong political views.

LAURA STASSI

And negativity.

KEN PAGE

And negativity if you’re on the other side, yeah, but you know, is the person willing? And I think that’s the bottom-line question, because if you’re — let’s even say that the person you meet is highly polarized around their political party, but in other areas of their life, they are generous, they are thoughtful. They’re really willing to listen to your side of the experience. They can make space. They’re not rigid and held in that kind of very primitive, defensive way. In other areas of their life, there could be room, there could be maybe lots of room for connection. I think that’s often really worth finding out.

LAURA STASSI

I like that because if you read some of the studies, they say that actually, most Americans identify as moderate, and there comes a time where we feel like we have to pick a side, but that maybe a lot of us are more alike than we are different

KEN PAGE

In a world that sculpts complete polarization, you’re either one or the other. You’re saying that the moderates are getting muddied, that it’s getting confused, that they are not articulated and they’re not clear. So that’s a really, really important point. Is like, are we being pushed to sides when actually we’re more committed to hearing both sides.

LAURA STASSI

But at the end of the day, or come election day, we do have to choose a side, right?

KEN PAGE
Right. There’s all these people that don’t vote, right? A huge percentage of America doesn’t vote, and part of that is, and I just want to acknowledge, there’s the moderate population. And then there’s the I’m sick of both sides population, so there might be room to meet in that as well.

LAURA STASSI

Let’s say there’s an older couple who have got together, and one of the very first, I guess, hurdles they have to overcome is something kind of rocks them. For example, when you first met me, I introduced you to my son, and my son now wants to transition, and you have a problem with that. I guess what I’m looking for are tips to help ease difficult conversations when we’re potentially on two different sides of an issue.

KEN PAGE

Yeah, one tip is that there have to be many conversations, not one. This is not a conversation about where you plant the flag and that’s it. This is a series of conversations where both parties learn and grow.

I’m gonna share a story. A client of mine knew that she wanted to have a kid, met a guy, really. They fell deeply, deeply in love, and one day the guy came to her and was just devastated, and he said, I have to end this, because I know I don’t want to have a kid, and I love you. I love you. I’d want a whole life with you. He was devastated. She was devastated, but they had really been clear about where their flag was planted. Well, a long time later, she said, I just want to call him. She called him. They had a series of countless conversations, and they came to a decision together, which was a beautiful decision that worked for both of them.

I don’t even want to say what it was, because it doesn’t matter which side they landed on, but they never would have done that if they trusted the original flag landing. They didn’t. They questioned it, they talked, and they said it’s more important for us at this point to meet as human beings who care deeply about each other. That’s a really hard journey. So that’s one thing I want to say, is, remember, this is not one plant the flag conversation if you really care. It is a series of ongoing conversations where you listen to each other and hear and also shift and change and soften. , shift and change and soften.

LAURA STASSI

Shift and change and soften. I like that.

KEN PAGE

Yeah.

LAURA STASSI

And, you know, I think speaking as an older woman who was married for a long time and then got divorced, I think there’s a lot of coming into your own that you experience, and so maybe

when you’re about to embark on a new relationship, you might have a lot of cautiousness about it, like I don’t want to lose myself again, or I just found myself. I’m not gonna, you know, give up anything. However, I think to be the most mature, we have to do what you just said. I mean, there’s no harm in having open conversations about things. And maybe we do change our minds again.

KEN PAGE

Exactly, exactly. So true. And I think that like when you confront a partner or a potential date, and they are hardened about their political views, which is very understandable, but let’s say you encounter that hardened quality, you’re experiencing a hardness from them, not a softness, not an openness, not a humanity. And then there’s a bristling reaction to that that isn’t only due to political differences, it’s different. It’s due to a human experience of like the person in front of me just froze up, got cold, got defensive, and you feel that in your nervous system so and you think, yeah, that’s just our political differences.

It’s more than that. They have stepped away from their humanity, and you are stepping away from yours at that time. So I think that that thing of like, if you can encounter someone with deeply different views, but they stay connected. They don’t start seeing you as an enemy, they keep seeing your humanity. That makes a really big difference, and it’s hard to do when your deepest values feel like they’re being threatened.

LAURA STASSI

Yes. When your deepest values feel like they’re being threatened, I think that encapsulates how a lot of people are feeling right now on both sides. So it’s yeah, troubling times.

KEN PAGE
Like I really, really do want to speak about the universality of this. A friend of mine went to see a couple’s therapist who said to him, you are going to spend the rest of your life together, you and your husband learning a new language, and the language is their language, and it’s a different language, even though it’s it looks the same. And I think that captures so so much of the truth of intimate relationships, this bewildering space where you meet a wall. Harville Hendrix, again, said it so brilliantly. This is what he said. He said there comes a time in a relationship where the thing you most need from your partner is the thing they’re least able to give you.

And that is not the end of love. That is the beginning of conscious love, because it is at that point that you need to build a bridge that seems unbuildable at the moment, but because there’s so much love there, because there’s so much shared connection there, that bridge can be built. It might take a lot of time. It might take couples therapy. And I’m a big proponent of couples therapy, if you’re hitting any point in any arena, in the bedroom at the voting booth that really feels really difficult, and you love your partner and you want to make it work, get help. Get help.

LAURA STASSI

That’s psychotherapist Ken Page, author of Deeper Dating. After listening to this show, maybe you’re still firmly entrenched in your particular political camp, and you have no desire to connect romantically with someone in the other camp. Nothing wrong with that. As long as we all strive to not demonize or stereotype each other.

Here’s a final thought from Vicki, who’s successfully navigating romantic partnership with her political opposite, Peter. Vicki wrote this about the 2024 presidential election: Whatever the outcome, we are hopeful that the path forward for our country includes more people who are willing to look for the good in others, can treat their differences with respect and seek to find understanding rather than react with violence vitriol and bitterness. Thanks Vicki, words to live by as we all get out the vote.

Surely you know – we DID get out the vote.  According to data from the Associated Press, more than 153 million ballots were cast in the 2024 presidential race — close to the record turnout four years earlier.

This time, Donald Trump came out on top, with about 52 percent of the vote. Vice President Kamala Harris received about 48 percent – which translates to more than 73.7 million individual supporters. So if we can predict anything that will happen over the next four years, it’s probably a sure bet that politics is likely to continue to divide us.

But, it doesn’t have to. For additional help on this topic, I’m bringing on another expert voice. She’s a psychotherapist and an author.

JEANNE SAFER

I’m Jeanne Safer. The name of my book is “I Love You, But I Hate Your Politics,” or, “I Love You, But I HATE Your Politics.” I think it’s really important for people to understand these, these issues, because we don’t understand them, and people get very angry, and they have no sense of what’s going on. I’d like to change that a little bit.

LAURA STASSI

Jeanne herself is in a politically mixed marriage. She describes herself as a diehard liberal. Her husband is Richard Brookhiser, a historian and political journalist.

JEANNE SAFER

We’re going to have some different politics till the end of time.

RICHARD BROOKHISER

Well, I never voted for Trump, but I’m still, you know, conservative Republican. I just don’t, didn’t vote, you know, for the president in the last two elections, and that’s what I’m going to do again.

LAURA STASSI

Jeanne interviewed several couples navigating the red-blue divide. Her book was published in 2019 and since then, at least two of the couples have divorced. Still, she offers valuable advice and tips, including these.

JEANNE SAFER

Assume decency and goodwill in your opponent, even if you passionately disagree with him or her. Mutual respect is a prerequisite for civil conversation and an essential part of love.

Talk with each other about how you talk to each other. List your hot-button issues, and discuss how you both want to handle them. Every couple has different needs and solutions. My husband and I opted for avoidance, happy with abstract discussion in our radioactive topics.

George Washington said, we must take men as we find them. And the tolerance he expressed was a cornerstone of American democracy. Make this your mantra.

LAURA STASSI

Thanks, Jeanne. You can find more tips from Jeanne on the Bonus Content page of Dating While Gray. Past episodes of the show based on her book, “I Love You But I Hate Your Politics,” are available wherever you get podcasts. Timely information, for sure, as many of us get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving with friends and family who may not necessarily share our views.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I am so grateful to all of you for listening, for sending me questions and comments, for reading the e-newsletter, for sharing your stories, and following Dating While Gray on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. I’m also thankful to listeners who’ve supported the sponsors who support our show … and those who’ve provided direct financial support, like this listener.

MARIE VOICE MAIL,

Hi Laura, this is Marie. I’m a local therapist and also going through my own gray divorce. This show has been incredible and supportive and I just love it. Thanks so much.”

LAURA STASSI

Thank you, Marie, and others like her, including Anne, Anastasia, Claire, Daniel, David, Elizabeth, Liz, and John. I appreciate all of you very much.

This is the final Dating While Gray episode for 2024. Fingers crossed, we’ll be back in time for Valentine’s Day 2025. For updates on the show, keep an eye out on social media and the Dating While Gray e-newsletter. And keep in touch, I love hearing from you.

Meantime, my wish for all of us is a joyous and hopeful holiday season. Take good care, we’ll talk soon.

END CREDITS

Dating While Gray’s audio production and mix is by Steve Lack: Audio. Theme music by D. Peterschmidt. Please like and follow Dating While Gray wherever you get podcasts. That way, you’ll never miss an episode. And, if you’re so inclined, leave a review letting everyone know what you love about us. For more on the show, check out datingwhilegray.com. That’s where you can find Bonus Content, along with links to send me questions, comments, tips, and true stories – through email and voice mail. You know I love hearing from you. You can also sign up for the free Dating While Gray e-newsletter, delivered most Fridays to your inbox.

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I’m Laura Stassi. Thanks so much for listening.

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