Aerosmith Concert Gone Wrong + Attracting Healthy Relationships

It was 1988. I had a hot wrestler boyfriend and Aerosmith tickets. Oh, how I love being part of Gen X and a teenager in the 80s! The stories are crazy. We were wild. Feral. Left to our own defenses as the first generation of latchkey kids. No June Cleaver at home greeting us with milk & cookies off the bus. We took off on our bikes, and later in cool muscle cars, to meet up with friends and get up to Lord-knows-what until the ‘rents got home from work.

I was 15 in early 1988. I was boy craaaaazzzzyyy! Rocking my famous Jon BonJovi hair, check it out! French cuffing my acid wash jeans, hanging with my other boy-crazed friends, and just trying to be all-around cool and attract attention from cute boys.

It worked with the new kid a few grades ahead of me. He had just moved to small town Michigan and Bullock Creek High School from somewhere in Maryland. He was tall, blonde, fit, outgoing, and a star on the wrestling team. I somehow caught his eye in the gym. The wrestlers did their thing in the balcony and we had volleyball practice down below.

Word got out that he liked me and I liked him and… bingo, bango, 80s high school magic … we were soon GOING TOGETHER. Which mainly meant holding hands in the hall, snuggling up on the radiator together, and passing notes between class.

Howevah, in this case, hot wrestler dude was old enough to drive and had access to a car. He started coming over to my house, invited me to wrestling matches, took me to parties on the weekends. We were glued to each other. Even though I got wind of the fact that he was two-timing me, romancing a pretty little Freshman who also played volleyball. I didn’t care for that, but my goal was to spend as much time with him as possible and win this Battle for the Boy.

We both loved music. Great start to find a music lover. (Remember my ex-husband who never listened to music and had sports talk radio on in his car all the time? ) This guy was a full-on 80s hair band lover just like me! We both liked all of the same bands. I surprised him and got tickets to see Aerosmith at the Saginaw Civic Center. He was super happy and he got tickets to see Def Leppard the following month. Sqqqquuueeee!!! Two hair band concerts in a row with my new man!

The time came for the Aerosmith gig. My Mom gave me the go-ahead to go with my new boyfriend and a group of friends. Just be home at a decent time. I had hippie parents. I never really had a specific curfew. We met for a pre-party with some brewskies, shots, whatever, and headed to the concert. It was AWESOME! Great show, everyone had a great time.

Until….. the drive home. Boyfriend’s roomie drove us to the show, but had a few too many drinks and wasn’t super fit to drive home (How I ever survived my feral 80s upbringing is beyond me. Thank you for working overtime Guardian Angel ). My boyfriend volunteered to take the wheel.

We got stuck in lots of concert traffic gridlock and it was taking forever. By the time he hit an open stretch of freeway, he floored it to get outta there. Not thinking too far ahead, as teens rarely do… he didn’t think about the cop that clocked him going over 90 MPH.

This cop was NOT playing. He had seen it all 1000 times with concert traffic on his beat. He pulled us over and was hopping mad. Asked for license and registration. Who owns this car? Who are all of you? How many laws are you breaking (nobody wore seat belts back then, residual beer, contact buzz weed, all of it). He took my boyfriend out of the driver’s seat and cuffed him. Told him he was going straight to jail and told all of us that he should impound the car and have all of our parents come pick us up from jail.

My boyfriend and his roomie begged for leniency. It was my boyfriend’s roomie’s Mom’s car. Their last names did match and the address matched. The cop let him take the car to get all of us back to Midland and out of his goddamned face. He immediately hauled my boyfriend off to jail and made someone come pick him up from the slammer.

I was pretty much in shock. This fun concert night did not end the way I thought it would. I thought we would have a great date, make out in the car on the way home, and look forward to doing it all again for Def Leppard.

Word gets around a small country high school when big things like cops, jail, and an Aerosmith concert all get mixed together. My friend Melanie wanted all of the deets. We loved to write little notes to each other between class. She heard a rumor and I sort of filled her in. She then carried on and joked about my boyfriend being a jailbird and even drew a picture of him behind bars in a pinstripe suit with wings. She was very creative, that Melanie.

Somehow my boyfriend saw or heard about that note and me telling someone he went to jail. He was pissed (not drunk to any of my Brit readers, American translation means super-duper angry) Pissed right the heck off at me and did not hesitate to let me know. He broke up with me immediately. That did break my heart , but I was really, really sad and upset that I didn’t get to go to the Def Leppard concert I had my heart set on. **SIGH** 80s teenage woes.

I recovered from the heartbreak over hot wrestler dude and not going to the Def Leppard concert. I got to see them in my 40s in Memphis with Journey. We had backstage passes and even got to meet Joe Elliott. Karma eventually swung back in my favor. I found new boyfriends and even kept in touch with this one over the years via the magic of high school reunions and that new-fangled Facebook thing that came out in the 2000s. All’s well that ends well.

The ill-fated Aerosmith concert sitch made me think about relationships, destiny, who we are meant to be with, and who is just there for life experience. Mr. Right vs. Mr. Right-Now. This guy was definitely always destined to be one of many Mr. Right-Nows in my life. I mean… he was blonde. Very blonde. Which is not my type at all really. I have a type = tall, dark, and scrawny. Wrestler dude was kind of beefy and blonde (so was my ex-husband). All of the signs were there.

It took me a while to learn what is best for me in love and life. God and the Universe is and always was giving me signs and encouragement along the way. I was just a bit hasty and headstrong for… decades. I often credit my family heritage, almost all German on both sides, and being a Taurus, for my strong propensity to be bullheaded.

I share these stories with y’all so you can see how far I have come with health and mindset. To reassure you that if I can end up creating a life I love that is full of love, joy, and peace… anyone can.

This Week’s Shot of MINDSET

This week’s flashback to how 15-year-old me handled relationships got me thinking about attracting and maintaining healthy romantic relationships. I never really expected that from the teen version of me. Some people find and marry their childhood or high school sweethearts. I somehow knew that wouldn’t be me. Too many lessons to learn in love and life for me to get it right out the chute.

I am happy to report that I did finally get it right and married Simon, the love of my life, at age 41. Our relationship gets deeper and our love gets stronger every year as we grow old together. I have a lot of PSYCH-K® clients who want to work on attracting a healthy, loving relationship or improving the relationships they have.

I have a lot to offer clients working on relationship goals as I have a lot of experience getting it wrong and the joy and comfort of finally getting it right. I promise I will share everything I have learned along the way to love, joy, and peace. It is a lifelong journey of learning for me and I love to share what has helped me the most.

The awesome little book How To Be An Adult by David Richo dedicates an entire section to Relationship Issues and summary tips on ‘adult living in relationships’. He calls these The “Givens” of Relationships: Antidotes to Unrealistic Expectations.

Simon and I pledged to each other when we were first dating in our early 30s (We were together 9 years before getting married. We definitely took our time to be 100% sure before committing to marriage) that we would have a “mature adult relationship”. We promised we would both be able to say to each other “You were right. I was wrong.” And we often do.

Here are some great reflections from David Richo on Adult Living in Relationships if you are looking to strengthen this area of your life:

Only at rare moments is the love in one partner the same as that in the other.
Intimate relationships survive best with constant permission for ever-changing ratios of closeness and distance.
No one can control or change someone else, nor is it necessary.
No one is loyal or truthful all the time.
No relationship can create self-esteem, only support it.
There is no one person who will make you happy, keep you fascinated, love you as your favorite parent did, or give you the love you missed from your parents.
Most people in relationships seldom know what they really want, ask for what they really want, or show what they really feel.
Beneath every serious complaint about your partner is something unowned in yourself.

David Richo also has a book specifically on relationships called How To Be An Adult in Relationships: The Five Keys to Mindful Loving if these insights resonate with you and you want to go deeper with relationships in your life. His books are small, quick reads, but full of very deep insights and things to practice to improve your life and your relationships.

This Week’s Shot of HEALTH

In honor of sweethearts old & new… this week’s health tip is about sweeteners. Specifically some good data on what are the healthiest natural sweeteners to use if you are trying to or need to reduce sugar in your diet.

This great article The Healthiest Natural Sweeteners, Ranked, and How Best to Use Them is a super helpful guide when trying to reduce sugar in your diet.

I have experimented with all of these sweeteners over the 13+ years I have been cooking healthy plant based meals. This information helps me focus on the healthiest choices for sweeteners in different types of recipes.

I keep a Banana Bag in my freezer. Anytime my bananas get really spotty and ripe, I don’t panic about using them all or ever throw them away. I peel them and put the ripe whole bananas in a Ziploc bag in the freezer. These are easily used in any recipe calling for mashed banana. Just thaw about 10-15 minutes, mash, and use those saved bananas from your freezer.

I also recently found a good organic date syrup at Trader Joe’s and love a little drizzle over my baked oatmeal (recipe in last week’s newsletter) for breakfast. I buy Simple Truth brand organic applesauce in either the big container or a six pack of individual 1/2 cup containers. The only ingredients are apples and a little Vitamin C to preserve.

Enjoy experimenting with healthy ways to keep sweetness and sweet relationships in your life

If you are interested in using the power of the mind to uplevel your life, I share mindset expertise every week, along with fun & insightful stories from my own life path from 80s hair band superfan to chemical engineer to health & mindset coach (what a journey!).

You will also see plenty of health promoting tips and recipes because I am blown away by the power of intermittent fasting + a healthy diet to prevent & reverse just about any health concern Mindset plays a big part in health and healing too, the power of the Mind Body connection is pretty mind blowing.