Tyrese Gibson On Marriage, Relationships, Daughters & Parents | NXT Chapter With T.D. Jakes

If I had my mother and my father at the same house, I probably wouldn't be here. So I said, I forgive you because just maybe God removed you out of the house. Right. Because I would have been a crag here. Yeah. By now you should know on TV, Jake, that I want to welcome you to next chapter. And I am very, very excited about the guests that I'm going to present to you today. A powerful man in his own right. He's a popular actor and Hollywood, not just one, but two of the highest roasting film franchises of all times. He's an iconic singer, a platinum selling songwriter, and an award winning R&B veteran. He's also an accomplished producer, a successful entrepreneur, a New York Times best selling author, and above all, a devoted father. He remains a true global superstar. Please help me welcome, I release. We're glad to have you here, man. I want to welcome you. The only uncomfortable part of the day so far is hearing you, Bishop Jake's read off my Wikipedia page. Yeah. I am not worthy. Oh, you are so much more to do. Oh, God. I want to fill in some of the blanks in between the mountain tops. We covered the mountain tops in the introduction, but I want to talk about some of the other things that you have learned along the way about life, about family, about self, and the complexities of all of it. Chapter one, recreating yourself. I want to welcome you, first of all, to be a part of this great next chapter podcast. You've had many next chapters. You've had to turn the page of many times, to recreate yourself and expose different parts of yourself in order to have the longevity and the career that you've had from author to R&B singer, to actor, to action actor, to all the many, many things that we've seen you do. And it's not easy to be able to be a chameleon that can fit into various situations like that. What do you attribute that to? If you've never met a person with blind faith, I'm right here. All right. No point of reference. See, I'm not the son of Barry Gordy. Anita Baker is not my mother. Gladys Knight, I was not raised in a house with executives and musicians and people. I wasn't raised by Will Smith. I wasn't raised by Sydney, 48. Denzel is not my father. I wish he was, right? Because you're being raised in a house where it's not just the talent, it's the dialogue, it's the business, it's the understanding. It's all the things that you would hope to say, well, if you're going to take this journey, you don't have to worry about being blindsided about what's around the corner before you get there. Because mommy and daddy already had a conversation with you about the traps, the things to avoid, giving you the heads up. Right. Right. And so blind faith. I cannot believe that's my resume. I cannot believe that I'm the first in my family to ever see or achieve or accomplish the things that God has had in mind for me. And the pressure that comes with being the only. The pressure. It's scary. The pressure is scary. The pressure is real. Let me, before I ask you, I want to follow down that trail. So hold that thought. We recently hooked up in Charleston, South Carolina at a wedding. We've been knowing each other for years and years. And we got together at the wedding. At a pretty tough time in your life, you just lost your father. And we were able to manage to do you and encourage you. And I wondered in my mind, the guy who was sitting on the back of the bus drinking a Coke or Pepsi or whatever it was and got discovered and entered into a career that was absolutely amazing, never fully goes away. Money doesn't take that away. Grammys doesn't take that away. You have to live with who you were and who you are at the same time and learn how to make a homogeneous connection between the past and the present and the future. How do you do that? I don't know. I've never heard it broken down in such a scientific way. Like you just went boom, boom, boom, boom. And you can't get rid of my punish. You can't get rid of, you can't totally dismiss your upbringing and your training. And there's a part of you that you learn how to survive in the world and the streets and the city. And there's a part of you that had to learn how to survive in California and Los Angeles in the Hollywood scene. And there's a part of you that had to learn how to do business. And all of them come home with you at night. Yes. All of them. You didn't leave the guy on the bus. He's still there. And so a lot of people don't realize that. You get it? A lot of people don't realize it. So when you find yourself in a situation, it's which God does to talk it. Who's going to drive the car? Is it going to be the guy from Philly? Is it going to be the guy from Hollywood? Is it going to be the writer? How do you manage that? Well, I think of myself as a black octopus. My arms is in 30 different places. And they're all working at the same time. At the same time. And so I'm the head and I'm the heart. And then my arms is this everywhere. And we're doing things and trying to achieve things that are all happening in real time. And each project and its situation is in various different levels. And you don't want to lose sight of any of them. Right. And then what a blessing it's been that the singer has helped audition and set up the success of the actor. Right. And then the actor and the singer has given birth to the entrepreneur. Yes. And then the co-kid is in the back of the bus. Yeah. And he's riding the wave. Yeah. I started this. Yeah. And I'm on the bus. And we got a lot of seats. And whatever version of Tyrese y'all end up seeing were all headed that way. And the bus is being driven by God. My problem is all of my TV Jakes is one of the talk at the same time. And so it just depends on who asked me and what tone of voice you asked me. Which one you're going to get? What environment. Yeah. And what environment I'm in. And I have to manage those people. The Apostle Paul said, when I would do good evil, it's present with me that which I would not do. I do a wretched man that I am. Who should deliver me from the body of this death, this sin, this human experience, and all of those people live with you. So you're in a mansion now. And you're eating something that you ate when you were back home, neck bones. Yes, right. Neck bones in a mansion. Yes, right. Chittlands on China. Yeah. The unique experience we have as a people of having climbed up and been colored, we've been Negroes, we've been black. We've been darkies. We've been everything to the point that there's sometimes an identity crisis, not just through us corporately but individually in finding yourself. And I wonder, did anybody else ever feel that way? Yes. Yeah. You know, you're, I've had so many moments in my life where I know that I had to dig deep within me because the things that I have in mind for me, you realize that other people don't have them in mind for you. Right. And so when someone makes it clear, no, no, no, we don't have that in mind for you. And I have it in mind for myself. It won't go away because this person or this room or this situation denies you of what you feel like belongs to you. Yeah. And so the appetite, the determination, it's the self-talk, yeah, the self-motivation, the speaking over yourself, the pouring over yourself, the, you know, and the thing is, I want to say this, I've been really struggling with how to put words to this because there's a chosen few that will, that will hear a piece of this and decide it goes over their head. You know, selfish starts with the words self. Uh-huh. And they've made selfish and being selfish and negative. But most of us are giving, doing, showing up for people, mentally, emotionally, physically, financially, psychologically, and we're overextending ourselves. Yes. And we're tired and we're sick and we're wiped out. And we got nothing left for ourselves. I appreciate it. And they don't care to notice. Yeah, they don't care. You know, I'm here to get what I'm here to get. Right. And even if you, if I wipe you completely out. Yeah. And so I have allowed myself to be more selfish and focus on me. And focus on me. And say, I'm not returning that text at that call because I don't have the time or the bandwidth to be on the receiving end of what you're about to dump on. Yeah, yeah. So, and then, especially when you know what the phone call is going to be about. Right. So now you got to say, I'm not going to give you emotional access to me. Right. Because you're going to change the energy of my day. So I'm going to make the selfish decision to say, if I want my day to be better, it's not going to include you. Right. You will not want to miss as he shares his personal experience with grief and losing parents. You know, when you talked about somebody like Denzel was not your father. You didn't grow up in an environment where you had a model to fit where you ended up. You knew, you had no blueprint, anything like that. I think every man and probably every woman yearns to having their parents some sort of shape measurement, pattern, blueprint of what they're going to and what they're going to be. We looked from that from our father. My father got sick when I was 10. He died when I was 16. I realized when I was 30, that as I wept for him, I was weeping for me. I recognized that I wasn't just weeping at the loss of him. I was weeping at the questions I didn't have answered. At the things that I didn't have resolved. You know, did you really love me? What did you really think of me? You never got to see me when you lost your father. It's part of the pain coming from inside your own house. This was interesting. When my father passed away, rest in peace to that brother, to that man. I went to St. Louis to see him, stage four, pancreatic cancer. Life was riddled with alcoholism and crack cocaine and just never quite got his hands around figuring it out. And I said to him, I just want you to know I forgive you. And I wanted him to know why. I said, I forgive you for not being there to protect me, for not giving me the heads up of what's around the corner. I don't know that he would have been anybody that would have changed my life and business or changed my life. You know, I don't know that my father was ever a very gory that could sit me down as his son. Don't sign that deal and here's why. Yeah. But I said to him, I forgive you. And then I realized that if my mother, rest in peace, messed my life up with the 27 years of alcohol, the verbal, emotional, psychological and physical abuse and all the abuse that was in my house and it's still affecting me to this day. If I had my mother and my father at the same house, I probably wouldn't be here. So I said, I forgive you because just maybe God removed you out of the house. Right. Because I would have been a crag here. Yeah. I would have been verbally and physically abusive to my mother the way you were. Yeah. There was other men that came in my house that ended up doing it to my mother ultimately. And so I was introduced to love and I was raised to believe that this is what love is. Love is not kind. Love is not gentle. Love is verbally abusive. Love is physically abusive. Love is all of these things that I was raised in. And so I would always find myself gravitating towards women that I would be fighting and arguing, being dysfunctional with. Right. And anybody else that any other version of love that I was in the president of felt soft. It felt, it felt boring. Yeah. You ain't argue? Yeah. Well, she must don't love you if you're willing to fight and argue. And so that's, and so I have to say to him, thank you for removing yourself from my life because if the crack cocaine and the alcoholism and everything that you were doing, that would have all been an impression that you would have made on my life that as a grown man, I would have still been deeply hurt by and affected by because I would have been raised by another level of trauma. Right. So as an example, you know, people love to look at you, Bishop Jake's, and say, look at him in the mega church. Look at him, what he's driving, what he's living in. Look at him, what his wife, and look at him, what his daughter who's now out there on stage, changing lives, and Sarah Jake's who I'm so proud of. And I know you are. And, but they, they, they always look at the fruits and the outcome. Yeah, yeah. And even if you make them aware of the strife and the struggles and the stuff that the family had to navigate through, when you mentioned, you know, I remember I was preaching and only had 17 people in front of me. Yeah. They have no concept of really wrapping their heads around that because the version of Jake's, Bishop Jake's that they're looking at is on the grounds of 40 books and mega church and where you are now. Yeah. And, and they trapped you in how they met you. That's true. They, they, they don't recognize you wrote 42 books. They don't recognize that you sold 500 million dollars worth of movies. They, they want to put you in a place where they can assault you with their implications. That's it. And, and you are how I met you. Yeah, you are how I met you and you are who I met you. Right. And that's what I meant earlier when I was talking about, you know, you have to live with that guy who grew up in that volatile home. He's still in there. Yes, sir. Okay. And money didn't take him away. No. And movies didn't take him away. And books didn't take him away. He's still there. He bottled up somewhere inside. And then this unresolved issue, which I can relate to, my father wasn't an alcoholic, but I can relate to an unresolved issue with your father. It's complicated. And let me, let me answer this. At what point or did you have a moment that you recognized that you were an orphan? Yeah. That hit me a month ago. How did that feel? The idea of being an orphan was something that we seen on television, documentaries, specifically throughout Africa. Right. You know, like, oh, this is village of kids that are orphans because they mother and father died of HIV-A or, you know, a bunch of bad guys came in and came in. They killed a bunch of people and here's these foundations raising kids as orphans. And so when they delivered my father's ashes to my house, and I was able to put my father's ashes next to my mother's ashes, I said, my mother and father haven't lived under the same roof since they divorced. Well, and now they're here. My mother and my father never even made it to my house that I've been living in Atlanta for nine years. So this is their first time living under the same roof with their son. And then I thought, well, at least they're here. And then I'm. I'm a bit of a junkie for the sense of humor of God. So I'm thinking of myself, my mother and father are finally under the same roof with a baby boy. Right. And my mother died on Valentine's Day after giving birth to an R&B singer. If you, if you're not booked to do any concerts throughout the year as a singer, you're likely going to get booked on Valentine's Day. And so there's a sense of humor in that. And then I always have my mother and father's ashes. I don't always announce it to everybody. But every meeting and conversation that I have, I always have my mother and father's ashes in the room with me because I want them to know how proud I am of them for doing the best they could. And when nobody's around, do you ever talk to them? Yes. Yes, I do. It's for them at therapy. Yeah. I always say, Mama, I don't know what's about to happen, but they pull it up right now. Yeah. And just cover me. Yeah. I know you was always a praying mama and I know you still with me, mom. So just pray for me with, I might not have the words in this meeting. But I wanted to be something. And then the biggest thing is I don't have it all figured out that. Yeah. I don't. And that scares me. Yeah. Chapter three, you may not even know what to name it, but you may be feeling it. It's called Survivors Remorse. What God is doing right now, I've always had this big appetite for success never driven by money, driven by impact. And what God is doing right now with visions and ideas and dreams and the things that keep me up at night. I've had this thing in my mind. And God, when you pray, I always say, pray specific prayers so that God can specifically bless you and cover you for the things that you're vulnerable about. Renewable about. Yeah. And so I'm in a place right now where I am sure that God is about to take me into these levels and this level of stratosphere in my career. And I don't feel prepared for what God is about to do, even though I know He's about to do it. So now I'm on this mission where I'm saying, I am very specific about, I got to surround myself with people to cover me spiritually with the wisdom and the knowledge and the blueprint and pour into me to say, okay, let's not talk about the winds and what happens. Talk about the moments where you were almost wanted to give up. Talk about the moments where you had to push through the trauma and the stress and the press or the social media attacks or the accusations or the talk about how you got through that. What prayer did you pray to get through that? Because I say this in my own way respectfully, I feel like where I love you, Bishop, as you have always been transparent about the moments that you wanted to quit and give up and the struggles because it's almost like survival's remorse, where it's like everybody looks at me as being so successful and all I want to do is make you all aware of how hard and how challenging it has been and how challenging it gets and you feel this overwhelming sense of wanting to really break it all down and breaking it all down ultimately gives folks permission to say, okay, I could achieve it. I feel a focus on the net worth and the playing and the shiny building and how big the church is. I have a plan to go ahead. Go ahead, go ahead, maybe that's prophetic. Maybe somebody will hear that and say, we're red bow, we're red bow. I welcome it. You're welcome. Yes. So, there's people that think of survivors or morse when they think of that and it's usually like, my friend died and we were in the same car and I survived and so they survived. But the other version of survivor was morse is I'm more successful than everybody in my family. Yeah, I knew you weren't. I knew you weren't all of that. I knew you weren't. There's a scripture in the Bible that says, I will give you treasures in the darkness. And at first I thought we made it in life in spite of adversity. Now I think we made it because of that person. If there had not been tension, there would be no muscles. If there had not been obstacles, if there had not been something to prove, if you hadn't felt invisible, you wouldn't have screamed out, I'm over here. See me, hear me, feel me, those sorts of things become a paramount important. And also I wanted to say to you because you said something, I think it's on Facebook or on social media somewhere where you talked about my wife and I'm talking about marriage and how it helped you. I see you. I see you. I was like almost 35 years ago. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just... I think God gives us serenity fathers and mothers to replace what we didn't have. Yes. Chapter number four, finding the right burden. Oh yeah, you want to get this. What was that like 35 years ago to get some counsel as if I were talking to you even though I were talking to a screen. You were talking to me. Yeah. I seen it on YouTube, but you were talking to me. Yeah. And that is why we love you and we are so moved by you and your transparency. The way you unpacked that conversation and dialogue and went into specifics about the working, functioning dynamics of your marriage. And then whenever your wife spoke, I mean to see you sit back. Yeah, yeah. It was just really like wow, you know, to just feel like this alpha strong dominant kind of man of God sits back and he holds his wife at such a high level of regard. So when she speaks, you like you disappear. Yeah. And you want nobody to be focused on you while the queen is speaking. Exactly. Oh, it was a chick. A chick. She is a lover and lace. And don't let the lace fool you. Recently, when I went through that health malady and I had a heart attack, my wife never left me for three days or nights. She never left my side. Every time I woke up, she was staring at me. She has a tenacity. She had just gotten over a knee surgery. We were dealing with all of those things at the same time. It was really amazing. She paid her knee no mind. She hadn't walked on a cane or walk or anything since when I collapsed on that stage, she ran over to where I was. She is leather and lace. So when I sit back, one of the greatest choices we get to make in life is who we are going to partner with. My God. And that choice needs to be taken real seriously because you're going to be in the foxhole with that person. And you need to know that when hell breaks loose, they're going to be there. They're going to be back to back and shoulder to shoulder with you. And you're going to be comfortable with that closeness. You know? Yeah, because all of us bring baggage. All of us had a bus moment. All of us came out of some sort of pit or hole or trouble. Even wealthy, successful people, we have a tendency to think that if people went to Ivy League schools and if they went to private schools, they had no trauma. That's not true. Trauma knocks on every door. And when you get your trauma and my trauma mix together, they either find a way to fit together and it becomes a key in a lock or they clash together and we spend the next 10 years fighting each other like we're in the Vietnam War. How did you know? That's a good question. Because and my question is coming from this place. I've been married in divorce twice. My divorce sadly is played out for the world to see. Child support, baby mama drama on full display. I'm almost like the poster child at this point. And I've been proud to be able to speak up and speak out about, you know, family law court systems and if you were born a man, you walk in the courtroom, they've already had a preset menu as to what the outcome of this situation is going to be. It does not matter what you say, a do or how fancy your lawyer is. But how many relationships were you in that allowed for you to say, okay, well, that was not it. That was not it. But then when you got to the presence of your wife, how did you know she was the one? Well, first of all, I was a Christian. I had the whole spirit. I had the inkling that doesn't mean I floated around the room and had halos over my head. I was a man, okay, okay. I used to tell my wife there's a man about this room, okay. But the reality is there is a knowing that it's spiritual. And this is what you know, it's not she frying those she is. It's not her voice. So she's got the voice available. It is that we will always be friends that I will always be for you. That you will always be for me. I might screw up. You might mess up. We might go through hell. We might be under the dialysis machine. But if you're under dialysis machine, I will have your back. That feeling of connection, especially when you grew up without it. It becomes extremely important to know that you're not connected to my job, my career, my name, my money, my fortune, my education, my intellect or whatever it is. That you really are into me. And the problem is when you've never had that a lot of times you will repel it because you're not used to it. You will repel it and give it up for somebody who fights, like you said, and give it up for somebody who gives conflict because we tend to be creatures of habit and recreate situations that we grew up in because we're at home in hell. If you were born in hell, when you go to hell, you're at home. So the first thing that has to be broken and you have to break this is hell you were birthed in. When you break out of that and you finally decide that I deserve to be loved and I deserve to be treated well. And I deserve to have good things in my life. And you stop self-sabotaging anybody who cares about you because you have this inner conflict going on that they had nothing to do with, but they inherited when they got you, when you get real with you and you find somebody who will sit there and listen to you and talk to you and talk you down and get you together. And no, I'm not talking to the star. I'm not talking to the actor. I'm talking to the guy on the back of the bus because he's still in there. Whoever marries you, marries all nine versions of you. Praise God. Yeah, because you can't act all the time. Pretty soon you have to take off the mask and with no lines, you have to be who you are, who you really are. And finding somebody who can embrace all sides of you and then learning the language to be able to explain yourself to the person who is confused by your behavior. When you learn the language that say, I know this is crazy about me. And I may not always be this way. And I may outgrow it. But when you do such a thing, it scares me. It triggers me. It triggers me. Yeah, that's what therapy gives you is language. Yes. It then always gives you cures. Yeah, yeah. It gives you language. Let me verbalize what I'm feeling. Because until you verbalize it, you can't get it out. Yeah. Okay. So you got me counseling with no, no, no, this is, this is, I came here just for this. You feel it? Oh, my God. You know, one of the things I want you to know that I'm like literally inspired by. And I can speak for me and everybody when it comes to you and your first lady, the level of regard that you have for each other, the level of nurturing. And like while you're preaching, your wife is at full attention. Yeah. Yeah. As if she didn't just arrive with this man that's up here preaching and she ain't going home with this man. That's what she's on the front row and high alert. Like, I never, it doesn't feel like neither one of you guys have allowed yourself to get too familiar. No, no. And there's such an honor and decency and respect and covering around that. And so what you just shared about when you had that moment on stage and she had just had her own knee surgery every time you open your eyes. And she was awake. I'm not even surprised. She threw that cane and ran out to meet me. She ran out. And I give her the credit because generally when you get married, one of you is gifted another is crazy. I'm the crazy one. I'm the crazy one. But there's got to be somebody stable who's consistent. But you know, most creative people are a little bit weird. Okay. So that creativity that makes you walk into an empty room and see it with brick on the wall and stone on that wall and this painted over here. That creativity, that imagination works for and against you. Crazy. Yeah. It gives you an idealism that is hard for people to reckon with because my wife can't see it till it's there. I can walk into a dump and see a palace. Wow. I'm going to put the pool over there. I'm going to put this over here. I'm going to do this. You know, I got it in my head. What are all of this? Yeah. I dress by myself. Yeah. I can see. I know how I want it to go. So opposites attract. But the very thing that attracts you later repels you because their steadiness starts to feel like boring and your excitement starts to feel like wow. And if you make it over that hurdle, if you make it over the hump, I figured out that we're losing each other in the turns of life. If you make it over it, men of policy, men of life, crisis, and make it over surgeries, and make it over grief, and make it over accidents, that grief you went through. That's got side effects. Oh, yeah, absolutely. You know, it's like the only person that's it. The only person that's experiencing that is the person that's intimately with you every single day. Every day and all the versions of you and how to express this stuff in an anger and fear and tears. Yeah. And can you afford to break down and still be respected in the morning? Those are the kinds of things we got to do. But I got to get through this because I wanted to say one last thing if you don't mind. Say it if you want. I just want to say thank you. I want to say thank you. I want you to know how often I actually pray for you. Thank you. And I'm saying thank you because you have literally changed this place. You have decided and God has been so present over your life. You have been a vessel. The messages that got your cell phone tower into Jesus is so strong. I'm sure that at this point when you get out on stage and you speak, you probably have a couple of bullet notes on the topic and everything that happens in between them bullet notes. You're channeling in real time on stage. And everybody in the audience leaves a very different person than they showed up. As because you have allowed God to speak through you and display the fullness of you, the good, the transparency, the challenges, the ups, the downs. Even your daughter having a child at the young age, I mean, what do we do? You have reinvented yourself over and over and over in front of us. And I want you to know that I pose this question all the time. Okay. All right. I'm ready. Chapter number five, material possessors. Are they all the correct up to the, let's see what Tyree says to say. And I'm speaking front of folks, I say, by a show of hands, can anybody in here that's behind the cameras in this interview, can anybody in here right now, if you know, what was the net worth of Dr. Martin Luther King when he was assassinated? Can anybody tell him what was in his bank? Don't Google it. Don't chat GPT. Anybody know? No hands. What was the square footage of Dr. Martin Luther King's house when he was assassinated the day he died? What was the RAM size on his car? Anybody know the brand of car he was driving or how many cars he had? Okay. So in my mind, we are not here to inspire people from materialistic possessions or net worth what we drive in the square footage of our house. We are here to empty ourselves of everything that we can to give people permission to be great, to pull them up, to pour into them, to activate something inside of them that could give them purpose, to pour into a prison inmate and say, I'm going to get out of here one day and I'm going to decide to be great when I get out of here because Bishop T.D. Jake showed up with the prison ministry and poured into me what God has done through you, through it all. I just have to say thank you. I often have a saying, the real message that I bring to you is that God can do so much with so little. That's the story that he can do so much with so little that everybody is eligible because if he can use me, he can use anybody. Okay. I honestly trust this truth before God. If he could, you know how our grandmothers and great-grandmothers could make cornbread with out of eggs and then take powdered milk and make pancakes. That's what he did. He took nothing. He took mud and made a man and he still shaping and he's still forming and he's still blowing and he's still breathing and the reason that I am a Christian is not because I have perfected being Christ like. It is that my only hope of being formed into something usable was the nostrils of the God that breathed the breath of life into me. So please know that, please know that I am not this exceptional person. I have the same pain, trauma, life, crisis, confusion that you do. Same exact thing. But you're able to verbalize it. I can verbalize it. And that gift of verbalizing it. But understanding, if we're talking about a teleprompter, go read those same words on that teleprompter and I promise it won't have the same. It will not have the same. In Bishop T.D. Jakes were to read it. Because I am in touch with myself. Praise God. I am definitely in touch with all of the oil. And most people lie to themselves and they present the version of themselves they wish and they were. And they're not in touch with all of themselves. So you can't do a 360 if you're determined to be a 180. Chapter number six gets real personal when he starts to talk about a public divorce. Can you imagine? Deon and Tyrese's daughter, your daughter living with you, I understand. Deon tweeted something in response to father's raising daughters that impacted you. Have you ever talked to Deon about raising kids after divorce and being a single father? Yes. We've had conversations. You know, there's a lot of single fathers, a lot of single mothers. And so what's always interesting for me is I know what I want to talk to my daughter about. I struggle with when. So when you know that certain things are being said about you, when you know that you're being put in a certain light, when you know what's being written and court documents that will end up being posted on TMZ, you have to live with that. And now social media and people in their comments, my goal is, okay, this is what's being said. But I just got to figure out when I'm going to have the conversation with my daughter because I got a mentally, emotionally, physically and psychologically protect you. And so we've been having a lot of fun with the stuff that looks a certain way. And then once I do my part as a father and I set her down, I had these conversations, then she looks at things to a totally different lens. There's nothing like loving a daughter that changes how you handle a woman. Wow. There's nothing like it. There's nothing like it that your girlfriend is somebody's daughter, that's your wife is somebody's daughter. You don't really get it until you have a daughter and allow that daughter to speak in your life. Now I don't want to put you on the spot. I'm very protective of people. You know anything about me at all, I'm extremely protective of people. But I understand you had a conversation with Holly Berry about divorce and about child support. It's as much as you are comfortable with talking about that. Can you share something with you? Yeah. Well, what I said to her, it was on my Instagram. I posted it. And so it is public knowledge what I posted. But it was actually on the topic, most recently, it was about her saying that her current daughter has been asking her to marry her because they've been together for a while now. And she has been struggling with the idea of ever allowing herself to marry again. And I say, well, I can relate to that. I've been a relationship now with my lady, Zellie, for five years. And she's always hinting at marriage. Some people will say, oh, you're a band-aid. You're just filling into blanks. And at a certain point, he's going to dispose of you and then go find the woman that he actually wants to marry. But people don't understand is that your opinion is formulating from things that you have never experienced. You don't know what it's like to wake up, get married, have a prenuptial agreement in place, have the prenupt to get cracked, where you end up paying all of her legal fees and my legal fees. And now I'm paying all this money to attorneys trying to protect what I have. And then you realize that somebody marries you and then they said, I don't want to be here anymore. And then they're trying to take everything that belongs to you with them. And it is really a painful process. And so, well, hey, if we could be happy and we could be together and we could not get married because if you ever decide that you don't want to be married anymore, now you're going to be another person trying to take everything that I've worked my butt off for the last 30 years. And what does that look like? And how long is this going to last before the judge decides this is my final judgment? So everything about my last divorce took four and a half years. I lost all of my appeals and the lower courts. Then I lost all of my appeals in the Supreme courts. And so I had like three weeks to cough up almost $1.2 million that I did not have to give. And then who do I turn to when I'm financially depleted? I was doing all right financially. I feel this divorce turned in the four and a half years. I got this calculator in my head. This adding up all the trauma we have talked about. And it's smoking. It's smoking the batteries are burning from the experience you went through with your mother to the death of your father, to the crisis of three relationships, to try to figure out how to raise a daughter, two daughters, why are you trying to heal yourself? How do you cope with feeling and everybody having an opinion about all stuff you're doing you crying on the internet and everybody's making fun and everybody? How do you cope with being misunderstood? I've gotten comfortable with being misunderstood. And I've been the beneficiary of being misunderstood. Because when people don't understand you they want to stay away from you. Okay. Oh, he weird. He does. He does. Oh, thank you. I would rather be at dinner for three hours with Bishop TD Jakes. Because at this point I value my time. I value my mental health. I value the people that I allow in my space. And so I have this very simple saying, if I do a lunch or a dinner with you and I leave the same person that I showed up as, give me my three hours back. My goal in life at this point is to become very intentional about who I allow in my personal space, who I allow myself to exchange with. And this is not money. This is not about like, you know, everything about who I spend time with has to be connected to a mission, how we going to get to the money. No, because most of the most life changing moments and exchanges that I've had over my 46 years has nothing to do with having conversations about how to get to the money. You know, I don't know what I don't know. And I am afraid at this point of what I don't know. I need somebody to love me and to a better me. Give me the heads up of what's around the corner. Talk to me in great detail about the choices and the mistakes, the shortcomings, the things that you were blindsided by, the charm, the charisma, the undiscovered magicians that know how to create all the smoke and get you to think and believe that they are what they appear to be. And then when the smoke clears, this is what their intentions were. Love me in a way that's connected to protecting me because I'm tired of to cry. I'm tired of coming close to losing it all. I'm tired of living and being on edge. I'm tired of, I'm afraid of what I don't know. And who's going to love me? Who's going to make me a choice and say, let me love you to protect you from all the things that you don't know? Chapter number seven deals with life after divorce. It deals with current relationships. So if you didn't have a point of reference at home and the arms of a mother or sitting on the lap of a father and you didn't have a point of reference in the three relationships, not saying it's their fault, but it didn't work out. What's different about this one that gives you the hope of finding the love that little boy, I'm not talking about the grown man, the actors, the fast, driving fast and furious, that has anybody ever loved your little boy and do you think you found that person? What's interesting, here's the best way I could answer that. Because you're speaking for a lot of men. There are a lot of men who feel the way you do. Wow. I, I don't know how much I could connect to the current relationship that I'm in and in this capacity. I'm actually surprised and shocked that my relationship had lasted this long because it started with flirting, that it went into trauma bonding and then it became just maybe God made you an assignment over my life and I'm an assignment over yours. I showed up broken, she showed up broken. We showed up with baggage, lots of baggage, but we made the decision that we're going to love each other enough to stand here and help each other unpack. I'm not going to judge you with the baggage that you showed up with. Don't judge me with mine. We might argue and disagree about some of the stuff that's pre-existing traumas that we brought into the relationship. You brought it to your head, yeah. And so what do we do about where we are and what we have? And guess what? If we ultimately have made each other better, were we supposed to be in each other's life for just this period? Because we were here to prepare ourselves for who else is supposed to be here? Or did we go through all of this live unraveling? Your parenting issues, my parenting issues, relationships that have put triggers and boundaries and trauma, nobody ever talks to me that way. No one ever makes me feel, you know, so now I'm now moving and operating within the comforts and discomforts of your past experiences. I call it marrying your nurse. I call it marrying your nurse, the person that you went to to get well, you don't recognize it, they're scaffolding and not the building. Okay, and you walk off tearing up the building and living in the scaffolding. And it's hard to determine which one is which. A lot of prayer, a lot of discernment. I took my wife to every old woman I could find, including my grandmother, let the smoke come up because nobody knows a woman like a woman. Yeah, nobody knows a woman like a woman. And there are women who have the same kind of trauma stories that you have and have been through the abuse that you have. And when those traumas clash, the house burns it out. Sometimes with the kids in it. So you can't afford to marry the scaffolding after you built the house. Yeah, some people are in your life for a season. Some people are in your life for a reason. And some people are in your life for a lifetime. I don't know what category she fits in, but you got to figure that out and you got to figure that out soon because you're getting older. And you're running out of time. And I say that with a face full of gray hair that if you don't figure it out quick, it ain't going to matter in a minute. You just said something. Some people are in your life for a reason. Others are there for a season. And it's important to recognize when people's seasons are over. There's an expiration date on loyalty. Some of us want to hold on and hold on and hold on. And you know that this relationship is that capacity. It's hit a wall. Nothing about this season that you're in right now. Make sense to proceed with this person, but you want to hold on because you're familiar with it. And so I've wrestled with all of those things, but it all goes back to this. And I'll put a button on this. Regardless of what me all may think or believe, we've created a checklist. What she looked like. The boom boom and the Kyle Kyle. What she dressed like. What she looked like. What her net worth is, you know, women they call them a checklist. Men have checklist too. And I've went into this relationship and I said, this woman does not check off a lot of boxes for me. And yet for the women that I did say have the majority of those checklist, where they are now. Right. I could not have been more wrong. Right. And so maybe God and the equation of this woman has said, you thought you had it all figured out, but I'm going to send you something that doesn't look, doesn't walk, doesn't talk, doesn't have any of these things according to this checklist that I've created. Next thing you know, we're at five years and I'm with this woman right now in a relationship that lasted longer than my last marriage. Well, chapter number eight, you think it's just a movie or a show, but it's really a business show business. Tell me about the role you wish you to took that you did. TV, film, whatever. And you look back at it since I should have took that. Well, I don't really know if there's a role I should have took that I struggle with over the role that I'm determined to still do. Okay. The life story of Teddy Pendigrass. Okay. That's the movie that keeps me up at night. I was the Paul Barrett as general. I was with him for at least six years prior to him passing away. And he said, you're the only person that could play me in a movie because even though you're saying that you act, you never wanted to be me. And he's like, I would never want anybody to play a role of me as Teddy Pendigrass who groomed and nurtured and tried to sound like me, look like me, perform like me. You were you, the whole time. And that's why I want you to play me in the movie. So Lee Daniels is attached to direct it because him and Teddy are both from Philadelphia. And so, you know, it's in a gray area right now. There's some stuff that's going on creatively that's kind of put the project on hold. But I hope and I pray that I'm able to keep my word that I gave him that I'm going to tell his story. What kind of man was Teddy Pendigrass? He was a good man. I grew up, my brother used to have these eight tracks with Teddy Pendigrass on him. And he would turn them up all the way to 10 and play them. And he was the man. Yes. Famous incidentally for wearing white suits and you got on the white jacket. And he performed with his cowboy hat. Yeah. When I met him, he was in a wheelchair doing gospel plays. Yeah. You you watched his deterioration. There's nothing like deterioration to show your inner ingredients. In in a word or two, without divulging anything private or personal, what kind of man was he? Charm charming charismatic. You know, I've been around my share of people that are in a wheelchair or living with some type of terminal illness. And you'd be surprised at how often they go out of their way to make sure that nobody feels sorry for them. Right. Right. And Teddy was that guy. Don't feel sorry for me. What's going on? I even, but yeah, you know, whatever you going through, I mean, you ain't going through this. Right. Right. You know, so he'll be the one to give you some perspective while he's laying in the bed, Quasar Polizia, paralyzed from the neck down. Right. And then you leave there and you go, well, yeah, you know, he gave me some perspectives that I did not have. But yeah, he didn't want anybody to feel sorry for him in his condition, in his situation. He'll have conversations with you about it. But he never wanted you to leave feeling sorry for him because he found strength. And the choice that God kept him alive as long as he kept him alive because he could have died in that accident. There is a certain fraternity that seems to exist amongst talented actors, singers, what have you. Either it's a very good fraternity or they're beefing at each other. You seem to have had a great fraternity. And what about the brook? Tell me about the right. 60 pounds. He lost 60 pounds. I saw him on TV. I almost didn't recognize him. Tell me about that. Number one, how hard is it? And is he going to gain the back? I don't, I don't know anything about his weight loss. I seen it online like everybody else. I'm not in touch with him to call him and have a conversation with him about. But it's my understanding that he lost all the weight for a movie role. Four movies. Playing a wrestler or some sort. And yeah, I'm sure if he lost all that weight for the role, then he'll probably be putting it back on. You probably don't remember this, but that's one of the first things you told me in California when we were going out to eat. How you eat sometimes and gain weight and do what you got to do and then go in the gym and work it all the streets. So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's back in your baby boy. Yeah, we ain't going there. We're going to stay out here. We're the areas fresh. What was Will Smith's advice to you? Will Smith said, you can often tell how far your life and career will go based on the five people you spend the most time with. So if you have a problem with your life, you should have a problem with the five people that you have surrounded your life with. If you're out of shape, you likely reflect the group of people that allowed for you to look that bad. What you're doing, what you're not doing, the direction you're going in, what direction you're not going on going in is all the reflection of the five people that you spend the most time with. That's a profound statement. Oh yeah. So we're right down and remembering because sometimes it is easier to see your brother than it is to see yourself. And sometimes seeing him helps you to see yourself. I only got one more card on it and I'll be done. Chapter number nine, I couldn't let Tyrese go without asking him, how's your mental health? How is your mental health today? Okay. Fraggle. Okay. I... That's the terribly honest answer. Yeah. It's fragile. It's fragile because I'm still processing my divorce. I don't like where I am financially because of a four and a half year legal with all it's bad. And at the same time, my life could only... I feel like... How could I say this? I really want to encourage somebody with what I'm about to say. So think of me as a rock. Okay. And then there's this... What do you call those things that poof, you know, that slingshot, right? So in most cases, the slingshot is a stick and two things that go at the top. And then there's a rubber band on each side and then the rock. So I feel like my life right now, literally. I'm stressed. I'm on edge. Anxiety. I'm unsure. I'm praying. I'm certain. I'm inspired. I'm motivated. I got all... I got this cocktail of all of these different things that I'm feeling and I'm the rock that's inside of this slingshot and the rubber band is Jesus. Stretching me all the way back. And then when he lets go, I'm going to get thrusted into a level that I've been praying for. My heart has been desiring. So being stretched to the level of depletion, mentally, emotionally, financially, psychologically, I'm in that exact place right now. Ten years from now, what does success look like for you? Impact. Impact. I'm not motivated about nothing else but impact. Impressive. Before I take my last breath, I have this overwhelming sense of getting all these visions and ideas out because they belong to me. Yes. Their mind. These are my assignments and I'm supposed to empty myself of all of these things and all of these experiences that I want to create for the world. And that's what keeps me up at night. And so I want to open a movie studio here in Atlanta, the one and only studio that's actually open to the public on the charitable front. I got so many more things that I want to do to impact the world from giving and nothing temporary, something that's going to be in place. I want to put trades in place for prison inmates when they get out. Teach them a trade so that the concept of them winging it once they get out because there's so many of us that are capable of doing it. But we just don't have any trades like teach me something that's connected to how I can survive. So as the market continues to go up and down, I'm something that's self-sufficient and independent of a Bitcoin. Our reentry program has seen over 40,000 formerly incarcerated people go through our program most of which who came out with jobs had the records expunged, did family reunification, anger management, everything was necessary to keep them from going back. The rate of recidivism is amazing one of the best in the country because we took the time to walk them through a two-year process to help them to acclimate. One of them, I was talking to one of them myself. Yeah, you're talking to the right guy. And he said, show me how to use a phone because when he went in, we had payphones. When he came out, we had awful phones. There's so many simple things. When he went in, he was married. When he came out, he was divorced and she was remarried. When he went in, the world was totally different. We were busing and training. When he came out, we were flying and now our cars are being driven without people in them. The world is changing so fast. So fast. In the midst of the change, I want to say this to you. I pray you find everything that God has for you. They give you peace. They give you joy. They give you wholeness. They give you mental health. They give you peace. They make you dance in the rain. The kind of happy. They're not saying in a movie just a happy man dancing in the rain. Thank you for this time together. I really mean that for you. I really want you to have that. Thank you, sir. That was amazing. That was amazing. That was powerful. That was powerful. And it was real. It was real. My honor, sir. Give me another. Yeah. Thank you. I hope you got something out of me. Oh, yeah. Beyond life. My life changed. You spoke for so many men. Hey, everybody, I want to take this time to thank you for watching the next chapter podcast. If this conversation inspired you, helped you reflect on an idea or spark something new inside of you. Make sure to like, comment, and subscribe so you don't miss future episodes. Remember, life isn't about how you begin. It's about how you finish strong. So start your next chapter with us right here every week.