Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world. It’s Dr. Jan Portman with the Relationship Matters show. I hope everyone is having a beautifully blessed morning, afternoon, or evening. Well, we are here right outside of Chicago and it’s a beautiful day. It’s like, let me see, it’s 74 degrees, it’s sunny and the breeze is blowing just so beautifully. Today was a good day, well every day really is a good day. And guess what? Let’s talk about my guest that I have today or this morning, this afternoon, this evening, wherever you are. Someone that I met quite some time ago and he is such a wonderful person, a bubbly personality. I’m just going to tell you a little bit about him, but when he comes on, I want him to fill in the blanks. Today, we’re going to talk about a lot of stuff, but long-distance relationships. I thought this would really be great because I know some people, some friends of mine who have had long-distance relationships, they have long-distance relationships. So we’re going to go into that. But what I want to do right now is just tell you just a little bit about Charles Prinzen, and guess what? I know him as Coach Chuck. So let me tell you about Coach Chuck. He is the founder and CEO of Me INC Now Consulting. He is a former campus supervisor at Vacaville Unified School District. He studied early childhood education at the Long Beach City College Foundation and he’s a part of the Alumni Association. He is also an extremely powerful educator and speaker against childhood abuse and he gives so much hope to our youth through his love of giving back. I really, really, I don’t want to say anything else. Well, oh no, well first of all, he was part of the Power We Symposium, he was a top 25 finalist. See, when he’s in one, I wasn’t a finalist, but he was. He was part of the Next Impactor. He speaks all over. Right now, he is in Hawaii. So let me bring, I like to call him Coach Chuck.

Charles Prinzen
Okay, yeah, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, okay, double chocolate, there you go. Then you’re gonna get the double and you’re gonna wiggle. Hang loose, hang loose, thumb out, hang loose, hang loose. No, shake them, oh, like Angry style, there you go.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
How are you, Coach?

Charles Prinzen
I’m blessed every day, you know that. I know that God gives me an opportunity to wake up. So he’s going to be coming in, but we’ve decided we already have a on the island, Heaven, evil, ever, ever, ever, h-e-w-a. W is a v in Hawaii, so have a heaven. Okay, so heva is trying to interfere, but we’re not gonna let heva interfere with anything. So, Charles, first of all, I want to start with, I want people to know who you are. And when I say who you are, I want you to go where you’ve come from and who you are and where you are today. I want them to know you.

Charles Prinzen
Well, first of all, thank you for having me on, Dr. Janice. We do go back. I was thinking about that, about 2018, something like that, right? The Power of We Symposium, the Next Impactor. And I’m honored to have you ask me and it happened. I mean, let’s just say how it happened. You had a cancellation. That’s how good God is. I mean, I got to throw him in here once in a while, right? Because it is a blessing. And I talked, I messaged you a little bit the other day and I said, hey, let’s do something together. I just threw it out there. Two days later, you’re getting a hold of me and telling me you had a cancellation and when I come on your show and talk about a long-distance relationship, that’s how it works, man. Yeah, that’s how it works. So I am Charles Prinzen, AKA Coach Chuck, your locker room coach in this game of life because good coaches coach X’s and O’s, great coaches coach life. So that’s my new thing. I’ve been coaching sports for over 49 years. I just celebrated 49 years at all levels, middle school, high school, Pop Warner, recreation. It all started when I graduated from Long Beach Poly High School in 1974. I had a lot of counselors. I left it in five sports. Sports kept me in school. Sports kept me off the street. Sports kept me away from my violent childhood, domestic violence, child abuse, serious at the highest level, both of them. While I was practicing or marching in the band on Friday nights, I stayed active. So while I was in school, I had a lot of good counselors. I had a lot of good coaches and they believed in me and they knew where I came from. I am a survivor of the street. I went to 18 elementary schools, nine junior high schools, ran away at 16 and got adopted by a widow Japanese lady that put me through high school. So Coach Chuck, to those that gave to me, I want to give back and it’s all about the youth. You see, our youth are tomorrow’s future. Unfortunately, our youth are sponges of the environment that they lived in or live in. I talk about traits, generational cycles or traits that are passed down from generation. Traits of negativity, the traits are positive, Christmas, Halloween, Easter, the Tooth Fairy, those are all good, those are good traits. However, there are negative traits and I want to bring awareness to our youth that those traits can be broken and the earlier they can be broken, the better off they are for them. So yes, I work very exclusively with at-risk kids.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Wow, okay. So I know you work with kids and so you go into different schools and you go into different organizations. Do you work with kids as a group? Do you work with kids as a group? Do you work with them one-on-one? How do you do that?

Charles Prinzen
Well, you mentioned, well, obviously if I’m a coach and I coach football, boys, girls, basketball, track, and obviously I work with male and female. So I’m gonna work in a group. I mean, it depends on what sport it is. If it’s basketball, you got about 11 or 12 basketball players. If it’s a football team, you can have as much as 60, 70 players. So as far as coaching athletics, it depends on the size of the, you mentioned me being a campus supervisor in Vacaville, California. I wasn’t just the campus supervisor, I was a campus mentor. I was the campus uncle. I was the one that the administration called on the walkie-talkie when there’s disruption in the detention room, 30 kids in the detention room and they’re acting crazy because they’re out of control. In most cases, those at-risk kids come to school angry because of the environment that they’re leaving, if they even stayed home at night. So they get the first period, the first period teacher is not happy with them. They don’t have a really good relationship. She ain’t got time to mess with him or her and boom, they send him to the detention. I’ve seen that happen. So those kids are feeling, you know, the self-esteem, their self-worth, the self-respect is at a low level in life in general. So when I go in there, I talk stories. I talk, I can talk up to 30 people, 40 people, a whole auditorium. But one of the things that I’m really, really, I have a monopoly program that I put together. Monopoly’s been around since 1933. I put on a monopoly presentation in front of 5, 10, 15, 100, a whole auditorium full and we play the game of Monopoly or we play the game of life. And while I’m on that, let me say that you talked about where I speak. I also speak in prisons. I speak in prison because with an organization called Mata, Mentoring a Touch from Above, Melanie Washington is the founder. We go in there and we’re in a gymnasium or on a gymnasium. And if Maui has anything to do with this, I don’t know, I don’t know, but you know what, it is what it is. Yeah, it is what it is. I mean, we’re not going to cancel this. No, of course. Yeah, we’re gonna roll. So I have gone into prisons many times and I talk as a coach. I come out as Coach Chuck. Have any of you ever played sports? And they’ll raise their hands. The majority of them were raised because they did, but then something happened to them in their life. So now I’m gonna start talking about cycles and stuff. Man, I have, at the end of my presentation, I have guys that have bald heads, tattoos, necks like as big as like that, and they’re crying on my shoulder saying, “Coach, can you please help me out? I have a son, he’s 16 years old and he’s doing the exact same things that I was doing when I was 16 and I can’t help shoulders.” So yeah, I speak at schools, I work in schools, I talk, you know, right now I currently am umpiring Little League Baseball every Saturday and Sunday. I get to stay around the youth, I get to stay around the parents. The parents aren’t always, you know, real good, but I like to be around the youth. I like to get involved with them because I believe that every time we can give them a smile or give them a little low high as we say here on the island, it’s going to put a smile on their face and that’s what it’s all about.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So Coach Chuck, you do so much. You coach sports, you coach young men and young women. How do you have time? Because you do a lot, as the kids say sometimes, you do so much. But how, with all of that going on, how are you able to have, I would say, a love relationship?

Charles Prinzen
Well, we’re gonna go there and we can start.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
When do you find the time?

Charles Prinzen
Okay, see here’s the thing.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And how are you managing?

Charles Prinzen
Here’s the thing, you don’t find the time. You are given the time from 5,667 miles away and a six-hour time difference. You’re given the time because you both have your own things going on. One in Fort Wayne, Indiana and the other one on the west side of Oahu. You have your life, but somehow or other, we know that we’ve been given, were given to us for a reason. So the time will come to you. Sometimes it’s not long at all in one day. It could be five minutes, but those five minutes, I like to say it’s, we have me time, we have we time, and we have our time.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So, okay, I know my audience wants to know, you in Hawaii and she’s in Indiana.

Charles Prinzen
Let’s just change that, let’s fix that. Her name is Elena.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Elena, okay. Well, I didn’t know if you wanted me to say her name.

Charles Prinzen
No, no, we’re good, we’re good, we’re good with that, you know, we’re good with that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, how did you meet Elena?

Charles Prinzen
Alrighty, now how you like that one? Alright, because that’s it. I think it’s a good thing and I do that a lot. I was scrolling and all of a sudden I came across this beautiful woman doing what she does because she owns her own business and she’s a speaker, she’s an author. And I watched her and I went, I mean, I’ll be real, I’m just telling you the way it is, I went, “Whoa, okay, whoa.” And I’m listening to her and I’m watching her and I’m like, part of me is going, “Friend her,” and the other part of me is going, “You ain’t got a chance.” But you see, I am a widower. I lost my significant other, you know this, December 24, 2021. I promised to my significant other that I would not, it might sound rude, it might sound disrespectful, but we had, you know what we had? We had unconditional love. My one and I shared unconditional love. The fact that we reunited 33 years after we separated as teenage parents at 17 and 15 and we got a second chance 33 years later and I got to spend 16 years with her until she passed on December 21st or December 24th, 2021 from a 10-year battle with cancer. So we had our communications and I know that she’s smiling down on me because she told me that she did not want me. So here I am scrolling, “Whoa,” and I went ahead and decided to send a friend request, a friend, because see, now all you want to do is you want to talk, you want to communicate, you want to, you know, you don’t want to sit in your room or you don’t, you know, I’m 67 years old and my lawyer to 68. Okay, and so I friended her and when I friended her, I left her a message and said, “This is not a hit. I’m not hitting on you. I want to be your friend.” Relationships raw and real, that’s what it’s called, relationships. Isn’t that funny? Raw and real. And she invited me into a panel because I got a little upset when she was on a live and she said, “But what we’re going to be doing,” because she’s, she just turned 49. Okay, so, so, and this again, very beautiful. I know she was younger than me. I ain’t got a chance. Oh, she was doing a show on 40s and 50s. And I went on a long, long time out. I mean, I got a little, the hair under my neck went up and I, and I, and I fought back and I said, “Whoa, what about 60s? Janice, you’re beautiful. I ain’t giving away your age, but everybody knows it. You’re older than 21. Okay, and we’re still here. We still want to love. We still want to, we want to communicate. We want to have friends. We don’t want to be lonely.” So when she said 40s and 50s, I don’t know, a whole time out, man, what about 60s? She went like, “Whoa, well, I didn’t think about that. I mean, I’m, you know, I just, I’m 40 going on 50.” And I, and that’s how it started. And then she got sick. She was in Texas at that time. She drove back home. She was sick from, she got COVID and she was in her room. She was sick. And I told you why I friended her. It wasn’t a hit. I wanted a friendship and I felt something. I felt, okay, not to, whoa, I just felt that we could communicate. She was a very positive, a very intelligent, a very powerful woman. And she got sick. And so I got on the GIS and I sent her a bowl of menudo soup, virtual menudo soup that still had the steam coming up. And I said, “I am your medical assistant. I will be watching over you while you’re bedridden. And if there’s anything I can do for you.” And yesterday we celebrated our sixth month anniversary.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know what, you cut out as soon as you said, “If there’s anything I can do for you.”

Charles Prinzen
And so, you know, if I can call them and do it. So you know about the bowl of menudo soup?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah.

Charles Prinzen
Okay, so I said, I gave her a virtual bowl of menudo soup. She was sick. Menudo soup is okay. And with harmony and all kinds of stuff, right? So I sent her a bowl of menudo soup. She’s Hispanic. I could have sent her some pozole, but I sent her a bowl of menudo soup. And I said, “I am your personal medical assistant. If you need anything, just push the button.” And that’s how it started. And like I said, we are, yesterday we celebrated our sixth month in this relationship for six months as of yesterday around five.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, wow. So how often do you all get to see each other?

Charles Prinzen
We have seen each other three times. She went to, she came to visit me when I did a presentation with BTBYB, the best you you can be, which I’m flying out to Kansas City next Thursday for a weekend with the conference or the experience, be the best you that you can be. St. Louis, Missouri, and stayed there for four days. And then I drove back with her to Fort Wayne and I spent another six days. And then we saw each other again in Vegas for a few days. And then last month, July, we spent, I flew to Indianapolis to visit her for her 49th birthday and celebrate her birthday with her. Other than that, it’s FaceTime, it’s text time, it’s not, it’s when you have, when the time, when the time comes, you know, when you work or you coach or you umpire or you’re doing all the things, taking care of your two sons, okay, taking care of your business. She owns, she’s a CEO and founder of Besitos Lipsticks.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, okay.

Charles Prinzen
You ain’t never seen a lipstick until you’ve seen hers, trust me.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All right, all right.

Charles Prinzen
But we might have to, we might have to hook you up, Dr. Janice.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Please.

Charles Prinzen
Yeah, oh no, no, she’s into all that matters, lipsticks. She is the founder and CEO of that lipstick company, along with being an author and a speaker. She does women’s retreats. She helps those women that have been lost, that find themselves. And she says she has a program called Comeback Queens.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, wow.

Charles Prinzen
Come get your sexy on, be selfish. So she has a lot going on. Obviously, you said that I have a lot going on, right? And so it’s when we have the time. And sometimes it might not even happen. It might be a text once or twice in the day. But here’s some things, you might want to ask me a question, so I don’t want to go that. So, you know, how are we not, you asked me how we met, and then, you know, you might have some other questions and our listeners, our viewers might have some questions. So I’ll just wait and see. If not, then I’ll fill in the blanks.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so what I’m going to do, because I got a couple of texts, so what I’m gonna do is, when you coming back, I’m gonna go to a commercial. And then when I come back, that’s when I’m going to ask you these two questions that I got here. And then anyone else that wants to put a question in the chat about maintaining a long-distance relationship, especially one that’s over 5,000 miles.

Charles Prinzen
Yes, and I’d like to answer some deep questions because let me tell you, it’s workable, but it takes patience, like a lot of others, like relationships that are not even long distance.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, well, that’s a good part about it.

Charles Prinzen
Right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, all right, Coach. Okay, so hang on.

Charles Prinzen
No worries.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, oh my goodness. It’s not only that acting, Hawaii is acting up on his side, but my side too. But if you have some questions that you would like to ask Coach Chuck, put them in the chat or put them in the comments and ask your questions, especially if you were thinking about a long-term relationship and wondering how it works, not long-term, long-distance relationship, wondering how it works, how it can work for you, or if you’ve been in one and you got something to say about it. Okay, we’ll be right back. Don’t go away.

[Commercial Break]

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Distance relationships. Oh, now, okay, first question I see here is, are there trust issues?

Charles Prinzen
No, not at all.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
That was quick.

Charles Prinzen
No, and I’ll tell you why, or I’ll tell, I’ll answer the question as brief as I can. I said that I was a widower. I passed, and my pawana passed December 24th, 2021. Listen, God is good. When you know, I mean, when you know the blessings that have been given to you, Elena lost her husband December 24th, 2018. December 24th, I lost my pawana December 24th, 2021. Elena found out about a relationship that her husband had even just before they had gotten married, and they’ve been married like four or five years. She lost everything, everything. So when she talks about being a comeback queen, she had to rebuild from nothing. I’m talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, houses, cars, everything. She sold a ring, a $7,000 ring she sold for $500 to put her electricity down because she was promoting her very first book that she wrote. She’s been through, she needed a man. Obviously, I needed a woman. So she’s been broken. She gives me happiness. She gives me a partner. She gives me a friendship, okay? And I give her the man of her dreams, the man of her dreams. So, you know, we’re gonna deal with this. I thought about it. It is what it is.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So Chuck, you said, and I give her the man, and then you cut off.

Charles Prinzen
I give her the man of her dreams. Remember, I have been polished to be giving back after 33 years to my very first love. I said very first, 16, 14, we become parents, or we have chi, we have, we are going to be parents, 17, 15, we have a child. Because of my foundation, my childhood, I was damaged, very damaged. I left, didn’t work. 33 years, I got an opportunity in those 16 years that her and I reunited. We polished, we grind, we did things that partners, soulmates are supposed to do, and we formed an unconditional love. So now I have this for a woman that has been jacked around, messed around, thrown. She came back.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So the trust, absolutely. I don’t want to get hurt, and I don’t want to hurt her. So up front, and I’ll talk about how, you know, that’s probably another question that comes up, but we’ll talk about communication. Up front, I told her, anybody else that I have a relationship, if we can’t talk, I was in a 22-year marriage, we didn’t talk, we existed, and learned things. If we can’t talk, I’m gonna walk. Simple. Alrighty, and that was the foundation.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so have you met her sons?

Charles Prinzen
Yes, I have. I met her entire family when I went to Indiana and spent six days at the Best Western. We went out to dinner, her and her sons and I went out to dinner. That’s the reason why I went from St. Louis to Fort Wayne, because I felt something here. I mean, we had already been talking to them. We made it official the 16th when she came into St. Louis. We made it official we were in a relationship. And so why would I not? I’m so close, four, six hours away from St. Louis to Indiana, why would I not? So I said, I’d like to come to meet your family, meet your parents, and I got to. We had a little get-together on a Friday night, her mom, her aunties, her cousins, a big family, a big loving family. And so yes, I did get to meet them. She has not got to meet mine physically.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, that was the next question here, right? Go ahead, what’s the question? I’ll answer it.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, did they meet, has she met your children?

Charles Prinzen
Yeah, well, no, not physically. She has met my, she has talked to and intermixed conversations with my oldest granddaughter, and I think that’s it. So yeah, and that is obviously, that is in the future, but getting her from Indiana to Hawaii may take some time. So, but yes, it is, it’s definitely, it’s a respect thing, absolutely. Yeah, you got to respect each other and you respect each other’s families, you respect what was there before you got there. Yeah, we have plans for her to meet, come here to the islands and meet my family and do it Island Style.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, the other, the next question here, okay, let me read, don’t have my glasses on. Okay, are you afraid that once you all are together that you will find out things that you didn’t know in the beginning?

Charles Prinzen
No.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Another quick answer.

Charles Prinzen
Okay, because if you’re, let’s be real here, if you’re in a physical relationship and you don’t communicate, you first meet and you hold things back, I’m not saying that there’s not things that we have not talked about because you still have that right. We’ve had those moments, we’ve had those conversations where I have to and she has to allow us to grow and come out within ourselves because there’s things that hurt us, there are things that are deep within us. But for the most part, everything in a relationship, whether it’s long distance or physically there, everything must be put on the table with respect to things that will come out later if they do because you got to give them that right, you know. But for the most part, I would say 99, yeah, there’s nothing that we don’t know about each other.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So when you met her, Chuck, when you all decided that it was a relationship, did you both say things that you liked, things that you did not like, things that were like a, wait till you come back.

Charles Prinzen
I get what you’re saying, absolutely, because again, you’re forming a word. See, here’s the good thing about a long-distance relationship, okay? You’re a long way away and if you say something that disturbs them, they’re not going to watch upside their head or give me that, we call stink face, right? And so it is very important. I mean, I’m just giving you my perspective. I’ve never been in a long-distance relationship like this, never. But my Creator, who I choose to call God, gave me this opportunity. She believes, or we both know, she calls her and her God, her God, her G-O-D, grand overall designer. So we knew that this was a blessing. There’s just too many things that we have in common that it was a blessing. So if you’re the Creator, who I choose to call God, you got to do things the right way. Do you lie? No. Are you truthful? Absolutely. Do you love unconditionally?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, all right. Okay, so excuse me. Let’s say now, I have a couple of friends who were in long-distance relationships, not 5,000 miles away, but like, you know, maybe a couple of thousand miles away. And when they, everything was fine until they started seeing each other more often, and then things kind of fell apart. And it’s, and well, of course, it was, you know, the woman that I would be talking to. And both of them said, you know what, he, the way he presented himself to me was one way, but then when we got together, it was just totally, he was, it was totally different.

Charles Prinzen
Well, that means that, that means that the blinders were put on. See, there are no blinders with Elena and I, none, zero. We have our moments, trust me. I have, there was, there was a few times, because she said in a way, she’s a scheduling person, I’m not, I’m spontaneous. You know that. And so there was things that we had to work on, but it’s not been smooth ride by any means. But here again, in a long-distance relationship, you’re away from each other. You’re not, all of a sudden you get into a spat, you get into a disagreement. And what I learned from, from my relationship with Mapuana was every partner has a right to an opinion. Every partner has a right, I love that, that’s okay, has a right or must be respected for a right to agree and disagree. So see, when you’re in a long-distance relationship, you’re on a phone, you might have a little spat or something, and then the next day you’re going to clean up or later on you can clean up. If you’re living with somebody or you’re close to somebody and you’re in that physical relationship, you have a tendency to push more, like maybe I got to come over and talk to you like now. No, I don’t want you to come over and you come over anyhow. There was a time that I was going to go to Indianapolis and she was going to work her schedule around, but she’s a scheduling person. And she finally told me the day before I was gonna fly out, I really, I’m really not comfortable with this. I had the flight plans and everything. And you know what? I pushed myself on her. I’m the one that said, I’m coming to Indianapolis or I’m coming to where you live. I’m going to go right back to the Best Western where I stay when I go there. And you know, I’m gonna be there. I was intruding on her time. And in the beginning, because she cares very much for me, she was willing to let me. But the more she thought about it, it was like, it doesn’t fit. So we talked about pieces of a puzzle. That’s how we talk. You know, you have that box that you look at the box, it’s a thousand pieces and it looks so good. And you throw it on the table. And the first thing you got, you got to do, you got to do the outer layer. You got to do the out, you know, the boundaries. And then you start filling in. And that’s how we look at our relationship. And there are times that we’ll start working on that puzzle and it’s starting to really come together. And then we get a piece and we try to put it in and it looks like it’s going to work. And we’re sitting there trying to work it and it doesn’t fit. Don’t force it because you’re not going to get that picture that’s on that box if you force things. I mean, that’s the best analogy that I have in our relationship because we have those moments, those pieces don’t fit. And when those pieces do fit, like coming to Vegas for three days or me going to where she lives or for her coming to Indianapolis, driving to Indianapolis for three days to celebrate her birthday, those pieces fit and they felt good and we had a great time and there was laughter and sharing and caring and obviously feeling loved physically. So there are those moments.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
What do you think, Chuck, that you have those moments because you are not like seeing each other every single day?

Charles Prinzen
No, and I’ll tell you why. I did not survive what I survived, okay, for 13 years. My stepfather almost killed me twice, strangulation and drowning. He beat me when I was three years old. They put me in a safe house for six months while he was incarcerated only to give me back.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so that was your father?

Charles Prinzen
Because that was my step, that was my stepdad.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh, that was your stepfather.

Charles Prinzen
That was my stepfather. So, I mean, I have a lot of, I had a lot of walls that I’ve had to break in my life, but I made a promise to God if he would let me get old. God, look, Kevin’s messing with us right now. And God said, hey, somebody to come on her show or she’s not gonna have her show. And we work things out with my granddaughter and my great-granddaughter because I usually pick her up, right? We work things out and here we are, so we’re rolling, right? I choose to allow my God, my creator, he has blessed me with somebody that we have mutual, we’re both speakers, we’re both authors, we both have children. I have 19 grandchildren, six great-grandchildren. I don’t have time to play around. Now, as you get older, you don’t play anymore.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And how do you know?

Charles Prinzen
You know, I mean, you know, I mean, it’s straight up, it’s being an adult. So we both believe with the things that we have in common and how this came together, it was chance. No, it wasn’t chance. It was God saying, Elena, you have been broken. You need a man. Charles, Chuck, yes, and you need to have a partner. You need to have a companion. Boom, there it was.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Because you said, and he said, Charles, Chuck, that’s all we heard.

Charles Prinzen
And God said, God said to me, this is her. We believe that. We really believe that if this is the blessings from above that we were both in a need, okay? And we honor that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And I think that’s wonderful. I think that’s the foundation when you really, really feel that God has put you together and that it wasn’t just a chance thing.

Charles Prinzen
Well, you see, I experience.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
In other words, you were there really to see her for a reason because you could have been somewhere else, you know?

Charles Prinzen
Could have been somewhere else, you know, she could have been speaking somewhere else or she could have not spoken, you know?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah.

Charles Prinzen
Well, you see, being 19 years older than her, I have, I’m a little bit more time and I’ve learned a lot. I learned a lot from being reunited with after 16 years and we worked on something. See, I have the education of what it takes, okay, to clean a partner unconditionally, okay? And my creator said, you’ve got the blessings, you’ve got them, now share them with this woman that I’ve put in front of you. Share your lessons, love with this woman. That’s what I’m doing.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
He said, share your, God said, share your love with this woman.

Charles Prinzen
Okay, and we know it. See, this is divine. We, and we say it, this is a divine intervention that was given to us for a purpose. And the purpose was two individuals in a need because see, when I first came into her life, she was like, she’d already been single for, and rebuilding from damage from nothing. She was destroyed, like destroyed.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And she’s worked her way back.

Charles Prinzen
Hard.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And you know, and so have you.

Charles Prinzen
Yes, every day. I can even get on the computer now. I’m loving that. Before, I remember when I was throwing stuff. But, you know, we believe, we believe, but you can’t just believe, you have to go through the work.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes.

Charles Prinzen
And it’s difficult at times. It is, it’s very challenging. Go out to the cocktail bar as the sun’s going down right here on the beach, which is three blocks away from me, and get a cocktail and look around and see who I might want to talk to, okay? Or go on a dating scene. I tried the dating scene and I wasn’t looking for anything. I was looking for a companionship. I was looking for a friend. Well, guess what? My creator gave me a friend and I get to talk to her. And those moments are special, even if it’s just a few moments of our time, okay? I don’t have to look anywhere. I’m happy.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
That’s wonderful. And you look happy, you sound happy, and I’m happy for you. And I think that if more people would take on what you’re saying and feel what you’re saying, number one, that is work. It is work. And, you know, and that if you really feel like when you take your vows, you know, that really that God brought you together, you know, and that way, if you keep, to me, if you keep that here and you keep that here, then you can weather the storms.

Charles Prinzen
Right. Well, there’s no vows here. There’s a relationship.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yeah, I know that, but.

Charles Prinzen
No, no, no, I know that, but I’m just specifically saying there’s no vows here. It’s not, it’s not that. It’s, we’re working on our relationship from 5,667 miles away, but we are committed to each other. See, I have one of my workshops that I, that I, I have one of my workshops that I, many workshops that I do at the schools, and one of them is Catch and Release. See, my mom broke up, went back, broke up. That’s why I went to so many schools, because of the alcohol and the fighting and getting kicked out of apartments or whatever. And so I was used to that back forth, back forth. And it was a trait that came into my life. And what, one of the, you ready for this? So I’m in the middle of a classroom, 30 kids, and I say, Catch and Release. So there’s the line, the rod, and the reel. You’re fishing in a pond, you get it, you’re fighting it, okay? You got to let it drag. You got to feel that fish. You want to feel that, you know, put the, you want to see how powerful and how long that fish is gonna fight, right? And then all of a sudden, now you get it in, you hold it up, and it’s like, it’s not a keeper. So what do you do? Catch and release. Go fish in another pond.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
I like that analogy. I love that analogy.

Charles Prinzen
Waste my time.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You’re right, you’re right. We only got a couple of minutes. And you, so now what part of Hawaii are you in? You’re in?

Charles Prinzen
I’m on the west side of Oahu in a small village, city, town. I say village because my Hawaiian family’s been here since the early, documented early 1700s. So I’m on the island of Oahu. Yes, I do have family. And I want to say, can we have prayers for my Ohana on Maui that are one, helping supply, getting supplies and delivery supplies to those in need because Lahaina is devastated.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, yes.

Charles Prinzen
So plenty prayers going to those that are helping, those that are serving, and those that have lost loved ones and pretty much everything that they have.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, yes. So yes, I’m on the west side of Oahu.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, we are, we are really, we are sending our prayers. We are, we are really sending our prayers to have, have you had, what, okay, I think something came in right quick before we go. Okay, oh, okay. So it’s just, someone just wanted to let us know, Sandy Barney and it says, Gwen and I are on the road enjoying this show.

Charles Prinzen
All right.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Thank you, Sandy Barney Ennis and Gwen. We appreciate that. And I wait, one is writing and one is driving. So the one that’s looking, look, that’s it. Now shake them, now shake them. That’s that hang loose.

Charles Prinzen
All right, you need to come to Hawaii. We’ll work on that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Well, you know what? Wait a minute now, right? Come see me. I’m like, okay, you know, two blocks on the beach. Oh my God. When the waves are high, I can hear the waves crashing on the shore from my bedroom.

Charles Prinzen
Oh, Chuck, stop rubbing it in. But I think, look, thank you so much for coming on. I really appreciate it. And I’m just so happy to, and I’m enjoying talking to you again because I haven’t seen you in person for a while.

Charles Prinzen
Not in a while.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And Coach Chuck, you have not changed.

Charles Prinzen
And I won’t.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And I don’t want you to.

Charles Prinzen
Well, I’ll change for the better. I’ll change because everybody needs to make change in their life to be a better them, the better version of themselves, right? BTBY, be the best you’ll be, the best version of yourself that you can be and be successful. So while I’m gonna take a minute of 30 seconds, any of you, and I know that you and I talk about this, Dr. Janice, but, and you were in the educational field, what I have to offer, if anybody has been listening to me and they see that I have some value, I don’t just work with at-risk youth. I work with their parents also because I work with them in the school. They take that home and their parents see a change in them. They see a change in their grades and they want to know why. And the kids say, well, I’ve been, I was told that I got some traits that you gave me, that you passed down to me from your, from grandma or grandpa. Have you ever heard you sound just like your father or act just like your mother? Those are traits. So once I work with the at-risk youth, I’m working with the parents also. I’m working with families because the sooner we can break those negative generational traits, the better off the next generation is going to be. I can tell you right now that my great-grandkids will never not know their great-grandfather or great-great-grandfather. My father died at 86 years old and he never in his life saw his father. My father wasn’t in my life off and on. I wasn’t in my daughter. Cycles are a real generational traits of negativity are real. So I speak, I speak in schools. I speak wherever I can. I even preach to the choir because God is good every day. So you can put my information out there if you would. I think I sent it to you. If you could put that out there, I’d appreciate that.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And you did, but I was on another one. So I did send her. So it’s LinkedIn, Charles Prinzen.

Charles Prinzen
Okay, hold on.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Charles Prinzen
Okay, on LinkedIn or obviously Facebook.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so what I did, I put it like this because I didn’t put the URL like that’s why they know who LinkedIn, friend me on LinkedIn, look at my, look at my, and then, but there’s his name on LinkedIn or www, I think you got that one, meincnow.com, all small cap, www.meincnow.com.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Charles Prinzen
And then obviously on Facebook.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, wait a minute. I gotta get rid of a banner because they told me I got too many banners on here. So now I can do yours. Okay, let me do it right quick again. Take, okay, okay, www.m, do it again.

Charles Prinzen
M-E-I-N-C-N-O-W.com, which stands for me expressing I need change now.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay.

Charles Prinzen
And the last one is chuckprinzen@yahoo.com.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, so let me run this over. There you go.

Charles Prinzen
There you go.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Okay, and the other one is yahoo.com.

Charles Prinzen
Okay, chuckprinzen@yahoo.com.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
And obviously I’m saying this so they’re gonna, everybody sees this. Did it work? Wait a minute, I take that big one out. Okay, so where is it? That’s the, okay, so let me create. Okay, now tell me that again so I can run it around.

Charles Prinzen
Chuck, he is a .com, I do believe, chuckprinzen.com at yahoo.com.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yahoo.com, okay, so prinzen@yahoo.com. Okay, so let me run that across the bottom.

Charles Prinzen
And obviously I’m also a marriage counselor, a relationships counselor.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
You know so much, Chuck.

Charles Prinzen
I want to share the Aloha, you know that. I had too much negative in my, I had way too much negativity in my life. I shared nothing but positivity now.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
It’s an honor, Dr. Janice, it’s an honor of having you.

Charles Prinzen
So now when we say Aloha, when you say, what do you mean?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Here you go, you ready for this one? You’re gonna mess it up, but here we go. Say ah, say hello. I’m asking you to say, I’m teaching how to say goodbye in Hawaiian.

Charles Prinzen
Okay, okay.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
What?

Charles Prinzen
Oh, oh, oh, Coco, that’s how we meet again. Until we meet again.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Until we meet again.

Charles Prinzen
Stop, or you can just go, hello.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Until we meet again. Thank you so much.

Charles Prinzen
Thank you for all the viewers. Plenty prayers and Aloha going to you and your Ohana in these times that we are in.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Thank you so much, Chuck. Bye-bye.

Charles Prinzen
You didn’t play on that one.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
This has been wonderful, wonderful and great. So we will see you again next week. So now if you have anyone who did not get to see this and they’re in a long-distance relationship, thinking about it, in it right now, tell them definitely to watch this. It’s on YouTube, it’s on Roku, it’s on Amazon, it’s called Apple, it’s on Android, wherever they get their podcast and their TV shows to watch this. Until then, I will see you next week where we will have another show on relationships. So remember, there are all kinds of relationships and they’re all kinds of relationship matters. See you again next week. Bye-bye.