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May 4, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
30:53
223 Stef Stumbles

I learned something verrry interesting about myself last night...

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Good morning, everybody.
I hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
It's May the 4th, 2006.
It is 8.36 in the morning.
And I think we're firing a little better this morning.
I actually got some good sleep last night, so we're back on.
Now, this is interesting.
I mean, this is personal stuff about relationships.
So I know that people want the philosophy, and I'm down with the philosophy.
But I think this, for me at least, is important enough to share.
Since the purpose of life is happiness, and we are most happy when we are free and we are rational, the two being pretty much co-joined at the hip, which is a pretty long-winded way of saying that I think that I solved or learned something very important about myself yesterday, which I really didn't know about, and which I think may be of interest to other people.
I mean, generally, my experience has been that When you go deep and you go honest, you go useful to other people.
I mean, that's sort of a valuable thing.
And so something that has occurred for me, that if I'm, you know, sort of deep enough about it, and that just means sort of fundamental and principle-based enough about it, and speak about it honestly enough, Depth and honesty is where we get connection, right? I mean, we don't get connection through shallow speech about the weather and so on, not that that's always the end of the world, but we get connection with each other, which is to some degree what our souls like and crave.
We get connection through depth and through honesty, because if we're deep but manipulative, then we're not close, and if we're...
So I figured if I talked about sort of what I learned about myself last night, that it might be of use to other people, and particularly in relationships perhaps, particularly in romantic relationships.
So Christina and I, I mean, fantastic marriage, love the woman to death.
We have, like all married couples, we have areas of...
Well, with Christine and I, we have areas of conflict, but what that means is the way that I sort of perceive that term, and we'll talk about it, is that there are areas in which it takes an inordinately long time to solve a problem.
And that is something which obviously has catastrophic inefficiencies associated with it, and we should always strive for efficiency at all times.
But... We always fix things and always march on and our relationship gets closer and deeper.
But there are areas where...
It takes a long time to solve the problems, a lot of back and forth, and it's exhausting.
And those are the areas where we are in danger of, I guess like all couples, right?
I mean, you only have a certain amount of time in your life, and we're still pre-kids, so where you have to spend hours and hours solving problems as your sort of life marches on and you get busier and busier, you just don't have the time for that.
And so my concern has always been in this area that we end up building these moats, I guess you could say, around various issues.
And so we kind of give up.
If you've ever had this philosophically, the idea that you just...
I can't solve this problem.
I'm just going to not deal with it.
And I'm going to continue to learn in other areas and so on.
So you might have a certain lifeboat scenario...
You might have something around ethics.
You might have, you know, the guys burst into your house and demand to know where your wife is so that they can kill her, and should I tell the truth?
Like, there may be things that you just can't solve philosophically, and so you just say, okay, well, I'm gonna say that I don't know this one, and depending on your level of obsessive-compulsive disorder, you will be fine in saying I don't have to know everything, and I certainly don't have to know everything at the same time, so I can come back to that one at a time.
And there have been questions which I've circled for years before coming up with an answer.
But there may be sort of things like this in your life of the mind which are important, right?
Knowledge is a structure and it builds on itself.
It builds on premises.
It builds on a prior conclusion.
So it just may be mean that you're looking in the wrong place.
Like, there's something else that you need to figure out before you can figure out that particular thing.
So those are all parts of sort of the growth of the life of the mind is what makes the life of the mind so exciting and enjoyable.
Now, in my relationship with Christina, we have a problem Which is that, like most women, and particularly women from immigrant cultures and Mediterranean immigrant cultures, she was never taught,
in fact, she was actively counter-taught against Feelings like anger, irritation, frustration, hostility, all emotions which are very helpful and very important emotions, assuming, of course, that they're applied against the right object.
That's That's fairly important.
You don't want to, you know, like the guy who wrote in to me about stateless prisons, you know, spew of venom about the human soul and society as a whole.
That guy's emotions aren't helping him.
But what's happening is he's got a little devil in there that's redirecting his emotions from his parents.
To the world, right?
To humanity as a whole, and he does this in order to pseudo-forgive his parents, so to speak, and he also does this to avoid the pain of having been singled out and corrupted by, you know, if everyone does it, then no one's to blame.
So that's an instance where emotions aren't helping you, but Christina's really not, obviously not that kind of person, so...
There are times when, I mean, sort of specifically last night, right?
I mean, I didn't have any sleep the night before.
I came home and I did a little work on the boards and then I made myself something to eat and then I did the dishes and I put a new printer together and installed it and, you know, just that kind of day-to-day stuff, right?
And then Christina came home early, and I was just doing the bathrooms, my weekly job of cleaning the bathrooms, which I actually enjoy because I get to listen to an audiobook or something.
It's fine. And she came home, and I didn't get this immediately, but it came out over the course of the evening that, for a variety of reasons, she felt a little down.
And yet I was getting sort of very mixed signals.
So she'd give me big grins and big hugs and say, it's so great to be home with you and blah, blah, blah.
And at one point she turned to me, I said, but how are you feeling?
And she said, I feel okay.
And then she gave me a big grin and I thought she was kind of joking.
And I said, oh, you just feel okay?
Not stellar? Not over the moon?
Not overjoyed? Shocking.
Or something like that. And then we watched, I think, a house episode and we were cuddling on the couch.
And she kissed me a couple of times, which is normally sheer joy, but it felt odd.
It felt something wasn't quite right.
And then we were getting ready for bed and then...
She said, you know, I have no topics.
Topics is kind of like an in-joke in our marriage, right?
So if we're sitting in the car and we're both silent, I will turn to Christina and say, your topic, something like that.
And then it's her job to come up with a conversation topic, which is usually what she's thinking or feeling at the time or something that's going on or whatever, right?
Just if we get, and this is sort of important in marriage, if you get sort of lost in yourself, which happens continually, right?
I mean, at least it does for me.
I sit there ruminating, sort of forgetting that there's another person in the room and so on, and Christina can turn to me and say, "Your topic!" and it's like, "Oh yeah, right, okay." So it's a good thing which we use, and so...
So, last night she said two or three times, you know, she said, you know, I have no topics whatsoever.
I am thinking almost of nothing.
And that was curious to me.
And I never feel too relaxed around people who...
Because for my own history, that strikes me as dissociation of somebody not being in touch with themselves and yet being sort of around you and you being emotionally involved in them, which is sort of inadvertent with the family.
And after you've been married for a couple of years, it becomes inadvertent.
Well, hopefully it's right away, but it becomes inadvertent with your partner after you've been in a relationship or married or whatever.
So that makes me a little nervous.
And I was somewhat aware of that.
So then Christina took a shower.
And I like taking this shallow bath because I can sit and chat with Christina while I shave and so on.
I shave the night before as I'm not a morning person at all.
And... So we were chatting, and I was saying, I felt sort of mild irritation, not towards her, but just she's been working very hard lately.
I've been working very hard lately.
And it's summer, right?
I mean, summer has finally arrived in Canada.
It's a beautiful country for about six months.
And normally we play badminton, we go hiking, we play beach volleyball, we do all of these great things.
And tennis and, you know, I mean, I love just about every sport on the planet, so I'll just put any kind of implement in my hand and I'll give it a go.
It's one of the things I miss since I got married is skiing and squash, and squash because our gym doesn't have a squash court and there's not one that's anywhere close, and skiing because Christina hates the cold and we haven't gotten around to getting her out there yet.
So I was just sort of saying to her, And it's been a long time since we took a long vacation.
We like two weeks' vacation.
We like going to the beach for a couple of days and then hiking and then whatever, right?
But we like to get away. And it's been about a year.
Now, we did go away last October.
I was on a business trip.
I had to go to Orlando and then I had to go to Las Vegas.
I know, tough life. And so Christina came along and we combined it with a trip to Lake Tahoe, which is beautiful, by the way, if you ever get a chance.
Although they're really stiffy at the airport.
Our car was supposed to be really cheap, but there was like a 40% tax on our car, and that was on top of other taxes.
So a car which was supposed to be about $50 for a couple of days ended up being $300 for a ride.
It really was quite the pillage.
But... It's tough for Christina now that her clinic is less than a year old and it's doing very well, but she's concerned about that if she goes on vacation for two weeks, I mean a week she'll be fine with, if she goes on vacation for two weeks she's concerned that the doctors who are referring patients to her are going to find somebody else.
And so we've talked about this a little bit.
It is the curse of the entrepreneur, right?
I mean, slavery gets you everywhere, right?
I mean, I don't know if it's human nature or because we are raised the way we are, but slavery will get you everywhere.
And so that's something that we've talked about.
It's a real curse. Like when I was self-employed, I would go on vacation for two weeks.
I would automatically calculate...
That, well, I'm not billing for two weeks, and so the real price of the vacation is this.
And, of course, it's nonsense because you charge more for those very reasons, right?
So if you don't take the vacation, you're kind of ripping your clients off because you're not relaxing, although you're charging them extra because you don't get paid for vacation.
So anyway... So I said, wow, you know, and the weather's been a little bit spotty.
It's not been bad. But I said, you know, it's tough.
It's tough because Christina works out of the home.
I said, you know, it feels like it's a little tough to get sort of summer jump-started with us.
It's not just because, you know, like you come home at 8 o'clock, one or two or three nights a week because you're working.
She also works outside of the home for somebody else's clinic.
And so I said, you know, it's not just that.
It's just that, you know, we really haven't had the time to get out and to enjoy the weather.
You know, we've sort of been trapped in the house like a ship in one of those little bottles.
We're trapped in the house all winter.
And now we finally are able to go out and enjoy the sun.
And it just feels like we don't really get a chance to do it.
And so she said to me, well, do you think we should book a vacation then?
Like a long vacation? And I felt irritated at that.
I mean, can you imagine? What a guy, eh?
His wife says, let's go on vacation, and he feels irritated.
And the reason that I felt irritated was that I felt that she was coming in just...
To solve or to eradicate my feelings of irritation.
Please, understand. When I say irritated, I just mean like mild.
And it wasn't directed at her at all.
It was just, you know, every now and then you sort of look up and say, wow, you know, time's passing by and we haven't done X, Y, or Z that we really love to do and we're a little sucked up in work.
That kind of irritation is very healthy, right?
Because it helps break a logjam of workaholism, which I know that I am occasionally prone to, and Christina is, now that she's self-employed particularly.
So, I mean, that's all to me very healthy, right?
And so I felt irritated that Christina was, that I was irritated and Christina was coming in and attempting to solve my problems of irritation through blanket action, right?
So she's coming in and saying, well, if you're irritated, we need to book a two-week vacation.
But I don't like that when that happens.
It's subtle, but I'm sure you get what I'm talking about.
If I feel irritated, I want the right to feel irritated, to express irritation.
If Christina feels irritated that I'm irritated, then I want her to have the right and the freedom and all that to express irritation back.
We're not made of glass.
We're big people now.
We're 20 years free of our families.
We don't have to do it all that kind of way.
But there's a line in Togo which goes something like, such seeming generosity is often an elegant way of just telling someone to shut up.
And that is sort of what I felt, that she was saying, well, we'll just book a vacation because you feel irritated.
And so we don't get to talk about my irritation, and I'm supposed to then stop being irritated because we're booking a vacation.
But the thing that bothered me most about it, why it felt mildly manipulative, was because Christina had...
I expressed concern about a long vacation and now suddenly it just wasn't an issue and we were just going to do it.
And that, I sort of felt like it's kind of like a trap.
And again, this is very mild and no disrespect to the gorgeous wife, but I just sort of felt like, oh, this is a trap.
Because what's going to happen is if I say, yeah, okay, that's great.
Let's book a two-week vacation.
Let's go to Greece. Let's go scuba diving or whatever.
And my 40th birthday is coming up this year, so I want a scuba diving vacation, because I love scuba diving too.
And so I felt that if I were going to say that, then...
Christina would be really surprised, and then over the next couple of days, in one way, if I were to do that, and I'm wise enough to not do that, but if I were to do that, over the next couple of days, then she would start to find problems with the solution that she gave me to my irritation when I was talking about us not being able to get out and enjoy life and so on.
Much. As much as I wanted.
And so then it would sort of feel really irritating, because then it would be like, okay, so I was irritated, and then you jumped in to solve the problem, I accepted your solution, and now you're kind of slowly taking it back through saying, well, I don't know, it's, I don't know if we get the time, I just got three new referrals, blah, blah, blah, right?
With no particular, there is no reference back to that, right?
Back to when she said, in my past relationships and so on, there would be no relationship back to what she had said.
Oh, I know that I'd said this and I'm really sorry.
Let's talk about your irritation again because what I suggested to solve it doesn't look as practical as it should be or as it could be.
So it's always just like, I'm going to solve your problem and guys do this too, right?
I'm going to solve your problem.
Now stop talking about it.
And, of course, as I said to her, you know, it's not my irritation that you're concerned about because...
And it's not my problem you're trying to solve because you're actually creating problems for me when you sort of rush in with these solutions and we don't get to talk about what I'm feeling.
Because I don't always know why the heck I'm feeling irritated.
Sometimes it can take me like half an hour of talking and thinking to say, oh, it's this.
It's not always obvious to me why I feel irritated.
And, you know, don't get me wrong.
Again, I don't want to put too many caveats in here, but I'm not like...
I'm a grumpy, grumpy fellow, right?
But if I am irritated, and it's usually very helpful, it's usually a good reason.
Someone's violating my space, somebody's interfering with my interests, somebody doesn't have boundaries around me, it's often at work.
And so, you know, these are kinds of things that you just need to keep figuring out.
And that's part of the, you know, enjoyment.
And you get better at it over time and so on.
But, so I said that I wasn't going to sort of, you know, I said, you know, you're trying to manage my feelings, and you're actually trying to manage your own feelings, right?
So if I feel irritable, and I'm expressing irritation, but not, you know, you, witch, you, whatever, right?
But just feeling irritated, then that creates anxiety in her, because when she was a child, she was never allowed really to be assertive.
She was You know, women are generally taught that having any kind of irritation or anger is not ladylike, it's not nice, it's not this, it's not that.
And so in my experience, and obviously it's filtered by the women that I've known, so take it with a grain of salt, but in my experience, women do have a problem with With temper and with getting angry, either that they're chronically angry or that they can't express it.
That's sort of the Aristotelian mean.
You don't want either extremes.
You want courage.
You don't want foolhardiness where you're just leaping in a First World War trench sense into the gunfire.
I'm courageous. I mean, that's foolhardiness.
And you also don't want cowardice.
You want the mean. You want the balance, which is a tricky thing.
And... And Christina's great for the most part, but there are certain areas or pockets.
Anyway, so we had a long chat about it, and it was kind of late, and I was really tired, but I didn't feel like I could fall asleep, which always for me means that there's something else to figure out.
And so, for a variety of reasons, we ended up talking about how when she's not particularly connected to herself for a variety of reasons...
That her actions around me are a little bit random, like she's happy and then tells me she's not happy, and then when I say, oh, are you not happy, or whatever, she'll say, no, no, no, I think I'm fine, I just feel a little tired, and then she'll sigh, and then she'll be affectionate, but a little...
Not connected to it.
These are very minor things, just so you understand it.
But as I talk about in The God of Atheists, what you end up with in life are all based on the tiny decisions at the beginnings of things.
So I look at the tiny decisions at the beginnings of things because I think it's worth living a philosophy that you're espousing.
So... Anyway, so what we figured out at the end of all of this, just to make a long story short, what we figured out at the end of all of this was pretty interesting, and it is the first major apology that I've had to make to Christina in her marriage.
And I've made it with great humility, and I'll continue to make it for weeks.
And in hindsight, it seems fairly obvious, but of course these things in hindsight always seem so damn obvious, and when you're in them, they just don't.
But... What happened was, of course, I'm saying to Christina, with all the lofty knowledge of wisdom and ha-ha, I know, I mean, yes, I mean, I'm going to be honest.
I mean, I don't say it in a condescending way.
I mean, I say it to her the same way I kind of say stuff to you with perhaps one or two too many irritating caveats and so on.
But with a certainty, right?
I mean, with certainty. The caveats are annoying because I am certain, but I'm not being honest about being certain.
I'm being sort of pseudo-inviting, which is why it irritates people and why I've tried to stop doing it, right?
So, with Christina, I was saying, you know, well, you're trying to manage my feelings and it's your anxiety you're trying to manage and it's fine for me to get irritated just because everybody who got irritated in your family ended up being sort of mean and abusive doesn't mean that I will and you've got to sort of deal with your past, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, so we figured out at the end of all of this that...
and I sort of came up with this sort of flash hit me that I may well have been doing exactly the same thing.
So, when Christina comes home and she feels...
Out of sorts, and she feels tired, but she feels like she has to sort of be happy for me because I'm tired, or whatever, right?
Then, if she ends up acting in a way that is inconsistent, then, you know, deep down in my reptilian childhood history brain, I get this echo of inconsistency, of course, from my own family, wildly inconsistent, perpetually inconsistent, and... Anytime you would point out inconsistency, you would just get rage, right?
In one form, a withdrawal or coldness or anger or contempt or dismissal or whatever, right?
It's the same thing where you would get with your professors, right, or your teachers if you point out contradictions in their thinking.
They don't say, wow, that's great.
Thank you for helping me out of error.
How wonderful. I mean, they're mad at you, right?
And so when Christina comes home, what happens is I... Don't call her on it right away and say, you know, I'm sort of getting two different things from you.
Are you okay? Like, is there something that's not clicking for you emotionally or whatever?
But instead, I sort of let it go and I myself get a little bit...
So, I mean, I notice these things, but I don't notice them, you know?
Like, it's like, huh, that feels odd.
Normally, I love kissing my wife and now she's turning to kiss me and I'll kiss her and it's nice, but it's not great.
I'll sort of vaguely notice that, but I won't sort of stop the interaction and act on it and sort of say honestly what my perceptions are.
And then later, it comes out that sort of my non-action on these minor clues that something is going on express itself in irritation, and then we make the focus on Christina, and I sort of get off the hook, and I'm the guy who says, well, this is the problem, and I'm so smart, and blah, blah, blah, right?
And, of course, as I'm sure it's fairly evident to everyone who's not, say, me and not Christina, the issue is that because of my own history, when somebody comes home and is acting inconsistently and appears to be out of touch with themselves and is dissociated in one form or another or is telling me one thing and doing another or telling me something and telling me something different a couple of minutes later with no consciousness of the contradiction,
then it awakens my primitive early defenses around, My own childhood.
And so what happens is then I... I mean, it's just so funny, right?
I mean, it's funny, and I will apologize for weeks about this, if not months.
But in order to manage my own feelings of anxiety around this situation, then I don't give Christina the space to notice that she's not feeling the way that she normally does, right?
Sort of close, connected, affectionate, and consistent.
I rush in to solve the problem, exactly the same as I was accusing, or not accusing, but saying that Christina was doing around this vacation, which is surely far, far less important the topic.
So, when I feel anxiety, when I feel that...
It's not Christina's fault what happened to me as a child, right?
When I feel anxiety around feeling that someone's around that I'm emotionally intertwined with, who is acting randomly...
Then I feel, so I want to rush in and solve the problem rather than say to her, you know, I feel really weird at the moment and it's not your fault, but this is sort of what's occurring for me.
There's some similarities that are whatever, right?
Now, of course, I have to be aware of it first.
So, I mean, I apologize simply because it's hurt her, not because I was trying to hurt her.
I mean, I just wasn't aware of it.
And now that I am aware of it, of course, I'm fully responsible.
And of course, I was fully responsible when the idea came to me to say that maybe I'm doing exactly what I'm saying you're doing, but in a far more serious manner.
Because this is not the first time this has happened, right?
I mean, over the course of our relationship, there have been a number of times where I've sort of said, well, you seem to be disconnected and blah, blah, blah.
And I sort of... Rush in, so to speak, to solve the problem, and then accuse her of a lack of trust, you know, like you don't trust me in the way that you could, because if you trusted me fully, then you would know that if I'm mildly irritated about something, then it's not because of you, it's just, you know, I'm not going to get angry, I'm not going to get abusive, or anything like that.
And of course, what the facts of the matter are, that because I rush in to solve Christina's feelings of not being connected with herself to some degree, and I do that because...
I'm attempting to manage my own feelings of anxiety.
Like I feel anxious that we're not as close as we usually are because I feel vulnerable and feel that there's danger and I feel this, that and the other.
But not because of Christina, but because of my own history.
So then rather than express those feelings and learn to deal with those feelings in a better way, And the problem is now, because I've done a fair amount of work on myself, the feelings are very subtle.
I mean, it's not like my hands are sweating, I'm not hyperventilating, I'm not, you know, I mean, it's just like I feel very mildly, obtusely uneasy, and of course you can't stop every time you feel that and sort of have a three-hour introspective session and so on.
So it's just a matter of, you know, it's learning balance, it's learning about yourself, it's learning to understand things, and it's learning, you know, the old echoes of old pain.
I mean, it's learning how they, it's like your sonar mapping the seabed in these sorts of situations.
So I don't feel mad at myself for this, and I don't feel like I've...
I mean, I definitely did Christina wrong, inadvertently through a lack of knowledge and with good intentions and so on.
I mean, not that intentions mean a whole lot.
And that when it did occur, it was because Christina was out of touch with herself, which meant that she was proximate, though not a direct cause.
I mean, she was a necessary but not sufficient cause for this kind of interaction to occur.
But it is really fascinating, and it's something that, if it's of any use to you, fantastic, but One of the lessons that I get is when I feel that it's really important to solve an issue with someone, it's really important for them to understand something about me or my philosophy or my ideas,
it's really important for me to communicate something to them that they're doing that's incorrect or wrong or problematic or whatever, then the first place that I now need to look at is, am I doing what I am accusing the other person of doing?
So I say to Christina, you're rushing in to solve problems about me feeling irritated about whatever.
And what I'm doing is I'm rushing in to solve a problem that's deeper and more complex.
And also not giving her the space to work it out herself, right?
I mean, so I'm all about the freedom, right?
I'm big on the freedom. And when you rush in to solve problems for someone, rather than just being mildly curious, and if they can't figure it out, just giving them time...
When it becomes very important, when it becomes, I say life or death, but it becomes very important to figure out and to solve the issue with the person, then, of course, part of what you're doing in that situation is you are saying to that other person, I don't think you can solve this problem on your own.
And that does not exactly add to their feelings of, you know, ultra-confidence in their own capacities to deal with things.
And so... When Christina sort of rushed in, so to speak, and said, well, let's just go on a long vacation without giving me her opinions or explaining any of the complexities that we've talked about with her taking a vacation at this point in her clinic development, then I feel sort of excluded and not trusted and so on, and that I can't talk about this issue.
Now, when she says, I feel kind of down, and I say, what, you don't feel up, great, perfect, whatever?
Because I, for whatever reason, I'm sort of misinterpreting the situation.
Now, of course, it's still her responsibility to say, no, actually, I mean, if we can talk seriously for a sec, I really do feel down, and I'd like to talk about it.
Of course, I'm not going to make any jokes after that.
So, when Christina tells me this, then I need to sort of understand that she's serious, and, you know, even if she's acting in a contradictory manner, and so on.
That's something that would be very helpful in our relationship and may be helpful for you and your relationships as well.
To trust the other person.
For me to trust Christina and say, yeah, okay, so she's acting a little randomly.
She's obviously a little out of sorts with herself.
And what I can do is mention that I notice it, ask if she wants to talk about it, but trust that she's going to solve the issue.
That I don't need to try and deal with my own anxiety by taking charge and talking us through it and getting her reconnected to herself and, you know, being the big hero warrior of emotional rescue, right?
I will be your knight in shining armor.
Riding Across the Desert in a Fine Arab Charger.
I think that's how it goes. A good song, actually.
I'm not a huge Stones fan, but a couple of songs of theirs are great.
Obviously, Sympathy for the Devil, I Like, Miss You, and Beast of Burden.
Great song. But...
This is something that's been quite an eye-opener for me.
I hope that it's helpful to you.
I know it's a little abstract.
I'm not sure how good a job I did of explaining it, but it is something where we feel compelled to go in and solve issues for other people that it may well be worth taking the time to figure out our own histories and why we feel...
We need to rush in and solve that problem for people and that the problem that we're saying that they have is very likely a problem that we are in fact having ourselves.
So thank you so much for listening.
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