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June 1, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
38:00
263 Dealing with Passive Aggression (Part 1)
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Good afternoon, it's Steph.
How is it going? 12.39.
Oh, gosh. Wednesday?
Thursday. Thursday. The 1st of June 2006.
And, yeah, good Microsoft conference.
I very much enjoyed it. Definitely, if you're a coder, look into the Ajax-enabled Atlas stuff.
And now available.
There's a free download for Visual Studio 2005.
Look at that. Not even paid for it.
But well worth having a look at.
I'm certainly looking forward to building some stuff.
I have a report writer that I'd like to build, and this Ajax stuff is going to make it a whole lot easier.
So, check it out.
It's really, really cool.
And of course, it's all zero-footprint server-side stuff, so it's browser-independent, believe it or not, from Microsoft, which is also cool.
So, if you are a developer interested in web stuff using Microsoft, I would definitely recommend it.
So, I'd like to talk about a topic that Christina and I were chatting about last night, which came, as all decent topics do these days, off the boards, where one or two gentlemen were complaining about About some challenges that they were having with their lady friends.
And, of course, the problem is absolutely theirs, and the issue is that they're not spending enough money on flowers, so definitely do that.
And the issue was really one of a repetitive kind of...
Gosh, I almost hate to say it.
I hate to say it. Entrapment, but it's something similar, though I would not...
Ascribe any conscious motivation in regards to this on the part of the women.
And of course it can reverse itself and be male to female, but we're just going to talk about what was mentioned on the boards in particular, which was female to male.
But it's something I think that's worth understanding, and I only can speak about it with some understanding because I... Well, it happened to me, oh gosh, for about 20 years, I guess you could say.
No, no, no. 15. 14.
Before I wised up and figured this stuff out.
So, if my understanding, which has been helpful to some people on the boards, is helpful to you too, so much the better.
But this is the situation.
And it can be anything, but we'll just talk about this particular one, which is not uncommon.
So... You're in a relationship with a woman, and the woman keeps saying, I don't like the way I look.
I'm too fat. Now, let's just say, for the sake of argument, that she is a pound or two overweight, and...
It's not a purely psychological manifestation, which is going to be a whole other situation to deal with, which we'll talk about another time if you like.
But let's just say she's a couple of pounds overweight and she's constantly complaining about the way she looks.
And it has an impact on your relationship.
I mean, and this can show up in any number of ways in a relationship.
So it could be that...
She just gets frustrated with her own weight.
She doesn't like the way she looks.
She's down.
Maybe she doesn't feel sexy because she feels overweight.
So that aspect of your relationship becomes problematic.
So like a sort of gas coming into a room, it begins to sort of infiltrate many areas of your relationship.
And she's obviously unhappy.
But doesn't lose the weight.
This is sort of key. If you're a couple of pounds overweight, you either need to lose the weight or be happy with where you are.
Because otherwise you get the worst of both worlds.
If you're happy with who you are being overweight, at least you get to enjoy your food.
You don't have to worry about dieting and exercise to that degree.
And again, I'm not going to say this is entirely correlated, but let's just take the general view that it is.
So, if you're overweight and you're comfortable with being overweight and it's like, yeah, okay, so I could stand to lose 20 pounds, but man, I just love pasta.
Well, good for you.
I mean, enjoy the pasta. Life is short.
It may be slightly shorter if you're overweight, but nobody's going to say what level of pleasure and longevity is the right balance for you.
There's no way to say that in advance.
You could live a lot longer by eating 1,200 calories a day, But as somebody said about eating healthy, it doesn't make you live longer.
It just feels longer because you get to enjoy your food.
So you get that benefit if you are overweight and you're comfortable with it.
Enjoy your food and you're just plus-sized and you're a good jolly, jolly overweight person and good for you.
On the other hand, of course, if you are unhappy about being overweight and you lose the weight, Then, great!
You've lost the weight. You feel better about it.
You're a little bit healthier, but you're denying yourself some foodstuffs that you like.
So, I mean, it's not a perfect win situation, right?
All things in life are a balance.
And no one can tell you what the balance is, right?
These aren't moral issues. Issues are personal aesthetics, right?
So, what I would say then is if you're in a situation where you are unhappy with your weight and you're not...
Losing the weight, then you really are in the worst of both worlds.
You're not enjoying your food.
Your food is becoming a source of stress for you.
You don't say, yes, I am trading, not exercising, for 20 pounds of extra weight.
So it's a trade. It's a voluntary thing.
And it's natural that you're going to make that trade if that's what you want.
So that's another way of approaching it.
But if you are overweight, unhappy about it, and don't diet, then you're not enjoying your food, and you're also not enjoying the health benefits and better body image benefits that come from having a better weight situation.
So that's something that's important to understand.
You don't want to get caught in that null zone between the two.
Unfortunately, though, a lot of women do seem to get caught.
I mean, I'm sure men do as well.
But a lot of women do get caught in this issue wherein they are constantly complaining about their weight and stressed about their weight and want to look better and are upset about this, that, or the other.
And it is something that affects, in a not insignificant way, their relationship.
No man wants to see his girlfriend or wife unhappy.
And so if she's unhappy, then he wants to, obviously he wants her to not be unhappy.
So this woman wanted to do something about it.
Now, of course, the best thing is when a woman sort of stands up and says, you know, got to tell you, I think I've chunked out a little bit here.
So I'm just going to lose the weight.
And she doesn't put the onus on her husband or her boyfriend to manage her emotions, to tell her she's not to look in overweight when she is, to get caught in all of that complicated, messy, difficult trap of having to manage somebody else's self-perceptions, which is never a situation where which is never a situation where you can win.
That's sort of important to understand that you don't want to go there.
So we'll talk about that in a little bit.
So that would be one thing.
A woman says, I'm overweight, I'm going to lose weight, and off she goes and does it.
And you're there to support her and help her and so on.
And maybe, you know, if you're a guy, you want to lose a couple of pounds, you'll join her on certain parts of it or whatever, and change your lifestyle and everyone's happy, right?
That's being responsible for yourself.
But this is generally not, unfortunately, what happens in these kinds of situations.
So what happens is, the woman says, I just, I don't like the way I look.
And she sort of stares balefully at these Victoria Secrets models because she can't afford the plastic surgery and good jeans that it takes to get that kind of look.
And I certainly know this because one evening I spent a fascinating evening in a bar once chatting with a Calvin Klein model who was a friend of my squash partner's at the time.
And he was telling me all that he had to do to get ready for a shoot where he was obviously modeling the underwear.
And what he had to do was he had to work out for four or five hours a day for like a month To get his body fat down.
And then what he had to do was he had to end up not drinking any liquids for like two days.
I mean, other than just enough to keep his organs from not failing.
So he had to end up not drinking any liquids so that he would end up with no rolls of any kind.
So that he would be sort of paper lean on his abs.
And I thought that was obviously fairly horrible and sad.
But, I mean, that's sort of what you're looking at, right?
You're looking at somebody who's paid to do it, right?
You're looking at somebody who's paid to have those washboard abs and paid good money, too.
And this guy made good money. And he's not going to get paid for his brain power in any other kind of specific situation.
And so that's something that is important to understand, like when you're looking at these kinds of situations that it's not...
It's not your everyday thing, right?
I mean, somebody paid me $5,000 a photo shoot to go to the gym for three hours a day, and I could get two of those a week.
Well, yeah, I'm sure I could manage to crank back a little bit on the snacks that...
That don't keep me with that kind of physique, but, you know, I'm not being paid for it to that degree, so why would I, right?
I mean, it's not like it's healthier to not drink any liquids for two days.
So, that's sort of something that's, and of course, that absence of any kind of midsection fat is not good for your internal organs, right?
I mean, unless you're completely naturally genetically freaked out that way, like I guess Brad Pitt is or whatever.
So, those kinds of situations, you know, it's just important to understand what it is you're comparing yourself to.
And, of course, a lot of us have had those conversations with women who don't like their physique because they don't happen to have that sort of hourglass cut-out shape, right?
So, a lot of us have had those conversations and they really don't end up being very helpful because, you know, they don't touch the core issues, right?
But what happens, unfortunately...
With these kinds of situations when you're in a relationship is you're caught in this impossible situation.
So the conversations will often go sort of like this.
So, somebody will say, or the woman will say, I'm not happy with the way I look, and she's depressed, she's frustrated, she's unhappy, none of her clothes fit, there's much woe in the land, right?
I mean, this is a difficult situation, and she is not at all happy.
And that has a strong impact on the relationship, of course, and so the man is in this situation where he's helpless to control everything, The happiness within his own life.
You really can't be a whole lot happier than your partner is.
And so you have this issue when you are a guy that, you know, if your partner is unhappy about her weight, then you are going to be kind of unhappy too, right?
You can't sort of be any happier than your partner is in general.
So what happens then, of course, is you start to lose your capacity to enjoy happiness.
Your life, which is not, of course, where you really want to end up being.
So what happens then is you try to...
So she's unhappy about her way.
She's not fixing the issue, and neither is she accepting the fact that she's not fixing the issue, right?
So she's complaining about something she's not changing, which is not really a very happy-making kind of situation.
So, well, what happens then?
Well... As a guy, you try to reason with the woman, right?
So you'll start to say, well, honey, it's not that bad.
These are paid professional models.
You know, you're not going to look like that.
I mean, I don't look like Brad Pitt.
So, like, I look like I had a piece of chicken in the last six months.
So, that's not a situation that you can reasonably expect to look like.
And so, you start to try and manage or help her with that sort of body image.
But what you're doing, of course, is you're taking ownership, right?
You're taking ownership. For her issues, right?
So you're saying now, as a guy, and this is sort of the primary mistake, in my humble opinion, that guys make, because we're a little bit more action-oriented, according to certain stereotypes, and I think there's some truth in it.
I'm not saying it's perfectly true.
We're a little bit more action-oriented, so we're going to say, okay, I'm going to roll up my sleeves.
I'm going to help you with this problem, because I don't want you to be unhappy.
I don't want to be unhappy. And so what we need to do is sort of roll up our sleeves, and I'm going to help you with this problem, right?
The grave error, right?
The grave error that occurs.
That men make, right?
To take ownership for other people's problems.
So then what happens, of course, is you start to say, you know, start to help her try and talk her out of this body image issue that she's having and try and sort of make her feel better about it and sort of give her some sort of more reasonable approach to dealing with this issue.
But that, of course, unfortunately, doesn't ever seem to work.
Because she knows she's overweight, and so if you tell her it's fine, well, you're kind of ignoring the basic thing, which is that it's not fine.
You think that you can sort of talk her into it like she's just got a bad idea, and you can talk her out of the way that she feels, and that usually is not the case, right?
So then... You realize that this isn't working, and also often you can get called sort of insensitive for telling her something that's just not true, right?
So you say, look, you're not a model, blah, blah, blah.
She's like, oh, so you find models more attractive, right?
You get into this kind of mess.
Or you can end up with a situation where, but you would find me more attractive if I were a model, right?
All this kind of no-win situations, right?
These are the Exactly the kind of thing that I sort of think is important to understand and important to talk about, that you don't want to end up in these no-win situations, but sadly, often, we do.
And that's a huge problem for men, right?
They get trapped in these no-win situations.
There's lots of comedy around this, but unfortunately, it's really not that funny.
When you get right down to it, it's not something that's going to make you happy.
Now... What is going to happen next is you're going to say, okay, well, I can't help her with her perception of herself.
That's not working.
And so what I'm going to need to do now is I'm going to need to get her to diet.
So now the woman is, oh, I'm so unhappy with the way I look.
Well, you find that talking her out of it doesn't help.
So now what you want to do is as a guy, you want to help her diet.
So you want to start to say, okay, well, let's deal with this issue proactively.
Let's get you on a diet. And then you'll hear, well, I don't like dieting.
It doesn't work for me. Or, I've tried all these diets.
They don't work. And so you'll say, okay, well, I'll try this or try that.
You know, you come up with all these diets, and she'll sort of maybe pick at them a little bit, but there'll be no particular enthusiasm, and, you know, she'll, oh, it doesn't work.
Diets don't work. And, you know, the problem with dieting is you end up heavier, so you're kind of in this situation where you can't win, right?
So a partner's unhappy about their body image, and she won't diet, and she won't change her unhappiness about her body image, so, you know, there's just a whole whack load of unhappiness going around, which you can't control, which is sort of repetitive, right?
So we'll get into sort of the symptomology of it in a little bit.
So then, you know, you try another, well, if dieting isn't going to work, let's try exercise.
Oh, I don't like exercise, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
So then there's this block as well.
Or maybe there will be, yes, we should get a gym membership, right?
You could also be suckered into the other way of it becoming a huge issue, is you say, well, okay, I'm going to go get a gym membership, and let's do it, let's exercise, I'm going to whatever.
And then... You go and get the gym membership, and you go for your fitness test, and you go sort of once or twice, and then the enthusiasm begins to sort of melt away, and, oh, I'm tired, or let's go tomorrow, or I think I pull the muscle.
I think I don't feel well.
I feel a queasy. I'm on my period.
I'm PMS. I'm post-MS. And there's going to be all of that kind of stuff that is going to sort of interfere with it.
And so you're going to, again, be sort of trapped in this no-win situation, right?
So your partner's unhappy, and they're constantly complaining, and yet anything that you come up with that is going to help them, it doesn't work.
Right? So you get very frustrated and upset if you're a guy.
I can feel it in myself right now because I had a number of girlfriends who I went down this particular path with.
And, of course, when I found out that Christina didn't work like that, I got her a ring like the next day.
So it's not female.
It's just the women I know and some of the women of the partners of the men that I know.
So then you're really hosed, right?
So what's happened is you've taken ownership for dealing with this woman's problems.
And she is now not letting you deal with the problems, right?
So she's resisting every solution you come up with.
Sometimes it's called the yes-but thing.
I just generally call it passive aggression.
Because what's happening is the woman's unhappy and frustrated about something.
And generally, right, the fact of the matter is what she's frustrated and upset about is the way she was raised.
She doesn't like the way that she was raised.
She was never allowed to make her own decisions.
She was given all the contradictory stuff that women are given, right?
I mean, men get their own set, but the women get stuff like, you know, be pretty, be attractive, but don't be slutty, right?
You know, it's...
You need to be valued for who you are, but the body image is this, right?
So, you know, become educated, but not too educated, right?
So, be intelligent, but be, you know, a pretty thing, too.
So, women get all this.
I mean, it's not so much the culture.
It's more the parents, right?
So, the parents give women all these contradictory information, and it's frustrating for women, very frustrating, because they're not allowed to sort of just be and make their own decisions for themselves.
It happens for men too, but in different ways.
So women get all this stuff.
You're an independent, strong woman.
You have to get married.
And I'm not saying that women don't participate in this, but they're not given a whole lot of roots out of this particular conundrum.
So if you look at feminist texts...
And you look at women's magazines, you can see the kind of craziness that women are expected to somehow magically be able to navigate and deal with.
And the fact that no women, few women seem to be able to do it effectively is sort of indicative of how crazy the expectations are that are placed on women, right?
Be a professional! Be a mother!
Be a supermom! You can have it all!
I think that's kind of funny.
And of course, basically, you know, the issue around tall, dark, and handsome still remains a big problem for women, right?
Women who are getting taller themselves, by the by, and men aren't, right?
Because women are getting sort of more protein, more nutrition, and better exercise, so women are getting taller, and men aren't, but women still want to be pocketed in the arms of a taller man.
So there's also that issue, right?
So anyway, there's lots of problems that are going on for women.
They're all really, really well-educated these days, and yet a lot of them seem to want to drop out and have kids.
And that's fine. No problem with that at all.
It's just that I would rather that they pay for their own education, or at least if they didn't, the state's funding and all that, particularly here in Canada, that they at least are sort of economically productive members of society.
So you can send your complaints to s.molyneux at rogers.com.
So just in case you were wondering...
Where to complain to me about my view of women?
That is the place to go.
And, of course, I have great sympathy for women in the modern world.
I think it's a terrible set of expectations that they have to live with, and it's very hard for them to navigate.
So there's a lot of frustration that women have in the mixed signals, the cross-messages, and in the way that they were raised, with a lot of controls placed on women that aren't placed on men, particularly in their teenage years.
I'm not saying they're all bad, but because parents aren't ethical, they're not put forward as moral.
I mean, they are, but they're not really moral.
They're just around control, being controlled.
So women grow up kind of tense and frustrated and, you know, with all these mixed signals and they don't know which way is up.
So there's a lot of challenges for women in terms of figuring out how to live, right?
I mean, and particularly with the added bonus of I think women are slightly more inclined to have children than men.
I mean, I want to have kids myself, but I could have gotten by in life without them.
But most of the women I know, it's a pretty big deal, so...
So, that having been said, I think that women have a great degree of frustration and anger within their own hearts and souls about their lives and confusion and all that.
And I'm not saying it's any more than men.
I'm just talking about sort of specific things around women.
And it's particularly true about the way that they were raised.
So, the women who end up generating these kinds of no-win situations, they don't have the capacity to express just frustration with their situation, with their environment.
So, they don't get to say very easily, or at all, man, I really hated the way I was raised.
I hate all these social stereotypes.
I hate all of these mixed signals that women get, that we have to be everything and And all at the same time, and I really hate this whole pressure that is on women to be this, that, and the other.
They can't express any of that, right?
Because, you know, the fundamental thing that women get is be nice, damn it, right?
You have to be nice, right?
You can't be aggressive if you're a woman.
That's the fundamental thing, right?
Which is nonsense.
I mean, women are feral when it comes to, say, protecting the young or protecting their husband if there's lots of love involved.
I mean, don't get between Christina and Her opinion of me, it won't be pretty.
She makes a female grizzly look like a panda bear.
So women are feral, and I think that's totally great.
But of course, since the Victorian era, and maybe slightly before, they've sort of had this whole be nice thing, or niceness is femininity.
So they're not really allowed a whole lot of stretching and flexor to be all that they are.
So they're not allowed to get angry.
Women are not allowed to get angry.
A man thumping the table is assertive.
A woman thumping the table is a bitch.
That's kind of the mess that they have to work with.
And, of course, it's not just all men to women.
Women enforce this even a lot more than men do.
And there's lots of complicated reasons why women aren't allowed to get angry, mostly because most of us grew up with kind of angry mothers.
So, we don't feel too comfortable with female anger.
It took me a little while to get comfortable with it, of course.
So, there's lots of controls. I'm not allowed to get angry.
But anger will always come out.
You can't not feel an emotion and expect there to be no consequences.
Anger will always come out. So how does it come out?
Well, if you own your own emotions and you feel them yourselves and they become something which is a propellant to action, right?
So if I feel like, oh my god, I've put on 10 pounds, I'm just going to lose it.
I don't even need to tell anyone, right?
I'm just going to cut back on the snacks and exercise a little more and lo and behold, hunky-dory, we're fine.
But if you're not able to feel your feelings or you don't allow yourself to feel your feelings, well, how are they going to manifest themselves?
Well, they're going to manifest themselves in you are going to recreate the same situation that you're not experiencing in yourself.
You're going to recreate it for others.
And we can get into the why another time, but just, you know, if you don't mind accepting it for now, I'd appreciate it.
So if I can't feel anger, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to create anger in other people.
So this is why there's a board member who is no longer with us, who doesn't ever think that he's being angry, but he creates a lot of anger in other people, and this is sort of the situation that I'm talking about.
If you can't feel your own emotions, you end up making other people feel them by setting up these sort of elaborate traps.
This is just an unconscious thing that happens.
And the feelings will out. I mean, you can't evade reality.
I mean, you can, but other people pay the price, right?
So what happens then is you end up in this situation where, so if a woman is frustrated and isn't allowed to feel angry and feels thwarted when she's growing up and isn't allowed to express herself and feels like she can't win no matter which way she turns, but she doesn't acknowledge the anger and frustration that that breeds in her when she was growing up, Why then, she ends up creating these kinds of situations, usually for her boyfriend, sometimes for her friends, but absolutely for her boyfriend and husband.
She's going to make him feel what she cannot.
This is the basic emotional interaction that is so dangerous when you're dealing with passive aggression and projection, counter-transference, and so on.
So, if you're in a situation with your girlfriend where she is complaining about something and doesn't accept any particular capacity to solve it, or I won't own it, or it's the media's fault, or I'm just unhappy about it but won't take any steps to solve it, well, what does that create in you?
Well, it creates feelings of...
Of anger, of frustration, of helplessness, and also that you can't express it.
There's nothing wrong with anger and helplessness in a relationship.
I would just want to express it and say, you know, what's happening here is really making me feel angry and helpless.
And the person says, wow, I'm really interested.
Tell me more about that. Maybe we can figure out what's going on.
That's what a healthy partner will do.
Of course, an unhealthy partner will say that, well, it's bad for you to feel that.
You shouldn't feel that. So you'll get lectured at for feeling the way that you're feeling.
So that's an indication that you know you're in the land of passive aggression.
So a particular response is provoked in you, and then you are criticized or condemned for having that response.
So if you at one point say, you know what, I'm just so sick and tired of this whole weight issue.
Like, woman, deal with it, lose the weight, or accept who you are.
But I don't want to hear another word about your weight issues.
And then you're going to get all this tearful or angry or whatever kind of response.
You're not supporting me. You don't listen.
You don't care. All you do is tell me what to do.
And you don't understand.
You don't face the same pressures.
So suddenly you're like a jerk for not understanding or not being sympathetic to these kinds of issues.
So you'll get that kind of stuff.
And so really you're in a no-win situation.
So you either continue to suffer under your partner's self-hatred in this realm...
Or you beat your head against the wall of coming up with solutions that she doesn't want to implement or promises to implement but never does, which is usually more common.
And this produces all of these inevitable and perfectly healthy feelings of anger and frustration and helplessness.
And then when you express that to her, say, I feel really angry and helpless and frustrated with this whole weight stuff.
It's driving me nuts. Then she'll say, well, it's not your issue.
Don't deal with it then. So you'll get all of that stuff.
And then, of course, the next day she'll start complaining about it again and make you unhappy.
So you're really in this no-win situation, in this kind of realm, and you really don't, you can't survive in that, right?
I mean, a relationship won't last unless you get to deal with that issue.
But what is happening is all the feelings that the woman can't express, she is bringing to bear on you, right?
So she can't feel her own anger and frustration and helplessness, and so what she does is she creates these impossible situations for you, right?
Wherein you end up feeling all of this anger, frustration, and helplessness, and then she rejects your feelings.
This last part is very key.
So she will provoke these feelings in you, and then she will reject those feelings.
And why? Well, because she's rejecting her own feelings in this area.
So that's sort of important to understand.
That the sort of final component of rejecting your feelings in this area is absolutely crucial and something, of course, that is really the most dangerous aspect of the whole interaction because of the way in which it interferes with your own ability to trust and process your own instincts.
So what's the solution?
How can you approach this in such a way that you're going to really help your partner?
Assuming that you care for your partner and your girlfriend is someone that you want to help, whether you stay with her for the rest of your life is another matter, but...
If you do want to help your partner, if that's something that you're interested in, then it's usually the case that you will not be able to describe this stuff openly to your partner.
That's never been my experience.
Now, the way that this can help, and this comes from the basic idea of the therapeutic relationship, the way that you can actually help in these situations is you just listen.
And I know it's tough as guys.
It's really tough.
But all you do is you just listen.
Listen. So you say, so your girlfriend says, oh, I hate the way I look.
I'm so fat. I look terrible in these pants.
I'm unhappy. It could be anything.
We're just picking this issue. And, well, all you do is you say, oh, I understand that must be upsetting for you.
It's really that simple in language, but it's very hard to do in practice because your tug is that you want to fix the problem for the person, right?
But as soon as you get that impulse, you know you're in a trap, right?
You know you're in a trap because you can't solve issues like wait for someone else.
You just can't. You can become a food cop.
You can drag them handcuffed to you and drag them to the gym and so on.
You cannot solve other people's problems.
Completely and totally impossible.
You can maybe motivate them and give them the knowledge and tools to solve their own problems, but if you are trying to solve somebody else's problem, you're like a doctor who's looking at a cancer patient saying, don't worry, I'll do the chemo for you.
I mean, that would obviously be ridiculous, but this is the approach that we all take in personal relationships, that somehow we're going to end up owning this problem, and we're going to come up with the solutions, and we're going to be the cops and the gatekeepers and the this and the that, and it doesn't matter.
I mean, there's no way that you can ever, ever, ever, ever do that.
And the amount of emotional energy that's wasted in this pursuit is really, I mean, could power the planet for a millennium.
So if your partner is complaining, oh, my boss at work, or my job, or My friends or my mother or my weight or whatever it is that's going on, and usually some combination of all of these joyful factors.
Well, it's really simple.
You just say, yes, I can understand that that's difficult for you.
And you say this in a very neutral tone, right?
Because people have these stories, right?
They have these stories that they're hard done by or that their weight is a continual issue and so on.
And the way that they validate those stories is to get other people to emotionally invest in them.
If you don't emotionally invest in somebody else's narrative about their own life, then that narrative is going to be considerably weakened.
So if you don't buy into somebody's unhappiness about their own story, then it actually becomes vaguely aware.
They become vaguely aware over time, and then more aware that it's just that.
It's just a story. So my friend who had the issue around his credit rating because he hadn't paid some bills on time because he was depressed, well, there's no bad thing about this.
He just bought some respite from his depression by not paying bills, which would have made him sadder.
There's nothing wrong with that.
So it's not a disaster.
You just listen to it and you say, okay, well, I mean, this is a trade-off.
You can say trade-off. I think that's fair.
But first of all, you just start by saying, yes, I can understand that you're upset about that.
You can say, I understand that you're upset about that.
Now tell me more. I want to know more about it.
But initially, for sure, you don't offer advice.
Certainly don't take ownership of the problem and don't say, I now have a 10-point plan for you to achieve what it is that you want.
That's never going to work, for sure.
Because you're disempowering the other person, fundamentally.
Now, they may want it desperately because they don't want to feel their own feelings of frustration and helplessness.
To its proper object, right?
So women will be frustrated with their body image when really what it is that they're frustrated about is that they weren't loved for who they were when they were growing up, right?
As very few of us, if any of us were.
So their real frustration is not feeling visible to their parents or their siblings or whoever it was that was around them when they were growing up.
That's their frustration.
And then it gets transubstantiated into, or transferred into, this body image thing, right?
Because it's safer.
It's safer to deal with the body image thing.
So, you know, the entire fashion industry is a way of covering up the crimes of the parents.
If you want to look at it that way, I think there could be a valid argument made for that.
I'm not going to make it right now, but I think you could definitely say that.
It's a way of getting women to focus on inconsequential details, like their levels of subcutaneous fat deposits, rather than to focus on what really makes them free and empowered as human beings, which is an accurate and just evaluation of the people in their lives when they were growing up.
That's what brings freedom, because then you actually deal with the issues that are significant, not the issues that are tertiary and insignificant, like whether you fit into your genes from 10 years ago.
So I would certainly recommend you take that approach.
There's no guarantee that this is going to work.
I mean, work in terms of, like, make your relationship great.
Because what is going to happen is if you sort of blandly and neutrally say, yes, that's tough, I understand that that's very difficult for you, then what's going to happen is the woman's going to attack you for not caring.
Now, that's partly her fault, but it's also partly your fault, because you have trained her that when she gets upset, that you rush in with all these solutions, and then she blocks you, and you get frustrated, and there's this whole cycle, this merry-go-round that goes on in relationships.
And that you've trained her, right?
That you're going to take on her emotional burden and she's going to get to act out her own emotional blockages or her own suppressed emotions.
You're going to act them out for her.
So you've kind of trained her as well.
So you've both trained each other into this interaction.
Now, if you change it, that's great in terms of progress, but it's going to feel like things get worse before they get better, right?
They always do, right, in these kinds of situations.
So when you say, well, that's interesting.
I can understand that that's difficult for you.
Then you are going to be attacked as being unfeeling, uncaring, robotic.
Like, stop repeating that. I want you to actually get involved.
I want you to really listen.
I am listening. I just understand that it's difficult for you.
You've just got to stay with this sort of broken record kind of approach where you simply refuse to step in and take ownership for somebody else's emotional difficulties because that is going to disempower them.
It's going to frustrate you and it's never going to solve a damn thing.
In your relationship, it's just going to make things worse.
What you are doing is staving off the inevitable.
And the inevitable is, why am I taking ownership for your emotional difficulties?
That's the inevitable question that relationships really sort of hinge on if they're not sort of mature and empowered relationships.
Why, oh why, would I take any ownership whatsoever for your body image?
It's your body image. It's your body.
It's your food intake. You control whether you exercise or not.
You control what you eat.
You control how you perceive yourself.
I don't have any ability to change any of that, so why on earth would I take ownership for it?
It doesn't make any sense at all.
It's like trying to drive a car that you don't have the keys to.
You're just sitting there knocking on the window getting frustrated.
You don't have the keys to somebody else's consciousness.
You can't inhabit their body and take over their minds and their bodies.
So it's completely irrational.
Though perfectly understandable, given the way that we're raised, right?
It's completely irrational to attempt to take this kind of control from another human being and enact a change for them.
So all you do is you say, yes, I understand that you feel upset, and you're going to get ragged on quite a bit for not being caring, because you're changing the rules, right?
And you can, if you're feeling brave, explain what it is that you're doing and why, but then you're going to be accused of being manipulative and being controlling and this, that, and the other.
So, you know, I certainly wish you the best of luck with that.
But what you do want to do in relationships, you know, this is my...
Humble opinion from having had more than my share of them, and not honorably so in some cases, but you want to figure out if this is someone you're going to spend your life with.
I mean, men have a clock too, right?
If you want kids or whatever, you want to settle down.
You don't want to waste time in relationships that aren't going to work out.
You just don't. You just don't.
It's not like a job where you take a job saying, okay, this isn't my perfect job, but you're not getting paid to be in relationships.
They're there for your pleasure. And now that I have a relationship which is beautiful and wonderful and grows and is going to be for the rest of my life, I think that's fantastic.
And I just sort of wanted to share that I wish someone had told me not to waste my time in substandard relationships with people who aren't going to change or who aren't going to change to the degree and in the direction that I'm changing.
Change like a body decomposes.
That's a change, but it's not a productive one.
And so people don't want to push their relationships because they're a fear that they're going to end.
Well, unfortunately, though, because you know that if you start to become honest and open and realistic in the relationship, like you tell the person what you feel, what you think, honestly and openly, and refuse to take ownership for their issues, that the relationship's going to fall apart.
Well, it should then, and you should get out of it, and you should get on to a better relationship with that kind of self-knowledge, right?
Because you're doing yourself damage staying in bad relationships.
It's not a neutral thing.
Every day that you're in a relationship where you can't be honest and you can't be forthright and you can't be realistic about what you can control and what you can't, every day you do your heart damage.
You do your soul damage. You do your capacity to love and have joy in relationships damage.
And every day that you continue in those relationships, you are reinforcing and continuing bad habits within your own capacity to relate to people, which is going to continue into your next relationship.
So people say, well, I want to break up with this relationship because I'll bring exactly the same problems into the next relationship.
Well, no, that's not true.
That's absolutely not true.
You work on yourself, and as you work on yourself, you will begin to attract different kinds of people.
So I could not have attracted Christina when I was in my 20s, I don't think.
Because I had too much self-knowledge to accumulate and too many emotional issues to work through.
But once you work through them, then you find yourself, you're not attracted to the rollercoaster stuff anymore.
You're attracted to stable and mature people, and they are also attracted to you.
And every day that you live in relationships, you push that day of a happy, productive, lifelong, beautiful love relationship that much further away, and you make it that much less likely to occur.
It's not neutral. If you continue to smoke, it's not like it's neutral.
You are damaging yourself.
The same thing occurs with relationships.
If you continue in relationships where you can't be honest and open, there is a negative consequence that accumulates over time.
That you get some more scar tissue over your heart and it becomes that much harder in the future to deal with relationships that are productive and positive without bringing those bad habits in.
So don't do that, would be my sort of advice.
Thanks so much for listening.
I wanted to mention that I'm going to be on vacation next week.
I don't know how much podcasting I'll get done.
It won't be nearly to the degree that I am getting done now.
We'll still have the Sunday afternoon chat at 4 p.m.
Eastern Standard Time. Come to freedomainradio.com forward slash board.
Click on general messages for instructions on how to get into the chat.
I look forward to talking to you.
Desperately would invite women to come and join in the conversation.
We will treat you with the utmost respect because we do love the fairer sex in Freedomain Radio land.
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