All Episodes
Previous Next
June 2, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
33:13
264 Dealing with Passive Aggression (Part 2)

Almost there now... Just a few... more... chews!

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good morning, everybody.
I hope you're doing well. It's Steph.
We're going to try an experiment here.
And the experiment is that we are going to see if I can use my Zen Vision Ember recording.
I slammed the door on my headphone jacks inadvertently yesterday, which didn't work As well as you might hope.
And so we are going to take a swing at seeing whether or not my Zen Vision M, with its non-noise cancelling headphones and its uncanny ability to pick up every background noise in the known universe, I think it even picks up the echoes of the Big Bang.
And we're going to see whether or not it can't at least produce some sort of recording.
And see what happens from there.
I didn't notice it until after I'd started driving.
So we'll go to backup and see how it works.
It's 8.37 in the morning.
And it is the 2nd of June 2006.
And this is going to be part two of the relationship stuff that we were talking about yesterday.
And the reason for that is when I was having a coffee this morning, I was checking out the boards.
And welcome to the new female listener, the new female listener.
We have actually started to get a number of female listeners.
We've had some lurkers, ladies and gentlemen.
We've had some official lurkers of the gentler sex on the board.
And I am enormously, enormously thrilled when they decide to make themselves known, when they decide to corporeal themselves on the board and start discussions.
I think that it's a friendly board.
We have some occasional snippiness, of which I am by no means never guilty of.
So... I'm very glad that you're with us.
I'm very glad that you'll add to the conversation.
And we certainly appreciate that it takes some courage, some more courage than us yapper-mouthed men for women to enter into the philosophical fray because there's a lot of cultural influences around keeping the peace, not speaking up, and being silent when the blow-hard men are Whittling and scratching and cussing and going, Yeah, that anarchy is a good thing.
So, welcome aboard.
Thank you so much for joining the conversation.
So, Relationship Part 2 is going to be prompted by a rather remarkable post, and I'm not going to read it because I'm driving.
So, this post that was posted this morning by a board member was talking about his girlfriend.
And I won't get into the details.
I assume that...
I'm not going to say who it is, and I assume it's not entirely private, because it's on the board and all.
But basically, this gentleman, like many gentlemen, has a girlfriend who has significant problems with her body image.
And so he ends up complimenting her, and she thinks he doesn't mean it, and so he compliments her again, and she thinks he doesn't mean it again, and they get into this kind of trap, right?
The kind of traps that I was talking about yesterday afternoon.
Well, what happens then is the conversation generally, I'm sure, slides into a kind of dissatisfied standoff, which is always the case when you're dealing with passive-aggressive people.
I mean, what they want to do is make you feel helpless and thwarted and yet be nice doing it, right?
So what the woman will do is say, well, I feel I don't like my elbow.
Oh, you've got a beautiful elbow.
Oh, come on, look at this.
They don't even match. Look at this elbow of this woman and the model.
Look at my elbow. You're telling me there's not a difference.
Well, there's... I mean, either you say, no, there's no difference.
You have a supermodel's elbow, which assuming is not the case, and then you'd be just accused of lying.
Then you say, well, there's a difference, but difference is good.
It's like, yeah, well, if difference is good, how come all the supermodel's elbows look exactly the same?
Well, that's just a cultural standard of beauty, and it's like, well, yeah, that's what is considered beautiful.
And my elbow, can't you just admit it?
My elbow is not beautiful.
No, I like your elbow.
Well, you might like my elbow like you've got a fetish for funky-looking elbows, but my elbow is not beautiful.
Can you at least admit that my elbow is not beautiful, that I'm not insane here?
That's all I'm asking. And then, of course, if you say, yes, you're right, your elbow is not beautiful, then you're stuck in two holes.
One hole is, well, why on earth have you been telling me now for 20 minutes that my elbow is beautiful?
I mean, if it's not beautiful, what kind of falsehoods are you trying to say?
It doesn't help when you lie to me.
And the other is, oh, so you don't find me attractive.
So, I mean, there's no way out of those holes, right?
You don't ever come out alive.
Which is why there's so many jokes about men not wanting to go.
Like, oh, it says, do these shoes make my head look too big?
No, your head's too big without the shoes.
Anyway, so...
This kind of conversation is always designed to make you feel thwarted.
It's lose-lose. It's impossible.
And a woman is just reproducing what has occurred for her.
And of course, it can be cross-gender.
I'm just talking about women here based on my own lack of experience of dating men.
If you know men who are like this, and I'm sure there are some.
I mean, certainly Christina meets some in her practice.
Just feel free to share what it is that men do that trap women in this sort of futility.
I think with men it might even be worse, right?
Because with men it's sort of like, I'm a drunk and you don't support me.
It could be that kind of stuff too, who knows.
But the one thing that this woman said, which was an interesting thing to say, and also the response of the poster was interesting as well.
At one point he's talking about Deeper topics, more important topics, philosophy, religion, and so on.
And she turns to him and says, well, I guess the difference between you and me is that I just don't hate God as much as you do.
It's a pretty remarkable statement to hear from somebody who claims to love you or like you or have any kind of respect for you.
Because there's a lot...
I mean, we'll unpack the statement for a minute or two.
Ha! Two minutes, if I can keep it that short.
For an indeterminate amount of time, which will probably be cut off by me getting to work.
But we'll unpack the statement a little, and then we'll talk about his response and ways in which he might take a different approach, which I've mentioned on the post, but might be worth having a few more details about.
Now, if somebody says, I don't hate God as much as you do, well, what are they implying?
What is implied? What is packaged into that statement?
Well, of course, the first thing that is packaged into that statement is that God exists.
Right? Because she's not saying, I don't hate the idea of God.
She's not saying, I don't hate the belief in God.
She's saying, I don't hate God.
Right? So God exists. Now, the second thing that is packaged into it is that the reason that this gentleman dislikes religion is It's because he hates God.
Now, she didn't say the devil, right?
Because he also doesn't believe in the devil, right?
So you've got to understand that these statements are very precise.
This kind of verbal sadism is very...
It's like a scalpel, like with a well, well, well-trained surgeon going straight for the most vulnerable part of the body.
This is a kind of verbal sadism that is exquisite.
I mean, really, it's exquisite.
I swear to... I could not spend six months trying to come up with a more cutting line To an atheist.
I don't think I could. And this woman says it without, you know, there's no practice.
There's no, like, she just opens her mouth and says it.
And I could not, for the life of, I couldn't even come up with something this good if you gave me six months of straight thought about it.
So I do have a kind of horrified admiration for this level of skill in this sort of verbal sadism.
It's fantastic. I mean, it really is a force of nature.
It's like an atomic bomb. But, see, this guy doesn't believe in the devil either, but she doesn't say, well, I guess I don't hate the devil as much as you do.
And the reason she doesn't say that, or any other supernatural entity, like she could say, and we'll get to this later, she could say, I guess I don't hate leprechauns as much as you do.
But what she says is, I don't hate God as much as you do.
Well, the reason that she brings God into the equation is that God is virtuous, and God is good.
Now, why would somebody hate God?
Well, it wouldn't be because they were good.
It would be because they're evil.
Right? That's also important.
So she's saying God exists.
She's saying that the motivation to dislike religion is hatred of virtue.
And so that also implies, well, more than implies, absolutely states that atheists are evil, that they're motivated by a hatred of virtue, that they're motivated by a hatred of God, which exists, right?
Right? So, I mean, there's more, lots more to go into about that statement.
But the fundamental fact or issue is that there's so much that's packaged into this that it really is quite astounding.
It's also, of course, not a philosophical argument in any way, shape, or form.
It's just an attack.
And this is what the false self does, right?
So the false self can't deal with rationality.
It can only deal with submission or sadism, right?
It can only deal with sadism or masochism.
So, because the false self is all about conformity, whenever somebody...
And it's all about brutalizing the real self for the sake of conformity, because it's even worse if you don't conform, sort of, when you're growing up.
And this statement tells you all you need to know about this woman's upbringing, that she was not allowed any kind of latitude or authenticity, that her mother is verbally sadistic, and her father is verbally sadistic, and both may be physically sadistic, and it seems quite likely that somebody with her was sexually sadistic, I mean, as a child, right?
Pedophilia is so common that it's something that is a symptom that we always need to think about when we are dealing with somebody's psychological difficulties.
It is just so common, so sadly common, especially among women, that it's just something we need to consider as a very real possibility.
I mean, it's not exactly as rare as some really obscure disease, It is so common that it's ridiculous.
So it's just something that we always need to be aware of as a potential symptom.
And this level of verbal sadism probably comes from somebody who's been extraordinarily verbally abused in their life and hasn't dealt with it, of course.
So they end up having to reproduce it and justify it and normalize it by putting it back out there.
And so this is everything you need to know about this woman's history.
But The false self brutalizes the true self.
And so what's happening here is her false self is brutalizing this guy's true self, right?
So he truly believes there is no God.
He truly believes in science and he's a scientist himself, an engineer.
So he truly, honestly and genuinely and passionately believes in the pursuit of truth and philosophy and is curious about just about every aspect of human life and not a bad writer to boot, I must say.
And So what happens is that his true self, which is stating his views on religion, is brutalized by this incredibly compressed and sadistic attack upon his psychology, his ethics, his motivation, his ability to determine truth from falsehood.
And you see, the false self believes that everything is hypocritical.
The false self, because the false self itself is hypocritical.
Not because it's protecting the true self, but because by the time we become adults, it thinks that it's virtuous.
It thinks that it is doing the right thing.
So because the false self is hypocritical, because of its addiction to the false argument for morality, then if you are false, you know, as is said in Hamlet by Polonius, above all else to thine own self be true, for then it shall follow as night follows day.
Thou canst not be false to any man.
And the reverse is true.
If you are not to your own self true, you cannot be true to anyone, and you will see no truth in anyone.
And the false self is incapable of seeing any kind of rational, emotional, or spiritual truth, any kind of authenticity.
So the moment that the false self sees any kind of authenticity, it automatically, without, I mean, it's not a consciously corrupting thought on this woman's part, or on anyone's part who does this, It immediately, immediately portrays whatever the true self is putting forward as hypocrisy.
As hypocrisy.
So the false self will always intimate to you that, yes, you may have all of these highfalutin $20 words about your philosophy.
You may have. All of these fantasies about yourself as an ideal pursuer of noble truth and as somebody who's only into the integrity and so on.
But I know the truth that you won't admit to yourself.
I know what's really going on.
I can pierce past this pompous veil that you put in front of the world about, oh, I'm so into ideas and I'm so into philosophy.
Ooh, and look how smart I am.
Ooh, and look how deep I am.
And look how superior I am to everyone.
Look how... Look how the little people are constantly disappointing me.
Look how noble I am.
Look how much... Ooh, I'm so stuffed with integrity.
It's almost ridiculous, right?
So the false self that is around you is going to strongly, in a cowardly manner, suggest that every one of your true honest-to-goodness passions, your true self, that it is just a pose, that it is just a front pose.
That what is really going on is you're acting out emotional sickness in the form of moralizing philosophy, right?
This is what you'll constantly get, because the world is entirely ruled by the false self.
The ruling of the false selves of the world makes the state look insignificant, right?
This is why I focus on your personal relationships and your family first.
So, what happens here...
It's that this woman is saying, so let's just say, I don't know what the guy said to provoke it, but let's just say he said something like, there is no God.
So she doesn't respond to this argument with respect for his intellectual integrity and his goal and so on.
What she does is she says, I don't hate God as much as you do.
And of course, the last thing that's packaged in there is that I'm virtuous.
I don't hate as much as you do, so I'm better than you.
I like God, and you hate God, and God is virtue, so I'm virtuous and you're evil.
I mean, there's just so much that's packaged in there.
Every single word of those is just fantastically compressed bile.
It's really quite remarkable.
You sit down and think for an entire day on everything that's in that statement, and how powerful that statement is in terms of making somebody defensive, right?
So... So she's saying that your supposed philosophy is just a cover for your hatred of virtue.
So the false self is always trying to say that what you're putting forward is a lie.
It's a hypocritical, pompous, self-serving lie.
Why? Because what this woman is doing is a hypocritical, pompous, self-serving, corrupt lie.
So anyway, we won't get into any more of that.
There's a lot more that you could say about it, but I'm sure you get the gist of what's going on with the statement.
What I think is particularly interesting is the response, right?
So this is an attack. This is an attack.
And it is a fundamental, powerful, vicious attack upon any kind of personal integrity.
So if you can get somebody to believe that their true self is their false self, then their false self will win, likely forevermore, right?
That's the great challenge of maturing out of the teenage generation.
Sort of gulag camps of the parental units is to remember that what your conformity to your parents' insanity or craziness or hypocrisy was an adaptive measure and not something that was your true self and was a temporary, like you cower when the shell goes overhead.
You don't cower when you're strolling through the park, right?
When the danger is past, you can relax the controls and so on.
So, it's an attack, and one's natural response to an attack is a defense, right?
So this gentleman says, no, I don't hate God.
I don't hate God any more than I hate leprechauns.
Now, this is not communicating, in my humble opinion, at the right level.
This is not communicating at the right level.
Because what this person, what this gentleman felt, I guarantee you, was pain and anger.
Because that's exactly what calling somebody hypocritical and evil, especially somebody who is interested very much in virtue, calling somebody hypocritical and evil and blind to themselves is going to provoke pain and anger.
It's going to provoke anger in somebody you don't claim to have a relationship with, and it's going to cause pain and anger in somebody you do claim to have a relationship with.
So, The first thing that I would do in that kind of situation is to say, holy crap, what you said just now, I can't even tell you how much that hurt me.
Now, if she's a verbal sadist, then she's going to say something like, yeah, well, the truth hurts, don't it?
Right? At which point, I mean, I don't think I would have anything more to say to that person for the rest of my life, but let's just say that I, for some reason, wanted to continue, then I would say something like, No, it didn't hurt because it was the truth at all.
It hurt because of the implications of what you're saying, right?
Because when something's that's compressed, it's a communication that's going unconscious to unconscious, right?
It's the direct sort of conduit unconscious to unconscious.
Whereas the defenses occur...
Oh, that's too complicated.
We'll get into that another time.
But the response is to defend...
As if the statement is about you and God and hatred and virtue.
It's not about that at all.
It's not about that at all.
The fascinating thing is that if somebody doesn't have curiosity about you, but just jumps to conclusions about you, the wonderfully liberating thing, my friends, is that the wonderful thing is that that has nothing to do with you.
There's nothing to do with you at all.
You could be anybody.
In that situation. The only part of you that's being attacked is the fact that you have any kind of integrity.
It's integrity that's being attacked, not you.
Right? It's not your integrity. It's integrity as a principle that's being attacked.
I mean, everybody knows who's listened to a couple of podcasts that my mom wasn't exactly Mary Poppins.
And, you know, the great liberating understanding that comes when you're an adult is that her hatred, her beating, her screaming, nothing to do with me.
Nothing to do. She didn't look at me With the capacity not to be evil.
I mean, okay, she had the capacity to not be evil.
But as I say, she didn't look at me and say, you know, I could love this kid and treat him with kindness and respect and be curious and loving towards him.
I could love this kid, but there's something about this kid that I just hate.
Like, I think, after a careful evaluation of this kid's nature, I think...
That this kid is evil.
And that the only way to make this kid good is to beat him and scream at him.
That's my approach to dealing with this issue of poor little Steph's evil nature.
Well, this had nothing to mean my mother doesn't know me at all.
My mother has no idea.
You ask my mother, you know, what's Steph's favorite movie?
What's his favorite book? Who's his favorite author?
What are his interests? What are his passions?
She'd get maybe like 5%.
Maybe, maybe 5%.
And even if she did get those 5%, she'd have the wrong opinions about them.
Like, she'd know I'm interested in philosophy, but she'd say, because Steph's life was so chaotic growing up, he now is drawn towards organizing his thoughts in a psychological manner.
So, again, she's saying that my desire or love of philosophy...
It's only a manifestation of a psychological fear of chaos, right?
So because I'm so afraid of chaos, I have to organize my thoughts, and so I'm addicted to philosophy because of all this chaos.
I mean, my brother would have the same opinions, and so would a lot of other people who knew me when I was young, because it's a lot easier to psychologize about people in a vacuum.
It's a lot easier to do that than it is, of course, to actually deal with their thoughts and ideas and their individuality and their identity.
So, this woman who is responding in this manner, it's not about the guy's belief in religion or non-religion.
It's got nothing to do with his belief.
So you don't respond to it like it's an argument.
It's not an argument to say to somebody, you're full of hatred for virtue, I am virtuous, and you're hypocritical, and false and blind to yourself.
I mean, I get those emails, but I don't pursue them.
As if that there are arguments, right?
As if there's anything in there that can be logically analyzed or is a rational response to any of the ideas that I'm putting forward.
What I do say is, can you tell me what it is about these ideas that troubles you?
Or I could say something like, well, that's not a particularly strong argument and I'm not sure I understand what you're getting.
I mean, you don't even know me, right?
So I'm not really sure what you're getting about my personality out of this, so...
Help me understand where you're coming from.
Or, you can say something like, that's a really painful thing to say to somebody, and if you have evidence for my hatred of God or something, I would really appreciate it.
I mean, if you've had this insight that I am motivated by a hatred of the divine or something, which I'm completely unaware of, then if you have evidence for it, then if you could...
Help me by telling me what the facts of the matter are, then I would really appreciate that because self-knowledge is very important to me.
And so if you have some insight into my soul that I don't have, then there's two things.
One, I would request that you share it with me.
And the second is that I would request that you share it with me in a manner that's not directly, you know, hurtful, right?
I mean, that's important. Now, of course, you are always going to get, right?
When somebody attacks you and then you respond.
My brother used to do this all the time when I was a kid, right?
So he'd say something just horrible and vicious to me, right?
And then I'd get upset.
And he would say, well, aren't we getting mighty defensive?
Right? So he would say, basically, you punch someone in the face and then they get angry and you say, well, you have a psychological problem and you can't handle getting punched in the face and so that's why you're getting angry.
Right? So not only do you get punched in the face, but then you get blamed and For getting upset about being punched in the face, right?
So this is a very... I mean, it's so common and very even worth mentioning, right?
This is what these kinds of personalities always, always, always do.
So that's something to, I think, truly understand from that context.
That if somebody says something that hurts you, then you can ask them to clarify it in a way that is not abusive.
I think that's only fair.
Because what that does is it then puts the onus back on them.
Like they're making a statement and it's a pretty significant attack or a pretty significant statement that says you are hypocritical and evil or whatever it is.
Then it's like, well great, you've really come to an insight about myself that I didn't know.
So if you could let me know how it is that you know this, then I can really benefit from your wisdom.
I mean, and I sent those emails off, oh Lord, I don't know, how many times a week?
It's not insignificant.
Oh, please, tell me about myself, because I don't see this about myself, and so I want to understand how you've come to this conclusion, and then just be relentlessly curious.
Oh, you're just always slagging God.
It's like, oh, well, okay, help me understand that, because...
I don't feel that I'm slagging God, but help me understand what it is that, oh, you're just always putting down religion and so on.
It's like, sure, I understand that I have a lack of respect for religion because, you know, the tenets are false and all that kind of stuff.
But help me understand not that I have a lack of respect for religion, which I already know about myself, but how it is that I hate God and how it is, like, just help me to understand because I'm not seeing that connection.
Right, so now you're putting the onus on them.
Now, if they get uncomfortable and if they get kind of...
Like, if they're like, oh, I've been wanting to talk to you about this for a long time and they pull out a whole sheaf of notes and they start going through the argument about, well, you said this and this gave me this indication and this...
Fantastic, you know, you should thank them for taking such an interest in your spiritual health that they're going to be willing to share with you the insights that they've gained about your character in a sort of therapeutic manner.
I mean, you should be... We should all be so lucky to have friends like that in our life.
I think that's wonderful. That's not going to happen.
I mean, sorry, that fantasy camp of friends who help.
It's not that that's not going to happen in your life as a whole.
Of course it will. But it's never going to happen from somebody who says that kind of statement.
Like, I don't hate God as much as you do.
So, what is going to happen is that they're going to get...
Basically what's happening is you're shining a light on the false self.
The false self is trying to poke your eyes out, and you've done that curly of the three stooges thing, and you've put your hand up in front of your face so that the two prongs going to your eyes get forked by your little finger.
And so what's happened is you're now asking the false self for proof, right?
But the false self isn't about the proof, right?
The false self is about destruction.
It's about corruption. It's about sadism.
It's about creating...
Horrendous and bottomless self-doubt in others, right?
Because that's how the false self, like a virus, reproduces.
So once you sort of say to the false self, you don't emotionally react, you don't become defensive, you don't say, I don't hate God!
Because then you're immediately assuming that it's about you and that the criticism is valid.
Right? Because you don't know whether the...
Maybe you do hate God. I don't know.
Maybe the criticism is valid, but you can't defend it.
You can't defend against it until you understand what's really going on.
So... What you say, then, is you start to get the false.
Okay, well, give me the proof, right?
Give me the rationale behind which you make this statement or make this claim.
I would be very interested in knowing or understanding how it is that you've come to this conclusion that I hate God and that's why I say what I say.
Because I don't feel that.
I don't believe that. So maybe there's something you...
Just ask them for proof.
Ask for proof. Be curious.
Be curious. Be curious. And I guarantee you what is going to happen is that you're going to go through a couple of half-hearted and additionally sadistic explanations.
And then you are going to get irritation and then you're going to get, well, I don't want to talk about this.
I don't think this is a useful topic.
You're going to get all of the endless defenses because the false self has been caught pickpocketing another person's self-esteem.
The false self has been caught...
Tying the shoelaces together under the table of somebody who's just about to go for a run.
And so the false self, when it's caught, right?
But the false self always wants to attack under the cover of night, right?
It's cowardly, right? It never openly, right?
It always just tries and provokes a lack of self-esteem in others.
So when the false self gets caught, then it no longer wants to play, right?
When the false self, when the light, it's a bully, right?
So it's a coward, right? So the moment that you actually end up in a situation where you've caught the false self, Being destructive, being hurtful under the guise of being helpful and honest, then the false self wants to just wriggle.
It's like an electric eel that's greased that's in your hands, like in a rushing river.
All it wants to do is shock you and get the hell out.
It doesn't want to suffer any cross-examination because then it ceases to exist.
And it's a false moral superiority ceases to exist.
So you are absolutely going to get that kind of hostility, that kind of...
Twisting away all of that horrible stuff that the false self is so addicted to.
You're going to get that.
And then, my friend, the relationship is over.
And I wish that there were more words of comfort that I could give to you about that.
But, you know, we have this fear of confronting people in our lives who are abusive or sadistic.
Because we wish to retain the fantasy that they will stop being that.
And the funny thing is that we wish that they would stop being that way, that they would stop being corrupt, yet at the same time, we reward them for being corrupt with our very presence.
And that really is not logical.
If you want somebody to stop being corrupt, Obviously, you talk to them about it at great length, and if they then refuse to see your point or don't want to stop being corrupt, then if you continue to hang around them, hoping that they're not going to be corrupt, then you're sort of missing the point that you're rewarding their corruption by hanging around with them anyway.
You're saying, I'm very interested in corruption, so I don't want you to be corrupt.
But you're also saying, I'm going to hang around with you even if you're corrupt, so corruption doesn't really mean anything.
So, which is it?
Is corruption important or is it not important?
Is being treated with respect important or is it not important?
If it's important, then stop hanging around with people who don't treat you with respect.
And that's sort of a basic.
And if it's not important, then don't want people to start treating you with respect.
Just give and say yes. I'm perfectly happy being treated with no respect for the rest of my life.
I'm perfectly happy with people sniping at me and slamming at me and verbally or physically or emotionally abusing me or being withdrawn or distant or manipulative.
I'm good with that because I don't really care about the integrity.
What I care about is just having a warm body around me with a pulse that makes me feel like I have some sort of intimacy.
That's fine. All we're asking for is honesty, right?
I mean, all the philosophy starts with is honesty.
But if you want people to not be corrupt because corruption is important to you, then if they don't change in pretty damn quick...
If they don't at least acknowledge that they have a problem and start to change, then get them the hell out of your life!
Because then you're sort of messing up both sides of the fence.
Because you're saying, yes, I don't like corruption.
Corruption is very bad. We're not so good with the corruption.
It's double plus on good.
But then you're saying, yes, but I will continue to hang around people who won't even admit that they're corrupt.
Or who, even if they do, won't do anything to change it.
I won't go to therapy or whatever, right?
So... Is it important or is it not important?
And that's the choice you've got to make.
And if it's not important, that's fine.
You don't need to listen to these podcasts anymore.
You can go back and merge with the general herd of all the uninformed and the unenlightened and the corrupt and don't worry about anything anymore.
And that's a valid choice.
It's not one that I would respect, but it is a valid choice.
But on the other hand, if corruption is important, if virtue is important, if integrity is important, then stop hanging around and rewarding people who don't have it and don't want it.
Because not for their sake, but for your sake.
Because you're undermining your capacity for future happiness, as I talked about yesterday.
So I hope this helps. I hope this is useful.
Don't be defensive. Don't defend yourself.
Don't defend yourself.
Just be curious. And that will give you the truth.
And that will give you freedom. Either within the relationship or freedom from the relationship.
And that is absolutely what is going to bring you joy.
Thank you so much for listening.
Donations always appreciated.
▲
Export Selection