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Jan. 23, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
39:44
616 Coincidence and Love Part 2
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Good evening, everybody. It's Steph.
Hope you're doing well. It's the 20 dang second or something like that of January 2007.
10 to 6.
Oh, I've got to make it home by 6.30.
Actually, about 6.25 because Christina has a patient tonight and it's get home by that time or go elsewhere for about an hour and ten minutes.
So we shall see how we go.
And so we have a drop-dead date on the end of the podcast, I think.
Which means I'm going to have to be vaguely efficient, which means...
Well, it's impossible.
So what does it really mean?
It means that it's impossible. So I wanted to talk about preparing yourself for love.
And this means more than shaving the llama and putting on the fur glove.
Preparing yourself for love is something that...
It invites love, I think, into your life.
It certainly has been my experience after spending a good number of years specifically not inviting love into my life.
In fact, inviting quite the opposite of love into my life.
I'd like to sort of mention a few things that helped turn it around for me, and maybe they will be of use to you.
And we can breed, breed, all of us libertopians.
Now, the great challenge for me in my life, in trying to get love into my life, in accepting love, and it's a cliche, of course, which we talked about this morning, about self-love and so on, but what was kind of a revelation for me,
what I kind of really got, was that Whether somebody likes me is more a reflection on their value than my value.
And this is really a kind of self-esteem.
Not the easiest thing in the world to achieve, and of course you wouldn't want to try and do it ahead of time because then it just comes across as a kind of pretty-ass vanity.
For me, there was something very important in trying to evaluate, and we talked about this before in the realm of job interviews, but in trying to evaluate whether somebody was good enough for me was an enormous change, a huge change for me, from trying to, you know, desperately beg and hope that somebody was going to go out with me.
Oh, will you date me? Will you go out with me?
Oh, please? Am I a valuable human being?
It's not the easiest thing in the world to act in a noble manner when really that's your inner voice.
It's squeaky on squeaky bill, like Mickey Mouse on helium.
But getting to the point where I was able to try and figure out if somebody was worth Is somebody worth going out with me?
Because basically men propose and women dispose.
At least that's the way it was for me.
And maybe there's Joe Craggy George Studley Muffins who can reverse that trend.
Maybe if you're in The Monkees or Brad Pitt or something like that, you can reverse that trend.
But for me, it was very much like you sort of...
You cross the dance floor in grade 6 or grade 7, and you hope that you can get to somebody who's going to go out with you, not somebody so attractive that they're going to never dance with you, but not somebody so unattractive that your friends will mock you for dancing with her.
But these kinds of things were not the easiest midnight calculus that went on in the teenage boy's brain, i.e.
mine. But...
It really was just a question of throwing yourself out there and just hoping to God or Satan that some woman would actually go out with you.
That really was not the most picky-choosy kind of situation to be in, like being a job hunter in a recession.
It's like, well, they'll pay me.
Great! I'm sorry, what was the job again?
Yeah, I can do that. I've had experience in that area.
Yeah, no problem. And shifting from that to something a little bit more picky choosy was a real struggle for me.
It was a real challenge for me because I'd never really had any, I'd never had inculcated in me or communicated to me a sense of my own value from my sort of family or community and certainly not from the women around me.
So, for me, it was very much a sort of like water coming down a mountain.
I'll try any path, bear any burden to get where I am.
Can I try this? Can I try that?
Can I try the other way? And I was never in a situation where I could command demand, right?
And that was always a challenge.
And that's still a challenge for me in my life professionally, right?
I mean, one day I will have...
Actually, I shouldn't complain. I had two job offers when I took...
The job that I'm at right now, so I shouldn't complain madly, but I'm sure that I will.
So... Ooh, is he gonna go?
Is he gonna go? Yes, he's gonna go.
He's gonna let me in. Oh, it's shocking.
It's just beyond shocking. So, for me, there were sort of two things that occurred...
One was partly just sort of getting older, sort of recognizing that there's nothing intrinsically valuable in a woman wanting to go out with you.
I can't tell you what a shock this was.
Vaginas are as common as noses, and the bestowing of one to you does not raise a woman's value.
This was beyond shocking to me.
This is something that I just couldn't really even process the first time it occurred to me.
A starving dog does not turn down scraps, and that was really where I was in terms of self-esteem vis-a-vis the fairer sex.
So that was not a very good position to be negotiating from, right?
I mean, if you're dying of thirst and somebody offers you a moose track of stagnant water, you'll trade away your kidney for it, right?
Because you're just not in a position to negotiate.
And that really came from...
Well, obviously, horniness and a desire for sex.
But it also came from a very sort of short-term approach to romance, to love, right?
Which is, can I get me some?
I mean, I like to sort of paint it in a more noble brush than that, but I'm not sure that that would be particularly accurate.
So that was sort of my experience.
That just getting access to a woman, and I don't just mean sexually, but romantically or whatever, having access to a woman, the fact that she would give access to me did not make her valuable.
It's shocking.
It still shocks me. That there had to be a value outside of that.
There had to be a value that a woman was bringing to the table outside of access.
And again, not just sexual and all that kind of thing, but...
That was sort of the first shock.
Now, the second shock for me was going out with this woman who's an engineer from...
No, it doesn't matter. She's going out with this woman.
And... A nice woman.
And smart and funny and so on.
But... I lie in a bed with her, sort of, middle of the night, and it just suddenly struck me.
It's, you know, like I said, I just sort of said to myself, like, you know, I really should be gauging the value of this by the pleasure that it's giving me as a whole, like the relationship.
I really should be judging this by the pleasure that it's giving me and by no other standard.
Not axiness. Sorry, I'm combining words here.
Not access. Not the sexiness of the woman.
Not her intelligence. Not her professional competence.
Not what my friends think of her.
But does she, as a human being, make me happier?
Because being involved in a relationship, it costs time and money, right?
Two finite things in life.
It costs time and money.
And so for me, just asking that basic question, right?
Because, you know, before I was low self-esteem enough that it was like, well, access is access, right?
What does it matter? But when I began to sort of think, well, I should really be judging this not by access to a woman, right?
Not by haughtiness factor or friends think she's haughtiness factor or intelligence or sense of humor or any of those things, right?
And those things can all exist in isolation.
And they can all exist for immoral people too, right?
And immoral people can be very funny and very sexy and very intelligent.
Or amoral people.
But it really came down to, for me, just asking that sort of simple basic question.
Am I happier with this person in my life?
Shocking! I mean, it's the most obvious thing in hindsight.
But not so much with the occurring to old Steph part.
And those sort of two questions are those sort of two realizations.
Proximity is not a value.
And the value can only be judged by the happiness it brings me, the value of being in a relationship with a woman or anyone.
It can only be judged by the value of the happiness that it brings me.
That's really what I have been talking about in terms of personal relationships since the beginning.
Family is not a value.
History is not a value.
Habit is not a value.
Sexiness is not a value.
Debating skills, eloquence, wealth, sense of humor.
None of these are fundamental values when it comes to the quality and the enjoyability and the positiveness of the relationships.
It really just comes down to...
Does this person bring me happiness?
Am I happier? Am I selfishly better off for being in this relationship?
Does it bring value to me?
Men, we're not so good with that.
I would say, again, there's Joe Studley muffins out there who can pick up women like grape picker picks grapes, but me, not so much one of them.
And just getting used to the idea that reciprocity, and of course it's up to the woman to figure out the pleasure that she gets from me in the relationship.
If I really love her, then it's up to me to ask her what works for her and what makes her happy and provide it where appropriate and where possible, but It really isn't the situation where the woman just has value for showing up and being available and whatever, consenting to be with you in a romantic manner, whatever that is.
And that really was a huge realization for me.
Massive. Because in my family and in my education and all this, there's no reciprocity involved.
No reciprocity. You're always helpless, right?
In your family, at least in my family, the idea of somebody asking me what I would like and what I would prefer and then bending their behavior to accommodate that, it's completely unthinkable.
I couldn't even think of thinking about it.
In school, of course, it's complete nonsense.
There's no reciprocity in school.
You don't go to school because it makes you happy.
You go to school because your parents need some place to stick you during the day, right?
So they put you in the holding pen.
And the same thing's true for so many things about our relationships when we're younger, that it's all just...
Non-reciprocal, and you're sort of forced into it, and you just sort of make whatever goodness you can out of wherever you are, and that's pretty sad.
All around, I mean, that's pretty sad.
So, for me, preparing myself for love was recognizing that love was in fact a factor.
I mean, again, how silly does this sound?
Well, it's very real, though.
How... How can you have love unless you expect love, unless love is a standard that you have?
Love being the involuntary joy that we feel in the presence of virtue, if we ourselves are virtuous.
If you're not a virtuous person, you're not going to feel joy in the presence of a virtuous person.
You're going to feel resentment and all these kinds of things, and then you'll email me.
Love is the involuntary joy that we get in the presence of virtue.
And joy is different from...
I use joy, not happiness or laughter.
As simple as laughter or happiness could count.
But, you know, we laugh at a comedian.
It doesn't mean that a comedian is a virtuous person.
It just means that he's technically funny.
I mean, that's quite different.
So... That aspect of things that you really do have to kind of anticipate, expect, and want, and accept nothing less than a joy in your life, well, that's pretty important when it comes to dealing with relationships.
I mean, that's pretty key.
You aren't going to get things in life that you don't expect, right?
That you don't have as a standard.
So... Sorry, just getting my plug sorted out here because we're snowing.
It's going to be a long drive, so let's get ourselves all set up so that we don't run out of juice.
Now, of course, I might run out of juice before the computer does, but there's no guarantee of that.
Excellent.
Alright, we are wired, baby.
Good thing traffic's moving slowly enough that I can do that with near-infinite safety.
So the expectation of love is sort of a very key thing.
And the first thing that we do is we get rid of the idea that we gain value from somebody wanting us.
We gain value from somebody wanting us.
Because that is essentially passive.
That's basically being a loaf of bread sitting on a shelf saying, I hope somebody buys me.
Oh, buy me, buy me, buy me.
It's very passive, right? Maybe there's a bit of advertising, but you're not really doing anything, you're not really choosing anything in that situation.
So, for me, it was very key not to be passive, right?
Going up, asking a girl, oh, you won't go out with me?
Go up, asking a girl, oh, you will go out with me?
Oh, that's good, right? And that means that I'll go out with her, right?
Because if she wants to go out with me, that means that there's value in what's occurring and blah, blah, blah.
You know the whole thing, right? Whereas, actually having standards over and above accessibility was quite a turnaround for me.
Quite a shock.
And I can't believe I never had an STD. So, making that leap was pretty essential.
Very, very key.
Because then you're saying, I have standards within my relationships.
And it's not...
A seller's market for women anymore because I'm comfortable with being alone.
And once you are comfortable with that, right, it is a kind of Zen thing.
I mean, not to abuse the term Zen too much, but...
You have to not be afraid of being alone in order to be with someone, right?
So people say, well, if I fake being comfortable with being alone, then I'll finally get to go out with someone, and that doesn't work that way.
It's sort of a very fundamental and powerful thing that once you say, okay, you know what?
I'm not going to waste my time in any more nonsense relationships.
I'm not going to go out with a woman just because she's willing to go out with me, and I think she's pretty.
I'm not going to do any of that kind of stuff.
I'm actually going to have standards.
I'm going to have standards. There's going to have to be an exchange of values.
There's going to have to be positive things.
I'm going to be assertive, not aggressive, but assertive in my relationships, and I'm going to ask for what I want.
And you ask for what you want sort of implicitly, and then you ask for what you want explicitly.
The implicit part of asking for what you want is just being assertive with your needs, right?
Just being assertive with your needs.
When Christine and I were first going out, we would meet and then we'd go and we were going to go and meet with some friends or whatever.
And Christina was very assertive with her needs.
And she said, look, we need 15 minutes to reconnect.
We can't just sort of meet and then go somewhere.
I need at least 15 minutes to reconnect with you before we go socializing.
And 20 to 25 minutes is even better.
But we can't just sort of meet each other and say, hi, hi, how's it going?
How's your day? Good, good, good. Okay, let's go.
Because then we're going out like two isolated people to a social event and not connected to each other, which is the whole reason why we're there together as a couple and blah, blah, blah.
That was great. It was just great.
My needs, I asserted in other ways, you know, the sort of problems were zinging and then I began to assert needs around, you know, when we would go to Christina's family, she would sort of mentally check out and I felt like I was just sort of stuck in a small house with old Greek people that barely spoke English and didn't know what I was there for and so on.
So I began to sort of assert my needs in that kind of way.
And it's not my needs at the expense of your needs or anything like that.
It's just these are my needs.
I'm not going to bully you.
We have this temptation because of our histories that when we present our needs to someone and they don't fulfill them, we get angry.
So you go out with someone and let's say you're going to go out with some woman and she's half an hour late.
And you say, you know, I really don't appreciate being kept waiting.
I don't like to be kept waiting.
I don't mind if it's an emergency, but you have a cell phone.
You should call me. I don't mind if something's going on, but I need to know what's going on so I don't sit there and go through the normal rigmarole that you go through when somebody is late where you're like, oh, did we talk about the wrong place?
Did we talk about the wrong time?
Is it the wrong day? All this kind of crap, right?
So somebody just calls, right?
And then if somebody says, basically, hey, don't put your power trip rules on me.
I don't work that way.
I'll show up when I show up.
Because of our histories, we get angry at this person.
We feel, you should be on time.
Well, no. They don't have to be on time.
There's no big cosmic hand that flicks people to be at the right time or the right place.
And there's lots of relationships that, however sad they may be, function fairly well with people not being on time.
You don't have to show up to work on time.
You don't have to show up to the train on time.
You don't have to do anything.
Only thing you gotta do is live and then die, right?
If you're listening to this. So...
No, there's no need to get angry.
We get angry because way back in the distant mists of our history, we asserted our needs with our parents, and our parents were enraged because our parents are narcissists, for the most part.
So we would assert our own needs, which was inconvenient for our parents, as we talked about in Podcast 600, and our parents would get angry.
And that's how we were trained to deal with an expression of need that is rejected.
Just anger, right? That's what our parents did to us.
And that made us very angry, right?
Not so much because our parents rejected our needs, but because they were hypocritically pious about what good people they were, right?
While at the same time backhanding any legitimate needs that children might have.
So... When somebody doesn't meet your needs or whatever, I mean, you can get angry.
There's nothing wrong with it, but it's sort of inappropriate.
You just don't get angry.
Just get gone. Somebody sits down and says half an hour late.
They don't apologize.
And you say, listen, what happened?
I really don't appreciate you being late.
That doesn't work for me.
And they say, oh, you know, well, hell, I just got confused about the time.
And they say, hey, you ready to order?
No, I'm actually not ready to order.
I'd really like to talk about this issue of time.
Because I feel that we have a real difference in our values here.
I'm not saying your values are wrong, but they're incompatible.
I'm certainly not willing to give up my values and just show up whenever the heck I want.
I'm not saying you did. I'm just saying that's how it would work for me.
That if we say 7 o'clock, that I just feel, oh, I can show up at 7.30 or quarter to 8 or whatever.
That's not how I operate, and I'm not willing to give that up as a value.
Now, clearly you have a value that's different.
I'm not saying it's wrong, but it's certainly different from mine in a pretty fundamental and incompatible way.
So for me, if I'm late, I phone and I'll be apologetic and so on, and I'll explain in detail what happened and why and so on.
But you don't feel that is important.
And again, maybe it's not, but this is sort of what I'm used to, and I'm not going to change it.
So, if you sit down without an apology or an explanation, then I can only assume that every time we get together, I will have no idea when you'll be showing up.
You know, within an hour maybe, or within 45 minutes.
But I'll have absolutely no idea when you're going to be showing up.
And I sort of look forward to a life of this, and it's not so appealing, right?
So... So, you know, I'd like to talk a little bit more about this.
I'm not going to try and impose anything on you, but I'll tell you that if you don't have any respect for my time, because, you know, I show up on time, if both of us are showing up, like, when does this end, right?
So, if we say 7 o'clock, And then you think 7.30, and I think, well, she's not going to show up until 7.30, so the date doesn't really start until 7.30, and I can be half an hour late, so I'll show up at 8 o'clock, and then you think that, well, he's going to show up at 8, so I can show up at 8.30, and basically we never see each other, right?
So somebody's got to be more punctual than the other person, and that person, which is me in this situation, and will be me for the foreseeable future, will end up wasting an enormous amount of time and being sort of irritated and frustrated the whole time, so...
That's not really going to work for me.
We have sort of fundamentally different values about respect for other people's time or what I would characterize as respect for other people's time.
Maybe you feel freewheeling and so on and not being tied down.
But I'd like to have a conversation about your values because if they're sort of diametrically opposite in things that I consider to be fairly important in terms of consideration and respect, then let's not waste any time and go through the motions of a date or anything like that and we'll just sort of bid each other a fond farewell and move on.
And then, of course, and it's very unlikely you get through this kind of speech, what you generally will get is stuff like, oh my god, is this what's going to happen?
Like if I'm a few minutes late, I just get this big lecture?
Oh my god, what a way to greet someone, right?
And you get all of this junk pushed onto you and so on, right?
Like now you're now the bad guy because you're asserting your values.
In which case you say, well, I don't really think there's anything else for us to chat about.
Have a wonderful evening.
I'm not going to stay. And those kinds of things, they may not escalate that quickly, but that's really sort of how it rationally would work.
And if the woman says, you know what, you're totally right.
I was absolutely inconsiderate of being late and then not apologizing.
It's really not me, and let me tell you what happened.
And be like, hey, I'm all ears.
Fantastic. Let's talk about it.
But, yeah, that kind of stuff is kind of important.
Her showing up doesn't give anything value.
If you have an employee at your company and they just show up and play Unreal Tournament 2004 all day, well, they're showing up.
Well, does showing up provide value?
No. Showing up consumes value.
They're taking up someone's desk, someone's computer, someone who could be producing value.
They're consuming value by showing up.
And the same thing is true of a date, right?
You ask a woman out.
You're going to pay, I assume, right?
And you're going to spend the time getting ready and this and that and the other and pick her up or whatever, right?
And... She's consuming your resources, right?
Her just showing up and eating doesn't exactly match the requirements of the potential position.
So, having those standards and having those values, that's the way to invite love into your life, is to have some self-respect and to say, no, I don't...
I remember going on one semi-blind date with a woman who...
Told me how two years after the breakup from her last boyfriend, she's still paying off his credit card debts.
Or the credit card debts he racked up while they were together.
Well, that's very much a high-buy situation, right?
Because it's like... Well, this is the kind of man that you date.
She didn't say, and I've gone into therapy since, but she just seemed kind of pissed off at him, right?
So, you know, for me, this was like a good, cozy 40-minute date.
I had a coffee and got the hell out.
Because it's clear this is where her standards are, right?
This is where her standards are.
And so if I treat her better than that, she's going to get bewildered and upset.
Because obviously this goes back to her family, right?
Her family exploited her probably for money, but perhaps for other things.
And so she ended up with a guy who exploited her.
And she's putting those signals out on a blind date with someone right away, right?
So clearly this is the expectation that she has.
How things are going to work.
And that's not the expectation that I have about how things are going to work.
So if I ended up treating her better, and there is this fantasy, right?
That you'll pick up this woman who's been treated badly.
You're going to treat her well, and it's all going to be just too wonderful for words.
And it is a complete and total fantasy.
It's as big a fantasy as voting to change the state, right?
I mean, it's just not the case.
It's not that you have a good woman who had a bad relationship.
Such a thing does not occur. It's not that you had a good woman who had a bad relationship, and she just needs to be picked up and set right and talked to and fixed and so on.
It's a great temptation, and I understand it.
And you can get into a needy woman's pants very quickly, but, boy, I tell you, the sex doesn't really last in the way that you want it to.
Because you start bumping up against all the personality disorders as you move forward.
People, women, or anyone, ends up in a bad relationship because they had a bad childhood, which they're defending, which they're protecting.
They were treated brutally, or exploited, or harmed, or bullied, or put down, or something in their childhood, and they are keeping that standard of relationship going because they don't want to change, because it's too much pain, it's too disorienting and too painful.
For them to change, for them to question and critique their family, for them to assert their needs with their family, to get smashed up in the way that we all do, pretty much, when we assert our needs within our family, that's too painful for her.
So she'd rather pretend that she had a good childhood, which means that her standards for any kind of beneficial interaction remain completely and utterly smashed, which draws her inevitably and draws others inevitably towards her to continue the pattern of abuse, right?
There's not a good woman who ends up in a bad relationship that you will love back into virtue.
That doesn't happen.
It is a result of a delusion, which I myself had for many years.
Not any kind of hoity-toity stuff, any kind of superiority going on here.
But it is the result of the delusion that your childhood does not run your life, right?
And that morals within your childhood are not essential to process as an adult to escape from corruption and from abuse.
It's this illusion, right?
And people love that illusion.
They really do love that illusion.
And that's what keeps them trapped, as Rod's a member, we put it, right?
That you feel like you're... In a sort of geese formation, right?
Nobody breaks ranks from the abuse.
It goes on for generation after generation.
Because it's very hard to apply universal ethics and morals in a personal way to your intimate relationships, right?
Or your, quote, intimate relationships.
Very painful. Very hard.
And... That illusion that there's this woman that you can love into virtue is just not valid at all.
It's a desperately dangerous illusion, right?
Heaven forbid you end up having kids with some witch like this, right?
Or she with you if you're still working through this stuff.
And this is just a guaranteed recipe for continuing the cycle of something pretty negative and then being in the enormously difficult and dangerous position of...
Having harmed a child, right?
If you've had a child and you haven't processed your history and so on.
And that's a very difficult thing to get out of, to dig your way free of.
So, to invite love into your life, for me at least, was to have standards greater than proximity and to look towards my own happiness.
And not try to change the other person.
You can express your needs with the other person, but you can't control them.
And your needs certainly shouldn't be anything that controls them.
That's dictatorial, right? That's bullying.
Say, I prefer it if you're on time or call me if you're going to be late.
That's you expressing a need.
And if the woman says, oh, forget that, man.
I'm not so square as that.
I'm sort of a hippy-dippy, come and go wherever I want.
I am a dandelion, as in the wind.
You cannot force your bourgeois standards on me.
It's like, well, I don't want to.
Bye! Right?
I'm not going to try to.
Having the standards doesn't mean enforcing them on others.
It means seeing whether other people have the same standards.
That's... Podcasts aren't viruses.
They don't invade your brain. I'm working on that for the next release.
But so far, no luck.
Podcasts are voluntary. If you want to listen, listen.
If you don't want to listen, no skin off my nose.
So, inviting love is just really having the standards that your happiness is worth something.
And it's up to the other person to affect your standards based on the values that you tell them about.
That's why you have to know your values, right?
What is important to you?
What is valuable to you?
What is beneficial to you? Because once you know your values, then you can say to the other person, these are my values.
This is what makes me happy.
And if the other person sees fit or shares the same values and you like what they're telling you about what makes them happy, Then, hey, presto, you end up with some happiness.
And maybe, probably, it needs some fine-tuning as you move along.
Oh, I thought this would make me happy, but really not so much.
You can slip out of the Big Bird uniform for now.
But you know your values.
You don't get angry.
You don't feel panicked when other people don't meet your needs.
That all comes from the past.
That's something that is resolved through therapy.
Don't feel panic and anger when somebody doesn't meet your needs or angrily rejects your needs.
It's like, fine. Fine.
Don't be on time. I'm not going to force you into a damn thing.
My boss doesn't shoot me if I'm late.
It's just that if I'm continually showing up at noon, my job may well be in jeopardy.
He's not forcing me.
Maybe it's just, you know, if I want to continue to participate in the company, you know, maybe it'd be a good idea to show up on time once in a while.
So that requires a certain amount of cleanup of the past, and it requires a fairly deep knowledge of the fact that if you're not... and it requires a fairly deep knowledge of the fact Some values are not just personal, right?
I mean, Christina doesn't have to like the band Queen to be my wife.
It doesn't hurt, of course.
But it's not a requirement.
That's not an essential value in a relationship.
The same way that I don't have to be massive fans of Yanni and Barbra Streisand because I'm not a woman.
But there are some things that are core, right?
Yeah, she's got to tell the truth.
Yeah, she's got to be open. Yes, she's got to be passionate.
Or at least have accessible emotions.
Yes, she has to treat me well.
Yes, she has to want to do nice things for me as I want to do nice things for her.
Yes, she has to be brave.
Yes, she has to have integrity.
Because if those things aren't there, Then they're deal-breakers as a whole for everyone.
There's no constellation of human personality wherein self-esteem and happiness and joy and peace of mind is achieved from, say, being beaten up every week by your husband or wife.
That's not a winner.
There is no human being who does well from eating arsenic.
Some people prefer cabbage, some people prefer broccoli.
But there's nobody who does well from eating arsenic or cyanide or, say, having a guillotine fall on their neck.
So yeah, there's some give and take.
But there's some basics that are deal breakers.
There's some basics that are applicable to everyone in relationships.
Lack of physical violence, emotional violence, abuse, put-downs, condescension, eye-rolling, snarkiness, putting down people.
I mean, all of these are total...
There's nobody who flourishes in that.
Nobody who flourishes in those kinds of relationships.
And those are the bare minimum, like, to not have those, right?
Then you have the possibility, right?
It's like, oh, okay, good.
So they're not going to shoot me if I accept this job.
Now let's just see what the job description is, and maybe I want it, right?
So... So inviting love into your life is knowing what love is.
And love is our involuntary, joyful response to virtue.
And I say involuntary, not accidentally, right?
Can't will it. Oh, this person should be virtuous, right?
If I had met Ayn Rand and spent a lot of time around her, I probably would not have ended up loving her to the skies.
Probably would have found her a little bit intolerant and, frankly, quite smoky.
So... She obviously convinced everyone that she was the most rational.
We all love the most rational.
Therefore, everyone loves her. And maybe, I guess, a lot of people tried to will themselves into loving Ayn Rand as the highest possible conceivable ideal.
but my gut would have told me otherwise, I'm pretty sure.
So it's your happiness that you need to nurture, right?
It's your happiness, your joy in the presence of somebody else.
Not just, I'm horny.
It's not just, I need someone to go to the movies with.
But your absolute joy in being in the presence of the other person.
I shouldn't say absolute.
That sounds a little absolutist.
But your joy in the presence of being with the other person.
These are all things that are very important.
Very important to understand.
Very important to have a handle on.
Because if they're not there, then it's not love.
If the virtue, if the integrity, if the honesty, if the courage, if the self-assertiveness, if those things are not present, then it's not love.
And if they're present, maybe somebody's courageous, like they'll stand up to a bully, but they're also angry and bitter, well, you know, a piece of cabbage with a bit of arsenic is still not a good meal.
And it's not a standard that involves perfection, of course.
Not every grain of rice has to be perfectly cooked for you to enjoy eating rice.
But no arsenic.
No cyanide.
That much is a for sure.
A for sure, for sure, for sure.
And having those standards To go back to where we started this one tour...
This two-parter on inviting love into your life...
Is love coincidence?
No! No, no, no, no, no.
There's a small amount of coincidence, of course.
But if you're out there and you have standards...
And you are courageous and you are virtuous...
And you don't accept that which will make you unhappy...
Then, yeah, you might not find love.
Of course. You train and train and train and go to the Olympic Games, you might not win.
You might not even place.
You might not even get a medal of any kind.
But you sure as heck aren't going to get a medal if you don't train, right?
You sure as heck aren't going to get a medal if you don't show up.
So, no, it's not coincidence.
That part is not coincidence.
Your height is coincidence.
Whether you find love, whether you find joy, well, joy is not coincidence.
Joy is virtue. I mean, assuming you don't have medical problems.
But, no, no, no, not love.
Not love. But love is something you have to earn, right?
In yourself and in others.
Self-esteem is, in effect, a virtuous action.
You don't sort of say, well, I'll be virtuous once I have self-esteem.
That's not...
It's like, I'll be healthy.
I'll exercise after I'm healthy.
Well, no. You've got to exercise to be healthy, right?
So... I would say that it's pretty important to try and...
It's more than important.
It's essential to reduce the variability in your life.
It's essential that you...
Work as hard as you can if love is of interest to you.
And the self-love, of course, is essential for happiness, but the love of another.
That you work to develop the standards within your life and work to figure out the essential and the non-essential standards.
What is it that you simply couldn't put up with and be happy?
Right? And then invite people into your life who may wish to provide those things to you and ask them what they wish you to provide.
And if you are of like minds, then fantastic.
Go to it. Enjoy.
Love. But don't use your needs to control others and your desires to control others.
And don't provide other people what they claim to need, regardless of the value and happiness that it creates in you.
And that way, you really do reduce the variability and the randomness of relationships.
And you really can get what I think is the greatest gift, which is real love.
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