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April 15, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:37:42

711 Sunday Call In show Apr 15 2007

How to succeed in love...

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	Hello, can you hear me? Ah, you heard.
	Okay, fantastic. Good. Well, we have had, I guess, a fair number of people join.
	You are booming in.
	Well, that's no good. Booming is not good.
	Let me turn it down a little bit. We have a special and exciting guest today.
	This is the Freedom Aid Radio Saturday, Sunday afternoon chat.
	My God, we're actually starting on time.
	We've had no technical issues to begin with.
	It's just beyond shocking.
	Shocking. Shocking.
	And this, of course, is because the magical goddess of all relationships sustained to join us, Christina, she of the infinite beating heart of intimacy, And she's here to get everyone married.
	I think pretty much that's the goal. By the end of the two or two-and-a-half-hour show, the goal is to have at least 90 to 95 new free-domain radio babies.
	And that is very exciting and is a special offer to those who have babies in the next two to two-and-a-half hours directly, cloning.
	Not allowed, Greg. Then you can actually name your child Free Domain Radio, and we can sign them a number, and that should work out fine.
	So, I guess we can get started.
	The topic of today's show, as I've mentioned before, Is relationships, and most particularly, relationships that involve the rubbing together of naughty parts.
	In other words, your relationship with whoever serves you coffee.
	So I thought that we could have a chat about that.
	Christina would start with her advice or thoughts on it.
	We did work out a structure.
	to the show yesterday, which means that it's almost not a free-domain radio show at all because of said structure.
	So we'll start with a few minutes of Christina talking.
	I may interrupt just because, I don't know, a few minutes with that sound of my own voice is very, very disconcerting to me.
	It's what I do, absolutely.
	Absolutely. Okay, so we'll give Christina the mic.
	And she can go to town and we can talk a little bit about relationships as a whole and how they can work and what they can do.
	What I'll do while you're doing your intro is I will try and get us set up with the proper audio so that we don't have to worry so much about Actually, you know what?
	I think we can do it. I think we're going to have to share headphones because we've got two mics splitting in now.
	And of course, because my notebook is still in the shop, we are a little habbled.
	So after that, we'll have to share mics, share audio to hear, which will make things a little bit less sort of feedbacky.
	Or we can keep switching off our microphones, but that could be it.
	Sorry, you're stepping on my cord.
	We can share a mic and turn it on and off to listen to your...
	Yeah, we can do that. Okay, just do your test there.
	Testing, testing. Beautiful.
	Okay, so if you'd like to start, we've got a nice little structure there.
	I may ask a couple of questions as we go along, but this should work out nicely.
	Okay, so today's topic is relationships, and my understanding is that there are a number of people on the board who are having some problems with relationships and who have expressed an interest in finding out what makes a good relationship.
	And we've all been in them.
	We've all had relationships where Things go well, and then there are problems, and then things go well again, and then there are problems, and things go well, and then there are problems, and it's sort of this never-ending oscillating back and forth between good and bad.
	All couples have conflicts, and how those conflicts are managed determines whether or not our relationship is sustainable or not.
	What I hope to help everyone achieve today, or some knowledge that I want to impart today with Steph's participation as well, with Steph's interruptions.
	Part of the knowledge that I hope to impart today is how to find someone, how to meet someone, for those of you who aren't in relationships currently and are looking for a partner, for a mate, how to meet someone And so that you know that that person that you're going to spend some time with isn't going to, you're not going to have conflicts in that relationship.
	Sorry, Steph and I are having mic issues.
	Okay. So anyway, sorry about that.
	I just lost my train of thought.
	Yeah, we were talking about, I was mentioning conflict.
	And everybody in relationships has conflict and I said how those conflicts are managed has a lot to do with how sustainable a relationship is.
	And so for those of you who aren't in relationships and are looking to start one or looking to find someone, what are some of the things that you should be looking for in a partner that will help you later on when things do become more serious and the real issues, the nitty gritty issues start to arise and rear their ugly little heads.
	You know, what kind of qualities do you want in a partner So that those conflicts can be managed more effectively.
	So in discussing this with Steph yesterday, he asked me, he said, you know, what do you think is the most important thing?
	What are the most important aspects in a relationship?
	And essentially the first thing that came into my mind was the issue of trust.
	If two people are going to be in an intimate, loving relationship, trust is essential.
	Without trust, there is no relationship.
	Without trust, there is no relationship.
	And what is a definition of trust?
	My definition of trust is that there is a knowledge and a belief That you can be vulnerable, which means that you can expose your emotions, you can put your heart out in your hands and say, this is what I feel, this is what I think, this is what I believe, in the face of a conflict, in the face of a disagreement.
	And know that the person that you are talking to is not going to shame you or humiliate you or criticize you or bully you for having those thoughts and opinions.
	Oh, sorry. And Steph says, and they may not agree.
	Knowing that this is what you're saying, that person may not agree with what you're saying, but they are not going to attack you for having those thoughts and feelings.
	That is the basic fundamental principle of trust.
	That you can trust that person with your deepest, darkest, most vulnerable And I don't want to say secrets, but emotions, because it is about emotional connection.
	And that person is not going to shame you.
	Now, that's not something that you can know about someone from a first meeting.
	Steph is looking at me skeptically.
	You can't know that, you know, that that level of trust exists with someone from a very first meeting.
	You can learn about that person's relationship to trust, or you can learn about your relationship to trusting that person from the little things that they do.
	What I basically, what I'm trying to say is that you're not, from the onset, going to meet someone and start talking immediately about your vulnerabilities and...
	And all your issues.
	That's enmeshment. That's fusion and that's not appropriate.
	Those are no boundaries. That's a relationship where one of the individuals doesn't have clear boundaries.
	What are some of the things that you can do to determine whether or not the person that you are with is someone that you can trust?
	Well, everybody tells you what you need to know about them through their behavior.
	We can measure someone's values and someone's integrity through their behavior.
	And trust is one of those things that we can look at in terms of how the person interacts.
	You start by...
	By looking at how that person relates to you in terms of commitments.
	And I'm not talking about a committed relationship, but just, you know, we have a date, we're going to meet at 6 o'clock.
	Does that person arrive at 6 o'clock?
	Or do you have to wait a half an hour for that person?
	If they do arrive late, which can happen, then do they actually process that they're arriving late and say, I'm so sorry that I'm late.
	This is what happened. I realize this is first impressions and you're now going to think of me as a late person.
	I'm not normally late, but here's what happened and I actually started getting ready, but then my cat attacked my leg and then my wooden arm fell off and then my car exploded.
	Are they aware that they have broken a commitment and that they need to regain your trust?
	Breaking a commitment is not the end of the world, right?
	It's not like gravity.
	It's not a law of nature. But to be conscious of the fact that you have broken a commitment and that you should make restitution, acknowledge it, and that's putting yourself in a vulnerable position.
	Every time you apologize to someone, you're in a vulnerable position.
	And how they handle even those little things like that, I think, are quite important.
	I would agree 100%.
	So just little things like, does that person do what they say they're going to do?
	If they're not able to meet that commitment, are they able to take responsibility for it?
	Are they able to be sensitive and respect your needs in that interaction?
	That's important.
	If someone's always showing up late or if someone's always saying they're going to do something and they never do it and they make idle and feeble excuses for it and Yeah, yeah.
	Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, yeah.
	Or they blame you, or they blame other people, and they're constantly making excuses for their actions, not taking responsibility.
	Then there might be a little slight problem that you could have in terms of trusting that person.
	Yes. And by little slight problem, she means enormous don't date them deal breaker kind of problem.
	Steph is much more matter-of-fact than I am.
	Anyway, trust isn't something that can be willed.
	It is something that has to be earned.
	You can't just meet someone and say, I trust you.
	A lot of people will take the values in a relationship and they will say...
	Well, you need to trust me.
	Trust is important in a relationship and therefore you need to trust me.
	As if it's your choice as to whether you trust another human being or not.
	That's not your choice.
	Now, somebody may act in a trustworthy behavior or in a trustworthy manner and you don't trust them because of your own historical issues and things you have to work through.
	But you can't will trust in the absence of trustworthy behavior.
	Absolutely. Trust is not something that can be willed.
	Trust has to be earned. That person has to prove him or herself to you.
	Just like you have to prove yourself to that other individual.
	Yes, Stephanie. Don't worry, honey, you passed.
	Need the paper bag?
	Need the paper bag? And, you know, trust isn't something...
	It's not just like, you know, I'm going to tell you my secret and find out, you know, whether or not that person spills your secrets.
	I mean, that's an important element of trust.
	But the essential aspect about trust is, as I mentioned before, being able to trust someone with your emotions.
	That's where we have our deepest vulnerabilities, our emotions, particularly the vulnerable ones like sadness and fear and even anger.
	Particularly for women, anger is one of those emotions that they have difficulty expressing.
	It comes off very volatile because they can't be vulnerably angry.
	So those are sort of my thoughts on trust.
	I just wanted to talk just briefly about the structure before we go on to the next one.
	So we're looking at trust, and what we're doing is we're saying, well, what is a value in a relationship?
	Well, trust is a value in a relationship.
	What's the definition of trust?
	And then what are the actions by which you can achieve trust in another human being or by which you can judge whether another human being is trustworthy?
	So we're sort of saying, well, you want to go somewhere?
	Well, you want to go to Vancouver, British Columbia.
	Okay, so that's, you know, 5,000 miles from here or something like that.
	Here's the, you know, are you going to take a plane?
	Are you going to take a train? Are you going to hitchhike or whatever?
	And here's the actions. Well, you have to take this road and then this road and then this road.
	So we're sort of trying to say where is it you want to go, the definition of how it is that you should get there or what it is that you're trying to get, and then the actions that you can take in order to get there.
	So I just want to sort of mention that as we go forward.
	Did you want to do the fusion thing or the respect thing?
	Let's talk a little bit about fusion.
	A lot of people, when they first meet someone that they're attracted to, it feels good to be with that person.
	There's often, for many people, it's a physical characteristics about an individual that attracts them to each other.
	And they might have a nice time together.
	They might share some common interests together.
	So they'll feel a little comfortable.
	And they'll start talking about some things that might be painful from their past and from their previous relationships.
	And they feel like they have a good listener.
	And we'll open up and we'll start telling these intimate details to this new love interest.
	And I say love interest because I'm talking very early on in a relationship.
	And they feel like they've established some kind of a connection with that person.
	And later on, as a relationship evolves over time and these two people perhaps are together for some time, a few weeks or a month or two or whatever, these intimate details that have been shared are then used against the person in a conflict situation.
	You know, we have this habit of disclosing all these things and it feels good to share and oh my goodness this person is so compassionate and so empathetic and what a really good listener and oh I trust this person with my life and I hear that a lot.
	I hear that from people a lot where they meet someone very and very early on make this determination and that's fusion.
	You haven't learned that quickly or you haven't had taken the time that quickly to know whether or not you should be able whether you can rather than should whether you can trust this person with the intimate details of your life this is what I was talking about before trust is something that is earned trust is something that you have to observe and experience you can't just disclose and divulge everything about yourself very early on in a relationship Because it feels good or you have a good listener.
	Can you trust the person with these details of your life?
	Can you trust the person with your emotions?
	How are they going to be able to handle that?
	And, of course, that is indicated through the little things that we were talking about before in terms of that person's ability to make a commitment and be responsible and take responsibility for their actions.
	That's how you establish trust.
	That's how you establish whether you know you can trust someone.
	And there's some ways that you can see where the fusion is occurring.
	First of all, if there's a very bright light in a jar that you have, no wait, sorry, that's something quite different.
	There's ways that you can tell. If you meet someone and the sexual electricity and the romantic hormones that flood through your system, Those are great, and there's nothing wrong with those at all.
	I mean, those are great, fun, whitewater rafting within your own neurochemical system to enjoy.
	And you should not resist those feelings or think that they're bad or anything like that.
	But there are ways to tell, and I'll throw a couple out and then Christina will correct me.
	But there are ways to tell whether fusion is occurring or whether you're learning something about the person.
	First of all, if you go from 0 to 100 in a matter of days, that's fusion.
	That's fusion, right? If you meet someone at a bar on Wednesday, And you call her on Thursday, and you get together on Friday, and then you spend Saturday together, and you spend Sunday together, and then you're in bed on Monday, and then you are talking about your future together on Tuesday, and so on. That's fusion.
	And that's a very dangerous place to go, because basically what's happening is you're merging your lives together without any real sense of the basic values that you may or may not share.
	And of course, you have to find the difference between somebody who talks about their values and somebody who actually lives their values.
	That is a very, very different situation.
	Anyone, as we know, every politician in the world talks about honor and integrity and changing the system and doing the right thing and this and that.
	But actually living your values, as I've certainly found over the course of my life, is a lot more difficult, of course, than Than just saying them.
	So you don't know. You guys might say, oh, you know, it's so great.
	We spent three days in bed together.
	And if it wasn't for the bed sores, we'd just be happy as clams.
	We've shared everything about our lives.
	We find that we have so much in sync.
	There's not a single bit of conflict.
	Well, that's just romantic hormones and sexuality, right?
	I mean, and there's nothing wrong with that.
	But you kind of want to measure your dosage, right?
	I mean, there's nothing wrong with dessert either.
	But you don't want to have a diet of nothing but dessert your life.
	I mean, you get diabetes and it's bad for your heart and so on.
	So, if you immediately merge and mesh, and you feel a kind of euphoria, and you feel like, this is the one, you know, like, oh, I found, is he the one, you know, like, she is the one,
	and you feel this instant blending of your personalities and All of life's questions have been answered and a future littered with children opens up before you and everything has been perfect and all of the problems that you've had in prior relationships don't seem to be present at all.
	They all seem to just have vanished and the fights and conflicts and breakups that you've had before are just not at all part of this new relationship, and this is of course assuming that there's not sort of two years of therapy in the middle or whatever, then basically what you're doing is you're grabbing a very large balloon that is going up over very jagged mountains that is going to pop.
	And that is a very dangerous thing.
	And again, it's not anti-romance, it's not anti-happiness, it's not anti-sex or any of these sorts of things.
	It's just about a certain measure of self-protection.
	And protection for the other person.
	You have the rest of your lives to get to know each other.
	Christine and I are still learning things about each other, and we've known each other for five years.
	And I'm sure that we will continue, because as you begin to really learn about another human being, that knowledge alters you, the knowledge that you have about that alters them, and there's constant new things that come up in long-term relationships.
	So there's some indications that it's very, very important to understand when two lives just...
	they don't merge like two cars Coming parallel in a highway or merging on a highway, they merge like mixing water together, right?
	Like mixing food colour into water.
	It just goes straight in and merges and that is not enough for you to establish whether the person is trustworthy.
	What you do know though is that the person is perfectly willing to do this kind of merge, that the person is perfectly willing To devote themselves and their heart and their openness, their vulnerability and their soul to you without checking about your trustworthiness, right?
	So it means that they may have issues themselves.
	Were there other things that would be indicative of that?
	I'm sorry, indicative of that kind of effusion?
	How do you know? Because you and I spent every day together after we met.
	We did, but you and I also had some very strict limitations on what we were doing with each other.
	What she means by that is to each other with mostly rubber chickens.
	We spent a lot of time together, but we spent time together talking and exploring and finding out about each other.
	We also had an opportunity to go out with mutual, not mutual friends, with Steph's friends and with my friends so that we can...
	I think this is important too.
	What kind of friends does the person you are meeting keep?
	Are they down-to-earth kind of people?
	Are they nice people? I don't want to say professional people.
	That's not so much important as people who are gainfully employed and responsible and appropriate.
	Are they heavy drinkers?
	Do they use drugs?
	Do they do it socially?
	Are they church goers?
	That's important, too. So you and I did spend a lot of time together, but we really spent that time getting to know each other, really trying to explore each other.
	We certainly weren't fused, I don't think.
	We didn't just sort of spend endless hours together.
	Well, it was kind of practical at the time that we were spending together.
	We went out and I met your friends, you met my friends, and we talked about our values.
	We talked about the difficulty that we had sometimes in our life with our values and so on.
	I mean, we were pretty frank and we, I think, established over time that they weren't just values that we talked about, but values that we actually did try to live, you know, to the best of our ability and as a process.
	The other thing that is important in terms of learning about somebody when you meet them is what are their goals relative to their capacities?
	This is very important, and this may be more on the guy's side than the woman's side, but I went out with a woman who's like, I really, really want to be an actress.
	It's like, oh, that's very interesting.
	Have you ever taken any acting classes?
	No. Have you ever auditioned for amateur theatre?
	No. And she sort of asked these sorts of questions, but she still really wanted to be an actress.
	And she had like retainers on her mouth because she wanted to fix her teeth so that in the movie close-ups she would look good.
	And when you meet somebody who has goals without any steps to get there, or who's sort of living a little bit sort of like in the now, That's not the end of the world, but if you have goals or whatever, that's sort of important.
	If you have goals and you're trying to achieve them with a variety of steps, and the other person has goals that are just incompatible, with the steps they're taking towards them, then you're dealing with somebody who doesn't have a strong connection to reality, and that is going to bite you in the long run for sure.
	The other thing too is that if they talk about their own family history as completely incongruous with the evidence, this is another example of somebody who's got a significant break with reality, So, if you hear somebody say, oh, my family was just so wonderful, my family was so great, I had the happiest childhood in the planet.
	One of my brothers is a drug addict, the other one of my sisters is an alcoholic, and they're both divorced.
	Well, you know, I mean, if somebody doesn't get that there's a huge mismatch between what they're saying and the evidence that presents itself in their life, then what's going to happen is over time you're going to realize that the person has complete fantasies about their family, they're defensive, they're going to get aggressive when you question it, all of this kind of stuff.
	So these are just other ways that you can evaluate somebody so you don't give them your heart and then watch them slowly feed it into the emotional Cuisinart.
	I think you've sort of moved away, not just, I mean, these things are all interrelated.
	You were talking about, you know, does this person's goals match their actions?
	And then that takes me to an issue of respect.
	You know, we were talking about values.
	I think respect is an appreciation of the other person, of the other individual.
	That you admire that person's values, which are shown in their behavior, and you respect someone's worth ethic, you respect the fact that they are responsible, their sense of responsibility, and as you mentioned, reality processing.
	Are they able to discern reality?
	Do they live in reality?
	And this is a big issue within the Freedom Aid Radio Group, what we're trying to do.
	You're looking at me very strangely.
	You mean that they just don't live within reality?
	But Freedom in Radio is reality, baby!
	I am reality.
	Know that we are all trying to live the truth, that we're all trying to live within reality and when you have someone who obscures reality and tries to get you to to agree with that, yeah, to participate with that, then there is an issue of there's a problem.
	There's a problem in that relationship.
	Can you respect someone who constantly obscures reality by saying one thing and when you look at their actions and when you look at their lives Is there consistency?
	So trust and respect are essential.
	And respect also has to be earned.
	You can't respect anyone more than you respect yourself.
	Self-respect has to come first.
	If you want someone Who lives in reality, you have to live in reality.
	You can't demand of someone something that you're not willing to offer yourself.
	So you have to be very clear in identifying what your values are.
	We're human, and everybody makes mistakes as human beings.
	So we define our values, and sometimes it's very hard to live up to those values.
	We all make mistakes. But having the self-respect to say, you know what?
	I erred. I made a mistake.
	I acted badly, or I acted poorly, or I didn't do what I said I was going to do.
	In my opinion, that garners a lot of respect.
	Sorry, I was just reading the chat window.
	What will you pass it to me for?
	What can I do for you?
	Completely? Yes. Totally?
	Totally. Really?
	Well, you see, you did half an hour. No, no, no.
	Not 20 minutes. The fundamental thing that I think occurs psychologically is that we are not susceptible to the craziness in other people.
	This is a very important thing to understand.
	Other people's craziness have no hold over us.
	Other people's insanity, contradictions, lies, defenses, obscurations, attacks, undermining, whatever it is that's going on in a relationship.
	We have No risk within our own minds.
	It's not like a virus. It's just risky.
	There's no danger from other people's craziness.
	There's only danger from our own craziness.
	There's only danger from our own craziness, which we all have.
	We all have. I have it.
	You have it. Christina doesn't.
	But we all have this craziness.
	And the only way to really inoculate yourself against other people's craziness about their lack of reality processing around their wishful thinking, their defenses, their lies, observations, is to deal with those things in yourself, to fully dedicate yourself to processing reality in a positive and respectful manner, and then you will no longer be susceptible to other people.
	I would really, really strongly suggest that you don't get sexually involved with someone, because I know guys are like, you know, hey, another notch of the old...
	The old headboard or belt, right?
	But guys, you know, your heart follows your dick too, right?
	I mean, you can't just go and have sex with someone and not have any emotional involvement, unless you're like just a sociopath, right?
	In which case you're not going to be listening to this show, at least not that often.
	So don't think that the sexual euphoria and the fusion is going to solve the problems of that.
	That's a very big illusion.
	And of course, nature, biologically, there's good reasons why we have that, right?
	Because there's two ways to create children.
	One is you get involved in a long-term committed relationship and raise those children, blah, blah, blah.
	The other is that you just have sex and keep moving, right?
	It's a spray and pray kind of situation, right?
	And so nature is happy either way, as long as kids get created, right?
	So this fusion and this sexual euphoria and so on, where you basically get to plant your seed before any of the problems show up, nature is fine with that too, right?
	Nature just wants more babies, doesn't care that much about philosophical truth and all that kind of stuff.
	So, beware of that.
	Be aware of that to get involved.
	Every time you get involved in a relationship that doesn't work out, you're kind of giving yourself scars on your heart.
	It makes it a little bit more difficult the next time.
	And, of course, the time that you spend in that relationship, the months, three months, six months, that's time that you can't be spending dealing with your own issues and becoming more sane and healthy yourself or looking for somebody else.
	And, of course, the time that you spend recovering and the bitterness that might come up from that relationship, right, where a relationship doesn't work out and suddenly it's like all women are irrational, right, as if women don't say that about men and so on, right?
	So I think it's just caution and conservatism and be as happy and joyful about getting to know someone as you can.
	But to put up boundaries.
	I mean, how do they handle it when you say to them, I'm sorry, I can't see you on Sunday because of X, Y, and Z? How do they handle that?
	Well, if it's like me, curled into a fetal position, screaming like a Japanese schoolgirl with her leg in a mousetrap and sucking my thumb.
	So for Christina, obviously, well, she had access to some medication from the hospital, so it was a bit of a different situation for her.
	But how do they handle it when you put a limit on the relationship?
	If they handle it in a poor and pouty or sucky or whatever way, then that's going to be something you're going to battle until you break up.
	So seeing the signs at the beginning is very important so that you can avoid getting into relationships that are not going to be productive.
	Because, let's be honest, what do we want out of a relationship?
	We want out of a relationship Somebody we can love and trust and have babies with if we want and grow old with if we want.
	We don't just want a series of failed relationships that leave us embittered and unhappy.
	And we don't just want a series of empty sexual conquests with substandard women.
	We don't want that.
	What we want is a lifelong partnership which has all of the intellectual richness and depth and emotional intimacy and beauty that we can get a hold of.
	And if that's our goal, then we have to have realistic ways of trying to achieve that, which means that we have to see other people's values in action.
	We have to see how clearly they process their own life and the lives of those around them so that we can learn to trust them in a real and positive way.
	I was going to say that love is something that is a result of trust and respect.
	Love is something that results from the ability to trust someone and respect that person.
	If you don't respect the person that you're with, I don't know how you can love the person that you're with.
	Correct me if I'm wrong, if you're constantly in conflict with that person's values, how can you claim that you love that person?
	If you don't respect what that person stands for, how can you claim to love that individual?
	So I think the essential thing also about a relationship is that you have to have shared values, and that doesn't mean you have to have 100% Nobody's perfectly right and nobody's perfectly matched in their values, but fundamentally you have to have some values that are similar.
	You have to at least have values about your approaches to problem solving and conflict resolution and things like...
	Well, let's just stick with that.
	Problem solving, conflict resolution.
	You at least have to have the ability to share those things in common.
	If one person thinks it's okay to scream and yell and the other person doesn't believe that screaming and yelling are okay and fighting, then you're never going to resolve any problems and you're going to have even bigger problems.
	Values are important, and you have to be able to respect the values that the other person holds.
	Again, how do we know what people's values are?
	Well, we look at their behavior. They might say, I value red, but they never have any red.
	They're always in blue. Not that red or color is a value, but I'm just using it as an example.
	So are they doing what they say they're going to be doing?
	And then, of course, that's related to trust.
	So these things are all interrelated.
	And the last topic before we take questions, if you have any, is deal breakers.
	What are the things which would cause you to not get involved in something?
	There's a couple, right? There's a couple, at least, that spring to my mind.
	Disobedience on the part of the woman in any way, shape, or form.
	Oh, wait. Sorry, I'm not allowed to say that.
	Disobedience in the man in any way, shape, or form.
	There we go. Much better.
	What else am I supposed to say, honey? Name calling.
	An absolute complete and total deal breaker.
	If somebody calls you an asshole, or a bitch, or a slut, or a whore, or a fat ass, or whatever it is, right?
	Big forehead. Yeah, even stupid.
	That was totally stupid.
	You're stupid. That was a stupid thing to do.
	That's name calling. A complete and total deal breaker.
	You cannot love somebody who calls you names, and you cannot You can't pretend that they love you.
	That's just about control, bullying, humiliation, and degradation.
	Name-calling is a total deal-breaker.
	The first time somebody calls you a name, what do you say?
	Do you even fire a warning shot or do you just go?
	If somebody calls your name for the first time, do you just go?
	Or do you say, that's never going to happen again if you want me in this relationship?
	I think you should show, you should express some curiosity.
	I mean, what made you think that you can say this to me?
	And do you, you know, obviously if they're calling you names in a fight, and I assume it would be in a fight, then you haven't observed something fundamental about this person.
	You haven't listened to them during conversations about how they talk about other people.
	You know, I think that's important too.
	Listen to them while they're talking.
	How did they treat the waitress?
	How do they talk about their friends?
	How do they talk about other people walking down the streets?
	Are they critical? Are they compassionate?
	Are they empathetic? Do they use foul language?
	Do they constantly put people down?
	Because if that's what they're doing, guaranteed that's what they're going to do when they feel threatened.
	And usually in conflict we feel threatened.
	Physical violence of any kind, any way, shape, or form, or any threat of physical violence in any way, shape, or form, is a deal breaker which, in my view, is non-negotiable, and you don't need to communicate a thing.
	You just get up. I don't care if it's a 20-year marriage.
	You get up and you walk out the door.
	There is no possible, conceivable way that any form of positive interaction can come out of a relationship where physical violence is either occurring or is threatened.
	Oh, I could just kick you.
	Well, bye-bye.
	Bye-bye. Even if they just raise their fist or if they punch the wall near you or anything like that.
	Any sort of physical violence from that standpoint.
	Well, addictive behavior.
	If they have problems with alcohol or drugs, that is a total deal breaker.
	You cannot get involved with somebody who has these kinds of issues.
	Raised voices. I think, from my experience, I think raised voices in terms of passion, when it's not aggressively directed at the other person, can be okay.
	You know, this is driving me nuts!
	That's not the end of the world.
	If you go above three decibels, it doesn't mean your relationship is over.
	But if it's used in a way to intimidate and humiliate the other person, a total and complete deal breaker.
	If they attempt to undermine things that you hold dear, things that you hold dear, if you say, and look, we might as well be honest because I know that free domain radio is causing some problems in relationships.
	And if you say, well, I really, really like the stuff that we talk about in Free Domain Radio.
	It's really important to me.
	And if the person says, well, you know, it just sounds totally culty to me or whatever, right?
	I'm not even curious about why you like it or whatever and what you get out of it and that.
	That's a deal breaker, because that's going to interfere with donations.
	Sorry, because... Wait, what was the reason?
	Where am I? Who am I? It's a deal breaker, not because the bad things are said about Freedom Aid Radio or anything like that, but it's a deal breaker because they're not...
	Curious and interested in something that is very valuable to you, something that really gets your juices going intellectually.
	If they put down things that you find very valuable or undermine it, if they talk about you negatively behind your back, that is also a deal breaker.
	That destroys trust and respect.
	If you have a problem with me, then talk to me directly and don't undermine things behind my back.
	Threats of breakups?
	Total deal breaker. You do not pull that sword out unless you are going to cut the tie.
	You don't say, well, I guess if we can't work this out, it's over, with the hopes that the other person is then going to fold.
	And if that is a tactic that is used on you, that is a total deal breaker.
	I think that you can rationally say, if we continue down this road, if we go in this direction, if we continue to scream at each other, we will break up.
	That's not a threat. That's an identification of the real consequences of scornful or negative behavior towards each other.
	But you cannot accept and you cannot inflict the threat of a breakup in order to induce conformity with your opinions or beliefs.
	That, again, is a total deal breaker.
	A relationship is implicitly bound by love and respect towards one another.
	If you threaten to remove yourself from a relationship in order to get somebody to conform, that's abusive in my view.
	You should just break up with the person and not worry about threatening them and this and that.
	Because if the person complies, they're going to do so in a resentful and passive-aggressive manner.
	You're not going to get what you want out of that tactic anyway.
	So those are just a couple of the things.
	Was there anything that you wanted to add to that?
	No, I think that those are really, really important things for people to think about when they're in a relationship, or when they're thinking about getting into a relationship.
	Also, when you're thinking about getting into a relationship, the deal-breakers.
	Pretty early on, you need to make a list of your own lists.
	I like lists. Make a list of the things that you value.
	Make a list of the things that are must-haves in a relationship, a list of things that are nice-to-haves, and a list of things that are absolute deal-breakers.
	That will help you to clarify what it is that you're looking for when you're looking for a partner.
	One of the listeners has posted, hostage situation, love me, or I'll shoot this dog.
	That is totally wrong, with two exceptions.
	One, if it's one of those yappy little chihuahuas, or two, if it's that hairy little rodent that Paris Hilton comes around, in which case I think shooting twice is appropriate.
	So, yeah, for the most part that stuff isn't going to work at all.
	And, jeez, there was one other I was just thinking of.
	And I can't recall what it is now.
	Should we go to questions? Did you have anything else that you wanted to add?
	All right, so let's see if we can have this work out from a technical standpoint.
	Let's figure out...
	Oh, interesting.
	The witch has said to me, you've got two kids, don't you?
	A boy and a girl. And I said, no.
	And she said, okay, sorry, I hope I didn't scare you.
	Well, I guess the psychic phenomenon still remains to be completely proven.
	All right. Spank the monkey.
	Save the dog. Spank the monkey!
	Isn't that a song? I think it is.
	All right. Let me get to...
	If you have questions and for...
	For the gentleman who sent in the emails, I talked to you a little bit earlier, we did an Ask a Therapist largely devoted to your girlfriend issues, so if we could leave those aside for this show, that would be excellent, because there's no point people hearing it twice.
	If you have questions on relationships that you would like to ask me or the brains of the outfit, just click on Ask for Mike in Skype, and we'll try and find him and see if he can talk to you.
	Don't worry, we got a good one, and I'm sorry that I couldn't get it posted earlier, but technical issues.
	Well, either everybody has perfect relationships.
	They're all monks. No offense, Greg.
	Or we answered everybody's questions and they're all so perfect.
	The Ask for Mike. The Ask for Mike button is showing.
	That seems good.
	That seems good.
	Could Christina talk about broken men?
	I don't think she can talk about broken men.
	She can talk about a broken man, can't she?
	Because I've been fairly well broken in, haven't I? The domestication of Steph was actually a whole lot easier than people thought.
	Not with Steph in the room.
	Yeah, that's right. No, we didn't lose it.
	It's just somebody else. Compromise definition in a relationship?
	I think that's interesting because there certainly are compromises in that.
	Do you have any wisdom on falling in love in sync?
	What is the danger if one person falls in love quicker?
	I'll leave that one for you because that's a tough question.
	I don't. I actually haven't really thought about that before.
	It's an excellent question. I think that when two people spend time together and are dating each other, I think it's obvious when two people like each other or when the admiration is mutual.
	They want to spend time with each other.
	They are happy to see each other.
	They enjoy each other's company.
	As for falling in love, it's one of those conversations.
	People can talk about love.
	You can have a conversation about love.
	What does it mean to be in love to you?
	How do you experience love?
	Have you ever been in love? What failed in your love relationship?
	So, I don't know.
	I really don't have an answer to that question about two people falling in love at different times.
	If you love... I don't know.
	If you fall in love before the person that you are falling in love with falls in love with you...
	Boy, oh boy, that's complicated.
	Does that mean...
	Well, that could be interesting.
	I mean... Why is that happening?
	I mean, is it a matter of you being in love with that person for over a year and that person not reciprocating?
	Then there's a big problem. Is it a matter of you having some intense feelings for the other person that the other person hasn't quite reciprocated within a month or two?
	I don't know. That's something then that you need to talk about.
	Another question that we've had, and sorry, I do need to correct myself.
	It's not ask for mic. It's ask to talk.
	Ask to talk.
	I believe it is. I don't think it'll show up for us because we're hosting, but it's ask to not.
	So there's a question that a listener is posting, which says, what about...
	Thanks. What about the paradox that I commented on on the boards?
	The paradox that broken men are only attracted to broken women.
	But it seems that far more women are broken than men.
	I suppose for the same reason more men dominate philosophy boards.
	Ask for microphone on Mac 2.5 versions.
	Mmm, Skype, you're killing me!
	Boy, if it just wasn't totally free.
	Anyway, so, you know, I think that's an empirically interesting question.
	Are there more broken women than broken men?
	I don't think so. I don't think so.
	I think that it's about equal.
	So, we all dating women and they appear broken or whatever, and so we say, oh, gee, there are all these broken women.
	But look at all the guys who are in the military, look at all the guys who are politicians, look at all the guys who are jerks, right?
	I mean, there's lots of broken guys in the world, and unfortunately some of them are very well armed.
	So I would not say that we can say...
	It's a problem of perspective, right?
	So if you date women, then you get more formal knowledge of broken women than you do of broken men.
	And so I don't believe that it's the case.
	Obviously, women want to date men and want to be attractive to men, and so every time you date a woman who's broken, you're just encouraging women to be broken, right?
	I mean, that's just sort of a natural progression.
	I mean, if men did not put up with that kind of behavior from women, then women would change their behavior.
	I mean, that's just sort of natural, right?
	That's why raising the standards for yourself changes the people who are in your life.
	So I would say that...
	I don't think it's fair to say that there are more broken women than broken men.
	I think it's just what we experience in our dating.
	Who wants to talk? Did he say he wanted to?
	I don't know. I have no idea.
	Yes or no, Rod. Rod.
	Y or N? The button disappeared from the free domain Skype window.
	You know what probably happens is that when Christina talks for, say, 20 minutes straight, the button probably gets exhausted and falls asleep.
	Like, I'm one to talk.
	Other deal breakers can be asking your wife to do a relationship show with very little notice.
	That can be a very exciting near deal breaker.
	So if anybody wants to talk and you can't figure out how to do it, there's a chat window.
	You can ask to join that. And ask about that.
	If you have sort of relationship issues, dating issues, marriage issues, divorce issues, anything to do with shaggy, bangy stuff, feel free to ask those questions and we will be happy to try and respond to them.
	Otherwise, we could have a very tidy short show that might actually come in at under an hour.
	Somebody had a question? Okay, so just for those who have just joined, if you want to click on the Ask to Talk, we'll be more than happy to take questions or comments that you might have with regards to this topic.
	No, there was one before that.
	Can you go up just a little bit? It's the on-hold music from Steph.
	All right, hang on.
	That was one, I think, further up.
	If you can put a star, the icon star in front of the questions in the chat window, it would help us identify them.
	Yeah, if you have questions, if you could put a little star in.
	If you have one there, you could retype it.
	Oh, we have somebody who's waiting to talk.
	If you could just click on them.
	No, it's okay. Just click on them.
	And then click on allow to talk.
	Down? No, you just clicked on allow all to talk.
	I'll do it. So close.
	All right, sorry about that. We're just going to sort all this out.
	And we had...
	I will get the gentleman who wanted to talk.
	All right. If you would like to give it a shot, we shall see if we can hear you.
	Go ahead. All right.
	Excellent. Technical problems.
	Are you talking?
	Mr. R.C. Mic not working.
	Can anyone else hear? Or is it just us?
	No, okay, so, excellent.
	I do sign language, so if you could just finger me.
	Not the fist.
	No, come on, let's keep it clean.
	That was Christina. So good at deflecting blame.
	Steph, you'll have to donate to me this mom question.
	Alright, so we have somebody who wants to talk but can't talk.
	Excellent. Well, that's almost like a step forward, isn't it?
	Alright, we're just going to wait for that gentleman.
	Oh, he's gone back to listening.
	Maybe he's rebooting.
	Ah, I would like to know how...
	Do you mind if I read this question?
	I would like to know how the quote, Christina, I don't see my parents defood, but I am completely reliable and committed, and your reaction on it.
	Oh, that was to my speech?
	What did you think of Steph starting up?
	Okay, I'm going to go down and let you just answer this one without even me staring at you.
	I'm going to grab a snack. So you go ahead and you tell them.
	Hello, hello, hello.
	Oh, I heard something.
	Did somebody talk to us?
	Is he back? I'm back.
	Oh, dude! You're just making things all too exciting from a technical standpoint.
	Well, you go ahead. That's much more interesting than Christina's first impressions of me.
	I'm sorry. I didn't even know I was still queued up to talk.
	No problem. My question was about exclusivity.
	The degree of which it's healthy in relationship to...
	Because I had posted on the board, we were talking about it with Nathan and Greg, I think, exclusivity as far as I've been in relationships where the girlfriend would still want to talk to her exes and where I was more inclined to cut off my old ties just for their sake,
	out of respect. And I wasn't sure if that was something I should expect in return or if it's just a preference Yeah, you know, I think that's a really important question.
	You know, if you're in a relationship with someone, the relationship doesn't work out, and the relationship ends, you know, if you can't be friends in a relationship, how can you be friends after a relationship is over?
	So I think that once two people have dated and the relationship doesn't work out, you go your separate ways.
	Your paths are no longer in sync.
	There's no reason to be in touch with that person.
	That's my belief about this.
	I'm very firm about this.
	That relationship is over.
	If you were such great friends, why are you no longer in a relationship together?
	And I think it is very disrespectful to be in contact with an ex while you're in a new relationship.
	Yeah, I mean, that certainly was the case with Christina and I's relationship.
	I'm still not allowed to talk to my left hand or caress any watermelons.
	There really are a lot of things that do get cut off, so to speak.
	But sorry, you wanted to talk more about fruit or was it something else?
	Oh dear, I silenced him.
	I think you're totally right to take that stand.
	This is a very interesting question when it comes down to somebody's loyalty and trust and so on.
	It's not an unreasonable thing to say, I don't think that somebody should be friends with their ex when they are in a new relationship.
	Because there's no question that, and there's a very practical reason for this, right?
	If you're friends with someone, then you talk about your relationship with that person.
	I mean, that's just inevitable, right?
	So what basically is going to occur is that, let's say that you're dating someone named Brandy or whatever, right?
	And Brandy is friends with Bob, her ex-boyfriend.
	Ex-girlfriend will get into a different situation.
	Then, of course, you're looking to be the man-witch, and that's a whole different kind of thing.
	But if Brandy's talking to Bob, well, she's going to be talking to Bob about you.
	So basically, she's going to someone who she broke up with for relationship advice about her relationship with you.
	That's absolutely and totally not going to work, and it's going to be quite counterproductive to your relationship as a whole.
	I also think that if you're broken up with someone there have been hurt feelings and to keep that person a part of your life just doesn't validate your hurt feelings in that relationship.
	So it doesn't make sense to me that you should stay friends or that you can be friends with an ex-boyfriend or an ex-girlfriend.
	Somebody's just posted and said that, sorry to interrupt, but they said that they are friends with someone they dated very briefly, but they were friends before and friends after, and I think that's okay.
	But just recognize that anyone that you've ever dated, you can't talk to about relationship advice in the present.
	And the other thing, too, is that is this person, like let's say there's this Brandy and there's this Bob fellow, is Bob then going to be coming to Brandy and talking about his relationship issues with her?
	I mean, it's just kind of weird and twisted, and I just don't think there's any reason for it.
	And the other thing, too, the last thing I'll say is look at the cost-benefit, right?
	Let's say that you have a relationship with an ex, and obviously it can't be that great because they're an ex, and if they were great friends, you'd be together.
	But it bothers your current partner.
	Well, what you're basically saying is, who are you going to be loyal to?
	Are you going to be loyal to a friendship with an ex that things didn't work out and you broke up?
	Are you going to be loyal to someone you actually have a future with?
	So I think that's important as well.
	I think the argument that you would get back on that particular issue, it's the principle of the thing.
	You can't tell me who I can and can't be friends with.
	And therein we have yet another problem.
	Frankly, if you have an ex, be exes, stay exes.
	Don't involve that person in your current life.
	The relationship didn't work out.
	It didn't work out for a reason.
	Why would you suspect that you can be good friends and have a trusting, reliable relationship with this person when you're no longer romantically involved?
	Just with the last caveat that if your girlfriend is still friends with her ex-girlfriend, then it's important to show up with a very large jar of mayonnaise and promise to be the man-witch.
	And that's the man inside the girl's sandwich.
	So again, I can send you some graphics on that if you're interested in that, just so that it's a little bit more clear.
	Very nice. Did you have any other questions or did that provide some sort of answer?
	I guess it can go into the jealousy area as far as Like with you two, have you ever had an experience where one of you got jealous over something the other person thought was minor, whereas one of you are going to have to compensate for the other's No.
	No, no, I'm sorry. I didn't know you could hear that.
	This is a very sensitive mic, I guess.
	I can hear you. But no, there's not been any issues with jealousy in Christina and I's relationship.
	In fact, when we were on vacation, we were on the silicon alert, right?
	So Christina would say, do you think those are fake or real?
	Because, of course, I have the best wife on the planet.
	Sounds like a fun game. So in order to try and please my wife, I did end up looking at other women's breasts.
	So there are things in a relationship that can be very helpful, right?
	So that's something...
	No, the jealousy is not...
	If you're committed to someone and you have that close and intimate relationship, two things occur.
	One is that you don't get jealous of the other person.
	The other is that you don't put out those signals that make anybody flirt with you.
	I mean, I used to hear someone talk about how once you get married, women start coming on to you.
	I don't find that to be the case at all.
	Now, it wasn't like there was a massive tsunami of female flesh heading my way before I was married, but women would flirt with me a heck of a lot more before I was married, and they don't flirt with me at all now.
	Why? Because I'm not putting out any of those signals, right?
	So, if jealousy is occurring within a relationship, it may indicate A lack of commitment on either person's part or it may indicate a passive aggression in terms of making somebody else feel uncomfortable or making somebody else feel that you're really sexy and valuable and that of course shouldn't occur because the other person should make you feel that way to begin with.
	When there is jealousy, there is insecurity, and the insecurity usually lies within the person who is jealous.
	Unless, of course, you're giving obvious signals that you're being unfaithful, then the jealousy is a clear symptom of deep-rooted insecurity within the other person.
	Over to you. Okay.
	I think that covers about I remember Stefan was talking about envy.
	Now, envy as far as relationships go, I remember, I think you're talking about it in a pretty, was it a negative context?
	It was an old podcast.
	Never mind, scratch that.
	Save that for another time.
	But thanks, guys. That sums up my questions.
	Well, thank you very much.
	We appreciate them. Good questions.
	All right. Thank you. We have another gentleman who wishes to talk about something that we talked about privately, which I think is important, and then we will move on to Mr.
	A.B. and Mr. L02. So, I feel like I'm talking to androids here, but...
	Mr.
	B., I think that you're up if your mic is working.
	Hello, Steph. Hey, how's it going?
	It's going well. One of the problems I'm having about the defooing thing is it's definitely pop culture that women take the how boys treat their mothers as how they're going to treat you.
	And so I have this fear of saying, yeah, I don't care about my mom, blah, and they immediately turn.
	I'm sorry, they immediately turn, and I guess that you...
	I was waiting for something else.
	I guess that means they immediately...
	I think he meant they immediately turn off, and in order to use the word off, he stopped talking.
	It's very clever in a lot of ways.
	It was a physical, verbal pun.
	Yeah, I think this is relevant to the question before, and I don't know, Bill, if you had posted this question about how did I react when Steph told me he was no longer seeing his mother.
	Yes. That's a very interesting question.
	And I clearly and distinctly recall that conversation that he and I were having.
	It was pretty early on in our relationship, and it had to be, because...
	It was a couple of weeks, I mean. Yeah, and it had to be.
	Otherwise, there would be this whole area that we weren't able to have a discussion about, which would have been a flag, a red flag.
	So here we were, and we were chatting about our families, and I asked him about his relationship to his...
	You know, he mentioned his brother and his mom and his dad, and then he told me.
	He told me that he was no longer seeing his mom and the reasons for that.
	And of course, you know, it wasn't so much the, I'm no longer seeing my mother, that was the red flag for me.
	It was I come from an abusive family situation.
	That for me was the red flag.
	Okay, here I am dating someone who was seriously abused as a child, so this person is going to have serious issues with self-esteem and self-respect.
	And while he was telling me all this, I'm listening to this as a woman in a relationship, but also with a therapist's ear.
	And I'm thinking, oh, red flags, red flags, red flags.
	Run, run, run. And yet, from an emotional point of view, and also as a therapist, you rely on your emotions as well and your intuition to discern truth and to find out whether you're being manipulated in therapy or to sort of relate back to the client.
	I wasn't feeling manipulated when Steph was telling me what had happened to him and why he wasn't in touch with his family any longer and the problems that he was having with his brother and the reasons that led to his separation or his defooing.
	There was no manipulation in it.
	And even though...
	There was no bravado. No, that's also manipulation.
	Yeah, that's all trying to relay a story to me that isn't real.
	And he was very matter-of-fact about it and very passionate and very real about it.
	And he also told me at that time that he, well, I think he told me before then that you were in therapy.
	And had been for two years and had been working hard at these issues, and I truly, truly respected that and admired that.
	I also, up until that point, hadn't seen anything in his personality that was manipulative.
	I've said this about Steph for many years, pretty much from the time that I met him.
	Steph is completely undefended.
	He has no defenses.
	And that's not a bad thing.
	Actually, I say that with a great deal of respect.
	He doesn't have any of the psychological defenses that create problems in relationships.
	He doesn't manipulate.
	He doesn't obscure reality.
	He doesn't blame. He doesn't criticize.
	He doesn't do the things that would suggest to me that there is a problem.
	And when he was telling me the story of what had gone on in his life and why he had chosen not to be in his Family any longer, why he removed himself from that very destructive and dysfunctional situation.
	Although I was alarmed, I wasn't alarmed to the point where I thought, okay, there's a problem here.
	In fact, it was quite the opposite.
	I couldn't understand why I was getting this story from someone, you know, that they were abused, seriously abused, and I wasn't picking up any of the characteristics that I associate with people who have been abused.
	And that's because of Steph's enormous work with philosophy prior to entering into psychotherapy and the merging of his philosophy with his psychotherapy helped him to become who he is today.
	And because we've talked about this before, I'll just sort of mention what we talked about before.
	I think that to be upfront, there's no false bravado in defooing.
	It's the hardest thing that anyone ever has to do.
	And with Christina, I said, well, I mean, if I remember, I think I remember the conversation fairly well because I've been preparing for it now.
	No, I just said, look, I'm afraid that this is a very sad story.
	I mean, it's a very sad story with regards to my family.
	It was very much the hardest thing I've ever done.
	Because you don't want to say, well, my family pissed me off, so I don't see them anymore.
	Because then what the person is going to receive is, huh, okay, so if I piss you off, you're going to dump me like yesterday's ham, right?
	Just be honest.
	The decision that I wrestled with enormously, I've talked it over with a therapist, I have really worked very hard to make sure I'm not doing this for the wrong reasons, but frankly, I really just felt that there was no way that I could flourish as a human being while being in contact with abusive people.
	I tried my best and I tried my hardest to make my position clear with my family.
	I tried to give them every opportunity to solve the issues and to listen and to deal with me in a more positive way.
	But after a year or whatever of trying this, or I think for me it would be going on even a little bit longer, I just realized that they weren't interested in changing, that they didn't want to end the behavior which was abusive, and I kind of have to live my own life, and I kind of have to do what's right for me.
	It was the hardest thing that I've ever had to do.
	I'm always willing to revisit the decision and to listen to more.
	I want to be perfectly frank if you have any questions about anything that's gone on with it, because I don't view it as anything I should be ashamed of.
	I mean, basically, I think to get abusive people out of your life is a badge of honor.
	And I think that if you...
	You don't sort of say, well, I have defood and I am a moral hero and so on.
	That's for when you have the cape and the tights.
	But I would definitely say that you should take pride in getting abusive people out of your life.
	And if you had a woman who'd been abused by a husband and she said, well, I left the marriage because he wasn't going to change and I wasn't going to put up with any abuse, that's nothing that she should feel ashamed of.
	Yeah, and I would say, as I mentioned earlier, the red flag wasn't for me that Steph had left his family.
	It was the fact that he had been abused.
	And if he had told me that he was abused and still in touch with these people who were really hurting him and who had hurt him, then I think I would have had more red flags.
	So I think, as Steph mentioned, it is something to be proud of.
	It's something that, you know, you stand up for your values, and that's what I got from Steph.
	Does that help? Did we put him to sleep?
	I think we did. Oh, I just thought I'd pop in and say hello.
	Hello. And I saw in your profile that you're a Canadian.
	That's correct. That's good.
	It's always nice to speak to a fellow Canadian.
	Okay, and where are you from?
	Well, I'm living in Lloyd Ministers, Saskatchewan, Canada.
	But I'm originally a Newfomander, born and raised.
	And did you have any questions about relationships or the topic of the day?
	Okay, your topic was what?
	Relationships. I can't think of anything right now.
	Maybe later sometime, but right now I can't think of anything.
	Well, no problem. Thank you for dropping by.
	If you'd like to just click on the Ask to Talk down the road, keep listening in.
	We're certainly happy to hear any questions that you may have about relationships, questions or problems that you have about relationships.
	So feel free to drop by again and just click on the Ask to Talk.
	And now we have the person who had the most problems with Free Domain Radio 500, I believe, is now on.
	Hey, can you hear me? We sure can.
	How are you doing? Pretty good.
	This is Scott.
	I post under the name of Four Voice Chord on the forums.
	Right. Yeah, yeah.
	You didn't like the podcast 500 BCF song, right?
	Because it was too much like work?
	No, not at all. Which one is 500?
	Oh, that was the one that did the Phantom of the Opera?
	Oh, you mean the ballad?
	Yeah, yeah. I think I have the right person.
	I'm sorry, if you don't play in the...
	Somebody on the board plays in the orchestra for Phantom of the Opera, and they said that they would have been happy if I'd chosen any other song than the one they have to listen to every night of their damn lives.
	If that wasn't you, sorry, I got the wrong one.
	No, actually, I kind of like that.
	Who played the piano on that?
	Oh, actually, I just bought a background track.
	Oh, okay. Well, that was some good vocal work.
	I just wanted to say that. Oh, thanks.
	You know, with eight million takes, you can do anything.
	But go ahead. You may have a question other than about my singing.
	Yeah, well, actually, I just wanted to talk about...
	What happened when I sent my DFU letter to my mother and stepfather, and I just recently posted about this on the board.
	Yes, that was a great letter, by the way.
	Yeah, thank you.
	My wife is kind of involved in this story because she did meet my mother and stepfather and siblings.
	They're down in Texas, actually, and it was the last time that I really saw them.
	I actually – when I went down to Texas, this was Emma, my wife, came with me, but we weren't married yet.
	We really just did not have a good time.
	We ended up spending the night at my mother's and stepfather's house.
	There was a big altercation about where people were going to sleep.
	I was not allowed to sleep with Emma, who was my fiancée at the time.
	But it was not handled in a very diplomatic or nice way at all.
	It's kind of how things have been done in my family.
	We actually just left.
	Emma and I stayed down there in Texas for the rest of the vacation.
	Then we came back.
	We got married. We saw my mother and stepfather at the wedding when we got married.
	I think I had spoken with my mother maybe a total of three or four times since the Texas incident.
	Actually, it was after you did the podcast about loss, which was about my grandparents.
	I think that's pretty much what motivated me to basically just I didn't realize and take the step to get my mother and my stepfather out of my life.
	And I did that and I just sat down and in one go I wrote that entire letter.
	But it wasn't really that much of a heavy emotional experience for me.
	I was almost kind of numb when I did it.
	I felt anger at certain points, I should say.
	And then I showed it to my wife, and she thought that what I was doing was pretty brave.
	But it wasn't really a problem, I guess I want to say, in my relationship with my wife.
	It didn't really seem to be that much of an issue.
	And I don't think that it was really Any kind of a significant red flag for her?
	I think she did kind of worry at one point because she was slightly afraid that I was, you know, gonna...
	She saw me as kind of getting rid of people, getting people out of my life, and she was kind of afraid at one point that I was going to do that to her.
	And I kind of assured her that, no, I wasn't going to do that.
	That was my experience with defoeing and how my wife interacted with me and all that and what her response to that was.
	That's obviously a very important question.
	You're basically putting people onto your life like you put a bunch of Chopped up onions on a cutting board, you're putting down your knife, and you're saying, well, these people are gone, and it's not that arbitrary, and it's not that decisive, but that's basically the process, right?
	The people who are going to stay in your life and the people who aren't going to stay in your life.
	And I wonder if you...
	I mean, if your wife read the letter, and I've read your letter as well, and it was a very powerful thing.
	I can certainly understand the numbness, right?
	Because, I mean, it's a kind of amputation, and we want to be a little bit dissociated from it.
	But the criteria that you put forward and the behavior that you described in that letter, and this letter is available at the Freedom and Radio boards if anybody wants to have a look at it, the behavior that you described was extreme abuse and humiliation, degradation, and so on.
	And obviously your wife doesn't do that, right?
	Otherwise, you know, she would be entirely right to worry about that.
	But if she had the vision of you as a sort of blindfolded machine gunner, just sort of randomly spraying the bullets around and saying, well, who's left standing at the end of this?
	That may have meant that you weren't as clear in your criteria for Who stays in your life and who doesn't?
	This is the fear that people have.
	Anybody who pisses you off, you just get rid of.
	And of course, we all irritate each other from time to time, so that's inevitable in any relationship.
	But it may have been that she wasn't as clear on the criteria you were using to get people out of your life.
	It wasn't even so much, if I understand, correct me if I'm wrong, it wasn't even so much that you were treated badly as a child that occurred, but it was more so that you couldn't have a voice with these people about that past in the present.
	Would that be fair to say?
	I'm not sure what you mean.
	Sorry. When people abuse us in the past, that leaves us with a lot of scar tissue, but if they go through some miraculous and, of course, mostly theoretical transformation in the present, and they turn into wonderful people who are willing to pay for our therapy, who are willing to make amends, who are willing to apologize, who are willing to grow with us, and who are willing to help us heal the wounds of the past by being available to talk about them in the present, then it may be possible, again, this is all theoretical because people who abuse children never end up like that, but it could be theoretically possible.
	That people who hurt you in the past can make amends in the present to the point where they stay in your life.
	Would that be fair to say?
	As a general principle, I'd say that would be pretty fair, but I don't think that applied to my mother and my stepfather.
	No, I completely agree with you that it did not even remotely apply to your mother or stepfather.
	So it was, of course, that there was bad behavior in the past, but what made it irrevocable in terms of getting them out of your life was that you could not talk about them in a productive way with that in the present.
	People who hurt you in the past, if they did turn into these fantasy better people who were able to talk to you about it in the present, could be very healing.
	It's the very witnessing of that abuse and the talking about it in an open and productive manner in the present that can be very healing.
	In a sense, the people who hurt you in the past have the greatest capacity to heal you in the present, but they never do that because they won't acknowledge anything that happened.
	So it was more that you couldn't talk to them in the present and they wouldn't acknowledge your emotional reality and your history with them in the present.
	That was more of the catalyst that got them out of your life than what had occurred in the past, if that makes sense.
	Yeah. And actually, with my mother and Randy, it was kind of strange because they followed the pattern that you talked about where they're abusive until I got out of the house.
	And then when I got into my early 20s, everything was fine.
	Everything was good. I graduated from college.
	Everything was great.
	And then when I got into my late 20s, early 30s, things went downhill again.
	And they were just, you know, until I was in my early 30s, which I'm in my early 30s now, and they were just almost kind of abusive again, but kind of snarky and I think that it might have to do with the fact that they've had children of their own,
	three children. The oldest one's grown up.
	He's gone into the military now, unfortunately.
	I have a sister.
	There's problems with her.
	There's my youngest little brother.
	I don't know too much about him, but I kind of think that maybe they did some of the same stuff that they did with me, they did with them, and maybe that's causing them to just finally cross over completely because they've also changed a lot in their outlooks and in their political views on things.
	They become more extreme.
	And maybe it's just like – I kind of think of it as they've finally completely gone over to the dark side.
	They had like one foot and I guess maybe some sense of morality, and then they had the other foot and basically just being evil, and then now I think that they've just basically completely gone over.
	I would have to disagree with you about that, with all due respect.
	And again, you can correct me if I'm wrong.
	There's no greater evil that they can ever do in their life than what they did to you as a child and to your siblings.
	There's no darker side than harming defenseless and dependent children.
	So there's nothing that they could do in their life that would be more evil than what they did when you were a child.
	So I know that that may be something that is of comfort to you, but I would have to disagree with it, and I'm certainly willing to be corrected on that, but I just don't see how you can get more evil than what they did to you as a child.
	Yeah. Well, you're right.
	I mean, I would imagine that they did not do some of the things that they did to me, to my siblings.
	However, I guess if they continue to go on and they never address what they did with me in any sincere fashion, if they never really tried to make restitution to me, and then there are There are other things too.
	Like with my sister, there were certain problems with her, and it's – like maybe they're kind of looking at what happened with me.
	They're looking at what happened with her siblings.
	Maybe they look at themselves and they see, well, I was violent.
	We were violent to Scott and now it's too late.
	He's He has to deal with that.
	He's got to clean up that mess.
	We can't clean it up for him.
	We've kind of done this with our children, too.
	Now it's all over.
	We're not really parents anymore.
	Our parenting days are done.
	Now all the rest of our children are going out into the world, and we screwed it up, and now it's all over.
	I'm not saying that they're doing this consciously, but maybe unconsciously.
	This is just completely speculation, but that's kind of the feeling that I get.
	And that process of looking over the wasteland of bad parenting and problems and damage that they've inflicted, Has basically just made them lost to virtue.
	Do you think that they are more lost to virtue now than they were actively committing these crimes against children?
	I don't know. I would suggest that you may know.
	In sort of any objective moral criteria, somebody who is actively committing crimes against children must be more evil than somebody who is not.
	And they're not at the moment because they don't have access to children.
	Is that correct? Unless my youngest sibling is still living with me.
	But he's not a child, right?
	I'm sorry? He's not a child, is he?
	No, I'd say he's probably about maybe 17, 18.
	I don't know if he's still living at home there or not.
	The reason that I'm pursuing this is that there is some reason or some benefit that you receive by thinking that your parents were more moral in the past and are less moral now.
	I think that's a way of shielding yourself from some of the pain that occurred in the past, to say that they're worse now than they were back then.
	To take a more extreme example, just to clarify the issue, I'm not trying to equate your parents to this, If there is a rapist who raped women for twenty years and now he's in a wheelchair because he's really old and he hasn't raped anyone in ten years, it's not that he's now more evil than he was before.
	He's just lost the capacity to enact his evil, but certainly he was more evil when he was raping than now that he no longer has the capacity to enact that kind of crime.
	Would that sort of make some sense?
	Yeah, I understand completely what you're saying.
	So your parents can't be more evil now when they're no longer abusing children than they were when they were actively abusing children?
	No. I don't mean to harangue you, but defooing is not a letter.
	Defooing is a very long process.
	I don't know the answer to this.
	I could theorize, but that's not the point because you know the answer better than I do, of course, infinitely better than I do.
	But there's a reason that you want to believe that your parents are worse or more immoral now, or have gone over to the dark side now, and didn't before.
	And I would say that that's part of their story, right?
	And it's something that gives you some comfort, but I would say that it's not too rational, and therefore it may be worth looking at.
	And you could do this, of course, anytime you like, but worth introspecting to sort of figure out How does that story give me comfort?
	Because the story can't be true.
	But the fact that it's something that you want means it's something that gives you comfort.
	And that is a risky thing.
	It can be a dangerous thing to take comfort.
	It certainly is a dangerous thing to take comfort in falsehoods.
	And we all And we all have this problem from time to time.
	But there's some reason that that story about the prior, vague virtue of your parents compared to their current corruption, there's some benefit.
	And I would say that you use it to shield yourself from the pain that occurred in the past.
	As you say, when you wrote the letter to your parents, you didn't feel pain.
	You felt dissociated. And I would say that that's healthy, right?
	Because you need to sort of get that done, but I would say that you may still be using this story to keep yourself distant from the abuse that occurred, which is not good, right?
	I mean, if you guys have kids, you definitely want to have this stuff cleaned up before you have kids and have real closure with your history, and you won't get that by having stories about your parents' decline from virtue, which I think just doesn't make sense logically.
	So I would say there's still more to do, and we all have more to do, right?
	So... But I would say that there's still more to do with your parents to figure out why you prefer the story that they were more virtuous in the past when I think quite the reverse is true.
	Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure that it goes back to their childhood.
	What does? When my mother and stepfather became the sort of people who would consider that it's okay to treat a child violently, verbally and physically.
	Well, that's very interesting, and I would say that this may be a secondary line of defense now that we've surmounted the first one.
	It may be, and I'm just theorizing, so you can let me know if this sort of makes sense to you.
	So, we sort of passed by the first line of defense, and the second line of defense that you say is that, and again, I'm not trying to harangue you, let me know if this works for you or not.
	The second line of defense is to say, but they had bad childhoods, right?
	Which is sort of what you're telling me.
	Well, as a matter of curiosity, how it was that they came to be those people who would regard me when I was a child as basically a chattel.
	As basically what? Chattel.
	Oh, right. Well, I mean, there is a great mystery here which can't be answered, which is they had bad childhoods and became abusers, and you had a bad childhood and did not become an abuser, and I had a bad childhood and did not become an abuser.
	And I can't answer that because there is no, I mean, we can only appeal, while tweaking the determinists, we can only appeal to the mystery of free will and the choices that people make.
	Everybody has the choice to deal with their past or not.
	Everybody has the choice to be honest with themselves and live by their values.
	But if you say, and I'm not saying you are saying this, but if there is an inclination within you to say that they had less free will because of their childhoods, then that certainly is a thesis that can be tested.
	And the way that you test that thesis is you say, well, did they abuse me in front of the priest or in front of the policeman or in front of my teachers?
	They never did that.
	Right, so clearly they had the ability to not abuse you.
	They made the choice to not abuse you.
	They could make that choice and they could refrain from abusing you.
	So they knew that it was wrong to abuse you and they knew that they could not abuse you if they were in certain situations.
	But when they got you alone, where you couldn't talk and couldn't get any sort of help and were completely at the mercy of their whim and violence and brutality, then they really let rip.
	So they totally had the ability to not abuse you.
	So you can say, but I don't think it's logical to say, that their childhood is a causal factor in them abusing you.
	Because even when you were a child, when you were in public with them, Then they had the capacity to not abuse you.
	Whereas if it was simply causal from their own childhood, they would not have that capacity to refrain from abusing you.
	So they could easily make the choice to not abuse you.
	And they consistently and perfectly made the choice to only abuse you in private.
	And therefore, they had the capacity to not abuse you.
	And of course, that's what makes it evil.
	If your parents have a, I don't know, if your dad had some sort of biochemical disorder or schizophrenia and he ended up beating you up in front of a cop, Then, obviously, he's not in a place where he can make rational decisions.
	And while there's horror in that situation, there's not specific evil.
	There's only the trauma of the experience, but there's not the evil in the action of the abuser, because there's no control.
	But where your parents make the rational calculation to say, well, I'm not going to abuse my son here because I'm going to get caught or I'm going to be disapproved of or someone's going to get upset, somebody who has some power, but I'm going to wait until we get home and then I'm really going to lay into him, then clearly there's choice and there's the capacity to not abuse there and that's where the evil comes from.
	Right. Yeah, and that was certainly the situation that I grew up in, as I guess so many of us did.
	Oh yeah, way, way, way.
	There's millions and billions of children the world over who have to deal with this.
	And there is an additional flavor of humiliation when you only get abused when you get home and you're alone.
	There is additional humiliation, right?
	And that's part of the abuse, right?
	The part of the abuse is for the parent to say, oh, I don't have to abuse you because I just restrained myself in them all.
	But now that I've got you alone, it's more humiliating.
	It's part of the abuse.
	The abuse obviously isn't just getting hit.
	I got hit as a kid and that was humiliating.
	I also fell off my skateboard and hit my head.
	That was not humiliating. So it's not the physical injury that is the primary humiliation.
	It's the fact that the parent could choose not to but is choosing to inflict that injury voluntarily that makes it evil and all the worse and all the more humiliating.
	And in dealing with the after effects of what my parents did to me, do you think that it is worthwhile to consider as much as I can, or to find out as much as I can, what was happening for them I don't.
	I would say that that would not be a fruitful quest.
	I think, and again, this is total skywriting, so take of it what you will, whether it's useful or not.
	I think, Scott, that you have a tendency to want to whitewash your history and to wish to find reasons for it.
	And part of what you do is you say, well, they had tough childhoods themselves.
	They were under a lot of stress. They're more evil now than they were back then.
	You're kind of inventing things.
	And if you go into the past, how are you going to find out?
	Well, you're only going to be finding out by talking to other family members who are probably corrupt themselves.
	And you're not going to get any clear answers.
	There's no video camera we can send into the past to get any objective information.
	We can only rely on people's reporting.
	And anybody who you can talk to who is going to have any information about your past is likely going to be as corrupt, if not more corrupt, than your parents because they were there and did nothing.
	So there's going to be no facts that you can get.
	You're only going to get self-justifying and moral obscuring opinions.
	So there is no truth that we can go back and retrieve.
	It's all obscured through people's defenses, through people's bad conscience and their attempt to assuage that and so on.
	I think that the past that you need to go into and to examine and to understand is your own personal history, your own personal experiences of what happened to you at the hands of your parents.
	It's not what your parents did in their choices and their childhoods because that doesn't matter.
	As far as your experience as a child, that's where you need to go.
	And I think that you'd do quite a lot to not go there, but I would suggest that that's where you do have to go.
	I'm sorry, run that by me again, go exactly where again?
	Do you want to try rephrasing?
	Just basically to revisit your own childhood and get in touch with the anger and the hurt feelings and the pain that you experience.
	That is more relevant.
	That is your experience.
	That is what matters, not necessarily what your parents went through in their experiences.
	There is a body of literature and psychology that says, well, you know, it's good to understand the history and to understand the cycles of abuse.
	And, you know, you could probably do that a little bit by trying to produce a family tree by looking at, just even looking at the relationships and the qualities and characteristics that you would have or that you would know about aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents.
	But all in all, essentially, it's your own experiences that will help you come to terms with what has happened and allow you to lay it all to rest and move forward with your life.
	The danger with trying to understand your history from other people's perspectives, particularly the perspectives of your abusers, is that you will then be drawn towards a kind of sympathy and drawn towards a kind of temptation to take the false Zen approach of, now that I understand my parents' histories, I can forgive them for what they did, and so on. But the reality is, of course, as a child, you didn't know or care about your parents' histories.
	You just didn't want to be humiliated and hit and bullied and so on, right?
	And those are the feelings. Those feelings of helplessness and rage and so on, those are the feelings that you need to go back and to reclaim so that you can move on and be a more clear and positive influence for your own children if you have them and just in your life as a whole.
	So I would say there's still closure to work on.
	There are, just from a more practical standpoint, because hearing this on a show doesn't exactly give you the magic bottle to rub and get the genie out, but do you know of workbooks that help people with this kind of stuff that are more practical?
	Would they be PTSD workbooks or childhood history workbooks or anything like that?
	There's a book called Healing the Child Within, and it's a companion book called A Gift to Myself by Dr.
	Charles Whitfield, or Whitefield, I don't know how to pronounce it, W-H-I-T-F-I-E-L-D, and he has done a lot of work on healing the child within, the inner child in all of us that was abused and hurt by our parents, our families, our authority figures.
	The Healing the Child Within has a few exercises in it, homework assignments, that sort of thing, where you read and you write some things out.
	But the companion book, A Gift to Myself, actually has a number of things that you can do where you actually focus on the events that were hurtful, the feelings that you had, the feelings that you have now, the relationships that you have now that are born out of that cycle of abuse.
	And helps you to work through it.
	So I would recommend that to anyone who's interested in overcoming a lot of the pain of their own past and history.
	Did you have any other questions?
	Was this vaguely helpful?
	Or was there anything that you wanted to add?
	Just one last question.
	Sure. I would like...
	If you could just...
	I'm sure you probably covered this in some of the podcasts, but if you could talk about how rational thinking, perhaps in a formal sense, can be beneficial to this whole process.
	Sure. I mean, what I would say is that, and we're recording this, and you can play this back.
	I mean, this is a lot of information to take in at once, though I know that you're a terrifically smart fellow.
	But the example of rational thinking and its benefit to this process, I think, if you replay our conversation here, you may at least hear my attempts at trying to apply that process.
	So when you would say to me something like, well, I think my parents are more corrupt now than they were when I was younger, then I tried to put a sort of logical process in.
	So when you said, well, I'd like to examine my parents' history, then I sort of went through a logical process of the only information you would get would be subjective interpretations from other corrupt people, and that's not going to get you to the truth, and so on.
	So I would say that applying the scientific method to defenses, defenses are the opposite of science, because they're based on history and trauma, not on empiricism and rationality.
	And we all have them, so this is not pointing the finger or anything.
	The rational approach of philosophy is very powerful in these areas because you simply compare your opinions or perspectives, as do I, to the facts and the reality.
	And wherever there's a discrepancy between belief and empiricism, between belief and rationality, we know that we're making up a defensive story to avoid pain and trauma, which may not be productive for us and probably won't be productive for us in the long run.
	Okay, cool, that's it.
	Well, thanks so much, and again, congratulations on a very powerful letter, and thank you so much for posting it.
	I do plan, if this is going to be of any help at all, when I go full-time in a couple of weeks I do plan to do a series on defooing.
	Not that that's something you're not already sort of underway with, but we do need to have more.
	I mean, I think it would be more helpful to go through the theory and practice and process and to give people some more detailed pointers about what to expect through this process.
	And I hope to be interviewing some listeners as part of that sort of video series and so on.
	So that may help.
	And have you thought of or set foot in a care therapist's office at all?
	Twice. Once in my childhood, that was not a very positive experience.
	And a second time, I guess for about a couple months, I saw a social worker who was a Jungian therapist.
	And I was very much a devotee of Jung at one point, so that's why I did that.
	I don't really think that it did too much for me.
	Right, right. No, Jung is a little bit, I think, a little bit mystical, abstract, and subjective.
	Although I was quite a devotee of Jung at myself at one point.
	Until, of course, I read Jung's personal history, in which case it's like, whoa, dude!
	You're insane! Thanks so much for joining in.
	Do keep us posted about how it goes.
	It may be that it would be worth talking to a therapist again.
	Finding a counselor can be a little bit like finding a life partner, and sometimes they go together.
	It's worth trying, and of course it's worth stopping to see a therapist who's not really getting involved in helping.
	So, if we have any other questions or comments, I guess we've moved a little bit beyond the relationship issue, which is totally fine, but if you had any other comments, issues, questions, problems, criticisms, suggestions of hairstyles for myself or my armpits, feel free to pop in now.
	Just click on Ask to Talk.
	If not, I guess hour and a quarter, hour and three quarters, we could close the show off if people are out of questions or out of comments.
	Can you upload the movie you said you made?
	Absolutely. I still have to pick it up for my ex-girlfriend.
	I will do that for sure.
	So yeah, I will try and upload that for sure.
	Okay.
	Yeah, no, I sort of have to pick that up, and it's on a VHS. This was all before digital stuff, but it's on VHS, so I sort of have to transfer it, too.
	But certainly, I would like to have a copy of it, of course.
	I've never seen it. No, Christina's never seen it either, so it was a good chunk of time and a good chunk of money, so worth having a copy.
	All right. Well, if nobody has any other questions or issues or comments about relationships or anything else to do with Free Domain Radio, no problem.
	If people can't think of anything to ask, no problem.
	Thank you so much for listening.
	And I really appreciate this.
	Thanks so much to Christina for doing an excellent show and for allowing the odd interruption.
	That's very good.
	So have yourselves a fantastic, fantastic week.
	I should only have two weeks more of work unless my notebook is dead, in which case I might take another couple of days just to pay for a new notebook.
	So, I will talk to you.
	Donations are a little bit light, not too bad this week.
	I've tried to put out some quality shows this week, so if you could show your appreciation, I certainly would appreciate it.
	Actually, it's not the...
	Somebody said, get a Mac, Steph.
	It fell. The notebook fell.
	It actually only fell on a carpet, but it's a five-year-old notebook, so it's getting a little...
	Unfortunately, the video went haywire, and I thought, oh, I'll just do it to an external monitor.
	But that monitor also was flickery and had lines, so I think it's a motherboard issue.
	So anyway, we'll see what the quote is like.
	Thank you so much, and have a wonderful, wonderful week.
	Thank you, everybody, for listening.

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