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July 19, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
56:15
828 Evil Girlfriend? - A Listener Conversation
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Time Text
Hello, can you hear me better?
That's much better. Okay, brilliant.
Alright, so, what's the story?
Wow, seriously. Well, actually, first, is it okay if I get a couple of things out of the way?
Yeah, yeah, sure. It was the podcast you did about the philosopher kings who are crap at being philosophers.
Can you just be...
I can't remember what number it was, but it was the people who put themselves forward as the greatest philosophers.
I think it was 816. Yeah.
Oh, the tennis anyone? Yes, tennis anyone.
Yeah, yeah, where I really, really overworked the tennis metaphor.
Put it through its faces. I'm sorry, go ahead.
Like one of my posts in a previous thread.
Hello? Yes, go ahead.
Sorry, yeah, you referenced my post, and I don't think that I was doing that.
I really don't think that I was putting myself forward as some great philosopher person, because I'm quite clear that I know very little about philosophy.
Well, I mean, I certainly would be, if you want to pull the post up, I can certainly tell you why, if I, I mean, it doesn't pop into my mind, because the podcast flow me like that, threw me like that.
Like, the water flows through the river, so...
Right. It's the, where is it, the steal a little bit, where asking about who, what, if you could go back in time, and should you forgive your brother for the stuff he did to you, and that sort of thing.
Remember those who pretended to be, whatever, who pretended to be someone she wasn't, and was that bad, and should you criticize her for that, or that sort of thing?
Yes, I do remember that.
And my basic sort of issue or questions about that has to do with the prioritization of one's ethical questions and ethical actions in one's life.
So again, you know that because I'm metaphor mad, I will often use a metaphor like, you know, we're doctors in the middle of a plague.
And I always get kind of concerned about the really esoteric gray area kind of debates or questions.
And to me, it's like, well, if your ethical issues or your issues of integrity and honesty, Are so advanced in your life that this is a big question for you?
I know that that isn't me.
I'm quite prepared to state right now that that definitely isn't me.
And it's not me either. I'm not coming from any place where this is the most important thing in my life either.
I've still got a long way to go.
That's my concern, that I get suspicious, and I don't mean suspicious in terms of anyone's conscious motive.
I know that there's a kind of gravity well around the gray areas of ethical questions, and I get sucked in as much as anybody else, but I think it's very important to just sort of shake your head from time to time and say, is this the most significant issue that we could be working on?
And that's sort of my major concern around that sort of stuff.
And so debating about, you know, what will happen if I get to Wimbledon is one thing.
You know, we've got to get up and play the game more directly.
I just wanted to make sure that, you know, I wanted to put forward that I'm not putting myself out there as a guy who knows anything pretty much about tennis or about philosophy.
And I don't – I certainly don't question the conscious motives, right?
The conscious motives are that you really want to understand something that is hard to understand, right?
I mean I do respect that.
I just think that it's important that when we get sucked into the gray areas of ethical questions, what happens is the whole world begins to look fuzzy and the whole world – like it becomes more complicated and more challenging.
And I think that there's much more simple and direct things that we can do.
And that's sort of my concern.
Everybody, and it's natural because we want to find the areas or the edges of valid knowledge.
That's where you put things to the test, I guess.
That's where you put things to the test is at the edges.
That's true, but I would say that's what you do theoretically, but I would say that where you put things to the test...
It's in your life, right? Yeah, yeah.
Well, yeah.
Yeah, I'm trying, but it's not the easiest thing.
And it certainly is an absolutely horrible thing.
Not the easiest thing, I think, is a nice way of putting it.
And by the accent, I guess that we both have a tendency to try and put things in the nicest way possible.
It's a living hell to put it into action, right?
And that's, I think, also why people gravitate towards discussing the fuzzy edges of the theory, because it is so horrible to put it into practice that it's almost more fun to debate somebody else's Grey areas than it is to work in your own black and white areas, if that makes sense.
Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't disagree with that, for sure.
For sure. Yeah, so last night.
Fun for all the family, indeed it was.
Well, it was just...
I've just recently started going out with this girl, and I think she's really cool, really awesome.
But we were talking about her dad, and...
Well, basically how it came up was...
Her dad was like, well, we got asked the question of hitting children, and she was like, did your dad ever use violence against you?
And she said yes.
Sort of unthinkingly, I didn't even really think about it, so I kind of just tried out that, well, I think that anyone who hits a child is evil.
And she said, well, do you think I'm evil?
And I was like, what? And she said, well, ages, years and years ago, you know, I was looking after my sister's kid, my sister's son, and she said, and he was crying, and he'd been crying for hours and hours, and she said to hit him on the arm, and I did, so do you think I'm evil?
So I was like, I didn't know what to say.
It was sort of, yeah, it didn't end well for anyone.
Yeah, that definitely is a bit of a precipice, right?
For sure. So what happened then?
Well, I was like, well, I don't know.
And she kind of made the point that it's very simple for me to judge because I've never been in that situation.
I mean, my parents never hit me.
They never shouted at me. They were on the spectrum of parental abuses.
They were actually pretty good.
So, you know, I've never been in that situation.
I've never had kids and I've never been really around kids.
I've got like a younger brother, but he's pretty much, you know, around my age.
So I've never been in the situation of someone crying 24 hours a day and you're not knowing what to do about it.
So who am I to judge basically?
And I didn't really have an answer to that.
And then, yeah, she kind of walked off and I don't know.
Certainly, evil is a bit of a hump in a relationship.
That definitely is a, hey, let's go for pizza.
That's a little tough to work out from.
So, what is your understanding or experience, both intellectually and emotionally, of the question of evil and its applications to people?
Well, I don't know.
I really don't know.
I mean, I don't know.
I honestly don't know. I mean, you know to some degree, I mean, because you used the term, right?
Yeah. So, I mean, this is, I'm not, I think that you have some idea of it, whether it's right or wrong doesn't matter, right?
I mean, it's not like the first time I picked up a tennis racket, you know, again, to abuse metaphor, I was very good, right?
So, that's just, it's just a question of sort of where it is for you.
A statement like, when you say anybody who hits a child is evil, do you mean that the action of hitting a child is evil in the moment, or anybody who hits a child ever is evil through their next twelve Buddhist reincarnations?
Well, that's a good question.
That is a good question. It's a difficult question to answer.
It is. I mean, it really is a difficult question.
Like, if I beat my wife, certainly the action of beating my wife is pretty bad, right?
It's pretty frank. Certainly. And certainly the moment that I stop beating my wife because my arm gets tired, I don't immediately become perfectly virtuous again, although I am no longer initiating violence.
So there's kind of like a half-life of, let's just say, we'll use the term evil because it's what you worked with with your girlfriend.
So there's no question that the actual act of abusing somebody is evil and that that person is committing an evil action in the moment.
And it's also true that they are no longer...
They're not restored to a perfect goodness the moment that they stop.
Right? So there is some sort of...
Like when you have a bright light in your eyes, there's an afterimage, if that makes sense.
It's all grey areas then.
Is that the... Well, no.
I don't think that there's a grey area...
Well, okay. Sorry. If she tapped...
Was it a baby that was crying or a toddler?
I don't think it was a baby.
Okay, a toddler. I think so.
Okay, so if she tapped a toddler on the arm to kind of startle him out of crying, then that's not...
I don't know. I mean, that's because you don't know exactly what happened.
And if people really do get a child, they don't say, man, did I ever fall off and clock that kid, right?
They say, well, there were all these extenuating circumstances and what it did was very gentle and it hurt me more than it hurt him.
And I was at my wit's end and I'd been patient for hours and hours.
Like there's a lot of... Extenuating circumstances that people claim in those kinds of interactions, and then they'll say, well, it was just a light tap and so on, right?
And if we believe all of that, Then I think it's pretty hard to label that person as stone evil for the rest of their life, because then, on that scale, I'm not sure why we'd put, like, Stalin or something, right?
Yeah. Well, that is, yeah, she did say that as well, actually.
She sort of says, well, if you're calling me evil, that's pretty much the worst thing ever.
You're putting me in the same category as mass murderers.
And that basically, that made me sort of take a step back and think, well, yes, I need to sort of maybe rethink this.
I don't mean really evil, just lightly evil, you know, like lightly dusted on a sugar.
I think I did use the term continuum of evil, to which the response was not entirely positive, and I think I was wrong in that, definitely.
Well, for sure, you may have used the term inappropriately, but of course, I don't think it's accidental that you did this.
And I don't think that you could necessarily classify this as a massive mistake, in my opinion.
And the reason that I say that is when we are...
Let's just say starting out.
And to some degree or another, we're all always starting out.
But when you're starting out in the realm of philosophy and ethical examinations, you're going to make mistakes.
We all make mistakes.
I make mistakes. I've had to apologize in podcasts for errors of judgment, for errors of inappropriate labeling and so on.
It's a complicated and difficult discipline or subject.
So there's lots of mistakes that abound, right?
So, I think that partly it's possible that what you were doing in this interaction was finding out whether there was a possibility of exploring this question with your girlfriend.
Yeah. So, if you said to me, anybody who is ever unfaithful to a woman is evil, right?
Okay, when I was 17, I had two girlfriends for about two weeks, because I thought that made me Joe Studmuffin or something, right?
But I wouldn't necessarily say, oh, so you're calling me evil now, and you'd get very upset?
But you wouldn't agree with me.
No, I wouldn't agree with you, but I wouldn't get angry at you.
I'd just be like, okay, well help me understand what you mean by, especially if I knew that you were new to the discipline.
Right. Right. I mean, just think of it in terms of physics, right?
Like, I mean... But then compared to her, I'm not new to the discipline.
I mean, I've, like, had conversations with her sort of about this sort of thing, and I'm the one who's supposedly, you know, the more knowledgeable about philosophy.
You know, I've listened to God knows how many hundred podcasts.
Yeah, sorry about that.
Send me a bill for your time.
Exactly. No, but for sure, I mean, you're not saying, I've been studying this for 25 years and I've got some really good stuff down.
You're like, I've just got a whole bunch of exciting ideas and I'm trying to figure out how they apply and I'm swinging wildly, but I've got to act.
And heaven forbid, this Brit keeps nagging at me to put these things into practice in my life.
And there's just no three-point landing of bringing values to bear in your life.
I mean, any crash that you walk away from usually is a good crash.
So, for sure, you're not putting yourself forward as a master philosopher.
You're just saying, well, I've got these ideas.
They're interesting and thrilling to me.
And you are going to run into issues where, when you try to apply...
Things like moral labels, in the abstract, people are going to call you on it and say, does that apply to me in the specific?
because in a sense your girlfriend gets a lot more about what philosophy means in the real world because when you say something abstract like people who had children are evil and then she brings it to bear in her real life the question is what is her emotional response to that so just from my own standpoint if somebody said to me Steph because you were unfaithful to a woman when you were I mean kissy face unfaithful to a woman when you were 17 you're now stone evil for the rest of your life
I myself would not be offended because I know that that's not true That would be like somebody saying to me, I really dislike your hairdo.
Well, my hairdo is scalp, right?
So I can't get upset at that, right?
So if somebody says, Steph, I think that you're evil, I would know that they were confused, right?
Or they thought they knew something when they didn't know something because I know that I'm not, right?
So I'd just be like, okay, well, maybe that's true, but tell me how you're coming to that conclusion and tell me what your reasoning is and what your definition is and so on, right?
And that's the kind of curiosity that makes intellectual exploration...
Like, fun, right?
I mean, this is, if you've ever read, and it's really worth reading the Socratic dialogue for this kind of stuff, that...
People come up and say, Socrates, you are unjust, right?
And Socrates doesn't say, oh yeah?
You and your mother, right?
Your mother wears army boots, who are also unjust.
He just says, oh, well, that's interesting.
Perhaps you can tell me your definition of justice so that I can be better instructed.
Of course, I do this all the time.
People come charging at me all the time with all of these labels.
And it's like, well, that's very interesting.
I'm certainly happy if they say, Steph, you're wrong about everything.
It's like, well, that's great.
Then you can correct me.
And then, of course, they run away.
Is that a little bit disingenuous?
Well, it's not that I don't know.
I mean, my function is, like, if the doctor has to tell the child that the medicine that will save his life is candy, is that evil?
I don't know. To me, the important thing is just to keep people in the conversation.
You never know who's going to be the next big genius who's going to make a big leap, right?
Or some old guy who's going to will hold his money to Free Domain Radio.
The most important things, obviously.
You've got to get things in order to be important.
You've got to eat before you can talk, right?
Right. I know what you mean about the disingenuousness of it, but people don't know what they're doing, right?
Right. And it's like when people sort of come charging at me, what I see is a two or three-year-old kid who's having a tantrum.
You don't engage at the tantrum level, right?
If the kid screams, I hate you, I mean, a mature parent doesn't scream back, oh, yeah, well, your eyebrows are funny or whatever, right?
You don't engage at that level, right?
And the important thing is that people recognize that they don't know what they don't know, right?
And for me, whatever I can do to help them.
And maybe there is somebody out there who's figured out a whole bunch of stuff that I've never even thought of who would really be able to help me.
I mean that's always a possibility, right?
Sure. So, I think that...
Sorry, go ahead.
It's not me. I'm making that clear right now.
Right. Maybe it's not you, but I think that...
I think that's the first step, isn't it, to wisdom?
Knowing that you know nothing? Well, not nothing, but knowing that a lot of what you believe is not necessarily true or is worth questioning.
Right. But I think that you should give yourself credit for a lot more intuitive intelligence than you might be giving yourself to.
Because the title of your post was the worst night of your life, right?
So when you make a statement like, you know, X is evil, and somebody says, well, I did X, does that make me evil?
And they're angry? Because it sounds like she got kind of cheesed, right?
Um, yes.
Yeah. Okay.
So what happens when you make a mistake In this relationship.
Let's just say that this was an honest mistake.
I mean, you weren't sitting there saying, how could I conceivably make my girlfriend feel the worst that she possibly could?
And how can I convince this person that I care about that she's stone evil?
So she throws herself up a cliff, right?
That wasn't your goal, right?
It really wasn't, no. No, I mean, your goal was you wanted to talk about what was important to you in terms of a moral judgment of those who...
Hurt children. And when you said hit children, I think what you meant was, you know, screaming in rage with closed fists and, you know, bruises.
Well, I was talking about, I mean, I was talking about her dad, you know, I was sort of sympathizing for what she went through.
I mean, I don't know exactly what she went through and I didn't go through anything like the same thing, you know, I had You know, nothing...
I didn't have sort of abusive verbally or physically parents.
So I was like, well, I don't know what you're going through, but here's my view.
I'm trying to sympathize with it.
Right. And it kind of...
Well, it didn't quite...
It didn't back... I mean, it's important to personalize this, right?
It didn't backfire like a car that hasn't been tuned.
What happened was you were trying to sympathize with her.
She took it personally and got angry.
Right. Right. Right?
I mean, you couldn't conceivably know that she'd swatted a kid at some point in the past, right?
Right. And certainly, if you thought, and of course I'm not saying in any way that she is, if you thought that she was some kind of chronic child abuser, you probably wouldn't be with her completely.
I'm with her because I think she's good.
I've known her for a year and before I started going out there I think she's a good person.
I've not had a girlfriend for a year and a half because I've been waiting for a good person.
Right. Right, so you were trying to empathize with a good person and sympathize with her history, and she kind of turned on you, not it kind of backfired, but she kind of turned on you, right?
Because she took as an offensive judgment of her character something which was designed to provide comfort, and which you believed, right?
I mean, and there's nothing wrong with her saying, well, do you mean that everyone who ever You know, taps a child on the arm is evil, and of course you would have said no, right?
Right, right. So, I think that what you're trying to figure out in this statement is that how is an error, or how is a...
If you're going to study things like ethics, and as you know, I mean, as I've said a million times, ethics is the most volatile of human disciplines because it's so easy to take it personally.
If you're going to study ethics, then what is going to happen in your relationship if you make a statement that can be misinterpreted?
Is your girlfriend going to be...
Because what she really felt was concern that your definition was going to be something that included her.
And even that wasn't her most fundamental concern.
Her most fundamental concern was, have I done things that could be labeled evil?
right because all you have is her self-reporting but the emotional energy that's behind it is what not one of real confidence right that she's never done because if she'd never done anything wrong and if she was perfectly comfortable with what she had did what she had done with her the child that she was involved with or involved in disciplining if she was perfectly comfortable with that then she wouldn't take offense right okay
so if she felt uncomfortable and But you can take offense to an unjust accusation, surely?
But she didn't know whether or not it was an unjust accusation.
She didn't know what your definitions were.
She didn't know what your definition of evil was.
And you have some lack of clarity with that as well, right?
So if somebody comes at me and says, Steph, you're evil, and I say, what's your definition of evil?
And they say, well, actually, you know what?
I really don't know. I'm confused.
And you were honest about that.
So when she said, does your definition of evil include me?
You said, I don't know.
Right? And that was honest, because you don't, right?
It's like there is something wrong with saying that somebody is stone evil for the rest of their life if her self-reported story is true, right?
Of course. So you said, well, I don't know, right?
And then she can say, well...
Tell me what was going—like, if she was mature, right?
And I'm not saying she's not, but just in this particular instance.
I mean, I'm not going to try and say she doesn't have any positive qualities.
I'm just talking about the challenges of this particular instance, right?
So when you say, I don't know what the answer to your question is, then she can say, well, what was going on for you emotionally when you made that statement?
And you could say, well, I was really sympathizing with what you had suffered as a child, and I wanted to express my outrage at how your father treated you.
Right. And I don't know what the basis of it is, right? That's perfectly honest.
I don't know if I was right or wrong.
Well, you know that you're right in some definition, right?
Because beating up on kids is pretty evil.
Yeah, okay. Yeah, that makes sense.
But you don't know...
I mean, this is the fuzzy area, right?
How many times do you have to hit a kid before you're stone evil for the rest of your life?
I mean, who knows, right?
Who knows, right? And of course, there's no way that you can ever apply ethical judgments to that because it's all self-reporting and subjective and no one ever tells the truth, so it kind of doesn't matter, right?
It's like, is there a murder in the 12th century when no one ever saw it?
It's like, maybe yes, maybe no, we'll never know.
Sure, right? So you were in a continuum and you had applied a statement, but you were thinking about how her father treated her, and then she personalized that and thought that you were attacking her.
Right. Which I think is an unjust response to what it is that was going on in your heart when you were talking to her.
Okay. Does that make sense?
I mean, yeah, that does make sense.
And so, I guess what happened was, things kind of escalated from there, right?
Well, they didn't escalate as such, no.
I mean, that was kind of the end of the conversation, pretty much, yeah.
But what happened with the remainder of the time that you spent together?
She sort of walked off, and I kind of followed her.
And then that's where she said, well, so, I mean, if you're calling me evil, you're equating me with mass murderers.
I was like, well, that's not...
You know, I'm not...
That's kind of a little bit of a ridiculous statement, don't you think?
And I don't know what her response to that was, but it wasn't, you know, it was sort of...
She didn't say, yes, I guess I am overreacting.
I can't seriously think that you think I'm a mass murderer, right?
I mean, that's not your particular taste in women.
As long as they put the blood of millions on their hands, they're hot.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not into that.
Right, right. Yeah, and then, I don't know, I was just kind of backtracking, I guess.
Sort of floundering, really, you know.
And what was your experience of that, emotionally?
Like, what were you feeling when that was occurring?
Well, I don't know. I mean, guilt, I guess?
For like... I don't know.
It didn't feel good. I know that much.
But... I don't know.
I've not been good in those situations, really.
I get this kind of horrific...
Well, you can't be. I mean, those situations are a trap.
And again, I'm not implying or imputing any conscious motives to her, right?
But what happened was she felt humiliated, and so she needed to regain the upper hand, right?
This process called leveling, that for certain types of people, in fact, most types of people, if they feel that you've put them down, they need to make you squirm to reestablish their feeling of security.
Really? Do you think that? It's possible.
Do you think it's conscious? No, I'm not saying it's conscious, but what I am saying is that if she felt attacked and humiliated by you, then the tactics, what a lot of people do, is they withdraw emotionally, which leaves the other person kind of floundering, they get offended, they get upset, and then you're sort of left trying to repair this grievous harm that you've inflicted upon the other person, when in fact you were trying to sympathize with their situation.
Right? So what they regain, they reclaim the power that they feel that you have taken away from them by criticizing them at some level that really upsets them.
So they then withdraw and they act hurt and they act offended and so on and then you're sort of rushing around trying to repair everything which reestablishes their power.
And I'm not saying it's a conscious thing on her part, and you were there, right?
So you know whether this fits emotionally, but you didn't feel like you guys were coming together, right?
You felt like a naughty boy who had done something wrong, right?
I mean, this is too much of an exaggeration, isn't it?
A naughty boy who had done something wrong and who now needed to make restitution and amends, and that she was then going to decide when you had groveled enough, and she was going to then restore you to her good graces, is that...
It was along those lines, yeah.
Right, right, right. And with all due sympathy to her, this is what she learned from her family, right?
I mean, she's not an evil person.
She's not sitting there going, how can I emasculate this person as much as humanly possible?
But this question of being offended and upset and the other person now has to scramble to make restitution is not uncommon in relationships.
And there is a certain amount of, at least as I remember from my time, considerable time in England, there's a certain kind of pattern with British women that they get this sort of stern, matronly kind of governess thing where it's like tap, tap, tap, you know, you have upset me, young man.
Right. You know, there's a certain amount that the boys are like sort of scrambling around to sort of make restitution or make amends and that's just what people learn from their family.
But then her mum is like the opposite of that.
I mean, if she's staying in an abusive relationship with a dickhead guy, then her mum is obviously not assertive and not, you know, Well, I would not necessarily agree with that.
And this is a volatile topic, right?
So we'll just touch on it briefly because a lot of people have a certain amount of sympathy for women who are in abusive relationships.
But... The power in an abusive relationship shifts from person to person, right?
Insofar as the man, let's just take a completely stereotypical example.
The man gets drunk and hits the wife, right?
But then what happens is the wife has all the power because she's now upset.
And she's angry and she's hurt.
And now the abusive husband has to grovel and bring her flowers and bring her chocolates and promise never to do it again and swear off booze and so on.
So now she has all the power to troll his behavior, right?
And then he begins to resent that after a while, goes out, gets drunk, and the whole cycle repeats itself.
So women who are in abusive relationships do experience quite a thrill of power, which is the groveling of the man the morning after.
Right. Okay.
Hmm. Now, you might want to read up on this, and certainly don't take my word for it, but the woman can threaten to call the cops and have them thrown in jail.
She gets an enormous amount of power out of the man behaving badly in this sort of cycle.
But you should, I mean, if you read up on this kind of stuff, sweetie, do you know a good book for that kind of stuff?
like the sort of switch of power in these abusive relationships where the woman...
Because it's well documented that the man will then feel really bad the morning after, and then he grovels, and then she has all the power, and...
Yeah.
Yeah, and Christina was just in the room.
She doesn't know any particular books in this, but if you look in sort of a self-help book or even online for abusive victims or marital abuse, it's pretty well documented that the woman has a lot of power after the physical or verbal abuse has occurred.
And of course, the woman has more verbal abuse generally, and again, stereotypically, the woman has more verbal abuse skills, and the man has more physical abuse skills.
Well, the girl's got the one saint-parent syndrome that you talked about recently.
Oh, like, so my mother was a saint and my dad was a rat-finger?
Yeah. My mother still is a saint.
Right, right. And of course, saints have a lot of...
She can't... I said that, you know...
Well, this is...
Well, it's not off-topic, but it's kind of a little bit off-topic.
She hates going home, going to her house.
I can understand that.
When we go out, you know, it's been recently, you know, in the past week, so I'm walking her home and, you know, we went to a party, you know, and she got quite drunk, for example.
I mean, I did, so I'm not casting judgment for that because that would be a little bit hypocritical on me.
But, you know, It would be this kind of impossible situation where she'd be in just someone's driveway, basically, saying, I don't want to go home, I don't want to go home.
And I'd say, well, okay, then why don't you come back to my house?
You know, I've got a sofa or something, we can do something, you know, I'll sleep on the sofa, you can sleep on my bed, you know, something like that.
And she'd say, no, no, no, I have to go home and face it.
And then two seconds later, she'd be like, I really don't want to go home, I really don't want to go home.
And they'd be like, well, that doesn't give me a lot of options.
And then five seconds after that, she'd say, I'm really cold, I'm really cold.
I'm like, well, let's go inside in the warm.
She'd say, no, I don't want to go home. I was just like, okay, these are all the options I have.
I don't have any more than that.
Right, right. So why is it that you feel that these are problems of hers that you have to solve?
Well, because I like her.
Well, sure, but liking her is respecting her, right?
Liking her is respecting her judgment and not trying to take over her thinking for her, right?
Because if she puts herself forward as somebody who doesn't want to go home but doesn't want to go anywhere else, that is cold but doesn't want to get warm, then if you say, well, honey, the solution to being cold is to get warm, that's not really respecting her intelligence, right?
Right. Right.
I mean, if I say to you, I'm standing in the rain next to a bus shelter and I'm getting all wet, what should I do?
I mean, how much respect do you have to have for my intelligence to say, you know, you might want to step into the bus shelter, right?
I guess. Yeah.
Now clearly she's much more intelligent than that, right?
Because otherwise she'd be like a central tunnel support or something, right?
So clearly she's smart enough to know that if you're cold, you should go into the warm, right?
And if you don't want to go home, then you should go somewhere else, right?
And if you don't want to go somewhere else, then you have to go home.
She's certainly smart enough. If those were questions on a test, She'd probably get it right every time, right?
So you know that this is not a serious or legitimate question.
So if you took this as a serious or legitimate question, I don't know what to do when it's cold because I have an IQ about the same as my Q size, right?
And you would not be dating this person, right?
So you have to have respect for their intelligence to the point where you know that's not a serious question, right?
Right. Should I leave her in someone's driveway to spend the night?
No, you have to be honest with her, right?
You have to be honest with her and you have to say two things which are the real truth of how you feel in this situation.
My humble opinion, obviously, whatever works for you is what works for you.
But the first thing that you feel is you say, you know, I feel a very strong urge to solve this problem for you.
Right. Because that's what you feel, right?
And the second thing that you say is, you say, I also feel frustration.
Because when I act on my urge to solve your problem and try to help you, I get told that it's impossible to help you.
So first thing you do is you complain to me about something that upsets you.
I feel a strong urge to help you, which I then give in to, and then you reject all the help that I can give you, which is sort of like if I'm a doctor and a patient keeps coming and saying, there's a pain in my side, and I say, take these pills, and they say, well, I don't take any doctor's medications.
It's like, well, then why are you coming to a doctor, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's what I mean by in terms of honesty.
You don't deal with the surface.
You deal with how you're actually feeling and you communicate to her how it is that you're actually feeling.
Okay.
And then you say to her, how is it that you feel about what it is that you're doing, right?
Not angrily, like, what the hell do you feel about this crazy situation you're putting me in?
But, you know, what are you feeling right now?
Right.
Right, that prompts you to want to express a significant complaint to someone who cares about you and then reject any offers of help, right?
That's kind of a – that for sure is putting you in an impossible situation, right?
And she's mirroring – I'm almost positive she's mirroring what is going on in her family in that situation, right?
So another impossible situation, which is, again, something you need to keep an eye on in this relationship, is the situation where she says, oh, yeah?
Am I evil? Right? That's another impossible situation.
Then you either have to give up your definition, which doesn't seem quite right because you – Have something correct in your formulation of beating children not being a very good thing to do, right?
So you can't pick up your definition, but at the same time, you don't want to offend her.
So again, you're stuck in this impossible situation.
And also, there's time pressure because she's getting upset.
The more you hum and whore, the more she's getting upset.
So you're stuck and the clock is running out.
You're sort of like in a... You know, a countdown terrorist movie.
So you have these situations, and I think the thing to do is, and of course I get criticized for this quite a bit, and I just did a podcast on psychologizing, which might help you, is when you start to feel that you're in those impossible situations, what can you say?
Well, I don't know.
You could say this is an impossible situation.
No, you can't say that because that's something you can't prove.
What you can say is, I feel that this is an impossible situation.
Right. You can always stop the interaction or the acting out and you can say, I feel that we're in an impossible situation here.
I feel that I'm in an impossible situation here.
How are you feeling at the moment?
Angry or hurt or upset or this or that.
It's like, okay, so what we need to do is deal with that.
When is it that you first started to feel angry or hurt or upset?
Well, when you said that I was evil.
It's like, okay, well, what did it mean to you?
That I said that. Like, what did you feel about that, right?
That's how you deal with those kinds of things.
You don't argue about whether she actually is evil or not, because that's not the real content.
I'm not sure it gets that far, though.
I think I say, I feel this is an impossible situation.
And the answer to that is, well, go then.
Well, but that's important, right?
That's important, right? So then you say, well, we're going to have difficulty as a couple if when I express my feelings, you tell me to leave.
Right. Right? Because that's another impossible situation, right?
Because then what you're saying is, I don't want to know how you feel, but I want to be in a relationship with you.
Right. That's kind of like saying, I want you to work for me, but I don't want to pay you.
Right? Right. Because that's just another impossible situation, right?
And the best thing, of course, is the best way to do this kind of stuff is to bring it up when she's drunk.
No, to bring it up right after sex.
No, to bring it up when...
Well, we haven't quite got that far.
And that's probably not unwise, right?
But I would say that the best time to bring this up is when you're both relaxed, right?
Yeah. And just say, you know, I'd like to talk to you about something that I've noticed.
I really care about you.
I want this relationship to work.
But there are certain things that make this relationship more difficult for me than I think it needs to be.
And here's the experience that I'm sort of having, and here's the patterns that I notice.
There's nothing wrong with jotting this stuff down, right?
Showing that you've really thought it through, that you really care about it.
And you just have to stick to your feelings, right?
You can't say, you do this or you do that and then you do this evil thing or that evil thing and I can't believe you beat up that kid.
No, I'm just kidding. But you have to just stick with your feelings because nobody can ever tell you that your feelings are wrong.
They might say, well, if you say, well, I feel like I'm in an impossible situation, and she says, I never put you in an impossible situation, right?
Then you say, you know what you're doing right now?
You're putting me in an impossible situation, right?
I tell you that I'm feeling something, and you tell me that my feelings are completely and totally unjustified without asking me any questions, right?
Right. I don't think she'd be like that.
I don't think she'd be like that.
Well, I think you need to try and make sure that that doesn't happen, right?
Because if you get into that spiral, the relationship will not work.
If you get into the spiral where she keeps putting you in impossible situations and you keep groveling or apologizing or whatever, right?
That's not going to work. I don't care how attractive she is.
It's not going to work. And you obviously have known this woman for quite some time and you care about her.
So I think that you need to talk about ways in which you have these issues or these problems with her and how you feel about it, right?
And if she then just tells you everything you feel is wrong...
Then you can also say, well, this is an impossible situation.
You can also say, well, how do you know that?
I mean, that's like saying, if you say, I had a dream about an elephant last night, and I say, well, that's just not correct.
You should have dreamt about a giraffe.
What is it that I'm talking about?
These are your feelings, right?
And if your feelings just get rejected, then what does it mean to have a relationship with someone who rejects everything that you feel, right?
Yeah. I did have a bit of positive news this morning, though.
Oh, go ahead. Basically, last night, I kind of said that, you know, I really, really like spending time with you, but I don't, you know, enjoy that much spending time with you when you get drunk.
And she said this morning that she would, if I asked her to, she would sort of stop drinking or drink a lot less.
If you asked her to.
Well, yeah. But what's her opinion about it?
Well, she enjoys it because she can forget.
Essentially, that's her position.
Because she likes the blissful hour of, you know, sort of zen nirvana of knowing nothing before, you know, the inevitable having to go home.
Right. Well, I would say that Again, she's asking you to solve a problem for her, and I don't mean to rain on this parade, right?
I mean, I think it's good that, I mean, if there's a commitment made to stop overdrinking, that's always a good thing, right?
Because overdrinking is not a very good thing.
But I don't think that it should be your decision.
She says, well, if you want me to, I'll do this.
Because that's, again, like, I'm cold, what should I do?
That's putting the onus upon you for that decision.
And she needs to own that decision, right?
How long is she going to spend running away from her problems, right?
Right, right. If she's going to spend the rest of her life running away from her problems, that's important.
If she's not, then what is the timeframe, right?
Does she think it's a good thing to drink rather than to face up to issues that she has with her family or whatever, right?
And if she thinks that it is a great thing, then there's no point her promising to stop, right?
We either want to do something or we don't ourself, right?
If we put the onus on other people.
I think this is going to be another kind of trap, right?
Because she's going to say, if you want me to stop drinking, I'll stop drinking.
Or stop drinking to excess, right?
And then, I absolutely guarantee you, at some point, you're going to be the guy who never lets her have any fun.
Right. She's evil, right?
This is just the pattern, right?
That she cedes control to you and then rejects that control.
What should I do? I'm cold.
Go inside. I don't want to.
You don't want to be the one who decides for her that she doesn't drink to excess anymore because that's something she needs to own.
Because otherwise, you're not going to have any purchase because she's going to be tempted to drink to excess in the future.
And if you say, well, you made a commitment, then that's one thing.
But if she says, well, that was just a mistake.
I should never have allowed you to control my behavior to that degree.
Then she's got an out, right?
So you've got to be alert when it comes and say, well, how did you feel when she said, if you want me to stop drinking to excess, I will stop?
Well, I thought it was a positive thing.
I felt that, I don't know, like I'm having an effect for the positive, but maybe not.
Well, no, I think you are.
And again, I don't want to say that this is a bad thing.
It is a good thing that she is recognizing that there may be a problem with her drinking.
Like, again, I don't want to say everything is terrible and, you know, become a monk.
But it's important that you not own her decisions, right?
Because you'll lose respect for her.
If you make all the decisions for her in her life, at some point it's like, there's no point dating me with longer hair.
Right, right. Again, I don't know how long your hair is, but...
Maybe she's forgot those pixie do's, but you know what I mean.
There's no point in dating me in drag, right?
So she has to make her own decisions which you can then respect or not respect or question or whatever, right?
But she can't say to you, you tell me whether I should quit drinking or not, right?
You can do that and she may quit drinking, but A, it's a trap and B, it's not going to do good things for your respect for her.
We really have to have people in our life act in a manner that we can respect because that's really the basis for productive and positive relationship.
Right.
Okay.
Now, do you – this is going to sound, again, totally gay, and I absolutely apologize for that.
Because not only does it sound gay, but I'm saying it with a quasi-British accent, which just overfruits it beyond words.
But do you have anybody in your life that you might be able to practice the conversation that if you decide to have with your girlfriend about, you know, I feel trapped or I feel in an impossible situation when X, Y and Z happens and it doesn't feel good, can we talk about this and how do you feel when these sorts of situations come up?
Is there anyone that you can practice that conversation with?
No, I read everything there is.
You might want to, again, this even fruits it up even more, so I apologize for that too, but you might want to practice it just sort of writing out the conversation like a little play, because I guarantee you that you know exactly what she's going to say, right?
But if you don't prepare for it, then...
Her desire not to confront the issues that you're going to confront is going to kind of take you over.
And then you'll forget.
And then you'll end up somehow in the wrong again, for sure.
I've got the message.
I just found the message on my phone.
Yeah, I've read it. Yeah.
Sorry, do you want to share it on her?
Well, I guess so. It says, I can't remember what I text her, but the reply is, all I want is you to be happy.
If not drinking is the answer, that's fine by me.
And then a little heart. Well, that's nice.
I mean, look, I mean, full credit to her for caring enough about your feelings, right?
But again, it's a decision that she needs to make for herself, not to please you, right?
We can't be good out of conformity to others, right?
So what's the answer to that then?
What do you say? Well, it's not a text message, for sure.
Yeah, it's not a text message, right?
You need to carve some time out, and it's not necessarily a bad thing to do it in a restaurant.
I mean, I know this sounds all too manipulative for words, but there is a kind of social blanketing that occurs in a restaurant.
I'm not saying she's a screamer, right?
She's not. She's really not.
I'm sure. I'm sure of that.
But there's less storming out potential.
And again, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but there tends to be a...
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I would say practice the conversation.
I think it's well worth having the conversation because, I mean, you care about this woman and it's wonderful when relationships work out, but it really can't work out at the price of you not being able to make mistakes in terms of your exploration of philosophy and ethics.
She can't pull the offense card, right?
The offense card is just not something that can work in an intimate relationship.
Right. The offense card of like, well, what you're saying is really offending me and that makes you a bad person.
I'm not saying she went that far.
That can't work in a relationship because a relationship has to be about mutual curiosity and exploration.
And if she feels that you are somehow trying to put her in the category of mass murderers, then either that's true, in which case she should run the hell away from you because you're a psycho.
Or it's not in which case she's being manipulative, right?
Right. The offense card is something that just really can't work in a relationship.
If you get upset, you just can't say, I'm offended and you must now make restitution.
That's not intimate.
That's not trusting, right? Because either it's true, in which case the person is bad, or it's not true, in which case it's manipulative.
But at what point is manipulative good and at what point is it bad?
Because you were just talking about use a public place and I mean, you have these little tricks.
But that's not to her detriment, right?
That's not to her detriment, right?
There's one thing to say to a kid, and again, this is infantilizing her with the metaphor, which I don't mean, but it's one thing to say to a kid, take this medicine that's good for you because I'm going to coat it in sugar, and there's another thing to say, take this arsenic because I'm going to coat it in sugar, right?
But it's subjective. I mean, that metaphor is obviously objective, but isn't Aren't feelings and things more subjective than that?
Who can say that something is outright, better or worse?
Well, I think that the key virtue here is honesty, right?
Right. And you don't start somebody off in physics at a graduate school level, right?
You have to sort of step through stuff, right?
And, of course, you're learning physics here as well, which is how to communicate honestly in a relationship and not deal with the surface manipulations but deal with the root causes, which is complicated and difficult.
Once you get the hang of it, it's fantastic.
But it's complicated.
It's complicated and difficult.
But what you're doing is being sensitive to the situation.
It's not manipulative to put anesthetic on somebody's arm before you give them a shot.
In that sense, you're just trying to make it as non-volatile as possible.
I mean, you could conceivably go in there and scream at her that she doesn't recognize her feelings, right?
Right. Which would be kind of true, but kind of volatile.
I don't think being sensitive is the same as being manipulative.
But when she pulls the offense card and gets upset and withdraws and puts you in these impossible situations, that's manipulative to both of yours detriment, right?
Whereas what you're trying to do is bring yourselves closer together.
Yeah. I mean, that's not something you can prove, though, is it?
So, ultimately, that one is good and one is bad, that one is...
I'm sure you can, I think you can, and I'll sort of give you a brief, very brief promise.
But it's true, right?
If you feel that you're in an impossible situation, then saying, I feel that I'm in an impossible situation, is a statement of honesty, right?
Yeah. Yes.
Whereas if you say to somebody, oh, so you think I'm a mass murderer?
That's not true, because she doesn't think that you think she's a mass murderer.
She can't. Otherwise, she'd be a complete lunatic to even be in the same planet with you, right?
But it is a question.
So a question can't be false, can it?
Sure. If it's insinuating, for sure, right?
Have you stopped beating your wife yet?
is a question that's highly insinuating, right?
If I say to you, "What do you mean by that?" I'm not insinuating anything.
What I was saying is that if I say to you, what do you mean by that?
That's an open-ended question with no implicit assumptions of whatever, whatever.
But if I say, have you stopped beating your girlfriend yet?
That is also a question, but it's more of an attack disguised as a question.
Right.
It sounds right, but, I mean, is it objectively verifiable?
I mean... Well, sure, sure it is.
Because you can say, like, if the person says...
I mean, if it's less obvious than have you stopped meeting your wife, you know, if it's something slightly more subtle than that.
Well, we're talking about somebody who asks you if you think she's a mass murderer.
Right. That's not too subtle.
In fact, I'd rather be a wife-beater than a mass murderer, right?
Because fewer people are going to get killed, right?
Yeah. So, I mean, that's just, you know, do you honestly feel that I might think that you're a mass murderer?
Like, do you honestly feel that I think that you're evil and I'm going out with you because evil is, like, ultimate hotness for me or something, right?
And if she says, "No, I don't believe that," then I say, "Okay, well, so that's kind of provocative, right?
To ask a rhetorical question that's kind of insulting to me that you don't really believe." And, you know, that doesn't make you evil because you already hit the kid and we know that.
Just kidding.
But it doesn't make you evil, but it's not particularly a calm or positive way to discuss a problem or a question.
Does that make sense?
I agree with that.
I do agree with that. So yeah, I would do some practice.
I mean, I know this, again, it's totally ridiculous and it feels ridiculous when you're doing it, but you know exactly what she's going to say to certain things and you need to practice, right?
Because if you do this right, if you're able to stay with your own feelings and be honest and curious, you guys will make a huge leap forward in your relationship, which is great.
And if it just degenerates into some monster horror show, then that's an important thing for you to know, right?
If you still want to try again, then you try again, but you need to gather information about whether she's able to make delete.
Right, right. But then, I mean, that doesn't make a lot of sense, but the one thing, I mean, who am I to judge, right?
I mean, I'm definitely not this sort of, I'm not a paragon of virtue, you know, I'm hardly Mr.
Philosophy. So it just feels that, who am I to judge?
Well, but you're not judging, right?
You're not judging. What you're doing is you're saying, I don't feel good when this happens.
I feel that I get put in these impossible situations where nothing good can, like I can't do anything right.
That's not, I mean, you're just saying what you feel.
You're not saying, oh, evil sorceress of confusion, right?
I mean, you're just saying how you feel and seeing, you're just being honest, right?
That's not the easiest thing in the world to do, but you're not making an argument for how defense DROs will work in an actual society.
You're saying, I feel that I get stuck in these impossible situations, and how do you feel?
And let's go over in more detail the conversation that we had last night, because obviously I don't think that you're evil, but we ended up with that as a question.
So how did you feel when I said that people who hit kids are evil?
And here's what I felt, and all you're doing is being honest with each other about what happened.
yeah So that doesn't require you to have never been a shoplifter, right?
Or to be able to levitate on your pure carpet of virtue.
It's just saying, this is what I felt and what did you feel.
Right. Is that how you got into work?
Was it the carpet of virtue?
That's right. The carpet of virtue is known as the carpet on the hallway between my bedroom and the study.
So, yeah, absolutely. Does it come with a webcam, the Carpet Virtue, or is that an optional extra?
That's an optional extra if I get really desperate for donations.
And let's hope that that never happens.
Listen, are you going to keep me posted about how it goes?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the other thing, too, is when you do finally have sex, put a podcast on.
No, because what that will do is it will associate positive feelings with her with this podcast.
And that, of course, is the key thing.
That kind of sexual imprint. I'll put on the 826 that I'm yet to listen to.
Absolutely, you can put on 826 or any of my fabulous musical numbers.
Right, yeah. Those are the ones.
Absolutely. Okay.
Okay, best of luck, brother. Thanks a lot for your honesty.
I'll send this podcast to you and then you can have a listen before I post it.
Okay, great. Thanks, man.
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