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July 25, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
48:41
831 Respect for Women
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Time Text
Alright, continuing on from the last one.
Look, let's start talking about respect for women.
I mean, good God, people.
Respect for women.
This is going to be full of so many offensive generalities that I apologize to everyone who is an exception to this rule.
But I'm not coming out of this from nowhere.
I've had like over 30 girlfriends.
I've had dozens of female friends.
I hear about Christina's patients.
I've read an enormous amount.
I have some, I've watched some Oprah, some Dr.
Phil. There is, I think, quite an epidemic in the world of lack of respect for women.
Lack of respect for women.
I think it occurred in this last dream.
I think that we can see it in just about all the relationships that we have.
That we can see around us.
I think it's endemic in marriage.
It's a lack of respect for women.
And when I say a lack of respect for women, I probably don't mean what you think I mean.
I probably don't mean what you think I mean.
So, in a podcast that was for Gold Plus members, you'll remember it, the dinner party from hell.
This guy says that this woman is spouting what her guru said about achieving spiritual oneness.
He confronts her at the dinner party.
The women all get mad at him, and the men are all sympathetic.
Well, that's just plain horrible.
That is just plain horrible.
If you love someone, and they're working on a motorbike...
And the motorbike somehow levers itself off its kickstand and lands on their leg and they cry out in pain and anger.
Would you just sort of walk by and say, eh, that's fine.
That's her thing. No!
You pull the damn motorbike off them because it's causing them pain.
Even if they yelled at you in frustration and anger and fear while you were doing it, you would still do it.
Right? If there are people around us that we say that we love...
And they are trapped and pinned under the weight of error.
They are trapped and pinned under the weight of error.
Do we not lift the load for them?
Or help them lift the load off themselves?
Even if they kick and scream and bite at us.
In their unconscious fear and anger while we're doing so.
If we love someone.
If we love someone.
If Christina starts growing some huge great wart on her cheek, do I pretend that it's not there?
Because I love her and don't want to upset her?
Or do I say, yo, wicked witch of the West, maybe it's time to go to a dermatologist to get that thing looked at.
Or something slightly more warm and caring.
When somebody is in error, if we care about them, should we not help them free themselves of that error?
If you're in a car, you want to drive from San Francisco to New York, your girlfriend is driving, your wife is driving, she goes westward, sadly drives into the bay, Do you sit there as water fills up your car and say, well, I didn't want to correct her on the path we were going because I didn't want to upset her.
Because she doesn't like it when I correct her directions.
Blub, blub, blub, glug, glug, glug, drown, drown, drown!
Wouldn't that be madness? Respect for women means respecting that they can accept correction.
Lord knows men have to accept correction to be in relationships with women.
And this doesn't always have to be unpleasant.
I am not, by my nature, a tidying kind of person.
I don't spend half an hour or 40 minutes at the end of the day straightening everything up the way that Christina does.
That's not my thing. Not when Unreal Turner went to the board or a podcast or a book is calling.
I can't quite prioritize things that way.
But I knew that, and Christina's not at all a nag.
She's very much the opposite of a nag.
She's like, you know, whatever makes you happy, do what you want, and not in a passive-aggressive way.
She genuinely means that. But I've learned, I have corrected my behavior, not because of her bullying, but because of my desire for her happiness.
Also because I wanted to work from home.
Anyway, we'll come back to that another time.
But there's correction. There's change, right?
In behavior.
In relationships. We have to allow each other to correct each other.
Because we have mistakes.
And one of the things that's great about being in a relationship is you get somebody else's perspective on your mistakes.
You get that feedback of somebody watching your back.
And... My god, I mean, I don't know, I guess it's the mom thing.
Who knows, right? Probably it's the mom thing.
But men, holy crap, do they allow themselves to be pushed around in relationships.
Oh my god, guys, grow a pair.
Not in terms of aggression, but just in terms of assertiveness.
When Christina and I used to go to her parents' place after we got married, we did this for, I don't know, a year and a half or so, We'd go once every couple of weeks, once a month, for a Sunday sort of brunch, afternoon thing, sometimes scaling into dinner.
And, of course, it was not hard for me to notice that Christina vanished psychologically during these interactions.
She wouldn't talk. She wouldn't come up with any topics.
So then I was sort of forced into this situation where I was trying to have a conversation with an elderly Greek couple whose English wasn't the best.
Which, it seemed like an outreach program from the verbal diuretics, right?
It was just weird, right?
It's like, why am I over here in Stony Creek with this old Greek couple?
Like, you know, it doesn't make any sense.
Be like, if I drag Christina over to my family's that she didn't really particularly like or dislike, and didn't talk, and left all the burden of conversation to her, well, that's a cry for help.
It's not a conscious cry for help, but I noticed that when Christina went over, she would self-erase.
She would go to her happy place, which was ABH, anywhere but here.
So what am I going to do?
Well, I'm going to say, hey, do you know, I've really noticed, let's sit down and talk about this, I've really noticed that when we go to your parents' place, You really vanish.
I mean, it's uncomfortable for me.
I sort of dragged over to talk to these people that I barely know in a language that we don't particularly share, and you're just not there psychologically, emotionally, right?
So what's going on? And she didn't like the conversation to begin with.
Of course not, right? Obligation and family and Greekdom and duty and guilt, right?
So we went to her parents' place because she felt guilty for not going to her parents' place, right?
Because I said, I don't understand.
I said, I don't mind if we go to your parents' place because you take great pleasure in going to your parents' place, right?
I can take pleasure in your pleasure.
It's the same way that you don't like to sing karaoke, but if we go, you don't mind, like you enjoy that I enjoy it, right?
You enjoy my cheesy hip-grinding renditions if you can leave your hat on.
Because I'm enjoying it, not because you...
So I don't mind going to your parents' place if you enjoy it.
Even if I don't. At least I can enjoy that you're enjoying it.
It's fine. I take pleasure in that.
I can get down with that.
But if we're going there and you're not having fun and I'm not having fun...
Then something's amiss, right?
Something's awry.
Something's not working out the way it should.
Some friends of Christina's.
We're not friends anymore.
That's the great cataclysm of philosophy tends to irradiate a large number of false relationships.
We'll call them Bob and Barbara.
And Bob's in the music business and has a huge CD collection.
He's a music fetishist, right? A musicologist.
And they were tight on money.
And so Barbara, his wife, said, look, no more buying CDs.
Right? And he's like, okay, honey.
And... Then he shows up with some CDs and she's like, did you buy these CDs?
And he's like, no, no, I got them as a promotion, right?
And then she finds out that she finds his receipt in his pocket.
She's doing the laundry for these CDs that he bought, like 50 bucks worth of CDs, after he'd promised not to.
Right, so then of course she comes down on him like a ton of bricks and this sort of sad, naughty boy nonsense that passes for adult marriage in all too many cases.
Oh, there's tyranny around engagements and birthdays as well too, right?
So, he gave her a ring, and he had this whole story that he'd been thinking about it for weeks, and that he'd bought it weeks before, and, you know, to try and pump up the specialness, the oh-so-specialness of this ring that he bought her.
And again, she finds the receipt, which was, it was bought the morning of, right?
Yeah. I mean, good God, how sad is that?
And how disrespectful to your wife.
How disrespectful to your wife.
And men disrespect each other, women disrespect each other.
I'm just talking about this particular issue right now.
Ooh, she's going to get upset.
So fucking what?
So what? She's going to get upset.
Do you care about her?
Well, that's the important thing, right?
Hi. It's that sort of classic question.
Do you tell your partner if she's putting on weight?
If she's gaining weight and she says, do you think I'm gaining weight?
Or if you just notice it, then you need to say something if you respect her.
I mean, this is called integrity.
And this is called kind of like acting on the premise of love.
Acting on the premise of love is not just hiding unpleasant truths from your wife or your girlfriend.
Because, ooh, she might be upset if I tell her the truth.
Her being upset is not your business.
The truth and watching her back and looking out for her is your business.
So the husband of this theosophist who was on a couple of months ago on the call-in show, right?
So she believes all this nonsense about theosophy.
He's got to stand up for her better nature, her better side, and say, honey, I know you love this stuff.
It's not true. Like, you've got to give it up.
You've got to. She's going to get angry.
Oh, she's going to get upset. So, fracking what?
So what? If you've got to give your kid an inoculation, you try and lead them through it as tenderly and as carefully as possible, but they've still got to get the needle stuck in them.
I don't know about the inoculation controversies, but let's just take that as an example.
If your kid has to eat his vegetables, right?
He's got to eat his vegetables. If your kid throws a tantrum in a store because you're not buying him a candy bar, you don't buy him a candy bar.
We don't use other people to manage your own emotions.
It's pretty core in the new book.
Available next week from Lulu.com.
Untruth, the tyranny of illusion. The link will be on the board and repeated endlessly here.
We don't use other people to manage your emotions.
You deal with them in an honest and forthright and truthful manner.
Right? That's how you deal with people.
If you want to be honest, if you want to help them, if you want to be honest, Their true friend.
If you want to be their true friend, then you deal with them in an honest and forthright manner.
You don't lie to them. You don't manipulate them.
You don't. And you can.
You can do whatever you want. But don't fool yourself that you're acting in any kind of loving or caring manner in such a case.
Because you're not. You're well and truly not.
So if your wife or your girlfriend is mired in some kind of illusion, and women are...
Men have their own, right, about machismo and income and sexual prowess and playodom and all this kind of stuff.
Do I have a prominent enough six-pack for some?
So men have their own nonsense, for sure, and women need to help them out on that.
But women have their own nonsense, too, particularly around obligation and relationships and getting along and smoothing the waters and being social lubricants themselves and Not causing any upsets and not causing any ruffles and so on, right?
But if you allow a woman's, quote, upset to prevent you from helping her free herself of error, then you don't love her.
You're using her.
Love is also confrontation.
Love is telling someone also how it is, even if they don't want to hear it, even if it's the toughest conversation in the world for them to have.
Christina will testify, and she could testify for hours how tough these conversations have been for her, where we've really drilled in and tried to understand what the hell's going on when she goes to see her family, or when we see certain of her friends, or when she goes to work, or what is really going on.
She had a friend at work, Bye.
We talk about this in public life.
She had a friend at work. I mentioned this woman before.
Dates a himbo. Just for those who haven't heard this.
Listening out of sequence. Naughty! Dates a himbo.
Tall guy. Lots of product in his hair.
Works it out four hours a day.
But, you know, he's got the IQ of a fairly sophisticated potted plant.
Reasonably sophisticated potted plant.
Total himbo, right? Constantly having fights with him.
He's got no cell.
He's got the introspective capacities of an obsidian.
And she's always having these fights with him.
One day, she says to Christina, what do you think of him?
Right? Christina says, well, I'm not sure that he has your level of insight.
No kidding. This woman's a psychologist, and she's dating...
This is a slab of man meat.
Barely has enough sense to turn towards the sun.
And so Christina says, and it was a pretty nice way of putting it.
I'm not sure that he has your level of insight.
A whole lot better than...
Which would be much more honest.
It's like, please, you're not asking me to have a serious opinion about this himbo, right?
I mean, if you've got some PhD guy dating...
A fairly retarded aerobics instructor.
What do you think of her? It's like, come on.
You're dating her because she's hot.
I mean, there's nothing to think of her other than that she's a vanity piece, which does not speak too well of you.
Right? Somewhere out there, there's an intelligent, wise, and deep woman who maybe doesn't have the same size boobs who is going without a date and doubting herself because you are chasing after some flesh.
Right? So, there's nothing to say.
I mean, you could be that blunt.
But Christina was pretty nice about it, right?
The woman just totally froze her out.
Shut her down.
Cold rage filled the room.
Well, you press on.
Okay.
Right? You press on.
I mean, or you say, well, I don't really care about this person.
If I'm willing to let them stew in a dangerous and self-destructive illusion called, this guy is quality because he's tall.
If I'm willing to let her stew herself in a self-destructive illusion called, maybe I'll get married and have kids with this guy, when we fight like cats and dogs in a barrel, rolling down a hill, because there's such different levels of intelligence and insight, although it could be said because there's such different levels of intelligence and insight, although it could be said that if the woman's dating this guy, the level of insight that she is capable of But she's got the vanity, the problem of vanity, because she's pretty attractive.
So if Christina is going to say to her friend, no, he's great, he's fine, he's pretty much Stephen Hawking in a 6'6", strapping build, then obviously he doesn't care about the person, right?
Because they've been dating for, I don't know, two years or whatever.
They met on vacation.
who's going to be a fling and they end up dating for a long time.
And they're always fighting.
They're always problems, right?
So she's pinned under her own vanity, Christina's friend.
So if Christina doesn't say anything about this, then obviously she doesn't care about her friend.
She's going to let her friend continue to take this relationship with this guy who's, you know, they're fighting all the time and they're not suited for each other.
The only thing that they have in common is vanity.
She likes the sizzle of being seen on the arm of a himbo.
She thinks it increases her attractiveness.
And guys do the same thing, don't get me wrong.
But if she had lied to her friend and not helped point out that she's pinned under the motorcycle of vanity, so to speak, then she's just walking past and saying, no, there's no motorcycle, you're fine.
And we, in fact, only say that to our enemies.
Right? If somebody comes and says, you know, I've got shooting pain in my arm, and I feel like somebody's putting a vice in my chest...
And I feel, I'm really short of breath, and I feel dizzy, and I, you know, then if we say to them, don't worry, that's just indigestion.
It's because we want them to die of the heart attack they're obviously having.
Well, this is very, very important.
It ties into this dream that we did last time.
If you feel bullied and manipulated by someone, you either sit down and say to them, That you're bullying and manipulating me and I don't like that and I'd like to talk about it.
Or you leave that person's orbit and don't talk to them again.
Or you're going to fuck them up one way or another.
The truth will out.
Vengeance. If you stay, vengeance will be exacted.
Vengeance will be exacted.
So this guy from May 26th in this last dream analysis...
Feels humiliated and bullied by his girlfriend, put into these impossible situations.
Right? So then, what does he do?
Well, he doesn't sit down with her on the Sunday and confront her about the shallow and vapid nature of her friends.
Quote friends, right?
Because she's got a motorcycle called socializing or social acceptance or whatever, merging with the herd.
She's got that stuck on her chest.
And he's letting her drag it around.
He's not referring to it and he's not saying anything about how she should get it off her chest because he's angry at her.
Right? Because he's angry at her.
If I go to a doctor in a free market situation, keep taking his treatment and don't pay him, at some point he's just going to stop treating me And if he's really angry at me, he's going to notice signs of some significant disease and tell me that I'm fine and don't need to change anything.
If my lung doctor really hates me, he's going to tell me, oh yeah, you should keep smoking, it's really great for you.
Or he should ignore the cancer on the x-ray in my lung.
Sorry, all these gruesome metaphors are showing up.
Over the last week, I had these chest pains because I basically pulled a back muscle, but it was really embedded in my chest.
And I went to see the doctor.
It was just a muscle thing, but man, a little scary, right?
Oh, you maybe got a dick!
So I've actually been off the gym for about a week, just letting it heal.
Right, so if my doctor really wants to kill me, Then he's going to see the terrible shadow of lung cancer on my x-rays and not tell me about it.
Just ignore it. Say, hey, how's it going?
What's new? Again, that's not the best metaphor because I've gone for an x-ray or whatever, right?
But let's just say I'm getting a standard checkup.
Doctor finds a weird lump and doesn't say anything about it.
That's a doctor who's really, really angry at me.
So if you claim to have affection for someone, this is a great girl, boy, she's wonderful, I really love her, I like her a lot, and she's got these shallow, empty, drunken, good-for-nothing friends,
if you care about her, if you genuinely care about her, then you sit down with her and you say, this is going to be a tough conversation, but But I don't like the way that your friends treat you.
He said, I see you crying and I want to kill your friends.
Aztec camera. Ooh!
Obscure 80s reference. He said, I don't like the way that your friends treat you.
Right? The same way that when I was going to Christina to a parent's place, I'd come back and say, you know, I feel really weird about going to your parent's place because you're not there, right?
Right? So what's going on?
What's your experience of being at your parents' place?
Because something is not right here.
Right? If my in-laws are unconsciously bullying my wife, then I want to help her.
I don't want anyone to hurt my wife.
Anyone to hurt my wife.
I want to protect and nurture and help her the same way that she wants to protect and nurture and help me.
Right? That's love.
And if it means tough conversations, then it means tough conversations.
She says to me, Steph, two fistfuls of back fat is one fistful too many, so maybe you better cut back on the cookies, right?
I mean, however she's going to put it, that's helping me.
Yeah, it's going to sting a little, but, you know, does it help me to let me gain weight?
No, of course not. So...
You sit down with your girlfriend and you say, you know, I think your friends are kind of shallow and empty and I kind of need to figure out what's going on here.
Right? I'm kind of into philosophy, like into deeper things, richer things, more introspective and honest and so on, right?
And I think your friends are kind of shallow and empty, right?
And I don't think you're shallow and empty.
Right? So there's a mismatch here, and I kind of need to understand what's going on.
Are you just hiding from them because you feel like you want to fit in?
Do you feel like they might be hiding because they want to fit in?
What is your experience of your friendships?
If you think that your girlfriend has the capacity for that kind of conversation, and even if you don't think it, you still have to have the conversation because you don't want to be exploitive.
You don't want to have someone in your life just to say you have a girlfriend.
Right? That's going to fuck you up big time.
And them. Right?
I knew someone when I was younger.
He had a girlfriend.
Really volatile relationship.
And she was quite a bit older than he was.
And she would use this.
Like, oh, you're such a kid.
And she'd put him down. She always claimed to be right because she was older and so on.
Right? And they went out for a while, then they broke up.
And then they had one of these, you know, like, infinite band-aid off the skin, slow-peel breakups.
Back together, broken up.
Then she'd, like, call him three times a day, but they'd just be friends.
Then they'd be friends with benefits, then be another big blow-up, and then they wouldn't talk for a month, and then, you know, they'd be back in touch, or these kinds of things, right?
This went on for a couple of years after they broke up, right?
And he was in his 20s, and she was in her 30s.
Right, and of course, as time went along, she would get increasingly desperate.
And so, at least it was clear to me what was going on, which was that he felt humiliated and bullied by her and put down, and so how did he exact his vengeance?
Well, he exacted his vengeance by dicking around with her and being off again and on again with her until the point where she was no longer able to have children!
This is the kind of vengeance that we exact on people if we're not honest about what bothers us in terms of their behavior.
This is how we will have vengeance on people.
I've done it. I've done it.
I've done it. I've done it.
I bought a movie.
I paid tens of thousands of dollars to make a movie with a girlfriend who put me down.
That was vengeance.
She wanted to be in movies, and she went to...
Anyway, it doesn't matter the details.
She wanted to be in movies, and...
But she didn't have the sort of self-confidence or the mania or monomania or narcissism, whatever you want to call it, to really just go and make it happen.
She didn't have the persistence and the ridiculous willpower that it takes to get something done in the art world.
You've just got to be like an asteroid.
Planets, do not stop me.
I go through them. It took me how long to get philosophy books out?
20 years. Rejection, rejection, rejection.
You've got to have that kind of ridiculous monomania.
She didn't, so she wanted to be in the film world.
The same way that people want to say they've written a book, not they have something that they desperately want to communicate.
So if I had really cared for this woman, I would have talked her out of it and said, look, that's not going to happen.
This is not going to happen.
You're almost 30. You're still a secretary.
It's not going to happen. And yes, there would have been storms, and there would have been hostility, but I would have stuck with it, right?
Because I know I can do that. I've done it in other situations.
But I was too mad at her to do that.
So instead, I helped her to make a film, which meant that she was going to get stuck, because now she had something on her resume, and she had a reasonably successful little film that she'd made.
So I wrote it and produced it, and then she's still stuck.
In that, right? That's my vengeance, right?
This is what happens when you don't deal frankly and honestly and openly with the people in your lives.
You have your vengeance in other ways and not in ways that are particularly ennobling or good, I could say, almost.
Well, not almost. I did it with my brother.
Right? Through my business, Acumen, and managing skill, and so on.
Right? I mean, this is all very advanced, and I'm sorry for springing it on you, but I hope it makes some sense in your world.
So my brother would continually betray me when we were in business with regards to clients and business partners and so on.
He'd make all these promises to clients, which then I, as the chief technical officer, would have to find a way to fulfill, so I would have to end up exploiting others because I was exploiting.
This is sort of what Terry's story in The God of Atheists is about.
So did I sit down with him and say, look, this has got to stop and this and that?
No. What I did was I had vengeance on him.
And so what I did, of course, was I managed to pull all of these things off.
I fed his bad habits.
I enabled his bad habits.
That's what passive aggression is, right?
I enabled his illusions.
The woman who goes and gets her alcoholic husband a drink is killing him.
She's enabling him. It's aggression.
It's rage. It's murderousness.
Right? It's the vengeance of the slave.
Right? So I reinforced his illusions.
I would get things done. I would pull it off magically, powerfully, properly.
Nights and weekends of coding.
Mad motivational skills with my employees.
I'd make it happen. I'd get it done.
I boosted his income.
He took on all of these expenses.
He never corrected his behavior.
I reinforced the worst behaviors that he was capable of.
Lying, weaseling, cheating, exploiting.
I enabled all of it.
And sealed him up! This is the vengeance of the slave, the younger sibling, often.
I sealed him up in his tomb of illusion, and I've done this a number of times in my life.
And I have since learned better.
That is the most terrible and terrifying form of vengeance.
That is the most terrifying and terrible form of vengeance, is enabling somebody's worst behaviors.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Right? So, I doubled my brother's income, he took on all these expenses, bought this big house.
Bang! Then, it cost him far more than he made.
That's passive-aggressive vengeance.
And that's what happens when you disrespect someone, you don't call them on it, but you stick around.
And if you look in your life, I guarantee you, you will be able to find these patterns of enabling vengeance, of enabling people's worst behaviors, of feeding the most terrible devils of their nature.
That's what's going on in this guy's dream as well.
He's not calling her on her shallow.
False. Empty friendships.
Why is he not doing it?
Well because he doesn't love her.
How do we know that he doesn't love her?
He doesn't treat her with respect.
He's treating her as a babysitter would treat a cranky and spoiled child.
I mean, if I'm babysitting someone's kids and they throw a tantrum at the store because I'm not buying them a candy bar, I'm like, hey, you know what?
I'm not going to fix all this stuff.
Here's your damn candy bar. At least I'd be real tempted.
But when we allow other people's upset and anger to control our honesty, then we've got to get out of those relationships or we've got to speak the truth or we are really going to fuck people up.
There's no middle ground here.
There's no maybe kind of sort of in the middle.
There's no, well, I'm going to stick around this person I can't tell the truth to, but I'm going to have a great relationship.
Not possible. Not possible.
Never going to happen. The moment that somebody makes you lie, you speak the truth or you get out.
Speak the truth or leave.
But don't stay there and enable their falsehoods.
That is really cruel.
Your parents, sure, when you were a kid, absolutely.
No one gets away with anything, my friends.
Nobody gets away with anything in this life.
So you have this, again, it's with relation to the last...
What happened?
You had this empty, stupid, vapid, drunken night with empty, stupid, vapid, posing friends of your girlfriends.
Is she barely drunk? It's kind of cruel.
And then the next day you get together and what do you do?
Do you talk about, well, you know, your friends are kind of empty and vapid and shallow and I'm concerned about your motives because I care about you.
I'm concerned about your motives as to why you're socializing in this kind of way with these kinds of people.
Or that would be the action of somebody who loves, who respects.
Yeah, she's going to get mad.
Yeah, she's going to do this. She's going to do that.
But so what? But so what?
If you care for the person, then you stand up for what is best within them, not for what is worst.
You stand up for what is best within them, not for what is worst.
And the way that you stand up for what is best in someone is you assume that they're going to have the integrity and the honesty to listen to hard truths.
Truths. I guarantee you that your perceptions about Your girlfriend's friends are true and valid.
Either you're going to respect her enough to have that conversation with her.
You're going to respect her enough to have that conversation with her.
And rescue her from the quicksand of social conformity and illusions and so on.
You're either going to do that.
Or you're going to leave her because you don't respect her enough to have that conversation.
But if you stick around and kiss her and paw at her and go and have chats with her in the park where you don't bring up the salient issue of her friends and the damage that they're doing to her...
I mean, if this woman's an alcoholic, and it sounds like she certainly has this potential, and her friends are centered around drinking, her friendships are centered around drinking, how on earth could her friends be considered to care for her?
If Christina is an addicted smoker or something, and I keep smoking around her, and keep offering her cigarettes and chide her for not smoking...
I mean, do I care for her?
If Christina said, we have to move to Timbuktu for X, Y, and Z reason, and we had to, hey, guess what?
Going to Timbuktu. If Christina says, I'm now allergic to alcohol and can never drink again in my life, I would not drink again in my life.
I mean, if she loved to drink.
Well, she doesn't. If she did.
I would never choose a drink over my true love.
I would never choose a cigarette over my true love.
I would never choose...
It doesn't mean I'll occasionally choose a cookie over longevity or whatever.
But I also exercise and eat well in general.
Right, so if you are, you know, your girlfriend is a potential alcoholic, has difficulties with alcohol for sure.
Right? So what she should do, of course, is she should sit down with her friends and say, listen, friends, I have a real problem with drinking.
It's a real challenge for me.
And so I have difficulties.
I have real difficulties going out and drinking in this kind of way with y'all.
So, I mean, I'm not going to try and control your behavior because it's not your job to fix my drinking problems.
I think that maybe we should have a talk about our drinking, right?
Because it seems like every time we go out, we go to a bar and we drink.
And not like one or two drinks a night, but we drink.
Right? So I'm sort of concerned that our friendship is kind of revolving around drinking, which is kind of like social alcoholism.
So I'd sort of like to propose I don't want to control everyone's behavior, right?
But... I can't come to the bars drinking with you, because it's real hard for me.
I've got a big problem with alcohol.
So, I'd sort of like to propose the following.
Why don't we have a night where we play Dungeons& Dragons?
No! Why don't we have a night where we do something that doesn't involve drinking?
Like, not at all. We go bowling, or laser tag, or whatever it is, right?
Minigolf. Something that doesn't involve drinking.
Can we do that?
Now, of course, if her friends really value her companionship, her friendship, and care about her, then they'll have that conversation.
They may not all immediately agree to become non-drinkers.
It doesn't particularly matter.
But they'll have the conversation and say, you know, we love hanging out with you.
You're a great person. If I have to choose between getting drunk and having you in the group, I'm not going to choose getting drunk.
That would not be a very high priority.
And of course that's what any friendship would involve, right?
Anybody who chooses getting drunk over you is not your friend, right?
So if you have a problem with drinking and you say, listen, I'm not going to control your drinking, but I can't do the drinking thing with you.
I can't go to bars and stuff because I'm susceptible to this problem.
So every couple of weeks I'd love to go out with you guys, but can we do something that doesn't involve drinking?
And if they say, well, absolutely, sure.
Great. Then they're choosing you over one more night of getting drunk.
But if they say, oh, come on, don't be such a pussy.
Have some club soda. It's not a big deal.
And they refuse. I mean, just put it to the test.
That's all I ever say about things.
And we only hesitate to put it to the test when we know the answer.
If your friends say, I'm not going to give up on any of my drinking, to hell with you.
If you can't drink with us, you're not part of the group, then clearly you're less important to them than a beer.
You've just got to look at that fact in the face.
Straight in the face. I am less important to my friends than a couple of drinks.
Are they then really my friends?
Well, no. Of course not, right?
Of course not. And, again, you're going to say, oh, so now my friends can't have any drinks if I'm an alcoholic?
No. It's just a matter of hierarchy, right?
Nobody's saying don't have any drinks.
But going out to get drunk is a different thing than having a drink or two at a dinner party.
So, in terms of respect for women, what I'm sort of pleading for here or asking for, and this is particularly for the guys, right?
Is that if you really love and care and respect your woman or the women in your life, whoever they are, your mom, your sister, girlfriend, whatever...
Don't be bullied. Allowing our behavior to change because somebody is bullying us is the ultimate enabling of their worst habits.
The ultimate vengeance against the bully is to enable his bullying through compliance.
That's the ultimate vengeance against the bully.
Christina only rarely stood up to her sister, who's a real bully, even as an adult, which enabled her sister's bullying, which means that her sister can never have a decent and functional adult relationship, and which means that her sister can never have a decent and functional adult relationship, and has not been Thank you.
Fairy tales are full of curses that come out of nowhere and strike people down for the rest of their lives.
Well, what are called curses are just the effects of passive-aggressive vengeance.
Passive-aggressive vengeance.
Christina's like, oh, so you were bigger than me and stronger than me throughout her entire childhoods.
You bullied me throughout her childhoods.
Fine. I shall comply.
I will comply.
Thus, enabling and feeding your bullying.
I will not confront you on your bullying.
I will not stand firm and continue to grind you down about your bullying until you break.
I will not stand up for what is best in you because you have bullied me for many years.
So I'm also not going to break off relations with you.
What I'm going to do is hang around you and concede to you.
Thus, fueling your dominant streak, your bullying streak, your desire, your need to bully those around you.
So my curse, the curse that I put on you for bullying me, is that you will never know love.
I'm not saying Christina should, but if Christina really did care about her sister, then she would sit down for as long as it took, and if it took three days straight, she would work through the bullying thing.
And if she was able to do that, then her sister would have the chance to find love and happiness, contentment, peace of mind.
and if that turned out to be completely impossible, then Christina would never have any desire to see her again.
But because Christina didn't do that, and of course that's not the most common suggestion in the world, but it is, I think, the essential one.
Because Christina didn't do that, She hung around her sister, did not confront her on her bullying, except on rare occasions when she snapped.
Thus enabling the bullying, thus cursing her sister with a loveless, futile life.
I cursed my brother's exploitation with an unsustainable life.
*sniffing* This is the dark side.
This is the vengeance of compliance.
This is passive aggression, inaction.
This is the mysterious curses which strike people down.
And we are all oh so innocent, we slaves.
Oh, you know, she's got some crazy ideas, saith the husband, but it's no big deal.
Well, no, it is a big deal.
If you care about somebody, you don't let them slide perpetually into error.
You don't! That's not loving.
That's vengeful. To let somebody fester and sequester in error is vengeance.
Have the respect for the people in your life.
And again, talking boyfriends to girlfriends, men to women, husbands to wives.
Treat them with respect. Treat them with respect to say, no, I'm going to stand out for what's best in you.
No, I'm not going to let you get away with crap, because I care about you.
Because I care about you, right?
So, Bob and Barbara, this couple that Christina used to know, if she says to him, no buying CDs, if he feels that's unjust, what he says to her is, I don't think that's real fair and just.
I've said that to Christina. We had some debt when we got married and she wanted to pay it off as quickly as possible and I felt we were going a little overboard like we just couldn't go out anywhere and do anything.
So I think we're going overboard here.
We've got to trust the future. We're going to make enough money and so on.
I didn't just go out and start spending behind her back because what that would do is it would then allow her to feel self-righteous and self-justified and that I was untrustworthy and she needed to gain more control which would be feeding the worst devils of her nature.
When we start acting with subterfuge with people, as this guy, you know, lying in his dream, no, the bouncer took the vodka.
When we start acting with subterfuge, what we do is we generate mistrust in the others, which causes them to want to bully and control us more.
It's vengeance! The moment that we feed the worst devils of others' natures, we are taking the most subtle and horrifying kind of vengeance on them.
It's worse than a beating. It's worse than an open bully.
It's not a fist in the face. It's a cancer in the bowels.
Undetectable until it's too late, usually.
So treat the people with respect, which means tell them the truth or get them out of your life.
But don't hang around and enable their falsehoods that it's vicious.
I hope that that helps.
I hope that this makes some sense to you, as always.
I look forward to your donations.
It's been a little dry again.
Sorry to keep going back to the well here, but summer's a time where people need a little bit of prodding just because It is a time when people don't have as much money, other expenses come up, but I still would really, really appreciate it.
Just so you know, the money is going towards advertising.
I just spent $2,500 on advertising.
I may need to spend some money rebranding the website so that I can get these t-shirts and mugs done and all these kinds of things, right?
So it's going into spreading the word.
I don't actually take a salary, believe it or not, at the moment, but I'm pouring the money into keeping this thing going.
And more bandwidth.
All this kind of stuff.
So I look forward to your donations, subscriptions.
I guess it's close to 20 bucks a month now.
It's still, I mean, it's nothing.
We're talking like 60 cents a day for philosophy, which I think is going to make your life better and your children's lives better in the future.
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