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Aug. 27, 2007 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:03:27
853 Managing Other People's Emotions

How to avoid one of the most subtle prisons of all...

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Good afternoon, everybody.
Hope they're doing well. It's tough.
It is the 27th, I think it is, of August 2007.
Sorry, so sorry, for the audio quality of the show yesterday.
We had some excellent topics which I will just revisit briefly, well, maybe briefly-ish here, and I'm still on the hunt for a decent way to do these call-in shows because, of course, the challenge is that Skype sucks, and it sucks in the worst conceivable way because it sucks in an inconsistent way.
So, we tried doing the show.
Last month or two, it's been just dropped.
But today, it wasn't...
Sorry, yesterday, it wasn't dropped.
But, of course, what happened was that I didn't end up with the sort of mechanism that allows me to control who speaks and who doesn't and mute and so on.
So, we had lots of idiots in there who were just playing bad music and sort of doing this repeated hello, hello, hello nonsense because...
I guess people have nothing better to do than to ruin other people's conversations.
So, we switched to Gizmo, which is stable and fine, but does not have the mute capacity, and so there's lots of background noise, and sadly, it does not record at a high quality, and there's no option to improve the quality That it records at, so we are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
I did my best to try and rescue the file, but the audio quality was so bad.
I mean, it's still audible, and you can hear the conversation with relatively little effort, but it doesn't have the scintillating and radiant Google-phonic sound that we are used to in this show, so I just posted it in the premium section for Gold Plus, people who want to know.
The sort of backup aspect to this conversation...
What I started off with in the show yesterday was talking about this question of trust.
And I'm sorry, Christina was also a part of that conversation yesterday, and she won't be.
She's seeing patients now, and I am doing so semi-remotely.
So what came up?
Was this question around trust in relationships, and I wanted to go over some of the ideas that are pretty core to what I think about, at least in terms of trust, and I think there's some fairly good Certainly personal empirical evidence, and you can look at it in your own life and see how it sort of shows up and what works for you and what doesn't.
But here's the way that I look at the issue of trust and have exercised it in my own life.
And you can see if there's any place you can apply it to in your own life to improve the quality of your life, which is what this philosophy, of course...
You know, it is snake central out here.
Christina and I went for a long hike yesterday, and it was basically like playing snakes in ladders, but without the ladders.
Or pick-up sticks, but with snakes.
So, if I go down in a flailing shriek, you'll know why.
So, around trust, let me sort of pop up an issue that was posted on the board, my response to it, which was followed by an enormous amount of confusion, which I apologize for and will do my best to unravel.
So, somebody posted, oh, book sales have been going very well.
I'm very, very pleased. I thought that'd be an initial peak and a drop-off, but this has not been the case, and so I do appreciate, of course, I know that it's a win-win situation, but I can't tell you.
I can't tell you, and I will tell you just how much I appreciate the trust that people have.
In buying the book on Truth, the Tyranny of Illusion, available at freedomainradio.com.
And find Lulu stores, I shan't say everywhere, but in the next version we'll have an ISBN number.
There's a couple of inconsequential typos which I will fix, and thank you so much to the listeners for pointing those out.
And I've also, sorry, a little bit of business that was in the show yesterday, which I mentioned here.
I have hired an editor to help me finish both proofreading and working on The God of Atheists, which will be out in a couple of months.
It's a big book, and it's a lot of work to do this kind of proofing.
And so on. So I would like to just sort of point that out.
It will be out, of course, in time for Christmas, which I think will be a good gift.
And I'm very sort of keen on the God of Atheists being out there because it's a way of getting people interested in the philosophy that you're interested in, but without giving them a book like On Truth, which is pretty explosive, or telling them to go listen to a bunch of podcasts, which they may or may not do.
But it's much easier to get people involved in reading a novel or to get them to read a novel than it is to get them to read a book of philosophy or to listen to a bunch of podcasts.
And, of course, it's always hard to know which ones to start with if they start with the beginning and they're more interested in relationships.
Anyway, you know the challenges, but I think that getting the God of Atheists out there will be a great way for you to...
I think it's a great read, whether you like philosophy or not.
But I think it'll be a great way to get people interested in something you're interested in without beating them over the head with philosophical concepts from the get-go.
So... I think it shows...
To me, if you can put philosophy into a humanistic-style setting, a fictional humanistic-style narrative setting, then I think it shows a certain amount of implicit connection between values.
But without the sort of cold, antiseptic, mildly dictatorial rage mine ran, so to speak.
Something that's a little bit more humane, I think.
Empathetic and inviting. So I hope that you will feel the same way, and I think it will be a great...
A great and exciting challenge.
If anyone has any good ideas for the cover and you'd like to see your name in light, so to speak, I would be more than happy to give you credit and give you a free upgrade to the premium podcast section and so on.
So we can do a win-win negotiation, I think, I hope, for the cover of the book.
Otherwise, I'll also choose a pre-formatted cover, which may not be quite as scintillating.
But if you are a graphics designer and want to get your work out there, Then let me know.
Just give me a shout. Go to the Free Domain Radio website, freedomainradio.com, and send me a message or a note.
And again, go buy a copy of On Truth.
A single day's read, it will blow your mind.
And I think bring you great joy in the long term.
Other news? Sorry about this interruption.
This is all the news I got.
I'm still working on the book on UPB, but it's slow going, of course, because...
When you propose a theory of universal ethics in a secular sense from first principles, there's so many places that people can start picking at stuff because the grey area is...
Inevitable, right? So I want to make sure that I tie off as many possible loose ends as possible.
Potential loose ends as possible, so it's slow going.
But I'm about 40 pages into the book, and I've got a very good framework, which I've not talked about before here.
The other thing that I mentioned in the show yesterday is that I'm working on a more precise and all-inclusive definition for free will versus determinism, which I hope Well, I mean, you can't cinch the debate that's been going on for thousands of years, particularly, of course, if there are psychological motives for people to hold a determinist position, but people always say, well, there's no definition of free will, and blah, blah, blah.
And people have been sort of fairly...
They've sort of ignored the one that I've put forward, and so I've refined it to, I think, provide a very good framework for discussing the topic, and that will help people understand the free will position, that it's neither random nor mystical nor...
There's no ghost in the machine, and we're not talking about randomness, but a specific conceptual ability of human beings, so I am working on that.
I don't know if that will be a book or just a podcast series.
I'll definitely put it out on YouTube because...
I am locked in mortal combat with the determinists.
It is a viewpoint that I thoroughly, thoroughly dislike and almost despise, and this may be my issue or it may not be, but certainly it is something that I will do battle with until science somehow magically proves me wrong, in which case I will embrace the determinist position and adjust my life and expectations accordingly.
So, sorry about that.
So, this question of trust.
So, somebody posted on the board...
And they said, well, I drink from time to time.
Not much. You know, from time to time, I drink.
But every now and then, I'll drink to excess and get drunk.
And my wife wants me to stop drinking.
What should I do? Perfectly valid, reasonable, and intelligent question.
My response was quite concise, shockingly.
Which was, of course, it didn't stay concise, as we can see from this chat, but...
My response was quite concise, and I said, stop drinking.
What's more important to you, a beer or your wife?
Which provoked not exactly a firestorm, but more than a few embers of questioning, disbelief, and so on.
I'm all about freedom, and now I'm just saying you should be enslaved to your wife's whims.
Well... No.
The central philosophy and approach to this is always freedom.
It's just that sometimes it comes along or comes across in slightly non-obvious ways.
Of course, if the truth were obvious, we wouldn't need philosophy or science, I guess, for that matter, or price.
So... I'll sort of go a little bit further into what I mean by that, and I'll use an example from a relationship that I had that did not work out.
And this was an on-again, off-again, long-term relationship for six or seven years, long distance, and then we were not together for about two years, and then we got back together and so on.
And then we lived together. This is a woman.
Who I proposed to.
I bought a ring and so on.
We can get into that story perhaps another time, but let me tell you how I got free of this relationship that wasn't going to work.
So when I was Joe Entrepreneur, I had a programming team.
I was sort of CTO, which is a glorified name for head geek.
And we are...
The salespeople had stupidly promised two major systems, one to Nortel and one to General Mills, in the same week.
So we called this Hell Week, and it was the stuff of legend within the company for many moons afterwards.
And we basically worked 40 hours straight, and then we'd go home and crash for a couple of hours, and then we'd go back to work.
And I remember when we went to go and show the Nortel system, I didn't actually have a driver's license at the time.
This was in my early 30s.
I didn't get a car until I was 33 or 34 and didn't have a license.
And so this guy drove me out, a Chinese guy, really a pretty funny guy, and he drove me out and I was giving the presentation to a whole bunch of people at Nortel going through the software.
I hadn't slept in two nights. It was just a wreck, right?
And he kept signaling me away from the bits of the software that didn't work, right?
So doing the presentation, we could click here, because it was still a beta, but we didn't want it to be crashing in front of this group.
It was a big contract for us at the time.
This is back when Nortel was a real company.
And I just remember doing the presentation.
And then at one point, I wasn't sure if I should click on something.
And this guy, this Chinese guy, was sitting in the back of the room.
And I looked up to get his guidance about whether I should click on something.
But unfortunately... He'd sort of fainted and fallen asleep and collapsed on his desk and you could see the puddle of drool from his mouth, so I had to just sort of make the best of things.
But at the end of this particular period of just a hellacious amount of work, I came back home.
And this woman, we'll call her Sue, this woman wanted to go out for dinner with me.
She says, you know, all week I haven't seen you.
I'm lonely. And she didn't have a whole lot of friends here in Toronto.
She had gone to school for a film in Vancouver and so on.
And I'm lonely, you know, and I haven't seen you all week and I want to go out for dinner and spend some time together, you know, like a couple should.
Of course, I'm half drooling on myself and seeing visions and riding unicorns home and so on because I'm just so tired.
And at that moment, and I can't remember exactly why I made this decision, but I did make this decision, which was I thought, okay, you know what?
I'm just going to assume that she's right.
Because part of me was like, are you nuts?
I haven't slept in two nights.
Like I've been working and demonstrating and living on caffeine and like I'm exhausted, sleep deprived.
I can't go out and have dinner.
I need to go to sleep. But I thought, if I get into a fight with her, I'm not going to be able to sleep.
I'm not the kind of person...
Like, some people can. I'm not the kind of...
Like, if I get into a conflict with someone, it can absolutely keep me up, right?
No matter how tired I am. I've got to work through it and figure out what went on and so on.
So, if I'd had a fight with this woman about, you know, this is selfish, I'm exhausted, you should let me rest, I can't believe you'd want this for...
Whatever, right? Well, then she would have got mad and we'd had a fight and I wouldn't have been able to sleep.
Right? Or I would have had one of those sort of uneasy sleeps when you've had a fight, and this uneasy sleep where it's like, oh, I know it's not going to be any better when I wake up.
Maybe I don't want to wake up kind of thing.
So I thought, you know what, I'm just going to go with the fact that she's right.
And I'm not going to go along to this dinner resentfully, and I'm not going to fight with her.
I'm going to accept her premise.
This was quite a change for me, because I'm a bit of a scrapper, a bit of a battler at times.
So I just went, and we went for dinner.
We had Thai food, and we were there for about an hour and a half, and I was not pouting, and I wasn't trying to be resentful or anything.
I was just chatting and asking questions about her search for work and so on.
And then we came home, and I fell asleep and slept for like 17 hours straight.
And... When I woke up, I didn't abandon what had happened, the decision that I'd made.
I didn't sort of pretend that it didn't exist or whatever.
I woke up, and I remember this very clearly.
She's making coffee. And I was sitting at the kitchen table, and I was just thinking about the day before.
And I said to myself, how do I feel about this decision that Sue made when she knew I hadn't slept in two nights to basically bully me or drag me out for dinner?
How do I feel about that?
How do I feel about that?
And I didn't feel very good.
But instead of saying, I can't believe you dragged me out for dinner, I just said, help me understand your thinking.
Because I'm a little baffled.
I came home, I was exhausted, I wanted to sleep.
You wanted to go out for dinner and you felt it was the right thing.
You weren't just bullying me for the sake of bullying me.
You genuinely felt that it was the right thing.
That I would be a bad partner or a bad person if I didn't go out for dinner with you despite being exhausted.
So it just sort of stepped me through that and so on.
And so she went into a long thing about...
Well, you know, you wanted me to come to Toronto and I don't have any friends here and I'm lonely and I'm not having a good time and this and that and the other.
And so I didn't argue with her.
She left Vancouver and came to Toronto and I didn't argue with her.
I just tried to understand for thinking.
I tried to understand what was going on in her mind that made this, like what Dr.
Phil says, what were you thinking that made this okay?
I don't do a very good Dr.
Phil, sorry, except for the forehead.
And that is sort of important, to just obey the person and see how you feel.
Certainty is not an intellectual process.
It's certainly aided by intellect, but certainty is a form of health.
And health is not an intellectual process.
Physical health, mental health, it's not an intellectual process.
You don't sit there and read books on nutrition and then have a good diet.
You don't sit there and think about dieting and then lose weight.
You don't think about going to the gym and develop muscles.
Certainty is a state of mind, like health, it's a state of the body, which arises from action, not from intellectualization or argument or anything like that.
And if I think that something is wrong, like if this woman says, let's go for dinner, you should go to dinner with me, you owe me a dinner, I'm entitled to a dinner, because...
You know, whatever. Then you just do it.
And see how you feel.
We're not saying go stab a cat or something, but just do it and see how you feel.
And I found that that process of simply obeying and asking questions set me free.
Set me free. So, for instance, when we first met...
I had some bad habits, for sure.
More than a bit of a volatile temper and so on.
I was a bit weaselly in social situations.
I would exaggerate things sometimes for effect and so on.
Some habits that weren't great.
It wasn't evil or anything, but just weren't great.
And I was never abusive with my temper.
I'd just get mad. And so I listened to her early on in the relationship and said, okay, well, you have these criticisms for me, and I think that they're valid.
Or they could be valid, so let's go with that.
And so what happened was, I grew.
Now, I didn't find, sort of in hindsight looking back, I didn't find that she did the same thing.
I didn't find that she would listen to my criticisms of her.
But that's not particularly important, because what is important is that I listened to her, and I changed.
So I worked on my temper and other things, bad habits that I inherited from my history and so on.
And, what happened was, then, by applying those, I became more successful as a human being, which was good.
And, of course, I discovered, through the course of our relationship, throughout my 20s, that I had a lot of other skills that I was not particularly aware of.
Skills in software and in business, even in academics and writing and so on.
But she remained highly critical in many ways, fundamental ways, foundational ways.
And because I had listened to her and worked on myself, I had achieved success.
And so I remember also very clearly sitting down with her and saying, well, you still have a lot of criticisms about me as a human being, but this is sort of where it sits from my standpoint.
When you first met me, I was sort of a not very economically viable undergraduate student who was interested in acting and so on, and she criticized my acting abilities, and in hindsight, she was quite right to do so.
I wasn't always the gentlest, but she was right about that, and I sort of admitted that after a while, that my acting abilities were limited.
And so...
I said, well, when you met me, I was this, right?
And now I'm clearly a much more competent and functional human being.
I don't have real problems with my temper anymore.
I've become sort of economically successful, developed a career, founded a company, built a business, and so on.
I've done a lot of things that have been quite challenging for me and succeeded at them.
And I said, but the problem is that your level of criticism has not changed.
So, by accepting...
I mean, you either dump the... I'm not saying you've got to be enslaved to people's opinions, right?
But if you're going to stay in the relationship, right?
If somebody says something to you that you really disagree with about yourself, you either stay and you get out of that relationship, or you just accept what they say and work with it and see how you feel.
Because if I had constantly fought this woman's criticism of me, Her criticism of me was very helpful in some ways.
Just because someone's critical doesn't mean that they're wrong.
But by accepting that criticism and acting as if it were true, not only did I gain some valuable and positive things, but also I gained the right to say, well, I've listened and changed, but your level of criticism has remained the same.
Now I completely have proof that your desire to criticize me doesn't have anything to do With me, fundamentally, like it's a moving target, right?
It's a moving target.
Like you say, oh, you're a slow runner.
You can only do a 20-minute mile.
Okay, now I've done a 10-minute mile.
Well, you're still as slow a runner as when you're still a really slow runner.
Okay, the 8-minute mile, 4-minute mile, whatever, 3.5-minute mile, jetpack mile.
If you're still called a slow runner, then clearly...
You've done two things.
A, you're starting to run faster, a lot faster, which is good.
I mean, assuming it's a value to you.
And secondly, by accepting the criticism of being a slow runner and working to change it, but still being criticized as being a slow runner after you've improved, you have also gained certainty and closure with regards to that person's habits about criticism, right?
Generosity is freedom.
We'll sort of get to that as we sort of move forward through this particular aspect of the debate.
So, if your wife says, stop drinking, then one of two things is occurring.
I mean, to, again, paint with sort of broad brushstrokes.
One of two things is occurring. Either A... You have a problem with drinking in one form or another.
And a problem with drinking does not mean that you're an alcoholic or drink every day or get bombed every weekend.
It just means that you don't always stick to your word, right?
So if you say, I'm going to have one beer, then you have four beers, three beers, or even two.
And also that your wife doesn't feel comfortable with your personality when you drink.
A lot of people's personality changes when they drink.
It's a disinhibitor, right? So things that they would not say or do well say, but this could be scary for your wife.
So either you should not drink, because you can't sort of, quote, drink with integrity, stay in a positive space with the guys who are drinking, a glass of wine at dinner or whatever, but you have to have a couple of drinks, so maybe you get mean or whatever.
Or you stay out too late, or you make bad decisions when you're drunk, or you've once or twice driven while tipsy.
You know, these kinds of things, right?
Either you should stop drinking, or she's just a bully, and she's just picking on you, right?
How are you going to figure this out?
Because let's just say that this is such an issue that divorce would be on the table, right?
Let's make it less dramatic.
Let's just say you've got a girlfriend who says, I don't want you to drink.
I don't like it when you drink. And she sort of says X, Y, and Z. Well, you don't want to break up with someone who's giving you good advice.
That's... That's not going to be good, right?
You don't want to break up with someone who's saying, stop drinking, when you in fact should not drink.
That's a seriously bad idea.
But at the same time, you don't want to be with someone who is just going to grind you down to a fine, emasculated, ball-less, no-stones powder, right?
And how are you going to know which is which?
Right now, we are going to assume that you don't have...
A clear enough connection with your own instincts that you can tell this ahead of time.
But you're in this relationship and you genuinely don't know whether or not you should stop drinking or not.
Well, if she's right that you have a problem with alcohol and you should not drink, then the only way to find that out is to stop drinking.
Right? Because people are always afraid that it's going to turn into appeasement, right?
It's like, oh, first of all, I have to stop drinking, and then I have to stop eating red meat, and then I have to give up video games, and then I have to not scratch myself in public, and then whatever, right?
That it's going to be a continual progression of having your liberties whittled away with.
You can't give an inch, or people will take a mile, and so on.
Well, how are you going to find that out?
How are you going to find that out?
Well, imagine that you are a customer service rep.
Somebody brings back a product, I don't know, some Cuisinac, some blender or something.
And they're angry because the blender, I don't know, blew up and killed their cat or something like that.
Or just to say the blender doesn't work and they're mad.
Well, are they a bully or are they just upset about the blender?
Well, the way you find out is you give them a new blender.
Right? And if they then say, well, thank you very much, I really appreciate it, and they...
Go away with a smile on their face, then you know that the problem was the blender.
They're not using the blender issue to bully you.
They're just mad about the blender and want a new blender.
But if they say, well, this blender is a problem and that's what I'm mad about, and you give them the new blender and then they start picking on something else, then you know that the blender is not really the issue and that they're, you know, bullies.
A bully. But generosity will let you know about that.
Generosity will have you figure that out.
So if your girlfriend says you should quit drinking because you're a jerk when you drink and you drink too much and you can't control yourself when you drink and so on, even if it's only occasional, if you stop drinking and she's perfectly content, not that she'd never have any other issues, but she doesn't immediately move to something else, then the issue was that you were drinking.
Now, of course, if after a while you're enjoying the fact that you're not getting nagged about drinking and your girlfriend is trusting you, And your girlfriend is feeling better about the relationship, more secure, right?
Because if your girlfriend says, and assuming she has some reasonable reasons, and your girlfriend says you shouldn't drink, and you say, no, damn it, a beer is more important to me than you are, well, that's pretty destabilizing in the relationship, right?
So, if you've got a nice, attractive, sweet, intelligent girlfriend, on the one hand...
And a bottle of suds on the other, and you are drawn towards a bottle of suds, well, of course, no woman with any self-esteem would stick around in that situation, right?
If I'm worth less to you than a beer, then I'm going to find someone to be with that is not the case with, right?
So, somebody who values me more than $1.50's worth of brewery matter, right?
So this is how you achieve certainty, and this is how you achieve closure in your relationships, right?
So this woman says, oh, you should stop drinking.
Okay, I'll stop drinking. How do I feel?
Of course you're going to feel a little resentful and so on, but overall, in general, how are you doing with that?
Do you feel better?
Is your relationship better? Does your girlfriend say, I really appreciate that?
It makes me feel fantastic that you did that and I hope that you're enjoying it and how you're feeling about it and so on.
I really respect what you're doing.
Do you get praise and positive reinforcement for a decision?
Do you feel better? Do you feel happier in the relationship when you quit drinking?
What's going on for you emotionally?
Well, that's a kind of freedom, right?
Because you gain some kind of closure.
And if you fight with her the whole time about quitting drinking, though, you're never going to find out whether or not she's a nag or she's right.
Because if you quit drinking and then she starts picking on you about something else, your eating habits, your exercise habits, or she starts picking on you about X, Y, and Z... Well, then you have your answer, right? But you have your answer emotionally.
Certainty, as I say, is not an intellectual process.
Certainty is an emotional process that arises experientially.
I mean, after a time, you get better at it, right?
Like, thinking about tennis doesn't make you a good tennis player.
You become a good tennis player by practicing, right?
So, certainty about valid or valuable courses of action comes through practice, right?
Through testing. And that's when I say that generosity is liberty.
That's what I'm talking about.
Be generous with people.
Trust them. Yeah, you're right.
Whatever you say, you're right.
And I'm going to try that on.
If you have doubt, if you don't have doubt, somebody says go jump off a cliff, you don't see how it goes.
If you have no doubt, then you just don't be in a relationship with people who are advocating things that are destructive or abhorrent to you.
Right? Right? So, if I was on a date with a woman, it never happened.
If I was on a date and a woman said, hey, let's have an orgy, or, you know, hey, you should do heroin, I don't sit there and say, hey, maybe I should, right?
Maybe that would be good, right? I don't.
All the polyamorists can send their complaints to ftopmolyneux at rogers.com.
But... Where I have significant doubt and I'm torn and I want to fight and I don't know and I can't decide, then just surrender.
Right? Just surrender.
And you surrender in order to achieve certainty.
So I'll give you another example. This same woman, we made a film together.
I wrote a script. She helped out a bit with the script.
I produced. I came up with the cash.
Tens and tens of thousands of dollars to make this film.
This was a finalist at the Hollywood Film Festival in 98 or something like that.
Anyway, we made this film.
Short film. I'm quite proud of it.
I think it's a good film. And...
I mean, we'd been together for a while.
She wanted to make a splash in the film world.
She wasn't having much success getting traction in terms of work.
And we talked about it, and then at one point I was just like, you know what?
I'm either in this relationship or I'm not.
If I'm in this relationship, then I'm going to be generous.
I have the money. I have the talent.
We can make the film. And maybe that will get her started, and it'll work out beautifully, and so on.
So we made the film and did all of that good stuff.
And then, we spent, oh lord, a long time, 6, 8, 10, 12 months, I can't remember, it was a long time on preparing for and making this film, and then showing it around and so on, entering into contests and so on.
And it was quite an experience.
And then what happened was, I said to her, a couple of months after we'd finished everything to do with the film, I said, okay, listen, I've got this novel called Just Poor, and I think it needs a reread.
Would you mind having a read of it?
And she's like, yeah, yeah, I'll do that, right?
And she was only working part-time, so she had the time to do it.
And, you know, a month went by, two months went by, she hadn't picked it up.
So, then I said, well, I'm kind of noticing that you're not picking up the book, right?
And to sort of cut a long conversation short, she basically said, well, the reason that I'm not picking up the book is you're not motivating me to do it.
And I said, well, did you motivate me to put the film together?
And then, of course, I knew you were going to use that against me.
I knew that you couldn't be generous with this, that, and the other.
And this was, of course, the end.
Shortly thereafter, we split up because it became clear to me, through my own generosity, that reciprocity was not occurring.
That reciprocity was not occurring.
And that's liberating because that gives you closure.
So I spend hundreds and hundreds of hours writing a script and preparing the film, learning how to do all this sort of stuff, turn over tons of money and so on.
And then she won't even sit down and read a book, which is like 5% of the effort and none of the money.
Well, then it's clear. Then I got certainty.
Then I got certainty that this was an exploitive relationship.
Whereas if I'd hedged and hadn't done the film and then felt like I couldn't ask her to read the book because I hadn't been generous, we could still be stuck in this nightmare, right?
But with kids. And I have never ever spent money as wisely as the money that I spent on that film.
Because we didn't get married. We didn't have kids.
I saved a lifetime of pain and agony and alimony and child support.
So that was an incredible investment.
I did the same thing with my brother.
So he sold all of his stocks.
The stock price was getting higher and higher.
I still had some stocks. So I... I sold some stocks and gave him the money.
Didn't keep it for myself.
Shared it. Then the stocks collapsed.
Then they became completely worthless.
And he gave me the equivalent number of stocks back when they were worthless.
Absolutely, following the letter of the law.
But in the conversations that I had with him about it, I mean, that's gross, right?
I'm voluntarily giving up wealth to help my brother, and then he's like, well, I'm giving you the same number of stocks back.
You've got nothing to complain about. It's like, my generosity freed me up from that relationship.
Those stocks that I sold have now saved me going on six years now.
Of a destructive interaction with my brother.
And it has saved my marriage.
Because if I had been around my brother, that had still been a value and so on.
And Christina sees them pretty clearly for who they are.
She would have had real doubts.
It would have been unpleasant. It would have caused problems in our marriage.
So that $25,000.
That and the $30,000 or $40,000 they spent on the film.
Cheapest stuff I ever spent.
Most sound investment I ever made.
Why? Because that's like one year of deferring.
I mean, I went to school for five years, postgraduate.
Actually, no, more than that.
More than that. Two years at National Theatre School, two years history, two years English, undergraduate degree, one year, so seven, right?
Seven years I went to school.
And the money that I spent, you know, $55,000 or $60,000 or $70,000, whatever, I can't remember the exact sum, on these two relationships, that money was my sort of lost earnings for like one year of school.
One-seventh of my education I spent getting free of a destructive romantic and a destructive familial relationship.
Right? That generosity...
Gave me freedom, right?
So you always give.
I mean, this is something I've learned in hindsight, so I say this with all due recognition of how long it took me to learn it, but give, give, give, give, give, give.
Don't hedge. Don't hedge.
Be generous. Be generous.
Where you have doubt, grit your teeth and give.
But then don't give and be a slave.
Give and evaluate. Well, I'm certainly generous here.
I have no doubt about that. And I'm going beyond what I'm comfortable going in terms of generosity.
But if you're always hedging, if you say, well, I'll give 1% and I'll see if the other person gives 1% more, you can't judge those fractions.
Can't figure that stuff out.
So just be overwhelmingly generous.
Just give, give, give, and give.
And then see what comes back.
Give and look for joyful reciprocity.
And see what comes back.
It's like if you want a raise at work, what do you do?
Well, you say, what is the highest value to the company?
What are the highest priority activities for the company?
And you say, okay, I'm going to do those and I'm going to do a fantastic job.
You're supposed to produce X piece of software or sell Y amount of widgets or whatever.
Go out and do double that.
Work, work, work. And then see if you get a raise.
Right? And if you're acknowledged and you get a raise and you get promotions, fantastic.
Great! And if you don't, quit!
Quit the job, right?
If everything in your life is a kind of grey bewildering fog and you can't make decisions and you feel paralyzed and you don't have enough information and you're torn and you think this and then you think that, then create some stark light and stark shadows by generosity.
Give, give, give! And then see what comes back.
Because then you're free of doubt either way, right?
So if you give, give, give, and joyful reciprocity is what comes back, and it's an ever-escalating, orgy-festive joy and generosity, well, you have no doubt anymore.
Good, fantastic, wonderful.
And you have all of this escalating generosity, right?
One plus one is a million when it comes to a relationship, when there's this sort of mutual and joyful reciprocity.
An escalation of benefits.
Who would want to not have that?
On the other hand, if you give, give, give, and nobody gives back, guess what?
You are also free.
You are also free of doubt.
Because that's kind of hard to miss, right?
If I pour a year and tens of thousands of dollars into making a film...
And my girlfriend can't be bothered to read a book I wrote, which would take her a couple of nights.
That's sort of hard to miss, right?
But I wouldn't have seen that if I hadn't been generous.
I mean, really seen that in a way that I could walk away with that relationship without ever being tempted to look back.
And when she threatened to take me to court for common law, money, I could get half of everything you made at this company you founded.
That I could have the real strength to just say, look, you know what?
That, for sure, is not going to happen.
And with no doubt that I was maybe somehow to blame and I felt guilty, just clarity, clarity, peace, certainty, strength.
That's what generosity will give you.
If you have doubt. I don't find exploitive people and have them exploit, because I know that now, but where I had doubt, where you have doubt, be generous.
This all ties into the exit to the Cage is in the foggy center, not by rattling the bars, right?
If you have doubts about the quality of your familial relationships, that's why I say go be generous.
Go talk to them. Go be vulnerable.
Go be honest. Go be open with them.
So where we have doubt, strong action will eliminate that doubt.
Like if I was like, oh man, I could be a really great singer.
Well, go into a singing contest and give it absolutely everything you've got.
And if people stomp and cheer, then go for it.
Have fun. And if they don't, then that's an answer.
You listen to the tape and you go, do I sound good?
Do I sound bad? But don't just sit there and wander.
You take action.
You take action. That's what sets you free.
Generosity is freedom from doubt.
And doubt is the ultimate cage.
Doubt is the ultimate prison because doubt is paralytic.
Doubt freezes you in immobility while life continues to tick along to its eventual end, regardless of your paralysis.
Doubt is the scar tissue that forms over the assumption that we will live forever and that there's an eternity of time to make up for mistakes and lost time.
Well, there's not! There's not!
Act now! So the second part...
That we talked about in the show yesterday.
And again, you can go to the original if you like.
It's in the Gold Plus.
I think it's the 24th or so of the Gold Plus Premium Podcast, or Gold Premium Podcast.
It's further up to Diamond and Philosopher King.
And this other gentleman was talking about his wife.
And he said, you know, it's kind of tough because...
We were both Jehovah's Witnesses when we got married.
Now I'm an atheist and I don't like to bring up this stuff with my wife.
Yeah, that may be Freudian.
Who knows? I don't like to bring this stuff up with my wife.
I don't get very far talking about it.
And... So, Christine and I were both chiming in on this, and again, you can hear it in the original file, but the basic thing that we were talking about was don't manage other people's feelings.
Don't manage your own feelings by using other people is what it really comes down to.
So, he wanted to avoid talking about this stuff with his wife, talking about his rationalism and so on.
And totally, with all due sympathy and with total understanding, he was using all of these weasel words, right?
Well, it's her perspective, it's my perspective, we have differences of opinion, this, that, and the other.
So, of course, that was the first thing that needed to be dealt with, right?
So, the first thing that I asked was, well, do you think that it's a difference of opinion about the existence of God, or do you think that God does not exist?
Like, if somebody says, I believe in God, is that just a difference of opinion?
Like, I like beige, you like plaid?
Or is it a false statement that To say there is a God.
I believe in a God and his son is Jesus Christ and his cheerleader is the Virgin Mary or whatever.
And he said, of course, no, it's objectively incorrect to say that there is a God.
And I said, do you think that people are happier if they believe true things or false things?
And he said, well, of course, I believe that people are happier if they believe true things, right?
No. And I said, well, then by not bringing this issue up with your wife, you are continuing to allow her to suffer.
Because she is believing in false things, and it is worse to believe in false things, emotionally.
Unhappy.
So you are continuing to allow your wife to suffer by not freeing her from this cage of illusion called religion.
Ah, but he said, I don't know if she can handle the conversation.
I said, well, that's a different issue.
Because he said, I'm afraid of upsetting her with this stuff, right?
I said, well, but if your wife was a diabetic and was sitting down to eat a big chocolate cake, would you stop her?
Would you let her do it? And he said, no, I would stop her.
I said, why? Because it would harm her.
But belief in false things harms her, like religion.
So if you really care for your wife, and I'm not saying you don't in general, but if you really care for your wife...
You will have her not eat the chocolate cake called religion.
You would free her from this illusion.
You would do whatever it took.
So you say that it is out of concern for your wife that you are refraining from having this conversation about God.
But it is not out of concern for your wife that you are refraining from having this conversation about About God.
And he's got a little baffled, and of course it makes sense.
Not because anybody's dumb, it's just hard to see these things when they're your things, right?
Right, so, if your wife's a diabetic and is sitting down to eat a chocolate cake, which is going to cause her to go into a coma or something, if you don't intervene, and forcefully so, I don't mean violently or abusively, but forcefully...
If you don't intervene, it's not because you care about your wife's feelings so much.
Right? Clearly. Because if you cared about your wife's feelings, you just take that chocolate cake away from her and ask her why she was trying to do this to herself and get her some help or whatever, right?
I mean, if I'm a doctor and somebody's got an illness which they can cure...
But I'm concerned about them getting mad at me.
Let's say I'm a doctor and one of my patients is a smoker.
And I know he's going to get mad at me if I tell him to stop smoking.
And I say, well, I don't want to bring up the whole smoking issue with him because I care about his feelings.
No. That's not true.
That's not true. It's not even close to true.
In fact, it's quite the opposite of true.
If I'm a doctor and I don't want to bring up quit smoking to a smoker because I'm afraid he's going to get mad at me, then it's not his feelings or his health that I'm concerned about.
It's my feelings and my comfort.
I'm trying to manage my anxiety by refraining from having a conversation.
So a conversation with my wife about her religious viewpoints would make me anxious.
And so I don't have that conversation.
Which is using her, or in this case avoiding her, which is still using her, to manage my own anxiety.
I'm avoiding anxiety by not having the conversation.
And he's like, well I can see that.
I can see that I'm avoiding having this conversation because I feel anxious about this conversation.
And I said, okay, well what are you anxious about?
And he says, well I'm anxious that it's going to destroy my marriage.
Right? Basically. Again, full sympathy.
Full sympathy. And I think more than a smidgen of understanding in this area.
But I said, but don't you see that you're doing the same thing that your wife is doing?
And he's like, huh? Well, he didn't make that sound.
He's a very bright fellow.
But that was the equivalent of that, right?
Short circuit. And I said, well...
You're avoiding a truth because it makes you uncomfortable.
The truth about your marriage, the truth about your wife, the truth about her receptivity to rationality.
And that's your ability to love her and her ability to love you.
You're avoiding a truth because it makes you uncomfortable.
And yet you criticize your wife for avoiding the truth about God because it will make her uncomfortable.
But you're both doing the same thing.
She's avoiding the truth about the non-existence of God because it would make her feel anxious and bad or whatever, mad, who knows, right?
But she is avoiding learning the truth about something because it makes her feel uncomfortable.
But you're avoiding, the husband, you're avoiding learning the truth about your marriage because that truth would make you uncomfortable.
And to his credit, I mean, he got it.
He got it.
That he was taking exactly the same approach to the truth of his marriage, that his wife was about the truth of God.
And what happened then?
Well, then he said, well, but how am I going to sit down and convince her that God exists?
And I said, but the conversation that you need to have with your wife...
It's not about whether or not God exists, because that's not the issue.
He's like, it's not?
No, it's not the issue.
The issue with your wife is not whether God exists or God does not exist.
The issue with your wife is that you're afraid to talk to her about whether or not God exists, because you're afraid that she's going to divorce you.
That you're afraid to speak the truth to your wife because you are afraid of being rejected and tossed out on your ass.
That's the central issue, right?
This is the honesty that we need.
You're not so much troubled...
about the fact that your wife believes in God as you are troubled by the fact that if you talk to her about it she's going to throw you out.
She's going to divorce you.
So you don't sit down with your wife and pretend that the conversation is about God when it's not.
It's not about God. It's about fear and rejection.
He's like, well, what do I say then?
And I said, well, of course, all of this is up to you.
It's always up to your own processing.
But the truth of the matter, as I can see it, is you sit down with your wife and you say, honey, you know what?
I want to talk to you about this whole God thing because it's really important to me.
But I am completely terrified that this is going to destroy our marriage.
I can't tell you. I'm lying awake at nights.
I'm tortured by this fear that if I talk to you, About what is important to me and what I believe to be really true and I do it with the best of motives trying to help you and not irrationally and so on.
That you're going to divorce me.
I'm terrified of that.
Because that's the real issue.
Not about the existence or non-existence of God.
But the methodology.
How are you going to resolve disputes?
Are you allowed to ask questions that the other people disagree with?
The conclusions. And how are you going to resolve these disputes?
Right? Christina believed in a higher power when I met her.
Did that mean that I couldn't marry her?
No, of course not. Because she was open to reason and she just never heard the arguments before and you can't invent all of this kind of stuff when you're becoming the best damn therapist in the world.
We all have to specialize.
That's why I don't change the oil in my car.
Myself, I mean, I do occasionally.
But she was open to rational arguments, which is wonderful.
Well, So it's not whether somebody believes in God or doesn't believe in God that matters.
What matters is the methodology.
And if you're afraid that someone...
If for sure you know you're going to be divorced for speaking the truth, then end the marriage.
If you say, I'm not going to...
I'm not going to quit drinking because I'm certain that my wife is just bullying me and trying to control me.
Then end the goddamn marriage, because it's not a marriage.
Right? It's just sex, resentment, and mutual tax returns.
Not a marriage.
any more than a state is a community.
So then this gentleman, and again, massive kudos to him for staying in this conversation, He said, well, but then my wife is going to say, well, I don't impose my beliefs on you.
I don't tell you you have to go to church and you have to believe in God, so why are you imposing your beliefs on me?
And, of course, the question is not, is that true or false?
Thanks.
That's not the first question that needs to be answered.
If you want to have this real-time relationship, if you want to have this conversation with people that is alive with meaning and with intimacy and with reality, don't sit there and say, well, that's true or that's not true or there's this philosophical or that philosophical aspect to it.
That's not the issue. If you sit down with your wife and you have this fear and talk about this fear of being Reject it.
For talking about what is valuable to you.
And attempting to take a chocolate cake out of her hand when she's diabetic.
If you fear that you're going to be dumped, you sit down and talk to her.
I'm afraid of this. Your wife says, well, I don't impose my beliefs on you.
Why the hell are you imposing your beliefs on me?
Then say, when you say that, I get even more scared.
And I actually get a little angry.
You can never be rejected for what you feel.
Sorry, let me slightly amend that.
You can be rejected for what you feel, but you can never be rationally rejected for what you feel because it's just a feeling.
It doesn't do any harm. People can tell you that your feelings are wrong, but they can't prove to you that your feelings are wrong because you're actually feeling them.
If I say, I feel angry, nobody can tell me, no, you don't.
I mean, they can, but it doesn't make any sense, right?
Be like if I had my appendix out and I say to somebody, I have my appendix out, and they say, no, you don't.
What do you even say to that?
I mean, you can't say anything to that because it's just insane.
People can say, well, you don't have the right to feel angry and this, but that's not the issue.
The issue is that I do feel angry.
And I'm not going to throw over my feelings, which are my buddies, which are here to help, which are my support system, which are my early warning radar, which is my rudder.
I'm not going to throw all of my emotional buddies off the ship because you don't like them.
Or they're inconvenient to you.
Sorry. But if I do that, I'm going to be depressed as hell.
Depression is self-rejection.
Depression is the rejection of the instincts.
Depression is the substitution of sentimentality for passion.
It empties you out like a vampire.
You don't have...
Living, vibrant, vital, true self instincts.
You just have dull, empty, self-rejecting conformity with the needs of others.
And of course, logically, to say to somebody, well, I don't impose my beliefs on you.
Why are you opposing your beliefs on me?
Well, because only one of us is diabetic.
It's like if my wife's going to eat the chocolate cake, she's diabetic and so am I. And I say, don't eat the cake.
She's like, I'm not stopping you from eating the cake.
She's like, yeah, because I'm not diabetic.
And also, of course, just logically, imposing the belief that you shouldn't impose your beliefs is, in fact, imposing a belief.
We'll have to get into that. Gordian, not too much.
But logically, it doesn't make any sense.
It's like saying nothing is true.
Uncertainty is the only constant. And all this sort of nonsense.
Self-detonating statements. You sit down and you say, I'm totally terrified to talk to you about things that I believe in because I really feel that you're going to throw me out with yesterday's trash.
That makes me feel really bad.
If you speak the truth about things that are meaningful to you and proven, not just made up stuff, I believe that unicorns live on comets or whatever, but true, true stuff.
If you believe that speaking the truth is going to get you tossed out with yesterday's trash, you feel like crap.
So that makes me feel terrible.
You don't do it in a manipulative.
It's just honest. You feel terrible.
If people are going to reject you for the truth that you believe in, that you can prove, that you're at least willing to discuss, right?
Well, you know, if you can prove to me that there is a God, then help me.
Help me to see that there is.
Mother Teresa, it turns out, didn't believe in any of this crap either.
Of course not. And then if you get rejected for that, Well, I don't see why I should have to follow your beliefs just because they're your beliefs.
Then you don't argue about whether she should follow your beliefs or not, but just say, well, I feel rejected here now in the moment.
I feel bad because I'm saying to you I'm scared of something and you're kind of getting aggressive, which makes me more scared.
Right? This is what I mean by a real-time relationship.
Relentless honesty. No matter how scary.
And I know, I know when I have these conversations, I haven't had one in a while, I haven't needed to, but when you're going to have these conversations, my hands are shaking, my heart is pounding, like I've just run up 20 flights of stairs.
I sweat. I stammer.
I can't control my voice.
And once memorably, I could not control my bladder.
No, actually, that's not the case. But these are terrifying conversations to have.
That's what real-time relationships means.
Tell people how you feel about what they're doing.
So you say, well, that makes me more scared when you do this.
It's like, well, don't try and bully me.
I'm not trying to bully you. I'm just telling you that I feel scared when you do this.
Like I say, I feel like I'm rejected if I talk about what's important to me.
That fear is one of the things that's important to me, and I feel that that fear is being rejected.
Because people can just try and talk you out of how you feel.
I'm never going to reject you for that.
But then I feel even more afraid.
Because now you're telling me that my emotions, which I use to guide and inform my decisions and my experience of the world, are wrong!
And either my emotions are wrong, which is completely terrifying, or they're not wrong, but you want me to believe that they are, which is even more terrifying.
If you understand the implications of that.
Right? Of taking away somebody's compass because you don't like where they're heading.
Setting them off to be lost in the wilderness.
That's no good. That's no good.
So, I mean, I hope that this gentleman will have that conversation.
Most importantly, though, and if you are considering these conversations, particularly around something as absolutely essential as a marriage, don't just wander in and do it.
I'm going to sit down one day and blurt it out.
That's a recipe for disaster.
This is a champion match.
Talking about your feelings and needs with those who are closest to you, talking about your values in a non-confrontational, non-hostile, non-manipulative way.
That's some serious food right there.
Like, you don't go into those conversations without preparation.
You don't go into the prize fight without at least jumping some rope and wackety-wackety-ing that ball around.
The leather teardrop.
But if you're going to have this conversation, you want to give it as big and as massive a chance of succeeding as humanly possible.
Which means you don't sit down and blurt it out, right?
And just jump in the ring with Mike Tyson and start throwing punches and hope that it's going to work out.
It's not. We're all trained to manipulate and be devious and underhanded and bullying.
When we try and do something that's not that, it's hard.
Right? Like if we are all grown up with bound feet, it's kind of hard to do the cha-cha-cha and the soft shoe numbers.
Of course. Of course it is.
That means we've just got to retrain ourselves.
Right? If you go skiing, six weeks after you've broken both legs without any physio, you're going to fall down and hurt yourself.
So this is why, if you're going to have these conversations, particularly with a relationship that's future-based, it's not so crucial with family, foo, like original old relationships that you're ditching, although it certainly would...
Would help to have these conversations, but it's not quite as essential as it is for the relationships that have a future that you're embedded in, like marriages and so on.
Of course, with your kids, you have to...
But go and talk to a therapist.
Go find a counselor. Go talk to a therapist.
Run through these conversations.
Run through how it is that you ended up in this situation where you're frightened of someone you love.
You shouldn't be frightened of someone you love.
Someone you love, you should be...
Unbelievably secure in that relationship.
That relationship should be the most secure fortress, the safest, most nurturing fortress that you have.
It is not love if you're afraid of the person that you claim to love and that you claim loves you.
That's not love.
So if you go to a therapist and work through all of these issues, how did you end up marrying someone that you ended up frightened of And why can't you speak the truth with this person and so on?
Work through all of that stuff and role play and role play and role play.
And if you can't get someone to play your wife, I know it's a freaky thing to do, but...
And then what you do is you write down the conversation you think is going to happen.
Every possible branch of the conversation, you know what she's going to say or he's going to say.
Sit down and write all that stuff out.
Work it through. Spend weeks or months...
Preparing for this conversation.
It gives us the greatest chance of success, which is what I want everybody to have.
A happy marriage and a joyful life.
That's my North Star, so to speak.
So, thank you so much for listening.
Sorry this was a bit lengthy, but hey, it's still short of the original conversation, which again is available for Go Plus members number 24.
And I look forward to your donations.
Please buy my book for both of our sakes.
And I will talk to you soon.
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