All Episodes
Previous Next
Oct. 9, 2008 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
55:46
1172 Unraveling Relationship Ambivalence (convo)
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Hello? Alright, sorry about that.
So yeah, what's up?
Well, there's two issues that are driving me nuts and I'm not quite sure which one to talk about.
There's one in reference to old issues I'm having with my girlfriend and some ambivalence I'm having with that and then The recent one is this letter I just got from my mom, which I posted in the miscellaneous section, which is just beyond disgusting at this point.
And it just really screwed my head up this evening.
I wish I could be more focused for you.
Well, which one would you like to talk about?
Two would probably be one too many because there's a lot of info in both, but which would you prefer to talk about?
At the moment, the letter...
Okay, do you want to read it to me?
Yeah. Basically, it goes like this.
Dear Ty, I hope you are doing well.
I miss chatting with you.
I'm sorry for the pain and hurt I have caused you.
I love you very much.
I would like to help you.
I think you are a beautiful young man, talented, very intelligent, and perceptive.
You have proved that you are capable of doing anything you put your mind to.
I made a lot of mistakes when you were growing up.
I was young and inexperienced and dealing with an immature husband.
I had not found myself yet.
I do not regret that.
Boy, that didn't take long, did it?
No. I had not found myself yet.
I do not regret having you or my sister.
I wanted to have children.
I'm sorry for any hurt I have inflicted on you.
I'm equally sorry for the deep emotional pain your father caused you.
I feel responsible for what has happened.
I didn't want to leave the marriage without trying to work things out.
I think after 10 to 15 years, I should have ended the relationship.
In the domestic violence project, a woman there said, no one wins in a divorce.
This is why I tried to stay.
I wanted you to have a father present as you grew up.
I thought maybe as you got older, my father would be less emphatic about correcting you.
Sorry, what does correcting mean?
Does that mean hitting you or yelling at you?
All of the above.
Yeah, okay. Correcting.
I got it. Yeah. He has lied to me about how he treated you and repeatedly tried to get me to believe he did nothing wrong.
He has stolen three of my journals, which I kept in my drawer, and one by my...
These journals had information about things he said and did during the course of our marriage.
He has betrayed me and deceived me.
Some of this did not come to light until recently.
I worry about you, whether you're alright, or you're hurting, or my father has told you lies about me.
That may be causing you distress.
I'm also sorry for all the stress and tension in the house while you and your sister were growing up.
I felt I needed to stand my ground whenever he blamed or accused me of something.
I had hoped by talking and explaining to him how you felt when he was mean to you that he would be kinder.
I thought... He believed in God and in being fair and just and kind and loving.
I thought he believed in being a good father as God's word teaches.
I know now that he doesn't know God.
He has been reading books on mind control and how to lie convincingly.
He has a book on how to win and get what you want by manipulating people using courtroom techniques.
Please, at some time in your life, find it in your heart to forgive me and my stupidity.
Love always, mom lady.
I mean...
I don't even see why there's a point for me to even...
Talk to her to even try and reason after that.
I don't know what I would be doing trying to gain closure from that.
Oh, there's closure in that, my friend.
There's closure. It's just...
I just kind of feel like I don't even have to go back there.
I'm almost... I mean, I want, you know, some weird part of me wants to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I keep getting this crap, and it's just like, why?
I mean, why not just be like, okay, write a letter, say goodbye, and then, but yet you'll still have this doubt that you need to keep talking to them.
Right. Now, sorry, I just wanted to give you my impressions of the letter, because solitude is the problem with this kind of stuff.
You feel like you're wrestling with demons alone, right?
Yeah. The letter is utterly vile.
Yeah. The letter is weaselly, right?
Yeah. That this praise is insulting.
Yeah. Right?
Yeah. The blame to your dad with no responsibility for marrying him.
No. The excuses, oh, I didn't know he was abusive, blah, blah, blah.
Right? But she's been abusive.
Yeah. And this God thing and how he's like the devil and he's mind control.
I mean, it's just...
Vile, right?
It is a complete mindfuck.
Basically. There's not one word in there that is genuine, that is authentic, that is curious, right?
Yeah. And everything is less emphatic about correcting you.
She can't even say it.
Yeah. Like, does he think, sorry, does she honestly think, That the biggest crime in your family that you're going to be concerned about is that he took some of her fucking journals?
Yeah, seriously. That that's really big on your list of things that need to be rectified in the family is where some fucking diaries are?
Exactly. Exactly.
And... It feels like the letter is telling me, oh, you need to be suspicious of him.
He's going to come after you.
He's the bad one, right?
Yeah. Yeah, like she was assigned to him, right?
Yeah. So there's no responsibility.
And you are not in the letter at all.
She might as well be writing it to Snowy Owl, the Aztec god, right?
Yeah, pretty much.
It's all for her, right?
Right. It's all about her self-justifications and her beliefs.
I mean, the fact that you're an atheist, she doesn't even notice.
No. That's the thing that really pissed me off at the end.
I was like, she really does realize that I don't know God either because I'm an atheist.
I was just like, how is that supposed to...
Okay, but man, tell me this.
What is new in this letter that you didn't already know about your mother?
Right? Because you get stuck in this anger thing, right?
Yeah. So tell me what is new here.
And I'm not saying you shouldn't be angry.
I'm not. Right?
But she's saying like, oh my god, this is like...
And she doesn't even... But tell me what is new, right?
Because you don't want to get in this broken record thing, right?
Right. No, it's...
There's nothing really that new about it, other than the fact that...
Really, he really, if I really picked it apart, there really isn't anything new.
And I'm not saying you shouldn't be mad, right?
But if some guy comes up and slaps you in the face every single day, after 20 years, do you still have the right to go, oh my god, he came up and slapped me in the face?
It's unshocking I'm so mad, right?
Yeah, yeah.
I think it's just that it was a slap on the face during...
There's some other stuff that was going on during the week.
I think that might have what made it feel...
More than what it was.
I just... I had an incident with my mail being stopped so I had to call the mail service and I have to collect these bills and I had that on my mind.
I had problems with my girlfriend and then I opened this letter of mailbox thing and it also...
I was curious as to maybe after opening it I was wondering why did I decide to open it?
That's the next question, right?
It's like, why are you reading this?
Yeah. And then posting it on the board.
I don't mind that you posted it on the board, but why?
Why? Why did you read it, and then why did you want to inflict it on others?
I don't know. Yes, you do.
Come on. You know the other bit, but of course you do.
Don't try that with me. You can save that for everyone else, right?
Yeah. Nobody gets to play dumb here, right?
Yeah.
So why did you open it?
The first thing that springs to mind is maybe I opened it because I wanted to be upset.
Yeah, well, that's for sure.
You knew that that was going to happen, right?
Yeah. I mean, that's like, you know, tomorrow the sun will rise, right?
Yeah. You open that letter, it's going to fuck you up, right?
Yeah. That's a guarantee.
There was no possibility of anything else, right?
Right.
So, I mean, if you dream about your mom stabbing you with a knife, if I remember rightly, there's not going to be anything good in a letter, right?
No. So...
Why open it?
Why read it and why get upset about it?
And then post it to other people saying, oh my god, this letter is so terrible, oh my god, right?
Yeah. But you shot yourself this time, right?
Yeah. And I mean this with all sympathy for the mom, for you having this mom, not sympathy for your mom.
I feel a lot of sympathy.
I mean, this is a really monstrous person to be raised by.
I totally sympathize with the manipulation, the weaseliness, the Mysticism, the self-justification.
It's stomach-turning. I totally get that.
So this is with all massive sympathies for what you grew up with.
Yeah. I mean, I don't want to eclipse that.
I just want you to get that, right?
Okay, definitely. But, dude, opening a letter from your mom when you're upset already?
Yeah. I guess it's just masochistic.
I guess I was just feeling so awful that I knew I was going to be tempted to want to open it eventually and that I was just going to like...
No, no, no, no, no.
This is like cutting, right?
This is like people who cut themselves.
The reason you do it is to distract yourself from something that's even worse, right?
Yeah, yeah.
You get to focus on this now rather than something else in your life, right?
That's true, yeah.
Which is ten times more painful.
Right, which is your girlfriend, right?
Yeah. And when did you get the letter?
I just picked it up today.
Okay, so you picked up the letter today.
You're going to talk to me about your girlfriend tomorrow, right?
Yeah. Do you see the correlation?
Yeah. Yeah.
I'm trying to avoid it.
I just...
I guess...
Tell me what the issue is with your girlfriend, because as far as I understand it, she's not that into philosophy, right?
No, she's...
The thing about it is that I'm extremely ambivalent about this relationship, because...
She's not really into the philosophy.
She's not really into psychology.
I'm basically slowly talking to her, introducing her to the stuff.
She's not like...
She's kind of, sort of, you know...
When she feels like if she listens to a podcast, this will make him happy.
I mean, that's the way it kind of feels.
It doesn't feel like she's really into it.
So... And I'm...
And so it's like...
I was in...
We had a conversation a while back, and it was about our relationship...
Sorry, you're in the chat room, right?
Could you just either close it or turn off the sound?
Because I can hear the bing of people coming in and out.
Oh, yeah. Okay, hold on more quick.
There's a little sound icon at the bottom.
It's just a bit distracting.
Sorry, go on. All right.
But... It's just, um, I had a conversation with her about, uh, about our relationship and where we were going and,
um, the conflict in between, um, her parents not agreeing with us being together and, um, and us wanting to spend time with each other and, um, And her really getting to know me,
and I was telling her, you know, this psychology and philosophy that I was going over, and me getting a therapist, that this is really, you know, being a major influence in my life, and I mean, this is going to be a part of my life, and I mean, you don't, I'm like, I told her, you don't have to get in, you don't have to, listen, I'm just saying, just think about it.
I was just like, just, you know, I was just asking her to just, and I don't know if this was right or not, but I was just like, for the sake of the relationship, for, I mean, just for me, if you could just please just, you know, just think about listening to it.
Think about, you know, you don't have to, just think about it.
I just kind of felt like, I just felt stagnant.
I felt like our relationship wasn't, it was just like, We weren't really talking about any of the important issues.
And every time I bring up those issues, it's consistently...
It will bring up a conversation where there's sobbing and there's tears.
And I can understand because it's extremely...
Sorry, sobbing and tears about what?
Her having to confront her parents and things like that.
Why does she have to confront her parents?
Well... I'm not saying that she necessarily has to.
It was just that we're interested in moving in together and, you know, being with each other and, I guess, taking the relationship forward and...
And that's like a...
I mean, we might as well be frank about it, right?
Don't hedge. It's kind of a condition for you, right?
Yeah. I mean, tell me if I'm wrong.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I just...
I mean, I don't know, I just...
I just feel like I'm...
floating in some sort of void, just waiting for something to happen, and it...
I guess it's just scaring me to death to wait there.
Right, because the changes that you want to make in your life are dependent upon other people, right?
Particularly upon her, right?
Yeah. Like she has to do X, Y, and Z for you to go to the next stage of living together, right?
Yeah. So you can't actually make that decision other than nag her, right?
Yeah. And there's a fundamental thing I think that's so important in life, which is to not have your freedom dependent on As much as possible.
On things that you can't control.
Because that's not free, right? Yeah.
Like I say, well, I'll be happy if it hails tomorrow.
Well, it's not under my control, right?
Yeah. So if the next thing in your life is dependent upon her becoming interested in things she's not been interested in before and wanting to confront her family, which she clearly doesn't want to do, or maybe she doesn't even have to, then you're stuck, right? Yeah.
Because it's all about, frankly, it's all about changing her, controlling her, right?
Yeah. Does that make sense?
Yeah. So you're stuck, right?
Yeah. And it's like there's only one way forward, and it's by changing this person's mind about something, right?
Yeah. That doesn't make you free, right?
No. I mean, it's...
To me, it's like...
That or have...
Or get a clear, you know, I can't do this.
You know? No, you can't do this.
If by doing this, you mean change your mind.
You can't. Oh, no, no.
I mean, it's... I know that you think I misunderstood, but let me try it again.
Maybe I did, but...
You feel if she's different from who she is, then your ambivalence will be resolved, right?
Something like that. No, I feel like even if she tells me, like, I can't...
Face my parents. And I was like, I'm okay.
I mean, I was like, I can understand that.
It's like, I mean, and I can't, you know, move in with you.
I've come accustomed to this.
And I just, I don't feel like I can, you know, I can't go this far with you.
Or I don't feel like the relationship can go as far.
I can take that.
I can deal with that.
Yeah, but you're asking her to be more decisive than you are.
I mean, you can't do those things, right?
No, you're right. You can't say, look, if you're not willing to deepen your understanding of the world, if you're not interested in self-knowledge, if you're not interested in wisdom, if you're not interested in philosophy and psychology, then I can't spend the next 50 years of my life having shallow conversations about the weather.
Right. I don't know what the speech would be.
I'm probably characterizing unfairly, but you're not doing that.
And you're saying, well, if only she would, right?
You're right. You're right.
Yeah. If she is who she is for the rest of her life, is that enough for you for the next 60 years?
No. See, that's what I mean when I say you're actually not ambivalent, right?
Right. Yeah.
Then why am I hesitating?
Why am I, like, scared?
Because it's hard, right?
It's really hard.
It's really hard to come to those conclusions.
It's the waiting for the bus thing, right?
You spend two hours waiting for the bus, you feel like a total chump for walking, right?
You're like, okay, another two minutes.
It's just, you know, you invest a lot of time and you invest a lot of your heart into someone and you just can't understand why it's like some fucking fantasy that you come up with in your head and they're not even anywhere...
not even going there.
Right, they're not close to what you thought or wanted, right?
Right. Right.
Right. It's really hard. I mean, I really sympathize.
It is a tough...
And how long have you guys been going out?
About three to four years.
Okay. Okay.
And that's hard to look at that and say, well, it's not going to continue, right?
Yeah. And you can stay in this place for another three to four years if you want, and then you'll look back and say, instead of three to four years, six to eight years, right?
Which feels even worse, right?
Right. Right.
Or with children.
Ugh, no. Not gonna happen.
No, no, no, no.
You having sex? Something like that, yeah.
It can happen. Yeah.
I'm not ascribing any motives to her, of course, right?
I'm just saying there's no foolproof birth control except...
You know? Prayer.
Right? Right.
It can happen.
True. True.
I guess it's just hard to toughen up enough to do something like that.
Well, I think that what you're doing is tough.
I don't think toughening up is the right thing.
I mean, I think what you're doing is hard work.
Right? Like trying to carry a load that you don't have to carry.
Relationships are optional, right?
I'm not saying they're easy to end.
I'm not saying it's not difficult, but they're optional.
I mean, this isn't your child, right?
Right. This isn't your parents when you're three.
Those are not optional relationships, right?
Right. But trying to, like, sitting in this tortured place where it's like, oh, I want her to be different, but every time I bring up what I'm interested in, she ends up in tears and sobbing, I mean, and I don't know, and I'm torn, and I'm ambivalent, and ugh, I mean, that seems to me, that's tough, right?
Right, right.
Clean slate is less tough.
Yeah. You know, where you say, okay...
I drove my life into a ditch, right?
Because I remember you posted it.
You feel like your friends are getting ahead.
Your career is not where you want it to be and stuff, right?
Right. So you say, okay, well, I'm this age.
I'm not in the job that I want.
I'm not in the career that I want.
I'm not in the relationship that I want, right?
Right. So pull the trigger, right?
Wipe the slate clean. Yeah.
And say, okay. So through my own...
Problems and through the history that I had with my family and through a variety of things, I took my life like a car and I ran it into the ditch, right?
Yeah. You say, okay, so I'll clean slate and I'm going to design what I want out of life, right?
Because this relationship is...
I mean, look, your girlfriend's a nice girl and all that, but this torture you have about this relationship, I mean, that's why you're working retail.
Yeah. You've got no energy left, right?
Right, right.
Right. Yeah.
I mean, you look at a life without your girlfriend and you say, Well, that's bad, because I'll be lonely, or I've wasted this time, or sunk costs, or it's going to be hard to break up, or, you know, then my friends will think, oh, man, he's working retail, and he's single, right?
Yeah. But, so what you're doing is you're looking at your life as it is, and you're subtracting your girlfriend, right?
And you're saying, well, that's less, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But, that's not true.
That's not how things work.
Yeah. Because if you subtract...
I'm not saying you should break up or not.
I'm just saying that to get your mind clear about it.
If you subtract your girlfriend from the equation and this tortuous relationship, which for as long as I've known you, you've been ambivalent about, right?
Yeah. Your energy gets released.
It's not a subtraction.
It's an addition. And a huge one.
And again, I mean after the transition, the pain and the loss and all, which I totally understand.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. But it's not your life as it is, minus your girlfriend.
It's a different life.
Not because your girlfriend's holding you back or holding you down, but just because your energy is consumed with this, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
You know, taking someone out of your life can be like taking the cork out of a champagne bottle, right?
Definitely. Could be.
Well, it will be insofar as the torture that you're experiencing will diminish over time for sure, right?
Yeah. The loss of freedom that you experience will diminish because you will be able to make choices about your life that are not dependent upon you trying to control someone else, right?
Right. It's another one of the reasons why I hate politics, right?
It's like, what? I've got to convince 150 million people to agree with me in order to be free?
Are you kidding? Right?
And you're like, I have to convince my girlfriend to be interested in what I'm interested in in order to be happy?
Are you kidding? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, you're so unconvinced.
I'm working. Maybe I'm totally off base here and I'm just pointing it out.
No, we talked about this in therapy.
I always sound unconvinced because I have an issue with trust.
And I have an issue with trusting ideas and things like that.
But trust me, it's definitely sinking in.
It is definitely sinking in.
I always give off this...
Sorry, I can't talk now.
I'm carrying the weight of the world on my shoulders.
I really don't have any energy left for you people.
But you need to design your life.
Where do you want to be when you're 35?
Where do you want to be in the next five years?
You need to sit down and figure this stuff out.
Your relationship is a distraction and your mother's letter is a distraction from that basic challenge of who is it that you want to be and what is it that you want your life to stand for.
Yeah. I mean, you're very intelligent.
You're very verbally skilled.
You're very curious. You're very empathetic.
You're fascinated by philosophy.
I mean, so what are you going to do with that big bundle of good stuff?
Yeah. Yeah.
And, you know, working retail and trying to convince your girlfriend to listen to a podcast is not the sum total of your life's potential.
I would hope not.
Right? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
But it is our potential that is the scariest thing to us, right?
I mean, if you didn't have any potential, life would be a whole lot easier, right?
Oh, yeah. You're like, TV? Great!
New fall season! I'm happy, right?
Yeah. Ooh, look, I play pool well.
You know, ooh, I play video game, right?
That's what sustains a lot of people, but that's not you, right?
Right. I mean, philosophy lent over your crib and bitch slapped you just like the rest of us, right?
Like this evil fucking fairy when we were born, right?
So you got the Mark of Cain and that's the life you lead, right?
And so it's the potential, right?
This staying small, right?
This staying in small relationships, staying in small jobs, worrying about little things.
That's the shadow that is cast by our potential, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Because we're attacked for being great, for being noble, for being heroic, for being courageous, for being deep, for being curious, for being wise.
We're attacked, right?
Right, right.
Whenever you ask questions or questioning other people, or any previous existing system and you start challenging it, people just naturally are going to get upset at you because you're challenging the way they run their lives.
Yeah, it's your abstract. I'm talking about your childhood.
That's a great fucking essay question, but I'm talking about your childhood, right?
Your intelligence, your skepticism about religion, right?
Yeah, yeah. Your raw intellectual curiosity, that's what got attacked.
And your skepticism about the virtue of your parents, right?
I mean, I'm sure you got about six million self-justifying, pompous-ass lectures like this one from your mom when you were a kid, right?
Oh, yeah. My dad also did the same thing, and he had a habit of repeating himself, so you get the same lecture in one, twice.
Right, right.
Right. And so what I'm talking about is when you would basically look at your parents and say, bullshit, right?
Yeah. Right?
That's scary because they could beat you up, right?
Right. So that's what I mean by that which is great and perceptive and intelligent and deep and rich within you was attacked because it's an enemy to this shallow bullshit that your parents pull, right?
Right. Right.
Right. I mean, was your mom a Christian when she was younger?
As far as I remember, she was sort of religious, she said, and I think she also, which this explains a lot to me, she eventually was into...
Like, they both had this nice little...
They started out drinking and smoking, and then they decided to come back to Jesus, and...
What was it?
She first went to the Evangelicals and was there for a while and didn't like that.
And then she went to Presbyterians or whatever.
But she stayed with the Evangelicals for quite a while.
And I was like, really? And I didn't learn this until probably 18.
I'm like, that explains almost everything.
Right. Right.
So, I mean, obviously this...
Not me, not anyone can wrap your decisions up for you in a bow and present them to you, right?
Because there wouldn't be meaningless. But I think that you need...
You're in a circular path.
That's the sense I get. You're like a guy running around a two-foot track, right?
Round and round. Same issues, same problems, right?
Which means that you're using these things to distract you from other bigger, greater things, right?
It is the glory of who we are that is the most stressful and scary thing about us.
Not other people getting mad at us.
But it's everything that we can...
It's the banquet we can bring to the table that makes other people so mad.
Because the bigger we get, the smaller they feel.
And I guess, in a sense, sometimes I'm terrified that the potential that I have won't be enough.
And that I will have enough to try, but not enough to do what it is that I want.
Sure. And that is a fear that we all face.
Absolutely. Absolutely.
I mean, I completely hear you.
I totally understand. But there's no alternative to trying.
Because there's no happiness in avoidance, as you can see, right?
Yeah. You throw yourself at life.
Like a crash test dummy through the windshield, right?
I mean, you throw yourself at life and duck and roll when you land, right?
But when you have that kind of energy or that kind of intensity, you throw yourself at life and sometimes you win and sometimes life wins.
But this option of staying out of the fight and fussing with the gloves, it doesn't work, right?
Right. Right. Yeah, no, it just keeps me stagnant, and I just keep going more and more insane because I'm staying stagnant.
Right, and clearly, I think clearly, and again, I say this based on at least having talked with her once, your girlfriend is not heavily invested in your greatness.
No. In fact, I think that she views your questions with anxiety and fear, right?
Yeah, yeah.
She always gets that kind of weary, scare look when I start asking questions and starts to hug me and act like, you know...
Hey, let's have sex! Right, right.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't think about that.
Sorry, I'm just making a note for the next person who makes the FDR mixtape.
Hey, let's have sex! But if she is fearful of your Depth, right, of who you are, of your true self, you'll never get there, right? You can't achieve authenticity in isolation, and you cannot achieve it with people who are not behind you.
If people oppose you, if people are around you who oppose your greatness, or who are skeptical, or who roll their eyes, or who, whatever, right?
You can't do it. You can't do it.
And you can't do it alone.
The reason I say to people, get the bad guys out of your life, is so that they can be great.
Because if you have petty, little, mean...
I'm not putting your girlfriend into this category, but I'm just saying in general.
If you have people who aren't 150% behind making you the best person or supporting you and being the best person you can be, you can't do it.
Yeah. Because we get, right?
We get deep down how our growth will affect them.
And they get it too. Yeah.
Yeah. And they don't want to go there.
They just want to kind of stay in limbo and...
Well, they're afraid.
They're afraid of everyone attacking them for becoming great.
Yeah. Yeah. That's true.
Yeah. You put in that perspective, definitely, yeah.
I mean, she knows exactly.
It's not about listening to podcasts, man, right?
Yeah. It's not about talking with you about psychology.
It's about being attacked by her family.
Yeah. That's exactly what it is.
And she knows that's where it's going to go.
She's a genius just like you, just like everyone.
Yeah. No, you're right.
She's terrified of that.
And you're keeping her small by keeping this pressure on her.
If she's going to do this thing called courage, which is a huge amount of courage that's needed, she can't do it unless you're supportive.
Not if you're like, you know, but I want to talk about it, or you should do this.
I have no idea how your conversations go, but what I am saying is that you have to support that Which is great within her.
That which is powerful.
That which is courageous. You have to lay yourself down like a bridge over troubled water so that she can cross to the greatness that she's capable of.
Now, if she runs in the other direction, you don't drown.
You get up and keep moving, right?
Right. You can't push her in there, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean... If I have, like...
I mean, if I have feelings that the, uh...
I mean, if I get, like, the anxieties and the feelings I get around the relationship, if, you know, say a month goes by and we, you know, and nothing comes up, everything's still the same, I mean, I know this is a stupid question to ask.
I know it's a stupid question to ask, but, and it's a pointless question, but still, it just keeps burning in my head, and so I'm going to ask it.
How long do you wait?
Well, you're in complete control of that.
You can change that tomorrow if you want.
I can give you certainty tomorrow if you want.
That's easy. Technically, it's hard emotionally.
It's easy. And you just say to yourself, nothing will change.
Nothing will change.
That's the three words that save the world.
Because people always look at the government and say, shit, let's give the regulators more power.
Let's vote in Obama. Let's vote in McCain.
Let's do this. No, nothing will change, right, with the government.
Right. They get involved in these cat and mouse games where they're hiding drinks from alcoholics.
Oh, this will change things.
No, nothing will change.
So with your relationship, nothing will change.
Does that mean that our psyches are kind of set?
you No, it means that you can't affect any change.
Nothing will change.
It means... It doesn't mean that your girlfriend will die the same person she was born.
I don't know anything about that.
But it means that nothing will change.
That is the axiom that we have to work with.
Because the moment we try to will change in other people, they just resist us, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So we can't...
Nothing will change. Now, if something changed after I accept that nothing will change, fantastic, right?
But nothing will change has to be the axiom.
That has to be the base operating assumption in a relationship.
Nothing will change. Now, this is blow your mind a little bit time, right?
But with my wife, we were, from the very first date, we were in a process of exploration and curiosity and psychology, right?
Right, right. So it has not changed that things keep changing.
Nothing changes that it keeps changing.
It's the same in that it's always changing, right?
Right, right.
So nothing changes in our relationship.
The change that we had then is the change that we have now.
Yeah. So in your relationship with your girlfriend, right?
Right. Nothing will change.
Nothing, nothing, nothing will change.
Hmm. With your relationship with your mother.
Nothing will change.
Hmm. Hmm.
Well, I mean...
Sorry, you keep thinking, what if it changes, right?
Well, no, it's not what it has changed.
Right now, I'm just kind of...
And I know I don't give this off, but I'm just thinking, you know, that's...
I guess a very...
For me, it's a very profound idea.
That nothing will change? That nothing's going to change.
Yeah, nothing will change. Absolutely.
Nothing will change. And what that means...
It's that you're going to be very unlikely to give up your desire to change her, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Because you know this thing in RTR and talk about you.
You want a car, you go buy a boat, right?
And then you try and change it, right?
Yeah. Well, your girlfriend is who she is.
She's not somebody...
Who, in the three to four years that you've been dating, she's not somebody who is interested in self-knowledge, exploration, philosophy, growth, curiosity, that kind of stuff, right?
Right. She's not.
It's not going to change.
Yeah. It's like trying to make someone love you.
Yeah. And do it. You can't generate a desire in her, right?
Right. It just feels so weird because when you're with them it feels as if the bond is that strong and yet when you sit alone by yourself and you think and you go over the actions and things that are actually going on it's like You're still in the same place you were before.
I'm sorry, I don't know what that means.
The bond is strong, but...
Well, it's like...
If you're...
You spend a whole lot of time with someone, you've been revealing your soul to them, you've been opening up to them, and...
And you're...
I guess you're just... I guess I'm just expecting for...
I was just expecting her to be as curious as I was, and that that was somewhere deep inside of her, and all I had to do was just wait for it to come out.
But you're not waiting. No, because I keep asking her and I keep talking to her about it.
There's no free market in your relationship, right?
Right. You're like this Stalin bureaucrat, right?
You will build a bridge here, right?
Right, right. Fuck the price.
Fuck the free market, right? This was how it's gonna be, right?
Right, right. But no, there's no hidden oppositeness in people that way.
A guy who's indifferent to the ballet doesn't have a secret love of the ballet, right?
Right, right.
Now, it's true, I believe, that Everyone is interested in philosophy, and everybody is interested in self-knowledge, and everybody is interested in psychology.
But she's already done the cost-benefit analysis, and it comes up with philosophy 1, her family, culture, religion, whatever, 10 million, right?
Right. And that's the score for her.
Yeah. And it's not going to change.
Yeah. And the reason it's not going to change is because whenever you try to change it, you don't look very happy, right?
You look kind of bossy.
You look kind of intolerant.
You look kind of dissatisfied, right?
Yeah, I just...
I do look that way because I'm just...
She's in tears, right?
Yeah, I mean, she's usually in tears because she's like, she's usually telling me, like, she just doesn't want to have to face her mother, she doesn't want to be yelled at, she doesn't want to have to deal with her father screaming at her, and she doesn't want, you know... Right, and you don't listen.
Yeah, no, you're right.
She's telling you very clearly, I don't want to do it, I'm not going to do it.
Yeah. Now, you know that the...
very happy and you leave her alone and you stop bossing her and you you just become happy and you improve your career then at some point she may go hey i want some of that right but when you're kind of frustrated and tense and unhappy and ripping open letters from your abusive mother you don't look like the guy who's got all the answers right you're right right So you're like, come join me on bitter nihilist island, right?
It rains acid here and the seagulls all have skulls for heads, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Right. It's not inviting, right?
No. No.
Nagging is the opposite of leadership.
If you want her to want something, then you have to enjoy it first, right?
Otherwise, it's like me taking a bite of some really questionable-looking food and going, man, that tastes like shit.
Here, have some. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. These monkey brains taste exactly like you would expect.
Like monkey brains.
And that's very bad, right?
Right. Right.
But really, if you understand and accept that, nothing's going to change.
You can't will any change.
Nothing is going to change in your relationship.
And I've never had or heard of a relationship where anything has fundamentally changed.
Your parents, same assholes they've always been, right?
Oh yeah. Your mom, same bitch she's always been, right?
Oh yeah, definitely.
My mom, my father, my brother, they're all the same people.
My wife's the same person as the first date.
Our relationship is fundamentally the same.
It doesn't change. You can't change it.
You can't change her one little bit.
It won't change.
And if your relationship is good for you, if you accept that, fantastic.
You know, live and be happy.
If your relationship is not good for you, when you accept that nothing is going to change, then you have to make your decision, right?
You're right. But trying to change it is...
It's like the libertarians trying to change the government.
We'll change this relationship.
You can't. Yeah.
Yeah. You're right.
So that's the way out of the ambivalence.
The ambivalence is thinking, part of you is saying it can't change, and the other part of you is saying, I can change it, right?
You're not sounding quite that gay, but I think you know what I mean.
Probably sounding a whole lot more manly.
But that's the ambivalence, right?
You're fighting yourself. You know deep down you can't change her, and you can't change your relationship, but part of you doesn't want to accept that, so you keep prodding it and poking it, right?
Right. Well, put the stick down, because you can't change it.
Yeah. Definitely need to.
Definitely need to.
I do feel better, though, talking about it.
Actually, putting it into practice is going to be, I guess for the first couple days, slightly nerve-wracking.
No, no. Don't talk to your girlfriend about this.
Don't, okay. No, no.
Because then you're trying to change it, right?
True, true, true.
What you need to do, again, this is just bullshit opinion time, right?
But what you need to do, at least what's worked for me in the past, is stop trying to change her.
Stop trying to say, oh, I had this conversation about how things can't change, so now I'm going to stop trying to change.
But shut up and listen to how you feel about the relationship.
Okay. Right? So, you talk to her about your day, you talk to her, and I'm not saying lie to her.
She says, what are you thinking about?
She says, well, I'm just thinking about, you know, this change thing, and I've been really trying to change it.
But how do you feel in the relationship?
That's where the certainty comes from.
Okay. Right?
But if you go in now with this, okay, I'm not going to change things, and that's how I'm going to change my approach, and that should change, right?
That won't work, right? Okay.
You're right. You're right.
Right on target. Yeah.
No. Because that's your next thing is to go with the big theory, right?
And how things are going to change because you've accepted that things can't change, right?
Yeah. Well, but there's a paradox, right?
Right. Just you need to, you know, calm down, right?
And again, this is not to say you're hysterical.
I just know that this has been a tough week for you and you're upset, right?
But be receptive.
The answers that you need about this relationship are already within you.
You don't need to...
Rack your brain. You don't need to come up with new theories.
You don't need to try new approaches.
The truth about your relationship, your potential, your career is all within you already.
But if you start trying to manage and start listening to yourself, and how do I feel when I'm in this relationship?
Do I feel good? Do I feel positive when she looks at me?
How do I feel? When the phone rings and I see it's her number, how do I feel?
When the door opens and she comes into the house, how do I feel?
When I'm going to be seeing her tomorrow night, how do I feel?
Do I look forward to it? The feelings you have will already tell you and give you all the knowledge that you need to have about your relationship.
Yeah. Yeah.
You relax into this certainty.
You don't go and, you know, bring it down like a jaguar.
Yeah, yeah.
And then that will definitely be a change in character and pace for me.
Yeah, I mean, you are melting your head, right?
That's why you don't have energy left over for your career, right?
Because you're trying to think through everything.
You're not falling into yourself.
You fall into yourself like a hammock.
It's all the certainty you need is already there.
Yeah. Yeah.
You're like a guy looking for his glasses when they're on top of your head, right?
Right. Right. Right.
Yeah. Definitely.
But, I mean, I definitely feel a lot more calm than when we first started talking.
And this has definitely given me mountains of things to think about.
And you sound...
Probably as close as you can at the moment to being convinced.
That's impressive, I'm telling you.
I feel like I can fly now, man.
I'm going to go Larry at the moon.
Well, listen, let me stop here.
You've got some stuff to think about.
I'll give you a copy of this. You can have a listen to it.
Obviously, I think the stuff in here would be really helpful for other people, but you let me know what you think if you have a chance to listen to it.
Okay, definitely. I'll do that.
All right, man. I'm glad we had a chance to chat.
▲
Export Selection