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Dec. 12, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:00:43
1529 A Goat Named 'Sparkles' - A Conversation
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Time Text
Oh, hi. How's it going? Good.
How are you? I'm just fine.
I'm just fine. So, where would you like to begin?
Can you hear me okay? I sure can.
Oh, very good. I'm not used to speaking to you.
I'm just used to hearing your voice.
I've just listened to you forever and ever.
Well, another few minutes, I'm sure it won't hurt then.
Well, no, it probably won't.
I'm excited to be able to talk to you.
Where do I want to start?
Well, I'm looking over the email that I sent you real quickly.
I guess one of the things that I complained about was, if you can call it complaining, was that this philosophy of yours has in some ways made me more angry.
Right. And specifically with my mother, and I feel like I can't communicate with her.
I feel like she blocks every attempt at my communicating with her.
And I feel very frustrated by that, but I don't know how to take it on.
And I don't want to cut her out of my life because it feels unfair.
And that's kind of where I'm at with that.
I don't know what other details you would like.
Well, I think that's an excellent place to start.
I'm just adding that to the warning label for philosophy may cause rage.
Okay. Side effects may include high explosions and rage.
Okay, so...
Well, I don't know that I would call it rage because I don't really get...
Maybe it is...
Frustration, anger. Yeah, I get frustrated.
It's uncomfortable, right? Yeah, yeah.
Right, right. And And I've been anxious for years.
I mean, just this undifferentiated anxiety that I just can't respond to.
Like, I'll sit there and I'll be like, I'm anxious about something and I don't know what it is.
Right, right. And in the past, I've generally dealt with that by eating something.
Right. And so when you say dealt by it, you mean not dealt with it, right?
Okay. Well, yeah, right.
Avoided it by eating something, correct.
Okay, so what's the upside?
You said that you didn't want to not see your mother, right?
And of course that's perfectly valid if you don't want to, but I just want to understand the reasoning.
Because if you say that you can't communicate with her, and I assume you've been trying, and you find the relationship increasingly frustrating, but you said that you didn't want to not see her because you felt that would be unfair, or unjust, was it?
Mm-hmm. And so help me understand that.
Well, the thing that I keep running into in my head is this idea that if my mother's so horrible, how did I become so good?
Like, I'm assuming that I'm good.
Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm a horrible person, too.
But, you know, I mean, I... I'm looking for the objective way to judge that and and in my particular My therapist and I when I was in therapy were working on working with something very close to what you call your Miko system He had a different name for it,
but basically it was he called it the committee Right, right, right and so and so basically it was and I've got committee members that are just really assholes and and Me too, but they're useful assholes.
We have an asshole as well, which is good for getting shit out of our system, so I actually quite like having an asshole, but sorry.
Well, they're mean to me, and I don't know where I was going with that.
Sorry, just to mention, I found that my inner assholes were mean to me Because I was being unjust.
Because I was putting them through hell.
They turned out to be scar tissue from my own history.
And I was putting them through hell by re-exposing them to an abuser.
Which is not to say this is the case with you, but it's just the case with me.
I was re-exposing them to an abuser by being in toxic relationships.
And so they were angry at me because I kept putting their hands into an open flame.
And so they got frustrated and angry at me for not listening to them around getting space from abusers if the relationship could not be reformed.
If the relationship with my mother is abusive, it is the most pernicious, subtle, really hard to see kind of abuse.
Because my mother, if I have said to her, I go, these things that you do drive me crazy.
And she'll just cry and say, I don't know what you're talking about.
You had one podcast where you were talking about mothers, and I laughed out loud at this because you said, oh, don't mind me.
I'll just be here waiting for some oxygen.
You go about your life.
Right, right.
And I was like, oh, that's my mother.
Right, right, right.
And it's really hard to call that abusive.
You know, I mean...
Well, I mean, that may be too strong a term, of course, but it may not be unfair to call it manipulative, right?
Oh, yeah, it's definitely manipulative.
Okay, I'll buy that.
I'll definitely own that word.
And see, I mean, my particular issue with any relationships, right, people are just often shocked because I don't draw the line at this magic circle called the family, but, you know, as a philosopher, I'm sort of into universalizations, so...
My particular approach is, look, I mean, she may never yell at you.
She may never have called you names.
She may never have hit you. She may never have done any of the things which would be emotionally or physically abusive.
But the problem with people who manipulate is they're just kind of unlikable.
And I find that with manipulators, in my experience, is you can't get close to them because all they're doing is shape-shifting into something which is going to get some There's part of me that hears that really strongly.
Okay, so part of the committee hears that really strongly, or the MECO system or whatever word we want to use.
One guy at the table hears that.
Another guy goes, you're incredibly unjust to your mother if you cut her off, and you're an awful son.
And another guy goes, you were a really good son.
In fact, you were a really good kid, and you never got credit for that.
And, you know, I mean, there's like all these competing voices.
And I know that that's normal.
But it's almost disorienting.
Oh, it's not almost.
It is, right? I mean, I would say it's completely disorienting and confusing and frustrating.
And, I mean, I really do sympathize with that.
I really do. And there's no easy way to resolve all of that.
It takes a lot of work.
And there is no cessation to those voices, right?
They're a part of you. Like, some of your...
I mean, some of your ecosystem is inhabited by your mother's needs.
And of course, if she is this way, like if she is manipulative and so on, then it's going to be really tough to eliminate that voice because it's something you've grown up with and perhaps you've grown up with, you know, satisfying your mother's needs or meeting her needs or helping her to avoid her anxiety, right? I mean, you've got this habit of avoiding your anxiety through some sort of...
You did self-medication or self-manipulation like food or maybe other things, but your mother may have done it through...
Control or pity or whatever it is.
All of these things that are used in place of actual value.
To my way of thinking, there's currency in relationships.
Currency is basically virtue.
That's real currency. That's the gold standard, so to speak, of relationships.
But for people who don't want to earn the gold, they will create this monopoly money, this fake currency.
Fiat currency called guilt or obligation or blood is thicker than water and so on.
The only reason that we have these cliches is because people don't want to actually earn love.
I don't have to say to my wife marriage is a sacred covenant and you should always love your husband.
I don't need to say that because she loves me.
I don't need to have this propaganda because I am actually lovable to her.
You know, the love of her life.
And so I don't need to create all of this stuff about how valuable husbands are and how bad people are who don't worship their husbands because she loves me.
I don't need propaganda, right?
because I don't need fiat currency because I have real currency.
So when you say like Well, I don't know.
It's this frustration and I'm not sure.
I mean, I'm telling you.
I'm telling you that if you're in a relationship that is of genuine value to you, you don't have these voices.
I don't have a voice in my head which says, maybe I should find some bimbo stewardess to take off with.
Maybe I should take my ring off, go down to the singles bar and head on over to swing town.
I don't have those voices.
I don't have any doubt about the value and pleasure of my Of my marriage.
I don't have any doubt this is the right woman for me for all time.
I just, I don't have any doubt about that because there's genuine value and love in our relationship.
And you're right about, and what I hear in this is this is the thing that's so irritatingly frustrating for me, is that I'm attracted to this philosophy because of this, what you described, this teeth-gritting happiness that I'm just like, ooh, I gotta get me some of that.
And I'm just like...
And then I'm terrified at the work that I have to do to get there.
And as am I. And continually, right?
I mean, it is a challenge.
It is a huge challenge. And I'm not going to say, well, just do the work.
It's easy. I mean, I'm not going to kid you, right?
As I never do, it's bloody hard work, right?
It's the toughest job you'll ever love, right?
But fundamentally, what it comes down to for me...
In terms of me evaluating the relationships that were in my life during this transition, without history, without obligation, without guilt, without self-attack, without all of this junk that just gums up the works, without all of that stuff, without any of that stuff, what is this relationship worth to me?
I mean, if I met my wife, if I didn't know my wife and I met her tomorrow, I'd want to get to know her, right?
Even if I knew nothing about her because, you know, she's that kind of person.
And so the only way that I know to keep a relationship alive and have it not stagnate and die in this sort of stiffening rigor mortis embrace of history is to say, well, if this person is, if I'm not obligated to this person, then what is my relationship?
If I'm not obligated, if there's no history, if there's just the pleasure of the present, if there's no momentum, From the past, if there's just the pleasure of the present, what is this relationship worth to me?
And, I mean, also, could you imagine, I mean, if you're not married, right?
Is that right? No, I have a boyfriend.
Oh, okay. Fair enough. So I don't even know if you can be married.
Don't tell me where you live. It doesn't matter, right?
So if your boyfriend were to come to you and say, I don't like you as a person, But I feel obligated to stay with you because I would feel like it would be – I'd just be really guilty if I leave, even though I don't really like you and I don't enjoy our time together and I'm always thinking of somewhere else or something else or someone else when we're together.
Right, right. But I feel – I just feel like I have to stay with you because I'll be a bad person if I go and I'll feel guilty and it's like an unjust action.
I mean, how would you feel about that?
I couldn't. Tell him to get out fast enough.
You'd be like you suddenly put your hands in a bowl of maggots, right?
Right. So, it's no respect to your mom to stay out of that sense of obligation and duty.
You know, one of the things that really pushes me with my mother is my desire to rescue her, to bring her with me into this...
Into what I see as genuine joy.
But my mother is...
There's two things that trip me up.
And if I could call anything about the relationship with my mother abusive, it would be the religious stuff.
And... Because my mother, she's Seventh-day Adventist, and she's very religious.
It's a fundamentalist sect.
And... I heard one of your podcasts the other day about where you were...
Where you were talking about how when you were...
Because now when I talk to her, it's like there's no defense.
When I say, well, look at the...
I wish you'd stop going to that church and stop believing those fairy tales and start living a genuine existence.
And there's no answer.
There's no defense to that.
It's like, oh, well, this is my faith and this is what I believe.
But to me, I really get angry.
And this is one of the things that really causes real anger in me.
Sorry.
It's no problem. Go ahead. Or take your time if you like.
It's just that when I was a kid, that was not an option.
To not go. To not go.
Sure. To not go to church and to not believe.
Right. And when I was 14 years old and 15 years old, and crying myself to sleep every night because I was a gay kid who thought I was unacceptable to God...
Well, not just unacceptable, but an abomination unto the Lord.
Yes. And...
I thought that I could never...
Like, you know, my parents taught me this is the way, right?
This is the only way.
And... I didn't feel like there were any other options, and I had to work very hard to discover what those options were in my young adulthood.
I believe that. And there were times where I came very close to self-destruction, and I feel like...
I feel like not giving me the options to be able to say, well, you know, well, wait a minute.
You know, there's a world, the world is...
I had to go out, I had to literally go out and discover for myself that the world was bigger.
It wasn't presented to me as an option.
At what point did your mom, at least to some degree, get that you might be gay or were gay?
My understanding is that it's hormonal, it's genetic, it's certainly not under anyone's control, and the evidence for it, at least to some degree, is there relatively early.
I like listen to recordings of myself when I was a child because my dad made recordings and I have listened to those and I have thought about things from my childhood and I'm like, how could my parents have not known that I was gay?
I mean, was it a complete cliche?
Were you like shrieking and playing with dolls and shunning the boys?
How far down the road was it?
Well, I mean... It wasn't probably that bad, but I did have dolls.
I had a pet goat named Sparkles.
Oh no, really? Did you put rain goats on it?
I must know. No, I didn't.
That would be the clincher.
It was a real goat, though.
It was on my grandfather's farm.
It's not the goat part that would be an indication.
Not troubling. It's the name of the goat.
It's not awesome.
Why did you pick that as an example?
Right.
I can't.
I kind of came out.
I mean, I did come out to my mother.
I wrote her a letter when I was...
How old was I? Uh, probably been 7th grade or 8th grade.
Wow, so you knew pretty early, right?
Oh, I knew, yeah, I knew early.
I can remember being 5th grade, 4th grade, 5th grade, thinking that I might be gay, and then, you know, dismissing that as, you know, not a possibility, like...
I can will myself to, like, the lady parts, right?
Right, right. Well, as scary.
Like, it's just like, oh no, that can't be, because that would make life...
Terribly, terribly, terribly hard in this house.
And did you ever, sorry, did you ever think that if you were gay, it may be because you'd been bad?
Like it would be like a punishment?
Like God has made me gay to punish me for something?
No, probably the...
No, the feelings there would be like God has given me this as a challenge to overcome.
He singled me out there.
I'm a lucky bastard, right?
Right, right. God won't give you anything you can't handle, even sodomy.
Right. So, no, I mean, there's cliches like that in the religion.
Like, God won't give you anything you can't handle, or, you know, and then you're...
13, 14, 15.
I mean, literally, my mother sat by my bedside.
I cried myself to sleep, and this woman never once asked me what was wrong.
Or even if she did ask me what was wrong, I didn't have the words to tell her.
They sent me to therapy then, and the first therapist I went to was completely useless, a religious therapist.
You can't tell anything to these people.
And then the second one I had was...
Was not religious that I could tell, but I was a little older, about 15.
And beforehand, my mother, like I sat out in the waiting room, my mother went in and talked to this therapist.
And I knew exactly what was going on.
She was setting him up saying, these are the things you can't tell my son.
And if my son reports X, Y, and Z to you, You know, you're to tell me.
And so I never felt comfortable talking to the guy.
It was just like, it was all...
You know what I mean?
Oh, totally, yeah. And of course, I mean, one of the challenges with therapy for children is that, I mean, it's the parents who are paying.
And the parents who can get really angry if you were to reveal particular pieces of information or to even explore things from a psychological standpoint, right?
So if your child from religious parents goes into therapy, does the therapist explore...
The faith as a psychological phenomenon.
Well, if the therapist does, then the parents are going to get really angry.
And as you say, there's nothing wrong with homosexuality, because then you say, well, God says this, and then what does the therapist say?
Well, that's nonsense. I mean, it's horrible to, I can imagine, what do I know, I'm just an amateur, but I can imagine it would be completely horrible to try to do effective therapy to the children of, you know, religious or otherwise dysfunctional Or superstitious parents.
Everywhere that effective therapy would lead would be a repudiation of the parent's ideology, right?
And that's...
Right. I mean, you can get into a lot of trouble as a therapist, right?
That way, I mean, they can launch complaints against you.
I mean, it can be...
The cost-benefit is really not worth it.
Right, right. And as a child, meanwhile, you're hanging out there suffering.
And I know that, you know, I'm not blaming the therapist for anything, because I'm sure...
That he had no, you know, no way to handle that.
But, I mean, sorry, you're very generous, right?
And maybe you're right, but he was still the adult, and he was taking the money.
And he had a responsibility to help you with this.
And if he couldn't help you, he had the responsibility, I think, to say, I'm not comfortable treating the children differently.
Of religious parents and so I'm very sorry but I'm not going to be able to.
My beliefs are very different from your parents and I just don't think I can be an effective therapist in this situation so perhaps that would have been I think a responsible thing but if he took the money to treat you and then didn't deal with the issues that to me is not good.
Well, he may have been religious as well, for all I know.
So that's also an issue.
I don't know.
I mean, it was so long ago.
Right, right. Yeah, I'm just saying I wouldn't necessarily just immediately say, or maybe it's not immediately, but say, he's completely innocent.
I mean, it may be, it may not be, but I would listen to the committee about that, right?
Because children are very perceptive and they can get things very quickly.
And I'm sure that they may, and I'm not saying focus on this guy.
I'm just saying that this is a general pattern.
Rather than coming to judgment conclusions, I think it's better to explore this stuff.
And the reason I say that is that if you had complete closure, it would be very unlikely that this would come up in this conversation.
Because that which we have closure about doesn't really generally come up, at least very often.
It's just a suggestion.
And I say this, of course, with reference to your mother as well.
But it's just a good habit to remain open to being...
To questioning, looking at the ambivalence we may have about things in our history rather than saying, well, there's just no way he was totally fine or whatever.
I don't think I understood that.
If we had complete closure, we'd what now?
Say that again? Well, if we have closure on something, then it generally doesn't come up when we're talking about our problems.
Mm-hmm. Right.
So, for instance, I mean, to take a medical example, right?
So, if I twisted, I mean, I twisted my ankle when I was 16.
I was running through the woods and I tripped and I twisted my ankle.
And so, when I go to my doctor now and, you know, I say, I don't know, I've got a boo-boo, right?
Then I don't say, and my ankle, and I sprained my ankle when I was 16.
Because that's irrelevant, because it's healed, right?
It's done. I'm done with it, right?
Mm-hmm. Whereas, of course, if I had sprained my ankle when I was 16 and it still hurt, then it would be something I would bring up with my doctor because it had not healed.
So the stuff that is healed, we really have closure.
We're done with it. It's part of our past.
We understand it. At least there's a law of diminishing returns against future examination or further examination.
That doesn't come up if we have closure with something.
I was sent to therapy.
My mother primed the therapist, possibly threatened the therapist, at least implicitly, and basically gave a very clear communication to me that I wasn't to talk about certain stuff.
There's a lot in that, I think, that's worth examining.
Because that's not good.
Because what it does is it puts you in a situation where the only path to healing is honesty.
But honesty is, in our practical senses, impossible.
And what that does is it places the burden of additional dysfunction on who?
It places the burden of additional dysfunction on...
on me.
Right. We sent you to a therapist.
The only thing that can heal you is complete honesty.
And yet your mother has primed the situation so that honesty is functionally impossible, which means that you can't get better, but then your parents can say, but we sent you to therapy.
And so if there's additional problems, you know, like, you're overweight, we sent you to a nutritionist who gave you a full diet plan.
If you didn't follow that, you know, we did everything we could.
That's a common... We did everything we could is common.
I hear that commonly from my mother when I've been critical of things.
And I've tried to...
You know RTR? I do, in fact.
Let's break a bell. I've heard of it.
Wait, let me just look it up. What is that?
Well, hit the Wikipedia article.
Right, real-time ratcheting, something like that.
Anyway. Well...
When you're applying it, or rather, when I'm applying it, I find that I can get the first two sentences in this RTR frame of mind, and then I'm gone.
Like, I'm off into something else.
Like, I would have to, like, I don't know, have a team of wild Clydesdales to drag me back to RTR every time.
You know, does that make sense?
Sorry, what do you mean you're gone? I mean, you're not gone, right?
I mean, you're still there. But what happens is, I would guess, you run up against some resistance or avoidance on the part of whoever it is that you're talking to.
Right, and I don't know how to handle it.
Well, sure you do. No, I mean, it'd be annoying, right, as always.
But you absolutely do.
You just don't like what's going to happen when you handle it in an honest way.
Right? There's no question that you know what to do, because you're a very intelligent fellow, I can certainly tell that, and your verbal skills are very strong.
And your understanding of philosophy, I assume, is very deep at the moment, right?
You've listened to a lot of stuff. You've read a lot of stuff.
So you know exactly what to do, right?
Which is to say, I feel this great pressure to not talk about this.
I feel anxiety.
I feel fear. I feel like I really want to just drop this topic like a hot potato and I don't know why.
I mean, so when you start down RTR and then you hit resistance, you're honest about the resistance.
You're honest about your feelings, the feelings that come up in the face of that resistance, right?
This is not a revelation to you, right?
No, it upsets me that you're right.
That really should be the tagline of Freemain Radio.
It upsets me that you're right.
I mean, this is just the virtue of honesty.
This has nothing to do with RTR fundamentally, because RTR is simply about honesty.
And it's just, you know, the word honesty is taken to invent a new one.
But so you know what to do.
But I would, you know, I would say that you stop...
That next step where you're honest about feeling uncomfortable about honesty because you don't...
A, you know where that's going to lead and how quickly it's going to lead there and B, you don't want to go there.
Or, to be more accurate, your mother doesn't want you to go there.
We know that honesty in relationships is a benefit.
We know that. And we also know This has nothing to do with me.
This is just something we all know.
We know that honesty is a benefit, a huge benefit in relationships.
We also fundamentally know that without honesty there is no relationship.
Because then we're just shadow puppets playing games, right?
Like we're in that platonic cave where we're just looking at the shadows of things on a wall, not at each other.
We're just looking at empty, dumbass manipulations, right?
And so, when we avoid honesty, Though we know it's incredibly essential that it really is the definition of a relationship, that if you're just fencing with empty words, an avoidance is not a relationship.
When we avoid it, that which is really good for us and that which we desperately desire, it's because the other person desperately does not desire.
That's to be honest. Right?
What I would get from my mother immediately would be some kind of victim stance and And do you want to take it for a spin?
I mean, do you want to try a role play, or do you want to just talk about it in the way that we're doing?
I mean, I'm easy either way, of course.
I just need your mind.
Yeah. We'll keep going.
I mean, it's totally fine.
We can keep going talking about it this way, but...
I might be open to that.
Yeah, I might be open to that in a little bit.
I just want to get this thought out.
She would immediately take a victim's...
Well, I'll give an example. The last time I talked to her was on Thanksgiving, and I called her.
And every conversation that I've had with her has been painful because it's just been like I'm trying to get her...
What it is is I'm begging her to be honest with me.
And I feel like I can't get her to be...
Genuine with me, but at the same time, I feel like I love her.
Sorry, at the same time?
At the same time, I feel like I love her.
And I know what you're saying.
You're saying that that's not love.
Sorry, what's not love?
Let's start again, because I just got a little, I fell a little into the holes between the thoughts, if that's all right.
That's all right. Okay, so you would start to be honest, your mother would give a victim stance, and you would feel this very strong desire to have her be honest with you.
Right, and well, what it is, is that I get anxious, because in my head, I want the conversation to go a particular way.
And I feel like it never goes that way.
And would it be more, sorry, if you want her to be honest, then that's not a direction, in a sense.
Like, wanting it to go a particular way is, I want her to say X, Y, and Z. But if you just want her to be honest, that's not the same as wanting to control the relationship.
It's wanting her to not control the relationship by being dishonest.
Right, right. But sorry, go on.
Well, I was talking to her, and she...
I had asked her what her plans were for Thanksgiving.
And she had named some people that she was going to have over.
And I didn't know who these people are.
And I go, are these people you know from church or whatever?
And she said, yeah. And I said, well, that sounds absolutely awful.
I can't think of anything that I would rather do on my Thanksgiving than sit around with a bunch of Adventists not eating turkey.
Because they're not meat eaters.
They don't eat meat.
So it's like... You know, I'm just like, I can't think of anything that I would rather not do.
So, you know, I have to work anyway, so it doesn't, you know, it doesn't matter.
But I just, you know, I called, you know, because I was thinking about you.
And then we got into this conversation about her father, who there's this tension between us because I absolutely refuse to be in the same room with him.
And... And they're still married, I assume?
No, her father.
I'm sorry, your father. I'm so sorry.
I'm sorry. You said your father. Please go on.
No, my father's deceased.
And he is, like, as religious as my mother is, he's, like, ten times more so.
Right. As if you could be.
I mean, he's, like, so heavenly-minded.
He's no earthly good. This one goes up to eleven, right?
Yeah, right. And...
My mother has told me he was indirectly responsible for her mother's death.
She said that he beat her stepsister when they were children.
Early on, she told me that he beat her brother when they were children.
And, you know, she said that, like, my aunt says that he would beat her and then would, like, force her to sit on his lap and beat her.
And then she could tell that he would become aroused by that.
And it was just like this insanity.
And upon hearing those stories, I said, well, you know, You know, I listen to your podcast and it was very easy for me to cut relationships with my grandfather because I didn't really have any.
It was just like, I'm done.
And so what I keep, what pulls me with my, and the reason I tell you this is what pulls me with my mother is I'm trying to get her to cut relationships with him because if she doesn't, I'm going to have to cut with her.
And I don't want to do that, but I keep him like, I'm like, look, you know, and I made her I didn't make her, but she cried when I said to her, look, either you're hanging out with this evil bastard or you lied to me about what happened and you're evil, right? So either he's evil or you're evil.
And she cried and she said, well, I might not have remembered it correctly.
You know, it doesn't make me evil if I made a mistake.
And I'm like, you know, I'm just like, I don't buy any of that, you know, because...
I've had other family members corroborate some of the stuff.
And, you know, to me it's like, really?
Really? And I cry when I think about it because I think about a podcast where you said, if we...
You know, she's holding this guy's hand.
You know, they're going to move...
Him and her stepmother, his wife, are going to move into the house where she lives.
And... Sorry, her father is moving in with your mother?
My mother, right.
And she's going to take care of them in their old age.
Right. And to me, it's like, so, you know, this is about that thing about permission for every single fucking asshole in the world to continue abusing children.
Right. And I feel that so acutely, and I feel like she doesn't feel it at all.
Right. Right.
And do you know if this guy has been around any other kids in the family, in the extended family?
Not that I'm aware of.
I mean, I think that...
Are you all gay? There must be some kids around somewhere.
Got no breeders in the whole clan?
No, no, there are, there are.
But I mean, I don't, I mean, I haven't been around.
I haven't been around the family.
Like, I've avoided... It's likely, but you don't know, right?
Yeah, yeah, I have no idea.
Because, you know, I just don't want to see it.
I mean, I know that he was around a cousin of mine that my mother had, a young girl that my mother had at the house for some time.
And I happened to be living with my mother at that time.
It was right after my father died.
I'd moved back from where I was.
I moved back to my mother's from where I was at because when my father was sick, And, uh, uh, she was watching this child and it was just like watching her do the crazy religious things with this kid just fucking set me off.
I couldn't be there anymore.
I was just like, okay, you know, well, I'm done.
Like, she would come down the hall and be like, she's, she's not going to sleep.
She's in there masturbating.
I can't have that. And she's just freaked out about this.
And I'm like, well, just fucking leave her alone.
You know, it's... None of your fucking business!
Certainly, Christianity and sexual dysfunction go hand in hand, for sure.
At least, it seems that's very common.
But sorry, go on. Well, no, that's the entire story.
I don't know where I was going.
I need the philosophization to direct me.
Well, I mean, you can do whatever you want, right?
And you say, well, I have to break with my mother.
I have to. You don't, right?
You can spend the rest of your mother's life going over every day for tea if you want.
You can hang out with her, with her grandfather.
You can do anything that you want.
That's the fundamental thing.
Philosophy is not about... I can't think of anything more dreadful than that.
Like, I would rather...
I literally would rather shove...
An ice pick under a toenail or two, then go do that.
I mean, I would just be like, no, because that'll be over quicker.
Right, right. That's the gay man's vanity, of course.
What kind of damage in my body that won't be visible?
That's not my fingernails.
Anyway, okay, so...
Vanities are so goddamn expensive.
Okay, yeah, like I'm one to talk about vanity.
But anyway, okay, so...
So the question then, I think, fundamentally becomes, what is the positive nature of your relationship with your mother?
And what you've told me seems to be that there isn't one, right?
You differ in religiosity.
You differ in terms of taking moral standards with regards to her father.
You differ in terms of honesty and integrity and intimacy and openness and connection and, right, the list.
I'm sure it could go on and on, right?
That there are fundamentally opposing values, which is not to say two values, but value and non-value, right?
So if you continue to see her, I mean, this is assuming that things can't be fixed.
And I personally, if I were you, I would go back and try the RTR stuff and just, you know, grip my teeth, put on the bobsled helmet and just ride it through to the end, right?
Just continue to be Honest, in touch with myself, excavate, communicate, connect, and all of that.
I would do that. You're doing it until you absolutely don't want to do it anymore, I recall you saying.
Yeah, or you have that breakthrough, you get that connection, and you can reforge the relationship.
One of the others. I don't consider the latter particularly likely, but what the hell do I know?
I don't know your family.
This is just my experience of people I've talked to in my own experience.
I listen to you say this.
I mean, this is just a tangential thought that pops into my head.
I can't believe for one minute that somebody could ever say about RTR or about Free Domain Radio that your counsel, your advice is, break from your family and never see them again.
Because you just said, run into the arms of your family and keep talking to them until you get it through your head that it's either salvageable or it's not.
Well, and I wouldn't even say salvageable, because that indicates that there was a ship that floated that sank that you can get.
But you can either make a relationship out of something that has not been intimate For most people throughout their entire history, you can either bring honesty to the relationship for the first time or you can't, right?
And the reason, I mean, I'm an empiricist, right?
So I'm not going to say, if people say blood is thicker than water, and if people say blood is thicker than water and family is everything, then surely family relationships should be for parents or others more important than ideology or religiosity or whatever, right?
I mean, it should be, if family relations are what people say they are, Then when you say we have this difference of opinion in terms of ideology, then people should put that ideology to one side and connect with people at an emotional level.
But empirically what seems to happen 99 times out of 100 is that people cling to their ideology and reject family.
So it turns out that family is not that big a value for parents.
It's just not.
I mean if your children Can't get through to you when they're really with therapy and begging for intimacy and displaying it and recommending books and free books.
If children are really that important, as everybody says, then parents should want to connect.
But it seems that that's not the case most times, right?
So it's just an empirical fact.
But no, I know this is a nonsense thing that's said, but that's just for reasons we don't have to get into here.
It's pretty obvious why people would say that.
But But yeah, so I would go back and communicate, communicate, but fundamentally I think the important thing to remember is that history does not have innate value.
Being born to somebody does not have innate value.
Somebody playing the guilt card or playing the weeping card or making you feel bad for being honest in a relationship with him or her It does not bring value.
I would say quite the contrary.
And here's the thing, right?
I mean, this is going to sound silly, but it's an example of...
So let's say you buy an iPod, right?
And the iPod doesn't work, right?
And so you bring the iPod back to the store, and you say, because you guys have a guarantee, right?
You say, I want to exchange or return this iPod.
And the guy bursts into tears and he says, I'm really stressed today.
I can't believe that you're doing this to me.
I'm having trouble with my payroll.
Some of my suppliers are late.
I'm so hurt and upset that you're bringing this iPod back.
I can't believe you're doing this to me.
Well, what would you do?
What would you say? I would say, well, you did it by selling a faulty iPod.
I'm not doing anything to you.
Yeah, but you wouldn't say, oh, I'm so sorry, right?
Let me go back and stare at this dead iPod and not upset you anymore.
No, I wouldn't say that.
Right, and of course the iPod is honest.
Well, actually, I might say that, and then I might just, like, never shop there again.
Right, but you wouldn't go back, right?
I mean, you wouldn't sort of go back every day and keep trying to give this dead iPod when the guy bursts into tears and, you know, whatever, right?
No. It wouldn't be a repetition compulsion for you.
No. And so the iPod is honesty, right?
Right. And this is the weird thing.
You know, when you think about it, and you probably can't think about it that clearly right now, not because you're not smart enough, which you obviously are, but just because you're in the middle of this and can't see it from the outside, but why would we have higher standards of integrity for some random stranger who sold us a gizmo than for our flesh and blood who raised us and Who have been close to our hearts for decades.
Why would we have a higher standards of honesty and integrity for some anonymous guy behind a counter than we would for people who are in our lives and supposedly extremely close with us?
It's a really good question.
Surely the highest standards of integrity and honesty and openness Should be proportional, like our standards should be proportional to the intimacy that we claim in our relationships.
We shouldn't be the opposite, that the people we have no intimacy with, we have higher standards of integrity.
So if you take the iPod back and the guy starts crying because he's having a bad day, you'd say, hey, I'm sorry you're having a bad day, but this is irrelevant to the equation.
And I feel upset and manipulated.
Especially if another customer came in and this guy's tears magically dried and he was fine, right?
Right. And what that means is that if we then comply with those around us who are manipulating us and they suddenly get all better, then we feel kind of jerked around, right?
So, how do I reconcile?
Like, if I go to my mother...
Oh, God, it's so fucking foggy.
If I go to my mother, you know, you say foggy cage all the time, but it's exactly the way it is.
There's no, like, place to find purchase.
It's like trying to climb a rock face where the rocks appear and disappear.
Sorry, but that's because you're focusing on the wrong thing.
And I will say this very, very directly to you.
Because a number of times during this conversation, my friend, you have talked about I desperately want my mother to do this.
I need my mother to do that.
She should do this. She should do that.
Right? But that's nonsense, right?
Right. She can't make her do anything.
There's no shoulds. There were shoulds.
You can't conceivably make her be honest.
It's completely and totally impossible.
And the more you try, the less likely it is to occur.
The only way...
It's like my mirror trying to make me pop a pimple, right?
The only way that my mirror can make me pop a pimple is to show me that I have a pimple.
Then it's up to me, right?
But my mirror has no arms.
It has no... Sorry for such a disgusting metaphor, but it's the one that popped into my head, so to speak.
And not because I had a pimple this morning, but just because I was a teenager.
But... But my mirror has no...
I work in medicine. I've seen worse.
I'm sure you have, right? And that's always a great compliment to someone's appearance.
I work in medicine. I've seen worse.
Thank you. I'm sorry.
I am an EMT. I've seen worse.
So you can't will her or make her do anything.
The only thing that you can do is be honest yourself and see if she responds.
And see if she responds.
Not be honest in order to make her respond.
Right, right, right. So you're focusing on what is the effect of my honesty going to be?
What is the lock that is going to open?
What is the key that is going to open this lock?
And you've got this huge keychain of things which you're trying and it keeps not working and you're like, oh, this is so frustrating.
Oh, this is alright. Throw away the fucking keychain.
Right. It's not your job to pick the lock of your mother's heart.
It's your job to open your heart to her.
Right. And see what happens.
Now, I believe that you know what's going to happen, which is why you're fussing with all these keys that you know are never going to fit.
But you can't... I mean, you can focus on changing her behavior if you want.
And I can stare at a rain cloud and try and turn it into a goat named Sparkles.
But it's just not going to work, right?
I'm just wasting my mental sweat.
You can't change her behavior.
You can't alter what she's going to say.
You can't manipulate her into being honest.
That is a contradiction.
You can't manipulate someone into being honest with you.
You can only bring a big steaming smoking slab of honesty, whap it down on the table and see who picks up a fork.
And either, either I get honesty in return or, uh, I learn that there's no point in opening myself up because I just get hurt.
Yeah, and there's a process, right?
It's as many times as you need to, as long as you just keep digging into that honesty, which is going to help things in your relationship with your boyfriend.
If you can be honest to people in your life that you have a history of not being honest with, and I don't mind just being punished for honesty, right?
Avoiding. I mean, it's fundamentally not about your past, but about your future, right?
Once you've gone through that, it's going to be great.
Much, much easier to be honest with other people in your life.
And it's also going to be easier to avoid getting entangled with people in your future who aren't honest, right?
Because you'll see them that much more quickly.
At the moment, it's probably a little harder to see them because they're obscured by mom, right?
But it's just go back, be honest.
Don't worry about what she's going to do.
I mean, of course you will, right?
But that's not your focus.
It's not to figure out, well, I've got to find some way that she's going to want to be honest with me.
Well, that's taking...
The cue of manipulation to produce honesty, which is like trying to go north to get south.
It's just the complete opposite of what will work.
The only way to bring honesty to a relationship is to be honest yourself and see how people react.
And that you can do.
That's not foggy, right?
Because that's focusing on stuff that is completely under your control.
Am I going to speak honestly about what is in my heart and mind?
That is under your control.
How are other people going to react?
What are they going to do? What are they going to say?
Not under your control at all.
So what are the moral excuses then if she, like, maybe I'm asking the wrong question, but this is the, one of the committee members says this, what are the moral excuses if she says, I'm sorry, you know, I didn't know you felt that way, you know, I love you, and I go, okay, so, you know, why the religious abuse?
No, no, no, no, no, no.
See, then you're getting into a debate.
Right. Right. Right.
feel when she says, I had no idea you felt this way.
Right.
Right.
How do you feel?
And I'm not asking you that now, though I can imagine that it would probably be kind of a frustrating thing to hear.
How do you feel when your mother says, I love you?
How do you feel when she says, I had no idea, I did everything?
You simply tell her how you feel and what you think in the moment.
We always want to get into an abstract debate with people we have these fundamental emotional conflicts with.
But it goes nowhere.
I was watching a Dr. Phil the other day, and...
He's been, it's crazy.
He's been working with his family for like six years.
It's an embarrassment to the profession.
They're completely messed up.
And this is after six years of investment from Dr.
Phil. And the daughter is like crazy and she's been abused by her husband she was married to for two months.
She's had two kids out of wedlock.
She's got no job. I mean, it's just a complete mess.
And the mom says, she says to her mom, I don't feel like you love me.
And the mom says, but I do love you.
And then they get into a debate about, well, but you did this, which indicated that you didn't love me.
And then she says, well, I did this, which indicates that I do love you.
It gets into this nonsense abstract thing, and it doesn't get anywhere.
Because facts can always be debated.
Yeah, facts, interpretations, you said this, I meant that, but this happened, but then this person said this.
Just is nonsense. It's like just lawyers tiring themselves out in an empty courtroom.
It does nothing. Right.
And because Dr. Phil, because of his own issues, I would imagine, just lets it go on and on.
It doesn't interrupt. To say, look, if she believes that you don't love her and then you tell her that you do, you realize you're kind of calling her crazy, right?
And saying that she's just not able to accept your love because of her own problems.
That is not a loving action.
So when you are doing a not a loving action, to say to someone that you love them, that's not healthy.
That's kind of crazy making. So let's rewind and try this again.
Okay. I'm lost.
Well, sorry, what I'm trying to say is that if she then says, I had no idea you felt this way, I'm going to guess that that's going to be a very frustrating thing to hear.
Yeah, because there's a fundamental lie there.
There is a fundamental lie, and so if it makes you feel angry and frustrated, then you say...
I feel angry and frustrated.
Right. And I'm not sure exactly why.
Right. Unless you absolutely know why, in which case you might...
Right. And then see what she does with that.
Does she ask you about it?
Does she say, well, tell me more about that?
Tell me what happened?
When did you feel that? How long have you felt this?
Does she ask you any questions about your feelings?
Or does she just say, I'm so sorry to hear that?
And then move on. And if she moves on, then you say, now I feel anxious and a little depressed that you just kind of moved on, or I felt like we moved on without addressing that I feel angry and frustrated.
And see what happens with that.
Just continue to tell her what your experience is of the conversation in real time, as honestly as you can.
ignoring or trying to avoid the temptation to debate.
I've always been very good at debate, so that's going to be a hard...
Absolutely, and she may want to pull you into a debate.
Right, right, right. Because a debate is just empty fencing, right?
You don't actually touch each other.
And I know exactly from what you speak, because when I'm dealing with patients that are, for lack of a better word, crazy...
The way to deal with these patients is to not dance with them.
Like, they want you to dance with their crazy.
But, you know, you just constantly stay on topic and do your assessment and meet their needs as you do with your protocol and then, you know, get them out the door rather than be drawn into their Am I making sense?
Yeah, it does.
I mean, obviously this is different because you're trying to get a connection.
You're trying to reach across what you experience as a void.
So this is a little bit different because with the hospital, you can get these people out.
It's different, of course, right? Because you're ambivalent about this stuff with your mom.
But absolutely, don't engage in the abstracts.
Continue to talk about your thoughts and your feelings in the moment.
I don't know if you listen. I did a role play with a guy who had a particularly ferocious father.
Recently, which might be of use to you, not because your mom is, you know, obviously exactly like this, or even approximately, but it might be useful.
It is... Let me just have a look here.
FDR 1513, Negotiations of Roleplay.
1513, okay.
Yeah, you might want to have a listen to that.
I'm not saying this is analogous, but I tried to give a roleplay of RTR in a parental conversation that might be of use to you.
I'll give it a listen. But yeah, don't settle for less than honesty.
It does huge harm.
I mean, you can, obviously, do whatever you want, but my suggestion is don't.
It does huge harm, right?
I mean, at what point is your boyfriend going to get bored of this, right?
I work very hard in that relationship to maintain honesty.
Like, it's this important thing to me.
And I mean, I guess I work...
I try to work hard in every relationship to do that.
But... I mean, I really...
Since the beginning of...
Since we started going out, I've, you know, I have been just relentless with that.
And he, you know, and he knows...
He knows what to expect when, you know, when I go into that.
So it's like... It seems to work out pretty good.
I've been impressed as to how I can feel a fight coming on and then just pull out the RTR and, well, I feel anxious about this.
And he'll stop and we'll think it over and it works.
I mean, it does work. Right.
And I would say you can use your relationship I mean, in a good way to help you with this, right?
Sit down with your boyfriend. Maybe do some role plays with him.
I'm sure he's probably met your mom, right?
He has some idea what she's like, even if he hasn't, from your reporting.
Do some role plays. Get some preparation.
Have him really support you in going to speak honestly with your mom.
Because I think, I mean, the more...
You just don't want to go through this alone.
And I know you're not alone, but I just would really enroll him into this process.
You know, that I'm just...
I'm going to grit my teeth and just be really open and honest with my mom and see what happens.
And have him help you prepare and have him go through the pluses and the minuses.
And I think it can really be an intimate thing, which I think is good.
And then you're going in with the invisible support network, which I think is really helpful.
I think he needs to have the same conversation with his mother as well.
And I know you're going to go shocking.
Well, no, because if he didn't need to have that conversation with his mom, then this would already have happened with you, right?
Right. He would have already done this with you.
But this is one of the reasons why it's hard to support other people who are doing things that, you know, the one fat twin decides to lose weight, the other one has some ambivalence about it, right?
Right, right, right.
Ah. My daughter is beginning to stir, and I should bungee down and do some casual parenting.
But I also think that we've talked about this to the point where I think there's nothing preventing you from action other than preparation, if that makes sense.
No, I agree. I think that we've come to conclusion on this.
And how was the conversation for you?
Was it useful? Was it helpful?
Was it what you were looking for? It was helpful.
Yeah. No, it was good.
It's given me a lot to think about, and I'll have to listen to it again and go forward.
Like, this is what everybody says, right?
I have to listen to it again and go forward.
Totally. Yeah, there's no rush, right?
I mean, it's not, like, imminent, but it should be on the list, I think.
Mm-hmm. Well, very good.
Well, thank you. Thank you for your time, and I appreciate it.
You're welcome. Thanks for listening, and best of luck with the convo, and if you do get a chance, let me know how it goes.
Oh, I definitely will.
Thanks, man. All right.
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