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May 12, 2010 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:28:59
1662 The Effects of Divorce - A Listener Conversation

The effects of the catastrophe that is so rarely talked about.

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Alright, so this is a conversation about divorce, and with your permission, I will just start with a few statistics about kids in divorce.
It is something that is quite shocking when you realize it.
It is something that...
Now, let's just do it.
Half of all American children will witness the breakup of a parent's marriage.
Of these, close to half will also see the breakup...
Of a parent's second marriage.
Among the millions of children who have seen their parents divorce, one out of every ten will also have to live through three or more parental marriage breakups.
So 10% of kids live through three or more parental marriage breakups.
40% of children growing up in America today are being raised without their fathers.
That statistic is 13 years old and I think it's even worse now.
Of all the children born to married parents this year, 50% will experience the divorce of their parents before they reach their 18th year.
Studies in the early 1980s showed that children in repeat divorces earned lower grades and their peers rated them as less pleasant to be around.
Teenagers in single-parent families and in blended families are three times more likely to need psychological help within any given year.
Compared to children from homes disrupted by death, children from divorced homes have more psychological problems.
The death of a parent is less devastating to a child than a divorce.
That's from 1988, so this stuff has been around for a while.
Children of divorce are at greater risk to experience injury, asthma, headaches, and speech defects than children whose parents have remained married.
Following divorce, children are 50% more likely to develop health problems than two-parent families.
Children living with both biological parents are 20-35% more physically healthy than children from broken homes.
Most victims of child molestation come from single parent households or are the children of drug ring members.
So this is the two highest correlations.
Children in a female headed home.
A child in a female headed home is ten times more likely to be beaten or murdered.
The long-term effects are pretty chilling.
A study of children six years after a parental marriage breakup revealed that even after all that time, these children tended to be, quote, lonely, unhappy, anxious, and insecure.
70% of long-term prison inmates grew up in broken homes.
Children of divorce are four times more likely to report problems with peers and friends than children whose parents have kept their marriages intact.
Children of divorce, particularly boys, tend to be more aggressive towards others than those children whose parents did not divorce.
Children, sorry, people who come from broken homes are almost twice as likely to attempt suicide than those who do not come from broken homes.
Children of divorced parents are roughly two times more likely to drop out of high school than their peers who benefit from living with parents who did not divorce.
So there's more that you can go into, but I just sort of wanted to point out.
We touched on this topic recently in a show, and I wanted to go a little bit more into it.
And I think it is a very important thing.
It is very, very toxic for children to go through a divorce.
And I, of course, have lots of thoughts about it.
My own parents, of course, went through a brutal divorce.
Not that I can remember it. I was too young.
But I'm sure it had an enormous effect on my brother.
But I just wanted to give some of that statistical background before we got into your story.
So if you'd like to go ahead, I think that would be great.
Well, the statistics are scary because I fit into a lot of those categories, unfortunately.
So kind of my story is when I was eight, my biological parents divorced after being married for eight years, a little over eight years.
I don't remember much of it.
I remember a few tidbits of it.
I remember the day when I got off the bus and saw my mom on the other side of the street, which was odd because the bus stop was right behind her house.
With her car, we got in the car.
I remember just dropping, basically stopping right there and crying because I pretty much knew it was going to happen.
I remember a few things afterwards, but I don't remember a lot of the details, the specifics.
There's some stories that I've been told.
Looking back on them, they're told, and my parents love them.
I don't necessarily care for them.
And then my mom – both my parents remarried within two years.
My mom remarried a – my dad was in the National Guard as a helicopter pilot.
He flew with my now stepfather and that's how my mom met my stepfather was through my dad.
And then, so within two years, both were remarried.
My dad is still married to my stepmother, his current wife.
My mom has since divorced.
About the time, within a month or two, separated from my stepdad.
Within a month or two of my wedding, got separated.
And then she remarried a couple years after that.
I'm sorry, you said within a month or two of your wedding?
Within a month or two of my wedding.
Okay, sorry. I just wanted to make sure I got that.
Okay, go ahead. Yeah, and my mom wound up moving in the apartment four doors down from where me and my wife wound up living, which was very awkward.
My stepdad, I kept in touch with him.
I still sort of keep in touch with him.
How I met my wife is actually because of my stepdad.
It's my best friend. My wife's father is my stepfather's best friend from years and years and years ago.
So if there's anything good to come out of the divorce, it's I met my wife.
But there's been a lot of things lately that have kind of pointed me in directions to look into You know, different things in my history and listening to a lot of things and then listening to the show that you referenced where the person talked about divorce or divorce got brought up.
It got me thinking, like, how much of an impact has this really had on my life?
And, you know, I'm a little scared about tonight just for the simple fact.
I've talked about many of these things not at all at once and not, you know, in a confined space more or less, you know, within a confined period of time.
It's been, you know, you talk to this person about one topic, this person about another.
But it feels right to talk about it.
Recently it came up, I wound up talking with my daughter about it and she, you know, asked me, and this is on the forum, she asked me a question about, she said, how did it make you feel when your parents got divorced?
And my eyes started welling up and I, you know, and I answered her and I told her, you know, I was sad and I was scared and angry and I, um, And then after thinking about it, I thanked her for asking me that because she's the first person in my whole life that I can remember that's actually asked me how I felt about it.
And that is what's been the scariest for me, is I've never really thought about this, and no one's taken the time to ask me about it.
And I don't know the impact it's had on my life.
I have some things that it might be, but I know getting married was very difficult.
I was eerie about getting married in some respects because, well, all marriages that I've seen have either not been happy marriages or have failed.
My dad and stepmom, they don't have a happy marriage.
So my parental units don't have happy marriages or have failed and my wife's parents are divorced as well.
That's always been in the back of my mind.
Are we going to fail as a couple and what can I do to not fail?
Everything I've tried up until finding Free Domain Radio has not really helped much.
Free Domain Radio has really helped those involved listening to your podcast.
And it's scary to think that just the impacts that it's having on my life that it's being – no, we're not divorced.
But what effects of my parents' multiple divorces are affecting my children because of the way I do things?
It's just – it's kind of – There's some more points of the story.
One that I think that's interesting, we moved into an apartment with my mom when we left my dad, or when she left my dad and we went with her.
There's a dream I had at some point in that six-month or eight-month span, and I still to this day, that dream is very vivid in my mind.
It had that much of an impact on me.
And then before my parents – and I'm sorry to be jumping around.
Like I said, I haven't really thought about a lot of this.
I tried to gather a lot of my thoughts and it still didn't come out clearly even typing them out.
I remember before my biological parents got divorced, waking up in the middle of the night to my parents fighting, yelling and screaming in their bedroom.
You know, pitch black, midnight, whatever time.
I have no clue what time it was, but I remember hearing that.
And I remember being scared, sitting in my room scared with my parents yelling at each other and it's dark.
And, you know, one other thing, this is something that I can't believe my mom said.
And after her second divorce, I was up in her apartment and I remember I was upset.
I was crying and trying to talk to her about things.
She looked at me stone-faced and said, this divorce doesn't affect you.
Oh. And I said to her, sorry, what do you think she meant by that in her own mind?
I think she wanted to wash it away, in a sense.
She didn't want it to affect her, and she thought it was just between her and my stepfather, and I was already married at the time.
And I don't think she wanted it to affect her.
Sorry, to affect? Your mom didn't want it to affect herself?
Correct. I don't think she wanted it to affect her life.
I mean, her actions, at least from my mind, clearly said that.
She joined, there was a local group, Parents Without Partners.
And she, you know, she would go out on that a lot.
She has her 13-year-old son at home.
At the apartment that she would leave, I'd walk by to take the trash out to the apartment.
I'd see him sitting on the computer.
On a Tuesday night, because she was out partying with her friends.
And how old was he? He was 13 at the time.
Right. And you had a caller on another show.
I don't know what show it was.
Someone who had a younger brother that he was scared for who had diabetes from the time they were seven.
And that show affected me as well because, well, my brother who was 13 who was home alone on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, whatever, has diabetes and was never taught how to properly take care of his blood sugar.
Right. Still to this day.
And he's had other issues too.
So the more I look at things, I thought I had a pretty good childhood.
And the more I look at things, things were just screwy.
And I look back at this divorce and I deferred my biological parents' divorce, my mom and dad.
I think that has had such a significant impact in my life.
And I don't know all the ways.
And it's... One other place that it might have had an impact is I'm on my ninth job.
Now I can kind of get away with that in my field.
I'm in computer programming, so I can kind of get away with that a little bit.
It was kind of what was done.
But why can't I stay at a job for more than two or three, four years?
And, you know, I was thinking tonight, I'm like, how much of an impact is that?
You know, kind of what you were talking about to the other gentleman on the Sunday show about he was reenacting some of the secrecy of his parents.
And how much of am I with the separation type stuff that I have repeatedly done?
How much is that is from the divorce?
You know, I don't know. It's just a theory.
I, you know, something I need to investigate as to why I do that.
That's. The other story my dad loves to tell is how much—how proud he is of me that I took so much care of my sister, who is about four years younger than me.
So I was eight. She was four when my parents got divorced.
How well I took care of her when they got divorced.
And now looking back on it, I'm like, well, you're proud of me because you weren't doing your job and somebody was.
I haven't had much communication with my dad recently, so I haven't talked to him about that.
But it's stuff like that that I look back now and say, what the hell happened?
What happened and why and how and how did it affect me?
But I did take your advice from that Sunday show.
I emailed, and I'm going to follow up with a phone call in about a week if I don't hear anything, to ask my parents why they got divorced.
I have my suspicions, but I'd rather hear it directly from them.
I emailed them Monday, still don't have a response.
I actually don't even expect a response from them.
Right. So that's my story.
But, you know, at least you asked, right?
And you can ask again.
Yep. Yep. And I think I know why my mom divorced.
I have talked to my mom a little bit about stuff and I think I know why she divorced both my dad and my stepdad and will eventually probably end up divorcing her current husband.
They're all exactly like her father.
The current one just happens to be a little more passive about it, passive aggressive about it, but they're all exactly like her father.
She's at least admitted that to me.
Right. So that's my story that I can remember.
Just looking over my thoughts here.
I'm happy to ask questions.
I have some thoughts based on my own experience as the kid of divorce appearance, which may be useful to you or you can keep chatting.
It's entirely up to you, whatever you think would be the most useful.
That's kind of my whole story at this point as I remember it.
So either thoughts or questions would definitely be useful.
Right. Well, I'll do a little bit of a ramble, a short ramble, and then you can tell me if it matches your thoughts or experience or where it diverges.
There's no truth in any of this.
It's just my experience and what I've thought of as working through these issues around divorce.
I tell you, the biggest thing that happened to me Coming from a broken home, coming from a single-parent home, was that my mother, who was the one who stayed, right? My mother had so little credibility for me because of the divorce.
It hollowed out for me the respect that I could have for my mom and for my dad.
So, for instance, if my brother and I would have a conflict, could my mother legitimately say, you should work out your conflicts peacefully?
She'd been divorced!
And it was an ugly and nasty, and again, I don't have any conscious memory of it, but that's certainly what I've learned since.
Can they say, Cher, be nice?
Can they, you know, could my mother or my father, for that matter, give me any moral instruction on how to live when they had busted up the family so badly as a result of their own dysfunction?
And to me, the most mournful and sad and long-lasting effect of divorce was the loss of respect for my parents.
And when you lose respect for your parents, things go kind of badly.
Because how are they going to get you to do the right thing, so to speak, if you don't respect them?
Well, they get frustrated, they get angry, they get overbearing.
Certainly in my family, things got violent, things got abusive.
And my mother would constantly bewail the lack of respect that she got from her kids.
And you see this with single moms.
It's a cliche.
It's a staple. But there's truth, right?
Things become cliched for a reason.
There's truth in it. That she was, you know, you don't listen, you don't respect me, blah, blah, blah.
I remember one of the things she continually would bring up to the point of it being like a bee in your brain, that once we were staying at my aunt and uncle's place on my father's side, And my uncle, who was an ex-bomber pilot, my uncle said to my brother, you left the toothpaste cap off the toothpaste tube upstairs.
And my brother, you know, jumped out of his chair, ran up the stairs, and we were, I don't know, we were very young, single digits for sure.
And this stuck in my mother's brain for years, for years, for years, for years.
And she would continually...
Bring it up with my brother when he would be disobedient or he would be disrespectful towards her.
She would say, ah, you know, when you were at such and such a place, this guy said, you know, you left the toothpaste cap off the toothpaste and you ran up the stairs, you flew up the stairs to do what he said.
With the implication that he was unjustly withholding his...
Respect for her.
That he owed her respect and she wasn't getting it and that was bad because he gave respect to other people.
Sort of like if I owe you money and I don't pay you but I pay someone else, it's like, hey, why aren't I getting paid?
And so what I found just so awful was the loss of respect.
I think that every child desperately, desperately, desperately wants to respect his parents, to respect her parents.
Because the alternative is...
Aggression, right? In terms of obedience, right?
And I found that to be just crippling.
That I just, I could not respect them.
I could not listen to them about how to live because divorce is a catastrophe.
Divorce is a catastrophe.
The health effects...
I mean, we just talked about the health effects for the kids.
The health effects for the parents are unbelievably bad.
I mean, depression and suicidality and alcoholism and drug use and, you know, negative health effects, heart disease.
You know, in many ways, you're better off staying...
I mean, it's about the same as getting...
Staying happily married and being a pack-a-day smoker is about the same as getting divorced and quitting smoking in terms of the long-term health effects.
Divorce... Divorce is a catastrophe!
And to go from love to animosity and sometimes to hatred, as happens in many divorces, certainly did with my parents, is such a catastrophe for a family.
And, I mean, the other thing that happened to me with divorce was I really got that my mom and my dad could go from love to hate.
And that's really scary for a kid.
It's like, well, what if you want to divorce me?
What if I'm annoying? What if I upset you too much in the way that dad did or mom did?
Am I just going to be divorced, so to speak?
So there was a huge amount that just went wrong.
There was never any honesty about the catastrophe that had occurred to the family.
There was never any sitting down to say, we have really messed up bad.
You know, there was never talking us through it.
There was never any offer of help or therapy or anything from no one, from no one would talk about it.
You say that your daughter, and I thought it was a beautiful story that you posted, that your daughter asked you how you felt about your parents' divorce.
I thought that was just wonderful and magnificent.
And as I said in the thread, and I'll say here for those who haven't read the thread that you were talking about it, and your eight-year-old daughter asked you how you felt, I think that's a beautiful thing, and I think that you should be enormously proud of how close you are with your daughter and how open your daughter is, which doesn't come about by chance or by accident.
That's, I think, significant.
It's part of your parenting and you should be enormously proud that she had the openness and the intimacy and the lack of fear to ask that simple question.
Because we all know it's not an easy question to ask.
If it was an easy question to ask, you wouldn't have gone through your whole life without anybody asking it.
So nobody talked about it.
Nobody talked about this massive disaster that had atomized the family, atomized my respect for my parents, It caused huge behavioral problems, particularly in my brother.
I mean, it was just a massive wall of silence, a massive wall of evasion and denial, as it always is, with these matters in this toxically secretive society that we live in, where nobody talks about any goddamn thing except sports, politics, and the weather.
Nobody talks about anything real.
And so from that, right, from the catastrophe of my own family, which had terrible effects on my respect for authority, it then radiated outwards, like the proverbial ripples in the pool.
It radiated outwards.
Because nobody would talk about it.
Nobody would talk about what happened to my family.
Nobody would ask me how I was doing.
So this massive catastrophe that flattened my family, it detonated my family, Nobody would talk about it.
So the lack of respect that I had for my parents radiated outwards to other people, to everybody else, even those who had intact families, the parents, right, the adults.
Because this huge meteor hit my house, and nobody asked how I was doing.
Nobody wanted to know. Nobody wanted to bring it up.
It just became something you just don't talk about.
Or maybe they talked about it between themselves, but there was never any hand-reached-down-to-help-me process.
This catastrophe, this huge catastrophe.
It is unbelievably destructive to children.
Divorce is unbelievably destructive to adults, but it is unbelievably destructive to children.
If there was something that was in the food or the air or the water that produced the negative health effects on children that divorce did, there would be a revolution.
There literally would be a revolution.
If there was something in the water that produced 50% more health problems than certain kids, there would be a revolution.
But because it's divorce, it's not focused on.
It's not talked about. And so it didn't just smash my respect and participation for and with my parents, but it radiated outwards to society as a whole.
And so I'm quite passionate about the subject of divorce.
And in fact, I mean, I just think about this today instead of preparation for this call.
It was about maybe 13 or 14 years ago, this couple, they divorced.
I don't remember if they had kids.
I honestly can't.
I think they might have had one child, but I can't for the life of me remember it.
And I really wasn't rude, but I was very firm with them.
And I said, well, that's really catastrophic.
And they were like, what?
You know, hey, you know, we tried to work it out.
We did our best with this, with that, with the other, right?
You know, hey, you know, it happens.
But sometimes it just doesn't work out.
And I said, no, this is a huge and catastrophic failure on your part.
Like, I'm not saying, I don't know your marriage.
I don't know, maybe you were strangling each other or whatever.
Maybe it was better for you to part.
But it's a huge catastrophe for your family.
And, like, the whole dinner table was, like, shocked at this.
Like, I was bringing up something like, you can't talk about that!
Are you crazy? You can't bring that up.
Because we have to have this live and let live thing.
You know, hey, people, sometimes it just doesn't work out.
People try their best, and this and that and the other.
It's like, no! That is not the reality of divorce.
It is not a live and let live proposition.
Not when there are kids involved.
But everybody was shocked that I would bring up that this was a catastrophe in their lives.
Now, if somebody had said, I have cancer, and I'd said, oh my god, that is a real catastrophe, everybody would have said, thank you for your sympathy.
Yes, it is. Now, if somebody had been a lifelong smoker and said, I got lung cancer, I would say, that's terrible, my god, how awful.
Even if they brought it on themselves, they'd say, well, thank you for your sympathy, right?
But divorce is as catastrophic as minor forms of cancer for people's health.
And so when I say, well, that's catastrophic to something that is damaging to them and damaging to their kid, everybody's like, well, you can't talk about that!
I really bloody well can!
And should. And should.
And should. It is a disaster.
And I'm not saying they should get back together.
I don't know what the hell their marriage was like.
I mean, but at least recognize that it's a disaster so that you can get your kids the proper help.
At least recognize that it's a disaster that you need to apologize to your kids for, that you need to reassure your kids about, that you need to take ownership for, and recognize that you have diminished moral authority if you fuck up a marriage.
If you fuck up a marriage to the point where you split with kids and take the 10-40% income hit and massive costs, $20,000, $50,000, $70,000 for lawyers, fights, mediating parties sometimes, drop-off points, kids having to have two different homes, weird two different sets of friends.
If you fuck up your marriage and you fuck up your children's lives to that degree, at least recognize that it's a catastrophe and that you've lost a huge amount of moral authority.
What bothers me about divorce...
It's that people think, oh, well, we just get divorced, and now we continue.
As if, you know, well, we just have two different houses.
No. That is the least of it.
That is the least of it. But people won't focus on the catastrophic elements of it.
And maybe if they did, A, they'd be more picky about who they got married to, and B, maybe they'd work it out in their marriage.
Maybe they wouldn't be. As I, you know, and I obviously can't speak for any marriage in particular, and certainly not for all marriages in general, but...
You know, fuck. Suck it up.
Work it out. Deal with it.
I mean, especially after you've had kids.
Like, oh my god.
I mean, you're a dad. I'm a dad.
You know it's not about you anymore.
It's not about you anymore.
Your life's choices are not about you anymore.
I mean, do you think I want to run around?
Do you think if I didn't have a baby, I'd be running around in a mall like Frankenstein with my arms outstretched in a half-crouch for three hours at a time?
Of course not. Of course not.
Do you think I'd keep my eyes peeled for ceiling fans because my daughter loves them so that I can bump her up?
Do you think I'd be chasing...
I wouldn't be carrying a 25-pound sack of flour around a mall to show it a bird that was flying inside the mall because she loves birds.
I mean, it's all about the happiness, security and trust of your kid.
And that's where your authority, if that's what you would call it, comes from.
But everybody wants to get divorced and they just keep all that authority.
But they've clearly said...
There's a selfishness in divorce.
There is a selfishness in divorce.
There is a selfishness which says, I'm not going to bend, I'm not going to break, I'm not going to do whatever it takes.
And I'm not talking about all divorce.
I don't know. I'm just talking about the majority that I've seen and heard about and talked about with people.
And there's a lack of ownership.
Things just didn't work out.
There's a lack of ownership in divorce.
I fucked up badly, and I hurt myself, I hurt my partner, and I've really hurt my kids.
And it is a disaster.
It is a disaster.
Imagine how angry parents would be if there was some toy from China that produced the negative health effects.
I mean, they would invade China, right?
My mom's comment that this divorce doesn't affect you, she wasn't willing to admit that it affected anybody.
Right. I mean, I don't even know if that's a question or an order that she gave you.
Yeah. It was a statement.
It wasn't a question.
But that's the selfishness that I'm talking about, right?
That is the selfishness that leads to divorce and also leads to that kind of statement.
Like, it's not your goddamn mom's decision about whether it affects you.
That's not her call.
No, and she didn't...
Even want to acknowledge the fact that it did.
This was towards the end of everything when we were talking and I'm sitting there crying and trying to talk to her about it because it was the second divorce where I really lost the respect for her.
And I was an adult.
I was just married. Well, it's the one where I remember losing the respect for her.
You know, I kind of got a sinking feeling when you were talking about the loss of respect.
My parents didn't turn to violence.
You know, there was no more violence than what was previous to that.
You know, whatever spankings were there were the same.
That didn't change.
What did change was the...
Obviously, punishment was involved.
My mom... There was always contention between my mom and my stepdad about who was going to punish the kids.
And there was contention between my mom and my dad about who was going to punish the kids.
And this is where I guess I didn't respect my mom after the first divorce because she wouldn't punish us.
She would not let my stepdad punish us, although he did.
She said she wouldn't let him.
And I could get whatever I wanted from her.
That was my acting out at that time was, you know, I can pretty much get whatever I want from my mom.
My sister took a different path with her acting out.
And but it wasn't it didn't turn to violence, but it was who was who was going to punish the kids, which I guess in and of itself is a form of violence.
The other thing when you were talking that came to mind is I remember admiring sometime, I believe, in the 80s.
I think it was in California. A kid divorced his parents.
When you were talking about kids being worried, are their parents going to divorce them?
And I think I remember admiring that guy because it was like, it can be done.
He stood up to his parents.
And I remember following that a little bit to try and understand that.
And the other thing that came to mind was, this is after the second divorce, and I'm sure it's after the first divorce, but no one was willing to talk about it.
Family members took sides.
You know, people on my mom's side of the family talked very poorly about my stepfather, who I openly said, I like the guy.
I stole him in touch with him.
And they had no problem talking bad about him.
And then there was, that was my, one aunt was the most vocal.
Her husband still liked the guy, my stepdad, but he never said anything.
And it was just all this, just, it was mass confusion.
And, you know, and I think They didn't want to talk about it.
Something else that came to mind too is my mom's one of five children.
Four of the five are divorced or probably all divorced now.
Some are maybe still separated.
My dad's one of three, all of which are divorced and some are on their second marriages.
I don't want to say it's in the family, but it's accepted within the families to get divorced.
I think it was my grandmother before she passed away.
My mom's mom said, something along the lines of, have you prepared for divorce?
You never would know what's going to happen.
I was a couple of years into my marriage and I'm like, no, why?
That's a horrible thing. And she's like, well, you never know what's going to happen.
And the more I think about this and just look at everything, the horrible things that have been done and said, I'm dumbfounded at this point.
Right. I mean, I think people who don't have a good relationship, they think that it's somehow up to chance.
You never know what's going to happen.
It's like, no, you really do.
You really do know what's going to happen.
When you're with someone that you really love...
It's not an accident. You really do know what's going to happen.
Anyway. I think that's important because I'm in control.
I'm not in control of the relationship with my wife, but I have a lot of input into where it goes and how it works.
And you ask her how she's doing.
Is she enjoying her? Is there anything you can do better?
Is it right? Yeah. We were talking about it tonight.
As I've talked about before, and I'm sure I'll talk about again, and I'm sorry for all my cussing, but the fucking pizza place down the road from me sends me a comments card every time I order a goddamn slice of pizza.
They want my feedback, and it's just a slice of pizza for two bucks.
Of course I'm going to solicit feedback from the people in my life that I care about.
Because they should be at least as important to me as a slice of pizza.
That's my general theory about that.
I've taken that from you wholeheartedly.
So primarily with my wife and kids and I ask them and I get feedback that's sometimes hard to swallow.
But you know what?
When you look at it and change what they don't like or what's bothering them and I go back and ask later and they're ecstatic and they want to talk more about it.
What else can we work on?
How else can we...
It's amazing.
And why people wouldn't do it is...
I don't know. I'm kind of looking.
Well, it's because it's hard, right?
It's hard to get negative feedback, of course, of course, right?
But, you know, we're not children, right?
We know that we're not perfect, right?
But here's the thing about divorce that I also wanted to – I just mentioned this.
I'm not going to give you a long speech, shockingly, but I just mentioned this and I really want to get your thoughts on it.
What I always felt about divorce that was so problematic was that there were higher standards applied to children than to adults.
That is something that's always turned my stomach.
It actually makes me pretty angry.
When adults have higher standards of behavior for children than for adults.
So, for instance, my mom or my dad would say, you're being selfish.
You're not sharing.
You're not being nice.
But they go back to snarling at each other on the phone, right?
And so it's like you, my son, as a 4 or 5 or 6 or 7-year-old, have these high standards of civil behavior.
But we, as 35 or 40-year-old adults, we can behave however we want.
And it was that kind of hypocrisy that I found was such an underminer of respect for me with my parents, and that's a direct result.
And to me, it would have been like if they said, well, we got divorced because we couldn't work things out, and sometimes you just end up hating someone, and you can just do stuff that's best for you in the moment or best for you, and you don't have to worry about how other people feel.
Hey, if that was a universal standard, I'm fine with that.
But they didn't let me have the same standard as That they had for themselves.
I was held to a much higher standard as a kid, as a little kid, than they ever held themselves up to.
And that I found particularly egregious.
And I don't know if that fits with your experience at all, but I just wanted to sort of throw that one out there.
No, I... Yes, the story that came to mind is...
There was one time, and this was a couple years after my mom had gotten remarried.
We were with my dad, and this is before the day and age of cell phones.
And my dad was late bringing us home.
And they were all up in arms, my mom and my stepdad, when we actually got there.
He had moved about an hour and a half from our house.
So it was about an hour and a half to get home.
And we were late, and I remember my mom being upset, my stepdad.
I remember going up into my bedroom.
My bedroom, the window looked out of the front of the house.
Next thing I know, my dad's sitting in the car.
My stepdad's got his hands in the car and they're throwing punches at each other.
This is around the only time that I ever was in a fistfight at school.
I'm sorry, I just missed who was throwing punches at who?
I believe it was my stepdad throwing him at my dad, but both sets of arms were moving.
So your stepdad was physically fighting with your dad, or at least that's what it seemed to be.
Yes. And this is, yeah, this is the only year I, this is about the same time, the only fight I ever got in school.
Um, and you know, I know, well, I, I know when I was a kid, you know, don't fight with your friends, don't fight with your sister, don't fight with your brother, none of that stuff.
Um, but the worst of it is I remember coming out of my bedroom after it happened, my stepdad had come in, he's sitting, I could come out of my bedroom and kind of overlook the living room.
It was a pretty small house.
And, um, I remember sitting, looking down there, and he's drinking a can of Budwiser.
And I remember thinking, that's OB. He's sitting there hitting my dad, and now he's sitting down there drinking a beer calmly?
And he's telling—and it makes sense now why—I think it makes sense.
He was doing what I'm told not to do, or what I would get in trouble for doing.
So that hypocrisy I think is very evident.
And now my stepdad, this was his third marriage, fourth marriage?
I don't know. So I think that hypocrisy rings very true because I was not allowed to do what they did.
There were times, it wasn't until we were about 15, me and my sister, until we really had a choice whether we should go to my dad's for the every other weekend visit or not.
And it wasn't like, you know, it wasn't, it took until then for my mom to actually say, no, you know, yeah, okay, if you don't want to go, don't go.
And I'm like, but I don't enjoy myself, you know, and you brought up the two sets of friends, two houses.
You know, I'm like, I want to hang out with my friends here.
You know, 12, 13, 14, you start to really, you know, you have friends that you go hang out with without the parents.
And I vividly remember them saying, you know, no, you have to go.
And I'm like, and it was, okay, you didn't go, why do I have to go type thing?
You know, and I said my sister, you know, so my sister did things at an earlier age than me, but that's because I paved the way, that whole story.
She had actually turned to drugs for many years, unknowingly to my parents.
My sister. Your sister, I'm sorry, go on.
No, my sister had turned to drugs for a number of years in her mid-teens or so, more than I've ever contemplated doing.
And, you know, parents didn't know.
You know, she started doing the whole music that, you know, she knew would really upset them and the dark eyeliner and all that stuff, hiding it, putting it on her way to school.
Yeah. I think that there's a direct effect there that she didn't like my stepdad and I don't know if it was because of him or it was because of the whole divorce or why.
I don't know the reasons.
And then my brother who I mentioned had diabetes, he wound up after the divorce, got a DUI for marijuana.
He stopped doing that and started drinking Robitussin.
The cough syrup? Yes.
You can get a high off of it if you drink enough.
Well, I'm sorry. First, it was some prescription pills, the antidepressants.
And then it went to Robitussin.
And he's been in a couple of places, therapy places and whatnot.
And he... Which is doubly bad for him because it's loaded with sugar as well and if he's a diabetic.
I think it's just him saying, you know what?
I don't care. You never worked with me on how to take care of my blood sugar and I'm just going to abuse my body.
I know people his exact age right now.
He's 24 now, I think.
Yeah, 24. I know people that are his age that Have done more with their life in the last two years than he's done in his whole life.
He just has no desire.
And about my mom being a pushover, she kicks him out of the house.
He still lives with her. She kicks him out of the house and you've got to go find a place to live because I don't like what you're doing.
Two weeks later, he's back.
I don't know what effect this has had on my mom.
I think a lot of this is from her childhood.
Talking to her about what she's been willing to talk to me about her childhood, she was pretty fearful her whole childhood of her dad and her mom's threats of her dad coming home.
And, you know, so I don't know where all this comes from.
And I've asked some and I get some answers.
I'll never know the exact whole truth.
But, you know, the my My mom got married very young, probably to get out of her house and married someone exactly like her father, which is the reason she was trying to get out of her house.
And lately what's been scaring me is I've turned out a lot – I have a lot of the same tendencies as my father.
And he learned – well, I know where they learned.
I know where my dad and his brothers and sister learned divorce.
His parents have been separated at least twice.
So that's, I guess, where they learned it.
What are the tendencies that you feel similar with your dad?
My dad was an officer in the military, and still was my stepdad.
So a lot of stuff was very drill instructor, you know, get up in the morning, make your bed, do this, do this, you can't sleep in, can't do this.
I want to be able to bounce a quarter off this mattress.
That was actually my stepmom.
She was an officer in the Air Force.
But yes... There's all that.
And I don't have the drill instructor mentality, but I have the loud, boisterous voice that'll come out.
And that's a lot of what prompted the whole discussion with my daughter, believe it or not, is after I was apologizing for that episode, we got to talking about the divorce.
And just kind of the way I treat people too.
I don't always treat them in the kindest, gentlest way.
So that's kind of where some of those things that I realized, and literally this was like last Thursday, starting to look at some of the stuff with my dad and journal about what it is and what it all means and how it hit me.
I'm like, there's a lot of aspects of me that are like my dad that I don't like.
But I think a lot of it's trying to just earn his respect and earn his whole thing.
I honestly think the reason I'm in computers is to earn his respect.
And the degree I got in college was to earn his respect.
And I've never had it.
And I realized I'm never going to get it.
And unfortunately, that's the way it is.
So those are the kind of things that – and I'm fearful that – I don't want my kids to have to be fearful that they're trying to chase things to earn my respect when they've done so much already to earn my respect.
And so that's why I'm – That's some of the things about my dad that scare me is just the mostly verbal abuse, the tendencies to just not be a nice person in general.
I know we don't have to be nice to everybody and everything's voluntary, but if you love somebody, Being nice to them is kind of a good thing.
It is a good thing.
Right now, he's not nice to my stepmother.
It's true that everything is voluntary, but everything has consequences, right?
Correct. And you want to stay close to your kids.
You want to have an open heart.
You want them to have feedback.
I mean, obviously, for you as a family man and as a father, but it's also in accordance with the philosophy that you're interested in a voluntarism and libertarianism or anarchy or whatever, wherever it is that you've ended up on the political spectrum.
You definitely don't want your kids to grow up afraid of authority because that works against what it is that you're trying to achieve from a philosophical standpoint.
I mean, that's not that important relative to your family stuff, but it's not unimportant.
I find it's very important.
The less authoritative, the least dictatorial that I am with my kids, the more happy they are to be around me.
Of course. And it's better parenting.
You'll have a lot more fun as a parent if you don't use the argument from authority, which isn't an argument at all.
I mean, it may give you very short-term benefits to In a sense, bully your kids or threaten to withdraw or whatever, right?
It may give you very short-term benefits in terms of resolving a particular dispute, but any time you use psychological or physical muscle with your kids, all you're doing is you're setting yourself up for future unhappiness as a parent.
And that's been completely clear to me from day one, and that's why I just have never raised my voice.
I mean, never, of course, no physical intimidation, no threats, I don't withdraw affection.
I mean, none of those things occur because I just know that I really want to have a great relationship with my daughter as she grows up.
I want her to want to spend time with me.
And there's just no way – you can't have that with intimidation or the threat of withdrawal of affection, even as a bare minimum.
You just can't have those two things in the same place.
Well, kind of further proof of that, so I asked my daughter yesterday, I've taken her to her ballet recital practice, and we were talking a little bit more about the divorce stuff, and I said, Georgianne, real quick before we continue, are you okay talking about this?
Do you enjoy talking about it?
Do you want to talk about it? Yeah.
And her response, I believe, you know, is perfect for this.
She said, yes, I want to know this stuff because I want to learn what others have done so I learn better how to parent my children.
Oh, man.
And she's eight, right?
She'll be eight in August, yeah.
She's seven. I mean, I got to tell you, kids, man, oh, man.
Man, oh, man. You know, in a generation or two, people will be...
Beyond shocked at how little respect kids were given, given how much amazing stuff they can bring to the table.
Well, she was...
Both me and my wife have issues, and she was a little scared to talk to my wife about something.
So we got to talking, and we're going to talk about it this weekend.
It was right before bed, so we didn't want to do it then.
But we were talking, and...
She, they came, her and my son came up with the idea, yeah, we're going to talk about this stuff, we're going to start talking about more and more, and we're going to change the world.
That was their bright idea of the day, and I'm like, right on, let's go.
Yeah, look, it only took me about 35 years to come up with that one, so I'm almost as smart as a little kid, that's beautiful.
What was it, Jeff Foxworthy's show, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?
Yeah, yeah, boy, I wish sometimes, right?
Yeah, so, you know, I'm trying to, you know, I don't understand what all the effects of the divorce are on me, but I think I'm having success not passing them on to my kids, and it's not simply by staying together with my wife.
I think there's more to it than that.
You there? Yeah, go on.
Oh, okay. I thought I heard someone talking.
So, Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Do you have any suggestions on how to figure out the effects of the divorce?
Well, I mean, it's a big question.
I can give you – I can't give you anything that will work for you, obviously, because we're different people.
But I can tell you some of the stuff that worked for me.
Okay. That was great.
I have. I was just saying this to my wife the other day.
She's a nicer person than I am, and I think that's great.
I mean, I'm very happy with myself, and I think I'm a very good person, but I have some jagged edges, to say the least.
And I think a lot of people do.
But they're a lot smoother than they used to be, believe it or not.
But I was angry.
I was angry. I was angry about...
Divorce. There's a joke I remember from that I heard when I was very young.
Everything in my life that has stuck with me is something, it's like a little dream.
It's something to be explored and to be understood.
And the joke was this.
So one kid's sitting next to another kid and he turns to him and he says, my dad could totally beat up your dad.
And the other kid says, really?
How much would that cost me?
And I thought that was just a great joke.
And it really stuck with me. And then I thought, well, geez, why the hell is this joke sticking with me?
And you hear 10,000 jokes a day when you're a kid.
Why is this one joke stuck with me?
Well, because I'm angry at my dad.
Right? Because the idea of paying someone to beat him up has stuck with me.
And so for me, I was angry.
I was angry at the selfishness.
I was angry at the pettiness.
I was angry at the immaturity.
I was angry at the game-playing.
I was angry at these giant infants who were raising me.
And I wasn't just angry because they were giant infants.
I was angry because they understood virtue and morality enough to lecture me on it That rings true for me.
I remember...
I don't remember how old I was.
It was probably 14 or 15.
I remember asking about the child support checks that my dad would send.
I forget. So either my dad or my mom would make comments about them.
My dad was always – he always paid them on time.
If he was going to be late, he would let them know.
There was no issues with that.
But I said to her, I said, where am I seeing these checks?
And I got – oh, well, we buy food with them.
We buy your clothes. We buy this.
Well, mom, I just asked you for clothes and you said no.
You know, so I didn't get the connection then, but that's more that hypocrisy that, you know, you were kind of just talking about there and you talked about earlier, too.
Right, right.
Yeah, and it does happen at the financial level as well, for sure.
I mean, my dad...
I mean, I don't want to get into this big thing about my dad, right?
But I'll just sort of mention it briefly, right?
Is that, I mean, my dad is an accomplished professional.
He has a doctorate.
He's, you know, he's... He's a fairly big deal in his field.
I mean, I went to McGill, and when my dad came, he didn't come to visit me, but he came for my brother's wedding when I was in my early 20s, and then he stayed with me for a couple of days.
And I was in Montreal, and I was going to McGill University, and my father was respected enough in the field that he gave a lecture at the university to a couple of hundred people.
He was quite the academic as well as a professional.
He wasn't an academic.
I think he taught some, but he was mostly a professional in the field of geology.
And he made sure that I came to the lecture.
And I have completely vivid memories of sitting at the back of this lecture hall, and my father is giving this big lecture, showing off his amazing accomplishments and his professional respect.
And obviously it was a big deal for him that his son would come and see him give a lecture.
At the university that I attended.
I mean, that's a pretty big deal, I think.
And even now, I think that's a pretty big deal.
But at the time, I did not feel that.
I did not feel that. Because all I could think at the time was, you know, you know that I've been on my own since I was 15.
You obviously are a big deal.
You have obviously some money.
doctor who obviously makes some good money and I was receiving a hundred dollars a month from him to go through school and I ended up with a lot of student debt at the end of my education because of that right and so it's like well it's really fucking great that you're able to come up here and give this lecture so I can go home and eat ramen noodles for the 12th night in a row you know that there's just it's a complete disconnect because of course it was all about him and he wanted to impress me but it didn't have anything to do with me as an individual He's just not that kind of person.
So I hope that story makes some sense just about the disconnect, that it does sometimes happen in a purely financial way.
I mean, it was no secret that my mom was institutionalized within the family.
It was no secret that she was unable to care for us.
And... We were basically just left to take three jobs apiece and fend for ourselves, take in roommates and make a go of it.
And then he wants to come and impress me with his professional accomplishments.
And it's just like, what an unbelievable disconnect, you know, with how I've been living at that point for six or seven years.
Yeah. Wow.
Yeah, and I can't say, you know, I did not have the hardships that you did with the, you know, spending for yourself.
You know, I don't want to say I'm lucky in that respect, but I didn't have to deal with that.
Well, you just weren't as unlucky, which is, you know, something.
Yeah, exactly.
And, you know, but there was that, you know, well, what about, okay, you told me there's no clothes, you know, you use the money for clothes, but I just asked for clothes.
And yeah, it's a disconnect.
You know, it was her paycheck, I guess, for being married.
To him and not liking him anymore.
I don't know the whole story.
I never will.
Do you want to talk about your dream at all?
I was just thinking that.
I didn't know you were a mind reader.
So this dream occurred probably...
It was within the first six months of moving out from my parents' house, or leaving my dad on a full-time basis.
And we lived in a couple bedrooms, me and my mom and my sister, and I don't remember how many bedrooms.
But I slept in a bedroom, but this dream was I was sleeping in the living room, and then...
I woke up from my sleep.
Being in the dream, I woke up from the sleep and I couldn't get out.
I was boxed in and it was walls of toys.
Walls of toys? Yeah, like board games.
I remember trying to get out and climbing up and it was just a never-ending wall of toys that I couldn't get out from.
I believe I was screaming for help.
I don't think I was crying for help.
Sorry, why did you need to get out?
I don't know. Well, the only thing I can think of is the room was colored the color of fire, that orange, yellow, amber glow, but I don't remember there being fire in the dream.
But I remember that everything was that color.
Was it flickering or just that color?
I don't remember specifically.
Okay, I was just wondering if you would remember if it was important.
I was just curious. Sorry, go on.
Okay, so you're trying to get out and you're surrounded by these walls of toys.
Sorry, how old were you in the dream again?
I guess at the time I would have been somewhere in eight.
Eight? Yeah, right around eight.
Six months. Yeah, yeah, eight.
And it's interesting that this is the time when you're connecting with your daughter, right?
She's almost eight. That's probably not a coincidence.
Yeah, no, I never thought of that.
Wow. Oh, it's amazing.
It's amazing what goes on, how little coincidence there is when you go deep.
But anyway, go on. Well, it's interesting you say that because a lot of people will say you need to watch what you do around the time when you got divorced and Or when your parents got divorced, because a lot of people reenact it when their kids get to that age.
That's what my therapist has told me.
I seem to be doing the opposite, going in the complete opposite direction and working better.
I ended a long-term relationship the exact year that my parents got divorced.
I mean, in terms of my age.
But anyway, that's neither here nor there.
Sorry, go on. So that's as much as I can remember of the dream.
It was almost 30 years ago at this point.
But that dream, every once in a while, will pop into my head.
And it hasn't come into my head for a while, a couple months.
But every time I think of the divorce, this dream pops in.
Okay, so let me just get the shape of the dream again, if you don't mind.
So you wake up, you're in the living room, is that right?
You're on a couch? Yes. And then there's this red glow, which indicates fire, but there's no indication of fire.
And then you really desperately want to get out of the room, but you're surrounded by these walls of toys.
And that's the dream that you can remember, right?
Yeah, and I tried climbing and climbing and it's almost like one of those, you know, just it was on like a replay thing.
You know, I kind of keep climbing and more toys keep coming and I can't even climb out.
And is it because they're wobbly or why is it that you can't climb out?
I mean, I think it would be impossible to climb a wall of toys because it would be too wobbly, right?
Well, they just kept going up and up and up.
I was able to climb it.
Oh, they just saw the ceiling in a sense was gone and these walls just, these toys just went up and up, right?
Yep, yep, and it was never-ending.
And what was your relationship? Was it mostly board games, like Hungry Hippo, and I can't remember what board games, Clue, and stuff like that?
Yeah, it was mostly board games.
It wasn't, you know, the Tonka trucks or anything like that.
It was, you know, board games that almost made a nice wall.
But I was able to climb.
So I don't know if some were sticking out or what, but I was able to climb, but it wasn't like a solid, flat wall.
Right. Okay.
I think in dreams, homonyms are important.
It's just my opinion, of course, right?
But I think in dreams, homonyms are important.
What was your family's relationship to boredom when you were a kid?
I think my mom was bored.
My dad, like I said, was in the military and he always had a strong work ethic.
And I think she didn't do much and my dad was working.
So I got to imagine...
I don't remember much of...
I remember the house.
That's about it. But I've got to remember, I've got to believe we didn't do much in the way I wasn't involved in sports or many activities, so we probably spent a lot of time at home.
And it was interesting, something else, one of the few things I remember from after the divorce is playing a board game with my sister.
This was after the divorce?
After the divorce. Sorry, this dream occurred shortly after the divorce, is that right?
Correct. Okay, so what was the board game with your sister?
You're going to laugh. It was Q-Bert, the board game.
Q-Bert, like the video game, right?
Yes, it was a Q-Bert board game.
I'm not proud that I know that.
I'm just telling you that I do.
I'm not proud, but it's there.
And probably some really important philosophical fact has never entered into my head because there's a little spot reserved for Q-Bert.
And you know why I knew that so much was that it was actually, I took Izzy to Chuck E. Cheese the other day, and they had a Q-Bert machine.
I was like, dear God, how old is this Chuck E. Cheese?
I went, like a rainbow afro and flared pants to come out.
Anyway, go on. I believe playing that game with my sister is after the dream, but it's just interesting that I remember playing a board game with her, and these walls were mostly board games.
Right. And were board games big in your family as a whole?
Yeah, we did play Clue.
I think Trivial Pursuit had just come out, so I think we started playing that a little bit.
But it wasn't like, you know, every Saturday night we played a board game, but we did play a lot of games.
You know, there was also backgammon chess and a lot of those things, so we did play those.
I guess, you know, thinking about it, that's one of the things we did do, play games, play board games.
Now, let me ask you this, and I know I'm getting kind of detailed, but I think it's important.
When you played board games, what were the conversations about when you were playing board games?
I mean, I'm sort of ambivalent about board games in families.
I think they can be good. But I think they can be fun.
I think they can be icebreakers.
But I think board games can turn into a way of avoiding important topics, if that makes sense, or any kind of games.
And this can be true of sports or anything.
It's like you're talking about sports.
You're talking about the game. You're not talking about your thoughts or your feelings or life or each other or anything like that.
So what were the conversations like when you would be playing board games with your family?
To be honest, the only conversations I can really remember happened years after the divorce, but I wouldn't be shocked if they happened back then.
The one game specifically I remember, and stop me if you think this is unimportant, but was Parcheesi.
And there was a way you could block people from moving in there.
And my mom and my sister, mostly it would be the three of us that would play it.
And they would get mad.
They would berate me for blocking them so I could get my pieces ahead and get them to the home base.
But that was supposed to be what you were doing, right?
I don't think I've ever played Parcheesi, but you're supposed to block them, right?
Correct.
And they'd get mad that you were doing something that you would win, right?
Correct.
And saying this is supposed to just be a fun game.
It's not supposed to be a, you know, a competition.
It was, you know, so it was, you're not playing fair, basically.
Sorry, those aren't quite, not playing fair is like you're cheating, but wanting to win a game that's supposed to be just friendly competition, was it because, did you feel that you were getting intense about winning, or was it just there?
No. I... I think it was their response to me.
I'm a competitive person to a point, but I don't gloat or anything like that.
I try and sympathize with the loser.
You don't have a victory dancer, right? Yeah, correct.
I'm not that guy.
You don't spike the football when you win, right?
No, no, no, no.
I like a good game, but hey, let's have a good game, we'll have fun, and then we'll go out and do whatever afterwards.
Tell me about a conversation with your family that you remember from before you were 12.
Before I was 12?
I'm trying to think where I live.
Because I guarantee you, if somebody asks your daughter this question, she's going to have about a thousand, and certainly she's going to remember the one about your divorce, right?
Yeah, yeah. And I'm not saying it has to be exactly that way or anything like that, but this is what I'm trying to figure out what you talked about with your family for the first 12 years.
Or you can just say with your mom, because I know that the dads kind of came and went to some degree, right?
But with family members, whether it's even stepdads or whatever, but what did you talk about?
What can you remember that was a specific conversation before the age of 12?
That's tough. I remember doing more stuff with my sister than actually talking with my parents.
Well, now, I'm going to have to be precise though, and I'm sorry to be annoying, but you said more, right?
Which means that you can remember some, but you remember more with your sister.
And I'm not sure that's what you mean exactly.
Well, more I mean, I remember doing stuff with my sister.
I don't really remember talking with my parents.
I'm trying to think 12.
I tend to relate everything to grades because school was such a big thing in our house and getting good grades and if I didn't get good grades I got punished and that sort of stuff.
So 12 I would have been in 7.
Conversations. I remember my mom The only one that comes to mind at all was with my mom and I played Little League football.
And this wasn't necessarily a conversation, but it's about the only thing I can remember.
At the time, I idolized some football player who had the number 69.
And she didn't want me to have the number 69 being a You know, a 10-year-old or whatever.
And I now understand what she was thinking.
And I wound up having that number.
But I remember her being, like, not dead set against it, but, no, I really don't want you to have it.
I really don't want you to have it.
Those are...
It's not really a conversation.
I mean... Now I'm getting scared.
I don't remember. And scared of what?
That I don't remember.
I thought I had an okay childhood at best.
I'm not saying you didn't.
I'm just asking about the conversation because I think it's relative to your dream.
The reason why I'm saying that is I'm scared that I didn't have an okay childhood and because I can't remember any of it, you would think someone would be able to remember something from their childhood if they had a pleasant childhood.
I didn't say pleasant.
It could have been an unpleasant conversation.
There was one where we were sitting around the dinner table.
It was me, my mom, my stepdad, and my sister.
And one of those entertainment shows was on on the TV in the other room, and Liberace was on, and...
I had said...
Me and my sister asked who was that.
And my stepdad looked straight-faced and he said, he's a pianist.
Not a pianist. He turned bright red after that.
But as far as conversations go, I really don't remember anything.
Thank you.
Right. Oh my god.
I always thought that when I was asked that, I'd be able to come up with something.
I knew there wasn't much there, but I have no recollection.
I mean, I can remember specific events, but I can't remember having a conversation about something.
Right. I'm very sorry for that.
I'm very sorry for that. As you're aware with your daughter, you can have the most incredible conversations with children.
Oh my god. They're so smart.
They're so smart and they're so wise because they're uncorrupted by the bullshit of culture, right?
Yep. Yep. Right.
Right. Right.
Right. Ah, okay.
So I'll tell you why I think this is important.
First of all, I think it's, of course, it's the key to your parents' divorce.
Lack of connection. Between me and them or between them?
No, between themselves. Between each other.
Why did they get divorced? Because they were disconnected.
Right? So, I mean...
You can't have better conversations with your kids than you have with your spouse, right?
Yeah. So, they weren't talking to each other.
They weren't talking to you. At least, you don't remember anything, right?
And, you know, if you wake up tomorrow and you remember 10 things, 100 things, let me know for sure.
But we're just going with what you can remember or not remember right now.
And I think it's hard...
It's hard to understand, at least it's hard for me to understand, it's hard for me to understand that if you're not having important chats about important things, you know, not 24-7, but it's in the mix, you know?
Sometimes you will talk about the weather and sometimes you will talk about sports, God help us, but sometimes you need to talk about things that are important, particularly with your children, so that they get a sense of their own capacities and depth and brilliance, right?
And you need to be intimate.
You need to have your hearts and your minds open, right?
Now, if you don't have those things in your life, if you don't have an open heart, an open mind, and good conversations, like meaningful conversations, not all this bullshit, small talk, static nonsense that passes for conversation in most of the world most of the time, but important conversations, like the ones that you had with your daughter, I think like the ones that we're having now.
If you don't have those conversations, I think people get really, really, really bored.
And when people get bored, they get frustrated and they get antsy.
And they start having affairs.
And they start drinking.
They start creating drama because they're bored, because they're under-stimulated.
It's the emotional equivalent of self-mutilation, of cutting.
You know, you can't feel anything, so you cut yourself.
So at least you feel something, and then the endorphins from the pain make you feel better.
So people who are bored play games.
They play games with each other.
They just manipulate, right?
And this may be a ridiculous reach.
I'm fully aware of that, right?
But it's a tiny possibility.
Because I was really struck by board and games.
Everyone around me is bored and they're playing games.
And I'm trapped by that.
I'm trapped in that.
And there's no way out.
Being a kid, there's no way out.
Yeah, being a kid, there's no way out.
And it goes out forever.
Because Board games in the box trapping you, it can't be about board games.
I mean, B-O-A-R-D games, because that would be a very sad metaphor.
But as a homonym, I think it could be important that everyone around you is bored.
Because if you're not having any important conversations or any interesting or deep conversations, you're going to get bored.
As a human being, of course you are, right?
And then you have a choice.
You then either run after someone new, go get married to someone else, have a divorce, have drama, have this, have an affair, whatever, right?
Or you say, I've really got to start investing more in my relationships.
I don't want to go through my whole life, you know, not even within shouting distance of the people I'm hugging emotionally, right?
I mean, I don't want to, so I'm going to, right?
Because people panic a little bit about that.
You know, life goes by and so on.
And I think that boredom is the root of a lot of problems in the world.
That isolation, that dissociation, that alienation, which people feel the distance from each other that leads people to too much sex, too much drugs, too much stimulation, too much stimuli, I suppose.
And so, boredom and the inevitable gains that result, I was just really struck by being trapped It makes a whole lot of sense.
I mean, I don't remember much of my parents' marriage, but, you know, communication was non-existent really As much as I can definitely say after the first 10 years of my mom's second marriage, I got to imagine before that there wasn't much communication.
And my dad's marriage, they communicated by yelling and screaming at each other.
So there's no real communication there.
So I got to imagine that my mom and dad's marriage, there wasn't any communication because all I remember is them yelling and screaming in the middle of the night.
Right. Right.
Actually, I read something recently that said parents who finish their fights out of sight or earshot up their children, that their children actually end up worse off than if they fight in front of their children and resolve their fights in front of their children.
So if your parents start fighting and then go to another room or finish the fight later, Children end up more anxious and depressed and unhappy than if the parents fight in front of the children but at least resolve the conflicts.
Because all the children see when the parents leave the room or fight late at night or whatever, assuming that the children sleep through it, all the children see are the fights.
They never see the resolution. And so they actually end up more stressed and anxious.
So this idea that we're going to take our fight upstairs and not let the kids see us fight actually is worse for the kids, at least according to the research.
I sort of wanted to mention that.
Wow. Hi.
Wow. You know, fighting in front of your kids was bad.
And as you've mentioned recently, you know, the kids will act out to try and stop the fight.
But I didn't even think that, you know, finishing at a site, at least if you finish it with them there, they at least see the ability for resolution.
Yeah, I mean, it's best not to fight in front of your kids, but if you're going to fight in front of your kids, and of course, as long as it's not abusive and violent, if you're going to fight in front of your kids, then finish the fight in front of your kids so your kids see that you've solved it and they feel more relaxed.
Otherwise, they don't know what the hell's going on.
They just think the fight's going on forever and you never resolve anything and they get really stressed about that.
Yeah, that pretty much sums up my parents' marriages.
It's a continual fight.
Yeah. And to be frank, the beginning of RTR talks about a marriage going down the tubes and what happens.
And that's the road my wife and I were headed on for the first couple of years of our marriage.
And we didn't even find RTR until recently and we were able to divert that and, you know, that describes, that section really describes what my parents' marriage was like.
All the blaming and yelling and, you know, accusing and all that stuff.
Oh, that is so beautiful.
I'm moved beyond what I can tell you that this little scribbling that I do has been of some help in helping you turn this stuff around.
I just think that is an unbelievably fantastic thing to hear.
So thank you so much. I've listened to RTR twice.
I've read a little bit of the book, just lack of time with kids.
You understand that.
That's right. I can't spend time with you kids.
I'm learning how to be a better communicator.
Exactly. Parenting is all about you bolt the wings on while the plane is taking off, right?
And you hope they hold. Yes, yes.
Luckily, I have, for better or for worse, I have an hour commute to work each way, so I got some time to listen to some stuff, and...
You know, it's helped, you know, OnTruth and RTR have both helped me tremendously.
And I was trying to explain UPB to my daughter tonight, and I think she kind of gets it.
So if you ever need help writing that UPB for Kids, my daughter might want to chime in.
Yeah, I did do a UPB for Kids podcast at the ABCs of UPB, but I really, yeah, I appreciate that.
And I certainly will ping you when it comes time to doing an intro to Philosophy for Kids, which I would just love to do.
But that won't be for a little while, but...
Anyway, let's make sure that we, just before we finish up, I just want to make sure that the way that you'll know if this, you know, homonym interpretation that I've got is of any value at all, and it may or may not be, is, you know, I would talk about this, you know, with your wife, think about it, and talk about it with whoever, and anybody who may have known your parents or whatever, right, talk about it, and just this idea of boredom and distraction and lack of connection with each other.
Whether that might be at the root of a lot of the frivolousness of some aspects, it sounds like, of your parents' life, right?
The sort of cavalier thing where, ah, this divorce doesn't affect you, that kind of stuff, right?
See if board games are being trapped within that, if it resonates with the idea of boredom and everything being kind of a game and no depth and no connection and so on.
And you'll find, in my experience, you'll find that if you've solved the dream to a reasonable level of accuracy, then you'll stop thinking about it.
I mean, it's not like you'll never think about it again, but it won't arise unbidden within your mind.
And if it does continue to rise unbidden in your mind, maybe you and I can have another quick chat about it.
We can try another approach, or maybe you'll solve it some other way.
But that would be my suggestion, to work on this idea of being trapped in boredom and gamesmanship.
And a lack of connection within your family when you were younger.
If you find that that causes the dream to rise less in your mind, then you're probably on the right track.
And if it doesn't, and you can't find any other way to solve it, give me a shout and we can take another run at it.
Yeah, I did talk to my therapist a while ago about it.
I don't remember, and I don't remember all the details of what she had said.
But her thing, what she got out of it is, I'm trapped and I can't get out, which we kind of came to the same...
Conclusion, right? You know, that what I don't remember is what her reason why I was trapped.
And I think the boredom does make sense with the lack of discussions and lack of communication.
I remember with my parents that no wonder why.
If I was bored and because they weren't communicating and they weren't communicating with me then and we were all bored and I was trapped, I was Eight years old, I couldn't survive on my own.
Of course, I'm going to feel trapped.
But that boredom and bored was...
I never put that boredom and bored game.
I never put...
That's interesting.
I'm going to try and figure out who I can ask about so long ago, but who I can ask about What our family was like back then?
Because I don't expect to get answers from my mom or dad.
Yeah, I mean, you will have your own memories, and you might find that as you start poking around, it comes up, right?
Like, the memories will come up a little bit more.
So, yeah, give it a bit of time.
Just try and come over what you remember, and you may find that...
To me, memory is kind of like a corridor.
You try a couple of doors and then one opens and it leads to more and more and more.
Sometimes it just takes one.
Sometimes it's a smell or a piece of music.
I mean, the other day I was doing my sort of endless scraping of trailers for videos.
I looked at a video of an old, I think it was semi-anime movie.
There's a comic or cartoon called Star Blazers that I used to watch before I'd go to school in the morning.
My brother went to school a little earlier and I would get a few, you know, 10-15 minutes of sort of peace and quiet.
I never watched it to the end because I finished at 9 and I had to get to school.
And I watched the intro to it thinking maybe I could use it for a video, and it just blasted wide all of these memories that I had about that time in my life, sort of in my, I think it was early teens, when I would watch that.
And so sometimes it can just take a little thing to start opening up these corridors, and maybe it has something to do with the board game you played with your sister.
this again that you said my mother and my sister had the same reaction but of course your sister was a child what does that say about your mother that she had the same reaction as a child there's something i think in the board game either directly or as a hominem or both that i think will will lead you down some very useful uh useful stuff yeah i'm gonna start poking around and try and remember the the the symbolism like that you're talking about um
Trying to figure out what I did back then pre-divorce and trying because everything's on YouTube or somewhere and figure out what You know, and start looking at some of that stuff.
Yeah, look at the stuff.
I mean, YouTube's an incredible memory tool.
It's an incredible memory aid.
If you want to go, you know, what was I into when I was eight, you'll find some damn thing about it on YouTube or someplace that will help you.
I mean, I used to really be into Superman collectible cards when I was 10 or 11 or whatever.
No, I was older than that.
I think I was 11 when the movie came out.
It's amazing what you can find to trigger your memory, and that stuff can be really powerful.
I don't want to take up your whole evening.
How was the call for you overall?
Did you sort of get what you wanted?
Was it a useful way to approach it?
I think so. I didn't know what to expect because I never really discussed all this at one time.
And I got a lot of good things to look at to see, to understand the divorce and how it affected me and how it affects me now and use that as a learning tool.
Fantastic. Well, I appreciate your openness, of course, and your honesty in this call.
I think it's hugely admirable.
I think you should just take an incredible amount of pride at how high you've moved the bar from one generation to the next.
I know it's hard to feel sometimes when you're sort of in the thick of things, but I hope that you will take a pause long enough to just recognize how amazingly fortunate your kids are and your wife is and how much you are raising the game for your gene pool.
That is a truly heroic thing, which future generations would, if they could, thank you enormously for.
Thank you. Yeah, and like I said, my kids decided tonight that they want to change the world, so make it a better place.
They've certainly got the tools for that with a dad like you.
Thank you. All right, Mark.
Take care. Thanks.
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