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Nov. 3, 2011 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
01:14:03
2023 Love, Distance, Need, Repetition - A Listener Conversation About Romance
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So, how can I help you, my friend?
Well, basically, I have this relationship question or issue, which sounds kind of pedestrian or silly, but it basically boils down to I find myself in a relationship where I feel like it's not a bad relationship, but it's not an ideal relationship.
And I'm not certain to what extent...
I mean, listening to your stuff, I definitely get the impression that you like to set up a high bar.
I mean, you say that if you're not in a relationship that's moving in the direction that you want to go, then you may actively be moving Away from that direction.
And that makes sense, but it's sort of like I also don't want to be so idealistic or demanding of my potential partners that I say, okay, well, you're not perfect, and I'm waiting for Mrs.
Perfect, so get out of here.
Basically, what it boils down to is that I'm in a relationship where I think I'm with a very nice person, a very good person, and she has a lot of attractive qualities, but I also have a lot of problems with her.
On some level, I find it difficult to imagine being married to her, perhaps, and getting on to be 30 years old.
Now, I feel like I kind of have to start considering that sort of thing more seriously.
Sorry, you're 30 years old right now?
Yes, that's correct, and she is 28.
So we're not in a huge rush, necessarily, but we're not getting any younger, as they say.
So there's a part of me that wants to just break up with her on the theory that, well, you know, I have a hard time imagining marrying you, and so I don't want to waste your time and mine, and, you know, I don't want to lead you on, and, you know, But then there's another part of me that says, well, if you're in a relationship that makes you happier than being single, then why break it off when you don't know if Mrs.
Perfect will ever come along?
You know what I'm saying? Bird in the hand.
He's left you in the bush.
Yeah, yeah. And then there's also the issue of the fact that right now it's a long distance thing because I am spending about 10 months in China for this research project that I'm doing.
And I think that gave me a different perspective on everything.
I mean, when I was living in Connecticut where I was going to grad school for the past several years, I would see my girlfriend maybe three times a week or so and I felt like that was a very sort of manageable level where it's like the good aspects will very much outweigh the bad because I'm not like living with you but I still have my own life but I see you often enough and now that I'm here in China, certainly I miss her and everything.
But I also, there's a part of me that's sort of chafing to be free almost.
It's almost like, well, and then there's also the issue that we might, you know, there was initially a consideration of moving in together when I got back from China.
And so that sort of deadline looming, you know, that The idea that, well, am I really ready to take this to the next step?
And also, do I want to foreclose other possibilities while I'm in China or while I'm back at grad school in America by taking the next step with this person?
All right. All right.
Well, I mean, obviously, there's statistics involved, right?
I mean, and I can sort of understand that if we're all waiting for the Heidi Klum philosophy major who is a atheist libertarian activist or whatever, right?
There is obviously there is.
And of course, to say that I want a perfect partner is to fall prey to the Prejudice that we ourselves are perfect and therefore deserve a perfect partner.
And I certainly am not a perfect partner.
So whenever I feel sort of, oh, my wife could be doing X and Y differently, I just remember, well, you know, she probably thinks I could be doing X and Y differently.
So until I become perfect, I really don't have that standard for others.
So I can sort of understand that.
But let me, of course, ask you the usual question, which is what is your template for marriage and relationships from your childhood?
Hmm. From my childhood.
You mean, what is my parents' relationship like, or what are my expectations just generally about marriage and relationships?
Yes to both.
Okay, well, with my parents, I would say that my parents...
Probably at least, I don't know, the funny thing is I feel like their marriage seemed pretty happy and harmonious when I was growing up.
And then in the past several years it has not been.
But I don't know to what extent that informs my ideas, you know, because maybe my ideas about relationships were formed when I was quite young and there wasn't so much discord going on at the time, although maybe it was under the surface.
So anyway, their relationship basically was mostly harmonious until I was about 20, say.
And then they started having an increasing level of kind of discord, mostly kind of related to somewhat to financial issues, but also to the idea that my father was irresponsible or untrustworthy with regard to financial issues.
Not so much that he was poor, but that he would I don't know, constantly have to pay late fees because he wasn't paying his taxes on time or doing his X, Y, or Z accounting correctly, etc.
My parents are not divorced, but they aren't happy with one another, that's for sure.
I mean, certainly I would like to avoid that.
I mean, I think that to a certain extent, it makes me have a high standard because I think I want somebody whom I expect to be able to live with for the rest of my life, not somebody that, you know, I think is hot for the next five years.
I'm sorry, what is the status of your parents' marriage at the moment?
They are not divorced, but not very happy with one another might be a way to put it.
I mean, they live together most of the time and every once in a while my mother sort of flees to another city because she has an apartment in this other city, Chicago, and my parents normally live in New Orleans, which is my hometown.
So basically they have a kind of unhappy marriage as opposed to a divorce is how I would describe it right now.
I mean, they're able to be nice to each other.
You were going to say put up with each other.
Yeah, put up with each other.
I mean, I think it's a source of...
Because they both have a fairly good relationship with myself and my siblings.
And so that becomes a problem because there's Christmas and Thanksgiving and all this.
And if they say, well, I'm not going to go because your father will be there, then everybody's like, oh, mom, why you got to ruin the party, you know?
And so that's a problem, I suppose, because, you know, our family is so interconnected and we mostly have good relationships between the siblings and each of the siblings has a decent relationship with each of the parents, but the parents themselves do not have a good relationship with one another anymore.
Yeah. And why not?
Yeah, it's kind of difficult.
I think they're both...
My sort of analysis of it would be that they just really don't communicate with each other in any meaningful way anymore because they've kind of escalated their...
I think they've escalated the conflict.
Like, my mother, I think she somewhat rightly believes that my father doesn't listen to her when she has a complaint about something, that he just kind of goes, you know, and kind of dismisses it and says, oh, I've got everything under control.
Don't worry, don't worry. You're just worried about nothing, etc.
And then her reaction to that is to continually escalate it and get more and more sort of...
It's hysterical and say, you know, I hate you, you're awful, awful, you know, and say really nasty things to him that are probably a little bit over the top, which just reinforces his idea that, well, your mother is hysterical and not being reasonable, And if she would just calm down and, you know, realize that I've got everything handled and that there's nothing to worry about, then, you know, everything could go back to normal.
And then from my mother's perspective, it's more like, well, if only your father would listen to me a little bit or would include me in the financial decisions a little bit, If only he would speak to an accountant about his inability to make financial plans, then, or if only he would go to a marriage counselor with me, then I would be perfectly willing to be recon, to be conciliatory.
But he won't do any of these things and he won't talk to me and he won't express his feelings, et cetera, et cetera.
So that's why I can't stand him.
That's what she'll say.
I think my dad is a little more in denial between the two, where if you talk to him, he'll just say, well, he tends to more say, well, I've always been perfectly nice and reasonable, and your mother's just getting hysterical over nothing, and I don't know why she won't just, you know, whatever.
And how did they solve their differences when you were a kid?
Or a teenager? Um...
I do think that...
Sorry, is that somebody knocking on your door?
Because if you're calling from China, I don't...
Ah! Bye-bye!
The call is now over.
Okay, good, good. That's the internet police here to pick me up.
Right. But...
I didn't witness as many of the conflicts when I was a child.
I think perhaps one aspect of my family that may not be especially emotionally healthy is that I think my father in particular very much likes to put a happy face on things.
In particular, he doesn't like the kids, whether the kids being 5 or 25, to see Any parental discord.
You know, he likes to keep everything behind doors and, you know, tries to smooth everything over.
So, you know, it's like it would be very rare that I would actually witness them arguing about anything as a child.
I do think...
Why did he not want people to see disagreements?
I just think that...
His natural emotional reaction to any sort of unhappiness or discord or whatever is to kind of brush it under the rug to some extent.
And in some respects I understand where he's coming from because I feel like a lot of times...
Little squabbles between people blow up into something big when it doesn't really need to.
And I understand why he just wants people to just calm down and sweep it under the rug and act like everything's fine.
But sometimes I think he runs the risk of sweeping legitimate concerns under the rug as well with his desire to not let anything get unpleasant or uncomfortable, if that makes sense.
I mean, that's not a very...
And of course, I mean, what you see is a long way away from where things, where problems would have been evident early on, right?
So, because people, you know, people have this idea, you know, that if you don't pursue or resolve conflict, somehow the conflict goes away.
Mm-hmm. And that's not, that's not true.
Mm-hmm. Right? So, let me try.
So, why? What's his emotional reason?
What's his emotional reason?
Um... You gave me his justification, right?
His justification. And what is his— This is why, I mean, I said it was a great runaround because now I'm talking to your dad and not you, right?
Because we switch over to the dad alter ego who then says, but here's my justification for what I did.
But what I'm asking is not the justification but the true reason.
Hmm. Like it's not an intelligent strategy because intelligent strategies tend not to lead to your wife running away to another city, right?
That's true. So it's not an intelligent strategy.
At least it could not be defended as an intelligent strategy now at this point, right?
Yes. And so my asking, if somebody thinks that something is an intelligent strategy when it's clearly not, then it's in fact an emotional defense, right?
Hmm. Hmm.
I think that he definitely has difficulty expressing I would say he has difficulty expressing emotion in general, actually.
Any non-sort of benign emotions, it's rare to see him express.
I feel like, for example, I'm sure that he has experienced probably some feelings of loneliness and...
Maybe even abandonment because, you know, for example, during the past several years, my mother has been in another city much of the time.
All of us children are also in other cities doing our own thing.
And he has, you know, his brother lives in the same city as us.
And, you know, he has a few friends, but he doesn't have a lot of friends.
Not a lot of friends, really.
And so, I mean, I think he's been alone much of the time.
And, you know, I can think of other situations, too, where I would have imagined that any normal person would have been feeling some significant negative emotions.
And yet, not only does he...
I mean, he's never expressed them to me.
I mean, never once in my life has he ever said to me, you know...
Oh, it's been real tough lately, you know.
And maybe that would be just because he doesn't feel...
I could certainly imagine him saying it's not appropriate.
Okay, sorry. I'm so sorry.
I don't know if you have any emotional experience of what you're saying, but there's no emotion in it, right?
Hmm. I mean, this is just a long series.
And I'm not criticizing, I'm just sort of pointing out.
This is a long series of meandering descriptions.
I'm asking for something a little bit more meaty.
Which is why does your father avoid – and this is all – I mean we're talking about your relationship, right?
This is sort of my idiot amateur internet opinion, right?
But the key question is why did your father pursue a strategy that achieved the opposite of what he wanted and has he admitted that the strategy didn't work?
Well, he hasn't admitted that it hasn't worked, that's for certain.
Okay, so that's important, right?
So this is another indication that what he says is a defense, right?
Mm-hmm. Because if I say, listen, you and I, we've got to head north.
It's north or die.
And we start heading off in the direction that I say, and then you say, you know, the sun's setting over there and not over there.
That means we're actually heading south.
And I'm like, no, we're heading north.
We're going north. And you come out with a compass.
And you say, well, the compass says we're actually heading south.
No, we're going this way. We're going this way.
And you say, well, my GPS says this.
And we end up in the South Pole.
Right? If I never admit...
That we're heading south instead of north, then there's some reason that I'm not admitting as to why we're heading in this direction, right?
And that's the reason I'm trying to get at.
Because if you don't know that reason, it's going to be really hard to know why your parents' marriage blew up, in which case it's going to be really freaking hard for you to commit to someone because you might have 20 years of an okay marriage and then end up with your dad is.
Hmm. Which is pretty unmotivating, right?
Yeah, yeah. Hmm.
So, I mean, the criticizing of parents is not about the past, and it's not about their past or their future.
It's about your future. And when I say criticizing, I don't just mean tearing apart for no reason.
I mean, understanding what went wrong so that this mistake can be avoided.
I mean, I'm assuming that you don't want to end up where your parents have ended up, right?
Yes, that's correct. And something must have gone wrong from very early on for them to have ended up in this situation.
It wasn't great, great, great, bang!
Unless somebody got a bad head injury or something, right?
Yeah. And so you want to not repeat these mistakes, but that means you have to understand them, which is why I am badgering you about this question, right? I'm trying to sort of think for myself what exactly could be the sort of deeper motivation for him to continue to pursue this strategy.
I'm not talking about continuing to pursue this strategy.
I mean, we can talk about it in the past.
Or maybe it's easier to talk about it in the present.
Alright, so let's try this, right?
Do you want to try roleplay?
Okay. Alright, so I'll be you, and you be your dad.
Alright. So dad, I've noticed that when we were growing up, I didn't really see how you and mom resolved conflicts.
I mean obviously you had them or I assume you had them because you're married and you're human beings.
But I didn't actually see how you resolved conflicts.
And now I'm concerned that whatever strategy you had about resolving conflicts hasn't really worked because now you've got this mother of a conflict, literally, that seems pretty unresolvable at the moment.
So tell me a little bit about your strategy of avoiding conflict or not talking about conflict and whether you still think that was a good strategy or whether there's something I should try that's different in my relationships.
Well, you know, years ago, your mother and I used to talk all the time and And, you know, if ever there was a little problem, you know, we would just discuss it and things were just fine.
And, you know, we didn't really have a lot of trouble.
And then, you know, ever since, you know, these past several years, your mother's just gotten so unreasonable.
I just don't know how to talk to her anymore.
And she says all these mean things to me.
Well, okay, sorry.
Sorry, but what was the biggest conflict you had, say, 10 or 15 years ago?
So sort of the early marital conflict.
I don't even know how he would respond to that, because I suppose I've never had this conversation with him.
You know, I've never even talked to him about early conflicts in his marriage.
Alright, let me ask this again, and I appreciate that.
So, let's go back in the roleplay, and I'll say, okay, well, Dad, what...
Could you have done differently to not end up in this situation?
Is there anything that you look back upon with regret or anything that you wish you'd done differently?
Again, it's really hard for me it's really hard for me to imagine how he would respond to that.
I imagine that he would probably say something to the effect of...
Every time I've talked to him about this, it's very hard to get him to concede any sort of mistake on his part.
Okay, so this is good.
So what is the emotion that's on the other side of conceding a mistake for your dad?
Regret, perhaps? Like, I have the answer to your dad, right?
I don't know. I'm just asking questions, right?
Well, I guess part of the problem is that he doesn't express very many emotions in an open way, whether by describing them or obviously expressing them on his face or in his voice, if you know what I'm saying. So, it's like...
I don't remember ever witnessing him openly expressing regret.
I mean, I may have... I would say that if he expresses sadness, it only tends to be about the what and not about the why.
He's sad about... Well, I mean, I got a sense...
I mean, when you were role-playing, I got a sense that your dad was really angry at your mom and blamed her for everything.
I would say that's pretty accurate.
Right. I mean, because he said, well, over the last couple of years, your mother has become so unreasonable and this and that.
I mean, that's pretty angry, right?
I suppose so.
And it's not exactly a seize the ownership kind of moment, right?
No.
One other thing, I don't know if this helps at all, but I think having talked to both of my parents, I think the sense I get from both of them is that they're both kind of traditional people in a certain way, not religious, but in terms of cultural ideas about what the role not religious, but in terms of cultural ideas about what the role of a man in a marriage is, what the role of a woman is in
And they both have this sense that the other person has somehow broken the contract, the traditional contract, by which I mean that my dad thinks that his wife, the role of his wife, whom he has provided all this financial support for all over whom he has provided all this financial support for all over the years, is to kind of just stick by him and stay by his side and shut up and listen to some
And I think that my mother feels that the role of the husband should be to provide not just financial support, but also emotional support or, you know, To make her feel safe or secure or supported and that he hasn't done that.
They're both very traditional in their ideas of what they expect from a marriage and they both feel that the other party is failing in that respect, I think.
Right. Yeah. And of course, I mean, if you focus on the other person's failures, then it is very easy to, quote, solve problems, right?
It's all the other person's fault.
That person should be doing this, but you should be doing this, but you should be doing that.
Right. But the reality is, of course, that's not very mature.
And the other reality, of course, did it take them 20 years to figure that out?
I don't know. You know, it's like if I drive a pickup truck for 20 years and then I'm suddenly enraged that it's not a convertible, do I look sane?
No, I mean...
Why does the damn hood on this thing not open?
A convertible's hood is like, dude, it's a pickup truck.
You've been driving it for 20 years.
Don't expect it to turn into a convertible.
You went to the store, you test drove a whole bunch of different cars, you picked this car, you married this car, you've been in this pickup truck for 20 years, and now you're suddenly mad because it's not a convertible?
Are you kidding? No.
Yeah, I certainly, one of the things that frustrates me about talking to both of my parents is that they both seem to act as if the other person has suddenly become nasty in the past few years, when in fact they're both pretty much exactly the same as they always were, as far as I can remember.
They just, you know...
It's like they should have known.
It's like my mother should have known a long time ago that my father was somewhat emotionally constipated.
And my father should have known long ago that my mother was a very high-strung person who needs to be reassured a lot.
And, you know, it's like if these facts about them were...
We're always clear, but for whatever reason, the smooth surface got peeled back over the years to the point that it was raw or whatever.
Well, you know, it's the oldest orbit in marriage, right?
It's the oldest orbit in relationships is the needy person with the distant person, right?
Where they do this dance, right?
You know, when I was a kid...
I used to – we never had a car, so I'd spend a lot of time in the backseat of cars.
And it was England, so it was raining all the time.
And in England, I'm sure – certainly here in Canada, it's the same in the States.
I don't know what the hell goes out in China.
But you know they have these two windshield wipers, right?
They go back and forth, back and forth, right?
And they go back and forth in tandem, right?
They don't sort of meet in the middle and then go apart.
They go back and forth, left to right, both in tandem, right?
Mm-hmm. And I remember even as a kid thinking, that's what human relationships look like.
One person's running away, the other person's trying to catch them.
Then the other person runs away and the other person tries to catch them and then they run back.
Do you know what I mean? Like they never meet in the middle.
Yeah. They're always kind of accelerating away from each other, right?
And this is the case with the needy person.
And the distant person. So the needy person is like the one windshield wiper.
They're rushing at the distant person.
And the distant person gets overwhelmed and retreats.
And the retreat can be going into the man cave, because often a man, or it can be just emotionally shutting down or pretending to listen or whatever it is, right?
But showing in a passive-aggressive way that he's upset and overwhelmed by the neediness of the other person.
But won't say it openly.
And so then...
The needy person gets hurt and withdraws and punishes.
Through distance. And then, in a sense, the distant person then becomes the needy person who then has to come in and fix it in some manner.
And then the cycle sort of repeats.
But this rushing after someone and then recoiling from them rushing after you seems to me very common.
I mean, I don't know if this is just my windshield wiper thing has anything to do with your parents' marriage.
But to me, neediness and distance, it's such an old pattern.
And of course, it comes from From childhood, right?
That the need of a kid for the mom and for the dad is astonishingly feral.
It's deep. It's powerful.
It's passionate. It is omnivorous.
It is all-consuming in some ways.
And for people who are emotionally distant, the need of a child is alarming, is terrifying.
It overwhelms defenses.
And this can happen in marriages as well.
And I certainly don't want to, you know, paint your parents' marriage with any kind of overly thick brush, but that relationship between need and distance seems to be a kind of grim orbit that a lot of relationships get stuck in.
And it can remain sort of stable for a while, you know, when there's distractions, when there's kids, right?
I mean, what happened a couple of years ago?
Did the last kid leave home or something like that?
I think really a sort of watershed moment, to use a silly metaphor for their marriage, was actually Hurricane Katrina.
So we're from New Orleans.
Yeah, I was expecting you to say that.
Of course, that would be... I'm like, was infidelity?
Was alcoholism?
Was drug use?
Was a national emergency?
Yeah, yeah, okay. I'm with you.
Go on. Yeah, so we were...
We stayed in New Orleans during that particular disaster.
I was going to law school at the time, so I was actually there.
And usually we would never evacuate during these hurricane emergencies because of the fact that they would always sort of...
I would cry wolf, so to speak, and say, oh my god, it's a huge disaster, everybody get out of town, and then it would turn out to be nothing.
Or because we would live in a high part of town, the floodwaters would never reach us, so we figured it was safer to stay.
Not really true, of course.
After three days of no power and rising waters, we decided to escape, which was all kind of harrowing and scary.
But I think that, you know, that I think my my dad acted kind of erratically during that during that particular emergency.
And that certainly kind of shook my mother's confidence in him as sort of the person who knows what he's doing.
And then after that, then there was the whole the reason my mother initially started living in Chicago was because we all moved to Chicago temporarily.
Because there were some friends of ours living there and my mother was able to find this apartment cheap or something.
And then my sister started going to high school there because obviously she couldn't go to high school in New Orleans for a bit.
And they ended up deciding to let her finish high school there.
So my mother had this sort of excuse to stay in Chicago with my sister, which was supposed to be kind of a temporary thing.
But it really ended up giving her this sort of like sense of liberation, I think, from the fact that one, she had lost this confidence in my father.
I think she I think maybe early on in the marriage, you know, the fact that he was kind of the stalwart man made her feel more confident that he knew what he was doing, you know, that he was in fact in control and, you know, a capable provider, et cetera, et cetera. And then sometime around then she just kind of, I think it was also coinciding with some financial problems that they were having that I'm not all that clear on.
But a combination of his sort of erratic behavior during emergency plus her receiving threatening phone calls from bill collectors on a regular basis or something sort of shattered her confidence in him as the person who knew what he was doing.
And all that was sort of left at that point may have just been the person who won't listen.
And then this, of course, gave her this excuse to be apart from him and live in Chicago for this couple of years, which she didn't really end up stop doing even after my sister graduated from high school, even after the excuse was gone.
And so then there was this constant tug of war between my father trying to get her to move back in with him on a permanent basis and her refusing to give up this apartment that she was keeping in Chicago because, you know, oh, she's not quite finished with whatever she has to do there, etc., etc., when in fact the simple fact of the matter is that she's happier living in Chicago.
Not only because she doesn't have to deal with my father, but also because she has other grudges against New Orleans.
Maybe she has more friends in Chicago who treat her nicer than her friends in New Orleans.
It's just a more fun place to be.
But from my father's perspective, it just looks like, well, my wife abandoned me because she found a more fun but more expensive place to live where she can just hang out with her friends and play tennis while ignoring the fact that she's supposed to be my wife and that she shouldn't just be living in another city just because she can.
And so, yeah, that sort of sowed the seeds of all the conflict, I think, was that whole emergency move away from New Orleans.
Well, you know, I would argue that it didn't sow the seeds, but...
Allowed it to bloom, perhaps.
Yeah, I know. Look, I mean, it's interesting.
Now, I'm just going to theorize here.
So this is all nonsense, right?
But if it's useful nonsense, good.
If it's not useful nonsense, then just enjoy the detail.
But I've often noticed that people seem to relish, in a sense, disasters in dysfunctional marriages.
And the reason they do that is it gives them power and it gives them freedom.
So if you've always been kind of mad at your husband, but he's been kind of okay and you've never really been able to express it, then things kind of trundle along.
But if your husband then has an affair, then you suddenly get a huge amount of power in the relationship.
And you can take a huge amount of liberties in the relationship because your husband can't say boo to you anymore because he had an affair.
Does that sort of make any sense?
I think that's very, very accurate.
And certainly that psychology I can understand.
I feel like...
I mean, I don't think I'm so much guilty of it myself, but I can certainly...
I can sense the compulsion.
I can sense the... The psychology of it, even within myself, because I feel like I'm sort of a non-confrontational sort of person who doesn't like to hurt people's feelings, but I can certainly imagine that.
Look, no, no, no, no.
Non-confrontational people end up hurting people more.
No, don't give yourself that out.
Please don't pin that medal on your chest, because that's just not true.
Okay. Like, people who are non-confrontational, they tend to be people who are not managing other people's feelings, but their own feelings.
Right? So if you're conflict avoidant, it's not because you're so sensitive to the needs of others, because the needs of others include the need to be confronted at times, right?
That's what the needs of others really mean, right?
I mean, if somebody's acting in a way that is negative or destructive or harmful, they need to be confronted.
Right? That's what they need, right?
So please don't say that because I think that puts yourself in a kind of angelic walking on water kind of super sensitive to other people's feelings.
No, it's your own feelings that you're managing if you're conflict avoidant.
Well, yeah, I don't mean to say that, you know, I don't mean to say I'm conflict avoidant and good for me.
In fact, I think that to some extent it may be it's one of the problems that I worry about.
For example, If I ought to just break up with my girlfriend, because that would be the kinder thing to do for her in the long run, but I don't because I'm too afraid of the negative feelings I'm going to get when her feelings are hurt, then that is me, in a sense, being selfish or managing my own anxiety or managing my own feelings.
Of course, it's cruel to her.
Yeah. I mean, it's cruel to her to stay because you want to avoid, right?
And I think that's what you're saying, right?
I mean, if somebody said to me, well, I don't really like you that much as a friend, but I pretend to be your friend because I don't want you to be upset if I reveal my true feelings.
I'd be like, ew, you know, that's pretty gross, right?
Don't do me any favors, right?
I mean, that's okay, but thanks, but, right?
And don't think it has anything to do with me, right?
That's just the other person's thing, so.
Yeah. But anyway, I do want to – I mean believe it or not, we are slowly circling your relationship, but I want to sort of get a lay of the land of your template, right?
But I do – I would agree with that.
I mean if you want to really break it down to the simplistic terms – and I say this not because you're a dumb guy but just because it's hard to see these things in our own families.
It's the old thing about the woman who really wants to go and spend a lot of money and then she finds out her husband is having an affair.
She confronts him on it and she's like – she grabs the visa and she's like, don't you dare say a thing about this now.
Yeah, no, I absolutely – You have to spend all this money because he had an affair and he better not say boo to him.
So in a sense, she's like happy about the affair.
She can go blow all this money and he can't see.
She's got a lot of power now.
Yeah. This is when people can't negotiate with each other.
They can only exercise power over each other and malfeasance on the part of the other person gives you a lot of power.
And this is what happens if you can't negotiate with people.
You just club them with power.
Yeah, I think that's a very – I think deep down somewhere my mother was happy after that whole Hurricane Katrina thing happened because it gave her a lot of – Thank God Almighty we are free.
Yeah, exactly. She gave her this excuse to be living in another city.
It gave her an excuse to spend a lot of money.
It gave her an excuse to, you know, vent perhaps any, all the years of dissatisfaction with her husband.
You know, I think in a lot of ways it gave her an excuse to do things that she would have liked to have done a lot earlier, perhaps.
Yeah.
And I mean, the problem is, of course, it doesn't.
allow you to respect your own needs anymore.
You just kind of have a story or an excuse that permits you to do this.
But it's still not the same as being self-expressed.
But again, we're not sort of trying to fix anything to do with your parents.
We're just trying to figure out what's stalling with you, right?
Yeah.
Well, I mean, obviously, first and foremost, I think that it is imperative that we all understand our parents' relationship.
It is imperative that we all understand our parents' relationship, or at the very least, understand where understanding is impossible.
Because, you know, they won't say or whatever, right?
But, I mean, that's why I always encourage people, you know, sit down, talk with your parents.
If they have a great marriage, sit down and talk with them and figure out what made that marriage great.
Don't assume that you just kind of imbibed it and absorbed it all, right?
I mean, I can watch a whole lot of tennis.
That doesn't mean I can serve like Roscoe Tanner, right?
So, you know, I think – and particularly kids from parents who've had difficult or problematic – I'm just inventing words left, right and center these days.
Problematic is a pretty good one though.
But yeah, if we've had parents who've had dysfunctional or problematic marriages and certainly where your parents' marriage is at right now is pretty damn disastrous.
Yeah. It's really, really imperative that we work to understand this.
And I will say to you, I think it's very important for you to understand this, right?
Because if you look at this, you have two stalled relationships, right?
You see that, right? You mean the one with my parents and the one with my girlfriend?
No, I mean your parents' relationship with each other and your relationship with your girlfriend.
Oh, I see. Okay, yes.
You don't believe me. You mean...
Well, they can't figure out whether to stay together or split up, right?
Oh, I see what you're saying.
Yes. Yes. It's waiting for that connection, waiting for the plug to go into the socket, right?
Uh-huh. That they're both stalled in a somewhat similar way.
Yeah. Yeah. So tell me about the similarities, and then we can talk about the differences.
I think that, you know, now that I feel almost...
It's like I had to try very hard not to see it almost, but it's a very good point you make.
That it is kind of stalled in a similar way, where it's like my situation with my girlfriend, while right now at least I would say we have a much more harmonious relationship than my parents have, the stall comes in in the fact that they're...
That it's like, I like her too much to break up with her, but not enough to be completely happy with her.
And I think that, you know, my parents are also kind of, they're kind of stuck together in a way.
Even if they, you know, superficially hate one another, not only do a lot of social obligations, like to their children and whatnot, tie them together, I do also think that they've reached a point in their lives where neither of them can really imagine, say, remarrying, for example.
So they kind of feel stuck together.
I think they're neither able to bring it to the point where they would just break it off and say, okay, we're just bad for each other.
We ought to be broken up.
We ought to just be separated.
Nor can they really pull it together and maybe reclaim or find a truly harmonious place to be.
And sorry, with your girlfriend, you mentioned something about long distance.
When was that in the relationship or is that current?
That is right now.
We dated for about...
That's okay about that. Sorry, I don't...
The details, I'm sorry. I just want to make sure that we get to the core of the matter.
Because that's the same, right?
Yeah. Yeah, you're right.
You seem surprised. Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't.
Perhaps, well, I'm very glad I talked to you about this because it's sort of these obvious things that I, too obvious.
And it's not because you're dumb. I hope you understand this.
You're a brilliant guy. It's just, you know, you can't see your own eyeballs, right?
Yeah, yeah. You know, I mean, I think that For me, perhaps what would have kept me from ever seeing that was the fact that I was always planning to take this research trip and that I could say, well, this is important for my career, etc., etc.
Look, I'm not saying you had your New Orleans.
I'm not saying it's as problematic or anything like that.
I'm just looking for the parallels.
I accept that there are lots of differences.
I really, really do. But we're just looking for where the parallels are because it's the parallels that we can't see that we need to examine, in my opinion.
Yeah. I think that there is one thing that might be similar.
Initially, I was kind of planning this whole research trip about the same time that I first met my girlfriend.
And when we first started dating and getting a little more serious, she asked me, well, if you're planning this trip to China, do you really think it's a good idea for us to get into a relationship now?
But that was still a year away at that point.
And so I said, well, maybe you're right.
Maybe we shouldn't. Because she liked me a lot or whatever, she said, well, why don't we just see where things go?
And that was my feeling at the time, too, was, why don't we just see where things go?
Because it seems a shame to not pursue an interesting relationship just because in a year I'm going to be spending a year abroad.
Then that whole trip had to get postponed by another year because of the fact that in It doesn't matter why, but sorry, go ahead.
Okay, it doesn't matter why, I suppose.
I'm just trying to make sure that you don't put too many identifying characteristics into the conversation in case there's ever a podcast, but so go ahead.
Oh, okay, yeah, um, sorry.
No problem. Anyway, it got postponed, and so it ended up that we spent two years with one another before I finally took this trip to China, which is slated to last about 10, well, okay, it'll last about a year.
Um, And so, by that point, we had been together two years.
You know, our relationship was fairly serious.
And the sort of, the thought was, you know, okay, we'll see if things remain, you know, if we can keep it together over this long-distance period, then that will mean that we're really serious about one another.
And, you know, then maybe we'll move in together, et cetera, et cetera.
But I think that part of my psychology about the whole trip was that...
You know, during the first year, I felt sort of like, well, I think some corner of my mind felt like, well, I'm going to be going to China anyway.
And so that will be...
Let's kill some time with it. Yeah, I mean...
Sorry, go ahead. Yeah, I don't know if I'd even, if I'd quite say kill some time, but there was also the thought that there was both the worry and the hope that I would also meet somebody in China.
And so then it was like, well, If I do, then, you know, if I meet someone I'm more interested in while I'm in China, then I can always break up with my girlfriend as calculating and calculus as that sounds.
And if I don't, then whatever.
And so it was sort of like, I think also in a sense, I viewed it as my last chance to be sort of...
A bachelor. It's like, well, if I move in with this person and things get really serious, then it's like, well, I'm on the road to marriage now.
I think I viewed it as a sort of, I don't know if I would say a liberation.
You know, a chance to be my sort of single self.
And I have been single a lot of the time.
You know, throughout my...
Okay, sorry, let me just interrupt you because I don't think that's going to...
I mean, it's interesting, don't get me wrong, but I just don't think it's going to lead us anywhere particularly fruitful.
Okay. Because what I've gotten out of our conversation so far is that your girlfriend has not talked to you about these issues.
With your family or been curious about things or tried to understand where you're coming from, what your template for relationships is and so on, right?
I mean, I think she's talked to me a little bit about my parents' relationship, but I don't think that we've necessarily taken that additional step to discussing how...
So we've been on the phone talking about this for about three quarters of an hour.
And so far, I think there have been two or three very useful things that you've connected.
And you've been going out with this girl for two years.
Two years, 45 minutes.
So obviously you should date me.
No, but do you see what I'm saying about the gap, right?
Wait, I'm not sure I quite understand what you mean by the gap.
Well, the gap in terms of helping you to understand things about your life, things about your relationship, and so on.
Okay. Right, so for instance, do you think that the woman, if you were to ask her to marry you tomorrow, do you think she would say yes?
I think she probably would.
Okay, so she wants a longer term relationship and you're the balky one at the moment, right?
Mm-hmm. She wants to get married or settle down or whatever, right?
Mm-hmm. And so, you know, if you want something, then you figure out what's in your way and try to remove it, right?
Mm-hmm. And if she hasn't really gotten in there in the trenches with you to figure out why you are hesitant or distant, right?
Because that's the other pattern you get, that this is distant from her like your dad is from your mom, right?
You see that, right? Mm-hmm.
Do you? Yeah. You keep giving me these hmms that I don't believe.
No, I mean, I- Because you've got one foot out, right?
You're like, I'm not criticizing.
I'm just pointing out, did you get one foot out?
Say, okay, well, we'll date.
I guess this has been pushed off a year.
I mean, I can always see if I can upgrade someone in China, go with the Eastern model.
So you're kind of one foot in, one foot out, right?
You're right. No, I am the more distant person in the relationship.
Which is your dad's template, right?
Yes. And I'm not saying you're a photocopy.
I'm just saying that these are patterns that are important to look at.
The other thing as well that, and again, I don't know if you're paraphrasing, that stuck out of my head is when the woman said, well, if you're going away in a year, do you think that we should hamana hamana, right?
That's very passive, right?
Because it puts the onus on you to make the decision as opposed to her making the decision.
Yeah. Um...
At least ostensibly, I think part of it has...
Maybe she is passive, but I certainly wouldn't have described her personality as passive if I hadn't been...
Well, I'll tell you, she's pretty passive if she's not been able to get a commitment out of you after two years.
Yeah, I think what she's always said is that...
She herself is a little nervous about the whole idea of marriage and children.
So even though I said that she would agree to get married if I asked her to, because I think that that is what she really kind of wants.
Why is she nervous about getting married?
Or rather, to be more precise, why is she nervous about getting married to you?
For reasons other than you might upgrade her while you're in China, which is not the biggest commitment in the world.
But why do you think she's nervous?
Or rather, why do you think she chose someone who would in a sense confirm her nervousness about getting married?
I think that probably she may have been more okay with me and my non-committal aspects, maybe precisely because she herself is somewhat conflicted about what she really wants, in that I think that on one level, she really wants to be in a very long-term relationship like a marriage.
Oh my god, you are such an intellectual.
Oh my god.
Yeah. I'm sorry, I don't mean to laugh.
It's funny. And I don't mean funny in a bad way.
I mean, when you hear this played back, and I hope that you listen to it again, you're a lawyer, right?
No, I'm actually...
You were studying law, right? I mean, you are a verbal guy, you are an intellectual guy, and I think that's fantastic.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I think that's just great stuff.
But the answer as to why she's conflicted about getting married is that she has a history of seeing a marriage with her parents, right?
Yeah. And you're giving me all this other stuff and theory and this and that, right?
Right after we finish talking about your ambivalence having to do with your parents' marriage, right?
Yeah. And I'm not saying it's the only place to look, but it certainly is the first place to look, right?
Yeah. I mean, I think that her parents' relationship is probably slightly better than my parents' relationship, but maybe not.
More than slightly. Significantly better.
But not, it's also far from perfect.
And I think she's somebody who's a little uncomfortable with change.
You know, she's frightened.
Sorry, but why do you say, sorry, I apologize for the interruptions, but why do you say that, I mean, have you not talked about this stuff with her?
I've talked to her about her parents' relationship, and I've talked to her about my parents' relationship, but maybe it hasn't really ever gotten very deep.
It's sort of like, oh, well, my parents always argue about X, Y, and Z, and your parents always argue about A, B, and C. Isn't that a pain how parents can't get along?
I don't know if we ever get And then maybe it will go further to the point where we'll say, I hope we never end up like that.
Let's always be— Cross your fingers, right?
We're heading into the desert with three thimbles full of water.
I hope we don't get too thirsty.
Yeah. I mean— Okay, so let me ask you this, and I'm sorry if I appear impatient, but I genuinely want to know.
What the hell do you people talk about for two years?
No, seriously. It's a serious question.
Look, I'm not saying that every single moment of every – because people always go to the other extreme, right?
They say, well, are you supposed to talk about your childhood?
I'm not talking about that.
But over two years, you think that major, massive, core, formative influences upon the personality and worldview, particularly in people who are thinking about marriage, looking at – The marriages of parents as a template, that's not a tangential discussion, right? So what have you been talking about all this time?
I suppose we never really fully absorbed the...
Sort of the idea that, you know, I mean, I think it's a fascinating and helpful idea that you have that, you know, one's parents' relationship can influence one's own relationships.
But I think that... Oh, I wish that was my idea.
That would make me really, really smart.
It's not my idea. This is all the way back to Socrates, but particularly, you know, 1850s and onwards.
But anyway, it doesn't matter who came up with it.
But yeah, so parents have an influence on our relationship for sure.
Yeah, but I don't think that maybe as sad as it may sound that this is sort of common knowledge.
You know what I'm saying? Well, how long have you been listening to this show?
Well, it's knowledge.
It's something I know from listening to you, you know.
And how long have you been listening to the show?
How long has it been?
About four or five months.
And have you come across any of these ideas in this show?
You mean about parents and relationships?
Family histories, you know, the self-knowledge-y stuff.
Yeah, I have come across some of that.
But you haven't really talked about it with your girlfriend, if I understand this rightly.
I'm sorry to be badgering the witness.
I apologize for that. I just want to make sure that we really get to your relationship.
I guess to the extent that I've tried to talk to her about what influence her parents or my parents might have on issues that we may have one another at all, it may be thanks to your show, but maybe I haven't gone deep enough.
You know, with that.
You know what I'm saying? Maybe prior to listening to FDR, we didn't talk about our parents at all, or barely at all, and then after listening to FDR, I brought it up once or twice, and then it didn't really go anywhere, and then I forgot about it.
You know what I'm saying? It's a step maybe in the right direction, but maybe we haven't pursued it nearly deeply enough.
Right. Right.
As to what we talked about prior to that, I suppose we just focused on what can we do to make our relationship more honest, open, etc.
I guess the conclusion we would come to would be just something very vague, like always be honest about your feelings, etc.
And I did try, actually, to sort of...
What I understand is this sort of real-time relationship strategy kind of thing.
I kind of discussed...
I tried to discuss this, what I was feeling, what I've been feeling recently with my girlfriend in a way that didn't present sort of conclusions.
You know, I just said, you know, this is what I'm feeling.
You know...
Do you have anything to say about that?
And I think what she gave me was sort of like, you know, she was upset at the fact that I was having some doubts about our relationship, but she was still very willing to, or more than willing, very eager almost to sort of allay my fears or say, oh, oh, don't worry, we don't have to move in together if you don't want to, etc.
So she came up with solutions?
Yeah, to some extent.
Rather than asking you more about your feelings.
I'm not saying that she would know all of this voodoo ninja advanced stuff, right?
But her idea was let's deal with this by taking away the stimulus rather than talking about the feelings, right?
Which is standard. I mean, that's typical, right?
I mean, I don't mean that in a negative way.
That's sort of average normal human behavior, right?
Yeah, yeah. And I bet you, I bet you, dollars to donuts, that that is exactly what your mom complains about.
That when she has a problem, she goes to your dad and your dad comes up with solutions rather than dealing with her feelings, right?
Yeah, that's correct.
You're right. Right.
Right. I really should be a psychic in Vegas, don't you think?
I just, I'd make such a killing.
But, yeah, so look, I mean...
It's important to know that you have a distant relationship.
If you're not talking about your formative influences, your deepest, darkest secrets, your hopes, your fears, your dreams, if that's not a blended part of your conversation and there are times when you need to discuss what your 401k contributions are going to be and there are times when you discuss who you think should win American Idol and then there are times when you have...
The richer, deeper meat of true intimacy, right?
If that's missing from your relationship, and it sounds like it is, then my prediction will be that your relationship will remain a shallow companionship which will break apart inevitably.
Which to me is a fair description based on what you've said of your parents' marriage.
Yeah, I would say that's pretty accurate.
And so the avoidance of intimacy can breed a kind of short-term conviviality, but...
It doesn't last through life's storms.
And I use the word storms advisedly as a metaphor given that it was a real storm that caused some particular issues in your parents.
So I understand that I'm treading on soggy ground.
But yeah, to me it's like you've got a catamaran on the water and you can just use a bunch of duct tape to hold it all together.
And as long as the water is calm, everything seems fine.
But the water doesn't stay calm in life.
It doesn't. And the way that we really bind ourselves to each other is through openness, through depth, through intimacy, through honesty, through, in a sense, confrontation.
I mean, I hope that you haven't experienced this too negatively.
I've been somewhat confrontational with you in this conversation, but I hope that you haven't experienced it as horrible or anything like that.
But that, I think, is what it really means to...
To listen to someone, to provide honest feedback, to really care about someone, and to not spend an hour as we could have talking about some completely abstract philosophy term, which, again, I love to do, but is not where you're at.
And that's what I would encourage you to bring into all of your relationships.
Great. The genuine deep curiosity, what formed you as a human being?
What are the patterns that are at work?
What is the tide and what are the storms and what is the sunlight and what is the precipitation of your ecosystem?
To really get to know somebody, to understand their formative influences, to understand what they're blind to, what they can see in you that you can't see in yourself, what you can see in them, that to me is the true value.
Of a relationship.
And that's what creates bonds that survive, I think, almost every storm.
I feel sometimes like – I don't know if this is at all helpful.
I feel sometimes like I know my girlfriend better than she knows me.
Not because I... I really don't consider myself someone who has a hard time confiding in people.
I feel like I'm willing to share and do share my deeper feelings about things with people.
However, I feel like maybe I'm more likely to engage in sort of probing questioning of her than she is of me.
I mean, not to blame her, but because I may be in fact...
No, no. I mean, you're not blaming.
You're stating something that is true for you.
I mean, a true and honest statement I don't think is blame.
Right? So, I mean, either or both, right?
Either you're more curious about her and she's more available to you, or she's less curious about her and or you're less available to her.
If that makes any sense.
Uh-huh. You mean that she may also be less curious about me and I'm less available to her?
Yeah, I mean any sort of combination of those.
And of course if you're less available, she'll be less curious and it tends to feed on itself, right?
Look, we're either getting closer to each other or we're drifting apart.
Right? I mean, there are these threads in relationships, and we can be apart, and we can drift apart, and then we've got to come back together.
But if the thread, if we pull too far too long, the thread breaks, which is what I think happened with your parents' relationship.
Or there's one sudden tug, and the thing breaks.
But if you're unavailable to her, and she, if she starts off being curious, but you're less available to her, then she'll become less curious, and therefore you'll be less available, she'll be less curious, and then, bink, at some point the string breaks, right?
The chord breaks. Mm-hmm.
And nobody knows the tensile strength or the length of that can go, but that's a really important thing to remember.
So, you know, my suggestion is, I mean, two years is a long time and it's a little tougher to do long distance.
Although it's actually, you know, long distance can be really good for a relationship because you don't get distracted by sex, right?
In a sense, right? I mean, obviously Skype sex, but after that, right, you can...
So, I think you can have these conversations and say, you know, I've been really thinking about Why we're not married.
We've been going out for a long time.
Obviously, you have some compatibility.
Otherwise, you wouldn't even be thinking about it.
Why we're not married? And I was thinking, you know, geez, my parents had this long relationship but then broke up.
And I'm not saying you're anything like my mom.
Mom? No, I'm not saying anything like my mom.
But, you know, I think and I'm thinking about maybe why you have this hesitancy and why we're both kind of drifting around this topic.
And I think it would be a real shame to continue to drift.
You know, let's... Get together or not, but I don't like this drifting in proximity.
I think that's disrespectful to our potential.
I mean, I don't know, whatever the hell you'll say, but I would definitely, you know, open your heart.
Open your heart to people.
And be really curious about what makes them tick at the very deepest level.
That is an incredible privilege to be a part of.
It is an incredible privilege to be a part of somebody's inner sanctum, somebody's star chamber, where somebody's bottom atom heart really does its ticking and echoing.
It is an incredible privilege to be intimate with somebody.
It's a very powerful experience to be intimate with somebody at that level.
And, which really to me is the only level called intimacy.
With the Enforced Run, there's only connect.
And we can only connect at that part of ourselves that is right at the core, right at the base.
And that has to do with a curiosity about our histories and our current thoughts because our current thoughts are shaped so much by our histories because it's peeling away the layers of distraction and the layers of self-blindness, which we all have, to really get to what makes someone tick. which we all have, to really get to what makes And I think that's – once you taste that meal, you can't go fast food that much anymore.
So, yeah, to me the answer in relationships is always, you know, go deep.
If you want to know whether you should stay together with your girlfriend or not, just keep being open.
Keep opening your heart and don't settle for shallow conversations.
It's too important now.
We've had our two years of shallow conversations.
Now, we must dig in.
I hope you... I apologize for characterizing your whole relationship with shallow conversations.
I know that's not the case, so I apologize for that, but just for the sake of this conversation.
Yeah, I understand. I guess part of the difficulty stems from...
Maybe it's that I'm not in touch enough with my own feelings.
I can kind of predict where the conversation would go.
I've already tried to some extent to explain my feelings to her.
Because she's happier with the relationship and feels more intimate in some way with me than I do with her, I feel like it's going to come down to her saying, well, I think that our relationship is going to work.
That all depends on you.
And then it's still – the burden is still back on me to decide, well, is this really the relationship that I want for the long term, which is something that I'm – But there's not – look, this is not a decision that you can make in the abstract by weighing pros and cons.
This is a decision that you make by trying to really, with both hands, reach through to this woman's heart.
And you'll know through that process.
That process will give you certainty one way or the other.
It will be a very powerful experience one way or the other.
But if you stay distant, then...
I don't know.
I don't know how to put it. It's like somebody drains 10 cents a month from your bank account.
How much time are you going to spend investigating that?
Be like, ah, who cares, right?
Somebody's draining $10,000 or $5,000 or $2,000 a month from your bank account and you're all over it, right?
Mm-hmm. Well, so I definitely, you know, I'm...
By your premise that if I really dig deep with myself and with my girlfriend and about our relationship, that then it will become clearer to me what I really need to do or what I really want.
But I feel like I still, I'm not entirely sure what sorts of questions I should be asking her or what sorts of questions I should be asking.
Why do you think we can't decide all the stuff that is on your mind?
Uh-huh. Why do you think I went to China thinking about upgrading?
This is the level of honesty that you need to have with this woman.
She needs to have all the facts about who you are and where you are.
Let me tell you about where I am in the relationship.
Let me tell you about...
I was so... I mean, I think you're great and we have a good time together, but part of me is like, well, maybe I'll meet someone else in China.
I don't know where you are. But this is intimacy.
This is honesty. Mm-hmm.
That doesn't sound too appealing, right?
But that is the reality of what she needs.
She needs to know who you are as a human being, where you are.
I see what you're saying.
I mean, you know, it's like I think that I've tried a little bit to do this, but maybe I need to be a little more raw, a little more, you know, unvarnished, a little more un...
Yeah, yeah. Diplomacy is for, you know, state-sucking, tentacled representatives.
This is not for love.
This is not for a lifelong commitment.
This is not for determining the truth about your relationships.
Don't be diplomatic. This is...
Who I am. This is what I'm thinking.
And this is what I'm frustrated by.
And I'm afraid to ask you about these things.
I know that I'm going against my own programming.
Talk about the template you have with your dad about distance.
That distance works.
That distance is considered to be a good thing.
It's considered to be manly.
It's considered to be, you know, not letting conflicts blow up irrationally into higher things.
That you've seen your mom, your dad try to manage your mom through being emotionally unavailable and see what happens.
Like, this is the truth about your experience.
I mean, you know, please understand, this is not the truth.
This is my retelling of your, you know, for an hour or whatever, right?
But whatever your truth is that you communicate as honestly, just say, you know, this is the truth.
I am scared of ending up like my parents and I don't know exactly how to avoid that because everything seemed fine until a couple of years ago.
So part of me is really holding back in life.
Part of me is really holding back from opening my heart fully to you or to anyone, maybe even to myself.
And that gets me a kind of security in the short run and that gets me a kind of stability and a kind of familiarity.
But I'm concerned that every single day that I do that is like another piece of sand in the hourglass going away and I'm going to spend my whole life skating above the earth and never actually touch down on anything real.
I will give that a try.
I will try to be less diplomatic.
There is no try.
There is only do or do not.
There is no try. You're not too young to understand that reference.
Good. No, I'm not. Good.
Well, look, I hope that helps, and I will definitely strongly suggest that distance is a very short-term gain strategy.
Mm-hmm. Well, thank you very much.
I think it has been very helpful, at least certainly in getting me to see some things about myself and my parents' relationship that may have been affecting me in ways I may not have perceived.
And I certainly think that you're right, that I need to dig deeper.
Yeah, if you're going to go down the road of self-knowledge, my friend, you need a partner in self-knowledge.
You cannot do it alone. If you're in a relationship with somebody who is not interested in self-knowledge or is resistant to self-knowledge or, you know, whatever, I mean, if you're going to go down the path of self-knowledge, you need someone to come with you.
I will say that. I mean, I don't normally tell people what to do and heaven knows I'm not telling you what to do, but that to me is a pretty basic reality.
If you want to go live in Timbuktu, and you've got to have somebody who's going to go live with you in Timbuktu.
And if you're going to go into self-knowledge, which I strongly suggest, then you've got to have somebody who's interested in self-knowledge.
You have to, because otherwise you won't make it.
And it'll be really bad because you'll destabilize them, you'll frustrate yourself, and it'll be lose-lose all around.
All right.
If she's up, maybe you can give her a call.
Well, All right. I will.
Good. All right.
Well, thank you very much.
You're very welcome. Let me know how it goes if you get a chance.
All right. I will. Thanks, man.
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