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Feb. 6, 2013 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
54:45
2320 If Your Heart Was Broken, This Was How: The Philosophy of Divorce
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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope you're doing well.
This is the philosophy of divorce, which I hope will be of utility to you.
Disclosure for what it's worth, I myself am the child of a very acronomious and bitter divorce, and this occurred when I was an infant.
I don't actually have any memory of my father being around.
Although I can remember from about the age of nine or ten months onwards, I distinctly remember not being able to walk, being able to just sitting in a room, and this is certainly since I knew I could walk at ten or eleven months.
I can remember all of that.
So, it was definitely within the first few months of my life.
And these are some thoughts that I've had about divorce over the years.
This is not an empirical study.
This is simply what I believe to be the logical emotional consequences of divorce for a lot, if not most, children.
Divorce is obviously a negative for children, and this is, of course, with the caveat that a house full of violence and abuse and fighting, drunken, brawling parents and so on is probably worse.
It is not what children want.
What children want is two happy, loving, connected, affectionate parents.
They don't want a divorce.
So divorce is always a negative for a child, though over time they may understand and appreciate that it's better.
than a fractious or violent or abusive household.
Now, one of the gravest difficulties that parents can run into is a loss of credibility.
If you lose credibility as a parent, you have to substitute uglier methods for influencing your child's behavior.
I mean, if your child genuinely respects what you have to say and really feels that you are acting in the child's best interests and are willing to negotiate and do all of the kind of good, peaceful, philosophical parent effectiveness training stuff that Helps a child become more moral.
Children who are raised in negotiated families end up more moral than children who are raised in authoritarian households.
So, authoritarianism does not produce children nearly as moral as those who are negotiated with.
Of course, right?
Because if you are authoritarian, you're simply teaching your children to obey power.
And power rarely has the best interests of its victims at heart.
And so you raise somebody who is a fear-based or aggressive-based conformist or mindless rebellion to power rather than somebody who can think and negotiate and reason his way or her way through logical, moral, emotional, and relational and professional challenges.
So, if you lose credibility with your children, this is the gravest blow that really can strike you as a parent.
Outside of the medical or whatever, right?
And unfortunately, divorce is a catastrophic blow to the credibility of both parents for reasons that I'll get into and which are really, really worth absorbing.
Even if you're not the child of divorce, you probably know people who are, you may date someone who is, and this is really, really important to understand.
So the parents, of course, you know, hopefully sit down, explain to the child they're going to get a divorce and so on.
Now, this either comes as a surprise to the child or it doesn't come as a surprise to the child.
If it comes as a surprise to the child, that's catastrophic because if the child is genuinely shocked that there's a divorce, it means that the child has been lied to about problems in the marriage or problems in the marriage have been so expertly covered up and kept from the child That the child feels lied to.
Now, don't get me wrong.
I'm not saying that parents are at all legitimate in pouring out their innermost tortured secrets about the marriage to their children.
That is not good.
Obviously, you don't put children in the position where they are expected to handle adult issues that the adults themselves cannot handle.
But what I mean is that if the parents appear to have been perfectly fine with each other and then there's a divorce, then the child knows that something of elemental significance to his life has been kept from him or that it was obvious but he was too insensitive or self-absorbed to notice.
And those things are very bad.
This is a trust issue.
if something as elementally important as the togetherness of a family is kept from a child to the point where the child has no idea there are even problems, let alone a divorce is coming down the pipe, that's catastrophic.
And it's emotionally brutal for a child in particular, because if the child has no idea there are problems, then the child clearly is satisfied with the family structure and doesn't want it to end.
And so if all the problems are kept from a child, sorry, if all the problems are kept from a child, then that child is going to have some huge issues in that something which he really likes is going to be taken away from him.
Thank you.
Something that he has no problem with, something that is working very well from him, is going to, without any warning, going to be taken away from him.
And that's something that is really, really important to understand.
Now, What is the child going to think of parental reassurances in the future, right?
If the child has had any issues with the marriage or has believed, like, are you and daddy upset?
Are we going to have a divorce?
Are you and daddy fighting too much for us to be happy, this, that, and the other, right?
If all of that is occurring and the parents say, no, no, it's fine.
We're just having some problems.
We're going to work it out and this and that and the other.
Now, if that turns out to not be the case and there's a divorce, then the child...
The child has a fundamental break in trust with the parent because the parent has reassured the child everything's going to be fine and everything is decidedly not fine.
So, if the child sees bad things happening in the marriage and expresses fears or concern about a divorce and is reassured that it's not going to happen and that it does happen, then trust with the parent is broken.
I want to say irretrievably, who knows, right?
But that's a fundamental betrayal of the trust of the child.
And the parent may feel that it's going to work out and then find out that it's not or make the decision that it's not or whatever.
But I'm simply talking about it from the child's perspective.
We can put all the caveats in the world we want into the heart of the parent, but I'm simply talking about it from the child's perspective.
So, there are basically four possibilities, and we'll run through them, right?
So, either the child has noticed nothing, in which case the child really doesn't want the family to end, feels the rug is completely pulled out from under him, and is going to have a great deal of difficulty trusting his environment again, because everything that seemed to be perfect turned out to be terrible.
Or, the child has noticed problems, has asked for reassurance, and reassurance has been given that the marriage is not going to end, and then the marriage does end.
That, of course, is a break in trust.
On the other hand, the child has noticed that there are problems in the marriage, and he has been told that the marriage will most likely end.
Well, then, of course, the child is probably going to say, assuming the problems are not so bad, or they're sort of, quote, adult problems, you know, like if they're to do with sex, then the kid doesn't, might have any exposure to that, and therefore won't view that as a deal-breaker.
Then the child is going to say, basically, I don't want you to get divorced.
Now, if the divorce then goes through, then the child's wishes are overridden.
The family is broken up against the explicit wishes of the child.
Now, let's say that the marriage is so bad that the child approves of the divorce.
Yes, I'm quite convinced that you should get divorced.
Well, you still lose a massive amount of credibility with the child.
Let's say that The dad is a drunken, abusive monster.
Well, then the kid may be like, yeah, let's kick him to the curb.
Sad, but what has to happen?
Well, what happens then, right?
What happens then is the child recognizes and realizes, accepts and absorbs, that the mother made an absolutely catastrophic choice of a father for her children, to the point where the child is okay, as best as can be, is relatively okay, with having the dad kicked out of the house.
How is the child supposed to judge the judgment or trust the judgment of the mother if the mother made a completely catastrophic choice about who to marry and who to have children with?
Right, so let's say the child is seven or eight.
The divorce comes along.
The child knows that at least seven or eight years ago, the mother decided to have children with somebody who's a completely unfit father.
A destructive, abusive, negative, horrible, whatever.
Let's say the mother is 30 when she has the kid.
So what this creates in the child's mind, I believe, and it's kind of impossible to avoid, it's an unconscious thing.
What the child puts together is this.
Okay, I'm 8.
My mother made catastrophically terrible, destructive decisions until she was in her 30s.
And she might make more, I don't know.
She might marry another guy or get together with another guy who's equally trashy and terrible.
But what it does is it gives the child, who's eight, 22 plus years to screw up royally, wherein the parent can have no effective counter to those screw-ups.
There's nothing that a child can do that is as catastrophic as having children with a bastard, Getting married to a bastard, raising children with a bastard, and then having a divorce.
There's nothing that a child can do that is that egregious.
Again, I'm staying out of the room.
I don't mean strangling homeless people.
I mean, just in the general emotional hurly-burly of human relations.
So, if the mother has made such a catastrophic decision, To meet and date and get engaged to and get married to and settle down with and have children with and expose her children to somebody who's so bad,
a dad who's so bad that the kid is okay with him getting kicked out, then the child is going to have A, no faith in the mother's judgment, And no respect for the mother's moral commandments or suggestions or whatever.
And B is going to unconsciously recognize that there's nothing that the parent can say, nothing that the mom could ever say to the child In terms of criticism that is even remotely close to the mess that the mother as an adult has made.
And since all children understand deep down that it's ridiculous, embarrassing, and destructive to have higher moral standards for children than you do for adults, then the parent has no credibility with the child.
So, in all of these four scenarios, the parent loses fundamental, possibly irrevocable credibility with the child.
Now, either in terms of explaining things to the To the child.
And again, I'm going to take the traditional scenario.
The majority of divorces are initiated by women and the majority of women initiate a divorce based upon dissatisfaction, not abuse or anything, just dissatisfaction.
So these could easily be reversed and are countless times throughout the world every day, but I'm just going to stick with the majority.
But when the mother sits down or the parents both sit down to explain to the child what has happened, I'd say the child is again 8 or 10 or whatever, it doesn't matter.
And the parents say something like this.
We just kind of grew apart.
We don't hate each other.
We still like each other.
We're still going to be friends.
But we just don't really want to get married, stay married anymore.
And so we're going to, dad's going to move out or mom's going to move out.
We're going to have the two household thing and go back and forth and all that.
But it wasn't anything terrible that happened in the marriage.
Well, the child then sees that a relationship that is more foundational to the family than even his relationship with the parents, right?
The parents' relationship with each other predates and causes the child's relationship to the parents.
It is an antidecent, right?
It is before and more fundamental.
I mean, the old and pretty horrible joke is that, you know, the parent would...
Would say to the child, you know, I really love your mom.
You can be replaced.
You run off, we can get another one of you.
I mean, it's horrible and you never say that to a child, but there's some elemental kind of truth to it in that the relationship between the parents is more foundational, is more fundamental to the family than the relationship between the parents and the children.
And so if the parents say, we're splitting up for no significant reason in particular, Then that weakens, in a very powerful and fundamental way, the child's perception of the bond between the child and the parent.
Because if the parents whose relationship is more foundational than the parent-child relationship, if the man-wife relationship can be blown up, can be ended permanently, For nothing in particular, for no reason in particular, for just some vague dissatisfaction or something called growing apart, which, what the hell does that even mean?
Then what the child does is, again, I would assume at an unconscious level, maybe conscious, translates that into, if I displease mom or I displease dad, the same thing will likely happen to me.
As children are always looking for patterns, reproducible patterns of disaster is what children are basically looking for, I mean, to stay alive.
And so, if a bond and a relationship are even more foundational than the child's relationship with the parent, i.e.
the parent-to-parent relationship, can be toasted for no particular reason whatsoever, then the child will also assume that the parent-child relationship can be toasted for no particular reason.
And the child will be terrified of that.
I mean, the parents can survive divorce.
The child can't survive at the age of eight without the parents.
And this is where bond insecurity, relational insecurity, festers and gnaws at the root of the parent-child bond.
You just got rid of the other boy, looks at the mom and says, well, you just threw out dad for no good reason, for no particular reason, for no reason that you would explain.
It was minor stuff, and you basically tossed him out of the family.
What's going to happen to me?
What do I need to do so that it never happens to me?
Well, that's really bad, right?
Really bad for the child.
What if the mom says, I threw your dad out because he's a bastard?
Well, of course, then the child says, well, why do I have to go and see him then?
Why do I have to go and see him on weekends or every other Tuesday on every third Coyote Blue Moon?
I don't know what it is.
But if you threw him out because he's a bad guy, And you can't stand living with him, then why do I have to go and live with him?
Why should I be expected to do something that you're not willing to do?
Why should I be expected to hang out with negative people or destructive people or abusive people which you have ejected from your life?
I mean, that's literally like the mom spooning yogurt into her mouth, spitting it out because it tastes like shit, and then saying to the child, now you finish it.
I don't want to eat this yogurt because it's going to make me sick, but you should finish it.
All of it, right?
I mean, that's lunatic, right?
So if the mom says, I can't stand your dad, he's destructive, he's abusive, then the kid at least says, okay, well, that's a better reason for breaking up than nothing.
But then that fundamentally destroys the child's relationship with the father.
And again, this could be reversed, but, you know, just keep going back and forth on this.
It'd be confusing.
I toasted your dad because he's a bad guy, reassures the child that the mom-child relationship is more secure, but it is at the expense of the child-father relationship, and then all of these problems occur in which if the mom throws out the dad because he's a bad guy, then she cannot say to the child, and now you have to go and spend the weekend with him, right?
Because he's so bad and toxic that the mama had to throw him out of the house against the wishes of the child, let's see, or with the wishes of the child, or, you know, after finding him acceptable and fine and wonderful and sexy and lovey-dovey enough to marry him, she then throws him out because he's so toxic.
She then cannot say to the child, and now you have to go and spend time with him.
I mean, she can, of course.
She can.
But what then?
So let's say she says, you have to go spend time with your drunken, abusive dad every second weekend from Friday to Monday.
You have to go spend time with him.
And the kid says, well, you said you divorced him because he was bad and dangerous.
And he was a bad guy.
So why on earth am I having anything to do with him?
Right?
It's like saying, this guy is a known bully, this kid is a known bully, and now you have to go and spend time with him.
Now, if the mom says, well, fine, great, you never have to go and spend any time with him because he's such a bastard.
Well, the dad, of course, is going to have some say in that.
That's going to further provoke conflict among the parents and courts and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right?
Parental alienation, you name it, it's on the list, right?
And that's all just catastrophic again, just catastrophic for the kids.
And, really, again, we've only just started to look at the destructiveness of all of this.
And I'm saying this not with any, you know, stay together, get divorced.
I mean, what the hell?
I don't know what the heck people should do.
I can't tell you about what to do, but I can tell you about some likely and logical consequences of this kind of behavior.
And also some understanding of why it is so horrendously difficult for children to have a divorce on their hands.
When you've made such a terrible decision in your life as to get married to and have children with somebody who you end up divorcing, it's a catastrophically bad decision, obviously, right?
I mean, this is not what anybody wants from being in...
this is not what anybody wants from being in...
When they're going to get married, this is not what anybody's looking to do or anything like that, of course, right?
And you then have such a...
I mean, it's so impossible really to then say to your children, "You should do X." Right?
You should listen to me, You should do what I say.
You should obey me.
How and how and how and how and how is the child supposed to take that seriously when the parent, the mom, You should listen to me.
Why?
Why?
Why should I listen to you, Mom?
You say that I should come home by 10 o'clock.
Why should I listen to that?
You were making catastrophic decisions into your 30s.
And so why should I listen to you when I'm 15?
I'm half your age and I'm making far fewer and far less egregious mistakes than you ever made.
And so why should I listen to your authority?
Your authority, your knowledge, your moral efficacy led you to get married to drunk and abusive dad.
And so why on earth should I listen to you?
There's nothing more humiliating for children Than to believe that they are being raised by idiots, by fools, by hypocrites.
I mean, there's nothing more humiliating.
I mean, submitting yourself to a terrible, big power, even if it's not the best thing in the world, at least you're surrendering to something big.
You know, like some dragon flies out of the sky and tells you to do some sit-ups.
You'll do some sit-ups.
But if an aunt tells you to do it and you do your sit-ups, that's a whole different matter, right?
Obedience to immaturity is catastrophic to children.
I mean, if the child ever gets the sense, as Jung said, that...
Most parents are immature fools, more than half children themselves.
If the child ever believes that the parents are incompetent and fools and immature, immature in particular, defensive, projecting, manipulative, That is so catastrophic for children that there are no words to even describe it.
And if a parent demands obedience to something that the parent has screwed up on so significantly and which remains unacknowledged...
I mean, parental wrongs that remain unacknowledged are just so toxic to families as a whole.
But then, you know, in the...
When the mom, you know, screams at the kid, the single mom screams at the kid to listen to her, to obey her, to just do what she says, damn it.
And the child knows that the parent hasn't earned that respect.
Then you're just obeying the parent because the parent wants it.
And the parent is ridiculous and immature.
And that is so humiliating for a child.
I mean, that's so catastrophic for a child.
Loss of respect for parents is the secret heartbreak that powers so much of the world's dysfunction at just about every level.
And it's very much unacknowledged.
I mean, it's the same thing that occurs when parents punish children for entirely inconsequential stuff.
Parents punish children, and then when the children get older and complain about how they were parented, Or have criticisms, the parents say, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge that I had and they minimize and they dismiss or they say, you know, let the past be in the past and, you know, try that when you're a kid, right?
You steal something from your mom's purse, she finds out and you say, oh, let's just let the past be the past.
I'm doing the best I can with the knowledge that I have.
But they say, oh, okay, that's fine.
You know, forget to take out the garbage or just say, I don't want to take out the garbage.
I'm doing the best I can with the knowledge I had and my refusal to take out the garbage is now in the past, so let's forget about it and move on.
Try that.
Try that when you're 10.
And then see your parents quite likely pull it on you when they're 50.
About when they were 30.
So you've got infinitely higher moral standards for 10 year olds than you do for 30 or 50 year olds.
And thus is the terrible rinse and repeat woe cycle of the world.
Turn back to its starting place and start it again and again and again and again.
So this is what happens.
With divorce.
And the question then becomes, okay, so then the mom or the dad introduces a new person into the child's life.
You know, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, maybe a live-in partner, or they get remarried or whatever.
Either that person is better or not.
If the person isn't better, then there's no parental credibility left whatsoever.
At all.
Because you cannot ask a child to learn when the parent is showing no willingness or ability to learn.
The old parental thing, if I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, right?
You need to clean up after yourself.
I mean, how important is that relative to bringing somebody into a child's life who's not positive?
I mean, come on.
You can't ask more from your children than you're willing to show as an adult.
And in fact, you can ask 99.9999% less of your children than you are willing to display as an adult.
I mean, if I don't tidy up after myself, I can't ask my child to tidy up after herself.
If I don't eat my vegetables, I can't ask my child to eat my vegetables.
If I am not engaged in the relationship, then I can't ask my child to listen to me.
If I am not a positive and enjoyable influence in my child's life, I cannot expect my child to pay any particular attention to anything that I'm saying.
Ah, you know, everybody wants the effects without the cause.
Not everybody.
Most people want the effects without the cause.
They want money without working.
They want respect without integrity.
They want obedience without morality.
It's all just a silly game.
I watched a Nurse Jackie.
Edie Falco, I think, the wife from The Sopranos, reincarnated in HBO fashion as a drug-addicted nurse.
And someone is, I think, alarmed about the effects that being a drug addict is having on the kids.
And Nurse Jackie says, children worship their parents unconditionally.
They love their children.
They love their parents.
They need their parents unconditionally.
It's what I'm counting on.
Four words.
It's what I'm counting on.
Four words.
There is all the dysfunction of the world in a nutshell.
It's what I'm counting on.
They have to be with me.
They cannot leave me.
They do not have a choice.
They will never leave me.
If they try, society will, she's your mother, she's your father, chase them back.
It's what I'm counting on.
How badly are children treated because the eternal nature of their attachment is what parents just assume, like gravity?
I don't have to talk my car into clinging to the road.
It does that because of gravity.
The magic magneto strips of tiny Aristotelian elves keep it securely attached to the tarmac.
Asphalt, asphalt.
Sorry, it's asphalt.
My mistake.
It's what I'm counting on.
Don't hit your wife.
She'll leave you.
Spank your children.
They're attached.
It's what you're counting on.
Don't scream at a police officer.
Scream at your children.
They're attached.
They can't leave.
It's what you're counting on.
We can't solve the problem of the involuntary relationship of the state until we accept as unjust the involuntary relationship of children, and of course in particular adult children.
It's what you're counting on.
I would not assume so for the long run.
Because, you know, all this cats in the cradle stuff, you know, like you toast a relationship with your son's dad, again, just to keep the genders roughly comprehensible.
You toast a relationship with your son's father and if it's for relatively inconsequential things, then you are saying relationships can be ended whether the other person likes it or not.
Relationships can be ended for inconsequential incompatibilities, for just being unsatisfied, for growing apart, right?
For growing apart.
Well, guess what?
Your children will absorb that message.
They'll say, wow, you know, so even if you've been with someone for a long time, even if you chose them to begin with, even if you got married and passionately kissed them on the wedding day and promised to stay together forever, you don't have to keep your word.
Your word can be abrogated in the most important aspect, the most important relationship in my existence, the most important Infrastructure, which is the family in my existence, that relationship can be unilaterally ended for minor incompatibilities and dissatisfactions.
I see, I see, I see, I see.
So, what connection am I supposed to have with you, lovely mother of mine, When I get older, and we have some significant disagreements, i.e., you ended a marriage, which was incredibly important to me as a child, for relatively minor disagreements, which means I now have a very major disagreement with you, oh mother dear.
And if you can end relationships for relatively minor disagreements, why should I remain committed to you as a parent for a huge and major disagreement called ending the marriage when it really wasn't bad by your own admission?
See the bond?
That's broken.
I'll run through it again.
I'm sorry to be repetitive.
This is all very important to understand because this all occurs at an unconscious level, I believe.
The mother kicks the dad out for relatively minor stuff.
Adult child grows up with the knowledge and the conviction and the understanding that it is good The parents don't say we're getting divorced because we want to do a bad thing.
So it's good for me.
You know, it's sad, but we've grown apart and in order to be self-expressed, in order to have the capacity to connect to someone else, in order to have all these good, wonderful, nice, kind, juicy tidbits of growth, self-knowledge, wisdom, happiness and bliss, I have to end this relationship.
So it's a positive for me to end a voluntary, committed relationship that is the most important thing in the child's world.
Over minor stuff.
It's a good thing.
Divorce is a good thing.
Relative to, right?
It's a better thing than the alternatives.
Probably a better way of putting it.
It's a better thing than the alternatives.
Because if it's a good thing, then the child is going to absorb the idea.
I mean, why do you think that kids are so distant from their parents these days?
I mean, especially kids of divorce.
They've absorbed this idea that it is good to shed relationships with people you have minor disagreements and dissatisfactions with.
Sever, cut, eject, trap door, catapult into orbit, break orbit, out to Jupiter, into interstellar space, never to be seen again within the family structure.
It's done.
It's over.
It's broken.
It's shattered.
It's broken.
It's cracked.
It's vaporized.
For relatively minor stuff.
Parent calls.
15, 20 years later says, come over for dinner.
Adult kids say, meh.
It kind of taught me that it was good to not have relationships with people you had minor disagreements or dissatisfactions with.
I have a big dissatisfaction called you blew up the marriage.
You blew up my dad.
You toasted my whole environment.
So I just don't really feel like it.
And you told me that it was good to end relationships.
Where you're dissatisfied over minor things.
That it was a good and positive step.
So, I am going to listen to your wisdom, oh mother, oh father, I'm going to listen to your wisdom and self-actualize in the same way and shed relationships.
Now, you chose dad and that's a relationship you felt was not good for you and I didn't even choose you guys as parents.
Now, I hope you understand because, you know, people misunderstand this.
I mean, I think obviously quite willfully.
I'm not saying that children of divorced parents should not see their parents.
I'm not saying anything of the kind.
Please don't misunderstand that at all in any way, shape or form.
I don't want you to get your knickers in a bunch about this kind of...
What I'm saying is that this is a logical pattern that is absorbed into the child's mind that weakens the bond.
Well, what the parents and kids do with it, who knows, right?
But what I'm saying is that if the child doesn't want to come over for dinner because the child just doesn't really feel like it, then the parent has no right to impose or create a guilt-based or shame-based obligation on the child and say, well, I haven't seen you in days or weeks.
You've got to come over.
I miss you.
Well, you taught me that I should really not bother with relationships where there's some dissatisfaction, and I have more than a dissatisfaction with you as a parent, so I'm just not going to bother.
I mean, there's that inertia, and of course, this is why.
To overcome that inertia, to overcome that inertia is why there's so much Parental obligation guilt embedded so deep within our culture.
Honor thy mother and thy father.
Why would you need a commandment if they were honorable?
You wouldn't need it.
There's no commandment which says, want sex, like chocolate.
Fear death.
Those things pretty much happen of their own accord.
Parents who spank their children for cognitive lapses from dysfunctional brains, from immature brains, right?
Well, of course they would be horrified if spanking was deployed in nursing homes for doddering oldsters who forgot where they left their keys again.
I've told you once, I've told you a thousand times, over my lap with you!
Spank your lily spotted ass.
That would be appalling!
It's exactly the same principle.
Cognitive deficiencies must be corrected through violence.
Well, people get old, they get forgetful.
Let's correct that.
Oh, that would be terrible!
Let's say that there wasn't a divorce and the mom just had a child out of wedlock.
She's 35, doesn't have a kid, just has a child out of wedlock.
Well, it's kind of selfish, right?
Because child needs a dad.
The child really needs a dad.
You do what you want at the expense of others.
That's the rule, right?
That's the rule that's...
It's the UPP rule that's been put into place.
And everybody, you know, they don't realize that their actions in a Kantian format, the actions create rules.
Through their actions, they create the rules and then they, of course, are desperate for nothing but exemptions from those rules.
Born to a single mom.
Born to a single mom.
Kid's going to grow up with...
My childhood is significantly negatively impacted because you cannot find a man to love you.
You cannot attract and keep a man to raise children with.
How's that going to go down in the child's psyche?
Mom is not a quality woman enough to attract and keep a man to raise children with.
Mom has a child And, you know, has to work or is on welfare or, you know, I'm thrown in daycare, I'm thrown in relatives' homes, I'm usually fatter, I'm more prone to criminality and mental health problems and depression and anxiety and all that.
Mama's created a child in harm's way.
Because she just wanted a child and was not able to attract and keep a man to raise a child with.
Well, the selfishness and undesirability is kind of written in stone there, right?
Again, where does that leave the respect of the child?
Towards the parent, for the parent.
Let's say that then a woman has a kid or two and then gets married to some guy.
Well, this is a guy who's willing to raise someone else's kids.
Maybe it's noble.
Maybe it's great.
Probably not, though.
And of course, after the first couple of years, the stepparent cannot be an authority figure.
Cannot be an authority figure, at least according to what I've read.
So, these are all decisions that parents make.
that have very profound impacts upon their children and there's just no good way out of these things.
Part of my brain, just to share at the moment, is saying, okay, well, how can you resolve these things?
Let's say you did make a terrible mistake.
You married the wrong guy.
Look, if you married a man and you're going through a rough patch in your marriage, the statistically rational and sensible thing to do is to stick it out.
Most people who are going through contemplating divorce, most people who then five years later, if they stay married, they're happily married.
They work it out.
They go to therapy.
They do the mature thing.
They keep the family bond together.
They preserve the integrity of the union.
They preserve the health and efficacy of their children.
They stick it out and they work it out.
So do that if it's just dissatisfaction.
If it's just, eh, you know, we're not really connecting.
Then work to connect.
Work to fix it.
I mean, statistically, you're going to be a lot happier than if you get divorced, right?
The people who get divorced end up pretty miserable.
But most of the people who stay married when it's just problems in the marriage, they end up happier, at least in the surveys that I've read.
So the rational thing to do, of course, is to, if it's relatively minor, if it's not abuse, you know, fundamental abuse related, then stay together.
And if you don't stay together, you're clearly transmitting the fragility of bonds, the falsehood of parental obligations and authority.
You are saying to the child that promises don't matter, honor, integrity, vows don't matter if you just don't feel like it.
And then you're going to sow the seeds of all kinds of huge problems going forward.
So, don't do that.
Now, if there's abuse, then, I mean, gosh, you have so much apologizing to do, it's ridiculous.
For exposing the children to abuse, for having children with an abuser, and for all the harm that that's done.
And, of course, the honest acknowledgement of wrongs is the only way to regain any kind of credibility and authority.
I mean, it's the only hope that you have.
But, you know, you sit down with your kids and you say, listen, I have done you incredible harm.
I have done you incredible harm and I'm incredibly sorry.
And I don't know how to work that conversation out with your kids.
I really don't know how to do that.
So, I mean, obviously, apologizing for wronging someone is a good thing to do.
It's an honest thing to do.
But it carries within it an implicit message that is very destructive, which needs to be talked about, right?
I mean, I'm trying to help with these conversations.
And the implicit destructive message goes something like this.
Well...
I got married to an abusive guy.
I had children with an abusive guy.
I exposed my children to an abusive guy.
You know, day after day, month after month, year after year, perhaps decade after decade.
But it's okay because now I'm apologizing for it.
Right?
Well, what does that do?
Well, of course, it tells the child that you can screw up and harm people in the most savage and fundamental ways for years and years and years, but it's okay because then you can apologize.
Right?
That is really not a great message.
So even if you don't apologize, that's just catastrophic.
I mean, then you have no credibility.
If you do apologize, You're obviously apologizing with the goal of making things better, of making things alright.
And if you do that, then you're basically telling your children that you can harm the innocent for years, expose them to the toxicity of abuse and violence and dysfunction and screaming and spanking and yelling, whatever, right?
You can do all of that for years, do the most egregious harm, far more harm than any child is capable of achieving.
But it's okay because at the end of harming the innocent people, possibly irreversibly for many years, you can apologize and that makes things better.
People will say, it's years of recompense and so on, right?
Well, I don't even know what that looks like.
Years of making it up to a child.
And what does that mean?
Buying them toys?
Well, then you're just bribing them.
Letting them stay up late?
Well, then you're just depriving them of sleep.
I mean, I don't know, right?
I mean, what does it mean to make things up to a child?
Particularly for...
I mean, the harm that is done to a child's mind by being exposed to abuse in the early years is irreversible.
It doesn't mean you can't ever get any kind of way better, but it is irreversible.
Right?
So even if you get better, you're still somebody who had that and got better.
You can't ever be somebody who didn't have that.
So...
Saying you can harm people irreversibly, but it's okay if you apologize, then what?
What happens if you apologize?
If you screw up so badly, you get married and have kids with an abuser, and then you apologize, well then what?
Can't undo it.
Can't undo the damage.
Can't undo the harm.
What do you do?
What does apology mean?
Does it mean then that the child is now obliged to listen to you because you apologized?
So, does an apology then undo years of irreversibly destructive harm to the child's mind and body?
And now you should be obeyed as if you were a good, wise, virtuous, and peaceful parent who has remained married and chose the right person.
Do you deserve that level of obedience?
Because you apologize?
Well, what you're telling the child then is you can do incredible harm to people, and then you get all the fruits of virtue if you apologize.
I mean, that's like trying to get someone to quit smoking while simultaneously telling them that there's a painless pill that they can take that's going to cure and reverse all the effects of their smoking and they can take it whenever they want.
That is only going to encourage a smoker to keep smoking.
Right?
It's like a pill that can cure me of all the ill effects of smoking.
We take it whenever I want.
It's painless.
It's free.
Well, of course I'm going to keep smoking.
I'll smoke more.
Because I've got to get out of jail free card.
I'm not saying this is universal or constant.
I'm just saying these are the patterns that I believe will be occurring in the child's mind.
None of this dictates behavior.
These are just all the challenges that occur in these situations.
If the, quote, offenses on the part of the spouse were minor, they just grew apart, drifted apart, dissatisfied or whatever, And then the parent says, you know, maybe they learn more or the child confronts them when the child becomes an adult and they realize just how destructive it's been and that they're not happy.
Maybe they say, well, getting divorced was a mistake.
Well, then what?
Maybe they can get remarried.
I don't know, right?
Getting divorced was a mistake.
Then you can make colossal mistakes that your child has warned you against.
Because remember, if the problems are not egregious, the child does not want the divorce to occur.
So you can override your child's wishes for your own selfish discontents, destroy a family, wreck finances, strip opportunities for the child, humiliate the child.
You know, it's not fun to say to your friends, hey, my parents are getting a divorce, right?
And then you apologize.
So then, what happens as a result of your apology?
Sorry that I blew up the family for the sake of my discontents, but now you what?
Say your kid is 10 and you say this, right?
Sorry I divorced your dad when you were 5 against your hysterical crying and desperate desire for us to stay together.
I'm sorry that I did that.
I was wrong.
I should have stayed married to him.
He's a good guy.
Yeah.
And now what?
Kids had five years of being divorced, and all the trauma that goes with being divorced, and all the relationship-breaking that goes with watching a parent toast another parent for totally minor stuff.
Well, what happens then, my friends?
What does it mean to say, I'm sorry?
Oh, I'm sorry I dinged your car, cost you 500 bucks worth of damage, cost you five hours, here's 1500 bucks to make up for it.
Well, you know...
In a sense, right?
No harm, no foul.
We want restitution to be what someone would just slightly choose over the problem that occurred.
But what restitution is possible for irreversible damage?
Irreversible spiritual damage?
Irreversible psychological damage?
What restitution is possible?
Can't fix it.
What restitution is possible if you cause someone's arm to be removed?
Then it doesn't grow back, right?
So, it's all pretty challenging stuff.
If you have made a mistake and you apologize, what does it mean to your parental authority in the future?
Well, you basically have said you can screw up and harm people savagely and terribly and horrifyingly for years, but then you can apologize and then it's like you were virtuous that whole time.
I don't know.
That's a pretty tough call.
I don't know how to get the trust.
I don't know how to get that trust back.
This may be, obviously, a complete failure of my imagination, a limitation of my ability to conceive of these things.
But, I mean, I sure as heck know that there's no apologies possible for my childhood.
I mean, you know, if my parents...
Yeah, a pretty wretched childhood.
If my parents came and said, we're really sorry, well...
I don't know what to say.
I wouldn't even know what to say.
A day late and a dollar short, to put it as mildly as possible.
But what does it mean for them to say that they're sorry, can't undo the damage, can't be the person who never went through those things?
What does it possibly mean?
I mean, it's okay.
If it makes you feel better, fine.
It doesn't change anything in my experience.
It certainly does not put you back in the position Of reaping the rewards of good parenting, right?
This is really, really important.
Apologies are great, but apologies do not restore you to the position of having been virtuous.
You know, maybe if you promise to change and you commit to that change and you achieve that change and you pay for your kids' therapy and do all the stuff that I've talked about before, maybe that's, I mean, that I think is certainly the best that you can do.
But apologizing for punching someone does not mean that they were unpunched.
Apologizing for raping someone does not mean that they are now unraped.
You understand?
And that is, I think, really, really important to understand.
That's really, really important to understand.
Restitution brings you back into equilibrium, right?
So, if I ding your car and I repair your car, you have now been restored to equilibrium.
That does not give me...
The fruits of virtue.
Does that make sense?
It does not give me the fruits of virtue to have restored you to where you were before I did you harm.
I ding your car.
I repair your car.
That does not mean that I have done you good.
It means that I have done some restitution for doing you harm.
I mean, if I risk my life to save yours by jumping in front of a streetcar and grabbing you, I've obviously done some good for you, and you're very grateful.
I have a huge net positive to your life, right?
If I give you $10,000 to start your business or whatever, then I'm doing good things for you.
So, there's a positive thing there, right?
But restitution is a very different matter, right?
It's a very different matter.
Restitution is not doing you good.
It is doing some level of restoration for the harm that I have done.
But it's not the same as doing you good.
And people make this mistake all the time.
They sit there and they say, well, I've apologized.
A parent might say, well, I've apologized and now you need to treat me like I was a good parent.
It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
An apology can take some of the sting off the negative things that occurred, but it can't undo them, and particularly when the effects can't be fixed.
I mean, if I plow into your car and your wife dies, I mean, you can't bring her back from the dead, right?
I mean, apology is not then the same as Hey, I saved your wife's life, right?
Don't you want to thank me?
And this is the great challenge, and this is the irrevocability of these kinds of losses.
It's really, really important to understand.
Really, really important to understand.
And the reason that it's important to understand is because these wrongs can't be righted, don't do them, right?
You can't undo these wrongs.
You harm children in the first five years of their life, you can't undo it.
You can't undo it.
And there's no amount of restitution that a sane person would take for that situation.
So don't, you know, you can't undo the damage of smoking once you get cancer.
So, the fact that people think that apologies can just make things better is really catastrophic.
Really catastrophic.
Because then they think that it's a way of diffusing the alarm that they have in the actions that can't be changed, in the harm that they do that can't be undone.
If you think there's a pill that can undo the effects of smoking, then you're just going to keep smoking.
If it then turns out that that pill doesn't work, Well, the belief in that pill has made you incredibly worse, right?
Because if you didn't believe in that pill, then you would have stopped smoking, right?
So if you believe that there's some magic restitution apology matrix that can undo or make up for or more than make up for the damage that you've done in your life, then you're going to be much more likely to keep doing that damage in the expectation that this wonderful magic Joy juice of apologies and so on is going to just make everything better.
Well, I don't think that that's true.
I don't think it's the case.
I think you could certainly bully people into saying, well, I've apologized, so blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but that doesn't really change the fundamental emotional reality of the situation, right?
So, my goodness, I mean, I know this is a big topic, right?
I sort of was using the other one to get to this, but it's a big topic.
It's a very important topic.
Apologies are at best meaningless.
And what I mean is that I'd bump your car, I'd fix it, it's kind of like a meaningless incident.
Apologies at best can be meaningless, but where irreversible harm has occurred, believing that an apology can fix it only makes you much more likely to pursue that irrevocable harm, right?
Does that make sense?
If you believe that an apology gives you all the fruits of virtue, You're going to be much less likely to pursue virtue for its own sake.
If there was a pill that gave you all the benefits of horrendous exercise, you would be much less likely to pursue that horrendous exercise.
And that's the kind of stuff that I really, really want to get people to understand.
There is no restitution for irrevocable harm.
There is no substitute for virtue.
There is no plan B. For virtue.
Do you understand?
There is no plan B for virtue, and we need you to understand that.
Because that way you can prevent doing the kinds of things that you cannot recover from.
And prevention, as I've always said in philosophy, is by far the better part of cure.
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