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May 15, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:49:11

2698 Help! My Mistress is Pregnant! - Wednesday Call In Show May 14th, 2014

Afraid of being disliked, calling somebody disrespectful, obedience to bullshit, biochemically assaulted for curiosity, connecting to formally unsafe emotions, my mistress is pregnant and my wife doesn’t know.

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	Hope you're doing well, everybody.
	Stefan Wallen, Freedom Aid Radio for the Wednesday Night Call-In Show with listener von Listenerville and Mike.
	So, yeah, we are moving the Sunday show.
	Now it's going to be the Saturday night show.
	So we're going from 10 a.m.
	Eastern to 8 p.m.
	Eastern for the call-in show.
	And sorry about that.
	You know, we've just been talking about it and we have found that the energy is better in the nighttime shows.
	I don't know if it's me or the listeners or both, but Sunday mornings seem to be a bit bleary-eyed and bloodshot for everyone.
	So we've just noticed we get better shows out of the glorious listenership.
	So we're going to do that and see how it goes.
	Basically, FDR has become a failing sitcom.
	We are randomly shooting it all over the spectrum until we find an audience that works.
	Wednesdays at 2 a.m.
	Oh wait, that didn't work, no.
	That's right.
	From 2 to 2.07 a.m.
	in a parking lot in Scarborough.
	So yes, Saturdays at 8 p.m.
	Eastern is going to be the new time, replacing the former Sunday call-and-show.
	We're still going to be doing Wednesdays at 8 p.m.
	Eastern every single week as well.
	And I just want to make a note and announce we've got two speaking dates coming up.
	The Toronto Domestic Violence Symposium, June 6th and 7th, downtown Toronto.
	You can go to torontodv.com for more information on that.
	And also the International Conference on Men's Issues, June 26th through 28th in Detroit, Michigan.
	Steph's going to be there.
	Warren Farrell is going to be there.
	Karen Strawn, a.k.a.
	Girl Writes What, is going to be there.
	Lots of cool stuff is going to be happening in Detroit.
	Hope to see you join us.
	And that's really it for announcements.
	I guess we can get on with the show.
	And I think as a result of this, Karen is changing from Girl Writes What to Girl Speak Stuff.
	I think that's...
	That's her approach.
	Alright, so Mike, who do we have up first?
	Please, throw me a guest before I make another joke.
	I think that's really, really important.
	Alright, up first today is Mr.
	Blake.
	And Blake wrote in and says, I guess I want to talk about my eagerness to please being unshakable, even though my firm understandings of individualism.
	The extreme fear and paranoia of being disliked or exposed as some kind of fraud or not being good enough, being left behind physically and emotionally, the anxiety of thinking that every pause in a conversation will be followed by the instant closure of that conversation.
	That is a very interesting set of questions and I appreciate you bringing those up.
	So is there any place in particular you'd like to start?
	Man, it's quite a task to try to identify the beginning.
	I guess I don't know where that would be, but for just a long time, trying to operate in such a way that is in line with what you think other people are thinking, instead of in line with what you want and what you're thinking, it's been kind of a struggle, and I understand it, kind of, to be Destructive objectively, in addition to me not liking it.
	Now, the first thing that I'd like to talk about is your language.
	You fix the language, most times you fix the problem.
	And you said, please people, right?
	Yes.
	I, my friend, will submit to you that it is not pleasing people that you are after, but appeasing people out of fear.
	Appeasement over pleasing people.
	I Yeah, look, I mean, pleasing people is good.
	I hope to please my audience.
	You know, once every third blue moon, I hope to please my wife.
	I hope to please my daughter.
	So pleasing, I'm going to tell you how much she looks forward to that.
	I mean, obviously I don't end up doing it, but it's nice to have something to look forward to even if it can't be achieved.
	But the problem is if you frame something in a way that is not, I would say, particularly accurate, then...
	You are going to really have trouble defining the problem.
	Because a problem has to be something that's unambiguously bad, or at least mostly bad.
	And pleasing people is a good thing, right?
	You want to please the virtuous people in your life.
	You want to please the honorable, decent people in your life.
	And you don't want to please the bad people in your life.
	So pleasing people is too morally neutral a term, I think, to be helpful in understanding the problem.
	Does that make any sense?
	No, I totally agree.
	And I guess given that, if I were to clarify...
	I like to please people that I want to please for selfish reasons.
	So that kind of doesn't bother me because I know why I'm doing it.
	But some people, I don't know.
	I mean, if I want to try to give a logical explanation, do I want to please them to make sure that they're not my enemy so that they don't harm me or please them so that I don't really...
	I'm afraid of that.
	I'm a humanist in that I really respect and like people, but I also, to some extent, fear people that are kind of crazy.
	Oh, my gosh.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm sorry.
	Oh, man.
	You're trying to do pointillism with some big, white-ass, paint-the-side-of-a-bond-door roller.
	In other words, you're painting with too broad a stroke, in my opinion.
	So, a humanist in that I like people.
	Fascinated by people.
	I don't know of any more generically useless statement that could be piled onto a philosophy show without backing a truck up full of manure.
	I mean, who are these people that you like so much?
	Can I meet them?
	I'd be curious.
	LAUGHTER Well, I mean, that's a good point.
	And I guess as far as, like, history and seeing economics as human action, I'm fascinated by what people do and choose to do.
	So I guess you're right.
	It'd be more accurate for me to frame it in that way instead of just saying, I like people.
	Yeah, I mean, it's like a little candy heart, chewy toy given to a four-year-old girl.
	So...
	I mean, who are these people that you like?
	Is it the people who support the state?
	Is it the 80 to 90% of people who hit their children?
	Is it all the people who cheer when mankind goes to war?
	Is it all the people who are greedily grabbing from the economic productivity of the unborn?
	Is it all the people who cheer foolish and dangerous politicians?
	Is it all the people who tear up when a soldier comes home alive without thinking of the trail of bodies he's got in his wake?
	Who are these people, Blake, that you like so much?
	Where are they?
	Well, that's true.
	I go to various places and do certain things where there's a high percentage of these type of people that are different than the people that you described.
	And actually it does cause problems because when I go back into my normal life and people aren't like that, I have this kind of internal dialogue where I love people.
	All of these people are assholes to me.
	Are all people assholes?
	And so it's tough to find a balance between going and Meeting with people that are kind of a part of the community of nonviolence and then coming back and realizing that they're not the majority.
	But I guess I try to think of it in terms...
	The really important thing, so racism is a general statement about a group based on inconsequential biological characteristics.
	And racism, of course, is negative racism and positive racism, you know?
	The negative racism is blacks are stupid.
	The positive racism is blacks are the coolest ever, right?
	I mean, both of those are racist statements.
	So what I'm saying is don't be a human racist, right?
	In other words, don't judge the human race by any generic moral standards, but be only empirical.
	Be only empirical.
	Don't be a human racist.
	Yeah, definitely.
	And I try to look at the empiricism relative to what the humans are doing.
	And whether or not the individual groups of humans are acting in a way that's beneficial or destructive, I like to try to study that human action and see what's going on.
	But I guess I'm really getting away from the core problem.
	I guess the core problem is a lot of the time when I was younger, I would be ostracized for doing things that I wanted to do.
	Oh, no, no.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry to interrupt you.
	We are not.
	You know, it's funny how people call me in for advice and then tell me we're getting away from the core problem without asking me why we're talking about what we're talking about.
	It's my job to tell you whether we're getting away from the core problem.
	No, because you were trying to please me and you were trying to please the audience and you were trying to appear as a very nice guy.
	Exactly.
	Exactly.
	Right?
	I like people.
	I'm a humanist, right?
	This is manipulative.
	Right?
	You're trying to present yourself in a certain kind of way.
	Because maybe you think, well, if I say, well, look, you know, I have massive moral issues with the majority of people who want me thrown in prison for following my conscience, then somehow people are going to have a negative judgment of you or some sort of hostile reaction to you.
	So we're not getting away from the problem.
	The reason that I'm trying to unpack your statements is to see if you're doing what you're concerned about in the moment with me.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	To try to see if it's realistic.
	We're not talking about a problem.
	You're showing me a problem.
	Yeah, and I'm aware of it.
	And I'm actively thinking, okay, don't do this.
	And then I just find myself, oh, I did it again.
	You're not aware of it.
	Otherwise, after manipulating me and trying...
	And I don't mean this in a negative way.
	I'm just pointing it out.
	After manipulating me and trying to manage my reactions to you and shape everyone's perceptions of yourself, you thought we were somehow not dealing with the topic and you wanted to move on.
	Self-knowledge would be...
	Like, right after you say something like, well, I think if I understand your beliefs correctly, you're an atheist or an anarchist and so on, and then saying, well, I'm really into people, then you just said, oh, you know what?
	I'm actually not really that much of a fan of people because of X, Y, and Z, so I say that.
	That would be having self-knowledge, right?
	Yeah.
	But you didn't.
	You said all that stuff, and I called you on it, and you just wanted to move on.
	Does that make...
	And again, I'm not criticizing.
	I'm just pointing out the flow.
	Yeah, and I mean, I didn't want to move on...
	I guess I wanted to move on because I disagree that I feel like human beings are...
	Are directly what we're talking about.
	I feel like they are negatively impacted by symptoms of things that we're familiar with.
	And I try to be really positive about humans because sometimes I get depressed a little bit.
	So I find that it's really, really helpful for me to say that.
	But as you kind of re-illustrate what I've said, it makes a lot of sense that the way that it comes off is really platitudinal.
	Man, you can spit out some syllables, man.
	Oh my God.
	Oh my God.
	You will, you know what, you will hear that back when you listen to this again.
	You'll be like, what was I saying?
	So you feel that human beings are negatively impacted by the environment and therefore are not as much responsible for their choices.
	Is that right?
	No, I don't feel that they're not responsible for their choices.
	I'm really a big fan of that.
	I guess it's trying to play into positivity and trying to affect positive change.
	And I know that criticism of things that need to be criticized is a part of that.
	But as a result of my extreme need to please people, I guess that criticism can be very tough for me too.
	And so things that maybe should be criticized end up not being, or my opinions or views end up being unclear because, you know what I mean, there's not that.
	Here's what I like, here's what I don't like.
	They're just kind of, here's what I like, and then here's a word salad about things that are neutral or that I don't want you to have a negative opinion of me about.
	Okay, so we have to go back to the beginning of the conversation because I suggested that what you called pleasing people was appeasing people out of fear, and you're still referring to it as pleasing people.
	And you may be correct, but I think we have divergent opinions about that.
	Appeasing people.
	Define more.
	Appeasing people is you are concerned about attacks or being neglected or being abandoned or other people talking negative stuff about you or maybe as a child you were physically attacked or maybe you were drugged or whatever it was.
	And so appeasement is when you attempt to preemptively Prevent a negative response from another person by manipulating them by appealing to their vanity or appealing to their sentimentality or something like that, right?
	I agree.
	And I think that I have a lot of problems with manipulating other people because it was done to me a lot.
	And of course, I don't feel like I'm manipulating people to harm them.
	I guess I feel like a central authority of control trying to make collectivism work and then having all this negative stuff come back to me because you can't compartmentalize and manage reality like that.
	Alright, still not sure what you're talking about, so let's go to your childhood.
	So, when you were a child, when you had disagreements with your parents or with those in authority, what happened?
	When I had disagreements as a child, I would generally be told that...
	I don't know what I'm talking about or that my opinions don't matter.
	And then as I would try to, you know, articulate my opinions, people would tell me that I was too long-winded, which I think is another source of my concern relative to people wanting to end a conversation every time there's a pause, which makes it worse.
	But long winded almost always refers to directness triggers attack.
	It means you have to dance around a subject because if you're direct, then it triggers attack.
	Like, when I was a kid, I would be more direct and people would get pissed off.
	And then rather than people saying, "Well, maybe people shouldn't get pissed off when a child is direct since we tell him to tell the truth," right?
	People would say, "Well, Steph, you need to be more diplomatic," right?
	Yeah, I agree.
	And we all have this, right?
	So I was at the eye doctor's getting my biannual checkup the other day.
	And my daughter and I are walking out of the waiting room.
	And my daughter points to a woman and said, she's really fat.
	Maybe she's going to have a baby.
	And the woman was like in her 50s, so I think not likely, right?
	Unless it's some sort of, unless the second coming is about to happen right there in the optometrist, that's not the case, right?
	And of course, I feel like, oh, ooh, that's bad.
	That's bad.
	You shouldn't say that.
	That's rude.
	And it's like, well, no, it's not.
	It's an accurate statement.
	The woman was fat.
	She wasn't about to have a baby.
	And I am not going to judge my daughter negatively for saying something that is true.
	I totally agree.
	How do you overcome the skin-crawling horror that comes over you when that happens, knowing in your frontal brain what the situation is and what it's a result of, but then not instantly knee-jerk reacting to say, oh, that's a terrible thing to say?
	I was...
	I refuse to know what the outcome is going to be.
	I refuse to know what the outcome is going to be because I don't.
	So maybe this woman doesn't have anyone around her who's telling her, you're getting fat, really fat.
	Right?
	So maybe a five-year-old walking past saying, that lady is really fat.
	Maybe that's a wake-up call for her, and maybe she's going to look in the mirror tonight and decide to change her behavior.
	I don't know.
	This could be a life-saving statement from a five-year-old.
	I don't know.
	Now, when I was a kid, when I was honest...
	About doubts I had about religion, about doubts I had about war, about doubts I had about people's motives and personalities and characters and intentions, right?
	I knew for sure I was going to get attacked.
	But I don't know whether it's a negative thing, right?
	So like, I don't know, five or six years ago, I went to the doctor.
	The doctor said, hey, you're putting on a little bit of weight.
	So I dropped 25 pounds and kept them off.
	You know, so he was telling me the truth.
	And it was a useful and helpful thing for me.
	It was great.
	So, the reason is, I don't know.
	I don't believe that saying a true statement is ever going to be harmful to someone.
	Now, they may get upset.
	But first of all, why would you get upset at a five-year-old saying a true statement about you?
	Like if a kid comes up to me and says, that man's really bald.
	I mean, I'm not shocked.
	I do have a mirror.
	And so, what's...
	What's the problem?
	Somebody walks up to me and says, you have a beard.
	Does it bother me?
	No, I have a beard.
	So I can't get upset with my daughter for saying a true statement.
	And I don't know what the outcome of her saying a true statement is going to be.
	Now, someone may get upset how rude that child called that woman fat, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, but she's fat.
	Right?
	But she's fat.
	That's true.
	I mean, it's true.
	It's like I'm overcomplicating it to an extent where I just don't even know where I am.
	No!
	Oh, man!
	Stop jumping to conclusions!
	If you're coming to me for some answers, or at least to ask me some questions, stop jumping to conclusions.
	You're not overthinking it or overanalyzing it.
	You have prior trauma, which you're attempting to adjust because you're not in a traumatic environment anymore.
	You're like a guy who comes home from the war.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Guy comes home from the war, needs to learn how to try and calm down his fight or flight mechanism, right?
	Yeah.
	And he's not like, well, I guess I, you know, somebody drops a pan in the kitchen, goes, crash, bang, boom!
	He jumps out of his skin.
	What does he say?
	He says, does he say, well, I guess I'm overthinking things.
	I guess I'm overanalyzing things.
	No.
	My nervous system is trained to respond to threats.
	That sure as hell sounded like a threat.
	If I didn't respond to that in the past, I could have gotten killed.
	Yes, I think it's much closer to something like that.
	Right.
	So this is not an intellectual process, although you are obviously a very smart and verbal person.
	You are desperately trying to bring it into the intellectual realm because that's where your strength is, right?
	Also where your weakness is emotionally, I would assume.
	You are trying to pull this into the intellectual realm, but this is a nervous system, amygdala, base of the brain, lizard brain response to threats that you experienced as a child.
	So what happened to you as a child when you strongly disagreed with your parents?
	Oh man, it's really, really, really tough to recall.
	It's almost as if there's some kind of memory block there.
	As a general statement, my dad is extremely religious.
	And there were a couple of times when I expressed to him that I wasn't, and that was really, really, really bad.
	That didn't go well.
	And how did it go well?
	What happened?
	It didn't go well.
	I think that I tried to talk about things empirically and talk about evidence and things like that.
	And my dad said that, you know, I was trying to be too smart for my own good or trying to figure things out or trying to meddle with various things and that it was disrespectful.
	And I guess I get worried about non-rational arguments.
	The word disrespectful is the last refuge of an asshole.
	Oh my god, that word disrespectful.
	It's such a generic smackdown.
	It's like calling in an airstrike to end a football game.
	It doesn't mean anything.
	Disrespectful, 99% of the time, disrespectful means...
	So far, you haven't been intimidated enough to nod when I spit out bullshit, so I need to crank it up a little and frighten you some more until you nod when I spit out bullshit, and then I'll pretend that that's called respect, when all it is is fear of consequences and obedience to bullshit.
	Yeah, and there was a big trend of kind of obedience in my household relative to, I don't care if you have questions or if you disagree, this is my way, or...
	The highway.
	If that's your dad, put him on.
	I'm sorry.
	I'm at my office and, you know, I rerouted all my calls and of course it didn't work.
	And what happened with disagreements with your father?
	What happened from there?
	Like, as kids, you push the envelope until you come up against a significant threat, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And with my dad, I mean, I get along with my dad a lot more now than I did when I was younger, and that was not a fun conversation about faith, but it's not completely repressed.
	I have conversations with my mother that every once in a while, they come back to me, and I remember how they went, and it's just horrifying.
	And I think that there was a little bit of a trend of that with my dad, but with my mother, it was much more severe.
	And since my Yeah?
	Do you remember the question?
	You are an excellent filibusterer, my friend.
	If you have a question that makes you uncomfortable, you unleash the doves of language to obscure the sun itself.
	Do you remember the question?
	No, I don't.
	That's fine.
	I appreciate you for saying that.
	So when you would continue to push against your dad, like when you would doubt or have skepticism or try to figure out something or have an opposition to something your dad was saying and you'd push it, what would happen?
	I can't remember.
	My dad left, I guess, is why I went with the political answer.
	And how old were you when your dad left?
	I think I was between three and six.
	I have two brothers, so my mom had three little boys, and then my dad decided that that wasn't so much fun.
	And when did your dad drop the respectful bomb on you?
	How old were you?
	I mean, did you see him after that or what?
	Yeah, he wasn't.
	I mean, he paid child support and we had, you know, a comfortable living and we'd see him on Wednesdays and every other weekend.
	And it wasn't until I was well over 10, somewhere in my 10 to 20 years when we would have various conversations about religion.
	And he was very defensive in that regard.
	So your dad was all about the respect, right?
	I mean, but when you have, say, three children with a woman who you have vowed, as a religious man, you have vowed to love, to honor, and obey for the rest of your lives until death do you part in sickness and in health, where was his respect for that vow?
	You know, because respect is a really, really big issue for this guy.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Always respect something he just used to bully children, but nothing that you would expect him to actually live up to himself.
	I can't imagine if I said to him what you just said, how he would react.
	Oh, no, no, no.
	You told me that you get along much better with your dad now.
	So you know exactly how he would react.
	How would he react?
	It would probably disturb the kind of peace that I've tried to create by walking on eggshells.
	He would probably be very mad.
	Alright, so let's say he got mad.
	Then what?
	Gosh, I can't.
	I've been walking on eggshells around him for so long that I really, I don't know.
	I think that now I'm old enough and I have a child of my own and stuff that he would have to consider his actions a little bit more carefully.
	I really don't know.
	Listen, listen, man.
	I mean, and again, I'm just pointing this out at the moment.
	I'm not trying to be critical.
	But you really are snowing me.
	Because you're telling me that you have a much better relationship with your dad now, and now you're saying you're walking on eggshells because you're afraid of his temper.
	I just do that with everybody.
	I don't talk about the state or how much Obama is and stuff, but you're right.
	I shouldn't make an excuse, especially for my own parents, and I shouldn't think of things framed in that perspective.
	Because you're right.
	I am not being myself.
	I am walking on eggshells.
	But I guess I do that so much that I just don't even realize it.
	Well, no.
	I'm just asking you not to try to...
	I'm sure it's unconscious, but not to try and mislead me.
	I have to be super alert to what you're saying because you are very verbal.
	You're very intelligent.
	And there's this scrolling set of billboards called Blake's Life that doesn't have anything to do with what you're saying, but it constantly pushed in front of me.
	Yeah, I think that this, what you're getting at here, and we've kind of touched on it a few times, is the manipulative element.
	And that was done to me by my mom a lot.
	And so it's something that I guess I'm not sure how to have a functional relationship with people without manipulating them because I was manipulated too much.
	Well, this conversation is part of how you do it, right?
	Yeah.
	And you have to call it what it is, and you have to not sentimentalize things for the sake of looking a certain way.
	For the sake of looking a certain way.
	Look, we all would like families full of wonderful, kind, benevolent, wise, helpful, honest people, right?
	Yeah.
	And in my experience, I come from an absolute shithole of a family.
	And it's, you know, when I was younger, kind of embarrassing, right?
	People would ask about my family and I felt it kind of reflected on me.
	Yeah.
	Because people always blame the kids for the parents, right?
	My dad had to hit me.
	I was a handful.
	I didn't listen.
	I was disobedient.
	I, I, I, right?
	And everyone piles on the kids as far as that goes, right?
	Your dad's not angry because he's immature, controlling, and a bully, and delusional.
	Right?
	Your dad gets angry.
	Why?
	Because you, Blake, are disrespectful.
	It's your fault.
	I'm angry.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, that's very much.
	If your parents are screwed up, right?
	There's this old joke that used to be around when I was a kid that says, insanity is hereditary.
	We get it from our kids.
	Laugh?
	I thought I'd cry.
	Right?
	And this sort of thing where parents portray themselves as victims is so common.
	It's such an automatic response.
	Because dysfunction on the part of children is considered the cross that parents have to bear, not the nails they pounded into the kids' hands and feet, right?
	Yeah.
	And so if you come from a shitty family, I'm not saying you do, but if you come from a shitty family, then there's...
	The great temptation is to feel shame in that.
	Like somehow that's your fault.
	Somehow...
	You were bad.
	Somehow you didn't do the right thing and people are going to judge you by your parents.
	Right?
	Which is why you want to portray yourself as coming from and having a better relationship with a functional family.
	Yeah, I can see that.
	Either portraying that I came from a functional family or that I was not affected by all the trauma that I suffered.
	Definitely trying to, I guess, push either one of those images instead of, again, feeling how I want to feel and talking about what I want to talk about.
	Always trying to consider how I'm landing with other people almost exclusively to the point of it being, you know, really upsetting to my normal thought processes.
	And it's really difficult for me to shake that.
	And it keeps you distant from the people around you, right?
	I can feel that, this gulf between us in this conversation, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	I feel like I'm striding into your life like some ogre spouting flames from my fingernails.
	And that you're throwing up shields and you're dodging and you're fogging and you're evading as if I'm some sort of dangerous guy to you.
	And I feel like you're trying to disarm me.
	And you're trying to misdirect me.
	Again, I'm not saying this is conscious.
	I just said, this is my experience of the interaction.
	And that means that I can't connect with you.
	Because I have to keep reminding you that what you're saying can't be true based upon what you're saying 30 seconds later.
	And I've imagined that this is common whenever you get close to any kind of truth with the people in your life, with people around you.
	That you can be solid until someone gets close and then you ghost and disco mirror and fog, right?
	Exactly.
	Word salad, fog, disco mirror, whatever I have to do to take the situation away from looking at me and maybe my filthy details or something.
	I don't know how to put it.
	And you get away with that because you're very good looking.
	You want your story to match your appearance.
	You want your history to match how you look, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Plus, I always witnessed when I was younger my parents telling things about our family that maybe weren't the most accurate things possible, and then witnessing them doing that, and then just figuring, oh, everyone must misrepresent the truth like that.
	Maybe weren't the most accurate things possible?
	Yeah.
	As in...
	I'm not sure what that even means.
	What is the most accurate thing possible?
	You know, when did this happen?
	When I was seven.
	Well, which month?
	Oh, I don't know.
	July?
	Well, which day in July?
	What time?
	Where were you?
	You can't say anything that is the most accurate thing possible.
	People are asking how I know what you look like.
	I can see your avatar in Skype.
	And I'm restraining myself from fondling and kissing my screen.
	Barely.
	Barely.
	But, - No, my thoughts have been totally real. - You're saying something like they weren't telling the most accurate things possible That is a very roundabout way of saying they lied, right?
	Well, it's even worse than that they lied.
	They would misrepresent the truth with elements of partial truths.
	So the only things confirmable to other people were partial elements of truth.
	So it's basically a really good way to learn how to misrepresent the truth when you see your parents give partial nuggets of truth that are verifiable and then attach all this bullshit to it.
	And that isn't just my parents.
	That's almost my entire family, which makes it Something that I see that I despise, but then I find myself either tempted to or doing it, and it's terrible.
	Well, you know, it seems to me a perfectly valid defense strategy for a child to adopt the lying of the parents.
	Because if you challenge liars, and they have power over you, they will simply escalate abuse.
	Yes.
	Yes, and that's what happened.
	I mean, cops come to the door.
	It's sort of a different matter, right?
	But for kids, you look at your parents telling outright lies to other people, and it's kind of jaw-dropping.
	It's like, who the fuck are you people?
	I remember this was my mom, too.
	She'd just say stuff, and it's like, I was there.
	It's not even close to what happened.
	Yeah.
	And then you realize that this kind of, it's crazy.
	Like, literally, it's crazy.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	You were going to say.
	Well, it's also reckless to misrepresent the truth in front of your kids that are listening to you and have good memories as if you're gambling and betting against their ability to understand and comprehend.
	It's not reckless.
	It's not reckless.
	Because you're still lying for them.
	Yeah, negligent, reckless, abusive.
	No, no, no, listen.
	It's not reckless because you're still lying for them.
	In this conversation, again, when you hear this back, you will hear them, right?
	At least half a dozen lies about your family, misrepresentations.
	One actually occurred while you were talking about how your parents lied.
	Because you said, well, they didn't tell the truth in the most accurate, conceivable, possible way, right?
	And then when I challenged that, you said, well, no, actually, it's the complete opposite.
	They lied in the most egregious misrepresentations, right?
	So you see, even in this swing, you're shuffling me some bullshit, and I say, this smells bad.
	And then you say, well, it's the complete opposite, right?
	Yeah.
	So let's have a pact, you and I. Let's pretend there's no one else in the universe.
	Just you and me.
	And let's have a pact that you will tell me the truth.
	Just ten minutes.
	Which means instead of responding in a verbally fluent word salad manner, You need to take a deep breath, relax yourself physically, and just speak from the heart.
	So, Blake, can we try that?
	Absolutely.
	I wanted to think and listen.
	Yeah, deep breath, deep breath, deep breath.
	Okay, so what was it like for you growing up?
	Growing up, I was a very, very, very inquisitive child.
	I had questions about everything followed by why.
	Why?
	Why?
	When my dad left and my mother was really one of the only people left to answer my questions, along with my two brothers that were very young, after a while, She not only would not want to respond and tell me that I had too many questions, that I asked why too much, she brought me to be diagnosed with ADD and ADHD and to be put on amphetamines at a very, very young age.
	And I remember when I went to the doctor's office, the doctor was very hesitant to prescribe me with anything, and I remember the doctor saying, I think that before we try this that you should make sure to answer your child's questions and to always, if you have a limit or a rule for him, try to tell him why instead of just making a rule.
	My mother basically kind of said, well, no, no, no, I feel strongly about this.
	I did research and if I don't get it from you, I'll get it elsewhere.
	And then as we were leaving, I remember telling my mom, you know, I think we should listen to the doctor because I always have questions and I want to talk to you.
	I remember she said something to the effect of, well, you have so many questions that they become not worth answering or you don't deserve an answer or something like that.
	That really motivated me to kind of shut down talking to my family and really get into computers and then I Worked with computers for a long time asking my questions there instead of to real people and I think that it degraded to some extent my Ability to socialize with people and to be right there present in the moment so it was It was kind of a strange mix of my childhood of being both isolated but
	then also connected with people but not really in a way where you pick up on mannerisms and eye contact and things like that.
	And what was the dominant emotion in your childhood?
	I guess fear.
	Thank you.
	Is that a guess?
	I would have to say, you know, fear that my family wasn't normal and that they wouldn't prepare me for the world.
	And then as I went into the internet, in the early ages, the internet was very elite and people there were very smart.
	And then that started to degrade.
	And a fear of me being not normal and also a fear of the world decaying I don't know.
	I guess it's all just a giant ball of fear and trying to pinpoint where it's coming from and why is really difficult.
	Well, that's the worst kind of fear when you don't know where it's coming from.
	Have you ever been in the woods late at night walking and you hear a crack in the undergrowth?
	You're not sure exactly where.
	You're looking around.
	You're scanning.
	You don't know where it's coming from.
	You don't know.
	Could be nothing.
	Could be some branches settling.
	Could be a bear.
	Could be a coyote.
	Could be a squirrel.
	When you don't know where it's coming from, this is what's so terrifying about sharks, right?
	They're underwater.
	Don't know where they're coming from.
	Can't see them coming.
	Yeah, basically no up, down, left, right.
	It's from anywhere.
	Yeah, I mean, if you're on top and you don't have goggles, I mean, you can maybe see a couple of blurs.
	You don't know what the hell's going on.
	You say that you didn't have any particular object for your theater.
	What that means is that everything was terrifying, which means that the people in charge of you had no empathy for you.
	Yeah, I hadn't really considered that before I listened to your piece about...
	I think you said something to the effect of, if you were a little boy, how many times did people ask you about what you liked or what you felt or what you wanted to do?
	I bet never.
	That still sticks with me.
	Right.
	And like a lot of parents, your mom found you inconvenient.
	Because to answer a child's questions when those questions multiply requires that the parents set aside their own personal preferences in the moment and sit with the child and do what the child wants to do rather than what the parent wants to do.
	And if your mom Found that onerous.
	It meant that there's not a bond there.
	If your mother would rather drug you than answer your questions, it means that your inquisitive nature was extremely dangerous in that you could get biochemically assaulted by pseudo-medicine for being curious.
	You know, curiosity killed the cat, but at least it was a quick death, right?
	Yeah.
	And so when your identity, when your nature draws insidious biological attacks from an immoral collusion between mother and doctor, and I fucking hate that doctor, let me tell you that.
	If your doctor knew enough to know that it was shitty parenting, then he shouldn't have given your mom the fucking medicine.
	God damn those assholes.
	Well, you know, you could just explain to him the rules and listen to him and try and answer his questions.
	You know?
	You don't do that if the kid has leukemia.
	You do that when you know it's shitty goddamn parenting that is causing, quote, dysfunction on the part of the child.
	Then don't give her the drugs to bury her child's brain in.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm so, so sorry.
	And I guess it's just really...
	Yeah, go ahead.
	It's really hard for me to figure out what's going on and where I am and who I am because as a child, I was taught all of these techniques for manipulating people.
	I was given amphetamines which It socially destroys your ability to interact because you're all jittery and stuff.
	But then also I built a Beowulf cluster computer when I was 12 because I had nothing to do and no one to ask questions and it was on amphetamines.
	At this point I have learned so much about technology and I'm now struggling with trying to get back into communication and working with other people.
	I'm just really trying to figure out who I am and where I'm at.
	What affected me relative to things that were damaging that I can fix?
	What are things that I should embrace and that are me?
	Are there any parts of me that are good?
	Are they all bad?
	Are they all good and bad things that everybody has to deal with?
	Am I different from other people?
	I don't know.
	I feel like I can't get an objective perspective.
	I guess nobody can, but I think it bothers me.
	Let me just give you a thought experiment here.
	Let's say you met a fine, intelligent, conscientious young man and you found out that he'd been born in a concentration camp.
	His parents were unjustly imprisoned.
	He was born in a concentration camp and he has trouble with social anxiety.
	He has trouble sleeping.
	He has trouble concentrating.
	Would you think that there was anything wrong with that fine young man because he happened to have the really, really shitty luck to have been born into a concentration camp and had to survive in that environment?
	No way.
	Would you ever think badly of him?
	Would you ever think that there was something wrong with him?
	Because of the strategies that he had needed to develop to survive.
	That's a more difficult question.
	I would try to lean towards understanding, but I guess it would be case by case, I think.
	I'm not sure how to blanket answer that.
	Let's say that everyone who was a guard in that concentration camp was a man with blue eyes, a shaved head, and a long beard.
	Let's say you were out with this fellow and a guy sat down right next to him who was blue, bald, with a big beard.
	And he got anxious and his hands started shaking.
	What would you think?
	I would think...
	That's absolutely understandable, and it's me being me, I'd probably try to run interference and make an excuse for us to get up.
	Would you say to him, there's something wrong with you, you might be all bad?
	Oh, absolutely not.
	Then stop saying it to yourself!
	Do you understand?
	The speech you just gave me before this thought experiment We're so heartless towards yourself, I can only assume it was your parental alter egos inhabiting your larynx.
	Do not ever say to yourself or about yourself or to other people that there is something wrong with you because you are born into a shitty family.
	You didn't choose that family.
	You had no legal power within that family.
	You had no economic independence from that family.
	You had no choice to get out.
	You had no social support.
	You had nobody calling your family out.
	You had no people bungeeing in to help you.
	You had to survive in the environment you accidentally happened to be born into.
	And none of the adaptive strategies that you developed, in my opinion, Make you bad or wrong or broken or dysfunctional.
	You were incredibly functional in that environment in that you had these kinds of parents and you grew into somebody who has an office.
	You didn't say, oh, that phone I'm calling from my cardboard box in a van down by the river.
	You need to have the level of compassion for yourself that you show to a stranger whose history you know because you know your own history.
	You know everything you were subjected to and everything you went through.
	And if you can summon genuine sympathy and empathy for a stranger you meet or a friend you have who was born to a concentration camp who's triggered by something, And if you would consider somebody to be a real jerk for saying to that person, you're screwed up, you're broken, you might be completely wrong, then you need to stop doing that to yourself.
	You need to extend the same compassion to your own history, to your own younger self, that you would to any stranger whose abused history you understood.
	My...
	My biggest concern is that my past traumas are going to be akin to somebody who was molested as a child doing it to other people because it happened to them.
	And that I will use these negative experiences or things that I've learned to go out and be that and do that.
	Yes, yes, yes.
	But to do the opposite, you need to think the opposite.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	I mean, if you're going north and you want to walk south, you turn right around and you...
	You've got to do the opposite to get the opposite result.
	The traumas that you faced were based upon a lack of compassion for you as a child, right?
	Yeah.
	So how is you, not having compassion for you as a child, going to stop that cycle from repeating?
	Because you need the opposite, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Have you done what you would call evil as an adult?
	Not that I can think of at all.
	I've never cheated on any girlfriend or spouse.
	I'm a very moral person.
	I mean, I guess misrepresenting the truth would probably be the biggest thing that I've done.
	Right.
	Right.
	Which is not evil, right?
	You haven't initiated the use of force against anyone.
	And you're a father.
	And...
	If your son was scared of something legitimately scary, or not legitimately scary, it doesn't matter, how would you react?
	I would be right there.
	My son has a developmental delay and I like to try to be where he is and tell him things and explain things all the time.
	He's about three but doesn't have really any language yet.
	Right.
	So...
	Would you ever say to someone about your son that he's broken, that he's bad, that he may be irretrievable, or anything like that?
	No, absolutely not.
	And if anybody said that about my son, I would be absolutely livid.
	Do you see why I'm livid about what you're saying about yourself?
	Yeah, when I frame it like that, I can appreciate it much better than Framing, I guess, myself as a child with all the other world being all-knowing and me just being messed up.
	Compassion for children is compassion for children.
	That's UPB. You cannot philosophically have infinitely more compassion for your own son than you had for you as a child.
	Philosophically, it doesn't work.
	It's an artificial distinction.
	This child I will have compassion for.
	This child I will call broken and bad.
	Now, children are children.
	And children deserve compassion because they're struggling to survive their environment.
	it.
	A child once said something terrible to my daughter.
	Once.
	Once.
	And then that child ran away, and I made sure my daughter was in safe hands, and I ran after that child.
	And I followed that child, and that child told me to go away, and that child said some terrible things to me.
	And I followed that child until that child was willing to sit down and talk.
	And she was five.
	And I sat down and I had a long conversation with that child.
	And it really was a conversation.
	I wasn't lecturing.
	It really was a conversation with that child.
	And I explained to that child what her life is going to be like if she allows herself to say things like that to people.
	And I said, I'm sorry that you felt that angry, that upset and didn't know what else to do.
	And for about 10 or 12 minutes, we sat in the sunshine and talked about the future.
	And then I said, I would like you to apologize to my daughter.
	You don't have to, but I would like you to.
	And that little girl went and picked a flower and walked over to my daughter and said she was incredibly sorry and gave her a flower which was an incredibly brave thing to do and mature and the child stayed and played and my daughter gave her a big hug when she left And
	that's what I want to do.
	I want to try to fix everybody.
	I want to talk to everybody.
	Blake, Blake, Blake.
	This is not about everybody.
	This is about you.
	Nobody seems to want to do that for me.
	Right.
	Right.
	And that's because you push people away who want to do that with you.
	Now, I understand in the past people didn't, but now, You tried to sell me a story on your badness, on your wrongness, on your brokenness.
	And I'm telling you, that's not true.
	That's your parents' story.
	That's the story that keeps you from sympathy with yourself That's the story that keeps you in the orbit of your parents.
	That's the story That keeps you telling the story about how things are going better.
	But that keeps people away from giving you the empathy that you deserve, that you need, that is your birthright as a human being for what you went through as a child.
	I mean, you almost couldn't have a worse mismatch than your curiosity, rationality and intelligence and your parents stone faced pig ignorance, stupidity and rejection of that.
	You should have had that from day one.
	You should have had that from month minus nine onwards.
	I'm incredibly sorry that you didn't.
	But that has left a hole in your heart where that empathy should have been that you fill with words and computers and abstractions and, I'm sure, a great deal of professional skills.
	You will not be able to fill that hole in your heart by attempting to fill the holes in other people's hearts.
	Because the only people who will let you do that are people who don't see the hole in your heart and therefore are unworthy of that level of compassion.
	And that's what I'm trying to do in this conversation is to point out that I see the verbal spiderwebs of defenses and obfuscations and avoidances and misdirections and fogging that is going on, which is simply...
	A big smoke bomb around the crater of your history.
	But you didn't get what you needed as a child.
	You got the opposite of what you needed as a child.
	That is incredibly painful.
	And you will be both sad and angry about that as a human being.
	As a wounded person, as a wounded child, you will be both sad and angry.
	But you're all about the brave front, right?
	I try to be, but I guess it's not for me.
	It's for what I perceive to be what others want, if I really think about it.
	The brave front is your parents doing.
	They want you to put up a brave front so that you don't receive the sympathy that will make you angry.
	You've expressed no anger over the last hour.
	You were drugged for curiosity, man, my God.
	My God!
	The doctor said to your mom, stop being a shitty mom, he doesn't need to be drugged.
	Nope!
	Drug him!
	Fuck that brain, drug him!
	Getting on my nerves.
	Come on.
	Yeah, as almost a 30-year-old man, I have the metabolism of a 12-year-old boy.
	Because of the amphetamine and stimulant Nice.
	Presence during my core key development.
	So I guess I'm not too happy about that, by which I probably should say.
	I'm pretty pissed about that.
	That's not...
	No, listen, you got a pretty pissed?
	No, no, you don't get it yet.
	And I'm sorry to be so annoying.
	I really am.
	But you've got to get this.
	You've got to get this, man.
	It's life-saving.
	It is absolutely essential.
	You've got to get this.
	Let's say your son goes over to some...
	No, let's say your son's out trick-or-treating.
	And someone gives your son some M&Ms.
	He pops them in and you find out later that the M&Ms have been laced with amphetamines because someone thought that was really fucking funny.
	How would you feel?
	I would have to resist going into a homicidal rage.
	That's what I'm talking about.
	That's what I'm talking about.
	That's one dose of amphetamines in your son.
	How long were you force fed this shit?
	I think almost like a decade.
	All right.
	So you have a homicidal rage about someone dosing your son for shits and giggles.
	What if that had gone on for 10 years?
	And had produced permanent changes in his metabolism.
	So Yeah, that's...
	Yeah, I've never looked at it that way.
	That makes me pretty mad.
	And...
	If your neighbor had been secretly dosing your son with amphetamines for 10 years, and then you said to me, but, you know, I get along pretty well with him, what do you think I would say?
	You'd probably think that that person was...
	Had some kind of serious mental or moral defect.
	I would say that that person is not in touch with his anger.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	And I would say that that lack of that anger is harmful to his son.
	If he's friends with the neighbor who dosed his son with amphetamines for 10 years.
	And I'm just talking about one of the things.
	It could be anything.
	It could be anything, right?
	Yeah.
	Then I would say that that son is probably still at risk because the dad is still friends with the dangerous neighbors, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	There's still risk there.
	Right.
	Right.
	And I would assume, given based upon what you said, that your parents have access to your son.
	Right.
	Yeah, my dad is pretty busy and never really wants to come visit, but my mom, his grandmother, and my stepfather, they do want to see him quite often.
	So what is your mom's perspective on having dosed you for 10 years?
	She thinks that I can still take it.
	She thinks that I'm still, you know, have ADHD and can't articulate my thoughts and don't make sense and that I still need it and that I talk about the non-aggression principle and monetary responsibility and just crazy conspiracy shit.
	I'm sorry.
	Okay, so she thinks that she did the right thing?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	Big time.
	Okay.
	So the neighbor who dosed your son is still coming over and still feeding your son?
	Yeah, basically.
	Still coming over and watching The kiddo.
	All right.
	Well, I don't think you have that right.
	I don't think, I mean, it's you and your mom.
	You're an adult.
	But if you have a lot of unprocessed stuff with your mom, and you do, In my opinion, if you have a lot of unprocessed stuff with your mom, then you will be emotionally absent when your mom is over with your son.
	Because you are not present to your mom.
	You are not real to your mom.
	Therefore, when your mom is around, you get exercise from your own body.
	You dissociate.
	You're unavailable to your son.
	And I would imagine that's true for some time after your mom is around.
	And you don't have the right to have people in your life who you dissociate from when you have children.
	Because you make a blood bond with your children, which I know you have, to be there for them no matter what, right?
	Yeah.
	You have your heart open to them no matter what.
	But if you have a woman in your house who dosed the shit out of your system, who, in my opinion, medically abused you for a decade and continues to think that it was a great idea and continues to blame you.
	And God knows what else.
	You can't be there for your son if you have to dissociate from your mom.
	If you are unreal to your mom, you will be unreal to your son.
	This is why I tell people to sit down and talk with your parents about all the shit that went down when you were a kid.
	Don't take no for an answer.
	Don't take blame for an answer.
	Stand your ground.
	Talk this stuff through until you can connect.
	Or not.
	But having people around who cause you to fundamentally dissociate is unhealthy for your son.
	Again, this is just my, as usual, idiot amateur opinion.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I was just going to say, and I guess that's a big part of the problem, is that I, you know, consistently and persistently, I tried to discuss various things with my mom.
	From the questions when I was little all the way up to now, the things that I want to discuss, but there aren't questions anymore.
	There are You know, trauma in our relationships and it's still, it's the same old, you're talking too much or quit yapping or I don't want to talk about this stuff.
	And she doesn't seem to have a lot of interest in wanting to, what she calls rehash that, but it's not rehashing it, it's trying to elicit an I'm trying to get her to admit that she cares, and it's tough because she'll say, like, I love you and stuff, but then when it gets into, well, if you love me, how come this or how come that?
	And even not framed defensively like that, it just really doesn't work out.
	Well, I mean, sorry, she says that she loves you, but she doesn't want to hear about incredibly important stuff that's going on in your mind and in your heart.
	Exactly, and that's like my entire family.
	Yeah, then let me tell you something very simple.
	She does not love you.
	Yeah.
	I hate to be this blunt, I really do, but you need this.
	Am I willing to listen to things that you have to say?
	Yeah, you are.
	I think so.
	Yeah, and with my children and my family and my wife, my immediate family, my wife and my child, if they wanted me to watch something that was six hours long and devastatingly boring, I would.
	Because they wanted me to.
	So, universalize this shit then, right?
	Yeah.
	I think your mom is telling you everything that you need to know.
	I don't think she could be more honest or more blunt.
	And you're hoping that somehow she can change her behavior in the present so you don't have to process your anger about the past.
	You're in this null zone of waiting for food to finally be delivered so you will have never been hungry.
	But no matter how much food gets delivered now, you were still starving as a child.
	And that won't change.
	And plus, the food is never coming anyway.
	Plus, it was Alestra all along that made me sick in the first place.
	So more Alestra food probably isn't going to help anyway.
	You know what I mean?
	It seems like if my mom was so abusive before then, even if she were to apologize or whatever, it seems to me like that is ingrained in her mind.
	The way that she interacts with people, and I guess my biggest fear is that that has happened to me, too.
	No, but it hasn't happened to you, because you're 30, and you haven't done any evil, and you haven't abused your son, right?
	It sounds like you have a loving relationship with your wife, so it hasn't happened to you.
	Yeah, I guess not.
	I guess that's something that I can be, you know, happy about, because you're right, it really hasn't.
	No, and it's not about to.
	I mean, by the time you're 30, your brain is five years past its final maturation.
	I mean, you're not just suddenly Jekyll and Mr.
	Hyde yourself, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	It seems like there's been trends working relative to me and to my mom.
	My mom's trend just has been bad and it's kind of going to stay there.
	And I guess my trend is just one of trying to constantly evaluate what I don't like about situations and other people and trying not to be or do that.
	But I need you to get that.
	Look, let's say tomorrow, like, okay, some guy jumps you in an alley with a knife, and he's like, give me your wallet, right?
	And you have some amazing jujitsu move, and you grab his knife, right?
	And then he's suddenly like, oh, oh, man, I'm sorry.
	Like, I got a drug problem.
	I don't want your wallet.
	I'm never going to do this again.
	I'm so sorry.
	What's happened?
	He's trying to manipulate me because he lost advantage.
	Yeah, did he suddenly have a moral awakening the moment you happened to grab the knife?
	No.
	What's going to happen if he gets the knife back?
	He's going to continue to rob me or kill me because now he knows I'm a bigger threat than he originally thought.
	Yeah, and he's going to fuck you up because of the humiliation of having to switch stories and having to beg where he formerly wanted power, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So let me tell you something.
	The knife...
	The knife passes from parent to child when the child grows up.
	I have all the power with my daughter.
	When my daughter grows up, she will have all the power with me.
	I accept that.
	That's why I don't exercise unjust power with my daughter because I don't want to teach her how to treat me when she gets to be an adult.
	When I am old...
	Fingers crossed.
	When I am old...
	I will be focused on my daughter.
	My wife, my daughter, my show and all that kind of stuff.
	But my daughter will be out there going into the world and she'll have guys and she'll have a career and education and travel and she's going to be doing all these cool things and there'll be little old shrunken dad back there saying it'd be great if we could have lunch together.
	Right?
	And she's going to have a whole distracting exciting world and a life to build and I'm going to be part of her past I'm going to be in a rocker, I'll be on the phone, and she can come and see me or not, but I'm going to be competing with a whole big, exciting world out there that she's going to want to go and explore, just as I did when I was a young adult, right?
	Yeah.
	So the power is going to pass from me to my daughter.
	That's an inevitability.
	Now, the power has passed from your mother to you, and you don't get that yet.
	Right?
	Which is why you're supplicating, you're still begging for, you know, please have a heart, please notice me, please be kind, please be compassionate, and so on, right?
	Yeah.
	Now, let's say that you find some amazing way to corner your mother and get her to talk about the past.
	Right?
	Like, get her to really talk about the past because you have squeezed and exercised every muscle of your communicative being to get her into a corner to talk about your past, right?
	And let's say she's like, fine, okay, we'll talk about your past.
	You've got me in a half-Nelson, fine, right?
	Yep.
	And then you talk about the past and whatever happens, happens, right?
	Yep.
	That will not solve anything about the past.
	Not a tiny, tiny little thing.
	Because all that's happened is that you have power now, whereas your mother formerly had power.
	And now you're exercising power to make her do what you want her to do, just as she formerly exercised power to make you do what she wanted you to do, right?
	Yeah.
	All that's happened is you got the knife from her, and now she's like, okay, fine, we'll talk about the past.
	Like, let's say you say, listen, we have to talk about the past or you can't be part of my child's life.
	I'm not saying you should, but let's say you did, right?
	Yep.
	Then you're like, fine, okay, we'll talk about the past, right?
	She wouldn't do that.
	All that's happened is you're now exercising power and making her do something.
	She's still not doing it of her own accord.
	She's just cornered.
	She's not compassionate.
	Yep.
	Once you have to start exercising power over people...
	You get that they will never spontaneously, emotionally do what they should do as basically decent human beings.
	Your son wants to talk about something important about his childhood.
	Shut the fuck up.
	Put down the cell phone.
	Look into his eyes.
	Open your heart and listen.
	And ask for more until your son is emptied out.
	But if you had the capacity to do that, he wouldn't have much to talk about anyway.
	Yeah, it wouldn't take up so much time.
	Uh...
	Last time that I tried to speak to my mother, it wasn't even about something extremely important.
	It was about something I cared about deeply.
	We were in a hotel room.
	I was visiting my stepdad's family with my mom and my stepdad, my wife and my son.
	They were in their hotel room, we were in ours, and we had all gone over to their hotel room and they were watching a show about, you know, prepping for the apocalypse or something like that and all kind of laughing when somebody said that when things go wrong you have to shoot the cat.
	And it was commercial.
	It was actually the second time we were watching this show.
	It had already been on.
	There was some kind of a marathon past midnight, so it was the same episode.
	And I said, well, let's mute this.
	I want to talk to you guys about, you know, economics, monetary policy, and quantitative easing, because I've been working at this bank, and this is stuff that we should maybe all know.
	And my mom was like, no, no matter what else we're doing, the last thing on earth I want to do is hear you talk about that.
	I don't care.
	So that being the case, I think that if I did...
	I don't care.
	You know, sometimes when somebody repeats something four times, it might be worth listening.
	I'm going to ask you one last quick question.
	Are you for or against government subsidies to bad businesses?
	Against.
	Against government subsidies, even to good businesses.
	Okay.
	Do you know why people accept subsidies at the economic realm?
	It's because of what you're doing with your parents.
	Do you get that this is a massive subsidy that you're giving them?
	Because you're treating them as if they were good parents when they haven't been.
	Everything that happens in the political realm first has to happen in the family realm.
	Otherwise nobody would believe it.
	And the crazier things are that happen in the political realm, the deeper the propaganda in the familial realm.
	So kids get hit 932 times a year on average for the spanking parents.
	And then they grow up and they say, well, we need a central agency, a force to keep order in society.
	How is that believable?
	Because of the childhood trauma.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, it reinforces it to an extent that most people don't even have an understanding of.
	Right.
	And so, in terms of subsidies, how is it that the banks get tarps?
	Because people with bad parents are subsidizing them and bailing them out all the time.
	Yeah.
	So when a business is doing shitty work and they get a subsidy, they're being paid as if they're a good business.
	As if that were voluntarily and deserved and earned and provided, right?
	Involuntary transactions.
	So people who are doing a shitty job of business who get government subsidies are being treated as if they're a good business.
	When they're doing bad and getting stolen money.
	You are treating your parents as if they were good parents.
	Yeah, coming over.
	Here, here's my son.
	Here's my heart.
	Here's my vulnerability.
	Here's my thoughts.
	Here's my feelings, right?
	Well, good parents would get that, you know.
	Of course they would, right?
	But you're pretending in some way that your parents were not who they were.
	You're subsidizing them.
	And it's much more dangerous for you than any government bailout could ever be.
	This is why it's so strange for me with libertarians and ANCAPs and so on, they get really outraged about shit they can't do anything about that has no tangible, immediate negative impact on them, and then they go off and do the exact same stuff at an emotional level and don't even notice that it's something they can do something about and something that has far more tangible impact on them.
	I mean, fight subsidies.
	Let's fight subsidies.
	Stop subsidizing your parents.
	Yeah, yeah, let's get to an elemental subsidy that really affects not just the people involved, but the entire future in ways that most people can't even extrapolate by the time it gets to violence and warfare and government picking winners and losers and top-down.
	Yeah, I totally agree.
	That's a very good...
	Yeah, if we stop subsidizing bad people in our life, government subsidies will end of their own accord because they'll be noticed as different from what everyone is doing.
	I agree, because we're not going to be able to fix it with top-down planning.
	That's what caused the problem.
	Oh, no.
	No, of course not.
	So...
	Yeah, so those...
	I mean, and by this, I simply mean, like, no, sorry, don't take no for an answer.
	You want to talk about something?
	They don't want to talk about it?
	I'm not taking no for an answer.
	Yeah, and maybe even, like, I'll try mixing in something, like, well, until we have a chance to talk about it, maybe we should try to schedule that before we schedule more family get-togethers.
	You know, maybe try to make it as...
	Absolutely.
	I mean, this is super important for you.
	And you deserve to get to the bottom of this stuff.
	You need to be assertive.
	This is breaking.
	Do the opposite.
	When you were a child, you couldn't be assertive because they had all the power.
	Now you have all the power.
	So be assertive.
	I know I say this like, whoa, just go and be assertive.
	It's completely terrifying.
	Don't get me wrong because you're really going against history then.
	But be assertive.
	No, I want to talk about this.
	If you don't want to talk about this, then I don't want to talk about anything else.
	Until we talk about this, there is nothing else on the table.
	Yeah, the price of being in my life is listening to what is important to me and talking about this stuff, which has had a huge effect and impact on me.
	Yeah, I think that that sounds like exactly what I need to do.
	I guess my biggest fear in confronting anybody, and it happens a lot less in business, I guess, is that people will use fallacy in response to my arguments that aren't fallacious and then won't know the difference.
	The point of confrontation is not...
	To get something in particular other than facts, right?
	So let's say that you confront your parents and they just send missile after missile of fallacy and fogging and straw man and whatever, right?
	Yep.
	And you persist and you're assertive and you persist and you're assertive and they just dig in and escalate and it just gets ugly as shit, right?
	Yep.
	Well, that is the point of the confrontation is to get the facts about the relationship.
	All we are is empiricists.
	All I want are the facts.
	And you need to know, do you have a voice in your relationship with your parents?
	Do they respect you?
	Do they care about you?
	Do they listen to you?
	Will they sacrifice their own self-interests for your sake, for your happiness?
	And if they won't, in any way, shape or form, deal with you with compassion or take any ownership for their past behavior, Or their past mistakes?
	That's information, right?
	So you're saying, well, it's really bad if they do all this terrible stuff when I confront them.
	It's just facts.
	I'm not saying that they're morally neutral, sorry, emotionally neutral facts.
	They're painful facts, but you need the facts, right?
	Absolutely.
	And persistence gets you the facts.
	And the reason we don't persist in confrontations is because we damn well know what's going to happen and we don't want to look at the facts.
	But you know, avoidance of the facts is never a good idea in life.
	And it's precisely what we criticize non-philosophical people for indulging in.
	Well, let's show them how it really looks, right?
	To not indulge in facts.
	And let's just go and get the facts about what we call our relationships.
	Absolutely and I guess I have a lot more practice in getting the facts than I did previously when I would engage with my parents.
	Now I've been a finance manager and things like that and you have to interrogate a business unit for metrics.
	I guess I can just put that mindset on and try to be assertive and politically correct as you have to be and just go after the facts and I don't know if it'll be fruitful to do that with my parents, but I agree that I need to do that.
	That until I do that, that a wall that I kind of am putting between me and others relative to, I guess, allowing them to know me is still going to be there until I can do something to try to start to carve it away.
	Blake, I just want to say something before the end of the call here.
	I'm sitting over here listening to you and Steph have a conversation and I'm actually shaking right now.
	Big secret everyone, me and Blake met in Texas at a conference recently and it was an incredibly positive experience.
	Meet quite a few people.
	Blake, without question, was one of the most kind, generous, enthusiastic people I've met in a really long time.
	And it was, you know, one of the highlights of the trip was getting to meet him.
	And someone that I definitely want to keep in contact with moving forward.
	And we're connected on social media and I just pulled up a picture now of you with your son, Blake.
	And he's got a really big smile on his face.
	And I see a lot of him in I see a lot of you in him, obviously, you know, looking at this picture of him.
	And the amount of sadness and anger that I feel when I think of that beautiful child that I'm looking at being force-fed amphetamines for a decade for asking questions.
	I... The amount of rage I feel for that is practically bottomless.
	And in this conversation, you've talked about, just to use the analogy of, if on Halloween your son was given some M&Ms that had amphetamines in them, so some freak could get some jollies, and your son was dosed once, how would you feel?
	And you described...
	A homicidal rage.
	You described it intellectually, but I didn't hear the emotion.
	I didn't hear the click in your tonality in your voice.
	I didn't hear the emotional connection to that anger and that rage that you would feel if your son was given amphetamines once.
	You were given amphetamines.
	I'm sitting here thinking about it.
	Sorry, do you mind if I finish here?
	Sorry, this is taking me a...
	No, no, go ahead.
	Absolutely, go ahead.
	But the idea of you being force-fed amphetamines for a decade, that person that I met at that conference, an incredibly kind, generous, wonderful person.
	I'm looking at your son, I'm seeing you being force-fed amphetamines for a decade.
	It's completely overwhelming.
	Like the anger, this mixture of anger and sadness that I feel right now, thinking of that.
	And I'm looking at the picture of your son right now and the idea that your son is going to be in the periphery of the people, of the person that did that to you.
	That scares me.
	Thank you.
	I don't have any eloquent closing, but that scares me.
	I see his smile.
	I know what this person did to you, and the fact that your son will be around that person, that scares me.
	And I guess what I have to say is, that homicidal rage that you described...
	Intellectually going into with the idea of someone doing that to your son.
	You need to connect to that emotionally.
	You need to actually feel that anger, feel that rage, feel the whole cornucopia of emotions that come along with what you experienced.
	And you need to connect to that.
	And you need to understand what it was like to be someone who would ask questions and be put on drugs for it.
	Why do you want to please people?
	Because when you didn't please people, they fucking drugged you.
	Why do you want to control situations and make sure everyone gets what they want?
	because if they don't, they fucking drugged you.
	Meeting you was an incredibly positive experience.
	Your son is incredibly fortunate to have you as a father.
	And I want him to experience the totality of who you are.
	I don't want him to experience a dissociated Blake.
	I don't want him to experience...
	I don't want him to experience...
	The kind of sadness or frustration that you experienced as a child.
	I want him to get everything that you are.
	And that includes those emotions, that includes that capacity to be angry, that capacity to be sad, that capacity to be frustrated.
	That includes the whole gamut, the positive and the negative.
	And I just really implore you to do whatever is necessary, therapy three times a week, whatever it takes to get in touch with those emotions so your son can have the totality of the wonderful person that I know you to be.
	Wow, thank you.
	It's so tough, as I said before, to be objective in the context of your own life and experiences.
	And Hearing an objective restatement of what I said really helps it fit in to something that makes sense.
	And again, you're not going to probably hear the edge in my voice.
	I feel like I feel emotions very, very deeply in both ends of the spectrum.
	So I have this kind of habit of trying to remain very, very calm.
	How do you feel right now, Blake?
	Instead of the words, how do you feel?
	Instead of going into the description, how do you feel?
	One or two words is guttural right now.
	How do you feel?
	About the amphetamines.
	About the amphetamines.
	I feel sad.
	I feel cheated.
	Like I'll never know what could have been.
	Go on.
	I just...
	I want to know how things could have gone differently had things been different in my childhood or if I had different parents or a different physical makeup and my every waking thought is occupied by what we could have been.
	It's unfortunate that we can't change what happened to you when you were a kid.
	But you are in total control of what happens from this point onward.
	And you don't want to look back a year from now, five years from now, ten years from now, twenty years from now, asking yourself what could have been in the moment, here and now, for the next several months, for the next several years.
	And you have the opportunity to Build an incredible life for you and your family, a life surrounded by positive, wonderful, incredible people.
	A chance to watch your son grow up with that beautiful smile on his face.
	emotionally connected to his father.
	And I just really urge that you can't change what happened to you when you were younger, like, I wish I'd move a mountain if I could to do that.
	But you can affect what happens next and where you're going to be tomorrow.
	And one day, when your son gets older, he's going to ask about your mother.
	He's going to ask about your childhood, right?
	Yeah.
	How do you think he's going to feel about a woman who drugged you for being curious?
	At this point, it almost feels so bad that I don't know if I ever want to tell my child about my childhood.
	It's not your guilt.
	I mean, if you had some illness as a child, you would have said, oh, I had this illness as a child, right?
	If you had a tough upbringing and you tell your child that, You are saying I was unfortunate, I was unlucky, and I did the best I could to navigate a very difficult and dangerous situation.
	My daughter loves me so much that if I had people around me who had harmed me enormously as a child, and she knew that, she wouldn't want them in the house.
	I mean, if some guy had beaten up your wife when she was younger and wanted to come over for dinner, what would you say?
	Come have a knuckle sandwich.
	Yeah, you would say no, in whatever form that was, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	Okay, so you need to protect yourself to one-tenth of one percent of the degree to which you're willing to protect other people. so you need to protect yourself to one-tenth of one It's strange.
	My brain rebels so hard when you say that.
	I know that it's true, but so many parts of my body become tense and anxious when I hear you say that.
	Yeah, the parents' parts, the Stockholm Syndrome parts, of course.
	That's perfectly natural.
	That's perfectly natural.
	I mean, you would be inhuman if that didn't happen, right?
	That would be a terrible symptom of something.
	And I'm not saying see or don't see anyone, What I am saying is have standards for seeing people.
	People who've done you terrible wrongs.
	And look, if your mom says, look, this was the doctor's advice, this, that, and the other, right?
	Fine.
	I mean, there's all this other dysfunction, right?
	And just have standards.
	Because when your son gets older...
	To maintain the respect of your children is one of the most fundamental aspects of parenting.
	It's one of the most fundamental aspects of life.
	If people trust you in business, your business life is a whole lot easier.
	If people trust me in this show, it makes it a lot easier.
	And you need to keep the respect of your son.
	So when your son gets older, he's going to ask you about your history, and you're either going to lie to him or refuse to talk about it, which is going to be continuing what your parents are doing, right?
	Or you're going to tell him what happened, all that happened, or at least age appropriately some of what happened, right?
	Yeah.
	And what's he going to feel about having these people around?
	He loves you.
	These people harmed Daddy enormously.
	What's he going to think?
	It's tough to know because we don't know the extent of his delay yet.
	When we figured out that there was some kind of developmental delay, I put in...
	You know, I made arrangements to be able to work from a home office or from an office about a block away, and I'm there constantly.
	And you're right.
	I mean, I think that this doesn't work against your point, that I don't know if he's going to be able to understand that, but maybe even works for your point in being that this stuff needs to be communicated in a way that might not have the benefit of being able to be communicated verbally.
	This needs to be displayed through actions.
	And I guess that's really what I'm thinking about, is trying to kind of translate for my son's Truth and what to do and how to help him interpret the world.
	And I think that this...
	Look, I mean, I don't know what's going on with his son, obviously, right?
	But, you know, my daughter was asking about my mom when she was four.
	And I said, my mom was very mean to me.
	She hit me.
	And every now and then she would say, I'd like to see your mom.
	And I say, well, if there was a child who kept hitting you, would you want me to invite them over?
	And what do you think she said?
	No.
	No, no, no.
	Of course not.
	Yeah.
	And I said, so do you understand?
	She's like, "Yeah, I get it." You've internalized your parents as a method of self-protection, Everyone does who's got difficult parents.
	And so when we talk about having standards and being assertive with your parents and talking to your parents and not taking no for an answer with your parents, it triggers your internal parents who are there to protect you when you were dependent upon your parents, right?
	The internalization of the abuser is a method of self-protection, but without effort it doesn't know when the parents aren't around and it generally then keeps the parents around which keeps the triggering occurring, right?
	Yeah, I feel like they're right here with me fighting inside my head, which sounds...
	Of course, they are.
	It's more than a feeling, right?
	It is.
	It is probably.
	I mean, the internal, right?
	Yeah.
	And every time you're around them and self-erase, you make them stronger in your head.
	And it makes you less available to your wife and to your friends and to your son.
	Because you're engaged in a battle of two worlds, right?
	The world of love and the world of harm.
	The world of caring and the world of exploitation.
	The world of giving and the world of selfish using.
	You're trying to make these two worlds fit together.
	They don't fit together.
	Square.
	A round peg in a square hole.
	And so you're split.
	You're at war with yourself because you've got these two worlds that you're trying to pretend you can be in both and be the same person.
	You can't.
	It's so exhausting.
	It is.
	It's completely exhausting.
	And particularly with your son's, whatever's going on with your son, you need as much of a presence with him as is humanly possible, right?
	Absolutely.
	Yeah, that's fundamental.
	So my whole life is about planning that as much time with him as I can possibly squeeze out of every single day.
	But the more you're at war with yourself, the more you're trying to make these two opposite worlds fit together, the less available you will be for him, right?
	Yeah, exactly.
	And it already has detracted massive amounts of time and continues to.
	Yeah, so imagine you're walking around on your cell phone having a chat with your wife, right?
	And then suddenly you think guys with knives are following you.
	I mean, how relaxed a conversation can you have with your wife?
	Let's say you can't tell her for whatever reason, right?
	Well, suddenly you're going through the motions, you're mechanical, you're distracted, right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	It'd be devastating to you.
	Because your fight-or-flight mechanism has been activated, right?
	Well, what happens around your family of origin, your parents?
	You can't be there for people when you're at war with yourself.
	Yeah, my train of thought.
	I mean, you can.
	I know you are.
	That sounds like an extreme statement.
	I'm not saying you're never there for people, but in those moments where you are in that conflict, you're less available to people.
	Yeah, and it's compromised overall.
	I totally agree that when I'm trying to think about what other people want and how to please other people, you can't be focused on what you want and how to benefit the people that you're charged with taking care of.
	You can only have about 70,000 thoughts per day, as far as I'm aware.
	Is this useful enough?
	I mean, we do have a couple other callers, but I know we've had a long time, but it's a very important issue, and obviously we care about you and your family and where things are going to go.
	How are you doing at the moment?
	No, thank you so much.
	This has been extremely eye-opening.
	I've kind of talked less and less as we've gone through because I'm trying to go back and think about everything that you've said.
	And I think that, yeah, absolutely, I'm going to go have this conversation and hopefully I'll be able to let you guys know how it went.
	And even if it goes poorly.
	Well, thank you very much.
	We certainly do want to know, and all the very best for you.
	Let us know how it goes, and best of luck with it.
	I think it's going to be very important.
	No, absolutely, and thank you guys so much for taking the time to talk with me on the show.
	I love it, and keep it up.
	Thanks so much.
	Thanks, Blake.
	All right, Mr.
	Mike.
	All right, up next is David.
	David wrote in and said, I'm in great need of Stefan's help about a problem I am having.
	I'm an ex-Mormon missionary that married a girl I met in Brazil while on a mission.
	We now have two kids and we are having problems.
	In the mix of the problems with my wife, I started an affair.
	The woman is now pregnant.
	I've started to listen to the show for a few months now and am gaining a great deal of self-knowledge, but I feel I've dug myself into a hole that will ruin many lives.
	Please help.
	That's David.
	Great.
	Wow, David, thanks for your patience.
	I'm sorry that the last call was so long, but are you still with us?
	Oh, yes, yes.
	Thanks for taking my call.
	Oh, you're welcome.
	Gosh.
	Well, how pregnant is the other woman?
	She is almost three months now.
	And she's planning on going to term?
	Yes, uh-huh.
	And how long have you been married?
	We have been married about six years now.
	And you have two kids, right?
	Two kids, yes.
	We have one that is almost five and a four-month-old.
	A four-month-old, wow.
	How did you mechanically work an affair?
	And that's always been kind of a curiosity for me.
	And we'll get to sort of all the implications of it, but I'm just sort of curious about, I mean, how do you have an affair?
	I mean, kids are so, so all time consuming.
	Oh, yeah.
	The girl I'm having an affair with is somebody I work with.
	So we don't really, I don't, we don't go out and do things really much together or anything.
	It's just more of a thing that happens at work.
	You have sex at work?
	Well, at work or hotel or her apartment, things like that.
	Just quick things that we find time to get into, I guess.
	Did you have a pencil?
	I don't know.
	Do you have, like, you're at a computer, right?
	I'm actually not.
	I'm on my cell phone.
	Oh, okay.
	Just because I'm going to refer to your girlfriend as Sally and your wife as Jenny, just so I don't have to keep saying your girlfriend and your wife and all that, right?
	So I just was going to have you jot that down to remember.
	If you forget, just ask.
	Okay.
	So girlfriend Sally...
	Wife is Jenny.
	Now, does Sally know, I would assume she knows that you're a married man with two kids, right?
	Yes.
	So tell me a little bit about Sally and her qualities.
	Sally is very hardworking.
	She's very calm and collected and unlike what's Jane?
	My wife.
	Yeah, Jenny.
	Jenny.
	Very calm and very in control of her feelings and her thoughts and her emotions and very loving and outgoing.
	All right, but none of that makes any sense.
	If you don't mind me saying so.
	I mean, maybe you're right.
	I'm just telling you from the outside, none of that makes any sense.
	In control of her feelings, loving, calm, collected.
	Why is she having an affair with a man who's married with two young children?
	And getting pregnant.
	Yes, that I don't know.
	That's not called being loving, right?
	Certainly not having any empathy for your wife, any empathy for your children, right?
	Right.
	Very true.
	I mean, your children who are born, right?
	So, listen, if you're going to sell me a bill of goods here, I don't want to have the conversation.
	Like, if you're going to tell me how great Sally is and what a great person and she's calm and collected and controlled of her thoughts and feelings and loving and this and that and the other, she got pregnant with a man who has two young children and is already married, which tells me she is significantly dysfunctional.
	Now, either you don't know how dysfunctional she is, or you do, but you're giving me some other story for reasons that don't really matter, right?
	Yeah, I was kind of hoping you would tell me exactly how dysfunctional she is, because I think I have that block of her beauty and mystery.
	Oh, she's pretty!
	Oh, God, what a shock!
	Yeah, that does not let me see too clearly.
	All right.
	Now, how did she get pregnant?
	She said she was on birth control this whole time and it just didn't – it didn't work this time or this month and she got pregnant.
	No, no.
	Birth control works.
	And she's the pill, right?
	She's on the pill?
	Yes.
	I've asked – I was like – Yeah, the pill works.
	Take the same time every day.
	Didn't miss a pill.
	She's like, oh, no.
	Yes, yes.
	I've done all that.
	Yeah.
	I don't know how this happened.
	No, if she's got the ethical standards to bang a guy who's got two little kids and a wife, I mean, she'd never ever conceivably lie about taking a pill.
	How old is Sally?
	She's 22.
	And how old's your wife?
	33.
	Right.
	And how old are you?
	34.
	So she's 12 years younger than you?
	Yes.
	So you're having unprotected sex with a woman willing to sleep with a married guy with two kids, and are you still sleeping with your wife?
	We haven't slept together for maybe 9 or 10 months now.
	Right.
	So at least you're not double dipping and maybe bringing some viruses home to your wife, right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	Does your wife know about the affair or the kid?
	She does not know.
	And what's your plan here?
	I don't really have much of a plan right now.
	Me and my wife have had problems and And I really don't want to break up the home that I have, but...
	Oh, no, no, no, no.
	Don't you tell me stuff like that.
	Oh, don't.
	Don't even insult my...
	Don't you give me these Hallmark card things.
	Oh, my God.
	You don't really want to break up your home.
	What do you think you're doing?
	Yeah.
	Don't give me any of this sentimental bullshit, and don't you give me a shred of self-pity here.
	What you're doing is specifically going to break up your home in its current form, right?
	You understand that, right?
	Yes.
	Right?
	It will never be the same, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so your actions tell me that you do want to break up the home because you don't have unprotected sex with someone and then expect that somehow things are going to work out, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, I have been unhappy for almost since the beginning of the relationship.
	So now you're giving me the self-pity thing, right?
	I guess I kind of was going that way.
	Yeah, of course.
	You're like, oh, well, the sentimentality didn't work, so now I'm going to switch to the self-pity, right?
	I don't mean this in anger or hatred.
	I'm just pointing out, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	All right.
	So what do you think you're trying to do empirically, like in reality?
	So you're not having sex with your wife.
	You're unhappy with your wife.
	You said your youngest son is four months old.
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so like 13 months ago, you were still having sex with your wife.
	Your wife got, I guess, pregnant.
	Maybe she was uncomfortable halfway through the pregnancy.
	You stopped having sex with your wife.
	And then shortly after your son...
	Is the son the youngest?
	Is that right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so shortly after your youngest son was born, about a month after he was born, you started having sex with Sally, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so what do you think you're trying to do here?
	It's not about sex, fundamentally.
	What do you think is going on here?
	What are you doing?
	I'm probably trying to self-detonate My relationship with my wife.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So good.
	You're aware of that, right?
	I mean, this is a grenade in the tent, right?
	Yeah, I probably don't have the balls to come at her one-on-one and either work it out or not work it out.
	It's funny you should say you don't have the balls because it's your balls that are doing it, right?
	By impregnating another woman.
	Yes.
	Tell me a little bit about Sally's history.
	Do you know anything about her upbringing?
	I've been questioning a little bit leading up to the call and she swears that she had a great childhood and her parents really didn't hit her very often or could barely remember ever being hit.
	It was more her brother was the bad one and he got spanked a little bit more than she did.
	But she is perfectly normal, and she thinks what messed her up most was probably in her teenage years when she was left by the love of her life at 13 or 14 and had her heart broken, and that's when she feels like she became jaded and rebellious and got into drugs and alcohol and everything else.
	Wait, hang on.
	Sorry.
	The love of her life left her when she was 13?
	That's how she put it, yes.
	The fuck was she doing dating the love of her life at 13?
	I don't know.
	Did they have sex?
	Yes.
	At 13, she's having sex with the love of her life?
	It was 13 or 14, yes.
	Okay, that's a distinction without a difference.
	Yes.
	And she, I guess, had very strong feelings for him, and he was lying to her the whole time.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	Does she have, like, were her mother and her father still together?
	They are still together, yes.
	And do they know that she was having sex with the love of her life at 13 or 14?
	I don't know how much they know.
	I have a feeling they know a lot.
	Um...
	There's been times in the past where she's kind of fallen off with drug use and stuff and her parents would call up to me and see if I know where she's at or where she's going or what she's doing.
	Wait, wait, sorry.
	Did you know her when she was younger?
	Yeah, I've known her for about four or five years now.
	Okay, so you knew her when she was like 17?
	18.
	It's about four years.
	You said four or five, so 17 or 18.
	Yeah.
	And is this recently, three months ago, was the first sexual encounter you had with her?
	No, there had been ones in the past.
	But just in the past year or so, yeah, that's turned into an affair.
	Okay, so you first had sex with her when she was 21?
	Yes.
	And you are telling me the truth here, right?
	Yes.
	Not shaping it for any legal issues, right?
	No, no, no, no, no.
	So her parents are calling you up asking you where she is?
	That's what I was trying to understand here.
	Oh, yeah, because she worked for me and still does.
	So I've always been her boss.
	Oh, she's your employee.
	Yes, yes.
	I'm trying to think of any like moral line you haven't crossed in this one, but all right.
	So her parents would call you up and say, where is she?
	And is that because she still has a drug habit?
	She has went into rehab and she went through all that six months and got cleaned up and But in the process of getting off drugs, she developed a binge drinking habit that she was into, all the way up until she got pregnant.
	Is she still drinking in the pregnancy?
	She's not drinking, no.
	Not that I'm aware of.
	Do her parents know she's pregnant?
	They do know, yes.
	Do they know you're the father?
	Yes, they do.
	What's that been like?
	Well, I haven't been in contact with them.
	They haven't come over to have a little fucking chat with you?
	They have not, no.
	All right, so this woman, we don't know what the hell happened, but she was having sex at 13 or 14, heartbroken, She was, would you say, a drug addict or had problems with drugs throughout her teenage years?
	I would say yes.
	She's had problems for sure.
	Okay, so she's had drug problems and binge drinking problems and she works for you and you thought, well, this is great.
	What could be better, right?
	Does it not feel a little bit exploitive to bang a heartbroken drug addict who works for you?
	It does, in a way.
	In what way is it not exploitive?
	Don't you give me this foggy language if you've called up for truth.
	In what way is that not exploitive?
	I almost feel like she was taking more advantage of me because she's made all the advances on me and everything.
	I tried to fight her off.
	She's taking advantage of you?
	Hang on, hang on.
	Give me the thought process that says that the 22-year-old drug addict is taking advantage of the 33-year-old boss.
	Just knowing that me and my wife have had problems and knowing that I guess I'm in a weak state of mind and throwing yourself at me.
	What do you mean you're in a weak state of mind?
	I'm just being unhappy.
	So because you're unhappy, you had sex with an employee who's had a history of drug problems?
	So unhappy people do that.
	That's what you're saying is the causal relationship.
	Unhappy people exploit young women with a history of drug problems sexually when they have power over them economically.
	That's what unhappiness makes people do.
	Is that what you're trying to sell me?
	You know, I've been unhappy in my life.
	I really have.
	Been times in my life where I've been really unhappy.
	Been times in my life I haven't wanted to get out of bed.
	But I didn't go find drug addicts who worked for me and have sex with them, unprotected.
	Because, you know, you don't really want to trust the I'm on birth control with someone who's got a history of drug addiction, right?
	So don't tell me it's unhappiness that made you do it.
	I don't know what made you do it, but don't tell me that it's unhappiness.
	Because there's lots of unhappy people who don't do that, right?
	Yes.
	And your wife suspects nothing?
	Is that your understanding?
	She doesn't suspect an affair, no.
	She knows that I'm unhappy with the relationship and we kind of talked about the problems that we're having and set a timeline to try to work these problems out and I'm moving forward with that.
	Wait, so you're pretending to try and work things out with your wife while you're banging your employee?
	You're pretending to try and work things out with your wife when you're lying to her about having impregnated another woman.
	I mean, are you kidding me?
	I mean, you're serving your own needs alone, right?
	Which of these three children, or which of these children, which of these group of children, right?
	You've got your mistress's baby on the way, and you've got two kids in your own household.
	Which of these households' children is going to grow up without a father?
	And that's the dilemma I found myself into.
	Which ones do you think it's going to be?
	Is it going to be your little children with your wife?
	Or is it going to be the little child with your mistress?
	Who's growing up without a father?
	Well, if me and my wife were to break up, I think she would take the children to a different country.
	So I'd definitely be more willing to try to salvage that relationship.
	Which relationship?
	With your wife?
	Yes.
	Well, not if she's in another country, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so if your wife finds out, you think that she might just go back to Brazil, is that right?
	I think if we were to get a divorce, yes, she probably would.
	There's a chance that she could forgive me if I was honest with her and told her everything.
	And all that stuff.
	There could be a chance to work things out.
	Oh boy.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	See, look, forgiving an affair is one thing.
	I don't know that it's even possible.
	But forgiving an affair is one thing.
	But when there's a child involved...
	When there's a child involved, then half of your resources are going...
	To the young woman, right?
	To Sally.
	Because Sally is going to say, shit, I'm 22 years old, I've got a baby coming, I'm going to need some money, right?
	Correct.
	Alright, so Sally is going to get you to pay child support, right?
	She hasn't brought that up quite yet.
	Oh, I get that.
	I get that.
	I get that.
	But I would assume.
	But yeah, she's going to go for child support, right?
	And then, to get child support, she's going to probably talk to a lawyer.
	Now, when she talks to a lawyer and she says, I was impregnated by my boss, then there's a whole other world of legal hurt that could open up, right, around sexual harassment.
	Mm-hmm.
	So it's not just the affair, which is, I think, unforgivable enough, but it's all of the other stuff that is going to happen as a result of the affair, right?
	It's not something that you can forgive and never think about again when there's a child and a woman that's always going to be around.
	And it's going to be taking food from her children's mouths through your income, right?
	Yes.
	And who can keep you tied up in court with lawyers for the next 20 years, right?
	And then it's going to be like, okay, which of these two kids are the three kids or which of the one of the three kids is going to get the money to go to college, right?
	It's just, I mean, expecting forgiveness in this situation may be unrealistic, right?
	Right.
	Okay, so tell me a little bit about your history and your childhood.
	What happened in your childhood that you think may have produced this kind of situation?
	I'm very strict, you know, religious, having to go to church all the time, and I was never spanked that I can remember.
	It seemed pretty normal.
	My parents really never had any answers for me.
	It was always...
	You know, church, and if you go to church, everything will be fine.
	And even now, I told them my wife's been really depressed after the second child, and she's very angry and aggressive and depressed, and their answer was, well, maybe she needs to start going to church more.
	Maybe church would help her.
	And where are you in relation to your own faith?
	I've woken up to it after I got back from the mission and started to really do some research and I was kind of kicked out of the church a little bit for starting a relationship with my wife as I was on my mission.
	And I turned myself in basically and they sent me back home a little early And I was kind of on probation with the church and would have to try to get myself back into good standing again, which I never did.
	I kind of stopped going as soon as I got back.
	I started researching it and kind of figured it out that it was just, you know, a big hoax and make-believe.
	And when did that...
	What awakening occur for you?
	Probably about three years ago.
	And is this the first affair that you had?
	After the birth of our daughter, a little time after that.
	After the birth of your daughter, a little time after that?
	Mm-hmm.
	Because they were really pressuring me to bring her to church and to get her Blessed and part of the membership role and do all that stuff with her.
	It kind of led me to really research it a little bit more, especially after kind of feeling shunned from them for the mission thing.
	And I'm going to assume that your wife is religious, right?
	She believes in God and Jesus, and she doesn't really have a certain...
	Religion, faith, that she's Christian, but doesn't have a certain church or denomination that she really belongs.
	So I converted her when I was there, and so she's kind of in the Mormon roles now, but she doesn't really consider herself Mormon.
	She considers more Christian.
	But have you talked to her about your atheism?
	I have a little bit.
	I don't really believe in anything anymore.
	Okay.
	So would you say that you're a nihilist or a relativist, like you don't believe in anything?
	I would say I don't know what to believe.
	I mean, I'd have to see proof or something to make me believe in something.
	At this point, I'm more of an atheist.
	Until proven wrong.
	And did your wife gain a lot of weight when she was pregnant?
	She did, yes.
	And did she lose it after she had the baby?
	She's still in the process of losing it and that's part of her depression is she's gained so much weight and is having trouble getting it back off.
	And how much weight did she gain?
	Um, about a hundred pounds.
	Wow.
	So you've got a fat wife who's breastfeeding and has kids around, and then you've got some hot 22 year old employee, right?
	Right.
	So physically, obviously, the 22-year-old wins out significantly, right?
	Yes.
	Yes.
	And did you want children with your wife?
	I did.
	Why did you want children?
	Well, Well, I wanted to, you know, have the family and the kids and the picket fence and the happy, you know, life that I kind of see my brothers and sisters having.
	Because, I mean, you get that you're acting with complete disregard for what is better for your children, right?
	Yes.
	And I've started to kind of analyze my actions and everything and trying to kind of get a grasp of how I found myself in this situation and how I can move.
	No!
	You did not find yourself in this situation.
	I mean, come on!
	Did your penis go out for a walk?
	Did it, like, detach and flap off on the wings of a dove?
	Did you black out or make up other nonsense excuses?
	No!
	Right?
	You flirted.
	You had unprotected sex with a drug addict who said, oh, I'm on the pill.
	And you were playing Russian roulette, right?
	But these were all choices.
	The first thing you got to get, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so you didn't find yourself in the situation.
	This isn't something that just happened, right?
	Right.
	And it is going to be incredibly harmful to all three children.
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	That's the heartbreaking part, right?
	Right.
	You sound like this is the news to you.
	I'm sorry.
	I got one of those children trying to come talk to me right now. - Listen, if you want to call back another time, that's completely fine with me because I don't know how much more time you got with these kids.
	You should spend time with them if that's where you're at right now.
	I'd really like to find out why I've been making these decisions and what I could do to better myself to be a better dad for these kids.
	Well, okay, but do you have a habit of not thinking things through?
	I do.
	I'm very...
	Once I get something in my head, I just do it, and the consequences seem to come afterwards.
	Now, have you experienced significant negative consequences from this impulsivity?
	Not severe negative consequences, no.
	A little...
	A little bit less money in my pocket from bad financial moves, but that's about it.
	Well, I can tell you, my friend, that is going to change pretty damn soon.
	Because you have leapt off the planet of bad decisions, right?
	You get that, right?
	I mean, you have made irreparably bad decisions.
	Because some bad decisions you can...
	You can fix, right?
	Right.
	But this is not fixable, right?
	I mean, there's no talking your way out of there's another human being on the planet, right?
	And if your wife takes your children back to Brazil, they will grow up without a father.
	Right?
	Right.
	That is very bad for them.
	If your wife stays with you and finds some way to forgive you, which I hope you don't think is her job, it's something you have to figure out, it's something you have to earn, it's something you have to do.
	Right?
	Don't you dare give her this information and then say, well, you know, basically you have to forgive me or I hope you'll forgive me.
	Don't be passive.
	Don't be active in pursuing the 22 year old and passive in trying to hang on to your wife.
	You have to work like the devil or like an angel to try and earn the forgiveness that you want, right?
	Yes.
	No matter what, if your wife stays here and you stay married to her, then the other kid is likely to grow up without a father, right?
	Or at least at the very best with half a father, right?
	Yes.
	You have permanently destroyed this young woman's chance of getting a quality man.
	Permanently destroyed this young woman's chance of getting a quality man.
	Because a quality man is going to come along and say, really?
	This is the child of an affair you had with a married man who had two infant children.
	Well, that's all I need to know about you.
	Bye-bye.
	Right?
	Right.
	So that's kind of ruined her life.
	Right?
	Right.
	And that means that her kid is gonna grow up with a succession of shitty guys going through his or her life on a pussy-driven conveyor belt of degradation, right?
	Right.
	And if they're gonna have siblings, they're gonna have half-siblings.
	And then their new dad, if he even marries the mom, is going to be like, well, that's not really my kid, but I guess I'll try to be nice, right?
	And your kids, at some point, when they grow up, if they're in your life, are going to find out that this happened.
	Why?
	Because there's another kid, right?
	So for the sake of selfish sexual pleasure, which lasted what?
	10 minutes?
	You have dropped a giant penis bomb into everyone's lives, right?
	Right.
	That is permanently changing their lives for the worst forever.
	forever.
	Would you consider yourself good looking?
	I'd probably say seven.
	I guess you're good-looking enough for a 22-year-old, right?
	Yeah.
	Not bald, right?
	Not yet.
	Maybe 10, 15 years.
	Yeah, but no, I thank God for my baldness.
	I really do.
	It kept me...
	Young Hippogamous girls away from me, but anyway.
	So, I mean, this is a complete catastrophe on every level, and there are innocent victims.
	You're not one of them.
	The 22-year-old, I mean, if her heart was broken, if she was having sex at 13 or 14, her heart was broken at 13 or 14, she went into drugs and alcohol, then she probably has an emotional age of about 10 to 12.
	Because when you get involved in drugs and alcohol, your emotional growth stops.
	Emotional growth happens when you overcome difficulties and you learn how to handle pain.
	Drugs and alcohol numb you to that pain and therefore you don't learn how to handle it.
	Exactly.
	That's exactly how she described it.
	Oh, that she's emotionally younger than 22, right?
	Yes.
	And drugs and alcohol were the only way to numb the things that she couldn't deal with.
	Sure.
	And so she doesn't learn how to deal with them and then she makes stupid decisions like having an affair with you.
	Yes.
	Now, she's 22 and a drug addict.
	You have no excuse.
	You're not a drug addict, right?
	Right.
	You knew what you were doing, right?
	You weren't blacked out.
	You weren't, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	I probably more consider myself maybe a sex addict in a way.
	Right.
	Right.
	And why do you think that you're a sex addict? - I really never had a relationship in my teenage years.
	I kind of had a bad transformation when I hit puberty.
	Acne and my nose grew and I was pretty ugly, I guess.
	And so no one really wanted to be around me.
	And then as I got to be 17, 18, acne cleared up.
	I got some plastic surgery and cut my hair and then women were talking to me and it just seemed like I've always been trying to make up for lost time by entertaining any woman that would sleep with me.
	And how many women have you slept with?
	Probably 18 or 19.
	I would assume all younger?
	For the most part.
	I dated a woman three or four years older than me for a while, but that was the only one that was older than me.
	And did your wife know about your history of compulsive dating and compulsive sexual activity when she married you?
	She did not.
	She kind of pictured me as kind of like a priest type personality.
	So you lied to her.
	You lied to her.
	I kind of told her about the past that I've changed, but obviously I haven't.
	No, no, no, no.
	This is easier than you're making it.
	Which is, I asked you, did she know about your past that you said no?
	So that means you lied to her.
	Look, when you get married to someone, their sexual history is something you have to tell them.
	I mean, when you're dating, your sexual history is something you have to tell people so that they can assess who you are and what kind of biological risk you might be posing, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So did you tell your wife about your sexual history?
	I didn't tell her how many.
	If I didn't tell her a number, I might tell her maybe nine or ten or something like that.
	Or maybe I just told her...
	So you basically are just fogging me here, right?
	I'm not going to get a straight answer from you, right?
	I lied to her.
	Okay, yeah.
	I mean, let's just be honest, at least about the lying, right?
	Yes.
	So you withheld the information from her that she might have needed to make that decision about whether to marry you or not, right?
	Yes.
	Because when this comes out, it seems very unlikely that she's going to be all happy about having married you.
	And if she'd had the information about this history of yours, she may not have married you and may have saved herself this disaster, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	And what's your history with pornography?
	I started looking at pornography maybe when I was...
	Well, internet pornography and...
	When magazines and stuff, when I was 12 or 13, probably when I was 6 or 7, I remember once looking out the window into my neighbor's house and seeing her take showers and her bathroom was next to my bedroom.
	So I would see her take showers in there.
	And that's kind of my first thought of pornography in that sense.
	And around 12 or so you began looking at internet and magazine pornography, is that right?
	Yes.
	Right.
	And you said you didn't have a relationship through your teenage years?
	That's correct.
	So you basically would masturbate to pornography through your teenage years, is that right?
	Yes.
	How many times?
	A day, a week?
	Probably average once a day, maybe twice when the younger I was to less as I got older.
	So you would have masturbated to orgasm thousands and thousands of times to pornography before you ever got involved with a woman, right?
	Yes.
	And do you know if your father ever had any affairs?
	I don't believe he did.
	If he did, I never heard about it or knew about it.
	My parents always seem to have the perfect relationship, at least in front of the kids, in front of us.
	There was never any screaming or calling each other names or anything.
	There was some arguing, but it was all calm and out of control.
	Right, right.
	Okay.
	So you began your first relationship, what, in your early 20s?
	Your first sexual relationship?
	It was when I was 18.
	When you were 18, okay.
	So then from the age of 18 to 33, right, so 15 years, you feel that you've been trying to make up for lost time as a teenager for 15 years?
	That's what it seems like.
	It seems like I can't say no.
	Well, okay, so are you saying that this 22-year-old woman threw herself at you?
	You didn't pursue her?
	I did not pursue her, no.
	She threw herself at you?
	Yes.
	I really want to have sex with you, and you didn't pursue her?
	That's right.
	She texted me one night and...
	Kind of made it obvious that she was attracted to me and wanted to take it further.
	And that was a year ago when you first had sex?
	Yes.
	After the birth of your first child?
	It was in between...
	Oh, in between the first and the second, right?
	Yeah.
	And sorry, I asked this before, I can't remember the answer.
	This is the first...
	Affair that you've had?
	Is that the first sexual encounter you've had since you were married?
	Yes.
	Really?
	Mm-hmm.
	Are you sure?
	Positive, yes.
	All right.
	I've never really...
	And what would you like to...
	Sorry, go ahead.
	I've never pursued an affair.
	I've had women hit on me and stuff like that, but I've never pursued them or anything like that.
	This is the only time that...
	It went that far.
	Right.
	And what are your emotions, if any, while we're talking about this?
	Sadness, self-hatred, thinking that I'm an idiot.
	Lack of control.
	Maturity.
	Yeah, to have an affair, you have to be putting out signals.
	Right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	It doesn't just...
	People don't just hit on you out of nowhere.
	You have to be putting out signals.
	You have to be putting out that you're available.
	Employees don't hit on their bosses because they're worried they're going to get fired, right?
	Right?
	Unless they know the boss is going to be receptive, right?
	Are you rich?
	I'm middle class.
	The people that work for me consider me rich because I have a nice house and nice cars for a 34-year-old.
	Okay, so you're doing well.
	Yes.
	So that's why you got sperm checked, right?
	Right?
	The woman is like...
	I mean, I assume she's doing some low-rent job with no future, right?
	Correct.
	All right.
	So, she's 22.
	She's got a dead-end job.
	She's pretty.
	So, she throws herself at you so she can have a kid and get set up, right?
	Correct.
	That's the way it's looking.
	She tries to say that she's in love with me and that she wants to have a relationship with me and that's all I ever was.
	And that may be true.
	I mean, who knows?
	I mean, I don't know what the truth is, but the reality is that...
	The outcomes still are going to be the same.
	You got, yeah, I mean, you got sperm jacked for money, right?
	Yeah.
	At least that would be my guess.
	I mean, who knows for sure, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	But, you know, I mean...
	The pill is effective and, you know, you should have...
	I mean, you should have been wearing a condom, obviously, right?
	I mean, that's so obvious, it's ridiculous, right?
	Because then you'd have a disaster, but not a disaster that would completely fuck up the lives of three children, right?
	Exactly.
	And I'm sorry that this has happened...
	I'm sorry that this was the choice.
	I'm incredibly sorry for what's going to happen to the children.
	I'm incredibly sorry for what's going to happen with your wife.
	I'm sorry for what's going to happen to your girlfriend's children.
	Because they really are the innocent victims and all of this.
	All children want to be born into a loving household with functional parents and this is not going to happen to those three children, right?
	And the cycle of dysfunction continues.
	In this case, because of you.
	And I'm incredibly sorry for all that's going to play out.
	I don't think you see it yet, but all that's going to play out for your life over the next decade or two.
	It is truly heartbreaking.
	You know, one of the first things that men have to master is the sexual impulse.
	You have to master the sexual impulse because it is so fucking dangerous.
	Literally, it is so fucking dangerous, dangerous fucking.
	Right?
	A man's sperm going into a woman, making a human being, a real-life human being who's going to need $200,000 to get to the age of 18, who needs a father, A man's first duty is to control his sexual impulse because we're stupid semen squirters, right?
	We're like fucking watering garden hoses, right?
	Squirt, squirt, squirt, squirt.
	That's the impulse.
	That's particularly if we come from disconnected or dysfunctional families.
	That's our impulse, right?
	Spray and pray.
	And I'm sorry that you didn't figure that out.
	I'm sorry that your wife didn't help you figure that out.
	I'm sorry that your father didn't help you figure that out, that you have to control your sexual urges.
	In the same way that you don't eat nothing but chocolate cake, you don't have sex, unprotected sex with strangers, you don't have affairs, and you sure as shit don't put children's lives in peril, and you sure as shit don't create children with no capacity to be their father, which is the reality here, right?
	I mean, the relationship with the girlfriend is not going to work out.
	I mean, your wife takes off.
	You'll probably try.
	You'll probably try.
	But you're going to be an emotional wreck.
	You were married for eight years, you said?
	Six years, yes.
	Six years, sorry.
	So yeah, I mean, so you're going to need at least three years, particularly, I mean, to deal with the self-hatred and guilt of the choices that you've made over the last year, since you first started having sex with your employee.
	You're going to need massive amounts of therapy, massive amounts of processing.
	There's a whole lot of fucked up stuff here that either you don't know or you're not telling me.
	Nobody makes decisions this stupid unless they come from an incredibly dysfunctional past.
	So either there's stuff you don't know or there's stuff that you're not telling me, in my opinion.
	But nobody makes decisions this unbelievably destructive to everyone involved, including the innocent and helpless children.
	Look, your wife chose to marry you and she chose to stay married to you and frankly she chose to gain a hundred pounds.
	Now that's a stupid thing for a woman to do.
	It's a stupid thing for anyone to do.
	And don't give me this while I was pregnant and shit like that.
	That's ridiculous.
	Women who gain a huge amount of weight put their marriages in peril.
	I mean, I guess guys too.
	I don't know.
	I mean, but I can't judge about the degree to which women will push back folds of male fat while having sex.
	I don't know.
	But a woman who puts on 100 pounds is doing something that is harmful to her marriage.
	I would assume the same is true for men as well.
	I don't know that.
	But it's particularly, would you say that your wife is very physically attractive?
	Before the wait, yes.
	Very beautiful.
	Okay, so she was hot, right?
	Hot Brazilian wife, right?
	Hot Brazilian, exactly.
	Okay, so she was hot.
	So you married her, of course, partly because she's hot.
	And then if she gains all this weight, the fact that you end up going for someone hotter, well...
	Live by the pussy, die by the pussy, right?
	Sorry, that's just the way it goes.
	If you sell yourself, you're going to get outbid, right?
	So if you're like, I'm hot.
	Oh, I've gained 100 pounds.
	And there's a hot employee working for him.
	It's not unprecedented.
	I'm not saying it's her fault.
	But it is her fault for gaining that much weight.
	And for being depressed without talking to you, working things out, whatever was necessary.
	Did she go to therapy?
	Has she gone to therapy at all?
	She's not gone to therapy.
	She's gone to a psychiatrist who, you know, tried to drug her up on things and give her Zoloft and Xanax and Everything else.
	She was on four drugs before this.
	And that may have contributed to the weight gain, right?
	That may have contributed to the weight gain, too.
	Plus, if you started having an affair about a year ago and you haven't had sex for a while, if your wife finds you repulsive because unconsciously she gets that you're having an affair, then she has no incentive to lose the weight because the weight keeps you from pawing at her, which she's probably grossed, right?
	Grossed out about.
	You can't just go and have an affair and not have that affect your marriage, right?
	Even if your wife, quote, doesn't know, we know a lot more than we let on, definitely down at the unconscious level.
	So probably one of the reasons she gained the weight, probably one of the reasons she hasn't lost the weight is because she doesn't want you to touch her because she's kind of grossed out by you, right?
	Because you're banging an employee.
	employee.
	Hmm.
	So, what would you like from me?
	Well, you've been pretty helpful so far, just helping me see exactly how bad it really is and without any sugarcoating on it.
	And obviously, I messed up as of now, just even before the kid's born.
	And I've been looking at maybe trying to start some therapy and In preparing and working for myself to try to get through this situation.
	Alright, do you want some advice?
	Oh yes, please.
	You know I can't tell you what to do and I'm not even going to try.
	But I'm going to give you some advice.
	Take it for what it's worth.
	In my humble opinion, Your girlfriend's kid is going to be a lot better being put up for adoption than being raised by a single mom with a history of drug addiction and very few work skills.
	And no father.
	I've made that suggestion To her, actually.
	Now, this is how you know whether you're being sperm-jacked for money or not, and whether the girl actually cares about the child.
	Children who are put up for adoption do as well as other kids.
	Children who are raised in single-mom households, particularly young, no-skill single moms, do shitty in general, right?
	So if she cares about the kid, she'll give the kid up for adoption.
	If she cares about your money, she won't.
	That's how you'll know.
	I've actually offered her...
	I talked to my sister who was actually looking into adopting and I made that suggestion that maybe my sister could adopt it and it'd be close.
	You could see it from a distance, grow up.
	Well, is your sister married?
	She is, yes.
	The dad wants to raise your bastard child?
	Are there any men left on the planet at all?
	Wait, your brother-in-law is willing to raise your bastard child with your girlfriend?
	Well, he doesn't have any kids of his own, and my sister's kind of getting too old to have kids now.
	But he doesn't want kids, otherwise he'd have had them, right?
	Yeah.
	And this is not exactly a great situation for him to learn about parenting, right?
	Because the other woman's going to know where the kid is and is going to be around, right?
	So my suggestion is get as many facts as you can about...
	Adoption versus kids from single-parent households.
	Ann Coulter's got a great chapter in one of her books, I think it's Scandal, about this.
	And that's just your starting place.
	You need to get all the facts together.
	This is your mission, to help this Fetus.
	Get the best chance in life.
	Don't take my word for anything.
	Maybe I'm talking completely out of my ass.
	Maybe Ann Coulter is too.
	But get as many facts as you can about how much better children being put up for adoption do than children being raised by single moms, right?
	With a history of drug abuse and very few skills and no father and no money, right?
	And you get those facts together and you sit down with your girlfriend.
	You sit down with her and you say, Sally, we both care.
	This is not about us.
	This is not about my wife.
	This is not about my kids.
	This is not about you.
	This is not about me.
	This is about what is best for the child that is growing in your belly.
	We need to get the best facts available.
	To make the best decision about what is best for the child, because the fetus, the child growing in your belly, no say in this, no choice, right?
	Now, if the facts show...
	That the very best thing for that child of this god-awful situation, the very best thing is for that child to be put up to adoption to a good family with people who want kids and stable and married and all that sort of stuff, then clearly that is empirically, factually for the best interest of the child.
	Now, if she says, well, I want to keep this child, to say, that's selfish.
	That is selfish.
	The best thing for the child is to put the child up for adoption.
	Now, if you are just going to do what's best for you at the expense of the child, then you're going to be a terrible mother.
	Because the whole point of creating life is to do what is best for that life, right?
	So get the facts and make that case and make it strongly.
	quickly.
	And appeal to her greed.
	Look, I say, if you give up this child for adoption, Then you can work on your issues.
	You can figure out why you propositioned an unhappily married man with two small children and got pregnant.
	You can figure out what the hell is wrong with you that you'd make that kind of choice and make that kind of decision.
	And don't give me this accidental bullshit.
	Right?
	So, you can still have a good life.
	You can still get married to a good man.
	You can still have kids.
	You can still do good and right things with your life.
	If you give this child up for adoption, then you're not going to be trying to land a good man with some other man's kid hanging around, right?
	So make that case.
	Make it strongly.
	Appeal to her greed.
	Help her to understand what it's like to be a single mom, to be broke all the time, to be exhausted all the time, to have no sex, to have no romance, no relationship, no future.
	She is going to have a terrible time being a single mom and it's going to ruin her life.
	My opinion.
	I'm just telling you what I'm thinking.
	Right.
	But if you can really make that case, then you can help airlift that child to the best opportunity for that child.
	to as good an opportunity as any other child born to a happily married couple can get, right?
	So that's my advice.
	With regards to the girlfriend, it's the best you can do for her, it's the best you can do for the child.
	It will coincidentally be the best thing you can do for yourself, but I wouldn't like you to focus on that, right?
	Yes.
	Okay, so that's the best advice I can offer about that situation.
	With regards to your wife, get into therapy now.
	You've got some money now.
	Now, you must get into therapy now.
	Do not pass go.
	Do not collect $200.
	Go straight into therapy with someone who understands sexual compulsivity.
	When you talk to the therapist, it will be anonymous, even on the phone.
	Say, this is my situation.
	I have got to get out ahead of this thing.
	I have got to figure out what's going on with me.
	How the hell I ended up in this situation.
	Because I have to tell my wife.
	And you have to tell your wife.
	I don't think I'm telling you anything you don't know.
	But you have to tell her with some knowledge.
	Because if you tell her without knowing why you did what you're doing...
	She's going to see it as just something that's going to repeat itself.
	Selfish.
	And then if you go to her with answers, it's taking a tiny bit of the burden off her.
	Right?
	Because if you go to say, I did this shitty thing, I don't have any idea why, she's going to be confused and angry.
	At least you can say, I did this shitty thing, I've been going to therapy for months, and here's what I did, here's why, here's, you know, and you'll be in touch with your emotions and so on.
	The only chance you have to save your marriage, in my humble opinion, is to get as emotionally connected with how this happened.
	Because if you don't know how it happened, and you don't yet, if you don't know how it happened, nobody is going to trust that it's not going to happen again, right?
	I'm not going to trust myself.
	No, you're not going to trust yourself.
	And then any promise you make to your wife is going to be hollow.
	But if you can dig in and find out whatever god-awful thing happened to you as a child that put you in a position where you're making these kinds of decisions, it may be nothing.
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	But you need to go and figure out how you can be trusted again.
	And that means pursuing self-knowledge as strongly as possible.
	It may not save your marriage, but it's the best chance you have, even if your marriage isn't saved, to have a more positive divorce or a more positive relationship with your kids as they're growing.
	But get into therapy.
	And I wouldn't tell your wife until you really knew and got it and were connected with whatever Happened in you that led up to this and that you can honestly and certainly say to her, this will not happen again.
	And here's how I know, and here's the work I've been doing, and here's the receipts for all my therapy sessions.
	It sounds like a good plan to me.
	I mean, I wish I could offer you something more positive, but the important thing is do not ever be behind a crisis.
	Don't be passive.
	You know, you said, well, I didn't approach these women.
	They just approached me and dragged me out by the dick, put sort of popsicle splinters on it and rode me into accidental pregnancy.
	Don't be passive.
	Passivity will lead to even more disaster.
	You must be proactive and really try and get out ahead of this crisis.
	Let this be a life-changing moment for you.
	That you have created a life with this girlfriend.
	Maybe you can really work hard to get it to a better place.
	Really work hard.
	And I'm sorry that we live in a situation where the woman says, my body, my choice, except, you know, you still have to pay for it, even if you don't want to have anything to do with it, even if she may have lied about birth control, even if it was accidental and so on.
	Hey, for me, it's like, hey, your body, your choice, then your body, your payment.
	That's not the way most of the world is.
	But get out ahead of it.
	You've got to, like, move heaven and earth to try and get out ahead of this and go in with as much knowledge and integrity into these difficult couple of months coming up.
	Does that help at all?
	That helps a lot, Steph.
	Thanks a lot.
	And keep it in your fucking pants from here on in.
	I don't care if your wife turns out to be bigger than Fat Bastard himself.
	You have to keep it in your pants.
	Like, no kidding.
	And you have to try and get that fetus to the best possible outcome.
	And I can't imagine it's with the mom.
	Does that help at all?
	It helps a lot.
	All right.
	All right.
	Well, thank you for calling in.
	How was the call for you?
	I know it was shitty stuff to talk about, but how was it?
	I feel some weight off the shoulders and at least enough weight off my shoulders that I can move forward now with...
	Some of the suggestions that you made also have been thinking about that.
	And it doesn't seem so dark at the end of the tunnel.
	Hopefully, you know, I can get out in front of it and try to turn it around.
	Yeah, I mean, it's tough to say.
	I mean, I believe most disasters are also opportunities.
	This one is definitely a tough one.
	It doesn't mean it's impossible.
	But I really do appreciate you calling in and talking about such sensitive issues.
	And I'm incredibly sorry that you're in this situation.
	I also hope this is a warning to other men and women out there about what can happen when you start these balls rolling, literally.
	And so thanks.
	Thanks for calling in.
	And if you do get a chance, let us know how it goes.
	All right.
	I will do, Steph.
	Thanks a lot.
	And good night.
	All right.
	Take care.
	All right.
	I'm so sorry.
	I know we've only had two callers, but it's been close to three hours.
	So I really do appreciate everyone's patience.
	We're really sorry for those who've been waiting.
	But I guess we were fairly aware of this.
	We're going to be meaty calls.
	And...
	Have yourselves a great night.
	Thanks again to all of the callers for calling in.
	This is tough stuff sometimes that we talk about, but this is where philosophy, I think, really, the rubber meets the road.
	I really, really hope that people are horrified by some of the lessons inadvertently taught by other listeners who have the courage to call in and talk about this stuff, which is not easy to say the least.
	And have yourselves a great week.
	If you want to help out the show, help get this kind of information further out into the world, FDRURL.com forward slash.
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	Thanks, everyone.
	We'll be back for one more Peter Schiff show tomorrow, and we'll be talking to you on Saturday night.

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