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June 9, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

02:33:24

2718 The Rise and Fall of Trust - Sunday Call In Show June 8th, 2014

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	All right, Stefan Molymey from Free Domain Radio.
	Just want to get this off my chest.
	I really hate technology on a regular, regular basis.
	You know, we're starting this show, and I'm sorry for everyone, it's 8.20.
	We're supposed to start at 8 o'clock.
	I was actually ready to go at 8.01, but then the Bluetooth headset, which I like to use to do the call-in shows, Just wouldn't connect.
	I think Bluetooth is mostly like throwing magical elves across an ocean and hoping that they high-five in mid-flight.
	That stuff sucks at a truly cosmic level.
	And I just really wanted to get that off my chest so that I can focus on you, the glorious listeners.
	But man alive, technology is annoying.
	At least though, so we've got this new camera and it's a very nice camera.
	And it's working out really well.
	So we bolted that down and none of the settings will be changed because it used to drift before.
	With the last camera I used to get this like it would start off okay and then just over time it would get darker and darker as it tried to compensate for some nefarious scheme.
	But a man alive.
	It seems like these shows, like I've been doing them for seven years, there's always some thing that doesn't work.
	I ordered some USB sound cards for my Surface 2 and they have a big buzz and hum with all except one microphone and it's not the microphone that I want to use.
	Why?
	I don't have no idea.
	Ordered a Rode microphone, supposed to be very nice and when I put it on top of the camera or attach it to the camera it has a hum because why on earth would a microphone designed to work with a camera work with a camera?
	I mean that would make no sense at all!
	What madness would that be?
	This thing, it's a little Creative XFI, which I use to do some sound work.
	The microphone is really quiet, unless you do microphone boost, which basically means make me sound like I'm yelling in a jet engine.
	I just feel like I keep ordering this stuff, trying this stuff, returning it is a pain in the neck, and it just doesn't seem to work.
	A little frustrating and I think this is the first time I've mentioned it low these seven years, but I wanted to get that off my chest.
	Tech sucks on a hugely regular basis.
	Stuff that should work doesn't work and it really just sucks up a huge amount of time.
	I'm very happy to have technology because it means we have these conversations, but when it's not Skype that's crashing or a microphone that's not connecting or a router that doesn't need rebooting or an internet hiccup, Or a microphone that doesn't work.
	Or a Skype recorder that crashes.
	Ooh, I wonder if it's even recording.
	Well, look at that.
	It is!
	It's like watching the planets do a magical dance through the sea foam of Zeus's ejaculate trying to get things to work.
	Anyway, Mike, any other thoughts?
	I agree.
	Technology sucks.
	Well, so somebody says Windows sucks, not tech.
	We have a Mac for recording.
	It's reliable, but the sound is not good, right?
	We have a recorder for Windows.
	I won't give the name of it out.
	We have a video recorder for Windows that if it crashes, it actually destroys the entire recording.
	I mean, it's like, wow.
	I mean, it doesn't even render the state in a video in a state that you could reimport into something else.
	So it's not, you know, I sort of like to think back in olden days.
	DOS is actually pretty reliable.
	They had that disc compression technology that was really kind of dicey at times.
	But DOS is pretty reliable.
	I didn't really have any problems with WordPerfect 5.1 and so on.
	But it just seems like, oh man, getting stuff to work is like a part-time job in and of itself.
	And this is when technology has been cruising for 30, 40 years trying to make stuff consumer friendly.
	I've been programming since I was 11.
	I worked in high tech as a programmer, R&D lead, engineer, but not just, you know, self-educated engineer.
	And for 15 years, I'm about as tech literate as they come and getting stuff to work is just insane.
	So anyway, I just wanted to get that off my chest because that way I can Put all that beside and behind me and...
	But don't...
	Okay, one last thing.
	Don't you wish you just got...
	There's the movie Office Space where it's like A4 load letter.
	What does that mean?
	Oh yeah, trying to get wireless printing to work?
	I mean, God, you might as well get carrier pigeons to peck out ink on their feet and then walk around a white canvas.
	I think that would be faster.
	And they just took the copier out and Pounded it in a field with a sledgehammer.
	And I really think that actually can be the appropriate responses to technology as a whole.
	So frustrating at the moment.
	And this is the culmination of many years of just wrestling with crap, trying to get it to work.
	But that having been said, let's move on to the caller.
	Thank you for your indulgence for my rant.
	But who's up first, Mike?
	Right up first is Darla.
	Darla writes in and says, is it possible to regain trust in a relationship after it has been broken?
	All right.
	Tell me the story.
	Okay, hi.
	Hi.
	Thank you so much, first of all, for having me tonight and everything that you might do.
	It's really been life-changing for me.
	Thank you.
	And I apologize ahead of time because I am really nervous.
	Oh, no, that's fine.
	I appreciate you mentioning that.
	I'm a lot more experienced at this than you are, so that's perfectly fine.
	Honestly, the 20-minute delay was kind of good.
	It kind of helped me breathe for a few minutes.
	So is it you who put some ancient voodoo hacks on my Bluetooth?
	I won't be mad.
	I just need to know if it is true and if so, where you live.
	No, I'm just kidding.
	I'll not answer either way.
	I think that's a good idea.
	So just before we start, you have a kind of like a binary thing.
	Like trust is broken.
	What do you mean by that?
	Because, you know, there's like from zero to a hundred, there's like trust, right?
	I mean, there's mistrust, I guess.
	So you could go like 50 is, I don't know, you know, under 50 is I mistrust and 50 plus I trust to varying degrees.
	But is it like less trust, less trust, broken, now no trust or just significant skepticism or doubt?
	Probably no.
	Significant skepticism or doubt.
	It might be better if I explain a little bit.
	Yeah, please do.
	Okay.
	I met my boyfriend like a year and a half ago, and he actually introduced me to your show.
	And he is, you know, he's an anarcho-capitalist.
	When I met him, he was just brilliant to me.
	And For the first time I had like really deep conversations and he was the first one to really ask me, you know, how was your childhood?
	Tell me about it.
	And he helped me and I had a lot of unprocessed trauma, I still do to a degree, but that he helped me with.
	And And not really just like help me with but you know actually talked with me as you all know people don't really talk about and and we had what I thought was just an amazing relationship like I dare say like perfect and about nine months into it or maybe like a little later nine or ten months into it I found out he was lying about like when we first met
	he said he was in school and then he told me later that that he wasn't going to go back but he actually wasn't even in school that semester and then a lot of the times he would he had an ex-girlfriend actually two that he was still friends with which wouldn't necessarily be a problem but he was Talking to them and hanging out with them and lying to me about it.
	He said they were just friends.
	Obviously still have doubts about that.
	And so now, I broke up with him.
	I broke up with him a couple times, actually.
	I'm sorry to interrupt.
	Sorry to interrupt.
	When you found, so the two major issues, he said he was in school when he wasn't in school, and he said he was not hanging out with an ex-girlfriend or claimed to not have anything to do with her, but it turns out he was hanging out with her.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And there was a few small ones.
	Were there other things?
	Yeah, some smaller lies.
	Those were the big ones.
	Now, how did you find these out?
	Um, the, the first big lie was, um, or the first main thing that made me skeptical was, uh, he got a phone call and he said it was work.
	And I, I saw his phone.
	I saw he had like a picture of caller ID and I was like, uh, that didn't look like work.
	Did you lie to me?
	And he said, yeah.
	And we talked about it and, um, For a long time, and I told him how that, you know, I couldn't handle that.
	You know, I needed him to be honest.
	And then, you know, he talked about his past with her and why it was so difficult and apologized that he lied and, you know, acted like it was just really just like a flute kind of deal.
	And, you know, I took a few days apart from him and told him I might not be able to get over that one.
	What was his justification for the lie about the ex?
	Basically that it was a relationship that he was in for far too long for the wrong reasons.
	Like he was dependent on her and he said he was embarrassed by that, the fact that it was like a codependent relationship.
	Wait, hang on, hang on.
	I'm sorry, just trying to understand.
	So he said that he Continue to stay in contact with his ex-girlfriend because he had been in that relationship for too long and therefore the best remedy for being in a relationship for too long is to continue to be in that relationship.
	Yes.
	So he's not a very good liar.
	No.
	There's no artistry.
	There's no credibility.
	Basically, it's just...
	It's really...
	It's incompetent lying.
	Yeah, yeah.
	I mean, he said he wasn't in a relationship as in dating her, but he just still talked to her every once in a while.
	But it's what I found out later.
	But yeah, what you're saying is absolutely correct.
	Wow.
	And then the...
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, and then the bigger lie, or another one, was...
	There was actually another ex-girlfriend who he was, he actually wasn't seeing this other girl.
	He wasn't like meeting her and hanging out, but he was meeting and hanging out with another ex-girlfriend.
	And whenever I found out about that, that's when we broke up for a while.
	So how did you find out about that?
	Well, I was at a friend's house and he called me and I was like, hey, I'm about to leave this friend's house.
	I'll call you right back.
	And he was like, oh no, no, I'll probably be asleep.
	And it was like eight or something.
	And which he always stays up and talks.
	When his attention is with me, it's incredible.
	It just seemed weird that he would stay up to talk to me normally, however late I wanted to talk.
	I was like, "That's kind of weird." I leave her house and I call him and he doesn't answer.
	He said he was going to bed and it sounded like there was wind in the phone.
	I'd kind of gotten bad feelings, especially since I knew he'd lied once.
	And yeah, so I drove by his house and his truck wasn't there.
	And so he finally, he called me later and he's like, yeah, I was asleep.
	I'm sorry.
	I was like, yeah, but you know, that's obviously wasn't true, was it?
	And he admitted it, you know, and told me about that relationship.
	Right.
	Right.
	So he's, I mean, he's really terrible at this.
	Like, it's one thing to be a liar, and it's another thing to need to be a liar and be really bad at it.
	This is like being a cabbie, it's like being a cab driver and facing the wrong way in the car.
	You know, like if you, or thinking that you drive by, you know, clicking a mouse and yelling at the car.
	I mean, if you're going to be a cab driver, you should be obviously a good driver, and if you should be a liar, you shouldn't say completely stupid stuff like I'm going to bed at 8 p.m.
	I mean, I mean, unless he's actually 90, that's just not right.
	Exactly, exactly.
	Maybe the only comforting part is he is really terrible at it, but that would be the only comforting part.
	Well, and, well, okay, so how did you find out about him not being in school?
	Well, he fessed up.
	So, like, once we got to talking about his lies, he was like, you know, I was like, is there any, you know, I've Drilled him.
	Maybe to even a bad degree.
	Like, is there anything else?
	Is there anything else?
	And he told me some more things and told me more about his childhood.
	He never told me.
	Oh, so he'd also been withholding, right?
	Yeah, and, you know, I'd shared so much, and I feel kind of stupid now because I see it.
	I saw that I shared so much, and he delved into my sharing, and we talked about it so deeply and so much, and I feel kind of, like, embarrassed and stupid now, but it's like I realized he would share some, but not, like, painful stuff, you know?
	Yeah, I mean, look, when there's a lopsided...
	Openness and vulnerability, it's usually because people are looking for what makes you tick so that they can manipulate you.
	Right?
	If somebody seems really fascinated by you, like you said, when he's listening, it's like, you know, I'm paraphrasing, but it's like, I'm the only person in the world and he's such a fantastic listener and so on.
	It's like, yes.
	And so is a guy who's trying to sell you a car.
	He's listening to you and scanning your body language because he wants to sell you a car, right?
	Yeah.
	And if you've been raised in a family where you haven't really been listened to, then when someone comes along and is like this big sponge and just wants to listen and listen and listen, I mean, you've kind of like, blah, right?
	Blah!
	Blah!
	Listen, listen, listen.
	Yeah.
	Like, I've hardly...
	I've told him more...
	You know, I've told other people, like, maybe a quarter...
	That I've told him, because it's very uncomfortable.
	People don't want to hear it, so yeah.
	It is nice to have someone that actually wants to hear it, you know.
	Made me a little blind, I guess.
	And how good looking is he?
	I think he's very attractive.
	He's not the kind, I mean...
	No, no, don't hedge.
	Don't hedge.
	Don't hedge.
	One to ten, for you.
	One to ten.
	What is he?
	One to ten.
	For me, like, when things were going great, I would say he's like a nine.
	No, no, no, no, not going great.
	I mean, how physically attractive is he?
	Well, now he seems less attractive.
	No, no, no, I know, I know, but before.
	He's probably, like, he's super athletic, you know, he's not very tall, you know, but I think he's very attractive, maybe eight or nine.
	Right.
	Because you don't have to be good at lying if you're hot, right?
	That's probably why he's not become very good at lying, right?
	Because his cheekbones and his abs and his pecs, you know, they do the snow job for him and he just coasts on that, right?
	Yeah, I mean, I want to say it's more than that, but maybe, I mean, maybe you're right.
	No, no, no.
	I'm not saying that's all.
	Look, I'm not saying that's all that there is.
	I'm not saying that.
	Obviously, he's got qualities.
	He's intelligent.
	He listens to this show, and I'm trying not to cut him a break for that.
	But he obviously is.
	There's more to him than that.
	I'm not obviously just saying it's only physical, you know.
	And if he was like a wax sculptor in the Madame Tussauds machine, you'd be like rubbing all up and down him like a chihuahua.
	On a Wienerschnitzel.
	But you have to be careful.
	That couldn't have helped either.
	Oh, it helped, honey.
	It helped, my darling.
	My darling, my sister in philosophy.
	It helps.
	And I say the same thing to guys, right?
	A pretty face and a great body.
	Nothing wrong with it.
	Nothing wrong with it at all.
	But you have to be on high alert because power corrupts.
	And beauty is a form of power.
	That doesn't mean that everyone who is beautiful is corrupt.
	But it means that you have to be very alert to that possibility.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Because it's hard.
	I mean, it's hard to...
	I don't know how attractive you are, but it's hard to know what it's like for really attractive people from the get-go.
	People treat them positively.
	People treat them better.
	I see this with my daughter.
	I mean, people stop and say, oh, here's my card.
	I'm a modeling agent.
	Bring her in.
	And, you know, people give her free stuff and everyone's very positive with her.
	I mean, it's...
	Crazy!
	But this is the world that we live in.
	Those that have get a lot more.
	I mean, basically life is like people...
	I get it.
	Yeah, people are basically firing schwag bags or loot bags at the pretty people basically from birth.
	And it does create a sense of magical entitlement and power.
	Sometimes it can make people narcissistic and so on.
	And because there's always someone else just next, right?
	Like just next.
	So this guy, you know, if it doesn't work out with you, there's like five women who he can go out with tomorrow.
	Or 10 or 50, I don't know, right?
	And, uh, so it is, it's really, uh, it's a tough thing.
	It's basically like trying to keep an employee when he gets double salary offers, uh, every hour he works with you.
	Uh, it's, it's a challenge, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, I get that.
	I feel like maybe I'm too generous, but I feel like I'm as attractive as he is.
	Um, he says I'm a Tim, but he's biased, but, um, or lying.
	But, uh, Yeah, I get it.
	You know, I understand.
	And I don't want to just find, I don't want to find the next guy that comforts me.
	I want to find like a, you know, good relationship or maybe stick it out with him if it's possible.
	Yeah, he's not comforted you.
	No, he's not comforted you.
	He's harmed you.
	Because you've opened up to him and then you found out he's not trustworthy, right?
	Hmm, yeah.
	I'm sorry.
	No, no, don't.
	Look, if I'm telling you...
	No, I'm sorry.
	I've already been emotional today.
	Don't apologize for being hurt.
	I mean, this is like if I see someone punch you in the head and I say, well, that looks like it really hurt.
	Don't apologize for being hurt.
	That's what you need, right?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Let's go back to when you first met.
	Because, you know, my goal in this conversation to be up front is, I always try to be...
	First of all, look, first of all, the guy's not into this show, right?
	Because, honestly, he's the first version.
	No, I know, but he's not into it, really, right?
	He may listen to it for entertainment value and so on, but it would be like, I don't know, me watching WWE. I tried to get him to come on.
	Oh, yeah.
	No, it's too bad he didn't, but...
	I've said from the very beginning, and it's all through real-time relationships, the book on the philosophy of relationships that I've written, honesty is the first virtue.
	Vulnerability, honesty, openness.
	And so if he's lying to you and not admitting it, and only when cornered and only when stuff shows up on his phone, then he doesn't get this show.
	Maybe it's just entertainment for him or whatever, but maybe it's like the equivalent.
	This show is supposed to be like Watch me work out so you go to the gym.
	Just watching me work out doesn't do anyone any good.
	You actually got to go to the gym.
	And it's like, read my diet book, but don't change your diet, right?
	The whole point is to get you to change your diet.
	And if he's not changing his behavior based upon principles, then he doesn't get the show.
	Maybe he just finds me entertaining or eloquent or funny or whatever.
	Or it's thought-provoking, whatever that means, like a taser to the frontal lobes makes you a better person.
	But I just want to point out, he absolutely does not get the show if he's pulling this kind of incredibly destructive and selfish behavior.
	The crazy part is when we first met, he asked me if I wanted to read RTR, and I did, and we read it together.
	I just thought that was so awesome.
	Were his lips moving?
	Just kidding.
	Okay, so let's go back to the beginning.
	And, you know, feel free to ping him if he's on Skype.
	If he wants to join us either by phone, it's fine too.
	Well, he actually just showed up a minute ago and brought me food and went back in the living room.
	Oh, he's in the house?
	Yeah.
	Do you want to just offer him one more time?
	I can.
	I offered him...
	And at first, he kind of said, well, I didn't know how the couple's things go.
	And then I asked him again, and he was more honest and just said that he was scared.
	Well, tell him that if he doesn't want to do this stuff again, he should damn well get on the phone now.
	Okay.
	This is not on the egg.
	Yeah, at least he's not in the attic, right.
	Actually, no, he's not in the attic.
	Oh, actually, I guess he left.
	Okay, I guess he left.
	I'm sorry.
	I guess he thought you might actually say that.
	No, you know what?
	It's 8.42, so he's probably already asleep, right?
	Because after 8 o'clock, he goes and sleeps in his truck down at the end of the road, right?
	Okay.
	I'm sorry that he didn't come on.
	That is the denial of an opportunity, I think, for some very productive growth.
	And I would imagine he grew up without a father, but that's my guess.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	I'm sorry.
	I was going to say I can tell you more about that if you're wondering, but I'm sorry.
	I didn't mean to interrupt.
	And since he's not, I don't want to waste time on the guy if he doesn't have the balls to get on the call.
	I just want to focus on you.
	You've got the balls to be on the call.
	So good.
	All right.
	So let's think back.
	I'm going to call this guy Bob, but let's think back to when you first met Bob.
	Oh, that's my ex's name.
	What?
	Is that his actual name?
	Bob is my ex's name, yeah.
	But not this guy's name?
	This guy who just left?
	No.
	No, it's one before that.
	Oh, it's another one.
	Okay, I'll call him Racket Ralph.
	Okay, so Ralph, when you first met Ralph, tell me about your first conversation with him.
	Um...
	To be honest, it was kind of frustrating because he asked me how I felt about taxation or free trade.
	He was asking me things that I hadn't thought about.
	I had a very long time because people don't generally talk about this stuff.
	He was basically talking to me about stuff that you talk on the show.
	The non-personal stuff.
	And he was very passionate about it and a little hard-headed at times.
	But I appreciated that we were having a conversation about something more meaningful than I normally do with guys that you just meet.
	Yeah, so he was kind of a smartass and he was smart and frustrating, but in a way that I appreciated.
	Tell me what was frustrating.
	Oh, just like, in a good way, I actually think.
	Arguing or debating, not arguing, but debating about things.
	And we had different opinions.
	I mean, at the time, you know, I was, you know, a statist and somewhat liberal and stuff like that.
	So we were arguing vehemently about or debating vehemently about those things.
	And so, yeah, I mean, it was a good amount of frustration and it was challenging.
	I guess that'd be a better word, maybe.
	All right.
	And how long did that conversation last?
	The first conversation we had lasted like four hours.
	And were you attracted to him at this point?
	Yeah.
	I mean, thank you.
	If he's a nine, then almost by definition, right?
	Okay.
	Well, we actually met, we met online.
	So I hadn't really I hadn't really seen him.
	You met?
	Oh, so you talked like you Skyped?
	Well, we called.
	He called me.
	I gave him my number.
	Oh, so it was just phone, right?
	Yeah.
	But had you seen a picture of him?
	Did you meet on a dating site?
	Yeah, I saw a picture.
	Honestly, I saw a picture of his face, but I didn't know what his body looked like, which is his strong point.
	And I remember whenever I saw him, I was like, oh, you are really attractive.
	Right, okay.
	Yeah.
	So pretty much did the- His picture was kind of like a goofy.
	Right.
	Did the four-hour conversation, did that- Mostly centered around politics and economics and so on?
	Yeah, basically.
	And then any personal, like the first probably two or three times we talked was like four hours, you know, two, like at least two hours.
	I don't know if it's four, but I know they're really long and they would, and then the personal stuff would be about me and about him to the stuff that I know now is the stuff he's comfortable about, you know, But mainly about that type of stuff in me.
	okay so can you tell me um what you learned about his family life earlier um basically like his dad wasn't around much um Actually, neither of his parents were around much, and he felt neglected.
	Like, he told me that early on.
	And he had, like, five siblings.
	Or immediate sibling, like full siblings, and then a couple other older ones.
	So big family, and he was kind of neglected, or really neglected.
	Sorry, where were his parents if they weren't around?
	Mainly working.
	I mean, they lived together, but they just...
	I mean...
	From what I understand, from when he was very young, it was just school and then hanging out by himself or with his siblings.
	They just weren't around him.
	They just worked.
	Yeah, that's not a very clear picture because it's illegal, I think, to leave.
	It's not your fault.
	You can't leave kids on their own before they're 12, right?
	Most places.
	Well, he had older siblings as well.
	Okay.
	So I'm not...
	So was he sort of half raised by siblings kind of thing?
	I'm sorry to be so vague.
	No, it's not your fault.
	This is what you don't know, right?
	Yeah, I guess so.
	I know his mom would work super long hours and so would his dad.
	And I found out later his dad was even gone He doesn't even know how long when he was maybe a toddler.
	He was gone for years, but he doesn't know how many or anything.
	And I'm not really sure who.
	I guess his mom just took care of him when he wasn't at school.
	And I think they were left alone quite a bit.
	Maybe after he was school age, they were left alone quite a bit.
	Why was the father gone?
	Just with each other.
	Well...
	That's something I learned later, like whenever I found out he lied again, he kind of broke down and said he may know why some things, he may know why he's basically as dysfunctional emotionally in ways as he is.
	And I'm not sure if he would really be comfortable with me sharing this, but basically his, they think he was in like a military prison.
	Oh, his father was in a military prison.
	Yeah.
	So he was in the military and did something wrong and was put in the military prison.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So court-martialed or something like that, right?
	And he doesn't even know any of that, really.
	They told him he was on, like, he was working, and they went and visited him a time or two, but he had no idea.
	And then they just, finally, he kind of learned a little bit later, but nobody ever talked about it.
	Okay, so, and the reason I'm asking all of this is that there are...
	When I was in theatre school, I was asked to write the history of my body.
	And I wrote about stuff when I was a little baby, a little kid.
	I sort of remember from 10 months old and up.
	And then I sort of jumped ahead to like 17 or 18.
	It was sort of this big gap from between the age of 3 and 4 to 16 or 17.
	And the movement teacher who had asked us to write this, he pointed this out.
	He said, you know, there's a lot at the beginning.
	There's a lot at the end.
	There's almost nothing in the middle.
	When you meet someone, Darla, it's really important to ask them questions about their life history, their life narrative, right?
	And when you come across stuff that is hinky, Strange, odd, incomplete, confusing, absent, and so on.
	That's when you grind the drill up.
	You're like, we're going in, right?
	And you can go in nicely and gently.
	It doesn't have to be mean.
	But you have to go in.
	And the reason you go in is...
	So let's just say he says to me, like if he was on a call with me and he said, you know, well, my parents went around, I was sort of, you know, alone a lot, and my dad was gone, I'm not even sure why, could have been this, that, and the other, right?
	Then my follow-up question would be, well, why don't you know?
	Right?
	And then he would probably say, well, my parents have never talked about it.
	It's like, but haven't you been curious about it?
	Why haven't you asked them, right?
	And we've had these conversations lighter.
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, no, no, but I want to get you the beginning.
	I want to get you the beginning stuff because I need you to get some force fields up here around people like this, right?
	To know how to see them before you get your heart.
	And I really regret that I didn't.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So the important thing is you have to find out what people have normalized in their life.
	So if he's not like, I can't believe it.
	My parents weren't around.
	They lied to me.
	They withheld information from me.
	They left me to be raised by my siblings.
	They were working because they found that easier than me.
	Parents, despite the fact that they had five or six kids, I'm so angry at such terrible behavior.
	I've confronted them.
	We're working through it.
	I'm in therapy.
	It was terrible, right?
	Well, what that means is that he has not normalized his parents' behavior.
	He's recognized it as bad, he's angry about it, he understands it did him damage, and he's working to deal with it, right?
	Yeah.
	When he came back, that was kind of the goal.
	Oh, I'm sorry.
	I think we're on delay.
	No, no, no.
	Don't apologize.
	This is a conversation.
	It's not a monologue, right?
	So, look, you can't fix this in him, right?
	I mean, so when you ask people their history, you have to figure out what have they normalized, what have they Stockholm Syndrome, right?
	Because did he sound upset at all of these weird, vague gaps and absences and neglects in his history?
	When he actually did talk about it, he broke down and he cried about it, and it was hard for him.
	Basically, when he came back, when he was asking me to be in a relationship with him again, he basically said he was going to go to counseling, he was going to talk to his parents, and he had already started talking to his parents.
	Not about the hardest stuff, because he's still afraid to do that, in my opinion, and I think he would tell you that, but...
	If he had the balls to call in.
	But I do think he knows that those are things he needs to work on.
	And he has gone to counseling as have I. But kind of the big problem lately and what's caused me to call in now Is that I feel like he quit going to counseling and he's got an appointment for next week, but I think it's because I'm like kind of ramrodding it.
	Like all the progress for all the goals.
	Stop, stop, stop.
	Okay, I'm sorry.
	Stop, stop, stop.
	Okay, you can't push this.
	No, no, don't get upset.
	I mean, I'm sorry.
	Get upset, but don't be sorry.
	Don't be sorry.
	Because you don't know this, right?
	You can't make him do this stuff.
	You can't.
	Did he ever at any point say, do you know what I feel terrible about Darla?
	I introduced you to this guy on the internet who's written these books on intimacy, which is about being honest and confronting your demons and talking to your parents and figuring out what went wrong.
	And...
	I didn't do any of it.
	I introduced you to this great advice, or at least what I called great advice, and I didn't do any of it.
	And I can't believe that I missed that, such an obvious thing.
	Is he doing any circling back and recognizing just how crazy this is?
	Yeah, he recognizes that it was super cruel, that he did introduce these things to me, and we had so many talks about these kinds of things, and I was really vulnerable with him and he just didn't do any of that for me.
	And yeah, I think he recognizes that.
	I mean, he said he's apologized for that.
	But he stopped going to therapy.
	Yeah.
	And did he tell you?
	Did he tell you that he'd stopped going to therapy?
	Well, I'm with him all the time.
	I mean, he said he had money problems, and I know he is having issues with money because he's having to pay his student loans since he's not going anymore.
	And his dad's kind of given him all of his bills to pay.
	Sorry, his dad's given him bills?
	Sorry, I don't understand that.
	His dad's giving him bills?
	I'm sorry.
	Yeah, I know his dad was helping him out with some bills, like insurance and stuff like that, and his dad finally changed everything over into his name, so his dad's not helping him out anymore, and he's got all these...
	Yeah, he does.
	So why is he going back?
	He's got a job.
	Well, I mean, he doesn't make a ton of money and.
	And like I said, he's paying his loans.
	Does he make enough money to pay his bills?
	Yeah.
	And he said once he got enough money, he would go back to therapy.
	Oh, so he has enough money to pay his bills, just not quite enough money to go to therapy.
	A convenient threshold.
	Yeah, I see what you're saying.
	And is there nothing that he can shuffle around, right?
	Nothing he can cut back on.
	He doesn't drink, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't go out, doesn't go to movies, doesn't go to dinners.
	There's nothing he can cut back on in order to go to therapy.
	He's cut right to the bone, and if he goes to therapy, he can't eat.
	Is that the reality?
	Right.
	No, of course not.
	I mean, he doesn't drink or smoke or anything like that, but yeah, we eat out all the time.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so your restaurant staff could pay for therapy, right?
	Yeah.
	Please tell him if he's donating to this show to stop doing that.
	I would really appreciate you telling him that.
	And are you living together?
	No.
	You said you're together all the time.
	Well, I have my house and he has his house.
	We are together all the time.
	And how long have you been going here?
	He'll come here or I'll go there.
	Like a year and a half.
	And when did you first find out that he lied in these significant ways?
	Probably about six months ago.
	It was the very first one I caught.
	Alright.
	So, I'll give you some tips.
	Right?
	Some warning signs.
	But let me first ask you this.
	If you were me hearing this story, what would your advice be?
	be.
	That's really hard to be that far away from it.
	And honestly, I would probably tell you that he I would probably tell you that he would have a lot of work to do and be motivated to do that work.
	Like what be it therapy or counseling or whatever.
	and he would have to be the one doing it on his own.
	That ship has come and gone.
	No, no, no.
	Darla, Darla, that ship has come and gone.
	Because he's quit therapy, right?
	Well, he started again.
	What?
	He started again recently.
	He quit.
	Okay, go ahead.
	I'm sorry.
	He quit for a while and it was really bothering me.
	And now he's going.
	And he said it was because he didn't have money.
	And now he got a promotion.
	And he is getting more money and he is going back to therapy.
	And then he even scheduled like a dual therapy session for us next week.
	Right.
	Okay.
	But he's not on this call.
	No, he's not.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So now I'm just going to give you a little speech.
	Sorry.
	It would be annoying.
	I believe the information gathering section of the call might be over.
	Okay.
	So I want you to think of a scale from zero to a hundred.
	Okay.
	So perfect trust is a hundred and like won't have anything to do with you with zero, right?
	Yeah.
	Where is your trust with the man now from one to a hundred or zero to a hundred?
	Um, Sorry, I'm not trying to avoid the question.
	As far as me knowing, like trusting that he's not lying right now, like I know he's not.
	I do trust that.
	That's very high.
	Maybe he's like 90.
	But my biggest fear is that if he's not getting, like we're not having serious talks, we're not, like and he's not going to therapy as often as I'd like, that the progress is going to stop and he's going to revert.
	So do I think he's lying right now?
	No, I don't.
	There's still some doubt.
	Well, hang on, hang on.
	So so he said hang on he said that he didn't go to therapy because he didn't have the money, right?
	Well, yeah, it And when, I mean, to be honest, when he was saying that- - No, no, no, no, don't go into explanation mode.
	These are yes, no questions.
	All right.
	Yes.
	So he said to you, Darla, I can't go to therapy because I don't have the money.
	Yes.
	Yes.
	Was that true?
	I mean, I feel like I'm going to be in a way.
	You already gave me the answer to this question.
	No, you already gave me the answer to this question.
	Yeah.
	Was this true?
	Yeah.
	And when did he say that?
	At the time that he said he didn't have enough money to go to therapy, he did cut back in other ways.
	I know he was literally checking his account before we went, even just to get some food.
	You said that you went out for dinner all the time.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, he could have.
	Yeah, that's not...
	So when he said, I don't have enough money to go to therapy, and then you pushed him to go to therapy, and he said, fine, I'll go to therapy, did he then say, you know what, I think I must have lied to you about that then, because it turns out I do have the money?
	No, he did not.
	He did get a promotion, and he is getting several hundred dollars more a week now.
	Mm-hmm.
	Would you have lent him the money to go to therapy?
	No.
	No?
	Okay.
	Because I kind of quit going to therapy for a while because I didn't have the money.
	Oh, no, you didn't just do that to me, did you?
	Uh-oh.
	You didn't.
	Is he back in the room?
	Is he telling you what to say?
	No.
	He's in the attic.
	No.
	Because you just, yeah, you just told me that you didn't have the money to go to therapy, but you also said that you went out to eat all the time, right?
	Well, I still went.
	Like, I don't have any.
	Oh, my God.
	You were just making my head spin, young lady.
	Oh, my God.
	What are you doing to me?
	Oh, my God.
	I'm going to therapy.
	I wouldn't lend her the money because I didn't have the money to go to therapy.
	We went out to eat all the time.
	Well, I am going to therapy, and it's just like, oh my god, which way is up?
	Okay, more accurate.
	I'm so sorry.
	More accurately, I barely had enough money to go to therapy, and I even skipped and didn't go quite as often there for a while.
	And I did actually tell him, we can't go out to eat.
	I've got to save money.
	And then I did start going to therapy again.
	So I was kind of on that line of barely having enough money to myself.
	Yeah.
	You're going to listen back to this and it's going to be pretty rough, I'm telling you.
	Crap.
	I'm sorry.
	No, don't apologize.
	Don't apologize.
	I've told you this like five times now.
	You need to listen to me, Darla.
	Do not apologize.
	I appreciate your honesty.
	But your capacity to talk yourself in circles is what makes you vulnerable to people who talk you in circles.
	Right?
	Okay.
	Yeah.
	This is really important.
	You need to be really straight with yourself.
	Right?
	As Polonius...
	I'm trying so hard not to...
	No, I understand.
	But you have a habit, right, of something, just give something to deflect in the moment, right?
	It doesn't matter if it hangs together.
	Yeah.
	But Polonius says, above all else...
	I'm trying so hard not to create the narrative that I want.
	Yeah, no, no, great.
	He says to Hamlet, he says, above all to thine own self be true, for then it shall follow as night follows day, thou canst not be false to anyone.
	Right?
	You have to be straight with yourself so that you can see the difference that lying does.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	And your commitment, first and foremost, in my opinion, as is the case for all of us, is to be as honest with yourself, as scaldingly honest with yourself as humanly possible.
	And if you are as honest with yourself as humanly possible, Then people will not be able to lie to you because you will notice the difference between yourself and them immediately.
	Like if someone comes up to you and starts speaking Mandarin, you don't know, I assume you don't know Mandarin, you don't know what the hell they're saying because they're just not speaking your language.
	And if you have the language with yourself called honesty, you become bulletproof to liars.
	True.
	How many times have you broken up?
	I've probably left him three times.
	Thank you.
	What brings you back?
	He says that he's going to get hold...
	That he doesn't want to be that way.
	Sorry, that he's going to get help?
	You just cut out for a sec.
	I'm sorry, that he's going to get help.
	He's going to get help.
	And that he doesn't want to be that way.
	Actually, the last time he started, he was going to counseling.
	And he said, look, he's like, I'm going to counseling.
	I'm journaling.
	I'm doing all these things.
	And I don't want you to believe me.
	I want to prove it to you.
	He's like, I'll give you my phone records.
	I'll give you any kind of proof you ever want to see.
	I don't want you to feel like you just have to blindly trust.
	I want to prove it to you.
	I want you to see...
	He started talking to his family about the more difficult things, asking them some of these questions.
	And that was a thing, because last time was like, okay, this is really it.
	I can't do this anymore.
	That's what he came to me with last time.
	And does he know he needs to talk to his parents?
	He does.
	He's talked to him about the easier stuff, but the deal with his dad, he just hasn't got the nerve.
	Right.
	Okay, so let me go back to this.
	I've talked to him a lot about it.
	You 90% trust him, you said.
	Yeah.
	Now, what is entirely different about that?
	than what you told me at the beginning.
	You are kind of a mistress of what I call a fluid reality, which is not reality like rocks and trees, but reality like the surface of a water, of a lake, right?
	Can't ever step in the same river twice because it's always moving, right?
	Because when you first called into the show, An hour ago, 50 minutes ago.
	What did you say about your trust level with this guy?
	Oh, I don't, I don't, I'm not even sure.
	You said, Steph, what do I do when my trust in someone is broken?
	And now you're trying to sell me a bill of goods like you believe him 90%?
	This is what I mean by a fluid rehab.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Because to a degree, it's like I know, like I trust right now that he's not talking to anybody.
	But to a degree, I don't trust him at all.
	Like I don't trust him to not fall back into that.
	So, darling, why are you telling me that you trusted 90%?
	I don't know.
	I guess I don't.
	I guess it's not true.
	Well, don't guess.
	Listen, I'm not going to do the work for here.
	You need to be straight with me if you want this conversation to work.
	Right?
	I can't play whack-a-mole with every turning phrase and every change of your mind.
	And the weird thing is, is that you're not referencing what you talked about earlier.
	Continuity is key to trust.
	I can change a deal with someone and be trustworthy.
	Right?
	I can change a deal with someone and be trustworthy, but not if I don't reference the fact that I'm changing the deal.
	Right?
	Like if I say to a guy, listen, come mow my lawn for 50 bucks, and he shows up and then I just pay him 40 bucks, I'm a slimeball, right?
	Yeah.
	But if I say, if I call him before he shows up and I say, listen, man, I had to go to the hospital last night.
	I had to spend cab fare.
	I can't get to the bank.
	I only have 40 bucks.
	I'm happy to pay you 60 bucks next.
	I can change the deal if I reference the fact that I'm changing the deal, right?
	Yeah, I apologize.
	I did not mean to do that.
	No, no.
	Hey, hey, hey.
	Stop it, stop it, stop it.
	One more apology if you can't continue, because I need to know that you're listening to me.
	I can't keep repeating myself about don't say you're sorry and have you keep apologizing, because that means you're not listening to me.
	Now, if I'm not in the conversation, I won't pretend to have a conversation.
	Okay.
	But you can say to me, Steph, you know what?
	I know I called you up saying my trust in this fellow is broken.
	Not damaged, not undermined, not cracked.
	It is broken.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	But now I'm saying that I trust that he's not lying 90%, right?
	Now, you live in a fluid reality, which means what you say in the moment does not have a connection with what came before, and you don't notice the difference.
	This is why you're susceptible to lies.
	Because you don't have continuity in your being.
	And this is not a criticism, please.
	I hope you understand this.
	I'm trying to give you protection here.
	I'm trying to give you armor.
	I want this.
	Right.
	You need the armor.
	And this is, I feel, massive sympathy for you, Darla.
	I'm not trying to think.
	There's nothing broken about you fundamentally.
	This is not a negative.
	It's not a criticism or anything like that.
	It's simply an empirical reality, which you will hear when you listen back to this call, right?
	And this is what's so great about having these calls recorded.
	I'm already seeing it.
	So tell me what I'm talking about, because I mean, I know you're very smart.
	So tell me what I mean.
	Basically, you're saying in the beginning of the call, I was saying, you know, the trust is broken.
	Like, it's a real issue.
	It's bad.
	And then, you know, toward the end, the more we talk about it, I'm like, oh, only 10%, which really isn't that bad.
	And I never even told you somewhere in between that I was changing my mind or that anything, you know, I didn't even...
	Yeah, like, if I said, if I said, Darla, I've completely failed a course.
	I only got a 90.
	What would you say?
	That's pretty good.
	Which is it?
	That doesn't seem like failing.
	Yeah.
	So what's happening is, as I try to get cohesion, you start to feel anxiety.
	To manage that anxiety, you make something up in the moment with no reference.
	I'm not saying this is a conscious process.
	You make something up in the moment with no reference to what came before, right?
	And then you hope that that's going to cause me to lose my reality.
	To go with you in this little bubble of now that is designed to manage your anxiety, right?
	So that it's more comfortable, yeah.
	Yeah, so that you avoid feeling uncomfortable in the moment.
	Right?
	And I sympathize with that.
	I sympathize with that.
	So, here's the multi-billion dollar question.
	And as far as your heart's happiness, protection, love, security, trust, this is the multi-billion dollar question, Darla.
	Who taught you to live in the inconstant nightmare of fluid reality?
	Who forced you to live in that world?
	Sorry?
	It was my parents.
	Okay, so let's talk about the real issue, which has never been the boy, but we need to figure out what the symptoms were of the real issue.
	So with regards to parents.
	I guess I always did have to lie to everyone, like blatantly lie, not I don't feel like I didn't purposely lie tonight.
	But yeah, like in my childhood, I always had to lie.
	I always had to make it seem like I couldn't really tell anybody what it was like.
	What did you have to lie about?
	Just like, well, like being at home was completely miserable.
	Even bruises and cuts.
	Just an overall environment of abuse and I had to act like it wasn't bad.
	So you were on the receiving end of physical abuse and you got bruises and cuts, is that what you mean?
	Uh-huh.
	I'm so sorry.
	I'm so sorry.
	And would you have to lie to friends, other family members, teachers?
	Is that where...
	Yeah, I mean, I literally had my principal ask me about bruised, like black eyes and stuff.
	Wow.
	And I would just lie.
	And then one time I couldn't...
	A friend saw it and she told the school and they told CPS and they called my dad in and I lied and said it wasn't true and that he hadn't hit me.
	I lied for him.
	The CPS guy was so shitty that he missed the meeting and so they ended up just letting the whole thing go.
	Sorry, who missed?
	The CPS guy missed the meeting?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	He didn't even show up, so what they did was a conference call, and my dad is super smart and super articulate, and he told the guy, you know, like, this is ridiculous, I shouldn't be here, you missed the meeting, and basically shamed the guy into, or not shamed him, but just, you know, just ended up talking the guy into letting it go.
	And was your father the one who hit you?
	Part of the time, yeah.
	And your mother the other part of the time?
	Yeah.
	What was their justification, for want of a better word?
	It was like their parents, they didn't even need justification really.
	Just that their parents Well, but they must have said you did X and whatever.
	There must have been some framework for punishment, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	I mean, my dad would.
	Like, his was very punishment-based.
	My mom, she would just go crazy.
	And, like, she wouldn't have an excuse sometimes.
	But dad usually would.
	Like, and it would be that, like, whenever I fixed him coffee, like, it was too weak or too cold or...
	Or like if I accidentally knocked something over or, you know, just like something that I did that made him mad or something like that.
	So you might get punched in the head, get a black eye for bringing the wrong strength of coffee, right?
	I mean, yeah.
	How often did that, well, when did it start?
	I assume it started fairly early.
	Yeah, from as soon as I can remember.
	And how often between them do you think it happened?
	Like weekly, daily, monthly?
	Oh, I don't...
	Um, crap.
	I knew you were going to ask this too, and I was going to think about it.
	Um, uh, weekly...
	The worst...
	The worst part of it, even worse than them, because it was so much more constant, was my brother, who was four years older, and he was so mean.
	Like, he's like the meanest person I still yet have ever met.
	And that would happen daily.
	I would have to defend myself against him.
	And you mean sort of physical attacks, right?
	Yeah.
	So you have experienced thousands of physical assaults.
	Oh, yeah.
	Yeah.
	Am I wrong?
	No.
	And you lived in a state of chronic terror.
	Yeah.
	Because that is torture.
	Not like metaphorical torture.
	That is direct, bludgeoning, spine-ripping human torture, right?
	Yeah.
	I'm incredibly sorry.
	I mean, it's a heartbreaking story.
	And mingled with the heartbreak is a pretty savage anger for me.
	At how these bastards, how this bastard and this bitch treated you.
	With a human punching bag.
	Yeah.
	And...
	Not only a failure to protect you from your brother, but creating an environment that incited and provoked him, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	And does your boyfriend know about all of this?
	Yeah.
	And he lies to you.
	Does he feel like perhaps you haven't had your fucking fill of betrayal as a human being yet?
	I think you've had enough.
	Thank you.
	I think you've had more than enough.
	I think you have had infinitely more than any human being should ever have to stand.
	Does he know how damages?
	This is why he doesn't want to talk to me, right?
	Because he knows about your history and he knows how damaging what he's done is given your history, right?
	Yeah, probably.
	I even told him that I was so, and whenever I even met him, I was really disassociated from my and whenever I even met him, I was really disassociated from I was like, yeah, it happened, but I'm okay.
	And, like, whenever I lived there, I hated him, you know, and I just existed, but I didn't really feel it that much.
	But, like, with him, like, The shields were kind of thawed and down.
	And it was so painful.
	And that's what I told him.
	That's almost more painful than whatever I felt as a kid.
	Because I knew it was coming from them.
	But you know the story in RTR of Simon the Boxer, right?
	Yes.
	So one of the things...
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	No, go ahead.
	Go ahead.
	That was one of the things I went to Max about after Crap Ralph.
	And I talked to him about that story resonated with me so much.
	And what is the most important part of that story?
	Why am I bringing it up now?
	Because I need to quit putting myself in the position to be hurt.
	Yeah, the likelihood is you're so used to managing feelings of betrayal that that's the only...
	Like, you couldn't manage being assaulted thousands of times as a child.
	And I am not a religious man, as you know, but I damn well wish there were some pretty fucking low layers of hell to cast these...
	Cancerous demons into the pit forever.
	I mean, I get all kinds of Old Testament when I hear about, particularly since I became a father, when I hear about assaults on children.
	I get pretty Old Testament on that stuff in my heart.
	And when you are in a situation of human torture and potential death, When people start beating you, especially you said your mom lost control, I know.
	I mean, my mom would lose control too and I never wanted to find out how far she would go because I did not suspect that she would stop.
	I suspected that what would stop my mom sometimes would be waking up in an emergency room being handcuffed by the police as people attempted to put my skull back together.
	That was what I thought would stop my mom.
	Your stories of your mom are so familiar to me, and I'm so sorry for that.
	Yeah, there's so many of the stories that sound so similar, just like the actual craziness of it.
	Yeah, I mean, it is insanely evil, and it is...
	For people who've not experienced out-of-control parental rage, it is...
	A direct death threat or you comply.
	The thought of resistance.
	Whenever I was 13.
	Yeah, go ahead.
	I'm sorry.
	Oh crap, I didn't mean to apologize again.
	Yeah, when Yeah I remember when I was like 12 or 13 I actually stood up against her but that was because I like I knew I was strong enough and she just went went crazy over something I couldn't even understand and she wouldn't explain to me because there was no reason and she just started trying to beat me with a belt and I actually took it from her and then she went to get dad to see him on me and he was like well what'd she do and she's like it doesn't matter I'm the mother and And he was just like, leave me alone.
	So that was actually the last time, like once I got big enough, was when she finally quit.
	Yeah, which means that she had the capacity to quit all along.
	It just wasn't in her interest to.
	And when it became dangerous for her, in other words, when she faced the physical aggression that she'd been routinely doling out to you, suddenly she was able to find peace in her heart and stop hitting, which meant that the bitch could have stopped hitting anytime she wanted, right?
	Yeah.
	So, yeah.
	So, I mean, it is a daily death threat that you live under because when violence is uncooked against children, particularly with people who are out of control, and all violence is a lack of self-control, then the child...
	you and I, and the others who faced this childhood holocaust, We don't know when it's going to stop.
	We don't know whether the mother is going to wake up to sirens and snipers.
	And so we simply don't take the chance.
	But it is a daily death threat.
	And I'm incredibly sorry.
	But you have to create this fluid reality.
	You simply cannot.
	You know, I wrote in a book once, a novel.
	And it's a It's a powerful question.
	Let me ask this of you.
	Imagine that a magical being came to you when you were 17.
	No, that's not the story.
	Sorry, let me fix that.
	Imagine that before you were born, imagine that before you were born, A magical being came to you and said, Darla to be, I'm going to show you the movie of your life until the age of 17.
	This is the mother that you're going to have.
	This is the father that you're going to have.
	This is the brother that you're going to have.
	This is the life that you're going to have.
	And You will be born into this house at this time, in this environment.
	And you will live until the age of 17, at which point you will die from an aneurysm.
	I offer you, Darula to be, this gift of life.
	It will not be very long.
	It will be 17 years.
	But this is the life that I offer you.
	For 17 years.
	You can take it or you cannot take it.
	What would you have chosen?
	Of course not.
	Absolutely not.
	Right.
	That is what repression is for.
	For the desire, the thirst, the need, the desperate clinging to non-existence.
	Because when you're a child, 17 is an eternity away when you're 2 or 5 or 10 or 15.
	And not wanting to live through a childhood of such brutality is what repression is for.
	It's to have you not think about it so that you can survive it.
	Yeah.
	To feel torture is to drink deep of the cup of death.
	Thank you.
	As a five-year-old, to wake up and say, okay, so what, 12 or 13 years more of this?
	Why would you want to get up?
	Why would you want to live?
	So this is the fluid reality.
	Like, so, when I said earlier, you can't connect.
	to your history.
	You can't connect to what was said an hour ago or half an hour ago or sometimes even 20 seconds ago.
	And I'm sure this causes a lot of conflicts in your relationship, a lot of conflicts with yourself, a lot of conflicts at work, in school.
	But the bubble, the victims of child abuse, we move in a bubble.
	We can't connect.
	We have to live in this fluid unreality.
	We can't connect yesterday to tomorrow Because yesterday was so god-awful and tomorrow was so terrifying that if we connect things through and there's a throughput, we won't want to get out of bed.
	If we actually think through time in a historical and predictive linear fashion, why would we even want to live?
	I'm telling you from my perspective.
	I don't obviously want to tell you your own experience, but tell me what you think.
	No, that makes sense.
	I mean...
	I connect to that completely.
	That makes so much sense.
	I mean, I hated, like, I was just counting the moments, you know, living there, and I knew I was going to leave immediately, and it didn't matter how.
	Like, I didn't have any money.
	They obviously weren't going to help me with college or anything, and I didn't care.
	Like, I just, there's just no question.
	I had to leave.
	And yeah, like, whenever I went to school every day, I had to put on, like, a different You know, like, things are fine at home, or else you're just a weird one, you know, because nobody asks.
	Nobody actually cares.
	One or two people tried to help, right?
	Actually, my best friend, who's still my best friend, I met her in kindergarten, so we've known each other since we were five.
	She was the one that told CPS and like she lived in my same tiny small town and that was very risky for her because she was just you know a girl too and that's probably the only person that really did anything that ballsy.
	That's the only thing ever done actually.
	Right.
	Well people don't want to get into conflict with abusive parents I don't mind because I have a larger vision of what my life is gonna goddamn well stand for but most people don't find it worth their trouble to get on a collision course with child abusers.
	I do find it worth my trouble because I know the costs of avoidance.
	I remember hating some of the parents because I was just thinking you know and Like, all they cared about was whether their kids were good at basketball and whether their, you know, girls were pretty enough.
	And it's like, you know what's going on.
	I remember just feeling, like, hate toward them.
	Sure.
	Yeah, no, this is the society that prides itself on its virtues.
	What do you mean?
	Yeah.
	My parents weren't in the cliques that said it games together with everyone and stuff like that.
	They knew.
	And they didn't want anything to do with them.
	They still wouldn't ask, of course, the kids, me, if I was okay or my siblings.
	Yeah, and that sucks, of course.
	And as a kid, you don't know the degree to which society is set up so that people avoid.
	The topic of child abuse.
	I mean, what can they do?
	They can call the cops, they can call the CPS, but look what happened there.
	Yeah, that just made it worse.
	Yeah, because then if you don't get saved, you're really screwed, right?
	If you don't get out, if they don't actually save you, then you are back in the house and you are in serious shit now, right?
	Which is why I lied to begin with.
	That's why I lied to them.
	Because I knew if I didn't lie to them and they didn't take me out, oh my God.
	Yeah, and that's why at 15, we just kicked the bitch out.
	Took in roommates.
	I worked three jobs just to get through high school.
	Wow.
	Just, oh my God.
	I mean, and people are like, wow, that was amazing.
	Wow.
	Like I was some sort of great singer or circus performer, you know?
	Wow, you can juggle 19 plates on straws.
	That's amazing.
	It's like me saying to the guy who got his arm trapped in the canyon and cut his own arm off.
	It's like, wow, that's amazing.
	It's like, no, that's just survival.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, my best friend that I was telling you about, she tells me how strong I am, and I don't feel strong.
	I just feel like I didn't have any choice, you know?
	Well, you are strong.
	You are strong because a lot of people don't make that.
	Don't make it out.
	I don't mean that they die.
	I mean they die on the inside.
	And, you know, there are, what, two kids murdered every day?
	Mostly by moms.
	It's just in the States.
	It's dangerous.
	It's a war.
	It's a war on children.
	Children are hostages in these kinds of households.
	And children are ignored.
	You know, some guy like Bergdahl, and some people have emailed me that he may have seen a child crushed by a vehicle, an army vehicle, and this is one of the reasons why he bailed.
	I don't know the truth of that, but that's what I've heard.
	But this guy goes and basically seems to have, or apparently seems to have joined the Taliban.
	And the administration works like crazy to get this guy...
	No one left behind!
	Get him back!
	How about the fucking kids in your neighborhood?
	You know, forget the guy in Afghanistan who was an adult who signed up.
	How about the five-year-old with black eyes and bruises and scratches in your neighborhood?
	How about not leaving those people behind who aren't even soldiers but are under siege?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Okay, well, I'm going to try and give you continuity as I see it, right?
	I don't have any final answers to this, but I will tell you as I see it.
	Yes, please.
	Thank you so much.
	No, I think that if I had to guess, I would think that you chose this guy with the knowledge that there was Betrayal.
	He has unprocessed childhood trauma.
	People with unprocessed childhood trauma are dangerous.
	They're dangerous to your wallet, they're dangerous to your heart, they're dangerous to your body, and they're dangerous to your private parts if they get STDs and bring them home or if they get you pregnant.
	You have unprocessed childhood trauma, for which I'm incredibly sorry and I'm not saying this in any negative or critical way.
	It's I think just a fact.
	You were assaulted thousands of times as a child.
	That is a staggering amount to process.
	You can do it and you can be a glorious human being and you already are for having survived and being a productive member of the social matrix.
	Thank you.
	He was caught.
	You caught him.
	Do you seriously think that he would have told you if you didn't catch him?
	No.
	He wouldn't have.
	And then you caught him again.
	And then you caught him again.
	Right?
	And then you said, is there anything else?
	house and he said oh well there's this right yeah and he lied to you with the full knowledge of how essential telling the truth is to a relationship because I mean
	I'm not the only guy to say this but he read the book wherein this is I say the basic essential part of a relationship a relationship based on lies it's not a relationship at all.
	So he can't possibly say, well, I did the best I could with the knowledge that I had because he said, hey, read this book on honesty.
	He'd been listening to you for like four years.
	Right.
	Right.
	So he knew better.
	And look, I'm not just trying to throw him off the boat either, right?
	I mean, obviously he's had his own childhood history and his own childhood traumas and so on, right?
	But one thing he cannot claim is a lack of knowledge.
	And one thing that you cannot claim now is a lack of knowledge.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	So here's a little speech.
	Okay.
	When I meet someone, I trust them 50%.
	Which means I have no particular conclusion.
	Mm-hmm.
	Right?
	Now, they can work to build my trust, go 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, whatever.
	If they're consistently positive and trustworthy in their behavior, then I will continue to trust them.
	Right?
	Now, if they build up enough credit, then they can act in an untrustworthy manner and they go from like 95 down to 80.
	Right?
	And then they have to work to build that back up.
	That's why I asked at the beginning, is it broken?
	Now, For me, and I think that's a pretty rational case to make, if somebody goes below 50, we're done.
	Because I can start with someone new at 50.
	So if somebody goes down to 30, why the hell would I wait for them to try and build themselves back up to 50, but I can meet someone new and start at 50?
	Do you know what I mean?
	Like, why would you continue to put money into a car that's costing you $1,000 a month when you can get a new car for $100 a month?
	Like, if somebody whittles away down their trust, down, down, down, down, to me, once they get below 50, then I might as well just start something new.
	Yeah.
	And I don't mean to interrupt, but I would like to mention one more thing.
	It's probably been like four months since I've caught him lying.
	And he's frustrated because he thinks that my trust should be more.
	Like I'm not regaining it as quickly as I should.
	Well, when did he say that he didn't have the money to go to therapy?
	Probably like three months ago.
	So it's not four then, is it?
	See, you're back into fluid reality, right?
	I didn't even get what you were saying for a minute.
	Yeah, sure.
	And let me tell you something.
	This has been fairly well established psychologically.
	It takes at least nine times the positive experience to the negative experience.
	How many I love you's does it take to overcome I hate you?
	Two, five, ten?
	Right?
	There's no defense in the criminal law that if I go and murder someone that I can say, well, wait, wait, wait, wait.
	Look, I'm 47 years old.
	I spent 47 years not murdering people, so this is just one thing.
	And it takes at least, at least nine times the positive experience to overcome a negative experience.
	At least.
	Bare minimum.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Like, and just think about it.
	So if you go to a restaurant and you have nine good meals and then one meal that makes you sick, will you go back?
	Maybe not, ever, yeah.
	Well, probably not, right?
	Now, if you've had a thousand meals and then one makes you sick, you, right?
	So it's at least nine to one.
	Yeah.
	Okay?
	Now, you met him, and I think, was it you were dating for six months before you found out that he was lying to you?
	Or was it a year?
	Yeah.
	I think it was around maybe like nine or ten.
	Okay, okay, good.
	Before the first lie.
	Okay.
	And the last lie that you can remember, which again, I'm not saying is at the same level, but the last lie that you can remember was three months ago, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so for a year, let's just say, for a year, he was lying to you.
	How many years of perfect behavior will it take to overcome the year of lying to you at a bare minimum?
	Benign, right?
	It would be nine, exactly.
	It would be nine.
	Now, that doesn't even count first impressions, right?
	So if I have a friend who's been trustworthy for ten years and then lies to me about something big, we have ten years of trust built up, but the first year of your relationship was founded on lies, right?
	Yeah.
	So it's nine to one Even if you don't count first impressions, right?
	For me, first impressions are like 10 times more important, right?
	So if you've had a hundred good meals at a restaurant, then you have a terrible meal, you'll probably go back.
	If the first meal that you have at the restaurant is terrible, what then?
	Right.
	Okay, so let's say instead of Let's just make it as easy as possible.
	So instead of it being nine times because of the first impression, it's 18 times, right?
	Because it's the first impression, it's the foundation of the relationship rather than you had 10 years of trust and then you found that he lied to you about something just in the last month, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so what that means is, if he lied to you for a year, then his trust, to regain your trust, will take him 18 years of perfectly honest behavior.
	This is not just my opinion.
	This is not all just made up, right?
	This is very good studies on how trust, this is not voodoo, right?
	How do you regain trust, right?
	So as gentle as humanly possible, we're giving him all the possible slack in the world.
	it's going to take him 18 years of perfectly trustworthy behavior to overcome the first year of lying.
	How does that sound?
	Yeah.
	Thank you.
	Sounds awful.
	Does that sound possible?
	No.
	I mean, in 18 years, aren't you going to be in your 40s?
	Yeah.
	Now, he has an 18-year sentence ahead of him to regain your trust.
	This is why we don't lie to people, because recovering from it is so difficult.
	So he has an 18-year sentence ahead of him to regain your trust.
	And he's getting upset with you for not giving him your trust when he lied to you as recently as three months ago.
	So three months into an 18-year sentence, he's like, well, are we done yet?
	Are we done?
	What's the matter with you?
	I haven't lied to you in three months.
	Come on.
	Trust me.
	What's the matter with you?
	Come on.
	Come on.
	Yeah.
	He acts like I'm not trying.
	You really think this is the better?
	You really think this is the best you can do?
	Do I? Yeah.
	I mean...
	I mean, I am attractive.
	I could go out and find someone really quickly if I wanted to.
	My hesitation is I've just never found anyone that's even open to.
	Of course, the honesty I know negates pretty much everything I'm about to say.
	The answer to your first question would be...
	You think you need to go out and find someone who's trustworthy?
	You need to look in the mirror and find someone you can trust.
	Not that you're bad, right?
	You don't have the continuity with yourself that allows you to trust, right?
	Listen!
	Okay, you have had such an unbelievably traumatic history for which a massive, you know, giant Jupiter-sized heartbeat of sympathy parting the clouds above you.
	I mean, massive sympathies.
	Knowing this history, knowing that your heart has been pummeled and beaten and dragged through the muck and ripped through the brambles and punched and kicked and whatever, Then you have to be fierce, maleficent-style protector of your heart.
	Right?
	Which means you have to be very skeptical of people.
	And it means that if you're interested in dating, you need to bring the guy to your friends.
	You need to bring him, I don't know, bring him on this show.
	I'll cross-examine him if you want.
	But you need to be incredibly skeptical.
	And you need to say, oh, this person had a traumatic history.
	Has this person been to therapy?
	No.
	Ejecto bot button.
	Off into space.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	You need to go to a therapist.
	You need to bring all of the information about the man to the therapist, right?
	You need to ask him all the skeptical questions.
	Be skeptic, right?
	Ask him all the skeptical questions.
	What was your childhood like?
	What's your relationship with your parents like?
	If your parents were abusive, what is your relationship like with them now?
	I love them!
	Okay!
	Bye-bye!
	I love my abusers.
	Well, that's great.
	If that's the word you use for abusers, don't ever use that fucking word with me, right?
	Right.
	And another part that kind of makes it frustrating is I'm actually the counselor that I'm seeing.
	She actually sees him as well.
	And she knows all about this issue.
	And she was telling me that I need to trust myself enough to let go and be able to trust him.
	Oh, she's saying you should trust him.
	Almost like, yeah.
	Right.
	Right.
	Well, I'm no therapist, but the empirical data that I've studied would seem to say that You know, if he lied to you for the first year and he lied to you as recently as three months ago, that you know of!
	And if he's irritated at you for not trusting him yet, I don't think I would put him in the trustworthy category.
	I don't think I'd put him within a light year of the trustworthy category.
	Yeah.
	So...
	I mean, I don't wish him ill.
	You know, I hope he goes to therapy.
	I hope he stays in therapy.
	But you need to be incredibly careful with your heart because it has been so raw, so bruised, right?
	It's like, you're like somebody who just had a terrible sunburn yesterday.
	You got to run from shade to shade.
	You got to put SPF 9 million on, right?
	You got burned hard and bad and ugly.
	Sorry, you didn't get burned.
	The burning was ugly that occurred to you as a kid.
	So you have to be careful of your skin.
	You are raw, right?
	You are raw.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	You are a hurt person.
	And I incredibly sympathize with that.
	I'm incredibly angry at your parents about that.
	But I don't believe you can ever will trust.
	Willing trust is one of these bullshit things like willing forgiveness.
	Trust is something that is earned.
	It's like love.
	I don't will trust.
	I don't will forgiveness.
	I don't will love.
	I don't will respect.
	I simply examine my emotional state and see what it has to say about the facts, right?
	If you're hungry, can you will being full?
	No.
	You can choose not to eat, but you cannot will being full.
	And if you mistrust someone who lied to you about fundamental issues, like whether he was in school or not, if someone lied to you for a year off and on, then you cannot will trust back.
	And it is not a flaw of yours if after a lifetime of betrayal, a man who lied to you for a year, if you do not trust him, that is not a failure on your part.
	That is a success on your part. - That's kind of nice to hear.
	I've been feeling almost like I'm feeling like crazy or like the problem's me, you know?
	Hello?
	Yes, you were saying that the problem is you.
	I don't have a huge amount of extra stuff to say.
	I certainly, obviously, would recommend staying in therapy.
	I'm not sure that I would see a therapist who's also seeing my boyfriend.
	I don't even know that you can do that.
	I don't think you can do that as a therapist if you're licensed.
	I don't know.
	What do I know?
	I don't even know where you live.
	But self-protection is key, and I have a rule.
	I think it's a universal rule, but people who have unprocessed childhood trauma I don't let them into my house any more than I take blind people to a shooting range.
	I just don't.
	I mean, whether, you know, maybe it's not even their own, like, maybe they're not even bad people or whatever.
	I mean, blind people with a machine gun are not bad people.
	It's just that I don't know where the hell they're going to point that thing, right?
	Right.
	But this would be my suggestion.
	You've been incredibly helpful.
	Yeah, and I'm sorry.
	I hope it's not been too long.
	And again, I'm very sorry that you're a friend.
	No, I'm so grateful.
	Thank you so much.
	It wasn't able to join us.
	If he wants to join us at any time, I'm certainly happy to chat.
	And, you know, I get people are like, oh, you're only getting her side of the story.
	I know, but we invited him to give his side of the story.
	He didn't want to show up to the conversation.
	So, you know, we work with the information that we have.
	But it is important.
	Look, The important thing in life when you're philosophically inclined, and it sounds like you are philosophically inclined, which I think is fantastic, is it's triage, triage, triage, triage, triage.
	Repeat after me.
	Triage.
	How many?
	Not one, not two.
	Triage.
	Right?
	And triage is, can I save this person?
	Can I save this person?
	Can I save this person?
	That's in the medical field, right?
	Someone's bleeding out, you move on to someone.
	Someone's not that big a deal.
	You go to the people who are right in the middle as a surgeon on a battlefield, you figure out who you can save.
	Who can you make the most difference to?
	Now, relationships aren't about saving people.
	But you have to have triage.
	And I don't care how many beautiful abs he's got.
	I don't care what kind of Donny Osmond shave chest he's got going on there.
	I don't care how square his jaw is.
	And I don't care whether he's got that little Anthony Kirk Douglas Chin dimple or some sort of butt chin going on.
	I don't care how icy blue his eyes are and how eurotrash his eyebrows are.
	What I care about is, does he have unprocessed childhood drama?
	If he has unprocessed childhood trauma, regretfully cross your legs, walk away, wobbling, turning around like a stick insect in a blender if you have to, but will your hoochie cooch to shut down and delube and power down.
	We're looking for the man whose heart is open through knowledge and experience, through self-knowledge and experience.
	And I've had to do this regretfully with women I was enormously attracted to.
	Oh dear, really?
	Unprocessed childhood trauma?
	I'm very sorry.
	I wish you the very best.
	I hope that you will go to therapy, but we cannot date.
	Because I cannot date you and expect you to change in any fundamental way, right?
	You can't take home the car and say, great, now we're going to get a boat, right?
	Right.
	Unfortunately, it seems like the vast majority of people The vast majority of people are screwed up.
	Absolutely.
	Let me tell you something, Darla.
	This is the last metaphor that I will leave you with.
	Let me tell you about this.
	That was very important.
	Darla, do you like diamonds?
	Are you a magnifier?
	Do you like shiny things?
	No, don't say yes.
	What about gold?
	Do you like gold?
	I like milk.
	I don't know.
	Milk?
	Yeah, gold's fine.
	I think that's mothers I'd love to take to Kansas, isn't it?
	Is there anything...
	Help me!
	Oh, God, I found the one woman who doesn't like any kind of jewelry.
	Is there something rare that you like?
	Yeah, we'll say gold.
	Okay, let's just...
	Thank you, let's say gold.
	Okay, so...
	Do you know, and I spent a year and a half In the woods looking for gold.
	Okay?
	And do you know that the vast majority of things that are pulled out of the earth when you're looking for gold are not gold?
	Yeah.
	Right?
	So if you're looking for gold...
	And you keep looking and you find some quartz and you find some obsidian and you find some pyrite and you find some granite.
	Do you just put all that stuff in a bag and say, well, I guess I'll go back and sell this stuff because I can't find any gold.
	Do you?
	No.
	No.
	Do you say, well, I found a pebble when I was looking for a diamond, but I guess it will do.
	No.
	If you're going to buy an engagement ring for some boyfriend in the future, and you go to the store and they say, well, we don't, you know, we don't want to sell you a diamond engagement ring, but we can give you this fire extinguisher for $100.
	Would you say, Lord, yes, this helps put out the fire in my loins!
	But, hey, look, that's what I was doing last night, so...
	So the important thing is, yes, if it's rare, then you have to have an efficient way of looking for it.
	But if it's rare, you redouble your efforts to look for it.
	And if it's rare, you have to be really efficient at finding it.
	If you want a diamond and you're looking for a diamond, you don't go out and grab a piece of quartz and take it home and then polish it and shave it and cut it and put it in a...
	Ring and then try and sell it and somebody says, I'm not paying you anything.
	It's a piece of quartz for Christ's sake.
	You need to be able to identify the diamond versus the quartz when you're out there.
	In the woods.
	You have to be very efficient at finding the quartz because it's rare.
	At finding the diamond because it's rare, right?
	Right.
	So complaining, which I understand and I sympathize with, I'm certainly trying to make as many good men and women as humanly possible through the annoying gadfly encouragement of philosophy.
	I appreciate that.
	But yes, it is rare, and this is why I'm telling you to be efficient.
	Unprocessed childhood trauma?
	Stockholm Syndrome bonding with abusers?
	Think school was great?
	Quartz!
	Move on!
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	I feel like if I would have been listening to you a year before instead of the past year, I think I would have seen so much more of this.
	Right.
	And as the saying goes, the only thing worse than spending a year in a bad relationship is spending a year and a day in a bad relationship.
	Yeah.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	Thank you so much.
	You're welcome.
	And thank you for your patience with a long call.
	I hope that it works out.
	And let us know how it goes.
	I'm sure that people would like to know.
	And again, if Wreck-It Ralph wants to call in, he's certainly welcome to.
	All right, Mike, let's move on to the next call.
	Up next is Kay.
	And Kay wrote in pretty much saying that some difficult issues have arisen after an ex crushed his confidence and eroded his trust in people.
	And at this point, he's in a position where he can't trust strangers anymore.
	What if the next woman he goes out with also turns out to be violent?
	And his question is pretty much, now that I've lost faith that new acquaintances may be now in violence, how do you think I can move past this?
	Wow.
	Okay, good.
	We have a theme.
	What happened in the relationship?
	Well, I met this woman two years ago.
	I dated for about two months and figured we were a couple.
	Sorry, go ahead.
	And shortly afterwards, I started getting all sorts of abusive texts and Well, the following autumn, she hit me the first time and pretty much escalated from there.
	Got a pretty much on and off again relationship for several times.
	What sort of texts were you getting that were abusive?
	Well, she'd say all sorts of nasty things about me.
	This is a bit circular, right?
	I mean, abuse is by definition nasty.
	Can you think of examples?
	Yeah.
	Well, she repeatedly accused me of cheesing on her, which I hadn't done.
	And, uh, well...
	All right, dude, are you going to be in the conversation or not?
	Because this is a live show and we're going to record this out, be respectful of people's time.
	If you don't want to talk about stuff, we can move on to another caller.
	But if we're going to talk about it, I don't want all this self-censorship and pausing and shit like that, right?
	I'm on your side.
	I really am.
	Okay, so, you know, she was abusive and this and that.
	Well, she accused me of cheating on her.
	I mean, that's maybe a little crazy if you're not, but it's not abusive, right?
	So, what happened in the text?
	Well, she called me a drunken whatnot.
	A drunken what?
	What does what not mean?
	Well, sorry.
	English is a second language to me so well managed.
	Okay, so what did she say?
	A drunken bastard?
	A drunken asshole?
	I mean, what did she say?
	Yeah, that sort of things.
	What I repeatedly came up with was she telling me I'd neglected her.
	Well, being so charming.
	Okay, so the first thing to understand is that the problem is not that your confidence was destroyed by this woman.
	I don't doubt that your confidence was destroyed by a woman, just not this woman.
	She was picking up the pieces, right?
	Like if some other guy hits a deer with a car, I can take it home and call myself a hunter, but I'm just picking up roadkill, right?
	So your confidence wasn't destroyed by this woman.
	Your confidence was already destroyed.
	Otherwise, you'd have been like, whoa, crazy bitch, and blocked her cell and whatever, right?
	Changed her number or whatever, right?
	So when a woman sends you crazy shit like that, why would you have anything to do with her?
	I'm not saying, well, that's bad.
	I mean, there's a reason why.
	But why would you have?
	This is not the first time you've experienced this behavior from a woman, right?
	Actually, it wasn't the first time.
	It was the first time?
	Yes.
	So you were never called any names by your mom?
	No.
	Never.
	Okay.
	Tell me a little bit about your upbringing, if you could.
	I grew up in a nuclear family.
	That's in the countryside.
	Nonviolent family and Oh, so you weren't spanked or yelled at or hit?
	No, never.
	No.
	And were you close to your parents?
	Yes.
	And are you close to your parents now?
	Pretty...
	Yes, I am.
	Wow.
	So what on earth did your parents say when you told them about these texts?
	Well...
	They were rather confused.
	What's confusing about it?
	I mean, that's crazy and abusive stuff, right?
	So what did they say about this woman when you told them about the text she was sending you?
	Well, they took her text at face value for some part at least.
	I don't know what that means.
	They thought she was correct?
	Well, they thought she was correct.
	Wait, so you have a great relationship with your parents, but they side with a woman who's abusing you?
	I'm confused.
	Well...
	They had never met her.
	But they've met you!
	They've known you for decades, right?
	I mean, you can go find mean stuff about me on the internet.
	I mean, I'm sure, right?
	But, you know, I mean, my best friends don't say, well, you know, I don't know those people, so I'm sure that they're right, right?
	Yeah.
	So what did your parents say when you got these crazy abusive texts?
	Did they say, yeah, sounds legit.
	I don't know her, but yeah, seems like you to me.
	I thought I should apologize and pay more attention to her.
	They thought that you should appease and do what the abuser wanted and that was their sensible strategy for you dealing with a crazy abusive bitch, right?
	No.
	It just doesn't make much sense, does it?
	No.
	It really doesn't make any sense at all, that they would side with an abuser and tell you that you had to change your behavior to appease the abuser.
	Yes.
	Are your parents mentally deficient in any way?
	Like, do they have trouble with shoelaces and doorknobs and garage doors?
	Are they unsupervised for significant portions of the day?
	I mean, what does that mean?
	I mean, it's crazy, right?
	I mean, what you're telling me makes no sense.
	I mean, if you're close to your parents, they don't side with some anonymous stranger who's abusing you.
	Hmm.
	I see that.
	So, would you like to amend the statement that you're close to your parents, or would you like to define siding with an abusive stranger as being close to your parents?
	Hmm.
	Let me tell you, okay, while you ponder that, I will tell you a fact because these pauses are going to give me an aneurysm, okay?
	So let me tell you a fact.
	All women know about crazy fucking abusive bitches.
	All women.
	Do you know why?
	Because they go to school, and they go to church, and they're around other girls when they grow up.
	Every single woman on this planet who's not Helen Keller who's grown up in the Batcave knows everything there is to know about crazy, dangerous, bitchy women.
	Abusive women.
	Everything.
	Even if they themselves are perfect paragons and angels of virtue and are a full-on Roman phalanx of nawalts, they know everything there is to know about crazy, dangerous, and abusive girls because they grew up with crazy, dangerous, and abusive girls.
	I'm not even saying they're a majority, but they're certainly around, right?
	So your mom knows that there are crazy, abusive, and dangerous women in the world, right?
	Let me ask you a question.
	Do you know that there are crazy, dangerous, and abusive men in the world?
	I'm not sure there are.
	Sure there are!
	Absolutely!
	And if you had a daughter, would you tell her, hey, by the way, there are some crazy, dangerous, and abusive men in the world, right?
	So you've got to be careful, right?
	The moment a man abuses you, the moment he's taught disrespectfully to you, the moment he hits you, the moment he screams at you, the moment he calls you names, there you go.
	Crazy, dangerous, and abusive guy.
	You've got to get out, right?
	Would you tell her that?
	Yes, I would.
	Of course you would.
	Because you love your daughter and you want to keep her safe, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So when did your mom sit down with you and tell you the facts of life?
	The facts of life are, hey by the way son, there are crazy dangerous and abusive women out there, right?
	Some of them go after singers and have one leg.
	And To keep you happy, I need to make sure that you know what the signs are because I grew up with crazy, dangerous, and abusive women.
	Girls, we called them back then.
	And so this is what you need to look out for, right?
	So for one thing that may happen is they send you abusive text messages that are insulting and derogatory, right?
	Yes.
	So when did your mom sit down with you and have that conversation to keep you safe from dangerous, predatory, and abusive women?
	A lot never came up.
	Well, no.
	She has to make that happen, right?
	Yeah.
	I mean, people think that the birds and the bees, like talking about sex and the moving pistons of biological reproduction is the important conversation.
	That's not the important conversation.
	The important conversation is cross your legs and watch your heart, right?
	So, your mom, although she knows everything there is to know about crazy, dangerous, and abusive women, Never told you about crazy, dangerous and abusive women and then when a crazy, dangerous and abusive woman started circling around you and abusing you, she sided with the woman.
	I see what you mean.
	So, are you close to your parents?
	Well, not as close as I thought.
	Right.
	Abuse happens in isolation.
	Abuse happens in isolation.
	I know if people choose to separate from an abusive family of origin that they are in danger of isolation.
	It's why I run a message board.
	It's why I have conversations with people.
	It's why I suggest that they connect with other people.
	It's certainly why I suggest that they stay in contact with a therapy because therapy is a conversation that keeps you out of feeling isolated, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So, when a man is abused, I know a few things without ever asking a single question.
	The first thing I know is that he's incredibly isolated.
	We cannot be abused If we are not isolated.
	Which is why when abusers and exploiters move in, first thing they do is they start cutting off your contact with good people in your life.
	Now, when helpful people come along, they'll suggest cutting off contact with abusers in your life.
	But when bad people come along, the first thing they do is they start cutting off contact with you from the people in your life.
	So I know for a fact that if a man has been in an abusive relationship, I know for a fact that he is isolated.
	I know for a fact that nobody he truly respects has intervened in his abusive situation.
	Because if you really were close to your mom and your mom loved you and would do anything to protect you, she would never side with some random crazy bitch sending you text messages that were abusive and say, yeah, well, go do what she wants.
	That's a recipe for complete disaster.
	So I know that the The man is isolated and I know that there is not a man or a woman that the man respects who's being abused in his life who's telling him the truth.
	Let me ask you this.
	Have you ever had it happen where you have a friend?
	You see, you have a friend.
	He's a male friend.
	And that male friend gets involved with a woman.
	And slowly but surely your friendship with that man Begins to whittle away, diminish, and eventually dies.
	That ever happened to you?
	Well, that does sound familiar.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, this is, men are splintered, you know, men are splintered and fragmented, and I've had, I don't even know how many male friends over the years, they get involved with a woman, and the woman begins to isolate The man.
	The woman begins to isolate the man.
	And this is the surest recipe for knowing that you're with a crazy woman.
	An abusive woman, an exploitive woman.
	Because she wants to have full license for crazy shit.
	She wants to be able to do crazy, crazy stuff.
	She wants to not work.
	She wants to take your money.
	She wants to get her own way.
	She wants to bully you.
	She wants to dominate you.
	She just wants to get what she wants.
	To hell with the man in the long run.
	Now, if there are other men around, when this soft, titified predation is going on, then the other men are like, dude, what are you doing?
	Come on.
	She's being crazy.
	So don't indulge her.
	Like, Say no.
	Come on.
	Don't be ridiculous.
	Don't buy that big house.
	Don't take her all over the world.
	Don't do all this stuff.
	Make her get a goddamn job.
	Show her some respect.
	Don't let her be crazy.
	Now, do crazy people like having non-crazy people around?
	No, they don't.
	Right.
	So one of the surest signs that you're with a crazy bitch is that she becomes negative to your friendships.
	She badmouths your friends.
	She downplays your friends.
	Or she just makes you so busy that you just don't have time for them.
	And she doesn't say, listen, you haven't talked to so-and-so in a while.
	Give them a call.
	Listen, so-and-so is kind of sick.
	He might even have cancer.
	Maybe you should give him a fucking call.
	Right?
	They don't say that.
	Mm-hmm.
	They whittle away your relationships.
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, I did feel very alone with this woman.
	Right.
	Now, can I tell you something else that I know about crazy bitches?
	Crazy bitches know when a man's mom is going to say, appease the crazy bitch, will you?
	That's the right thing to do, son.
	Let me pack you down into a tiny crushed car square and feed you into the giant maw of a crazy bitch.
	Because I love you, son!
	And I don't care how crazy my grandkids are.
	I just want some grandkids.
	Right?
	So I guarantee you that this woman sent you these text messages knowing deep in her caustic, bitter little witchy heart that your mom was going to push you right back into her punchy hands and bitey teeth.
	Right?
	Right.
	So how did she know that?
	Well...
	She's a woman at least.
	Well, I think Me not showing enough confidence in general would indicate that.
	Right, right.
	So she knew you did not have a moat, a phalanx of protectors around you that you could show this crazy text to and they'd say, oh my god, block this psycho, right?
	Yeah.
	So what happened then?
	What happened after your parents failed to protect you, after your friends failed to protect you?
	What happened in your relationship with the woman?
	Well, last autumn it got to the point that I told this woman I didn't want to have anything to do with her.
	And I...
	Well, some months prior to that I had spoken with some friends and They were rather disturbed by this woman.
	They thought she was trouble.
	trouble.
	And what happened in the relationship that made them think that?
	Well, Well this woman was rather dominating in conversations when the few times they ever saw her.
	Well my friends also noticed that I was rather isolated.
	Were you hit?
	Yes, I was hit.
	Right.
	So why are we talking about all this other nonsense?
	She was rather dominating in conversation, right?
	Let's get to the meat of the matter, right?
	So did she punch you?
	Yes, she did.
	Did she choke you?
	No, she didn't.
	Did she throw things at you?
	Yes.
	Did she steal from you?
	Not that I know of.
	And did she verbally abuse you?
	Call you stupid, lazy, a bastard, whatever, right?
	Well, frequently.
	And did she swear at you?
	Yes.
	Like, not I'm so goddamn frustrated, but you are a fucking asshole or whatever, right?
	Yes.
	That sorts of things.
	Right.
	I'm incredibly sorry.
	Did she scratch you?
	No.
	Did she break your property?
	Phones, cars, TVs, walls?
	Well, seemingly by accident, but I wouldn't know.
	Did she cost you money?
	Not did she steal, but did you end up paying bills or...
	Paying her debts or subsidizing her?
	Well, I did lend her some money.
	How much money did you lend her?
	Which I did...
	Oh, some tens of euros, which I did get back.
	Tens of euros?
	So not much?
	Yeah, not much.
	Right.
	But...
	Then there are legal costs.
	And what are those?
	Well, related to the restraining order.
	Oh, you had to get a restraining order on her?
	Yes.
	And why does that cost you money?
	I thought that that's just part of criminal protection.
	You had to get a solicitor or a lawyer?
	I had to get a lawyer.
	Right.
	And how much did that cost all around?
	It's about 1400 euros.
	Right.
	Well, I'm sorry for that as well.
	Has it worked?
	I mean, are you safe from her?
	Well, texts occasionally keep coming.
	Oh, you can't block?
	I guess she just changed his numbers?
	Well, I've blocked her number on my phone.
	But if she contacts you in violation of her restraining order, doesn't she go to jail?
	Well, it takes time in this country.
	She'll get a fine up first.
	You report it, right?
	Oh, she gets a fine first?
	I do.
	Yeah.
	Right.
	Right.
	Appeal the restraining order, so I was in limbo for maybe five months.
	Yeah, it's great.
	What a wonderful government system to keep you safe, right?
	I mean, you say, I've been physically assaulted by this woman, I need some safe protection, and they're like, well, we'll put you in limbo for five months, and either then you'll be alive or not.
	So...
	Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
	That's what I mean.
	It's a terrible system all around, but I'm sorry about that.
	No.
	Well, I'm a libertarian, so I haven't been happy having to deal with the violence of the state.
	You're not really a libertarian, if you don't mind me saying so.
	Did the woman initiate force against you?
	She did.
	Right.
	And did you recognize that as an immoral evil?
	No, I did.
	So you were libertarian, but you recognized that she was doing evil to you, but you accepted it?
	Yeah.
	I should have walked away at that point.
	I'm not trying to make you feel worse.
	I'm not trying to make you feel worse.
	What I'm trying to say is that your values had the potential for some measure of self-protection for you, right?
	In that the non-aggression principle means, right, do not initiate the use of force.
	And if she initiates the use of force against you, then you can pull the libertarian catapult and get out, right?
	Yes.
	All right.
	So is your question how to feel safe in the future?
	Yeah, that's the issue I'm currently having.
	Right.
	This is not a personal issue.
	This is a social issue, okay?
	This is a social issue.
	You know, if you're in a war and everyone runs away and you get shot, then your first question upon getting back is why did everyone run away, right?
	In other words, why didn't they stay there to help protect you, right?
	So, if you get sucked into a violent relationship, And given that it starts with sex, I genuinely mean get sucked into a violent relationship.
	Then the question is, where were your protectors?
	Where were your protectors?
	Where were the people who were like, oh man, you seem depressed.
	Oh man, you seem upset.
	Oh man, you seem down.
	Oh man, you don't seem very happy.
	Oh man, there's a scratch on you.
	There's a bruise on you.
	Oh man, you seem...
	You know, miserable.
	What's going on?
	Oh my God, you're getting hit.
	Well, come stay at my house.
	Never go back home.
	Call the cops.
	We're going to do everything we can to help support you in this, right?
	Where was everyone?
	Well, they weren't around.
	And...
	Well, what does that mean you didn't see them?
	No, not much.
	But you saw them.
	Sort of ashamed to talk about the whole thing.
	I get it.
	Of course you are.
	But that's why we need protectors, right?
	I mean, they know you.
	Do your parents know the difference between when you're in love and when you're being beaten?
	Well, they should.
	But they don't, right?
	I'm not sure.
	But they don't.
	Or they do, but they don't care.
	No.
	Okay.
	So, do you know what I would do if I hired a man to guard my car and he just basically watched someone steal it?
	Well, I wouldn't trust the guy anymore.
	I fire him.
	Yeah.
	So there are people in your life, I'm not saying you have zero responsibility, but you weren't able to solve the problem.
	There are people in your life, do they claim that they care for you?
	Yeah, well, they do.
	Do they claim that they love you?
	Evidence shows otherwise.
	Yeah, do they claim that they love you?
	Yes.
	And they let you get taken down by a crazy, violent bitch, right?
	So, in my humble opinion, if I were in your shoes, I would say to my friends and my family, we need to have a little bit of a chat.
	Because Either you didn't know that I was in desperate straits, in which case it obviously doesn't matter to you whether I'm happy or sad, whether I'm in love or getting the shit beat down of me, which means that you either don't know me or don't care about me, or you knew that I was miserable but never really saw fit to take the time and effort to call me up and ask me what was going on.
	Right.
	You got people in your life who claim to love you.
	They were around when you got sucked into a violent and abusive relationship with a violent and abusive woman.
	And you got a mom who basically served you up on a platter to this Cruella de Vil, right?
	Go, son, and appease the crazy, violent bitch.
	Go make her happy.
	Go change your behavior.
	Go conform to her craziness.
	Now...
	Do you know the only type of women who will serve you up to a crazy bitch?
	Are crazy bitches.
	Go appease that woman means keep appeasing me.
	Go appease that woman's craziness means from a mom, keep appeasing my craziness.
	And your dad?
	What did he say?
	Well, he hasn't said much about it.
	Thank you.
	Did he ever hear about or see the texts at the beginning?
	No, he didn't.
	Did he ever hear about them?
	Did you ever talk to him about them?
	Was he there when you talked about them with your mom?
	Did your mom ever talk about them with him?
	him and why didn't you, if you didn't, talk about them with him?
	Well, I haven't spoken much about relationships with them at all.
	Much or at all?
	You mean you didn't tell them every time you were beaten, but you told them sometimes that you were beaten?
	Well, at first I didn't tell them about it.
	But then you did.
	Yeah, I did.
	So you told them, you said, Mom, Dad, I'm being beaten up by my girlfriend.
	Yeah.
	And what did they say?
	Well, their reaction was that I should get out of the relationship.
	Okay, and what then?
	Wow.
	I don't really agree.
	I mean, you didn't, right?
	You didn't get out of the relationship when they said you should get out of the relationship, right?
	Well, that was, uh, at the point when I had already decided at the point when I had already decided to leave this woman when I told about the beating.
	And how long had you been beaten when you told your parents about being beaten?
	that was a that was a year and look I mean I sympathize I really do.
	I'm not...
	I'm not...
	I'm down on you.
	I understand how this can happen.
	I'm trying to denormalize it for you.
	You spent a year being beaten up without telling your parents.
	Did you tell any of your friends?
	No.
	Didn't tell about beating.
	Why not?
	Again, I'm not trying to blame you.
	I'm not trying to make you feel bad.
	I'm genuinely curious.
	Why not?
	I was ashamed to talk about it.
	Okay, I understand that, but you're able to talk about it with me, right?
	What's the difference?
	Yeah.
	So you're not ashamed to talk about it.
	You were ashamed to talk about it with them.
	There's a difference, right?
	Well, yeah, I was ashamed to talk about it up to a point.
	I don't know what that means.
	I didn't want to talk about it until it got too bad.
	If you see what I mean.
	No, I understand that.
	I understand that you said that already, but the question is why?
	And again, I'm not trying to blame you.
	I'm genuinely curious.
	Why?
	I mean, if my daughter was in a violent relationship when she gets bigger and she didn't tell me, I would be like, whoa, why was I not the person that she could tell?
	And also, if my daughter was in a violent relationship...
	I was hoping that...
	No.
	Right?
	Because...
	I was hoping that the...
	Go ahead.
	Yeah, I was hoping that the behavior would stop, but it just wouldn't...
	Okay.
	I'm just going to have to tell you, frankly, because we're not getting anywhere in this part of the conversation.
	You were ashamed to talk about it with them.
	You weren't ashamed to talk about it because you're talking about it now.
	You talked about it with the police.
	You got a restraining order.
	order.
	You talked about it with a solicitor, right?
	So you were ashamed to talk about it with them.
	The reason that you were ashamed to talk about it with them is that you expected a negative reaction because when you showed abusive texts to your mother, she said, well, the important thing to do is to conform to the abuser and make her happy, right?
	And I side with this crazy bitch who's sending you you abusive texts, right?
	So you had already tried to talk about abuse in your relationship and your mother sided with your abuser, right?
	Right.
	So...
	You were ashamed to talk about it with them because it would add further, you would imagine, to your humiliation, right?
	What did you do to make her so angry?
	You need to buy her some flowers and be nice, right?
	And whatever you did to make her that angry, just stop doing that, right?
	Right.
	So you need better people in your life.
	Because it's not up to...
	I mean, let's say...
	I mean...
	Let's say that it was perfectly justified for you not to tell your parents.
	I don't think it was in so far as you should have a relationship with your parents where you go and tell them.
	But if you have that relationship with your parents, you never get targeted by abusers anyway.
	But...
	Let's say that...
	It was perfectly appropriate or understandable or acceptable for you not to tell your parents.
	Did your parents not notice that you were being abused?
	Well...
	They did think I was acting strange when I didn't get out much from, well, mine or my girlfriend's apartment. mine or my girlfriend's apartment.
	Well, they talked to you on the phone.
	Did they drop by?
	Did they see you?
	Did they see any difference in your demeanor?
	I mean, you can't possibly be being assaulted in your own home and not have an effect on how you are, right?
	Yeah.
	There was a difference in my behavior.
	Of course there was.
	I mean, if there was no difference in anyone's behavior, there'd be nothing wrong with it in a weird way, right?
	Yeah.
	Because it makes you miserable and because it destroys your confidence and because it's so emotionally ugly is one of the reasons why it's so wrong.
	Yeah.
	So did your parents notice that you were unhappy?
	happy.
	Wow.
	They did notice I was acting strange, No, no, you said that already.
	Did they notice that you were unhappy?
	No, they didn't notice that.
	Right.
	So please, please, please, you need to redefine in your head and your heart, okay, what it means to be close to someone.
	I ask you, are you close to your mother?
	She didn't notice the emotional effects of physical, emotional and verbal abuse on you.
	That's not being close.
	Yeah.
	That's not even close to being close.
	No.
	No.
	But because you think that is being close, It's normalized for you.
	Like, that's, well, yeah, I'm close, I have a great relationship with my parents, I'm close to them, and so on, right?
	Right.
	So, I invite you to recognize, I think, the basic empirical fact that they're not close to you.
	Either they didn't notice that you were unhappy and being regularly physically, emotionally, and verbally abused, In which case, I don't know what planet they're living on or whether they can see anything outside their own eyeballs, or they noticed it but didn't really bother themselves to ask you about it.
	And I really want to denormalize that behavior for you.
	That is incredibly destructive, selfish, blind, self-involved, narcissistic behavior.
	If you are around someone who you raised from your womb to an adult, And you have no clue that that person is being assaulted and abused, then you're not close to that person.
	If they know it but don't bother themselves to ask you about it, then they're narcissists plus complete assholes, in my opinion.
	So I would sit down and have conversations with the people in your life and say, listen, how the hell did I end up in this situation?
	Why did I not feel comfortable?
	Coming to you.
	Did you not notice anything?
	Now, of course, they're probably just going to get evasive and they're going to try and make it feel like it's your fault and that you should have come to us and we would have done anything for you.
	And don't take any of that bullshit.
	If you're getting sucked into an abusive relationship, it's other people's job to watch your back if they claim to love you and know you.
	And we can point fingers at you all day long and say you should have known better, but the reality is you didn't.
	And I can understand that.
	The reason is because you have these non-relationships that you think are close.
	If you had good relationships in your life, you would not have been abused and exploited in this manner.
	Because you said to me at the beginning, how do I trust myself in the future with women?
	You cannot trust yourself.
	You cannot keep yourself safe any more than you can win a war single-handedly.
	You need a platoon.
	You need people around you who are going to watch your back, who are going to care for you, who are going to pick you up when you fall, and you will do the same for them.
	Who are going to scan for predators.
	Who are going to make sure you don't get abused and exploited and robbed from and beaten up and yelled at and cursed and called names.
	Who are going to put themselves forward as a human shield to keep you safe because that way they won't have to.
	Because then the potential abuser will say, oh, this guy's got real friends, real close relationships.
	The people who love him will never get away.
	Never let me get away with the shit I want to do.
	And they'll go find someone else who's isolated and thinks that they're close to people and go prey on that person.
	Abusers are parasites, and they take enormous risks every time they try to exercise abuse.
	Because if they try to exercise abuse, and people just say, stuff it, you crazy bitch, or stuff it, you crazy bastard, they feel rage and helplessness.
	It's very risky emotionally for abusers to try and abuse.
	They have to be damn sure that it's going to work.
	Right?
	Right.
	And so...
	She knew that you did not have people who genuinely loved you in your life.
	I'm sorry to put it so bluntly.
	Again, this is all just my opinion, but I think there's, for me at least, certain empirical evidence for that in that people did not watch your back.
	So she knew that you weren't close to your parents, but she knew that you thought you were.
	She knew that you wouldn't pick up the phone and tell them you were being beaten.
	She knew that you wouldn't run to the cops saying, arrest this woman for domestic violence.
	She knew that your friends weren't going to come over with a fucking moving van and get you out of her orbit and say, stay back, crazy bitch.
	You're hitting my friend.
	That is what friendship is.
	That is what love is.
	That is commitment to protect no matter what.
	No matter if it's uncomfortable, no matter if it costs you the cost of a cube van, no matter if it's difficult, no matter if people yell at you, it is the commitment to protect no matter what.
	And I want your sense of what it means to be close and to be loved and to have relationships and friendships to rise to that level because that is the way that you can be safe and secure in the future.
	Right.
	I better have some standards in my relationships.
	Yes, and I'm very sorry that you have these low standards in your relationships.
	They're not your low standards like you just picked them.
	The relationship with your parents is just what you inherited, right?
	And there's not a standard in society that says protect men from abuse, because abuse is always considered to be, you know, repeat after me, man, bad, woman, good, man, bad, woman, good, man, bad, woman, good, right?
	But we all know that half the domestic violence incidents are women initiating.
	Yeah, that's right.
	And that women can do a lot of damage and men are paralyzed often by fear of the woman saying that it was he who assaulted me and going to jail, fear of kids, a fear of divorce, fear of alimony, fear of leaving their kids with a child abuser who's almost certainly going to get custody.
	Women, particularly when combined with the power of the state and the sexism of the entire legal system and the pussy pass Women have enormous power in relationships to abuse men and of course this is not acknowledged in society as a whole because gender relations are currently run by the government and like all government programs gender relationships are a complete penultimate disaster.
	So you know it's not just you This is a whole societal problem.
	But your specific question about how to stay safe, Kay, it means confront the people in your life who fail to protect you and do not let them side with this crazy bitch and blame you alone for what happened.
	Mm hmm.
	Yeah.
	Thanks.
	That's very good advice.
	And I'm very sorry.
	I'm very sorry for what happened to you.
	It is Brutal.
	It is evil.
	It is, of course, incredibly destructive.
	It is predatory.
	And there are a lot of women out there who are like that.
	Right?
	There are men out there too, but we already know about them.
	Right?
	It's the wolves in sheep's clothing that we need to worry about.
	The wolves we can see are a little less dangerous than the ones we can't.
	So I'm incredibly sorry for what happened to you.
	And, you know, your story is not unique.
	There are hundreds of millions of men around the world.
	who are suffering in the exact same way from the exact same stuff and goddamn well society as a whole just brushes it under the carpet and say women good men bad women good men bad well no sometimes it's women really fucking bad and I'm sorry that you got into the orbit of these kind of crazy bitch and I'm really sorry incredibly sorry that the people around you did not see fit to watch your goddamn back and beat this predator back Well...
	I never saw it coming.
	Well...
	No, no, no.
	Don't, uh...
	Look, geez, we were about to end and then you told me some crap, right?
	You did see it coming because you went to your parents and you said, look at these crazy texts, right?
	Right?
	Right, yeah.
	You saw that there was something off.
	You knew that there was something wrong.
	And you were displaying to everyone that you were unhappy.
	Not like faking it, but, you know, it was embodied.
	And you weren't going out and, right?
	You weren't seeing people as much.
	And you're probably walking around with that staring at the sidewalk, sloping shoulder, abused guy shuffle, right?
	Yeah.
	So, no, you did see it coming.
	But, unfortunately, you were anesthetized into compliance largely through your mom.
	Yeah.
	So I hope that you will talk to people and express your upset at the fact that they did not help you in your year or two of need.
	And that your mom told you to go and appease this crazy bitch.
	Lady got some explaining to do.
	Well, she sure does.
	And with that, like, I'm really sorry, but I'm sort of cooking along on five hours sleep last night for a variety of reasons.
	So, listen, I'm sorry for the cost.
	Six in the morning here.
	Yeah, and I'm incredibly sorry for your experience.
	It doesn't mean you can't love.
	It doesn't mean that your heart is wrecked.
	It doesn't mean that you're a broken man.
	But it means that you have woken up to the danger that you're in because of your lack of a virtuous tribe.
	And you know, if you want to go into the glorious battlefield of love, you need some armor and you need some cohorts with you.
	We cannot ride safe in a dangerous world alone.
	And the most important thing to stay safe, to keep your heart open, is to find people around you who are going to make sure that you're okay.
	And you will make sure that they're okay.
	And there are so many predators in the world that we really need beneficial, kind, loving, compassionate, strong, and moral people around us.
	And they are hard to find.
	I get it.
	It's diamonds and it's gold, which means be ruthless in your casting off Of quartz and crap and dung beetles and go for the gold and go for the diamonds except nothing less, my friend.
	So this is Stefan Molyneux for, from, with, behind, in the vicinity of Free Domain Radio.
	I hope you have a wonderful, wonderful week.
	We will speak to you Wednesday night.
	And thanks again to the organizers of the Toronto Domestic Violence Conference.
	I gave a speech there Friday and Saturday.
	Senator Anne...
	Cools was there.
	She's the longest serving senator, I think.
	Black, not that that matters.
	She had a great quote, which she said, behind every male abuser is an abusive mother.
	I think that's not altogether true.
	I'm sure there are other abusers in the history, but it was a powerful statement as well worth checking out her speech.
	And we'll be in Detroit at the end of the month, I hope.
	So have yourselves a wonderful week, everyone.
	Thanks to Mike.
	Thanks to the callers.

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