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June 17, 2014 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux

01:39:12

2724 The Death of Men: Resurrection after Exploitation

Stefan Molyneux speaks with a listener about dissatisfaction with a long term relationship, male isolation in the face of female dysfunction, inability to express preferences and recovering from being financial exploited.

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	Yeah, so Tyler, what's up?
	How can I help?
	Well, you know, I've been in this nine-year relationship, and I mentioned to Michael earlier in an email that I've read Real-Time Relationships, and reading that first dysfunctional relationship scenario of Bruce and Sheila, it was eerily similar to how me and my current girlfriend kind of started out.
	So...
	I don't know.
	I guess I just wanted to figure out, you know, maybe what effects my parents had on me that would kind of lead me to choose girls like that.
	Because, I mean, she wasn't the first relationship I had where I had acted in similar ways.
	Where, you know, it's just like I find somebody and I just go all in.
	And, you know, stop hanging out with my friends and stuff.
	And then it's like...
	Yeah, I mean, just all that stuff, so...
	So your girlfriend, I don't know, girlfriend for nine years, your partner?
	I don't know what partner.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Your partner and other women, they've separated you from your male friends, is that right?
	Yeah, I feel like it was more me.
	Like I just wanted to kind of spend more time with the girls than with my friends.
	But, you know, it's something that they were doing.
	I'm not sure.
	I mean, it's quite common that dysfunctional women will try and separate men from support systems, right?
	I mean, to isolate someone is to not give them access to objective feedback about their situation.
	So, I mean, I had girlfriends and they basically, it wasn't anything overt.
	They weren't like, you can't see other men, you know?
	Right.
	That was my life.
	But no, it was generally like, you know, what do you mean you want to go spend time with?
	I guess that's all right.
	You know, they'd be upset or disappointed or whatever.
	And I just found myself gradually ending up in that situation where I saw my friends less and less.
	And that was a problem.
	It was a problem.
	You need other men around you to make sure that your spouse or girlfriend or fiance or partner isn't going crazy.
	And, you know, if you don't have that kind of person around, your male friends who can say, I'm sorry, she did what now?
	And can give you some kind of feedback, it can get tough.
	And women who are dysfunctional will generally want to hive you off from your male friends.
	And it's not an explicit, you know, you can't, because that's too obvious, right?
	But it's just this kind of pressure that heads you in that direction.
	Yeah, for sure.
	Yeah, the disappointment, like the Kind of just getting...
	Not completely mad, but...
	You go.
	You have fun.
	A little cold.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Go ahead.
	Go ahead, yeah.
	That stuff.
	Yeah, I mean, it's recognized that women need other women, you know, girls' nights out and that kind of stuff, but it's really not recognized as much that men need men because male companionship, male friendship is always trivialized in culture, right?
	It's always like, well, you just want to get together and talk about sports or, you know, politics or nothing personal or whatever it is.
	And it's sort of like, well, why would you need that kind of thing?
	What is the man providing to you that I can't?
	Or, you know, what we have is real.
	What you have with your male friends is shallow and whatever it is, right?
	I mean, I remember I had a girlfriend who I'd be on the phone with, a friend of mine for like an hour, and we were chatting about a variety of things.
	And she was like, you never once talked about your feelings.
	You never once talked about anything real that was going on in your life.
	It's like, That's like me saying, well, you're on the phone with your mother for an hour and you never want to talk philosophy or politics.
	What's the matter with you?
	Right?
	It's different styles of communicating.
	But I find that there does seem to be this isolation that occurs for men.
	And then, of course, when the relationship breaks up, the man is much more prone to emotional problems because the woman has carved him off from his support system and...
	Then he loses the relationship, which is why men sometimes go batty when those things end.
	So what are the patterns that you see in the women that you date?
	Well, I mean...
	With my girlfriend that I've been with for the past nine years...
	There wasn't a lot of...
	They didn't have a lot of discipline.
	They didn't really have strict parents or any kind of rules or anything.
	So it was like I could...
	I don't know.
	Sorry, do you mean you didn't have strict parents or they didn't?
	They didn't.
	I did, yeah.
	My dad was pretty strict.
	And my mom was completely insecure throughout my childhood.
	And I feel like that had a pretty big effect on me.
	Instagram?
	Or about what?
	So, if my dad was watching football, and she would walk by and flash the cheerleaders on the screen or something, she would just get so mad.
	And, like, I don't know, maybe create some kind of scenario in her head that she played off of.
	And she would just get mad at my dad and freak out and, like, go in a room and cry.
	She was, you know...
	Bipolar.
	She was on some Prozac for a little while.
	I recently talked to them about my childhood because I've been going to therapy and stuff and trying to figure out what makes me tick, basically.
	He had mentioned that she would just go off on me sometimes for no reason, just yell at me and then just go hide in her room and then apologize later.
	I was just wondering what kind of...
	You're good at really spelling out what that does, psychologically, especially to a child.
	Yeah, I mean...
	Whatever happened to women just being crazy?
	You know, like, I mean, because I hear this all the time.
	I hear like, well, my father was this way.
	And it's just, well, that's the way he was.
	Maybe he was a jerk or whatever.
	But with the women, you always get this, well, she was bipolar or she was on medicine or, you know, maybe she was just a bitch, right?
	I'm just possible, right?
	I don't know, right?
	Maybe she was just lazy when it came to self-management or self-regulation and she just vented like a toddler.
	Or like, that's an insult to a toddler because my toddler's never vented, but maybe there's not a medical, you know, like a brain imbalance.
	I mean, I don't know.
	I'm sort of of the opinion that people have a choice about how they react emotionally or how they, not how they react, but how they express that, right?
	So if you were in a parent-teacher conference, I doubt your mom would have done that stuff, right?
	Oh, right, yeah.
	So, you know, you can't suppress cancer when you're at the doctor's.
	Like, you can't, like, not have cancer when you're at the doctor's, right?
	You can't not have multiple sclerosis.
	I can't have hair, you know, during a job interview or acting audition and then not afterwards.
	And so when the behavior can be changed based on circumstances, I don't view it as having any medical explanation whatsoever.
	Does that make any sense?
	Yeah.
	So if, I mean, if your mom, I don't know, would do that when other people were over and she was sensitive to the whatever, right?
	And if she would just do that no matter what, then I could sort of understand that she didn't have really any Empirically identifiable control over her self-expression.
	But if she only did it in particular circumstances, then the insanity defense doesn't hold weight, if that makes any sense.
	If you hide the body, you're not a crazy killer.
	You know, like if you strangle the homeless guy right in front of the cop while screaming in Klingon, then you can make an insanity defense.
	But if you kind of plot it and then you hide the body and then you avoid detection and you lie to the police, then clearly you knew it was wrong and you're trying to hide it.
	And so the insanity defense is really a tough one to get past legally.
	Like one or two percent of murder is excused because of insanity.
	And I just wanted to point out, like the first thing you said, where she did this, where she was bipolar and she was on Prozac.
	In other words, like there was some sort of medical thing, but this all...
	If the behavior can be changed voluntarily, I don't see how it's medical.
	I just wanted to sort of tell...
	Yeah.
	I guess I threw that in to kind of just describe what type of personality she had.
	Because I think...
	No.
	Sorry, sorry.
	Oh, no.
	Yep, call me on it.
	Wait, wait, wait.
	You see, now you're saying that she has a type of personality.
	In other words, she wasn't making any choices.
	Right, because you could say, I wanted to describe what kind of decisions she made as a mother.
	That would be a better way to put it.
	Right, but by saying what type of personality she had, it makes her passive almost to her own personality.
	Right.
	And the reason I'm sort of harping on this is I just figured it's the most annoying thing I could know.
	The reason I'm doing it is because women make choices.
	I mean, if they don't have a brain tumor or some sort of brain injury or whatever, right?
	Women make choices.
	And I respect women's choices.
	I respect the fact that they make choices.
	And I won't sort of make up other things that...
	Allow them off the hook for responsibility.
	Like, I'm sure when you were a kid, she said, you know, you're making choices, you're responsible for your decisions, and I'm sure sometimes you would get punished for making the wrong decisions, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, you know, if it's good for a five-year-old, guess what?
	It's good for a 35-year-old, right?
	I can't treat women as having less moral agency than your average five-year-old.
	Like, I just, I can't do it.
	I mean, I'm married to a woman I love.
	I'm raising a daughter.
	I can't view women as retarded children, right?
	So I really sort of have to urge you to look at your mom blowing up.
	She had a choice.
	If the local priest had been over, or someone had been over, or you were at some house looking at a real estate thing, or if a policeman was at the door for just, you know, whether you left your garage door open or something, she wouldn't have done that, I'm quite sure, right?
	I don't have any memories of that.
	You mean of her doing it when there was other people?
	Yeah, actually, at all.
	Like, my dad had to tell me about that.
	He's like, you don't remember that?
	Her yelling at you?
	And I'm like, no.
	He's like, wow.
	He's like, yeah, she used to do that.
	I'm like, oh.
	Right.
	And so she made a choice to yell at you, and she's responsible for that choice.
	I just really want to focus on that, because if you can't assign your mother responsibility and moral agency, that's going to be a trouble with your partner or your girlfriends, right?
	Right.
	Right.
	You're going to want to excuse her behavior.
	And generally, when a woman behaves badly and she's not mature, who's at fault?
	The parents?
	Well, let's say with your partner, if your partner behaves, we'll call her Sally.
	No, no, we'll call her, wait, It was Sheila in the book, right?
	Yeah, correct.
	Okay, so we'll call her Sheila.
	So if Sheila behaves badly, and let's say she's not particularly mature, then if she gets into a conflict with you, whose fault is it?
	It's her fault, right?
	Yes, but does she say it's my fault?
	No.
	How did I know she didn't say that?
	Because you're you.
	No, how did I know?
	I don't know.
	Because you are not giving her responsibility, right?
	And saying, if you're upset and you're yelling at me, or if you're upset or you're, you know...
	Slamming doors or slamming cupboards or whatever it is, then you are responsible for getting a hold of yourself.
	You are responsible for not acting in that way.
	You're responsible for not raising your voice.
	You are responsible for not calling me names.
	And I absolutely will not have it, right?
	And because you've not given that moral agency to your mom, it's almost impossible for you to give it to your partner, right?
	Right.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	With my partner, it's more she just kind of shuts down.
	She's not one for yelling or confrontation in general.
	It's just, you know, I can tell something is visibly wrong and it's, what's wrong?
	Nothing.
	And she just doesn't want to talk about it.
	So it's hard to have any kind of a conversation with her.
	Well, okay, but that's another kind of moral agency argument, right?
	Which is, if you're in a relationship, like, I would say this to my wife if she did that, I would say, look, if you're married to me, you don't have the option to not tell me what's bothering you.
	Because I'm affected by who you are and what your mood is.
	Right?
	It's sort of like saying, you know, you and I are in an elevator, right?
	And I'm smoking a stogie.
	You know, some big ass, fat thing that looks like half a torpedo, right?
	And I'm like, Tyler.
	And you'd be like, dude, you know, my eyebrows are falling off here.
	My nose hairs are curling.
	Please, you got to put that out.
	And he's like, hey, I'm the one smoking it.
	And it's like, no, we're in this elevator and we're sharing the same air.
	And the shit that you're breathing out is the shit that I'm breathing in.
	And if you're in a relationship with someone, mood is like cigar smoke.
	It affects you.
	And if you're in a relationship with someone, you don't have the option to be moody.
	I mean, you can have a bad mood, you can be upset, you can be crabby, you can have stubbed your toe, you can have slept badly, you can have a headache, any of these things.
	Totally fine.
	But you don't have the option to not talk about it.
	Because the mood affects, don't you find it like the air gets thick with the mood, right?
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah.
	And it's a downer.
	That's suffocating.
	Right.
	So if, and is this a habit that is still continuing with the, with the woman?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So you are not able to say, uh, Sheila, you, I know something's wrong.
	You don't have the choice to not talk about it.
	Do you guys live together?
	Yeah.
	Okay, so you don't have any more than you say, hey, I'm going to take up smoking cigars in the bedroom, and you have no say in it.
	It's like, I really do, because we breathe the same air.
	Well, emotionally, you breathe the same air, right?
	Yeah.
	So that kind of assertiveness is tough, right?
	Yeah.
	Well, you say, look, I don't know what the problem is.
	I'm happy to hear about it, but you don't have the option to not talk about it at all, right?
	Yeah.
	And so she's...
	Not talking about it, right?
	And turn my screen up a little there.
	Look a little less ghostly.
	But for you, it's okay that she doesn't talk about it.
	And I would argue it's really not okay that she doesn't talk about it.
	But that's hard for you to get, right?
	I express that to her every now and then, but I just don't know what to say after that, because it's still like, yeah, nothing's wrong.
	You keep asking me what's wrong, and I keep telling you that it's nothing.
	And the more you ask me, it just makes me more aggravated.
	So then it becomes your fault, so to speak.
	So is she correct about that?
	I mean, does it turn out that there isn't anything wrong?
	I mean, I guess I wouldn't know if she never tells me.
	I mean, it seems like there's something.
	I mean, she'll be fine one minute and then the next minute it'll just be like, you know, just like you can tell by her face.
	So do you think she's lying to you when she says there's nothing wrong?
	Yeah.
	Do you think that she feels that there's something wrong but is not telling you or do you think that she doesn't even, she genuinely doesn't believe that there's anything wrong?
	I think it's a little bit of both, probably more of the latter.
	Maybe she just doesn't.
	Sorry.
	This is a binary one, I'm afraid.
	We can't really do both, right?
	Because if she knows that there's something wrong with her, right, then it's like if I stub my toe, I know it hurts.
	I can't sort of know that it hurts, but I'm leaning more towards it not knowing that it hurts.
	I either know that it hurts or it doesn't, right?
	Like if I stub my toe and I don't have any feeling below my waist, I may not know that I've stubbed my toe and I wouldn't feel any pain.
	It wouldn't be kind of...
	But at the moment, even if you feel 10% of the pain, you feel that there's...
	So this is a binary thing.
	Either she knows that something is wrong and she's telling you that there's nothing wrong, or she doesn't even have an idea that there's something wrong.
	I think she knows that there's something wrong and she's not telling me.
	I don't know if she knows exactly what is wrong.
	No, no, no.
	I don't mean that.
	That's why it's important to have a conversation about it, right?
	Right.
	Because sometimes we're in a bad mood.
	We don't even know why, right?
	Exactly, yeah.
	Could be led with some, I don't know, some woman who snapped at me in Starbucks the way my mom used to 20 years ago or whatever, right?
	I mean, so it may even be a pre-conscious memory.
	So lots of things can go wrong.
	We don't know what, but that's what conversation is for, right?
	That's why it's so nice to have conversations about things.
	Yeah.
	So, okay.
	Now, how long does it usually go on for when you have these freeze-outs, I guess you could call them?
	A couple hours.
	I mean, they don't last too long, I guess.
	And then what happens?
	And then it just kind of gets brushed under the rug, like, just forget about it.
	We'll move on to watch TV and just forget about it, and then we'll just have normal conversation or whatever, and just forget about it, I guess.
	But, you know, it doesn't ever really go away.
	Right.
	And do you know much about her childhood?
	Yeah.
	And what was it like?
	It was pretty rough for her.
	Her dad was an alcoholic.
	Pretty bad.
	Yeah.
	And her parents split up when she was pretty young.
	I think four or five.
	Five years old for her.
	Right.
	Our father when she was a child was completely unreliable.
	So she's not used to getting her needs met, right?
	So when she's upset, when you speak to wildly under-functioning parents, then if you're not getting your needs met and they're just trying not to...
	Have their lives destroyed by alcohol.
	They usually don't have any patience for your needs, right?
	When you're a kid.
	I'm sorry if I look like some Alfred Hitchcock movie down here.
	It's crazy how dark it got so fast.
	Yeah, just very quickly.
	I didn't expect the sun to go quite this quickly, but I don't want to move now.
	So I hope you don't mind, but I should have set boogers dripping from my nose and do something out of that horror movie.
	Anyway.
	So your girlfriend probably wasn't used to getting her needs met at all.
	In fact, she was used to hiding her needs because if under-functioning parents feel that you have a need, they tend to lash out.
	I remember years and years ago, I was driving with a friend of mine.
	I was just chatting with him about something and he didn't answer.
	I asked him a question.
	He didn't answer.
	And he looked a little tense, right?
	And I asked him again and he didn't answer.
	He just looked a little tense.
	And then I realized that we were kind of not doing this, but doing like this, but still going forward.
	So what had happened is we'd hit black ice on the road and he had completely lost control of the car.
	And so my question to him seemed like, basically, Steph, shut the fuck up.
	Let's not die right now, right?
	Like, don't be upset because I'm not answering your inane question.
	I'm simply trying to engineer us not disintegrating into burning metal and bits of Paul Walker, right?
	That's what a lot of parents experience, right?
	If they're like alcoholics or really underfunctional or addicts of any kind or if the marriage is breaking up or if they're about to get fired at work or if they've got huge money problems and the kid comes up and says, you know, I'm really upset because, you know, my necklace broke or I'm really upset because my Xbox controller isn't working or I don't have any battery.
	Like for the parents, it's like, you know, part of them says, shut the fuck up.
	I'm trying to not have the family disintegrate at the moment, right?
	Yeah.
	And I think that can really happen to people.
	And if there's like multi-year trauma that is going on in a family, stuff like alcoholism and marriage breakup and, you know, I think your father's having an affair.
	That's what the mom's saying to herself.
	And I think he lost his job three weeks ago but isn't telling us.
	And then, you know, the kid comes up with, you know, I'm hungry.
	And part of them is like, you know, don't bother me with your...
	They can't usually...
	I mean, hopefully they don't say.
	Sometimes they do, of course, right?
	But if that...
	You know, what I did with my friend, it was like 10 or 15 seconds, and he did a great job steering us out of it.
	Otherwise, you'd be talking to some trees, and that would be different.
	But...
	But for a lot of people, this stuff goes on like year after year after year.
	And there are like 15% of kids, 15% of children, when they're upset, they avoid their parents.
	You know, when my daughter's upset, first thing she does, jumps into my arms, right?
	And...
	But for like 15% of kids, like 40% of kids have attachment disorders, which are hugely problematic, but 15% of kids, if they have a problem, they wish to avoid their parents, right?
	They wish to hide their problem from those around them.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	And I'm sure you've thought of all of this in the context of your partner, but that's probably the habits that she developed, right?
	Don't say you have a problem because you're going to get attacked for, like, demanding to know the answer to who sang the original version of Dancing in the Streets when Black Ice is about to claim our lives, right?
	Yeah, that makes sense.
	Now, does she know that this is...
	So, one thing...
	No, go ahead.
	I think maybe we're heading in the same direction.
	So, I mean, listening to your show and stuff, I kind of got into therapy, and we were going in the beginning at first, but she just, she had so much anxiety.
	Every week when we would go to go, she was just in like an awful mood, and I just, I'm like, look, if you don't want to go, I'm not going to make you go.
	And so she stopped going.
	I kept going.
	Okay, okay.
	See, wait.
	See now.
	But this is where the interesting question is, right?
	What do you think is going to happen to your relationship if you're going to therapy and she's not?
	Exactly.
	It's not going to last.
	So does she have the choice to not go to therapy and stay in a relationship with you in the long run?
	No.
	Does she know?
	Are you hiding things from...
	Oh, Tyler!
	Are you hiding things from Sheila?
	I mean, that was the deal in the beginning.
	What was the deal?
	Like, we gotta go.
	Yeah, we gotta go.
	Yeah, yeah, of course.
	And...
	You know, I just, I don't know, the way she would act when we would go, it was like I didn't want to go.
	Like, the day we were supposed to go, it was like I dreaded it all day because of the mood that she was going to be in when I got home.
	Although she'd say there's nothing wrong with it.
	Yeah.
	She'd just sit there like, let's go.
	I'm like, I'm not going to make you go.
	But I think she still knows that.
	No, no.
	Obviously, you're not going to make her.
	Drop her in a sack with some chloroform and a windowless van and drop her into Dr.
	Feelgood's house of healing, right?
	I get that.
	But does she know that if you go and she doesn't, your relationship isn't going to last?
	Yeah, I think she knows that.
	You think?
	Yeah.
	Maybe I can make sure.
	You know, when my daughter tells a fib, she gets hand spiders.
	Now, you're far enough away that the hand spiders cannot eat your knees, but they totally would be if we were in the same room.
	And you'd be like, I knew he was going to go with my legs at some point, right?
	But why doesn't she know that?
	Because I told her that I wasn't going to make her go.
	She didn't have to keep going.
	But I didn't express that.
	We're not going to last if you don't decide to go soon.
	So she doesn't know?
	I haven't expressed it to her.
	Does she know?
	Oh, man.
	I knew you were going to get to me.
	So you haven't told her explicitly that, right?
	So she's not actually operating under the truth, under correct assumptions, right?
	Right.
	Right, because she's like, oh, well, if I don't have to go...
	And I still get to date the fabulously, devilishly handsome Tyler, then, you know, great, right?
	Yeah, I guess.
	Well, no.
	I mean, that's, right?
	Whereas if you then say, listen, I'm not saying you should or would, right?
	But if you would then say, look, I mean, I'm learning so much from therapy.
	You're not going.
	I'm growing.
	You're not growing.
	Sorry, right?
	This isn't going to work.
	Then she probably would have said, why didn't you tell me?
	Like you say, you're not going to make me go.
	And I'm free to not go.
	But you never told me the consequence of not going was that you were going to break up with me.
	Right.
	So...
	So she should probably know that, right?
	And look, I'm not saying this is true.
	I think in general, if one person goes to therapy and the other person doesn't, you know, it's a matter of time, right?
	Yeah.
	And she doesn't think that there's anything wrong, and I'm trying to...
	I don't know what I have to say to her to...
	Because I'd like her to go and want to go, you know?
	Yeah.
	Is it going to be any help if I just say, go or we break up and she just goes and, you know, is this the whole time and doesn't participate?
	I'm going to just, I think it's just getting a bit too dark and ghostly here.
	I'm like this giant thumb of annoying self-knowledge, so just hang on a second.
	No problem.
	Okay.
	So, no, and I get that quandary.
	I really do.
	Like, I understand that quandary.
	Which is, if I make someone do something that's right for them, then have I really achieved anything, right?
	Sort of hold a gun to someone's head and say, tell me you love me.
	Oh, look, it's real love, right?
	I understand that.
	I understand that.
	Why does she say she doesn't want to go?
	She's been through therapy as a child, and I think that they probably did more harm than good.
	You know, you say, find a competent therapist.
	I don't think that anybody found that for her.
	I forget the exact stories of what she told me that they did to her, but it didn't sound like good therapy to me.
	Well, it's tough, you know, because parents often drop kids off with a therapist saying, fix my kid, right?
	Yeah.
	And the reality is that...
	The parents are paying for the therapy.
	And so, for the therapist to say to the parents, it's not the kid, it's you, we'll probably have the therapist not get paid, right?
	Right.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	All right.
	It's better.
	Okay.
	So, does she think that you should or shouldn't be going to therapy?
	She thinks that I should.
	Or she doesn't have a problem with it.
	Or she hasn't expressed a problem with it.
	I can understand that if she realizes.
	Because I think she knows that if I keep going and she doesn't, that it's just going to happen.
	I haven't expressed that, but I think it's...
	I don't know.
	I can't see how she wouldn't know that.
	I don't know.
	Okay.
	I got it.
	Yeah.
	I got it.
	So you're both a bit conflict avoidant, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	I got it.
	I got it.
	And of course, since your mom was yelling at you and her dad was drunk, right?
	And therefore probably quite belligerent, right?
	Then it makes sense that you would be conflict avoidant, right?
	I mean, because conflicts lead to catastrophe, right?
	This is the great challenge of...
	People who come from dysfunctional relationships is that there's this perception which is not inaccurate.
	The perception is that conflicts lead to catastrophe.
	You have a conflict, people don't listen, they escalate, they yell, they scream, and there's no limit to the amount of pull no punches, knee to the groin, dirty fighting that occurs.
	And then you saw, or I guess she saw with her, Appearance that this kind of conflict escalated to the point where they broke up, right?
	Right.
	People who can't negotiate have to bury or kill, right?
	That they bury their feelings or they kill the relationship.
	Because if you, I mean, you have disagreements in relationships and some of those disagreements can be significant, right?
	That's exactly how we both were until I came across your show.
	We were both that same way.
	Just bury it.
	Yeah, bury or kill, right?
	It's bury or die, right?
	I mean, you either drive the stake through the vampire or the vampire rips your freaking head off, right?
	I mean, that's how it works when you don't have a common ground with which to negotiate, if that makes sense.
	I'm trying to think of the best way to put it.
	When you have a disagreement, have you had an example of a successful negotiation resolution and what that means usually, and I've got a whole series on negotiation on YouTube that is tragically under viewed because people like and I've got a whole series on negotiation on YouTube that is tragically under viewed because people
	Do you have an example in your relationship with You're a partner of a successful negotiation, which is where you both feel that it was actually a good thing to have the disagreement.
	Like if you sort of look back and say, I'm really, I'm so glad we had that disagreement.
	It taught us a lot about, or me a lot about you, or you a lot about me, or us a lot about our values or whatever.
	Do you have an example in your relationship of a negotiation that's gone that way?
	No.
	Okay.
	Do you have an example of a negotiation that has gone not badly?
	Not badly.
	I don't mean a stalemate.
	You weren't exactly glad you had it, but at least it got resolved.
	I can't think of a specific one, but I think so.
	They're generally win-lose.
	I don't think we've ever had a win-win negotiation.
	We'll come to an agreement that I can do this thing for you if you do this thing for me at some other point.
	Sorry, I just felt my will to live leaving my body.
	Hang on.
	Oh, got it.
	Got it just before it went down through my philosophy blowhole at the top.
	You got to play that back when you watch this video.
	Oh my God.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Can I recreate it for you?
	Go for it.
	All right.
	I don't think we've ever had an example of a successful relationship.
	It's win-lose.
	I don't think it's ever really worth it.
	Right.
	Okay.
	Got it.
	Right.
	And how did you feel when you were talking about negotiating and all that?
	Just now?
	That we've never really had a successful negotiation.
	That we're just bad.
	And that was when I first started listening.
	That happened to be where I... Just now?
	Yeah.
	How did I feel about it when I was talking about just now?
	I don't know.
	I believe that size is a lot, but go ahead.
	Yeah, sad.
	You know, we just never had a really successful negotiation, so that kind of makes me sad that we could never do that.
	You mean could never in the past, or do you mean could never in the future?
	Yeah, both.
	Okay, and...
	The way things are now, if...
	No, go ahead.
	The way things are now, if she doesn't start showing an interest in wanting to find out more about herself and go to therapy, then I can see that we're never going to have successful negotiations in the future.
	Has she changed much in the last nine years?
	Or has she changed in any fundamental way?
	I don't think so.
	Right.
	And if she doesn't change, will it be something you will be happy about having for the rest of your life, or with children, or that sort of stuff?
	No.
	What do you think the odds are of her changing without applying herself significantly to self-knowledge, usually through therapy, or there's some other ways you can do it, I guess, at least get it started?
	Uh, you know, not at all.
	I mean, she's gotta, she's gotta put the work in.
	I mean.
	Right.
	I, I, I've made a huge effort in the past year and I feel like I've only, you know, I've been crawling.
	Oh yeah, it's horrible.
	Trying to change myself.
	It's tough.
	It's hell.
	You made a, uh, analogy about the, uh, there's an older podcast with, uh, I'm one of the first listeners from the call-in shows, and you're talking about a car.
	You can inherit this car that is missing the engine from your parents.
	Yeah, that's how I feel.
	I feel like all the wiring was screwed up, and you hit the blinker and the wipers come on, and I'm starting to figure out what I need to do to rewire it, but I know I have all the rewiring to do still ahead.
	Does that make sense?
	Okay.
	What is her relationship like with her parents?
	Her dad, every time that he talks to her, it just annoys the shit out of her.
	She can barely even talk to him.
	He was not drinking for a little while, but recently started drinking again.
	When she knows he's been drinking, she just comes unglued.
	She doesn't want to talk to him.
	She doesn't want to look at him.
	Yeah.
	Alright.
	So what you're saying is she still has a relationship with her alcoholic father who is still sometimes alcoholic?
	Yes.
	And on what grounds does she feel that's productive?
	It's family.
	And I've tried to bring that conversation to her and, you know, she's stuck there.
	That, you know, family is family.
	Well, that is a tautological argument.
	Family is family.
	That is very true.
	Blood is thicker than water.
	That family has an inherent value.
	Right.
	Okay.
	And what do you think of her parents?
	I think that It would be better for us if we didn't talk to them.
	Yeah, because, I mean, it's tough for her, right?
	I mean, it probably throws her way off.
	Yeah, and I think it affects me in the way that it affects her.
	Well, it's the same cigar smoke, right?
	Exactly.
	Let's have your father join us in the elevator, and he can smoke the stogie in the air we all have to breathe in someone.
	Okay.
	All right.
	So I'm sorry.
	I haven't frozen.
	I'm just thinking about how to bring up the neck.
	It's okay.
	I've got like a deer in headlights this entire time.
	Nothing's bothering me.
	me, why do you keep asking?
	Is she even there in a weird kind of way?
	Because Because what I'm getting is a lot of absence, right?
	Is she?
	It's like a ghost or it's like a puppet of history, like some sort of any animatronic puppet of history, right?
	So when she's upset, she shuts down.
	She complies with her parents' wishes and then calls it, well, blood is thicker than water, right?
	Whatever that means.
	If blood is thicker than water, then she should have been treated really well by her parents, right?
	Because blood is thicker than water, right?
	So if blood is thicker than water, then we shouldn't ever have any problems with parents.
	Because they should treat us so well.
	Because, you know, you should treat your own children far better than you ever treat strangers or work colleagues or waiters or friends or anything like that because blood is thick in the water.
	But I certainly know with my own parents, blood is way thinner than water.
	I mean, my mom would treat just about everyone better than she would treat her own children.
	So I don't buy the blood is thicker than water thing.
	But I do buy that I will judge people by how they act.
	And with my own parents, blood was not thicker than water.
	You know, my mom would be screaming at me and then we'd go out and she'd be really nice to the bus driver, make jokes and stuff, right?
	So blood was not thicker than water.
	Blood certainly isn't thicker than alcohol in this situation, right?
	I mean, if blood is thicker than water, then you should not drink because it's bad for your kids and blood is thicker than water or booze or whatever, right?
	So it seems to me like she's not there in a way, right?
	So my guess is this, and it is just a guess, but it's not, I think, a wild ass guess.
	But my guess is this, Tyler, that she's so inhabited by her parents that her parents know that if she goes to therapy, what's going to happen to the family?
	She'll leave.
	Well, or there'll be significant challenges, right?
	She'll bring stuff up.
	She'll maybe want to pull them into therapy.
	You know, there's going to be some resurrectionists in the family graveyard, right?
	And you're pulling skeletons out of closets left, right, and center, right?
	Yeah.
	So it's not her that doesn't want to go to therapy, right?
	Yeah.
	It's her parents in her that don't want her to go to therapy.
	And this is what I mean by absent.
	Like, there's not an ego there that says, I don't want to go to therapy.
	Why?
	Tyler's getting value out of it.
	It's not a bad thing to do.
	Like, a third of people out of the course of their life consult with someone in the mental health profession.
	It's not Shameful or bad or, you know, there's shows about it.
	There's in-treatment.
	There's, you know, Fraser Crane was a psychiatrist.
	You know, it's not like taboo or it's not like I'm, you know, going to consult a witch doctor about my thyroid.
	So there doesn't seem to be an observing ego or a part of her that says, I don't want to go to therapy.
	That doesn't make much sense.
	So why don't I want to go to therapy?
	And then, you know, you start that process of learning about yourself.
	And you then quite quickly and obviously come to the realization that you do want to go to therapy, but it's your parents that don't want you to go to therapy, right?
	Because they don't want you to find, A, that there are bodies, and B, that they buried them, right?
	And that's what I mean by absent.
	It's like, you want her to go to therapy, so she'll drag herself to therapy.
	Her parents don't want her to go to therapy, so then she rejects therapy.
	She's not explicit about why, she just makes it difficult.
	When she's upset, she's absent too.
	So, I mean, who are you dating?
	Is there a person there, or is there this empty marionette of other people's preferences?
	Yeah, I feel like the person, her true self inside her is just completely smothered by her false self parents.
	How do you know there's a true self in there?
	I'm not saying there's not.
	I don't believe that there is a true self in everyone at all.
	Oh, okay.
	It's like saying, well, if I'm a smoker for 30 years and then I get lung cancer, then it's like, well, my healthy lungs are in there somewhere.
	You know, just in case of emergency, break glass and, you know, doc, just go to my backup lungs, my healthy lungs.
	It's like, no, your bad habits, like there's no soul in the person, right?
	The person is simply an accumulation of habits.
	Nothing more, nothing.
	Thoughts and habits.
	This is all we are.
	And if you, for 20 or 30 years, pursue the wrong habits, I don't know that there's a true self in there.
	That seems, and I'm not, you know, accusing you of this, but it seems like that's the idea of the soul.
	You can do all this evil, but there's still good in you somewhere that you just have to connect with and reveal to God there's God's you in there somewhere.
	And I'm not saying you're wrong.
	I'm just asking the question to me, which is, well, what evidence do you have?
	That there is a true self in there that's accessible.
	I guess because sometimes she can act just completely different, like sweet and charming and just so not that other person that she is when I can tell that her parental side of her is showing.
	So I don't know, I guess maybe I thought that It wasn't too late to turn the ship around for her.
	Yeah, and I don't know.
	I mean, I don't know any of this at all, so I'm just asking questions, right?
	You're obviously the expert in the relationship.
	Now, emptiness and charm are characteristics of what kind of personality structure?
	Because you said she can be very charming, right?
	Yeah.
	You want me to say sociopath or...?
	Well, I mean, as far as I understand, it is, and I'm not, obviously, I don't have any idea what the diagnosis is or anything like that, but you said charming.
	Yeah.
	And that is, and I mean, if she has severely dysfunctional personality traits, and I don't know if she does or not, then that would be even more, they would be even more resistant to therapy, right?
	And the fact that she's still in contact with a man who not only was drunk when she was a child, but remains...
	Sometimes drunk today is pretty indicative of not making choices.
	And the choice might be, you know, well, I'm going to stay with him because of X, Y, and Z, but not just this empty mantra of family is family or whatever.
	That's ridiculous patriotism, right?
	Well, it's America, so I'll go shoot people, right?
	I mean, it doesn't make any sense, right?
	Mm-hmm.
	Obviously, I'm not saying she has no positive qualities at all.
	Of course she does, right?
	I mean, I'm sure there's some great things about her.
	But the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.
	Right now, you changed course, you go into therapy, right?
	So you're sailing down, you know, the boat of FDR comes crashing in.
	That metaphor would be great if you didn't sink.
	Anyway, so with your partner, she's not going to change.
	That's the feeling that I get.
	Well, and it's more than a feeling.
	This is very well established.
	It's one of the few things that is really, really well established is the inertness of personality.
	That in the absence of strenuous change, people stay the same.
	Right, so if some guy is 400 pounds and says, I'm neither going to change my diet nor my exercise, how much is he going to weigh tomorrow?
	400 pounds.
	Yeah, or 401 or whatever, right?
	And if he says, I'm not going to change my diet, I'm not going to change my exercise, is he ever going to be thin?
	No.
	No, because as time goes along, of course, his metabolism slows down and it's harder to lose weight when you get older and stuff, right?
	So when people say, I'm not going to change my diet and exercise, there's no point crossing your fingers and hoping that they're going to change their weight.
	They've just said to you, I'm not going to change my weight.
	So if who she is, is not someone you want to stay with, and she's openly telling you she's not going to change, right?
	then the only thing worse than spending nine years in a relationship that's not going to work out is spending 10 years in a relationship that's not going to work out.
	And how are you doing in the conversation?
	I was trying not to laugh.
	I told myself, don't laugh if you're talking about something serious.
	I've told her how ambivalent I've been about this since I started going to therapy.
	I feel like I'm being pulled in two different directions.
	And I think I know what has to be done, but it's...
	What do you mean you're being pulled in two different directions?
	What does that mean?
	Like, do I stay with her or do I leave?
	And...
	Yeah, it's tough.
	It's tough.
	It is.
	It is extremely tough.
	And I... I made it to six or seven, not nine, with a relationship that didn't work yet.
	So I'm not trying to be glib and, oh, you know, the decision is clear and blah, blah, blah, right?
	I sympathize.
	It is a horrendous, horrendous decision to make.
	I mean, this is almost a decade.
	It's a massive, massive investment.
	Yeah.
	Of time and energy and care and emotion and intertwined lives and shared memories and all that kind of stuff.
	So I'm not...
	I want to be glib and say, well, it's an easy decision.
	It's absolutely not an easy decision.
	I think you know logically what the decision is, but it's still not an easy decision, right?
	Yeah.
	If you lay your heart bare to her and say...
	I can't, you know, I feel like we've never had successful negotiations.
	I can't stand your family.
	I don't believe that blood is thicker than water.
	I mean, if blood was thicker than water, then they should have treated you like a goddess when you were younger.
	And I'm going to therapy and you're not, which signals to me that you don't want to change.
	And you don't have any indications of wanting to change and you're not telling me that anything is particularly dissatisfying for you.
	So I can't see how we're not just going to keep doing this further and further apart.
	I'm scared.
	We both invested a huge amount in this relationship.
	But I don't know how...
	I'm not saying we're breaking up, but I don't know how we can continue.
	And I am resentful.
	Rightly or wrongly, I'm not saying my resentment is always justified, or maybe not even that you did anything wrong, but I'm resentful of the fact that I really, really asked you to go to therapy with me, and you made it really difficult to do that.
	And you didn't say no, but you didn't say yes.
	You just kind of made it difficult.
	Now, I've gone and done family events with you, which I really didn't want to do.
	I've done stuff with you that has been not that much fun for me, but I did it for you because I care and I didn't make it hell for you to invite me to do those things with you, even if I didn't really get the importance of what they were at the time.
	Now, I'm going to guess, Tyler, that in this speech, it will not be an unfair thing to say.
	I have not put a lot of demands on you in this relationship.
	I have not said, you have to do this, you have to do that.
	I've not been controlling.
	I've not been bossy.
	I've not been domineering.
	Really, I think this is the first major thing that I've asked you to do for me.
	And it's not just for me.
	It's for you.
	I'm not saying, go skydiving with me when you're scared of heights, which is no win for you.
	I'm saying, look, I'm going on this journey.
	Which is scientifically shown to improve happiness, to improve connection, to improve...
	The therapy makes you like 20 times more likely to be happy than getting a huge raise at work.
	I mean, it really works and it's well validated to have worked.
	And this is the first time that I've really tried to get you to do something that you're reluctant to do.
	And you made it really difficult to do it.
	You pushed back passively and aggressively the whole way.
	And then the moment I let you off the hook, you ran and never looked back.
	And that bothers me because this is important for me.
	The things that I've done that are important for you that I don't like have actually, I think, been okay.
	But this is the first time I've really asked you to do something for me.
	And the fact that you're not going to do it is very disturbing to me.
	Because it's not like I'm saying, let's go join the Moonies and shave our heads and ask for a spare change out by the airport.
	I'm saying, let's go spend an hour a week talking to someone who can help us improve our relationship.
	I'm not asking something extreme here.
	I'm not saying, let's go bungee jumping off the Eiffel Tower.
	I'm saying, you know, our relationship is not, you know, we're not that good at negotiating.
	We're not that good at connecting.
	So let's go talk to someone who can help us be better at that.
	You don't want to do that.
	And that troubles me because what am I supposed to ask for going forward?
	I'm not asking for the world.
	I'm not asking for the moon.
	I'm not asking for you to become a gymnast and engage in a three-way with a goat.
	I mean, I'm just saying, let's go to therapy, right?
	It's not an outlandish requirement.
	And I think that you should trust me enough to To go with me and to go with an open heart and an open mind.
	And the fact that you push back and push back and push back while never actually saying no or saying why, radiating all this anxiety and then the moment I said, well, you don't have to go, you're gone.
	Is troubling to me because we're going to have, look, if we stay together, if we want to have kids, there are going to be more disagreements.
	My boy, you think you have disagreements when you're single.
	Try having disagreements when you're married and then further try having disagreements when you have children.
	There will be disagreements.
	Where is the kids going to go to school?
	What exposure are they going to have to religion?
	How are you going to raise them?
	Is there going to be punishment?
	What kind of punishment is there going to be?
	How are you going to deal with toilet training?
	How are you going to deal with reading?
	So many things.
	What exposure are they going to have to dysfunctional parents or dysfunctional people?
	Very big and important questions.
	We can't even negotiate two adults.
	If we throw two or three more kids into the mix, how on earth are we going to be able to negotiate anything when we have less time, less money, we're more tired, and there's constant noise in the house?
	We have like this perfect lab for disagreeing with things with each other at the moment, which is we can take all the time in the world with all the quiet in the world to disagree.
	We can't figure out how to productively disagree even now.
	We had needy, noisy, farty, smelly, grabby kids fighting over who gets the last piece of the Happy Meal.
	We couldn't even lift the five pound weight of two adults negotiating.
	How are we going to lift the 500 pound weight of negotiating with kids in the mix too?
	I can't see how that's going to happen.
	There's a fundamental dichotomy in values.
	You claim to love and stay in contact with your abusive alcoholic father.
	I'm neither abusive nor alcoholic.
	You use the same words love, connection, family, respect or whatever for me as you do for him.
	I don't see how that's possible.
	It's like me saying, I love X and the opposite of X at the same time.
	That makes no sense to me.
	I understand how that's possible.
	It means you either don't love him and do love me, or you do love him and don't love me.
	But you can't use the same word for both.
	It's insulting to me.
	To be put into the same category as the man who harms you so much as a child.
	I just said that to her like a week ago or two weeks ago.
	Not so eloquently, but...
	But it is.
	It's disturbing.
	That's why when people say, well, I love my abusive parent, I'm like, no, don't say that.
	Because otherwise, no decent person is going to want to have that love, that word used to them.
	So, I mean, I don't want to, obviously, I can't do the monologue of your life forever.
	But if it's stuff like that, or you just really speak from the heart, not, you know, tensely or, you know, just look, these are the concerns with continuing the partnership.
	I'm telling you, Tyler, life gets harder, not easier from here, if you're going to have kids.
	And as you age, you know, I mean, I got hit with cancer last year.
	The fuck is that?
	Healthy as a horse, right?
	Shit happens.
	Parents get sick.
	You get sick.
	Kids get sick.
	Jobs change.
	This is why, you know, when people have affairs, they get drawn into affairs because the affairs are unreal.
	You know, you meet and you have sex in a hotel room and then you go back to your wife.
	There are no in-laws.
	There's nobody who's got colds.
	There's nobody who's, you know, gassy.
	There's nobody who didn't sleep that long.
	Everything's just this, you know, fairy tale of pharonyms, right?
	And so if you guys can't negotiate the easiest possible life, which is life in your 20s with two single people, You know, you are going to bury this fragile relationship if you take on additional responsibilities, right?
	Because this is why I imagine you're kind of stuck in a null zone here, right?
	Oh, yeah.
	Right?
	You've got so much invested in the relationship.
	I mean, nine years is a staggering time.
	I mean, in the Middle Ages, you'd have been buried five years ago, right?
	So you've been married for a lifetime according to the Middle Ages.
	But it's a staggering amount of time.
	How do you move forward?
	I don't think you can responsibly, based on what you said to me.
	But what do you do?
	I mean, it's tough.
	But if you were to have a conversation with her about your reservations, a real heart-to-heart, I mean, what do you think would happen?
	I'm not saying you haven't but I mean if you sort of went through the stuff that we've been talking about I think she would evade I I mean, part of me likes to think that if I said it how you just said it just now, that it would click.
	But, you know, I don't.
	Would you like me to say it for you?
	I think you'd like me.
	Get a Bluetooth mouthpiece and we'll do a little Cyrano de Bergerac, right?
	Tell her this.
	Now grab her boob.
	No, wait, sorry.
	But sorry, go ahead.
	So you think she would evade to some degree?
	Yeah, she'd just say, you know, I don't think that there's anything wrong with me.
	You know, I know what's wrong with me.
	My dad was an alcoholic.
	That's it.
	You know, end of story.
	I'm like, that's not the end of it.
	Like, you don't know all the stuff that, all the little things that were done to you that had a big effect later on.
	Right.
	Right.
	And clearly she was enough for you when you met, and then you, you bastard, you up and changed, right?
	You up and grew.
	Right.
	Yeah.
	You're both fat.
	You lost weight.
	Now what, right?
	Right.
	Well, if you were to encapsulate my advice, what do you think it would be?
	All right.
	Set up an ultimatum.
	Kind of be like, you're going to make an effort to change, or that's going to be it?
	But she's already told you that she doesn't want to change.
	And this goes back to the point we started at earlier, Tyler, right?
	Which is, well, so she accepts an ultimatum.
	So what?
	All she's going to do is comply, right?
	Right.
	She's not initiating that behavior.
	Right.
	I mean, you can corner anyone you want.
	It doesn't make them your friend, right?
	Yep.
	Yep.
	I'm not a big fan of ultimatums.
	I think that by the time a relationship has come to ultimatums, I mean, we've never had any ultimatums in my marriage.
	I mean, it would just be just so committed, right?
	So I think if you have an ultimatum, like she's already told you she doesn't want to do therapy.
	She's already told you nothing wrong with her family.
	I mean, obviously she's frustrated with her dad, but blood is thicker than water, which means she, you know, I mean, what if you have kids and she wants her dad to babysit them?
	Well, you think you're having trouble negotiating now?
	What about that?
	Right?
	I mean, it's a matter of empiricism, right?
	I think she's given you, I mean, nine years is a lot of information to have about someone.
	Yeah.
	And if she's actively resisted and opposed self-knowledge growth and change over a nine-year period, I'm not sure that 9.1 is going to turn it around, right?
	I mean, I don't know.
	I'm no expert.
	I don't know that ultimatums really work in relationships.
	But I sort of sense that once you're at the point...
	Of administering ultimatums, particularly if you're asking for the opposite of what the evidence shows, then the ultimatum is simply a precursor for ending the relationship.
	But what it can do is it can drag shit out for a lot longer, right?
	Right.
	Because if you say, you've got to come to therapy or it's over, right?
	Well, you could be kind of screwed there, right?
	Because she might comply.
	She comes to therapy, puts on, but I mean, there's no fundamental change.
	She's not committed to it, but it could drag it on for another couple of years, at which point she might be pregnant.
	Like, you know what I mean?
	She could get pregnant.
	Who knows, right?
	But that's the problem with ultimatums, is what you want is a partner who wants to grow, who wants to learn, who wants to change.
	You don't have that.
	Forcing her to do it with the threat of leaving puts you in the very difficult position of what if she says, okay, okay, I'm coming to therapy.
	I'm going to work at it.
	I'm going to, you know, if it's this important to you, I didn't realize this was the right.
	Then what?
	Have you changed her?
	No, you've bullied her.
	Has she reached any understanding of why these things are important?
	Why knowledge, self-knowledge and growth and therapy and communication?
	No.
	Nothing's changed.
	She's just conformed.
	And now what are you going to do?
	Going to go to therapy and she's going to go through the motions, but not much is really going to change.
	And then she's going to say, well, I'm going to therapy.
	I'm doing, what do you want from me?
	Right.
	And then what are you going to do?
	Right.
	You have to accept people for who they are, Tyler, and who she is, she has told you very clearly.
	Very clearly.
	And you cannot force change on people, you know that, right?
	Right.
	You can't threaten people into growing, right?
	You can scream at a rose and have it bloom, right?
	It doesn't work, right?
	Right.
	Yeah, after I finished listening, I listened to Real Time Relationships.
	I think it was like Monday after the Colin show.
	And I just, I had asked her to read certain parts of it.
	And she said she would at first.
	And then went back on it.
	And I was just like...
	you know, I kind of clicked then.
	Yeah, so this is a book that's really important to me.
	It speaks a lot to how I would like our relationship to go.
	Will you read it?
	Yes.
	And then she never gets around to it, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, like I helped a woman make a film, and then I asked her to read one of my novels and give me feedback, and she never got around to it.
	And then I said, well, how come?
	I wrote you a film, produced a film, funded the film, and you don't even read my novel?
	And she's like, well, you're just not motivating me to do it.
	I'm like, oh, shit, I should have seen that.
	And she never did.
	So, yeah, if she's not willing to read this stuff for you, how important are you to her empirically?
	Okay.
	Your preferences, your wishes, your needs, outside of what she prefers or wishes or wants, right?
	How important are you to her?
	Not important enough to change.
	Not important enough to change.
	To start reading a book.
	I mean, if she'd read 50 pages and said, here's what I disagree with, or here's what I like, or this guy's an idiot, or whatever, right?
	That would have been a huge relief, right?
	Disagree all you want, but at least we're talking about it, right?
	But if she basically doesn't even pick up the book, and it's very important to you, I mean, is it an exaggeration to say it's a life-changing book for you?
	I mean, everything you've done has been life-changing, yeah.
	Okay, so it's an important, let's say it's a very important book for you, and if this is an important book for you, and she's not willing to pick it up, she's very clearly communicating to you that your wishes, if they go against her wishes, are not anything she's willing to surmount.
	And she's not even giving you the respect of saying, no, I'm not reading this book.
	She's like, yeah, I'll read it.
	And then it doesn't.
	I feel like I'm seeing an invisible elephant slowly put its foot on your chest here.
	You are zoning out, my brother.
	This is where you need to step up and grab the helm of your life here, and I just feel like you're ghosting.
	I'm waiting for you to shimmer, and I just see a skull and then some ash, right?
	Poof.
	Yeah.
	It means that this is a familiar enough situation for you that it doesn't even bother you, which is why we talked about your mom, right?
	Yeah.
	Right, so if your mom is who she says she is, I think I get a pretty good picture.
	Then she was not somebody who was willing to put aside her desires to focus on your needs, right?
	Right.
	She had a need to vent, fucking vents on you, right?
	Yeah.
	You're the poison container, you're the helpful, convenient garbage can she can spew all her emotional shit into, which is using you as an object and not focusing on your needs and preferences as an individual, right?
	Right.
	Abusive parents use their children like toilets.
	And so what it means is that this is a Simon the Boxer thing for you, which is putting out a need and not getting it met.
	Now, before you were doing it implicitly, which is you'd say, well, I have a need for you to talk about what's bothering you.
	Now you're doing it explicitly.
	Please read this book.
	Please go to therapy.
	Please change.
	Please grow, right?
	And so rejecting this behavior in your girlfriend is rejecting this behavior in your mother, which means to re-experience the pain of Being used, right?
	Yeah.
	I'll give you a big hug.
	I'm sorry.
	I really am sorry about this.
	I mean, this is typical for men, right?
	Yeah.
	We are appliances.
	We're ATMs.
	We are poison containers so often for moms and dads, right?
	You are not particularly in the universe of having needs that people listen to and respect.
	It doesn't mean always agree with, but listen to and respect, right?
	Right.
	So when you think about having those needs, listen to and respect it and met, which is basically breaking the hypnosis of history, right?
	Breaking the hypnosis of history.
	What does that feel like for you if you had a partner in your life who would say, therapy?
	Wow.
	Yes, I'm open to it.
	If it's great for you, I'm really interested.
	I love you.
	I care about you.
	If this is important to you, I definitely want to learn more about it.
	Oh, this book is really influencing you.
	Oh, this guy is really influencing you.
	He's really helping clarify things for you.
	Shit.
	Throw it on a...
	CD, I'll listen to it on the way to work and let's talk about it.
	Sit me down and what's this stuff that this guy's done that's the most important for you?
	Help me to get it.
	Help me to understand it.
	Help me understand what's powerful and important about it for you.
	It's a great opportunity to get to know you, Tyler, even better.
	That would feel great.
	Right.
	But not great enough to actually pursue at the moment yet, right?
	Because you're still in the hypnosis of history.
	Which is, you, Tyler, don't get listened to particularly by women, you don't get your needs wet, and you're there to serve the needs of others.
	Right.
	Right?
	Well, fuck that.
	You are not here to serve the needs of others.
	You are not here to please implicate other people, particularly empty people, who aren't respecting your growth, reasoning, individuation, maturity, and emotional needs.
	That is not your job on this planet to satisfy the needs of others, to satisfy the needs particularly of women.
	Women should be focusing on how they can satisfy your needs and then, and simultaneous with that, you can be focusing on satisfying their needs.
	But you need to develop the self-respect to say, if my needs aren't being met, You fall into the life is too fucking short category.
	If you have no interest in finding out who I am, getting interested in the stuff that I'm interested in, respecting my preferences and needs as a human being, sorry.
	I don't have resources for exploiters, for takers.
	I need people in my life who are interested in me and who are willing to take alarming journeys with me because they respect and trust me.
	Oh, you say this guy, this deaf guy on the internet is worth listening to?
	I bet you're right.
	Hit me.
	Because I trust you.
	My wife says, read this book, it's great.
	It's right there.
	I read it.
	Right?
	Yeah.
	Dude, you're killing me here.
	You're killing me softly.
	Yeah, I mean, it's all great stuff.
	I'm just, you know, I still feel stuck right here, and I'm working my way out of it.
	But, you know, I know it, I just don't get it yet.
	You know what I'm saying?
	That was from another older podcast.
	Look, I'm not saying you've got to commit to any kind of decision right now.
	When I say you're killing me, it's just because...
	There's no emotion in you.
	I mean, we might as well be discussing groceries.
	I mean, this is nine years of your life.
	Yeah.
	What happens if you feel?
	I'm not saying you have to, but what happens if you feel something about Nine years of your life, possibly being, let's say, malinvested.
	What happens if you feel something about that?
	Is there a bad thing that happens?
	We never have to publish this.
	This never has to go anywhere, right?
	right?
	But is there something bad that happens if you feel something?
	No, nothing bad will happen.
	I guess I've just been so used to Repressing my emotions that I haven't been able to express them, really.
	I mean...
	Do you feel them or you don't feel them?
	Once in a while, I'll feel them.
	And lately, I've been trying to really experience them.
	But, I mean, for the past...
	You know, for a long time, I just...
	I repress my emotions.
	So, I... I don't know.
	It's just...
	It's hard to feel.
	But Tyler, don't you get that this is what your girlfriend wants?
	Right?
	If you've been with her for nine years and you have been crushing your heartfelt balls in the feminine vice, it's what she wants.
	Because she hasn't said, Tyler, you're not bringing much emotion to the table here.
	What's going on?
	Where are your feelings?
	She wants you in this neutered state.
	It can't possibly be any other way.
	She wants you to be this compliant ball-less zombie of like empty estrogen compliance, right?
	I mean, this is what she wants.
	This is who she has constructed.
	These are the patterns that she has not only not interrupted, but has exploited and expanded in you.
	This is what she wants.
	You are how she made you.
	Because if you were this emotionally distant with me, if we were gay...
	No, I mean, if we were friends, And you were this emotionally distant with me, I'd be like...
	I'd be sticking ice water up your sphincter just to get a reaction, right?
	I'd be like, I wouldn't put up with it.
	I'd be like, dude, hello, come on.
	Hello, over here, humanity, heartbeat, come on, right?
	I wouldn't...
	I wouldn't accept it.
	I would fight it as I'm fighting it now, tooth and nail, right?
	But she...
	She'd be very comfortable with you in this position, in this void, right?
	This is what she wants.
	Otherwise, she wouldn't accept it.
	She would afford it.
	I bet you she has helped engineer it.
	I bet you she saw these wounds of compliance and emptiness and conformity to female desires left by your mom and she's like, oh, here'd be a rich vein of empty testosterone that I can mine.
	Right?
	How the fuck have you ended up in this situation after nine years with a woman who claims to love you where you can't even feel?
	I don't know.
	Yes, you do.
	Come on, tell me.
	How the fuck did you end up in this situation?
	I don't know.
	You know, I mean...
	Do I blame my parents?
	Do I blame how they raised me, how my mother treated me, or my father treated me, to create somebody who would...
	Well, that didn't help.
	That didn't help.
	That didn't help.
	That laid in the foundation, right?
	What I'm trying to tell you is that you're not in anyone's life and nobody misses you.
	Do you understand what I'm saying?
	Yeah.
	You're not there and nobody's missing you.
	Nobody fought to keep me out of that situation.
	You know, I went to the gym today and my daughter was like, don't go, don't go, right?
	Said, sorry, I gotta go to stay healthy, right?
	But she misses me when I'm not there.
	Right?
	If I was like emotionally absent with my wife after about 12 nanoseconds, she'd be like, hey, what's the matter?
	Where are you?
	What's going on?
	I miss you.
	Right?
	Mm-hmm.
	So, you're not there for the people in your life, and no one's missing you.
	And that means you're being exploited.
	Because if you're not in people's life because they know you and love you, then they want you around for some other reason.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah.
	So how are you being exploited?
	That's the marker.
	Once you figure that out, then you'll know why you're not allowed to feel.
	Why you're not allowed to have preferences.
	People being exploited, they can't have preferences.
	This whole point of exploitation is to not recognize the preferences of the people you're pillaging, right?
	Right.
	So, how are you being exploited?
	I think that's going to take me a while to figure out.
	Well, let's start with some obvious ones.
	Are you paying for this woman?
	Yeah.
	Well...
	Tell me.
	Tell me you didn't say it's going to take you a while to figure this one out, and then tell me that you're paying for her.
	Dude.
	Well, so, I mean, we got an apartment for a while, a few years ago, and...
	She was working for a little while, but then stopped, and then we moved back into her grandparents' house.
	And I think that, I mean, we've been here for a while, basically, because I don't want to go pay for a house or an apartment if she's not going to be contributing anything.
	So that's kind of another reason why I feel stuck here, where I'm at.
	So you're staying where again?
	At her grandparents' house.
	Oh, so you have a job, right?
	Yeah.
	So you could go and live somewhere.
	Right.
	But she doesn't have any money.
	Right.
	Oh, my God.
	You're going to look back on this video in 10 years and you're going to scream into a pillow.
	No, you are.
	Yeah.
	Right?
	Because it's turning point time.
	So you're paying for the woman.
	Yep.
	Right.
	Is there anyone else you're taking care of?
	Thank you.
	No.
	Okay.
	So, has this been a pattern at all in your relationship with the woman?
	With other women?
	Yeah, paying for them.
	No.
	I didn't have a decent job until after I met.
	Oh, so you would like to have.
	You just didn't have the money.
	Exactly.
	Okay.
	Yeah, I would have.
	No, but what about this nine-year relationship with this woman?
	What about how long have I been paying for it?
	Mm-hmm.
	That's seven years.
	Seven years.
	Yeah.
	How much do you think it's cost you?
	Just money?
	Yeah, let's just talk about money.
	I don't know, thousands of dollars.
	Tens of thousands?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	How's that working out for you?
	Yeah, not so good right now.
	Not so good.
	Not so good.
	Of course you can't have preferences.
	Man, this is why she's rejecting your preferences.
	This is why she likes keeping you in this stupefied state of compliance.
	You have free money.
	Right?
	I mean, you start to...
	You start grabbing your balls.
	You start having preferences.
	Gravy train runs to an end, right?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Did your dad pay for your mom?
	Yeah.
	Which is another reason why she got to remain in this immature state, right?
	Right.
	Because you shield people from the consequences of their actions.
	You know, nothing cures what's called mental illness.
	Nothing cures it better than having to go get a fucking job, right?
	Yeah.
	Then it's like, yeah, you try screaming at your boss, bitch.
	You'll find it's a little goddamn different than screaming at your children, right?
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	How did it work out for your dad paying for your mom?
	Not so well.
	So, fuck, man.
	Change the script.
	Yeah.
	Is your dad...
	Does your dad know you pay for your girlfriend?
	Yeah.
	And what does he say?
	Nothing about that.
	Said nothing about that.
	You know, hey man, if you ever see me, like you see me at a conference or something, you see me at a coffee shop, you know, we'll sit, we'll chat, right?
	And I'll give you a big hug, right?
	But we'll sit and we'll chat.
	Do me a favor, okay?
	If you see like a big giant fucking leech, no, like hanging off my neck halfway down to my man tits, right?
	If you see this giant leech, do me a favor, shake some salt in it, will you?
	Or at least tell me that it's there.
	Because it's a little hard to have a conversation when someone's got a giant fucking suckerfish hanging off their neck, right?
	Got it.
	So I'm telling you, you're being exploited.
	That's why you can't have preferences, and also this is why you're being separated from your male friends, right?
	What are your male friends going to say?
	Yeah, they did put up a fight in the beginning, and I think they just kind of gave up.
	Yeah, well they probably didn't have enough, you know, insight to help you with the causes or whatever, right?
	Right.
	I mean, how big are her tits?
	I mean, how pretty is this girl?
	She's pretty.
	Right.
	Right.
	So this is typical, right?
	I mean, and by this I don't mean that it's Not emotionally important to you.
	Typical sounds diminishing or dismissive.
	I don't mean any of that.
	But man brings resources.
	Woman brings sex, right?
	Yeah.
	And the more attractive the woman, the more resources the man has to bring, right?
	Let me ask you this.
	Was your mommy pretty?
	I think you know the answer.
	I know the answer, which is why your dad was willing to pay for her and put up with a bunch of crazy shit so that he could have sex with her, right?
	Yeah.
	Yep.
	Okay, so...
	Dude.
	Dude.
	Don't turn her into a prostitute.
	That's not good for either of you, right?
	Right.
	Don't pay.
	Don't pay.
	Because then you're saying it has to be me plus tens of thousands of bucks to equal one woman, right?
	So your woman's here, and you're like, well, I'm down here.
	I can't equal a woman.
	Oh, but if I get lots of money, and I stand on lots of money, and I make lots of money, and I give her lots of money, oh, then we can be equal.
	Do you see?
	You're still down here.
	You just got a bunch of money.
	But you're still confirming that you're down here.
	Screw that.
	Or rather, don't screw that.
	Right?
	Be equal.
	No, I'm not bringing money to the relationship.
	No!
	I don't...
	Do you pay for your...
	Do you pay people a thousand bucks a month to be your friend?
	No.
	Why not?
	Because they should be your friend for who you are.
	Yeah, because you've got to pay someone a thousand bucks a month to be your friend.
	You're a shitty friend.
	Yeah.
	Listen, I want you to be my friend.
	I need you to know, Tyler.
	I quite regularly will sucker punch my friends.
	You won't see it coming, like bam, out of nowhere.
	So to make up for that habit, and sometimes it'll be kidneys, sometimes straight to the nads, right?
	In order to make up for the fact that I randomly sucker punked my friends, I'm going to have to give you a thousand bucks a month to be my friend.
	With that comes some truly Kato-style crotch thumping.
	But, you know, on the other hand, it's $1,000, right?
	I'm down here because, you know, I sucker punch my friends.
	$1,000 plus sucker punching puts me back up here.
	Makes me a regular old friend, right?
	And now you're stuck in her grandparents.
	What, you living in the basement?
	No, third floor.
	Third floor.
	Okay, so at least you get a little sunlight in the John Hoare sex dungeon, right?
	Okay, so you're stuck in this woman's grandparents.
	So these are the fine people who raised her dad, right?
	Yeah.
	Great company to be keeping, right?
	How are they?
	I think they're a lot different than they were when they were raising their son.
	You know, I mean, not people that...
	I want to continue to be around.
	I tell you this.
	My daughter tries to come home with a guy.
	She's got no money.
	He's paying for her.
	They're living on the third floor, having sex with each other.
	They're not married.
	No, sir.
	No, sir.
	I would be having a long old chat with you, my friend.
	And my daughter.
	Right?
	And I'd be saying, you don't take money from this man.
	No, no, no, no, no, no.
	You don't take money from the man, because we all know what you're giving in return for the money, and that's not the kind of daughter I raised, right?
	There are other kinds of women out there, I'm telling you that.
	And she can't be that pretty.
	I mean, unless she can levitate and make papier-mâché squirrels with her vagina, like, she can't be worth that.
	Because no woman of real quality will take money from a man in exchange for sex.
	So if you really want to break the cycle, then you have to do differently than your dad did, right?
	Because, as you said, that did not work out very well.
	Right.
	Which means you stop paying.
	You stop enabling.
	You stop being exploited.
	You stop giving over money for pussy.
	And you have the self-respect of saying, oh, me and a woman right here, I don't have to pile up cash to be equal to a woman?
	Then you have to sit there and say to people, the fuck are you people letting me do it?
	What are you letting me do?
	I mean, my God!
	I mean, Mom, Dad, help me!
	Why are you letting me do this?
	Where are your values?
	Where is some basic self-protection for your son?
	Let me tell you this, my friend, too.
	If you decide to break up with her, Do not have sex with her.
	Do not have sex with her.
	Do you know what happens next?
	If you do?
	Yeah.
	What happens next?
	If it's pregnant.
	Yep.
	That is a significant risk.
	ATM's closing.
	Let's get a baby.
	ATM stays open at the point of a gun for about 22 years.
	No makeup sex.
	No one time for old times sake.
	Nothing without triple bagging it from the other side of a field.
	I'm not sure this conversation has been of any value to you whatsoever.
	You still have the same expression on your face as when we started.
	No, it has.
	It has.
	Trust me.
	It's just...
	I don't know.
	It's also...
	Familiar, you know?
	Like I know it already.
	Oh, all the stuff I'm telling you?
	Yeah, it's there.
	It's just...
	Is this stuff you've thought of before?
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	probably and um Yeah, it's just thinking about actually doing that is...
	There's a lot of apprehension there.
	I don't know why.
	Well, who's to say it's even your apprehension?
	Right?
	I mean, remember we were saying she doesn't want to go to therapy because her parents don't want her to go to therapy.
	Your apprehension?
	I mean, what the fuck are you getting out of this?
	I mean, sex, okay, right?
	Pretty woman, okay?
	Lots of pretty women.
	Some of them, I'm sure, are really nice, right?
	And would no more take money from you than they would Clap from a stranger on a subway, right?
	But I don't see how staying in this benefits you.
	I mean, you can't even move out of her grandparents' house, right?
	So it's maybe her anxiety, right?
	Because for her, I guess you guys are like, what, late 20s, early 30s kind of thing, right?
	Yeah.
	Right.
	So she lost a lot of coinage with you, right?
	Because if she's playing the beauty card, then she's hitting her expiration date, right?
	So if it doesn't work out with you, if you as the ATM closes down, then she's got to try and get to another ATM, right?
	Get another neck to suck, so to speak.
	And it's going to be tougher, right?
	Because she's older and there are now 21-year-old vampires out there.
	Yeah.
	So, a lot of anxiety from her standpoint, but sorry, you know?
	A lot of anxiety if the welfare state closes down.
	A lot of anxiety on the part of people, yeah, sorry.
	You know, a lot of anxiety on the people who owned slaves.
	A lot of anxiety among the Nazis in the last days of Second World War.
	Sorry.
	Shit's gotta change.
	People gotta grow.
	And it's better for her too, right?
	Isn't she as stuck as you are?
	Yeah.
	I mean, what's going on with her life, right?
	Yeah, nothing.
	Yeah, sweet nothing, right?
	Sweet fuck all.
	So it's not good for her.
	It's not good for you.
	Right?
	You're doing her the biggest, if there's a shred of, you're doing her the biggest favor, not pay.
	Pay, come on.
	You know, if you're married and you love each other and she has kids, I mean, pay, yeah.
	I'm a stay-at-home dad, fine.
	But not when you're both single, right?
	It's not good for her.
	I mean, because what you're doing is you're keeping...
	I don't want to get into all that's a big topic, but it has a lot to do with anger at your mom, right?
	You're doing the same damage to this woman that your dad did to your mom by shielding her from reality, shielding her from consequences, shielding her from adulthood, maturity, growth, consequences, reality, as I repeat myself, but you're basically acting out the same vengeance on her because you're angry at your mom and you're angry at your dad For shielding your mom from the kind of consequences that might have had her not be an aggressive bitch with you when you were a kid.
	But you're wreaking the same destruction on the girlfriend that your dad did on your mom.
	With the plus side that you don't have kids yet.
	Which again, five years from now you'll look at this video and say, thank effing God, right?
	Yeah.
	And isn't this what you called me for?
	Yeah.
	Did you listen to the last Wednesday show at all?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Did you really think I was going to say anything different from what I'm saying?
	No.
	Yeah, you know what you've got to do, right?
	Yeah.
	It's so nice when you spell it out.
	I hope it helps.
	I mean, this is a hard one.
	And look, man, I mean this with all sympathy.
	I've been in the same situation.
	And I really sympathize.
	I'm not trying to trivialize this and say, you know, man up and do it easier.
	No, it's really tough.
	I mean, you're breaking not just a relationship, not just exploitation, but it's an entire, who knows how long this shit's been going on in your gene pool.
	Could be a hundred generations, right?
	Yeah.
	You know, men paying for crazy pussy, right?
	It could have been going on for a thousand generations, right?
	to stand up and just say stop.
	That's hard, hard, hard.
	Oh, thank you.
	Thank you.
	You're welcome.
	Will you keep me posted?
	I would hate to not know how this goes.
	Yes, I will.
	Just really try to promise me that if you're going to break up with the woman, and again, your choice obviously has to be your choice, please don't have sex with her.
	If I've got to send you a picture of Margaret Thatcher doing deep knee bends in one piece, in a string bikini, I will send you those pictures.
	I have them.
	You know what?
	I think that'll do it.
	I appreciate your time and I'm glad it was helpful.
	I'm very sympathetic for the situation that you're in and I hope that you get that.
	I really would like to give you a big hug.
	It does not sound like this can go on.
	Or should.
	Let me know how it goes.
	Yes, I will.
	All right.
	Thanks, man.
	Thank you for your time.
	I will.

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