One of the bravest calls in the history of the show. A female listener calls in to discuss her domination and submission based romantic relationship, its dark origins and how she’s outgrown it, yet feels as if she cannot leave.
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| Hi everybody, it's Stefan Mullen from Freedom Main Radio. | |
| Hope you're doing well. | |
| Time for our Wednesday midweek philosophy skydip into the deep Andreas Fault waters of philosophy. | |
| Mike, any comments, questions, disagreements, massive compliments on my incipient late 40s mold development, anything? | |
| I do want to give another plug to the fine folks at the Voice for Men's Conference. | |
| June 26th through 28th, the International Conference on Men's Issues coming up next week. | |
| Detroit, Michigan. | |
| I'll be there. | |
| Steph will be there. | |
| Lots of listeners are coming in. | |
| Hope to see you there. | |
| Not too late to get tickets. | |
| Come on down. | |
| Should be fun. | |
| And yeah, other than that, no major announcements. | |
| Alright, let's dive in. | |
| Alright, up next is Ashley. | |
| And Ashley wrote in and said, My boyfriend rescued me from an abusive situation, and now that I've become healthy, we are having issues in our relationship. | |
| How do you know when one partner outgrows the other? | |
| Oh my goodness. | |
| How many issues can we have bundled into one tiny sentence? | |
| That's great. | |
| Alright, thank you for calling in. | |
| Yeah, it's a pleasure to be a part of the show. | |
| I feel very honored to be able to speak with you. | |
| So, thank you. | |
| Oh, I appreciate that. | |
| I feel honored to speak with everyone in this show. | |
| So, the feeling is mutual. | |
| So, I guess let's start at the medium beginning, which is, what was the abusive relationship? | |
| What was the nature of it? | |
| Well, it was primarily self-abuse. | |
| I had become addicted to... | |
| Sorry, you just cut out there for a second. | |
| It was primarily what, abuse? | |
| Self-abuse. | |
| I was self-erasing, in a sense, with addictive substances. | |
| I was practically homeless, an addict, very unhealthy overall when he found me. | |
| So, hang on, you said you were in an abusive relationship and then you defined that as self-abuse. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| I was in an abusive situation, and by that I mean a self-abusive situation. | |
| Okay, okay, okay. | |
| And so you were taking drugs, putting yourself at risk, harming yourself, and you said you were homeless or nearly homeless? | |
| Nearly homeless. | |
| I had my place at that time, but I was living without electricity and hot water, things like that. | |
| And this wasn't just a particularly vivid game of Dungeons& Dragons, right? | |
| I mean, this was actual economic brinksmanship, right? | |
| Yeah, not a game of Dungeons& Dragons. | |
| You don't know what I'm talking about, because... | |
| Right, okay, got it. | |
| There are like three guys out there who had pimples in their mid-teens, and they know. | |
| Anyway. | |
| Okay. | |
| And how did you end up, dear Ashley, in that situation? | |
| I became addicted to this substance called potpourri. | |
| And because of that, my job performance suffered. | |
| I was working at a doctor's office and I was terminated. | |
| So I went back to waiting tables and was not able to afford my apartment and car insurance and car payments. | |
| So that's really how I initially became... | |
| I mean, when you say that you're addicted to potpourri, you sound like a gay designer out of control. | |
| I think of it as pleasant-smelling dried leaves, but I assume it's something else in your world, right? | |
| Well, potpourri is also called spice. | |
| It's synthetic marijuana, but it is not in any way like marijuana. | |
| Oh, is it the K2 stuff? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Oh, okay, then I do know. | |
| My God, I'm becoming an expert on all this stuff. | |
| I do know because there was a guy who called in last week who had struggled with this stuff. | |
| And okay, okay. | |
| So, okay, potpourri, also known as spice, also known as K2. All right. | |
| And so that's the immediate cause. | |
| What is the childhood cause? | |
| Oh, I'm not sure where to begin there. | |
| I have a... | |
| Yeah, if you would lead with a probing question, that would be helpful. | |
| Alright. | |
| How were you disciplined as a child? | |
| Verbally put down. | |
| It wasn't until I was a teenager when physical force was used against me. | |
| And what sort of verbal abuse did you receive? | |
| You're fucked up. | |
| The way you think is distorted. | |
| I don't know how you became this way. | |
| I don't know what happened to you before, but... | |
| And was this from when you were a little kid, or did it show up more as a teenager? | |
| Hello? | |
| Yeah, can you hear me? | |
| Did this happen from when you were a little kid, or did it show up more when you were a teenager? | |
| It started around age eight. | |
| And progressively got worse. | |
| And prior to eight? | |
| It was mostly me and my mother and my two little sisters. | |
| My mother wasn't much of a disciplinarian. | |
| She was mostly neglectful, not really present. | |
| And so there was no verbal or physical abuse before eight that you can recall? | |
| There was one or two times. | |
| I remember one situation. | |
| My mother was looking for her sunglasses and she was frantic because she was about to go on a date with some guy and he was going to take us out to Chuck E. Cheese. | |
| I was excited to go. | |
| They were my sisters. | |
| I'm pressing her to go, go, go. | |
| She's insistent that she can't leave without her sunglasses. | |
| I plainly tell her, Mom, they're on top of your head. | |
| She smacked me across the face. | |
| And that was the first time I really remember her ever being physically violent towards me. | |
| Right. | |
| Did you know the man who was taking you to Chuck E. Cheese? | |
| No, I don't remember meeting him before that night. | |
| I remember his name and what he looks like and the great fun I had, but I don't remember him particularly. | |
| And did your mother have a lot of, I don't know, I guess I could loosely call them boyfriends? | |
| In the brief time that I remember, at least three. | |
| What's the brief? | |
| I don't know what you mean by brief time. | |
| From about, I was in and out of foster care from about two to five. | |
| Oh my God. | |
| So from about four, five to about eight, I remember three of them. | |
| And why were you in foster care? | |
| My mother and my second sister's father were building a methamphetamine lab in our apartment. | |
| Oh, God. | |
| It just gets better and better, right? | |
| So mother, and what was it, second boyfriend? | |
| This was the father of my second sister. | |
| My mother had four children in a matter of seven years, so this was the third child's father. | |
| And were they by three different fathers? | |
| Four children by three fathers, yes. | |
| Four children by three fathers, right. | |
| And how long did she run the meth lab? | |
| I don't really recall. | |
| I looked up her criminal record and it looked like it didn't last for much more than three months. | |
| Until when? | |
| Oh, and she was arrested? | |
| Did she go to jail? | |
| Is that why you were a foster kid? | |
| No, no, she didn't go to jail. | |
| She actually had her sentencing dropped down to a conspiracy to commit a felony. | |
| It was dropped down from a felony to a misdemeanor of conspiring to commit a felony. | |
| So she had to go to rehabilitation. | |
| We were taken away during that time, but still visited on the weekends. | |
| And then she regained full custody. | |
| And this was the second time being in foster care. | |
| I don't remember the first time. | |
| But so you said from two to five you were in foster care? | |
| Right. | |
| So the first time of being in foster care was because of a dispute between my mother and my biological father. | |
| And during the resolution of that dispute, I was placed into foster care because accusations were brought forth that questioned my safety and my sister's safety. | |
| What accusations? | |
| Molestation. | |
| Did your mother accuse your father of molesting you? | |
| No, my father accused my mother of lending me to her drug dealer for substances. | |
| Wow. | |
| I'm incredibly sorry for, I mean, for all of this. | |
| I mean, what a completely Dantean level of maternal and paternal hell you have. | |
| I had the incredible misfortune to be born into. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I'm really working through it. | |
| I've made a great amount of progress and a lot of that I attribute to what I've learned from your shows and your podcasts. | |
| So it's helping. | |
| I appreciate that. | |
| What happened with your bio dad? | |
| He pretty much disappeared from my life from about two when the initial dispute happened until I was... | |
| I officially met him once I turned 20, but I ran into him once in public, so he was absent. | |
| He was always a threat held over my head. | |
| Oh, if you don't behave, I'll send you to your dad. | |
| But I never knew him. | |
| And I'm going to assume that this hasn't really changed, right? | |
| No, once I met him, I formed my own opinion about him and his decency as a person, and I have cut off contact ever since then. | |
| Yeah, no, I mean, shitty sperm donor gets the eject button, I can understand that. | |
| Right, right. | |
| Okay, so from around the age of eight, you say that you started to get more verbal abuse and then some physical abuse from your mom? | |
| Yes, that was because she had married my stepfather. | |
| He's been around since I was seven, and he was insistent on her taking more of a dominant role in the disciplinary actions and things like that. | |
| So he, in his paternal moral wisdom, felt that the problem with her children, with your mom's children, the problem was not that there were three children by four different guys. | |
| The problem was not that there were accusations that you'd been handed out as a rape toy to your mom's friends. | |
| The problem was not that you'd been in foster care. | |
| The problem was not that you'd been abused. | |
| The problem was not that you're Biological father had abandoned you. | |
| The problem was that you weren't being hit enough. | |
| That was his wisdom in approaching this challenging situation, right? | |
| Yes. | |
| Well, what a son of a bitch. | |
| He felt like that we were walking over her. | |
| Oh, he's... | |
| I defood about three months ago, so... | |
| I'm not talking to them. | |
| And neither is my siblings, one of my siblings, so... | |
| Well, at least you got someone out. | |
| Hopefully the other will follow. | |
| Yeah, I hope. | |
| All right. | |
| And so then, as a teenager, then, your mother, in her massive fount of maternal wisdom, she said that she had zero idea why you might have emotional problems. | |
| It's a complete mystery, and I would assume then 100% your fault, right? | |
| Oh, definitely. | |
| Once I became... | |
| More aware of what had happened to me and of the still abusive situation I was in, she put me into a mental institution to cover her own abusive actions. | |
| What do you mean? | |
| I can get a sense of what you mean by that last part, but I just want to make sure I fully understand. | |
| What would you like me to clarify on? | |
| That she put you into a mental institution to cover up your own abuses. | |
| Oh, I finally... | |
| Both of my parents were drug addicts up until about four years ago. | |
| Four or five years ago. | |
| And I finally got the balls one day to tell a counselor because I had come to school with bruises and a friend of mine told the counselor and it was just like the cat was out of the bag. | |
| So I admitted to everything that was going on. | |
| And so to cover all of those accusations that I brought forth, they put me into a mental hospital. | |
| So they said that you were delusional in thinking that they were drug addicts? | |
| Yes. | |
| They said that I was making it up for attention and that there was something wrong with me. | |
| And it was... | |
| And the psychiatrists, in their wisdom, looked at your family history and said, oh yeah, I'm sure that the child is just delusional and the parents are great, right? | |
| Well, the psychiatrists never asked me about anything. | |
| They just took my parents' word and input. | |
| I swear to God, those guys, a bunch of satanic witch doctors, I think. | |
| And, you know, anyway, I will get into that perhaps another time. | |
| And how long were you in the institution for? | |
| From 15 to about 15 and a half, January 2007 to June 2007, so six months. | |
| Right. | |
| And when you got out, is that when you didn't go back home? | |
| Yes, I didn't go back home after that. | |
| I've lived with my grandmother for a brief period and then moved out on my own. | |
| And was that because your mother didn't want you back or you didn't want to go back? | |
| Oh yeah, she didn't want me back at all. | |
| She was afraid I would corrupt her other children. | |
| Right. | |
| She said the other option was to give me away to foster care. | |
| And if she did that, then that would make her look bad as a mother and cause another investigation from child services. | |
| Right. | |
| Wow, she really is a piece of work. | |
| Oh, definitely. | |
| I'm so sorry. | |
| I mean, it sounds like there is almost not any particular layer of our human capacity for hurling children into the lake of fire that you did not experience. | |
| And what a terrible way to start. | |
| I mean, the fact that you are not dead or in jail or in the army is... | |
| Truly an amazing feat on your part. | |
| I mean, what an incredible strength you must have deep down to come out of that. | |
| Yeah, I definitely feel like if the only good thing I can take away from the situation is that I don't think there's anything that I can't do now. | |
| Oh yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah. | |
| But back to the original question, though, I'm perfectly aware of my personal trauma and how it's going to affect my relationships and how it has affected my relationships. | |
| Yet, I am... | |
| Still struggling with understanding if I have or have not outgrown my current partner. | |
| Because he's overall fairly, he seems fairly healthy as a person. | |
| I mean, last night we talked about this. | |
| I was like, why did you pick me up? | |
| What's wrong with you to put yourself in that kind of situation? | |
| He's not there, is he? | |
| No, he's sleeping. | |
| Well, why would he want to be awake for this? | |
| Oh, I purposely wouldn't wake him up. | |
| I didn't want to have him around for this conversation. | |
| It's just not something I'm ready to address at this moment. | |
| Okay. | |
| So how did you guys meet? | |
| How did that start? | |
| We met online. | |
| I was in Oklahoma. | |
| He was in Arkansas. | |
| And we met on a mutual interest site. | |
| And he asked me out to dinner and it took off from there. | |
| And when did he know about your history? | |
| Pretty much from night one, from the first time we spent time together. | |
| And you were homeless or nearly homeless at this time? | |
| Yes. | |
| And how quickly did you guys do the fusion thing? | |
| I assume pretty quickly, right? | |
| Yes, very quickly, actually. | |
| I was a little hesitant at first because I had just gotten out of a very toxic relationship and decided, oh, I want to take a break. | |
| I don't want to get involved with anybody. | |
| I really need to work on myself. | |
| But life was so difficult that I willingly let myself fall into his arms. | |
| Right. | |
| So it was a matter of maybe three weeks before I moved in. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, you also needed a place, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Heat is good. | |
| You know, hot water is good. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And what's his background like? | |
| He grew up fairly wealthy. | |
| His father is a professor of psychology at a university. | |
| His mother graduated with a master's in yoga. | |
| Oh, you're kidding me. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Oh, no. | |
| They're very hippie-like. | |
| Oh, no. | |
| This is like you write this movie and people are like, no, come on. | |
| Yeah. | |
| It can't be. | |
| All right. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| So you get exposed to, like, uneducated crap heaps of parents, and then you say, hey, this is what the kid of somebody who teaches psychology at a university turns out. | |
| Great! | |
| Yeah. | |
| So both ends of the spectrum are messed up. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah, that's something that took a long time for me to understand or comprehend because I thought, oh, wow, you mean you were never hit or never yelled at and your parents weren't on drugs and you had everything material-wise that you could have ever wanted. | |
| I just – for a long time I was blind to the fact that he himself may have some issues. | |
| And if you don't mind me asking and you don't have to answer anything to do with these questions, did the sexual relationship start up pretty much right away? | |
| It did. | |
| I mean, I somewhat want to reason as to why that happened. | |
| I don't think that's really helpful to the situation, so I guess I'll just... | |
| No, I'm certainly happy to listen. | |
| I was just kind of curious. | |
| I mean, like I said, I had just gotten out of a toxic relationship, had been single for maybe three months or so, and I gave in to physical needs. | |
| Oh no, listen, I'm not criticizing you in any way, shape, or form. | |
| I mean, to me... | |
| Okay, let me ask you this. | |
| Did you meet his parents? | |
| Oh yes, I've spent the last two Christmases around his parents. | |
| And do you know what they thought of their rich son having pretty much a homeless girl move in with him and have sex? | |
| I don't think they... | |
| Have any idea about my situation beforehand. | |
| Oh, so he's been lying to them? | |
| He's been withholding information from them? | |
| I believe so, yes. | |
| And you have been too. | |
| And again, you know, it's not your family and all that. | |
| I'm just curious. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, there was this awkward conversation at Christmas. | |
| Oh, where did you guys meet? | |
| And we hadn't talked about I'm telling his family. | |
| So we looked at each other and he says on Christian Mingle and I said on OkCupid. | |
| And it was just very humorous because it was literally at the same time we both said these contradictory statements. | |
| Well, your definition of humorous and mine may not be exactly the same thing. | |
| Why did he say Christian Mingle? | |
| His parents are Christians? | |
| No, it was just an acceptable dating site that he felt could be told. | |
| Wait, is he a Christian? | |
| No, he's atheist. | |
| Wait, his parents are atheist. | |
| He's atheist. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| I said Christian mingled, didn't I? I meant e-harmony. | |
| Oh, e-harmony. | |
| I was going to say, like, what? | |
| No, this doesn't make no sense at all. | |
| Okay. | |
| Okay, okay, okay. | |
| All right. | |
| And... | |
| Does his father, who teaches psychology at an Ivy League university, as you say, does his father, in his amazing knowledge of psychology, has he ever divined that you may have had a less than optimal upbringing? | |
| I'm sure. | |
| I'm sure he has. | |
| I've spent a couple of times talking with him one-on-one over these various vacations. | |
| I'm sure he's... | |
| Got a whole list of ideas about what created me, for lack of a better phrasing. | |
| But he doesn't know your real history, right? | |
| No, he doesn't. | |
| And he hasn't asked? | |
| No. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Why would he ask? | |
| I mean, he's an expert in psychology. | |
| This is a woman living with his son. | |
| Why on earth would he possibly ask about her family history? | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I'm fine. | |
| I'm just, I'm having the, uh, the ice pack, the disco bondage headgear applied to my forehead to keep it from going full, full retard cling on on me. | |
| All right. | |
| No, because I mean, my God, I mean, if my daughter is going to go and live with a guy, I, there's no stone that I won't find unturned about this person. | |
| There's nothing I will not ask about this person because anyway, for, for reasons I don't think I need to tell you. | |
| Wow. | |
| Wow. | |
| I'm sorry, this was quite a Pandora's box to open up, so... | |
| Why are you apologizing? | |
| Because the question seemed so simplistic, and I knew the underlying factors that have... | |
| I hope. | |
| I will pay you $50 at the end of this call if you don't apologize to me again. | |
| Guaranteed. | |
| I know you don't need the money. | |
| I will pay you $50 because, my God, young lady, I cannot think of anyone in the world right now off the top of my head who's not an actual Holocaust victim who has less to apologize for in this world. | |
| Okay. | |
| All right. | |
| Wait, you felt something there, right? | |
| I, um, you know, I just, I, before this last year or so, I, I just really tried to minimize so many things, uh, to, to, uh, in attempts to move on. | |
| And I, I spent a lot of that apologizing to my parents. | |
| And, uh, I guess I, and not just at that time, I've spent a lot of my childhood apologizing to my parents. | |
| I, I've, I guess I've sort of, uh, I've internalized the need to apologize anytime I feel like I've made any kind of inconvenience to somebody. | |
| Joe, you are not making any inconvenience for me. | |
| Some of the earlier callers were making some inconvenience for me. | |
| You are not making any inconvenience for me. | |
| And how is your heart during our call? | |
| How are you doing? | |
| I'm much better than I expected to be. | |
| I was very nervous leading up to it. | |
| I was able to speak with a A long-time FDR member, and they really gave some insight. | |
| Were they at the level of grand poobar lizard-headed wizard? | |
| Because, I mean, that or above. | |
| I'm just kidding. | |
| I don't even know who these people are. | |
| And so how long have you been with this fine young man? | |
| It'll be two years in September. | |
| So two years in September, and he's paying the bills, can I ask you? | |
| Yes. | |
| Yeah, he pays for everything. | |
| And what have you been doing for the last... | |
| Oh, I manage his properties, and I've managed multiple remodel projects. | |
| I've worked here and there occasionally, waiting tables, working in childcare facilities. | |
| I pretty much just take care of the home as of now. | |
| Right. | |
| Okay. | |
| And when did you first begin to think that you might have outgrown him? | |
| Hello. | |
| You back, Ashley? | |
| I am. | |
| Hello. | |
| I'm so sorry about that. | |
| Yes, I'm back. | |
| Internet had, I guess, my router needed rebooting. | |
| We're not going to count that apology because it was due to a technical issue. | |
| Okay, please don't. | |
| But you have a very nice voice, and we've had some requests in the chat room that you talk more tech stuff for some of our listeners. | |
| No, I'm just kidding. | |
| Well, anybody who's gotten to know me knows I'm a woman of many talents. | |
| Right, right. | |
| All right. | |
| So the question was, when did you first suspect that you might have begun to outgrow the boyfriend? | |
| The guy. | |
| Probably about... | |
| Six months ago. | |
| No, maybe about five months ago. | |
| Not quite six months ago. | |
| Right around January. | |
| And was there anything in particular that happened? | |
| Was it a moment or was it an accumulation? | |
| It was an accumulation. | |
| Just a general instinct, I guess, that the way I was feeling the relationship was going and the feeling of a lack of emotional connection. | |
| So I felt like... | |
| That was the original point when I started to think the relationship was slipping. | |
| And an accumulation of what? | |
| Of differences in views about... | |
| That was primarily where I started to notice it was... | |
| Yeah, he calls me a crazy conspiracy theorist because I don't believe that the... | |
| I believe the government is a fictitious entity and that Voting has no real effect and it's actually a violent act. | |
| So I guess once I really started to delve deeper, that's when I noticed we were not quite on the same page anymore. | |
| Now, does he know that your mother called you crazy? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| I'm sure I mentioned it, but I don't know if it really registers with him. | |
| But you told him that your mother called you crazy. | |
| I mean, you told me, right? | |
| Right, yeah. | |
| I mean, he knows about them putting me in the mental hospital and some degree of the verbal abuse. | |
| Okay, so this fine young man knows that you've had an incredibly traumatic history of being called crazy, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And what was that word that he used about you again? | |
| A conspiracy theorist? | |
| A crazy conspiracy theorist. | |
| Right. | |
| So he used the C word that's even worse than the other C word, right? | |
| Right. | |
| All right. | |
| I must say that my sympathy happy meter for this guy is currently residing somewhere around the center of the earth. | |
| Right? | |
| You don't call someone crazy who was unjustly institutionalized, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| You just don't. | |
| Right, that's like having a game with Anne Frank called Let's Hide in the Attic. | |
| Yeah, that's an amazing analogy there. | |
| Okay, so douchebag stratosphere pierced with the very first thing you're telling me about him. | |
| Right. | |
| What else? | |
| Um... | |
| I think the main issue I'm having is that I already know the answer, but for some reason I can't. | |
| No, but knowing why the answer, knowing the answer and knowing why are two very different things, right? | |
| Because you can have an answer that's instinctual, but until you know why, then it's hard to really trust yourself, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| So, I mean, we don't have to talk about anything you don't want to, but I think that knowing, like, so if you say, well, I want to break up with this guy, that's, you know, obviously your decision. | |
| But knowing the why really clearly, first of all, it minimizes the, you know, the danger of the boomerang breakup, you know, I'm gone, I'm back, I'm gone, I'm back, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Because if you really know at a very deep level why you're doing what you're doing, Then the chance of backsliding becomes non-existent, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| You know, then that temptation of the monkey-poo throwing hyper-aggressive makeup, sex stuff, just becomes like, ew, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| So that's, you know, it's probably worth exploring, but obviously I'm happy to talk about whatever works for you. | |
| I guess I'm curious, from my limited knowledge about him and his childhood, What has motivated him to put himself in this type of situation? | |
| Well, let me ask you this question. | |
| Obviously, you're more than your looks, but if you're going to categorize your looks, one to ten, being, you know, casting all modesty, all false modesty. | |
| False modesty is just another kind of hypocrisy. | |
| So casting all false modesty to the side, one to ten, where are we floating here for you? | |
| Probably about an eight. | |
| Okay, so very attractive, right? | |
| Yes. | |
| Nice figure and all that, right? | |
| Yes. | |
| Okay, so nice body, nice face, good hair. | |
| I assume you have all your own teeth and very few golden horseshoes back there. | |
| All right, so there is the easy sex aspect of it, right? | |
| Hey, look, this girl's broke. | |
| I have money and a place to crash, which includes a bed where she can crash on the bed and I can crash on her, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And the fact that you were... | |
| Okay, I'm just trying to do math here in my head, but you were 19 or 20 when you met him? | |
| Yeah, I was 20. | |
| He was 35, 34. | |
| Wow. | |
| Oh, you didn't just say that. | |
| Oh, God. | |
| Don't apologize. | |
| It's not your fault. | |
| Oh, God. | |
| Oh, no. | |
| Ew! | |
| Ew! | |
| I just want to get this, like, Paul Walker sleaze-back-begone spray. | |
| It just... | |
| All over the place. | |
| My brain will never feel clean again! | |
| No, I'm kidding. | |
| Okay. | |
| God Almighty. | |
| So this 35-year-old rich guy... | |
| Picks up a hot 20-year-old homeless woman and has sex with her. | |
| Yeah. | |
| What fine parents he must have had! | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| This is your relationship. | |
| I need to treat it with the due amount of respect. | |
| Oh, wait. | |
| I am treating it with the due amount of respect. | |
| Ah! | |
| Okay, so you were 20. | |
| Where would you put your emotional age, given everything that you've been through? | |
| Oh, goodness. | |
| Considering I'd been on my own since about 15 and I was 20 when I met him, I'm 26, maybe 27. | |
| I would say that your age of experience in a sense of like getting things done and being on your own would be far in advance of your age. | |
| But emotionally, in terms of your emotional development, I don't think it would be your biological age because you'd had so much trauma, so much stuff that you just had to survive, right? | |
| Yeah, definitely. | |
| I mean, I've been the mother figure since I was about seven. | |
| Yeah, so a lot of your sort of emotional development would have just, you know, like nobody... | |
| Studies calculus when the bombs are falling, right? | |
| I mean, there's not a lot of emotional development that occurs during times of crisis, and your entire childhood was just a massive crisis, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Now, what's, again, 1 to 10, what's this guy hovering at? | |
| Just physically? | |
| Just physically? | |
| Um... | |
| I'd say about a 6, 7, 6 maybe, closer. | |
| I mean, he's slightly balding. | |
| Oh no, that's an automatic 10, if I remember right. | |
| Bald tower. | |
| Yeah, this is why men evolved to be taller, so you all can't see easily. | |
| No, because when we're balding on top, you know what we're getting is Absolutely fantastic thistle bushes in our noses and ears. | |
| Oh gosh, yeah. | |
| You don't have to tell me. | |
| Something to look forward to. | |
| I've listened to so many of your podcasts and not just from your view. | |
| I keep thinking of this, how women lose value as they age and men increase in value. | |
| Although, I guess a part of me is afraid that That I, I mean, I could easily be replaced, I feel like. | |
| Yeah, I'm not sure that if I were in your shoes, I'd worry about me being replaced at the moment. | |
| Right. | |
| I mean... | |
| Okay, I mean, sorry, my brain is full of things. | |
| Look how eloquent I am. | |
| My brain is full of things. | |
| That should just be the name of my autobiography. | |
| Brain full things. | |
| Reminds me of your caveman impression last week. | |
| Oh, right. | |
| Stuff. | |
| All right, so, yeah, what's that old joke about? | |
| There was a movie a long time ago called Eat Drink Man Woman. | |
| And I think it was Billy Crystal who said, that's how Arnold Schwarzenegger asks a woman out on a date. | |
| Eat Drink Man Woman. | |
| What do you want to add? | |
| I don't want to tsunami you with my thoughts. | |
| I want to make sure that... | |
| The only thing I want to add is that I was in a very bad position when he found me. | |
| And so far in my relationship experience... | |
| This has been overall, as twisted as it seems, this has been overall the healthiest relationship I feel like I've been in. | |
| No, I get that. | |
| I do. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| And that's to be commended from your side, right? | |
| I mean, you didn't say to this guy, sorry, not enough facial tattoos. | |
| You know, you don't have enough jewelry hanging off of your... | |
| And nipples, and therefore I can't have anything to do with you. | |
| You're not a drug dealer, you're just not exciting enough for me. | |
| I mean, this is a huge step up, right? | |
| I mean, this is a functional guy who's not physically abusive, and you didn't have a template from the men in your life growing up. | |
| I mean, I'm getting you that this is, you know, a big step up, right? | |
| It definitely feels like it. | |
| So... | |
| You know, I feel like I wasn't a very good person when I was using. | |
| And since then, I've done a lot of reflection and gained a lot of self-insight as to the things I did in that mind state. | |
| And when I met him, I was just in awe. | |
| Of his virtue, really, I guess, because he wouldn't say anything hurtful to another person. | |
| He was very diplomatic. | |
| He is very diplomatic, very kind. | |
| He did call you crazy, right? | |
| Yes, but I mean, that's after me. | |
| Sitting there spewing about why the Federal Reserve is a corrupt state. | |
| Not spewing. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Don't describe yourself that way. | |
| Not spewing. | |
| Don't apologize. | |
| I'm just saying that it's not spewing. | |
| It may be surprising. | |
| It may be alarming to people. | |
| I get it. | |
| But if the man cares for you, if anyone cares for you, then they will take unusual information, startling information, and try to understand it and try to understand why it's important to you. | |
| Right, and that's actually a conversation we had last night. | |
| I mentioned that to him, that I feel like if he genuinely loved me and cared for me the way that he would, he would take an interest as to why these things are so important to me, or try to approach it at least from a more open standpoint, other than everything that comes out of my mouth is just a conspiracy babble. | |
| Well, especially because he's the son of Psychologist, right? | |
| Right. | |
| I mean, this is not like completely foreign territory for him, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And that's one thing that he's an excuse that he's given me as to why he doesn't like to open up really about his emotional state or what he's really feeling. | |
| I mean, he's great about hiding his emotions. | |
| And he blames that on his father's probing. | |
| Most of his childhood, which I don't understand because from what he's told me, his father is very distant. | |
| And do his parents have any issue with him dating a woman 15 years younger from an extremely dysfunctional background? | |
| I don't think so. | |
| They've always been really nice to me. | |
| I talk to his mother pretty often. | |
| They called me radical, and they love that. | |
| Although we don't necessarily agree on many things, they appreciate that I'm not... | |
| They call him Republican, and he's not, really. | |
| But they appreciate that I'm not that way, so they feel like I'm a good influence in that aspect. | |
| Wait, so are the parents Democrats? | |
| Oh, huge Democrats. | |
| Right, right, right. | |
| Okay. | |
| Yeah, they think the government is going to save everybody. | |
| So he's like the welfare state for you, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Well, his father, so he definitely believes in socialism. | |
| Well, his father is licensed by the state and works at a state-subsidized university and gains a huge amount of prestige from the state. | |
| I mean, that's not a very objective place with which to evaluate anti-statist concepts, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Well, it's just so funny because I tried talking to his brothers about this and they haven't, they don't necessarily take the same stance, but it's obvious that they've internalized their parental influence and opinions when it comes to politics and worldviews. | |
| And what's the age difference between his mother and his father? | |
| I think three years. | |
| Right. | |
| Okay. | |
| And have you exchanged the I love yous? | |
| Oh, yes. | |
| Yes. | |
| And what does love mean? | |
| Right? | |
| So when you give someone the I love you, it's a contract. | |
| And people like to just wave it around like, I love you. | |
| But it is a contract, right? | |
| Because when I say to someone, I love you, that means that, you know, there can't be any put downs, there can't be any cruelty. | |
| I mean, not that I... Offer this stuff up to people I don't say it to, but it means that there's a contract, that love is my admiration of their virtue, my respect for their intelligence, my belief in their integrity, my belief in their best intentions, right? | |
| So to me, and I think not just to me, but it's how it should be, love is a contract of the highest standard of behavior and the highest respect for the other person. | |
| This is why it troubles me when people say, I love you, and then, well, you're crazy. | |
| That is a clear violation of the contract of respect for your virtue of mind, intelligence, integrity, common sense and intentions that love must actually mean. | |
| Yes. | |
| When we first exchanged the I love you's, my definition of love has definitely changed over the course of our relationship. | |
| And when I first heard you say love is an involuntary response to virtue, I felt, oh my gosh, that must have been what it was. | |
| You know, that he was, by comparison, such a virtuous person to the men that I had had previously. | |
| And as I've grown, that feeling has changed in quite a few aspects. | |
| Do you want to have kids, do you think? | |
| Oh my goodness, yes, definitely. | |
| I think I'll be a great mother. | |
| And is this the father that you want? | |
| Not ideally, no. | |
| I mean, there's a lot of benefits. | |
| I could homeschool and... | |
| Wait, wait, wait. | |
| You know, I don't have a lot of sound effects in this show, and I don't even have a soundboard, but I gotta tell you, Ashley, that when you said, there's a lot of benefits, do you know what I heard? | |
| What? | |
| Ka-ching! | |
| I know. | |
| I sound so horrible. | |
| No, no. | |
| But I'm right in hearing this. | |
| There's a lot of benefits. | |
| I mean, Benjamin. | |
| I mean, benefits. | |
| Yeah, very true. | |
| I grew up in poverty, and I feel like a lot of the traumatic events I went through might have been prevented had that not been a situation. | |
| So I guess, in my mind, a good father, somebody that provides... | |
| Financially. | |
| And I had this discussion with an FDR member the other day about how he said, you know, I wouldn't mention your situation on the boards or on the forums because there's so many great men out here looking for a woman like you that's, you know, young and intelligent and open to these concepts and self-aware. | |
| And I mentioned to him that The only problem is a lot of the people that I've met, in my limited experience, this could be wrong, that the people that have the same views as me tend to live with their mother or work at Subway. | |
| No, no. | |
| They say they're working at Subway. | |
| That's just code for working for the underground. | |
| Yeah, they're working at Subway. | |
| Unless the underground regularly comes with the choice of... | |
| Of spinach and avocado, but all right. | |
| Yeah, so basically you could get a guy who is more mature, emotionally available, and concords with your virtues, but you don't necessarily want to live with your head resting up against a washing machine in someone's basement, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Does he want to have children? | |
| Yes, he wants to have children immediately. | |
| Right. | |
| With you? | |
| Yes. | |
| So if he had his way, he would want to have children with you, like, right away? | |
| Right, as soon as we were wed. | |
| Wed. | |
| What's going on with that? | |
| Oh, we've discussed getting married quite a few times, more so over the last few months. | |
| And he's expressed how he doesn't want to be an old dad, and even though he's kind of already approaching the age of old dad. | |
| Right. | |
| No, no offense to you at all. | |
| You know, if I had young ears and I'd heard that, I'd be highly offended. | |
| But it's okay, because they couldn't get past the thicket of middle-aged fur that I have in my ears. | |
| Basically, it's like my ears have swallowed two hobbits' feet. | |
| That's my life. | |
| Anyway. | |
| Okay, so he doesn't want to be an old dad. | |
| And you, of course, are in possession of, like, primo egg factory productivity time. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And so he might want to get married to you so that he can have kids, you can have kids, and you can live, I assume his income is six figures plus, so you can live in some recent... | |
| reasonable luxury and not have to work and homeschool if you want and so on, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And what do his parents – have you talked to his parents about the marriage stuff? | |
| No, not at all. | |
| Right. | |
| The only time I really talk to his family is about which company they think I should boycott at that time or what petition they think I should sign and – And that's usually the only—that's the depth of our conversations. | |
| Do they know that you have defood? | |
| No. | |
| I actually mentioned that to my boyfriend. | |
| I mentioned that to him the other day about how— I asked him how his family would react if I did not invite my family to our wedding, if we were to get married. | |
| And he said that his father would be definitely curious, so I phrased it as, would your father want somebody who beat a puppy in front of him at his son's wedding? | |
| And he says, no. | |
| I was like, well then, there's no reason for him to To be insistent or even curious as to why I wouldn't want them there. | |
| Well, good heavens. | |
| I mean, if people are very keen on having you boycott companies with questionable business practices, I'm sure that they wouldn't have a problem with you boycotting the hellscape that you came from, which has had a little bit more effect on your life than people's wages in Malaysian countries. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I guess I just feel like I'm really in a tough situation. | |
| Because I have defood and my lifeline is here. | |
| Of course, there's always a way out. | |
| I just have to really want it. | |
| It's not easy. | |
| You know, I feel for you. | |
| This is the first safe haven you've ever had, right? | |
| Oh, definitely. | |
| I mean, I feel like I've found my home, being able to talk to the people on FDR and make some amazing connections. | |
| Has he ever suggested that you get any therapy? | |
| Yeah, he's actually paid for me to go to therapy for the last six months or so. | |
| That's good. | |
| All right. | |
| That's getting me reoriented to this guy, you know. | |
| That's good. | |
| That's good. | |
| And how's the therapy going? | |
| Um... | |
| At the time, I was in such a dark place, it was beneficial. | |
| But looking back on the sessions and the progress that I have made, I don't feel like it was... | |
| I don't think I had the right counselor. | |
| Are you switching or did you switch? | |
| I'm currently seeing two at the time. | |
| I was referred out. | |
| I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but it's a new treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder. | |
| It's called EMDR. Oh yeah, yeah, no, I've heard of it. | |
| So I was sent to a social worker to begin EMDR. So I haven't really had much contact with my counselor since then. | |
| Right. | |
| And where do you see the relationship in 10 years? | |
| Well... | |
| Well, one of two ways. | |
| I mean, I guess it's what it comes down to. | |
| Either he becomes more open to or more aware of the actual... | |
| I'm at a loss for words here. | |
| He becomes aware of the world's condition and the political condition and... | |
| Doesn't it go along with this status idea of society? | |
| Or he doesn't, and then we just part ways. | |
| So that's the only two ways I see this really going much further. | |
| Is there any part of... | |
| I assume that the approach to self-knowledge that philosophy was really founded on is something that he's not opposed to, right? | |
| I mean, he's sending you to a therapist, right? | |
| No, he actually, he's told me that he really appreciates that I've started to take this approach when debating politics and worldviews. | |
| He likes that I'm taking it more from a moral standpoint other than this is corrupt and evil and wrong, which I don't necessarily understand because I feel like It's the same fundamental ideas, just repackaged in a way that's more pleasing to him. | |
| Yeah, look, I mean, I sympathize with the challenge. | |
| Like, I really do. | |
| So, this guy is good in a lot of ways, right? | |
| I mean, obviously, he's not a mean guy. | |
| He's not a, you know, I think that the crazy thing would be something worth a significant apology and a commitment to never return to. | |
| But... | |
| To abandon a life of comfort, and I'm not, that doesn't, I mean, that sounds shallow. | |
| I don't mean like, oh, just be comfortable. | |
| It's important, you know, if you have kids that you have some degree of financial security can be very helpful. | |
| It's not the only thing, but it's not unimportant. | |
| And then you've got the choice to maybe find the vagabond of philosophical compatibility where you have a meeting of minds and... | |
| A parting of the wallet that reveals nothing but dust and mothballs and maybe a couple of coupons for pizza. | |
| And that is a challenge. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I do. | |
| Because you don't know. | |
| I mean, if you could replace this guy with some other guy who's materially comfortable and who is philosophically consistent, then that would be great, right? | |
| On the other hand, you know, there's lots of Lots of challenges there, and I get that. | |
| Right. | |
| It reminds me of this episode that you had done with another caller named Ashley, and you said, anytime your ovaries need dating advice to call in, and I guess I felt like that was sort of the underlying idea of the call. | |
| Oh, listen, your ovaries are screaming to marry this guy. | |
| I mean, I have no doubt about that. | |
| They're like, Forget your abstract philosophical differences. | |
| Right. | |
| You know, he's stable. | |
| He's not abusive. | |
| He's got money. | |
| He comes from a good family. | |
| You'll be set for life. | |
| I mean, your ovaries are like, breed, woman, breed! | |
| Go get that sperm with a syringe if you have to. | |
| I don't care if there's a turkey baster and a goat skin involved. | |
| Go get that sperm! | |
| Right. | |
| Definitely. | |
| I mean, you know, I don't often imitate other people's ovaries, but is that... | |
| Is that somewhat what your ovaries are saying? | |
| Like, what are you an idiot? | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| Extremely so. | |
| Right. | |
| But, you know, I still have this internal conflict of, ah, you know, I'm still very young. | |
| I have plenty of time. | |
| And, you know, the other part's like, but this is the best thing you've ever seen. | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| No, I get it. | |
| You get a bird in the hand, right? | |
| It's worth two in the bush. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So, but here's a challenge, right? | |
| And I'm sure you've thought of this as well, right? | |
| Which is, if you are compatible with a man 15 years older at the moment, either it means that you're super mature or he's super immature. | |
| Yeah, that's something I got from that video I referred to a moment ago. | |
| Right. | |
| Now, if he's immature and you're continuing to grow, Then that's a big problem, right? | |
| Because you're going to outgrow him. | |
| Right. | |
| If he has the kind of judgment where he's great to invite a woman he barely knows with an incredibly traumatic history into his house after knowing her for a couple of weeks, that is not... | |
| Good decision making. | |
| I think, you know, I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with you. | |
| Obviously, there's not. | |
| But, I mean, from what he knew, I don't know, you could have been a thief. | |
| You could have had diseases. | |
| I mean, who knows, right? | |
| Right. | |
| You don't, right? | |
| But you could have had, you know, you could have case the joint for some druggy friends of yours to steal, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| So, you know, the decision points, the fact that he's hiding things from his parents about where you're coming from. | |
| The fact that his parents are not really inquiring as to where you came from. | |
| I mean, where's this famous probing that so bothered your boyfriend from his father? | |
| I mean, you could be joining the family. | |
| You could be the harbor that pumps out the grandchildren. | |
| I mean, shouldn't they really want to know? | |
| Great. | |
| I don't know. | |
| I guess they, I feel they, I don't know how they feel or they think about the situation since we're not in contact, but I assume that since he is, you know, he's approaching 36, that they kind of gave up on that venue. | |
| Oh, so they're like, we don't care where she comes from. | |
| The eggs are young, right? | |
| The eggs are fresh? | |
| All right. | |
| We're in. | |
| We'll find some way to make it work. | |
| Don't boycott that egg farm. | |
| Okay, got it. | |
| Oh, goodness. | |
| Yeah, so that was really my only understanding. | |
| Is there any, sorry to interrupt, is there any other area in his life that you question his decision making? | |
| I guess his, not really, it's always been really about his choice in partners, significant partners and sexual partners that has always been a Of great curiosity to me. | |
| Curiosity? | |
| Okay, that's a nice thing. | |
| But what does that mean? | |
| Oh, I hate to be too explicit here. | |
| You don't have to be... | |
| You can just tell me that you have some concerns. | |
| I mean, I trust you. | |
| You don't have to get into details of sleeping guys. | |
| I'm just going to skim over it. | |
| We? | |
| Yeah. | |
| As a couple, I slept with another girl, and this girl was absolutely, oh god, sickening. | |
| I couldn't even do it. | |
| I was kind of... | |
| Wait, you had a reason? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| No! | |
| No, no! | |
| Why are you waiting till the... | |
| I'm like scratching my face on the carpet because of these sound effects here. | |
| I'm sorry. | |
| Oh my goodness. | |
| I'm just trying to be self-expressed. | |
| Okay. | |
| And you're saying that the third wheel in this erotic adventure was not primo horse meat? | |
| Is that what you're saying? | |
| Oh, God, no. | |
| She was a basket case. | |
| I mean, yeah, just horrible. | |
| And how did you feel about the threesome? | |
| You know, I just, I don't know. | |
| I wanted to make him happy. | |
| So I, you know, I went along. | |
| Even though... | |
| I mean, was he like, you know, you guys make on the couch, I'll be the repairman, and your copier needs fixing, and next thing you know, I mean, did the 70s porn music, did he grow a mustache? | |
| Did he have strange oils on him? | |
| Did he have a bathrobe that didn't even reach down to his mid-thigh? | |
| Actually, you know what? | |
| I don't want to know. | |
| He does have a Hugh robe, so... | |
| Okay, okay, okay. | |
| All right. | |
| Um... | |
| Anyway, so that was, yeah, my only curiosity. | |
| So wait, wait, wait. | |
| Okay, so you wanted to make him happy. | |
| Yeah. | |
| What did you want? | |
| Well, I'm always down for a new adventure, so I guess that's the way I was looking at it. | |
| That's not an answer. | |
| No. | |
| That's a bumper sticker, young lady. | |
| What did you want? | |
| I think... | |
| Fundamentally, I've always had a difficult time feeling happiness on my own accord. | |
| So I thought if I made him extra happy, then some of that happiness would spill over and I would feel happy. | |
| Then how did that work out for you? | |
| I just kind of left it feeling disgusted because she was such a revolting person in my opinion. | |
| And revolting her. | |
| Oh, yeah, she was, she reminded me a little bit of myself. | |
| She's an addict, mostly with alcohol and pain pills. | |
| She's very manipulative. | |
| She would try to Plot us against each other or do things to try to make each one of us jealous. | |
| Just a generally slimy person. | |
| Was she trying to replace you? | |
| Is that why she did it? | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| Yeah, she wanted... | |
| She definitely wanted to. | |
| Yeah, she's like, you know, I'd like that ka-ching monster, so... | |
| Right, right. | |
| And she's 30, you know, he was 35, and so... | |
| So this would be the second... | |
| Somewhat sexually exploitive thing with a drug addict or ex-drug addict, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah, there's one other ex-girlfriend of his that was sort of like that. | |
| She was a college graduate who had developed a cocaine issue. | |
| I guess I'm starting to see a pattern there. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| He must be wildly insecure. | |
| Like, he must be, like, bone-shakingly, ice-marrow insecure. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I think that's definitely becoming apparent. | |
| Yeah, I mean, if he's got to, like, trawl for drug addicts and homeless people when he's a reasonably good-looking, wealthy, educated guy with professional parents, upper-middle class, comfortable, if he's got to dip down to trawl for Some really broken women, | |
| then that is pretty damning as far as his level of confidence goes. | |
| And it actually seems predatory in my opinion. | |
| Thank you. | |
| Oh, are you around? | |
| I'm not sure if we lost her. | |
| Looks like we did lose her. | |
| Oh, we did? | |
| Okay. | |
| She's still on the call. | |
| Let's see if she comes back. | |
| Hello, I'm sorry. | |
| I cheek-slided the mute button. | |
| No problem. | |
| Did you hear me at all? | |
| I did, but then I took the phone away and I didn't hear the last bit, so if you wouldn't mind repeating. | |
| Well, his level of insecurity is so high that, to me, he's blended over into predatory territory. | |
| Okay. | |
| Right. | |
| In that he is basically trawling for damaged and desperate women and sexually exploiting them. | |
| Do you know if he's had problems with faithfulness in relationships? | |
| I mean, not counting the threesome, which is kind of a, I don't know what to call it, but with being unfaithful? | |
| No, he actually prides himself on being faithful. | |
| He was married before and she cheated on him and got pregnant. | |
| Okay, so he married a woman who cheated on him and got pregnant? | |
| Yes. | |
| It was his high school sweetheart, the girl he lost his virginity to. | |
| And is he paying alimony? | |
| No, no. | |
| The child was of another man. | |
| No, that would be child support. | |
| Is he paying alimony? | |
| No, no. | |
| She was very well off. | |
| She inherited quite a bit of money. | |
| She actually supported him through most of his first few years of college. | |
| Right. | |
| I'm sorry to ask a leading question, and you can toss it out if it's inappropriate. | |
| How will you feel if you have an attractive daughter who grows up around this guy? | |
| I have thought about that before, and sometimes I'm a little worried. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Because, I mean, a level of attractiveness is very important to him. | |
| Yeah. | |
| My personal opinion is that you can do a hell of a lot better than someone who pressures you into a threesome with a very damaged woman. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And if he did suggest or propose the threesome without fully probing, sorry, that's probably not the best word to use when talking about a threesome. | |
| If he suggested or proposed the threesome without deeply trying to understand what your thoughts and feelings were about it, that's troubling at a very, very deep level. | |
| I feel like I have to come clean about an aspect of our relationship. | |
| Wait, are you telling me there's more? | |
| Hang on. | |
| I'm going to sit down for this part. | |
| Oh, goodness. | |
| Okay, hang on. | |
| You know what? | |
| I'm not just going to sit down. | |
| I'm actually going to assume the crash position for this. | |
| Okay. | |
| You probably should. | |
| Okay. | |
| I'm... | |
| I've got my head between my... | |
| Okay, I'm ready. | |
| Go. | |
| I am in a dominant-submissive relationship. | |
| Go on. | |
| I'm hanging in there. | |
| Go on. | |
| I have... | |
| I've given pretty much all personal power to him in regards to sex and a lot of aspects of our lives. | |
| I don't know what that means, but I'm ready to hear. | |
| Oh, gosh. | |
| Are you familiar? | |
| It's like Fifty Shades of Grey, almost. | |
| I have not read that kiddie porn. | |
| Yeah... | |
| Yeah. | |
| He's master, I am slave. | |
| I still don't know what that means! | |
| I don't know how else to... | |
| Who wears the SS costume? | |
| Who drips wax onto who? | |
| I don't know any of this stuff! | |
| I live in the suburbs! | |
| I'm the slave. | |
| I've given over all power to him. | |
| Okay, but what does that mean practically? | |
| That means that if he wants me to sleep with the crackhead, I sleep with the crackhead. | |
| Have you told your therapist this? | |
| Yes. | |
| And what does your therapist say about that? | |
| He finds it interesting. | |
| Oh my god! | |
| He probably finds it titillating. | |
| The creep. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Okay, so in every aspect of your life, financial, sexual, emotional, relational, in terms of friends and so on, he is the dominant one, which means basically he tells you everything that you do and you're like this, what, empty, inflatable hand puppet? | |
| No, no, I definitely have input. | |
| Whether or not my input is incorporated in actuality, that's another question. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Don't give me questions. | |
| Don't give me anything ambivalent here. | |
| It's not going to help. | |
| Yeah, generally what he says goes. | |
| I have plenty of room. | |
| I speak my mind whenever I want. | |
| We have open dialogue in regards to everything about our relationship dynamic. | |
| But at the end of it all, what he says goes. | |
| So you don't really have any input. | |
| I mean, you can raise your hand, but he can choose whether to take your input or not. | |
| And does he really sound like he's going to take your input with any seriousness, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And, I mean, he prides himself on making these decisions in my best interest. | |
| You know, he... | |
| I mean, and I usually feel this way, too, that he wouldn't put me in a situation that... | |
| He doesn't think that I could handle or grow from or learn something about myself from. | |
| Who the fuck is he to decide what you can handle and grow from? | |
| Well, I gave him that power. | |
| No, no, but what I mean is, rationally, I can't decide what you can handle and grow from, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Who can, other than you, in negotiation with yourself and with... | |
| And is that how you guys met? | |
| That's why you couldn't talk about the website that you met? | |
| Was it a fetish site? | |
| Yes. | |
| Right, okay. | |
| And he was looking for a submissive? | |
| Yes. | |
| He found me within 24 hours of me being on the site. | |
| Right, right. | |
| And I guess it's great that his mother is spending so much time studying yoga rather than trying to figure out who her son actually is. | |
| Right. | |
| Wow. | |
| Is there anything else that I need to know before I share a few thoughts? | |
| I think that's pretty much every little piece of information available. | |
| Please share. | |
| First of all, I feel a strong urge to rescue the discipline of psychology from this massive black mark against it. | |
| You know, that this is who a psychologist raises. | |
| I mean, that's just astounding. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| His mother visited once and she was staying while he was at work. | |
| And she was insistent, oh, I'm, you know, I'm going to clean your house while you're gone. | |
| And he says, just, you know, don't organize anything. | |
| Don't mess with my closets. | |
| Just, you know, if you're insistent on pond cleaning my house, just, you know, leave my stuff alone, really. | |
| And she's a nosy. | |
| Don't find the manacles! | |
| Yeah, and she found her. | |
| Yeah. | |
| She found things and, like, purposefully sat it, like, on top of his bed so that he would know that she knew about it. | |
| And over the... | |
| Lamps and thumb screws. | |
| I don't know what the hell. | |
| What would you find? | |
| Floggers. | |
| Floggers. | |
| Right? | |
| Right. | |
| It's like a... | |
| It's a stiff handle with leather falls. | |
| And it's for hitting? | |
| Yes. | |
| And he hits you with these? | |
| Yes. | |
| Dear God. | |
| Okay, I'm going to put myself in check, and please continue. | |
| Anyways, so once she found these items and made it clear that she knew about it, over the course of the next few months, her and his father, the mother and the father, would ask questions about if he watches horror movies, or is there some kind of event that happened when he was a child that they're not telling him about? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Wait, who was asking these questions? | |
| His mother and father. | |
| They were asking him? | |
| Yes, if he had an interest in horror movies or if he found violent art entertaining, those types of questions. | |
| Yeah, they're probing for sadism, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah, okay. | |
| Right. | |
| And did they ask you any questions, given that you were the assumed target of these floggers? | |
| Oh no, this was years before I joined in. | |
| He's been into this for about 15 years. | |
| Since he was married? | |
| Yeah, he started messing with S&M when he was married. | |
| Right. | |
| And he's still messing with S&M now, just my initials, alright? | |
| Um... | |
| And does he know why he's interested in this stuff? | |
| No, I think we lost her again. | |
| Okay. | |
| Ashley, did you... | |
| I keep cheek sliding. | |
| I apologize. | |
| Okay. | |
| I was going to say, this conversation about S&M is torture for me because you keep cutting out. | |
| No, I'm kidding. | |
| Go on. | |
| No, I don't think they have any idea as to what's caused it or if he has any idea as to what's caused it. | |
| I have my own ideas. | |
| No, but why aren't they asking you? | |
| Oh, I don't know because they feel like it's not really their business because it's an adult man's sexual life and they shouldn't probe. | |
| I guess. | |
| I don't really know. | |
| Well, it's nice that they're so discreet at this point, I guess. | |
| But I guess if my kid was involved in a relationship where he was causing physical harm to another human being or physical pain to another human being, I would talk to another human being and say, hey... | |
| Why do you think this is acceptable to you? | |
| Why do you think this is working for you in the relationship? | |
| Why are you submitting to this? | |
| And so on. | |
| And is there any insight? | |
| I'm not getting any information out of my son. | |
| Is there any insight that you can give me? | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah, I don't think they would be happy with the insight that I gave. | |
| And what would be the insight that you would give? | |
| Oh, that his mother was very domineering. | |
| She's quite a feminist and demanded that both her and the husband do equal parts around the house, even though the husband worked. | |
| You know, he was a professor, worked quite a bit, was gone. | |
| But she didn't work. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| Do you think it's easy to get a master's in yoga? | |
| I mean, that's a lot of not doing dogs in the upward way. | |
| Right. | |
| So that's, you know, you got to bend, you got to be quite bendy for that. | |
| So, all right. | |
| So, so strangely enough, the arch feminist created a man who likes to dominate and humiliate women. | |
| Right. | |
| My God! | |
| Oh my God! | |
| Can somebody not figure out that there may be something not totally right about this ideology? | |
| But anyway, go on. | |
| Yeah, that was pretty much my conclusion, was that he had a very dominant feministic mother, that he felt bad for his father, that his father should have taken more control in the relationship. | |
| Well, you know, it's funny, but that's a false dichotomy, right? | |
| Saying that the father should have taken more control. | |
| That assumes that somebody has to have control, and it's either the woman or the man. | |
| Right, right. | |
| I don't think of having control in my marriage at all. | |
| Right. | |
| My wife wouldn't let me. | |
| Just kidding. | |
| I'm kidding. | |
| I'm kidding. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Now, if you... | |
| Sorry, is there more that you wanted to add with that? | |
| No, that was all. | |
| The accusations that were leveled at your mother handing you out for possible pedophilia activities, do you know if they were true or not? | |
| I know you were pretty young. | |
| My mother denies it. | |
| My biological aunt confirms it. | |
| And my memories and early childhood sexual behavior definitely indicate that it was true. | |
| And does your boyfriend know about this? | |
| Yes. | |
| It's one of the first things I told him. | |
| So he knows that you have a likely history of childhood sexual abuse, and he feels that dominating you sexually is somehow appropriate and not massively exploitive of a situation of childhood rape. | |
| I think he has the same views that a lot of people do in the community, that the issue... | |
| How do I say this? | |
| that's I really don't know how to explain it um um No, you can take your time. | |
| Okay. | |
| That it has some type of deep-seated, almost primal-type arousal out of myself, so... | |
| So he thinks that there's... | |
| I'm not saying he does think this, but I'm assuming... | |
| That he thinks it's perfectly okay since I've enjoyed it so far. | |
| Have you enjoyed it so far? | |
| There's parts that I enjoy, yeah. | |
| Overall, yeah, I've enjoyed it. | |
| And there's parts that you don't enjoy? | |
| Yeah, there's parts that I don't enjoy. | |
| Right. | |
| Do you think you could enjoy a sexual or romantic relationship without the domination aspect? | |
| I don't think so, honestly. | |
| The best sexual relationship I've had has been in this dynamic. | |
| Because I'm trying to think of a situation in your life, Ashley, where you haven't been dominated by something or someone. | |
| Right. | |
| If it's not the meth lab drug whore mom or the... | |
| Unstable avoidant dads or the foster care system or the physical or emotional or verbal or sexual abuse that you suffered, the institutionalization, the drug addiction, the dominance of financial insecurity and uncertainty, | |
| which then transitions into the dominance of From this guy, I would argue that you have tragically, and as a survival mechanism, developed a need to control being dominated. | |
| In other words, you're like somebody who's been walking into a wind their whole life. | |
| They're walking at 45 degrees. | |
| If the wind stops, they fall over, right? | |
| Right. | |
| It's the Simon the Boxer thing that I talk about or write about in real-time relationships. | |
| Yeah. | |
| which is that managing helplessness is the only thing that gives you a sense of efficacy, a sense of control. | |
| I guess I feel most comfortable in situations where I'm dominated. | |
| Sure. | |
| Of course. | |
| I mean, I feel comfortable in situations where people are speaking English because that's the only language I know, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And in a situation where you weren't being dominated, what do you think would happen? | |
| Well, in my previous relationship, I was the dominant one. | |
| And it was very messy. | |
| I didn't. | |
| No, no, no. | |
| I had no respect for it. | |
| False dichotomy alert, right? | |
| So I said where you weren't being dominated and then you went to, well, when I was dominating. | |
| No, no, no, no, no. | |
| That's not what I said. | |
| Okay. | |
| Could you elaborate further then? | |
| What do you think would happen? | |
| Sorry, and I wasn't clear. | |
| What do you think would happen in a relationship of equality where you respected the other person, they respected you, nobody won, nobody had to override the other, nobody dominated, but you negotiated for what you want as equals? | |
| You know, that just sounds like such an alien thought to me. | |
| I don't even know how I would react. | |
| I can give you a hint. | |
| Please do. | |
| Here's a question for you, Ashley, the brave. | |
| Who is dominating who in this conversation we're having? | |
| I don't know. | |
| My gut says my parents, but I don't really know. | |
| I don't think anybody is. | |
| Well, that's the answer. | |
| I'm not dominating you, and you're not dominating me. | |
| We are having an exchange of ideas, an exchange of experiences, an exchange of thoughts, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Definitely. | |
| It's just, I guess it's such a, like you said, though, it's a language that I've learned, so to deviate from that is a More than just scary. | |
| No, but this is why I asked you if you wanted to have children. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Because when you have children, you will automatically and biologically be placed in a position of dominance so intense that you will never experience it again. | |
| And your temptation to dominate your children... | |
| Or your feelings of being dominated by your children and thus being a helpless unparent will be extremely intense. | |
| Yeah, I don't want that at all. | |
| Well, I'm not sure you can say that given the relationship that you're in, right? | |
| Yeah, yeah. | |
| When I say that, I mean that I want to be... | |
| I want to be the best mother possible. | |
| That means learning how to negotiate as an equal. | |
| And Ashley, tell me, how the fuck is this relationship helping you do that? | |
| How is it learning, how is it helping you develop the muscle of equality and negotiation, mutual respect, virtue that you will need to have to use the word love and mean it and to be a good mother? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Are you answering by not answering? | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, it's obvious that I'm not going to be able to learn these things in this type of relationship. | |
| Well, actually, you're learning the exact opposite. | |
| You're reinforcing helplessness and being dominated and not existing except as an object to satisfy other people. | |
| Right. | |
| You are strengthening the worst muscles and weakening the most necessary. | |
| I think I know that on such a fundamental level and that's why I'm feeling all this anxiety and tension around the relationship and it feels like fire is being lit under me. | |
| My head is screaming, run, run! | |
| I've ran from plenty of relationships so there's this part of me that I know is irrational but it's like... | |
| You know, you always run. | |
| That's been what you've done pretty much since day one. | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Good! | |
| Good! | |
| Keep running! | |
| You know, first I ran from the lion. | |
| Then I ran from the tiger. | |
| Then I ran from the sniper. | |
| Then I ran from the asteroid. | |
| Then I ran from the shark. | |
| On water, I'm that good. | |
| Good! | |
| They're predators! | |
| Run! | |
| Yeah. | |
| And keep running until you find a place that's not predatory. | |
| Running is good. | |
| It's not whether you're running. | |
| It's what you're running from that matters. | |
| I was just afraid that I was running from unresolved past trauma instead of actually... | |
| No, no, no, no. | |
| You are staying because of unresolved past trauma. | |
| That's the only reason this relationship is acceptable to you. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Damn. | |
| Right? | |
| You leaving is not running from... | |
| From past trauma. | |
| It's refusing to live a life dominated and dictated by the past trauma. | |
| I mean, haven't you had enough of not having a voice? | |
| Haven't you had enough of not being listened to? | |
| Haven't you had enough of not being negotiated with? | |
| I guess I'm just really lacking self-esteem when it comes to that. | |
| You know, I've never... | |
| No! | |
| No! | |
| You're not lacking self-esteem. | |
| You were brutalized. | |
| If I'm not, then why am I not allowing... | |
| Lacking self-esteem is like, shit, I lost my glasses. | |
| You were brutalized. | |
| Right? | |
| I mean, if somebody drugged you and tattooed you on your arm, would you say, well, I guess I'm just lacking pink skin tone there? | |
| No, I was roofied and tattooed. | |
| Somebody assaulted me. | |
| Lacking self-esteem makes it sound like a deficiency on your part. | |
| I just feel like I've internalized my abuses as somewhat being... | |
| I know it's so illogical. | |
| I know it's not my fault, but I still can't help it sometimes feel like it was. | |
| Of course. | |
| And that's how you survive it. | |
| That's good that you did that. | |
| You have to internalize the abuser because self-punishment won't get you killed. | |
| External punishment might. | |
| This is really important to understand, Ashley. | |
| The fact that you internalized and you beat yourself up and you dominate yourself and you put yourself down and you attack yourself and you undermine yourself and you put yourself in compromising positions is exactly how you survived. | |
| And there was no other possible way to maximize your chances of survival. | |
| Because if I said... | |
| I don't even want to put myself in that position. | |
| Some guy comes up to you and says, Ashley... | |
| Either I punch you or you punch you. | |
| Which would you take? | |
| I punch me. | |
| There you go. | |
| That's exactly how you survived. | |
| Because if you attack yourself, you won't get yourself killed. | |
| You are in control of the attack if you attack yourself. | |
| Even if it has to look realistic, it's still better to punch yourself than to have somebody else punch you. | |
| Because if somebody else punches you, you don't know what's going to happen. | |
| You can try and manage and control it to some degree if you punch yourself, right? | |
| And so the fact that you have internalized your abusers, the fact that you have internalized your abuse, is your medal. | |
| It's not your shame. | |
| It's not out of weakness. | |
| It's not like they got to you and they won. | |
| That's how you win! | |
| That's how you survive, is you internalize it. | |
| Because you can deal with your internal bastards, but you can't survive the external bastards. | |
| You said, yeah, I'll hit myself and I'll survive. | |
| Because if you hit me, I may not make it till tomorrow. | |
| That's smart. | |
| That's cunning. | |
| That's how you live. | |
| And there's no other way to do it. | |
| What you did is exactly right. | |
| It was strong. | |
| It was courageous. | |
| It was incredibly intense survival strategies. | |
| You cannot put yourself down for the strategies you adopted to survive. | |
| I can't believe on that desert island I ate those beetles. | |
| That was gross. | |
| No, no, no, no. | |
| I'm so glad on that desert island there were beetles to eat. | |
| Otherwise I'd be dead. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I mean... | |
| I'm so glad you internalized that abuse. | |
| because otherwise you'd probably be dead. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Now there are other people out there who are going to say, oh, Ashley has internalized abusers. | |
| If I hook into them, I can control her like a skinless puppet of history. | |
| And those people are complete and total fucking assholes. | |
| You don't need people to step into the shoe ghosts of your parents and continue swinging at you like you were five. | |
| You need people who are not Going to respond to the calls of the inner abusers to justify their existence and justify your need for them by continuing the abuse. | |
| You need people who are going to step in and say, I'm incredibly sorry for what happened to you. | |
| There is no invitation on this earth that would cause me to step into your abuser's shoes. | |
| your fucking boyfriend is not one of those people. | |
| people. | |
| He is preying on the wounds of your abuse. | |
| He is finding a wounded person and stealing their wallet, their kidney, and their fucking soul, or trying to. | |
| Thank you. | |
| No, we find a wounded person, we bind their wounds. | |
| We don't suck their blood. | |
| We don't say, oh, you were entirely dominated by physical, emotional, and sexual abuses as a child. | |
| You know what the best thing is for my needs? | |
| For you to completely subject yourself to my whims. | |
| You were a slave as a child. | |
| Ooh, you know what would be great? | |
| For me to exploit that by making you my slave as an adult to cash in on the wounds that your parents inflicted on you when you were a helpless child. | |
| That's great for me. | |
| That can feed my ego and my petty insecurities and make me feel like a big strong man. | |
| Because I can prey on women who barely survived the assholes of their childhood. | |
| Big man. | |
| Great family. | |
| Yeah. | |
| I'm curious about when you had asked me what I choose to hit myself or have somebody else hit me, and that was a way of taking control of the situation. | |
| I don't see how that could relate to what I'm doing now. | |
| Is it because I'm choosing my abuser instead of just being a complete victim to the situation? | |
| Do you mean why are you in this relationship now? | |
| Thank you. | |
| Well, you had said that had given the choice, would I rather punch myself or have somebody else punch me? | |
| Right. | |
| So in this situation, am I choosing to punch myself by being in this relationship instead of... | |
| Oh, yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Because, I mean, the relationship is a choice. | |
| Now, you were... | |
| On the verge of being homeless, so like I get there was an extremity of circumstances, and I'm certainly not trying to criticize you for the decisions that you've made. | |
| As I said, and I still stand by it, this is a more functional relationship than any you've had before, right? | |
| Right. | |
| So... | |
| When we get used to managing abusers, that becomes our entire identity at that time. | |
| It's not all we'll ever be. | |
| It's not all we can ever be. | |
| But we become... | |
| A person who manages abusers. | |
| That's who we are, right? | |
| And there's no other way to survive a situation where you're dominated by abusers at every level. | |
| Psychiatric, sexual, emotional, physical, parental, extended family, right? | |
| All you do to survive is manage abusers. | |
| That's who you are. | |
| That becomes your identity. | |
| That becomes all that you can do. | |
| All you're functional at. | |
| All that you know. | |
| It's life. | |
| Life is managing abusers. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Right? | |
| So you're like, okay, well, I'm managing this abuser and I'm broke. | |
| with this abuser I get money and it wasn't like there was any other offers on the table right Yeah. | |
| At least it had... | |
| Yeah, it was that or go back to my asshole parents. | |
| Right. | |
| Right, right, right. | |
| I'm in that situation again now. | |
| I mean, I can choose to actually do something about it in the relationship. | |
| I can be homeless or I can go back to my family. | |
| Well, no, these aren't the only choices. | |
| Right. | |
| If I really wanted to, I could find another way, I'm sure. | |
| Well, I mean, you can stay with him and get some schooling or retraining or whatever, right? | |
| Mm-hmm. | |
| But isn't that like a violation of UPB, that I'm not being forthcoming with my emotions and feelings? | |
| Yeah, I don't know. | |
| A guy who exploits a homeless ex-drug addict for sex, I don't know that you have a whole lot of reciprocal moral obligations at this point. | |
| I wouldn't necessarily apply my very highest standards of behavior in this area. | |
| Okay. | |
| But... | |
| When your identity is, I manage abusers, then in order to have an identity, in order to have a life that you're adapted for, that you have skills for, and that you don't have skills for the other kind of negotiation-based life, you've got to find abusers. | |
| It's like an expat community. | |
| You go to live in Malaysia, and there's only like 20 other people who speak English. | |
| You're probably going to go live near where the 20 other people speak English, right? | |
| Because that's the language you speak. | |
| And the language you speak is subjugation, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| So I shouldn't feel like I've indebted because when I met him I was in such horrible condition and now I'm not. | |
| Indebted to him? | |
| Right. | |
| I mean, I was a drug addict. | |
| I was a smoker. | |
| I was an alcoholic. | |
| You know, I was all these horrible things when he found me. | |
| I was $16,000 in debt. | |
| Now I'm not in debt anymore and I'm not addicted to anything. | |
| And, you know, I... Right, and he got his threesome, so I think you're kind of equal. | |
| I think you're even Steven, frankly. | |
| I think that's, you know... | |
| Look, he paid and dominated for sex. | |
| And other things, I'm not saying that's the only thing, right? | |
| Yeah, so am I a whore? | |
| Sorry? | |
| Does that make me a whore, though? | |
| I wouldn't say so. | |
| I wouldn't say so. | |
| A whore has no personal connection, right? | |
| It doesn't live, doesn't, you know... | |
| Doesn't have any kind of intellectual or emotional connection with the client, right? | |
| Right. | |
| So, no. | |
| No, there is a transaction of sex for resources that is endemic throughout the animal kingdom. | |
| And in a huge amount of human relationships as well. | |
| So, no. | |
| I mean, unless you're willing to call monkeys whores and all. | |
| I mean, you had... | |
| Look, if you were an elderly Asian gentleman, he would not have asked you to move in, right? | |
| Right. | |
| I mean, he asked you in because you were willing to be dominated, he found you sexually attractive, and he had resources, right? | |
| So this was a sex-for-money transaction, but it was a relationship. | |
| I mean, you weren't swinging your purse on a street corner and 20 minutes later you're back on the street corner, right? | |
| Right. | |
| That doesn't mean that all relationships, like all romantic relationships, are sex for money. | |
| That doesn't mean that at all. | |
| But that is a pretty important basis for this relationship, right? | |
| All right. | |
| Well, this has definitely been very insightful. | |
| example. | |
| If you want to have, like, if you simply can't have any other kind of relationship, I don't think that's the case. | |
| I think that you can. | |
| I mean, you're not blowing up at me. | |
| Or you're not provoking me to blow up at you. | |
| Like, you're not either inflicting or inviting dominance or win-lose in this transaction, right? | |
| In this interaction, right? | |
| Right. | |
| So, you have the capacity for win-win interactions. | |
| The most important thing, in my opinion, is this is that it would be a desperately unhealthy environment for children. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Right? | |
| It's one thing to suffer wrong. | |
| It's another thing to do wrong. | |
| Yeah. | |
| And if you want to have kids, this is not the guy. | |
| This is not the guy. | |
| I mean, if he thinks you need therapy, oh my God. | |
| Oh my God. | |
| I mean, I don't even know what to say, right? | |
| Right. | |
| I'm not saying you don't. | |
| You know, I think therapy is a good idea in general. | |
| And you obviously have a tragic and hurt enough history that I think therapy would be fantastic for you. | |
| But this is not... | |
| You know that. | |
| This is not father material. | |
| I mean, he doesn't know how to negotiate at an egalitarian level. | |
| How on earth could he negotiate with children? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, we've discussed that. | |
| He spent 15 years in dominance and submission relationships. | |
| He will be a brute towards children because all the muscles he's developed are, I dominate, you erase. | |
| I dominate, you erase. | |
| I dominate, you erase. | |
| How is he going to be? | |
| With a child. | |
| Would it be any indicator the way he treats my dogs? | |
| I mean, the way he treats you is more important, but how does he treat your dogs? | |
| Oh, he's great with them. | |
| I mean, sometimes he gets frustrated and yells and I tell him to stop. | |
| Okay, yelling at dogs is not great, but see, dogs don't negotiate with you. | |
| Right. | |
| Right? | |
| right and do you want to spend the next 40 years of your life or I guess I don't know how old his parents are | |
| maybe the next 20 years of your life lying to his parents and lying to your friends and having to hide your relationship and who this guy is and all that Thank you. | |
| Thank you. | |
| I'm sorry, you cut off there. | |
| Could you repeat yourself? | |
| Do you want to spend the next 20 years lying to his parents and the next 40 years lying or 50 years lying to your friends about your relationship and hiding things and pretending things are... | |
| Well, there's an interesting standpoint. | |
| I don't have anybody in my life other than people who are in kink that are also part of the community. | |
| Right. | |
| Of course. | |
| Because when healthy people come into that... | |
| Right. | |
| So like all people who are exploitive and abusive, isolation is the first order of business, right? | |
| Don't have her around anyone who's going to disagree with the massive vortex of sexual and emotional dysfunction called this community, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Yep. | |
| And he doesn't, he's not like, because some people who have dysfunctional addictions are like, oh man, I got to stop. | |
| Oh man, I gotta stop, right? | |
| Right. | |
| But I assume he's like hunky-dory with this stuff, right? | |
| Oh yeah. | |
| Yeah. | |
| Yeah, so he's like, there's nothing here that needs to be fixed. | |
| This is a lifestyle choice. | |
| This is what I'm into. | |
| You know, this is my flavor of ice cream. | |
| Who are you to tell me otherwise, right? | |
| Pretty much, yeah. | |
| Yeah, definitely. | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah, I mean, you can choose this for yourself, though I certainly wouldn't recommend it, but you cannot choose this for your children. | |
| You can't. | |
| You know, you certainly don't want to, God forbid, right? | |
| I mean, imagine you end up in a situation where there's some dysfunction around your kids or the only people that are around are like BDSM people and so on, right? | |
| I mean, you don't want anything like that going around again, right? | |
| No, I wouldn't forgive myself if... | |
| I did anything to prevent my children from being anything but happy and healthy. | |
| Right. | |
| And really, I mean, do you think this guy is the guy who's going to make your children healthy and happy, given what you know about him? | |
| I'm sorry, I was reading the chat there. | |
| Could you please? | |
| I didn't catch the last. | |
| Do you think that this is the guy who's going to make your children healthy and happy, given what you know about him? | |
| And the answer is no. | |
| But by my comparison... | |
| Yeah, better than your parents, for sure. | |
| Much better. | |
| Yeah, but philosophy doesn't care about better than. | |
| Right, right. | |
| Philosophy fundamentally cares about better, not better than, right? | |
| Right. | |
| I mean, I can always find a fatter person, that doesn't mean I'm thin, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Let me put it to you another way. | |
| So if you have a daughter, she is going to see you and this guy as a relationship. | |
| This is going to be her template for a relationship. | |
| He's dominant and you're submissive. | |
| I mean, is that what you want for your daughter? | |
| No, not at all. | |
| Well, if it's not what you want for your daughter, how the hell can it be something you want for you? | |
| I guess I'm just not able to feel that amount of empathy for myself. | |
| Well, I think you can if you felt it for your daughter, because you were a daughter once, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And why should we have higher standards for future fictions called children than we would for our real, actual selves in the here and now? | |
| That's like saying, if you're wounded, don't help me, help the ghost! | |
| It's like, no, no. | |
| Ghost is, no. | |
| Help you, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| That was very insightful there, actually. | |
| I really kind of felt like something clicked there. | |
| With your daughter? | |
| No, with the comparison. | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| Yeah, you deserve even better than fictional characters from the future, right? | |
| Right. | |
| And that's how you build the right environment for your daughter, right? | |
| Right. | |
| But I just, I look, I just, I mean, I know that I've mentioned this in bits and pieces, but I just want to make it clear my perspective. | |
| Thank you. | |
| 35-year-old rich guy Picks up near a homeless victim of child abuse who's a drug addict, a smoker and an alcoholic and starts screwing her within a week or two and sucks her into a completely dominant submissive relationship that's an exact mirror of what occurred for her in her childhood abuse and then has the | |
| nerve to call her crazy. | |
| I need to put it in as stark a set of terms as I can possibly paint for you, because I need to sort of jar you out of this hypnosis of history, right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| I mean, if you heard this story from someone else, what would you say? | |
| Oh God, I would be screaming. | |
| What would you scream? | |
| Tell me, Ashley, I'm telling you this story. | |
| What would you say? | |
| Really? | |
| Are you that dense? | |
| Come on, look around you. | |
| Oh, come on. | |
| That's your audition for the part of outraged Ashley? | |
| Are you kidding me? | |
| What's more with feeling? | |
| I'm telling you the story I just told you. | |
| 35-year-old rich guy picks up homeless drug addict woman, starts having sex with her and sucks her into a dominant relationship based entirely upon the sexual and physical and emotional abuse she had as a child. | |
| Tell me. | |
| Get out! | |
| Now! | |
| It's like screaming at the pretty white girl opening the door of a serial killer's house. | |
| You go for help. | |
| I'll follow the bloody footprints. | |
| Okay, keep going. | |
| Give me the outrage to audition for Ashley. | |
| I don't know if I can anymore there. | |
| Well, that part where you said get out now... | |
| This doesn't mean you have to do anything. | |
| We'll talk about that in a sec. | |
| But the important thing is imagine that you have a daughter who comes and tells you this story. | |
| Not that you would, because your daughter is not going to suffer the way that you suffered. | |
| But imagine a friend of yours comes with a daughter who has this story. | |
| What would you tell that girl that would Shake her into clarity. | |
| Tell her about the guy. | |
| What's the guy like? | |
| Because you know. | |
| Don't you realize that you are being taken advantage of? | |
| Not. | |
| Thought you're worth more than that. | |
| Clearly she doesn't, so help her to understand, otherwise she wouldn't be there. | |
| Well, kidnapping her and putting her in my basement isn't an option, right? | |
| Do it with words. | |
| Wake her with words. | |
| What does she need to hear about the situation she's in? | |
| I don't know. | |
| I don't know. | |
| At least I can't find the words. | |
| Would you like me to try? | |
| Please, yes. | |
| I don't want to elbow you aside. | |
| If you're on the verge, I'm happy to hear. | |
| Yeah, no, I'm hitting a brick wall here. | |
| All right. | |
| Mr. | |
| Balding, pudgy, middle-aged fuckface... | |
| Needs to be giving a hand to people who are broken by life, who are broken by their childhoods. | |
| He doesn't need to be sticking his dick in broken women and saying this is somehow good for them. | |
| This is predatory and given your mental age damn close to pedophilia. | |
| This guy has the privilege of a wealthy upbringing. | |
| He has the privilege of money. | |
| He has the privilege of psychological expertise in the family. | |
| He should put a damn sight better used to it than trawling the internet for broken women that he could screw and dominate. | |
| And this is nothing to do with love. | |
| And this is everything to do with a tiny, tiny man who Trying to dominate the most broken people that he can find. | |
| This is vampirism. | |
| This is not affection. | |
| This is somebody who is so insecure and self-absent that the only way that he gets any sense of identity is by eating the emptiness of others and calling it some kind of relationship. | |
| This is predatory. | |
| This is vile. | |
| This is exploitive. | |
| This is disgusting. | |
| And this comes from a man with a psychological family who has access to all the resources, financial and knowledgeable and educational, to actually go out and fucking help people. | |
| Rather than saying, oh, there's a pretty damaged little girl. | |
| I guess I'll bring her home and have sex with me. | |
| And then I'll tell her, even though I know that her entire upbringing was about being dominated by assholes, I will say to her that she now needs to do absolutely everything I say. | |
| I'm going to put her in bed with vile neurotic 30-year-old drug addicts so I can satisfy my ridiculous penthouse cartoon-based lusts. | |
| I'm going to tell her, even though she was institutionalized unjustly, that she's crazy. | |
| I'm going to make her lie to my family. | |
| I'm going to lie to her family, to my family. | |
| I'm not going to inquire much about her history, except... | |
| Oh, you know the one thing I will do, Ashley, to find out about her history? | |
| I will ask her the things that will give me power over her. | |
| I will ask her exactly where it hurts and what hurt, so I know which buttons push to get her to control me. | |
| And I'm maybe three and a half steps up from that creepy fucking guy... | |
| In silence of the lambs, who lowers lotion down on a basket so that he can end up wearing the woman's skin. | |
| I will pray on the bodies left by the sole murderers of childhood. | |
| I will go through the battlefield. | |
| Although I am a doctor, I will go through the battlefield not to heal, but to pull gold teeth out of half-living people. | |
| Even though I have all the money I need, I just like the sound of them screaming. | |
| I will cut open their chests just to see if they have a pacemaker I can pillage and sell on eBay. | |
| I will open up their skin to see if they have any titanium rods or screws that I can pull out and sell as medical waste. | |
| That is the kind of person I am. | |
| When I find wounded people on a battlefield, I pull them apart for personal profit. | |
| I don't put them back together for the good of humanity. | |
| And it's packaged up as I wanted to rescue somebody and bring them up and help them. | |
| Yeah, the way that you rescue somebody who's been a victim of child abuse is you do the exact opposite of what the abusers did, which means that you treat them as equals, right? | |
| You don't do what the abusers did and call it healing, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Oh, is there one fingernail not pulled out? | |
| Now, let me get that for you, because I'm a healer. | |
| I didn't want to think it was that bad. | |
| I'm happy to hear otherwise. | |
| I'm telling you the way I see it. | |
| I'm not saying this is a philosophical proof. | |
| Right. | |
| I mean, because I've been around truly evil people. | |
| It's just... | |
| I mean, it makes perfect sense if somebody's going to take advantage or... | |
| Benefit from the doings of evil people that makes them just as evil. | |
| Yeah, he's like secondary evil parasite, right? | |
| He's a parasite on evil. | |
| You know, he's like the little stripey fish, the pilot fish that swim under the jaws of sharks, and when the sharks rip off someone's leg, he picks up the pieces as well. | |
| Right. | |
| He's like the guy who takes the wallet from the corpse that the hitman makes. | |
| Right. | |
| Right. | |
| But no, you don't take victims of childhood sexual abuse and force them to act out or pressure them to act out your erotic fantasies and have no sexual will of their own. | |
| That is unholy. | |
| It is absolutely unholy. | |
| You simply don't do that if you're an even remotely decent human being. | |
| I'm not trying to justify anything, but I did express an interest in these things. | |
| No, I get it. | |
| I get it. | |
| And you know, often an addict will say, you know, sometimes I miss heroin. | |
| That doesn't mean you put it in their fucking coffee. | |
| Right. | |
| I'm not saying that you are a mere victim. | |
| I'm not trying to strip away any agency. | |
| You've had choices, and you still have choices. | |
| I'm not trying to paint you as pure victim and, you know, the fainting damsel. | |
| I'm sure that this stuff has been sexually exciting for you. | |
| I'm sure it's been a turn-on. | |
| I'm sure you've had orgasms aplenty. | |
| And I'm not trying to sort of say that you're some mere victim. | |
| You can correct me if I'm wrong. | |
| It doesn't really matter. | |
| But the reality is that because of your history, you have a susceptibility. | |
| And he's absolutely aware of that. | |
| So you are, are you, I'm sorry, Yeah, go ahead. | |
| Okay. | |
| When you say he's absolutely aware, do you mean that he's actually thinking? | |
| Yeah. | |
| Oh, this is somebody I can take advantage of. | |
| This is somebody that can fulfill my needs and I can push these buttons. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| I have no doubt about that. | |
| Because you guys didn't meet by accident. | |
| Right. | |
| Right? | |
| Right. | |
| You met on a BDSM fetish site, right? | |
| Right. | |
| So he's looking for young, attractive women who come from this kind of history. | |
| I mean, why the hell would you end up on a website like that if you came from a happy, healthy background, right? | |
| Right. | |
| So this is the clear marker of women from extremely disturbed and dysfunctional background. | |
| And he's sitting there saying, oh, look at that. | |
| I can dangle some cash in front of these people and have sex with the ghosts of their abusers. | |
| It's a lot more grave of a situation than I gave it credit for. | |
| And this doesn't mean that you've got to go run into the night. | |
| And these are all my thoughts, right? | |
| I mean, I don't want you to then replace this guy's dominance with my dominance, right? | |
| Right. | |
| Right? | |
| Yeah. | |
| He doesn't beat you. | |
| He's not a drug addict, right? | |
| He's not on the run from the police. | |
| He's right. | |
| I mean, I think it's creepy and dominant. | |
| But he's not initiated force against you, right? | |
| Right. | |
| No force. | |
| No force, right? | |
| So you're not in a situation of imminent danger, and you have participated in this, so I'm trying to sort of jar you free by painting some vivid pictures of where I think this guy stands morally relative to a good man. | |
| But... | |
| This doesn't mean that you now have to go run into the night and end up with who knows what, right? | |
| Great. | |
| So you can switch therapists. | |
| You can talk to him about stuff. | |
| You can find a therapist who's got more experience in helping people with your kind of history in these kinds of relationships. | |
| Right. | |
| That's something I'm definitely looking into, finding a therapist that is more... | |
| Because I tried bringing up my history with my therapist and he didn't seem to have any, he didn't think it had any impact. | |
| He was more about dealing with the anxiety and yeah, it was more about coping with the feelings instead of trying to figure out what caused the feelings. | |
| Right. | |
| In other words, he was trying to talk you out of your feelings. | |
| Right. | |
| Like, you know, why would you feel anxiety? | |
| He was a mystic-y person. | |
| He had me drawing mandalas. | |
| Oh, Jungian. | |
| Right, right. | |
| Everything's happening for a reason. | |
| He's got something to teach you, blah, blah, blah. | |
| Right? | |
| Right, yeah. | |
| Yeah, so you might want to find a therapist who's got more experience with the effects of sexual abuse and intense instability in early family situations. | |
| And you can talk to him about some of this stuff, you know, and say, look, is there going to be any room in our relationship for a redefinition from master-slave to something approaching equality? | |
| Yeah. | |
| You know, if you want to have kids, you know, I think the least of his goddamn worries is being an old dad. | |
| God almighty. | |
| How about being a cult dad? | |
| It's pretty freaky, scary stuff. | |
| Yeah. | |
| So... | |
| Yeah, I mean, you're there by choice. | |
| He's not locked you in the basement. | |
| You're there by choice. | |
| And you have had some secondary gains from the relationship, sexual, intellectual, financial, in terms of stability. | |
| It's probably been great in a lot of ways. | |
| So it's not like this man is the demon and you must leave a wily coyote hole in the wall. | |
| Actually, I don't think anyone knows what that means anymore. | |
| I think those cartoons are way past it. | |
| Oh, no, we know. | |
| Okay, you know, yeah. | |
| So, yeah, I mean, I wouldn't want you to go running in your nightgown into the night, right? | |
| I mean, I'm just sort of saying this to jar you into denormalizing the situation that you're in. | |
| I'm not saying this because I think you've got to run like whatever, right? | |
| Right, right. | |
| So, enough of my ramblings. | |
| What are your thoughts and feelings about all this? | |
| First off, thank you very much for cutting through the bullshit and being honest about it. | |
| I mean, you're always honest, but it was very refreshing. | |
| You know, I can't help but feel like this is stuff that I really felt like I already knew, you know? | |
| But I just, like, I've... | |
| Not been able to trust myself for so long that I guess I felt like I needed a second validation before I would really accept it. | |
| Will you let us know how it goes? | |
| Yeah, definitely. | |
| I'm on FDR every day, so I'll be around. | |
| I appreciate your honesty. | |
| I appreciate your openness. | |
| Okay. | |
| I really do. | |
| I mean, you know, it's not easy to talk about this kind of stuff. | |
| And I really, really respect the strength that you've had to get where you are. | |
| Where you are is a better place in many ways than where you were, obviously, and certainly when you were as a kid. | |
| So that's progress. | |
| You know, I really want to sort of acknowledge that and respect you for that. | |
| I mean, you obviously have... | |
| A great mind and a great spirit. | |
| I dare say impossible to defeat in the long run, which is a great thing to have. | |
| And I hope you will keep us updated. | |
| And again, thank you so much for trusting us with your life. | |
| It was my pleasure. | |
| The story of your life. | |
| So thank you. | |
| What about my $50? | |
| You get your 50 bucks, absolutely. | |
| You can send it to your host, Haste. | |
| Absolutely. | |
| All right. | |
| You guys have a great night. | |
| Thank you very much. | |
| Appreciate it. | |
| No problem. | |
| Obviously, the router will have to refund us 51, but... | |
| Okay. | |
| No, Mike, was there anything you wanted to add? | |
| Just amazing bravery, Ashley. | |
| Just really want to compliment you on that amazing bravery. | |
| And thank you so much for calling in today. | |
| That was a fantastic call. | |
| Thank you guys for allowing me to share my story and Giving the feedback. | |
| It's immeasurable how much I appreciate it. | |
| Good stuff. | |
| Win-win. | |
| Hey, we like that. | |
| Win-win. | |
| All right. | |
| Good night, everybody. | |
| Good night. | |
| Thank you so much. | |
| Bye-bye. | |
| Oh, sorry, Mike. | |
| There was nothing else? | |
| No, that's it. | |
| I'm still in awe of that call. | |
| When people call into the show like that and really want to talk about important stuff and really work, I mean, those are the shows I love. | |
| Wait, you're saying we shouldn't get the first couple of callers back on the line? | |
| There wasn't quite the contrast. | |
| Actually, that won't make sense because I assume we're going to slice them out. | |
| But anyway, yes, of course. | |
| Thanks, everyone. | |
| FDLURL.com forward slash donate. | |
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