2741 Jailbreak from Propaganda Hell - Saturday Call In Show July 5th, 2014
How do you know where you blind spots are? How do I move forward in a relationship with somebody who has hurt me physically and emotionally? I’m married with two children, how do I avoid a divorce with my Alpha male husband? I’m escaping a toxic past filled with religious propaganda, isolation and abuse… what now?Also includes: Criminally incompetent at philosophy, the ritual spanking of Jesus, dancing with the dead, the drive to be a baby factory and the value of the Freedomain Radio community.
We had a caller drop-off at the last minute, so not as much of an Estrogen Fest, but we do have two female callers on the line.
So we're not technically outnumbered, is that right?
Well, with both of us, the two male callers, two female callers, we have them outnumbered two to one.
So, aha.
Patriarchy.
All right.
As long as we go by testicles, not eggs.
Okay.
Got it.
Is there any news and business that we need to talk about up front?
Oh, well, we could talk about the fact that we do have employee number three.
We do have another employee coming on.
That is entirely correct.
We do.
That is entirely correct.
Not many people know about our Steve Jobs resurrection project.
He's not smelling too good, but hopefully he can innovate or something of the sort.
I feel inspired often to leave the room.
But very, very inspired.
Very inspired.
But no, we have brought on, after much weeding and I guess sifting, we have brought on employee numero trois, which is I guess number three, which is completely fantastic and I'm completely thrilled.
I mean, he's really your fault.
That's how it goes.
So, I mean, please understand, for those listeners, when I say that it's Mike's fault, what I mean is that anything negative that occurs will be blamed on Mike, but I will take credit for all the positive stuff, but I'm sure that's no news for you.
But did you want to talk a little bit about the sort of process and how it came about?
Oh, yeah, sure.
We're able to work with him because people are donating, so let's give the feedback for the people who've helped out.
Oh, yeah.
For the longest time, it's like, hey, it'd be cool to bring someone else on.
There's so much stuff to do.
I originally came on and helped Steph because I saw he was completely overwhelmed.
We were friends, and it's like, hey, let me help you out, and wound up turning into a job.
And then it got to the point where the show grew quite a bit last year in terms of downloads, in terms of listeners, and it's like, wow, I've got so much to do.
And what did we do, I guess, since you, I mean, it's been, what, about a year, just a little under a year and a half?
Since you came on board and what sort of growth have we experienced?
Well, last year, I think I ran the numbers in January, and it was triple in downloads and video views.
Triple the size of the audience in those terms.
Right, so we've gotten 300% size over a year.
Just under a year and a half.
And that's fantastic.
And this is why, you know, people who invest in the show, people who donate to the show, FDRURL.com slash donate, are not donating into a static entity.
Like, your money is the gasoline that fuels the fire of philosophy.
That is the wrong metaphor for burning down the world.
Anyway, I mean, this is sort of what we're trying to do, is really, really grow the show.
It's not just, hey, down on a podcast, let's go to the beach.
But we're working fiendishly and fanatically, I dare say, to really grow the show.
And that's what's coming out of it.
Sorry, go ahead.
Well, we went down to Texas for the Texas Bitcoin Conference months ago, and we ended up stopping by the Alex Jones compound.
And all those people were really cool.
And I really liked the team that they had working with them.
I mean, he has like 50-some employees, and it's like a well-oiled machine of doing stuff.
And I saw it, and I was just like, I want a team.
We could do that.
I want that.
I think what you said was, I think you wanted to create a sanity, if I remember the phrase correctly, Mike, it was something like a sanity buffer between you and the host.
I think that was the phrase that you used, and, you know, obviously I can completely understand that.
I wish I could have one other than the various multiple personalities, some of whom are Sailor Moon characters, but we'll get into that another time.
So that really struck me.
It'd be great to have a team and the individual that's coming out.
I won't name his name.
We'll have him on the show in the near future to talk about things.
But he's someone who – we had an issue where the YouTube channel just disappeared not too long ago after Steph's big speech in Amsterdam.
And some people were concerned about, man, are all the videos backed up?
What happens if this happens again?
Of course, Google gave us no explanation as to what happened.
And he just took it upon himself to create this very cool app, programmed it himself from scratch, unsolicited, to enable us to categorize and pull the metadata and thumbnails and everything for all the videos we upload, which saved me a bunch of time.
I backed everything up, but it was nice to have this real automated process.
And I was like, wow, that was fantastic.
And then we ended up having a conversation a little later about what I was doing with the show.
And I had a project that I was not too enthralled with.
I was working on a presentation on net neutrality.
And it's one I've wanted to do for a while.
Oh, it was giving me headaches.
It's very technical.
And it was really tough.
And I'm just like, hey, would you be interested in doing this?
And he jumped on it like a monkey on a cupcake.
And he was very excited to do it.
And I think we had a fully formed presentation in like three days that was meticulously researched.
So you'll actually be seeing that coming out in the very near future, the truth about net neutrality.
And it's really interesting stuff.
And then we offered him to do like a presentation on immigration.
And really, he's such a self-starter and a go-getter that he built an enormous series of tunnels between Canada and Paraguay, which I find...
An unusual combination, but we appreciate that kind of initiative in the show.
He's actually the person responsible for the Che Guevara presentation as well, and he's doing some really awesome stuff.
So he's going to pretty much be on, and right now we're looking at him as being a full-time researcher so we can churn out even more quality presentations at a higher volume than we have been, which those are what act as the advertising for the show.
They get most of our video views on YouTube, and that's how a lot of people end up finding the show is through the Truth About series and those kind of things.
So we're just going to have more of what works.
More quality research, more quality presentations, and really try and be the go-to source for any type of major news story that's going on.
And now having a third person is really going to give us more ability to do that, and it won't involve me working 90-hour weeks when something like the Elliot Rogers situation happens to make that.
Yeah, so, I mean, obviously people can clearly understand that most of this is driven by Mike's laziness.
Unrepentant laziness.
And his abandonment of the Protestant values that...
No, and I would say that of the people we've worked with, he's the one who's been the least bitey when stuffing him into the bunker.
And I obviously appreciate that because those wounds are hard to mask in shirtless videos.
Oh my goodness, it's a mask.
Yeah, that's right.
So obviously, thank you so much to our new friend who we hope will, you know, we want to make this a career, like be around for the long term.
I hope that he can work here for the next 40 years.
I'd be completely thrilled.
And grow with the organization.
And so, yeah, we are really expanding.
It is, of course, thanks to you, the donors.
Something to be proud of.
Something to be proud of.
You may get asked in the future, what did you do to help birth the third wave of philosophy on the world?
And you'd be like, well...
I counted a few Facebook comments.
Not massively heroic, but if you do help support the show, you know, we promise, we promise, we promise to take your money and to use it to expand and to grow.
And fortunately, I have many years of management experience in growing companies, so it really does help.
Mike, of course, is an absolute joy to work with, and our new fellow is also...
Wonderful to work with, and we're all kind of on the same page, so thanks again.
And listen, as we've always said, if you can find a way to help us grow the show, this dream, too, can be yours.
It worked out for me, and now it's working out for someone else.
And yeah, I mean, anyone out there who is not presently a donator, if you want to chip in, expenses certainly are going up with the addition of a third person.
The subscriptions are incredibly helpful.
Incredibly helpful.
It helps us do some budgeting, know what we have to work with, know how quickly we can grow things.
And, you know, for $0.16 a day, this sounds like some Somalia feed a child commercial, but for $0.16 a day, a $5 subscription.
$0.32 a day, a $10 subscription.
If it winds up being $0.64 a day, it's a $20 gold subscription.
$1.61 a day!
That's less than you put in the vending machine at work if you do that kind of thing.
That's the Philosopher King $50 a month subscription.
And the $100 a month subscription works out to $3.22 a day.
And those are the people that, I mean, oh my, thank you so much, thank you so much, thank you so much.
But all the subscribers, you get tons of bonus content.
We got lots of bonus podcasts that you get for signing up as a subscriber.
And that is like the backbone of the show as far as helping us grow, plan, and try and spread the good word of philosophy as far as...
Yeah, it's possible.
So thank you, everyone.
And an alternative way to consider donating.
So, you know, if you're just going to do a one-time donation, which is, of course, appreciated as well, push the 9 key and hold it down for as many seconds as you are old in milliseconds, let's say.
And then just before you have any chance to reconsider or think in any way, shape, or form, click...
Confirm.
And that's another alternative approach.
So, all right.
Is there anything else you wanted to add?
No, that's pretty much it.
But I am incredibly excited to have someone else to work with who's really passionate, excited about philosophy, and is going to have a lot of great stuff to offer.
I know how hard I worked at the beginning, and it's nice now to...
Not have to look forward to 90-hour weeks if something big happens.
So it's nice to have the health.
This is really in the nature of an exorcism, right?
So there's a demon of hysterical overwork that I cast into you, and then you have to live with that demon until you can find some other human receptacle to cast that demon into, and then he'll get burnt out and then find another victim slash employee.
Well, potato, potato.
It's like the movie Thinner.
I'm going to put it into a pie next, and someone's going to eat it, and it's going to be a whole travesty, but...
Right.
And then what we'll do is we'll get him to work on a refutation of the Marxist theory of labor exploitation, and he will get extremely passionate about it and firebomb the mothership.
Anyway, so...
But thanks, everyone.
Thank you.
It's great.
Great to have the more people on board.
It's great.
It's really going to add to the quality of the show.
I am hungry for new material to present, and we've got some fascinating, fascinating...
We are going to do The Truth About Ayn Rand, which I'm really looking forward to.
And great stuff.
Great stuff coming up.
So thanks everyone so much.
Now, should we move on to the meat and gist and bone marrow of the matter, the callers tonight?
Sounds good to me.
Up first is Robert.
And Robert wrote in and said, because of the distorted nature of culture we are a merchant, it's safe to say that I may have been played by the system in many areas of my life.
If that's true, how can one best discover where they still may be blindsided, duped, chumped, still in the dark?
Well, that sounds like an open container for me to pour whatever rant is currently circulating the old frontal lobes into it.
Let me interpret what you mean and go with my own agenda.
Yeah, so I'd like to zero in on that a tad more, if you don't mind, Mr.
Bobby.
Thanks for having me on.
It's really exciting.
I know it was a pretty broad question, and it was difficult for me to boil it down specifically.
But what I mean to say, I guess, in another way is that I'm just sitting down and thinking about All the different areas of my life that I've had to solve problems.
If you had to – if I had to boil it down, it would be just distortions that I've inherited either intentionally or unintentionally from just learning from other people in the culture that I've emerged in.
You know, you have to have a college degree to get a job, or you're bad at math because you're just not good at learning it, or all the good girlfriends are taken, just like loads and loads and loads of stuff like that.
And instead of waiting for a crisis to occur and then having to backtrack and wipe the dry erase board clean and start with basic premises, wouldn't it be nice if we kind of sorted that out from the beginning, you know?
Right, right.
I assume that everything is a lie until proven otherwise.
That's, you know, my sort of nuclear strike on culture is bullshit until it smells not like bullshit, you know?
And I got a pretty keen nose by now.
So, I mean, most thoughts are put forward for specific advantage, right?
For people who So, why do you have to have a college degree?
Who's telling you that?
Well, I mean, obviously this comes out from colleges a lot.
And of course it comes out from government funding, right?
Why do government want people to go into colleges?
Because colleges, particularly in the arts, are a great way of neutering anybody who might question the system.
So you want to try and rope in the smartest people around because they may actually end up questioning the system or provoking questioning of the system and so on.
So you want to rope those people in as much as humanly possible.
And the best way to do that is to bribe them into compliance.
And the way that you do that is offering fantastic benefits to academics.
And that draws everyone in to be a compromist or if they fail, they're stuck with so much debt that they can't think about it.
Bucking the system and so on.
Of course, everyone who's got those degrees, a lot of people who end up as managers came through the degree system, and so they don't want to say, well, I guess you don't need a degree if you're really talented.
But, of course, if you look at the IT field, how many of the top people in IT have PhDs in computer science?
Well, I would say almost none.
None that I can think of.
I'm sure there's a few.
But...
Yeah, so just look for a specific advantage and you can find why are people motivated to pursue a particular topic, right?
So it's always the question, why is someone saying this?
Why is someone invested in this?
Why are they even interested in this topic or fact at all?
And you can usually find the answer fairly quickly, but I just assume that everyone is trying to manipulate me for profit, you know, until I sort of hear otherwise.
And the hearing otherwise can be very quick.
But that's just generally my fortress of skepticism, if that makes sense.
But go ahead.
Fair enough.
I mean, I track along with what you're saying.
I guess it was more of almost a...
How can I say this?
Isn't it a shame that, at least for me, that I have to go through the agony or the pain of confusion and failure in order to go, wait a minute, and step back and say, let's do this again?
Because I've just spent so many decades...
I'm unhypnotizing myself from just a bunch of nonsense, you know?
And I'm thinking, what else is left here, you know?
Because, you know what I mean?
I mean, of course, you know, there's map territory distortions and things like that.
And you get down into like, you know...
Transformational grammar, and you can get so deep, and it's like, well, wait a minute, what's this got to do with getting what I want and having a successful life?
So I don't want to track too far down there, but in the end, it's about just being better at what I do and being more successful in life and being happy and giving something back.
So what I'm thinking about, I'm pretty goal-oriented, but I'll step back and I'll even question why I want the goals that I want and things like that.
For example, I've wasted a lot of time chasing estrogen-based parasites and things like that.
So it affects all areas of my life and of course everybody else's.
So wouldn't it be nice if you could just have some breakthrough and you could just all the pieces of the puzzle just lock into place that you need to know, right?
Well, I think it's just about having respect for the knowledge that you've acquired.
I mean, let's say that you become an expert.
You spend 20 years studying Byzantine art, right?
Now, you would not expect people you meet to be experts in Byzantine art, right?
Right.
Right, so that to me is pretty foundational.
So I spent 30 years studying philosophy, so when I meet people...
I simply assume and that's just respect for the knowledge that I've acquired.
I wasn't born brain damaged or with some sort of horrible physical defect or deformity or incapacity and I have spent 30 years trying to muscle and lever and physiotherapy myself back into a state of normality, right?
Right.
I have become deeply learned and wise in philosophy.
Certainly not perfect, but very learned in philosophy.
And the vast majority of people have not spent 30 years and 40,000 hours studying philosophy.
They think they have.
I mean, the one difference, of course, is that if you study Byzantine art, Then most people, if stuck next to you at a dinner table, will say, I know nothing about Byzantine art, right?
And so at least their lack of knowledge will be clear to them, right?
But that's different with philosophy because philosophy is one of these disciplines, sort of like economics, where every asshat with a rodeo lasso thinks that they are really, really, really great at it, right?
They do.
I mean, they really think they know what truth and virtue and reality is or isn't and so on, you know, because they've watched Inception or something.
They think they have some grand knowledge or vision.
And if you have respect for the knowledge and wisdom that you have accumulated through your study of truth and reason and virtue and evidence and all that, then you have become an expert.
Now, a physicist is known as an expert.
If I have a...
Huge degree or some massive accomplishment in physics, then everyone says, dude, that guy's a physicist.
He's really good at physics, you know?
That doesn't mean that you defer.
As Richard Feynman said, science is basically skepticism in all authorities, including scientists.
Yeah.
But there is a category called physicist which people recognize and defer to, right?
There's no category called philosopher that people recognize and defer to, right?
I mean, when was the last time when some moral question came up in society and all the news directors were like, damn it, Jim, let's get a philosopher on the set.
Nobody else will do, right?
I mean, if you have some big question about physics, then you get your physicist on the set, right?
If you get some big question about art, you get your art expert on the set.
But...
People are so bad at philosophy, they don't even know that they're bad at philosophy.
They haven't accumulated the humility of the rational consequences of applied ignorance.
They spent all this time playing Candy Crush and watching Seinfeld reruns, which makes them better at Candy Crush and Seinfeld than I am, but they have not spent that time studying philosophy.
And one of the reasons...
They haven't spent time studying philosophy if they already think they're an expert.
I don't take walking lessons or how to go bald lessons, right?
I mean, I've already got that down.
Thank you very much.
And so people already think that they're experts, so why would they...
Why would they study something that they're already an expert in?
And it is very humbling and humiliating for people who are actually good at something to assert their expertise.
People find that upsetting and scary, and you're saying to people, well, this essential discipline that you think you know something about, you don't know anything about.
And this was Socrates' pursuit of the sophists 2,500 years ago, and it's my pursuit of...
The villains of false confidence in the here and now.
People who think they're really good at something which is essential and they say is essential and everybody knows that virtue and philosophy is essential.
When their ignorance is revealed they get very hostile because philosophy is one of the few disciplines where people make fundamental and major life decisions.
And inflict coercion and support violence and so on based upon their understanding of what is moral and good.
The welfare state is moral, right?
National defense is good.
Without the government, we'd be, right, taxes are the price we pay to live in a civilized society.
I must hit my children, right?
So children should be put in government schools.
Government schools must be paid for by property taxes.
We must tax the rich.
We should, right, help whatever minorities, right?
I mean, these are huge decisions that people make.
Without having a clue what is goodness, what is truth, what is virtue.
And when you point that out, Not a huge number of people make massive decisions based upon a personal interpretation of physics, right?
Those who do, right, fire is my friend, tend not to be around for too long.
I can fly, right?
And those people are obviously insane, but people make massive decisions based upon their perceived understanding of philosophy, particularly moral philosophy, about which they know less than nothing, right?
Knowing nothing is fine.
I know nothing about Byzantine art.
Nothing wrong with that.
But I know that I know nothing about Byzantine art.
I don't pretend otherwise.
And I don't vote and run a museum dedicated to Byzantine art and all that.
I know that I don't.
So really having respect for your own expertise and recognizing that most people are criminally, literally criminally incompetent at philosophy...
In other words, their incompetence leads to criminal actions on the part of the state, on the part of foreign policy.
Human beings are criminally incompetent at philosophy and don't know it and believe that their criminal incompetence is stellar and deeply wise and knowledgeable virtue.
Recognizing that and having respect for the information that you have gathered in your course of studying wisdom is really, really important.
That's sort of my best advice for staying sane in a crazy world.
That was brilliant.
So I guess the question is that I asked myself then is like, where am I assuming that I'm good at and I'm not, but I don't know it?
See, that's the next level.
And that's a hard thing to discern, you know?
Right.
I mean the obvious stuff, like I'm not good at physics and things like that, but what I mean is hidden assumptions.
I mean most of the things that I – the concepts I'm referring to are just daily life things, going to Safeway, going to 7-Eleven.
How should I talk to the girls?
Should I go out with this person?
Should I apply for this job?
I mean should I – what – Well, hang on, hang on, hang on.
It's a street level.
I think you might be putting different sized things in the same bag, right?
I do that.
So going to Safeway, how do you talk to someone at Safeway versus should I apply for this job, right?
Those are very different categories.
Sure.
I guess I'm trying to – I'm allegorically illustrating just street level stuff.
I mean what I mean to say is there's been so many obvious aha moments.
In my life that I had known, if I had known before, it would have saved me a lot of pain.
Just in day-to-day living and obvious things.
Right.
Well, okay, so my question is, when you have a major life decision to make, then what do you do?
How do you approach it?
Let's say you're thinking of applying for a job in a different field or something like that, right?
Right, yeah.
Well, first I wonder why I want it, and then I'll sit down and say, what do I know about it?
And then I'll check my premises about what do I think it really is, and what will I really be doing, etc., etc.
I mean, we all have a certain degree of that level of skill to be able to do that.
But what I'm wondering is, I've always had, this is a little bit more personal, I've always had a feeling.
Well, since I was in about fifth grade, that everybody knew something that was really important about life that they didn't tell me.
Right.
Yeah, that's a defense mechanism, which makes you say, well, the driving seems crazy, but I'm sure that's a method to his madness because I'm strapped and tied up in the...
In the trunk of the car.
So I'm sure there's...
Right.
Feeling that there's somehow a method to society's madness is simply a way that we don't wake up screaming every five minutes when living in a society that's currently running the world, right?
I mean, there must be some method in this madness is a defense mechanism when you're in an obviously insane society.
And you'll often try and picket tea leaves for evidence of sanity and so on.
So yeah, people, you know...
It can't be this crazy.
There must be something they know that I don't.
It's not the case.
I mean, people are retarded about society and about virtue and aggressively.
There's no idiot like an aggressive idiot because it's one thing to be an idiot and say, I don't know.
It's another thing to vigorously assert that you know something you don't.
That is kindling for the world's fire.
So, yeah, there is that sense, of course, that people know more than they're letting on, but I don't think I'm going to go to my grave never knowing that secret, because I don't think there is any of that.
Right.
Yeah.
So, what about asking people, right?
Asking people?
Yeah, I mean, do you have people in your life?
Did I hear you correctly?
No, no, I apologize.
No, it's fine.
But do you have people in your life that you can run through your decisions with, right?
You know, I did.
I did.
I don't know if you probably read my response, the survey that I sent back.
But I had one best friend for a long time.
One.
And he was very bright, and he passed away recently, and it's been really weird since then.
So I guess that's also compelling me to ask somebody else.
But no, I don't have any peers that are at all right now that are a foil for me right now.
Do you have any way of finding anybody new?
I'm working on that, yeah.
Yeah, I mean, that's key.
Yeah, that's key because we all have blind spots, but the good news, we don't all have the same blind spots.
Right.
Right?
So, you know, I asked, I was just yesterday asking Mike, we spent an hour chatting about my proposed action in the face of a particular situation, and I think he talked me out of my initial reaction.
We ended up with something that I think was a good compromise.
I would not have come to that on my own, right?
Because we have These grooves in our head, right?
And not the delight kind of groovers in the hall stuff.
Like we have these grooves in our head, which we tend to fall into, right?
The well-trod paths of circular reasoning or non-reasoning, as the case may be.
And we need other people to jump our tracks, to jump us out of our train tracks.
And I find that if I merely ruminate myself about my course of action...
I will invariably make mistakes, because I can't see what I can't see.
Now the people is blinding the obvious, what I can't see, but I can't.
It's my blind spot, and I can help other people with their blind spots and so on, right?
So I think that stuff is pretty important.
So I would say really try and work to keep people in your life or find people in your life.
I mean, if you've been studying philosophy and you've been studying self-knowledge, then you have a lot to offer like-minded people or Minded people, as I like to say.
So I would really focus on that.
And then if you have studied the principles, like if you've got a life decision coming up, if you've studied your principles and what you're doing is in accordance with your principles...
If you have checked your skepticism, right?
Because other people want to disarm us of skepticism in the same way that bank robbers want to disable security systems, right?
In order to exploit us, other people want to rob us of our skepticism and whirl us up in crowd, borg, unthinking hysteria, right?
It's the 4th of July.
Cheer!
Right?
And, you know, you're on this sports team.
Cheer!
You know...
And so people will always want to disarm us of our skepticism.
It's the first ninja move of nimble-fingered exploitation.
And so if you check your skepticism, you check your principles, and you talk it over with people that you trust and get their feedback.
It doesn't mean you won't make any mistakes.
But at some point, you have to act, right?
And we don't want skepticism to become paralysis because that's another way in which bad people win, right?
They either overrun your skepticism or provoke your skepticism to the point where you become a statue of infinitely, excruciatingly slow contemplation and inaction.
So, you know, you check your principles.
You check your skepticism.
You check with those who care about you for blind spots.
And then you act and you monitor the results.
Right.
That's what I was looking for.
I mean, that's a really good heuristic.
I was wondering how you were going to put that.
So...
Brilliant.
And look, I mean, this show is a resource for that, right?
If you are between friends, right?
Then if you have a big major decision calling in, you know, give us a shout.
We're happy to help.
I mean, it's instructive for you.
It's instructive for other people.
It's certainly what I really enjoy in these conversations.
So feel free to give it a shot.
Yes, and I have to say, I've been waiting, but your show is so incredibly valuable.
I really sit down and think about what you guys are doing, and I'm just so pleased with what you guys are doing, and I turn everybody on.
To it that I know, even if they hate me, which is actually kind of amusing, because it does happen once in a while.
And I go, okay, well, that's good.
So yeah, I'm constantly pimping out Free Domain Radio, as they say.
I really, really appreciate what you guys do.
I really do.
I think the most powerful...
I discovered Free Domain Radio by Googling the phrase, countries don't exist.
Because I came – because my girlfriend and I were sitting down and we were meditating on abstractions and we were really – because she's a skeptic as well.
And we were really digging deep and it's like if you were to step back as an alien and look at that kind of thing.
And so there it was.
And I was like, wow.
But it's like one of the most difficult – I'm sure you know.
Besides denormalizing abuse, just getting people to see that countries are just made up.
They work to a certain extent, but it's like there are no lines, you know.
On the map.
It could have been anything.
It could have been Oz.
It could have been Narnia.
It could have been Middle Earth.
It doesn't matter.
I've got some cohorts and peers that are not stupid and they look at me like they're from Mars.
It's so shocking to them.
Well, that's an insult to Mars.
I hear what you're saying.
I remember working on a Dungeons& Dragons map of a fantasy world that I was creating.
I was looking for names.
The guy who wrote Conan came up with Iranistan or something like that and then killed himself because He was upset that his mother died.
Anyway, I guess sometimes hyper-muscled guys can be a reaction formation to a bit of an overgrown mama's boy.
But I was working on this and I had a map open of...
A geographical map, right?
And I was sort of looking at the map that I was creating of a fictional world and looking at the map of the real world, and I'm like, you know what?
Actually, I think these are both just fantasy maps.
I think this is both just a made-up universe of imaginary lines.
There's no particular reality to one versus the other in terms of their existence in the world.
Anyway, so...
Listen, is there anything else you wanted to touch on right now?
No, not at all.
I just really enjoyed talking to you, and I really appreciate what you guys are doing.
Thank you so much.
Well, thank you very much, and give us a shout if there's anything we can do to help, and thank you so much for your enthusiasm for the show and for sharing it.
I appreciate that.
And, you know, as far as people disliking what you do, you know, I just read this study today, and I'm going to talk about it.
I'm doing a couple of Peter Schiff shows later this week, and I read this study today that, you know, for those who don't know, Milgram's experiment, where he was trying to—it was shortly after Adolf Eichmann, one of the Nazi leaders— And the majority
of people ended up just dialing it up.
Now this experiment was redone recently, but they studied people for eight months beforehand to get a sense of their personality types, and they found that the people who registered as the nicest and the most agreeable people were the ones who dialed up the fatal electrical shocks the most.
Agreeableness is a virus.
It is a pathological virus.
Disagreeableness, those people who were marked high, On what are generally called antisocial disorders, who were disagreeable, who were cantankerous, who were oppositional.
Those people had a goddamn conscience and at much lower rates were willing to kill citizens on the order of somebody supposedly in power who simply had a bleached coat.
Ooh!
The bleached coat of moral forgiveness.
I can do anything that that coat says.
It's magic.
And, you know, Joseph had a coat of many colors.
Evildoers have a coat of one color, which, you know, pretend evildoers in this situation.
And so, agreeableness is promoted in society because agreeableness promotes the agendas of evil rulers.
Have friends, be agreeable, be liked.
This is just politico speak for conform and obey.
People who are agreeable scientifically tend to enact the orders.
They tend to enact the orders of those in power.
And those who are disagreeable tend not to.
So whenever you see someone who is highly popular and who is very agreeable and nobody dislikes...
This person is a Nazi just waiting for the right person to give them orders in general.
And those people who are disagreeable, whose psychologists will say, well, this person has antisocial.
What it means is that they will actually save the lives of people rather than kill them because somebody wants them to.
So agreeableness is a pathology.
To be profoundly adapted to an insane society is not a mark of sanity.
it's simply a mark of convenience to the rulers which is why antisocial is considered negative and prosocial is considered positive because it makes people very easy to rule so yeah, be disagreeable, be disliked that is the future and the lives that you will save well thank you that's brilliant mate Well, thanks very much.
And Mike, who do we have on with the nextness?
Alright, up next is Michelle.
Michelle wrote in and said, How do I move forward in my relationships with people that I am close to, but have hurt me physically or emotionally?
Hmm.
I'm afraid you've tripped over the midnight wire of my landmine of inconsistency just in that very sentence, Michelle.
Do you know what I might be tripping over?
Hi.
Hi.
How are you?
I'm well.
How are you doing?
I am well.
So I tripped over your landmine.
Yeah, you tripped a landmine of mine of inconsistency.
Do you know what that might be?
I do.
That's my struggle.
What is it that made me go click?
The desire to want to be in a relationship with anyone that would hurt me.
Well, yes, I mean, that's one thing, but even self-contained, but in the statement, you said people I'm close to who've hurt me physically and emotionally.
Now, I would argue that if somebody is close to you, they can't really hurt you physically and emotionally.
Hmm.
Right?
That's a mischaracterization, I would argue, up front, right?
Well, I'm referring specifically to my mom.
You say that like that changes the equation.
Oh, your mom!
Oh, well, that changes the principle completely, right?
No, I mean, why would it be any different with your mom?
Even more so with your mom, I would assume, right?
So how has your mom hurt you?
Michelle, what's happened?
In the last few months, she's like punched me and hit me like in public for Something I've said to her, which she misinterpreted.
One was an interesting situation where I just asked her to turn the television off, because my brother was here with my nephew.
And it was a sweet moment, and I just asked her if she wanted to turn the TV off.
And she didn't say no, she just went into an explanation of how she'd spent...
I had enough time with him already in the day and she started telling me that I wasn't allowed to tell her what to do as far as how she should pay attention to her grandson.
My intention was to only invite her to look at my brother rubbing baby lotion on this beautiful child and just be involved in the moment.
So I reached for the television remote because I said, if you want to have this conversation, you should absolutely turn the TV off.
And she reached out and dead-punched me in the arm twice in front of my brother and my nephew, and I was taken aback.
So I think that was probably within the last six months or so.
Like in April, let's see, the end of April, I was out to lunch with her and the rest of my family.
My sister and her fiance were in town and my mom was, she's overweight and we were sitting at a high top table and she was struggling to sit up on her chair and she backed into the stroller, woke the baby up and my brother was upset and walked outside and I noticed she was struggling and I went to help her up on her chair.
And she's self-deprecating, you know, out loud to me, like, oh, you know, whatever.
And I whispered in her ear, I said, don't make yourself a spectacle.
And she punched me on the side of the head, you know, I was right next to her head, and she closed fist, hit me right in the ear.
And I sort of, you know, I hopped her onto her chair, I walked away, and I looked over at her, and I said, what just happened?
And she told me that she heard me say, fuck you, you spectacle.
And I was just like, wow, you know, she has an interpretation of what I'm trying to say, regardless of what I'm actually trying to say.
If she's even telling the truth about what she heard, right?
Right.
And so my question is that I know that I'm not close to her because she has built wall after wall after wall.
And the reason she thinks I'm such an asshole and that I hate her so much, I'm trying to attack her is because, I mean, you can hear it in my voice.
I have a great amount of passion for...
Enjoying life.
And I know that she is an amazing person despite her circumstances.
She's self-deprecating and negative and toxic.
And my struggle is that...
Sorry, sorry.
Hang on, hang on.
I love her so very much.
Wait, wait, wait.
Too much.
I could go forever.
Please stop.
Yeah, no, no.
I appreciate this.
It's important.
All right.
So I appreciate you sharing all of this.
Now...
Your mother hitting you in the arm and in the side of the head.
I'm curious why you felt the need to tell me the circumstances.
I'm not saying you shouldn't have or should have.
I'm just curious why you felt the need to tell me the circumstances.
I'm obsessive about details.
No, no, no, that's not an answer.
Is it?
It's not?
No, that's not because I'm saying why you're interested in telling me the answer and you're saying because I'm obsessive, which is saying I'm super interested.
That doesn't tell me why you're interested.
I guess I don't know.
I mean, I would like to know.
I would like to know why I care more about her than I do about myself.
I didn't say that.
No, no, no.
You're rushing off again.
You're rushing off again.
So just take a deep breath because we have to take this stuff slowly, right?
Okay.
Because if we go too fast, what we end up is in story time, which is stuff you've told people a bunch of times before or told yourself a bunch of times before, and we don't get to the emotions if we go too fast, all right?
Okay.
But we don't actually have...
Like, if you imagine watching, I don't know, Shadowlands or some movie that's emotionally deep at eight times the speed, you won't end up feeling anything, right?
It would just be vaguely comedic and no content, right?
So we have to slow down tragedy in order to not view it as comedy.
Does that make any sense?
Yeah, definitely.
All right.
All right.
So...
The reason why I think...
That you needed to give me the circumstances of the hitting was because for some reason you thought that just saying your mother hit you was not enough.
Right, so when you say your mother hit you, I don't need any circumstances.
That's appalling, and there is no circumstance under which...
Right.
Right?
I mean, unless you're coming at her with a chainsaw or whatever, right?
But that's not right.
Right.
So, the interesting thing is that by giving me the circumstances, you're implicitly telling me that if the circumstances weren't that way, your mother would be justified.
Like, my mother hit me, and she was unjustified because of these circumstances.
But in a weird way, that's telling me that there are circumstances under which your mother hitting you would be justified.
Yeah.
I mean, that's...
Can you think of any situation under which your mother hitting you would be justified?
No, absolutely not.
Right, so what that means is...
So what that means is, sorry, this is not the first time you've told this story, obviously, and it's not a complaint or anything, it's just an observation.
Mm-hmm.
So, if you tell people around you that your mother hit you, what will they say?
What do they say?
Well, my best friend says, get the fuck out of there.
Plain and simple.
She's not your problem.
And it's simple.
Anyone else?
It's blunt.
It's the same thing.
Yeah, she's never going to change.
Love and tolerance is one thing, but, like, remove yourself from the situation.
She's never going to change.
Okay.
Anyone else?
My sister tells me that I'm a bitch and that I'm rude to my mother.
So she's...
Go on.
And then my brother tells me that he doesn't even know why I try.
He doesn't know why I bother at all.
Does your brother have anything to do with your mother?
Yeah.
Yeah, he's over here all the time.
He's a single dad and I have been helping him raise his child and...
Because my parents are...
Wait, wait, wait.
Sorry.
Does he say that your mother is like a bad person for hitting you and you can't change her?
His statement is she's a lost cause.
Okay, but a lost cause like what?
Like me becoming...
A prima ballerina for the New York Ballet Company is a lost cause, but that doesn't mean that it's an evil situation, right?
Does he know that your mom hit you?
Yeah, he was sitting right there.
He was sitting right there.
Okay.
So does your brother believe that your mother is a lost cause morally?
Yeah.
Absolutely.
Right.
So then why is he over and why is he exposing his child to this kind of person?
You know, there's a situation less than two weeks ago where I was talking to her about something and our voices were raising and my nephew was running around at my feet and my brother just came in and grabbed his kid and just left.
He said, I won't expose him to that anymore.
So he's not going back over?
Well...
I mean, he will be back over.
Why?
This is my huge...
I feel just disgusted inside.
It's my huge conundrum because I've listened to you talk to people about how can you love someone who hurts you?
And I'm really struggling with that right now because...
I don't know how I could love someone who hurts me.
I mean, I constantly am being invalidated.
Like, my feelings and my experiences are being invalidated when I'm talking to my mom about these things.
You mean by your mom or by your siblings or all?
Mostly by my mom.
I don't really talk to my siblings about this stuff anymore.
You got more emotional about your siblings, Michelle, than you did about your mom.
Yeah, they mean more to me.
Well, okay, okay, okay.
But again, here's where we need to slow down, right?
Okay.
So if you say that your mom is abusive, and obviously I'm going to assume that this is not the first time she's done things physically or emotionally harmful to you and blamed you for it.
So if your mom is an abusive human being and a violent human being, then What your siblings think is very important.
Right.
And what they do is very important, right?
Do your siblings...
I guess your brother does.
He recognizes that your mother is a moral lust cause, which means that she's irredeemably abusive in general, right?
If I understand what he's saying correctly.
Yes.
She's not going to change, right?
No.
Okay, but he's like, yes, but I'm going to bring my child over on a regular basis.
Well, you know, it's because I'm here, and I watch the kid for him.
But, yeah.
You can't go to his house?
No, I do.
It's, I mean...
Oh, so you're part of the people who are exposing a child to this person.
Unfortunately, I have been...
There goes another click for me, Michelle.
Okay.
I mean, this is why I wanted to talk to you because I feel that I have a lot of misconceptions about what is appropriate and what is not because of the way that my parents have raised us.
And going back to what my siblings...
Look, I'm going to grant you intelligence.
I assume all my listeners are very intelligent.
I just, I do.
Because you are.
Nobody listens to this show.
Who's of average intelligence?
It just doesn't work, right?
So, what misconceptions could there be?
Do you mean on my part?
Yeah.
You said you have lots of misperceptions or misconceptions about your mother or about your family situation.
She hits you and blames you, right?
Has she hit you or blamed you throughout your life?
Yes.
And I've seen her do it.
Has she verbally abused you throughout her life?
Yes.
Was she a fun mom to be around when you were growing up?
Yeah, she was.
I mean, they homeschooled us.
They let us do so many very wonderful things.
And I know that that's not justification for any of the behavior, but they're...
They're in their 60s, and they're Catholic, and they're of the parents who raised them to be seen and not heard.
I addressed that with my mother and I've said, you know, like, this cycle of abuse didn't start with you, but I would really like to end it here because our family is very important to me and we have functioned long enough and we've enjoyed each other very much and we still have so much life to live.
What can we do about this?
Do you want to contribute?
Like, should I even bother or should I just get out and go live my own life and deal with all of this shit when you die?
And that's where I'm at right now.
It's like, I feel like she's incredibly toxic in my life.
And I just don't have time for that shit.
Because it's emotional.
Wait, okay.
Look, I mean, God, Michelle, you're like one of these medieval torture devices that pulls people apart with a horse tied to each limb.
If you don't mind me carrying me that as a joke, right?
I'm angry.
Because you say she was physically, emotionally, and verbally abusive, but a great, fond mom.
I mean, that's a misconception, I guess, that maybe I lied to myself.
I don't know.
Well, what you're saying is that somebody, okay, so let me say, if I was a woman and I said, my husband hits me, he yells at me, he puts me down, he insults me, he verbally abuses me, but he's super fun.
I mean, can they not be both?
I mean, people are multifaceted.
Can she not have a great sense of humor and also be a bitch?
I mean, that's where I'm at.
I know that it's fucked up.
Like, it's fucking me up.
Oh, yeah.
Look, somebody can have a great sense of humor and be incredibly dysfunctional.
Look at 99% of comedians.
Not you, Jo.
Right.
Right?
But, no, people can be incredibly messed up and be incredibly funny.
Oh, I got it.
But the difference is that you're not an audience member, right?
Joan Crawford, the mom from hell, was not a movie star to her children, right?
She was just hell on wheels, right?
She wasn't glamorous, right?
So can she have moments of fun while being abusive?
Sure, but so what?
My mom could be fun sometimes as well.
So what?
I mean, an abuser is not someone who is abusive 24-7, right?
That would be an unreasonable and manipulative standard to have, right?
For something to poison, like for a dish to poison you, it doesn't have to be 100% poison.
In fact, if it's 100% poison, it won't poison you because it'll smell like crap usually, right?
And there won't be any food there.
There'll just be a lake of bubbling, whatever, right?
So for food to poison you, it has to taste good and have the minimum amount of poison that will do you damage but not taste bad, right?
So, of course, if somebody really wants to harm you, then being 100% unrelentingly abusive is not going to achieve their goal, right?
Of course.
So, in the movie, or the play, originally Streetcar Named Desire, Stanley Kowalski is abusive towards his wife, and then he leaves after hitting her, and then he's back.
Wailing and crying and like a little baby.
Then she has all the power and then they have erotic monkey-based makeup sex, right?
So he exercises brutal power over her.
He then comes back completely submissive and, you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
And so, yeah, he's, I mean, all abusers buy flowers if they've got any brains in their evil at all, right?
Yeah.
But it's the presence of poison, not the presence of food, that counts as to whether you're poisoned, right?
Yeah.
And of course the whole point of hitting someone If I go off and, I don't know, punch Aaron Pizzi, right?
Is my defense while I spent 47 years not punching Aaron Pizzi?
I mean, is she trying to show me that she has the power?
I don't know why you care.
I don't know why I care.
Tell me, what does it matter?
What does it matter why?
Let's say you're in a concentration camp, right?
And you find out that the concentration camp guard had a really bad childhood.
Does that get you out of the concentration camp?
Nope.
Does that mean the beatings are any less painful?
Nope.
What does it matter?
What the motives are?
First of all, you'll never know.
I mean, I guarantee you, with regards to the motives of abusive people, you will never know.
Because abusers are liars.
Yeah.
That's the most fundamental aspect of abuse is the lying, right?
Which is why your mom blames you for her own actions, right?
Right.
That's lying.
You're responsible for what I do.
Right.
Well, that's not universalizable, right?
That cancels it.
It can't be UPB, right?
It can't be universally preferable.
It can't be a universal standard.
Right.
That other people are responsible for everyone's behavior just gains grain of infinite and instantaneous hot potato where nobody's responsible for anything and nobody can be blamed for anything.
It doesn't work, right?
Right.
So all abusers are liars.
So even if you can think about or try to puzzle out the motives of why people are abusive, you will never know.
Everything that you imagine is solipsistic, is self-referential.
You'll never know the truth.
I could go to my mom and say, why did you hit us?
I know six million things that she would say.
I also know that none of them are the truth.
Because if she was capable of the truth, she wouldn't have hit us.
And every time she hit us, she became less capable of the truth.
And now that the effects of hitting are irreversible, the truth is inaccessible.
Right?
So whatever you think, oh, well, my mom had this, or she meant that, or maybe she thought this, or maybe you will never know.
And it doesn't matter.
Right.
Sorry, go ahead.
I was just going to say, so I have to stop giving her opportunities to do the same thing.
Well, see, now you're trying to do a have-to situation.
No, I don't.
And you're trying to jump to action to avoid emotion, right?
Well, yeah.
I mean, to relieve her of her responsibility, or to relieve her of...
The opportunity to be the way that she is.
That's my conundrum, is how do I spend time with my family in a way that isn't shallow or completely...
That's not a conundrum, Michelle.
You want it to be a conundrum because you don't want the truth, right?
You want it to be complicated, so the simple answer is avoidable, right?
I mean, I feel more and more like the answer is to not be involved at all.
And that's, you know, it's causing me pain for whatever reason.
Oh, of course.
Of course it's causing you immense, enormous, and at times it feels like bottomless pain.
I mean, that I completely accept and understand.
It causes enormous pain to imagine not spending time with abusers who raised you.
We have this desperate need for the approval of abusers because that's one way that we try to minimize or avoid the abuse.
And so provoking the anger of abusers feels suicidal.
And also being in the circle of abusers has kept so many good people out of our lives that there's this massive Donut void of social emptiness around us without abusers, right?
I think the more time I spend away from her, the more I realize that when I am around her, I don't want to be around her.
It's too much.
And I don't like who I am around her.
Right.
I mean, I've done the same thing.
I've humiliated her in ways of...
I mean, it's embarrassing to look back on my behavior and to think that I've talked to my mother so disrespectfully and essentially done the very same thing that she's done.
Nope.
Not the same thing.
Well, okay.
No.
No, no, no, no.
Not the same thing.
Not the same thing, because she's the parent and you're the child.
Right.
Right?
Yeah.
So, I guess, you know, that's it.
It's painful to think about, like...
Essentially cutting her off.
Cutting myself off from, as you called it, you know, the life force, the thing that gave me life, the thing that brought me here, the thing that I should have undying gratitude for because, well, that's how it is.
Yeah, you know, it's funny.
You're talking about your mom's vagina rather than your mom herself.
The thing that brought me alive.
Either it was a vat of some sort of horrendously complicated biochemical primordial soup, but not a human being.
The thing, right?
The thing.
Well, my parents are Catholic.
You know, I'm the third child.
They chose to bring me into the world, and it's...
Did they?
I mean, aren't they not allowed to bring a child into the world?
Well, they chose to.
They already had two.
They chose to have me.
No, but they're Catholic.
They're not allowed to use birth control, right?
I mean, they knew what they were doing.
I don't know what that means.
You mean they were pretend Catholics?
I'm not really sure.
I think that my mom converted for my father, and I think my father is a Catholic because it was beaten to him as a child.
The picture of Catholicism that I get from them is incredibly hypocritical.
It doesn't make sense to me, especially having grown up here and heard them yell at each other and be less than supportive and also hit all of us and express anger instead of instruction and lots and lots of things.
Yeah, because there's this inconvenient bit in the New Testament where Jesus says, whatever you do to the least among you, therefore also do you do to me.
And I don't, you know, it's been a while since I went to a Catholic religious ceremony, Michelle, but if memory serves me right, there's not a lot of ritual Jesus spanking.
In Catholicism, there's not a lot of washing Jesus' mouth out with soap.
And there's not a lot of sending Jesus to bed without supper.
There's not a lot of snarling epithets and put-downs at Jesus.
And there's not a lot of, Jesus has to go to the fucking naughty corner because he took a cookie without permission.
Look, I mean, I can't tell you what to do, obviously.
I can't, but I can give you hopefully some clarity.
There is, to my knowledge, there is no known cure for cruelty.
The only thing that can cure cruelty that anyone knows anything about or can predict with even a rough approximation, the only thing that can cure cruelty Is an indecent exposure to time.
In other words, nobody knows how to deal with or cure criminality, except that if criminals make it to 40 or 50 years old, they mellow out a little bit.
Right?
They just get tired, right?
Right.
So...
If there's no cure for what your mother is, for how your mother is, if there's no cure, then you, like me, like I think every sensible person in the world, needs to take the advice of experts.
If experts have no clue how to cure cruelty, how to cure criminal tendencies, how to cure a propensity for child assault, let's say, if experts have no clue How to cure that stuff?
Then I'm going to assume that neither do you.
I'm also going to assume that neither do I. Like, I don't have any capacity to teach people Japanese who don't want to learn Japanese, right?
No, seriously.
You're trying to teach your mother an entirely different way of being, right?
Be nice.
Don't be a bitch, right?
Don't be cruel.
Don't hit me.
Don't yell at people.
Don't be selfish.
Don't be mean.
Don't be avoidant.
Don't be exclusionary.
Don't be neglectful.
Pay attention to the people around you.
Listen to them.
Be in the moment.
Enjoy people around you while you can.
You never know how long you've got.
You're trying to take her brain and mold it like it's still clay and not hardened pottery thoroughly glazed over by the immoralities of years and years and years.
Right?
Exactly.
Well, if I remember the movie Ghost correctly, with the Everly Brothers at the right cadence, you can, in fact, mold clay.
No, that's not the Everly Brothers.
Whoever did Unchained Melody?
Isley Brothers, I can't remember.
Anyway.
But you can mold clay when it's wet, right?
In other words, you can have a great deal of effect on a child's personality when that child is growing up.
And that mostly means getting out of the way and not traumatizing the child, right?
So when a child is young, or if you're a therapist and someone comes into your office and says, I really, really, really, really want to change, and they're willing to do the work and dig in and put everything to the test of reason and self-knowledge and all that, well then, through the magic of neuroplasticity, that person can change their own brain, right?
Yeah.
But when someone has done great wrong and is basically only doubling down on that wrong, then their brain, to me, and again, this is based upon the experts that I know and all the criminologists throughout history who've tried to cure crime, all the experts say, agree, that the brain, once infinitely hardened by cruelty, can no longer regain plasticity.
So you are attempting to reshape ancient pottery heavily glazed over that's on the other side of a glass case in a museum underground that no one has ever found.
It's just a bizarre ritual that you do to manage yourself rather than to affect any change in the world.
You're saying, Mom, let's go learn Japanese.
And she's like, why the hell would I want to learn Japanese?
I'm not going to go learn Japanese.
And you're like, I'm sure any moment now she's going to start speaking Japanese.
Right?
Well, that's only a song.
Tony Japanese is not how it happens, right?
Yeah.
Well, thank you for your insight.
But keep trying.
You know, if you doubt anything, I mean, obviously nothing I say is authoritative.
No, I understand.
But, you know, put it to the test.
Keep trying to change your mom.
Just accept the evidence.
That's all I'm saying, right?
Keep beating your head against the wall if you want.
I'm just saying feel for bruises and be open to the fact that it hurts like hell just because, right?
You need to know that.
Yeah.
Don't make the desire to change others into masochism.
Into what?
Masochism.
Oh, right.
In the illusion of helping her, don't actually harm yourself.
Thank you.
I appreciate it.
And for God's sakes, do what you can to keep your brother's kid away from a known child abuser.
I will.
I really will.
Has this been at all helpful?
Yeah, it has.
Especially the Japanese analogy.
It has.
I appreciate it.
I mean, you know, most people who, even if they want to learn Japanese, they never end up doing it, right?
Or certainly they never end up fluent, or they never stay fluent five years later.
Yeah.
I think that, you know, the thing that I can recognize is that...
She doesn't want help.
I mean, maybe she does, but she doesn't want it from me.
And I certainly do want help about different things in my life, and I have every reason to go elsewhere to find it.
And, you know, she'll be living her life however she wants, and I'll be out of, you know, I'll be keeping myself in a safe place instead of just avoiding being around her.
So...
Yeah.
Instead of staying in a forest of frozen statues of trauma waiting for them to hug us, I'd say just go find people with real arms.
You can't dance with the dead.
You can't get hugged by the frozen statues of history.
You can just go and find people with a pulse.
Right.
And get your connection thereby.
That would be my strong suggestion.
Cool.
Thank you so much.
You're very insightful.
Will you keep us posted?
Of course.
Yeah.
Please do.
I love you guys.
Take care.
Thanks so much, Michelle.
Appreciate it.
Yeah.
Bye-bye.
All right.
Laurel is up next, and Laurel wrote in and said, I'm at a huge...
Righteous Brothers!
Righteous Brothers, yes.
I'm going to pretend that I remember that, but it was just Mike who typed it in.
Righteous Brothers.
I knew it was some fraternal group of white people.
Lowell wrote in and said, I
want to do right by my kids, which means in my mind he either acts differently or we can't live with him.
Hmm.
Alright.
And, uh, what are you doing that is so offensive to your husband?
Um, um, okay.
Um, thanks for taking my call, Stefan.
Um, I, uh, mostly, um, we get along well.
Basically, it was a relationship that started, um, very quickly.
Um, I was at a point in my life where I was very much ready to have kids and wasn't careful enough about who I got into a relationship with and who I had kids with.
Um, so now it's basically I'm married to this man who's, um, uh, he can be somewhat abusive, um, and, uh, and I'm basically reading...
Okay, all right.
Bookmark.
Please go on, Laurel.
I will continue to listen.
Um, basically, um, my sister is who told me about your show, and, um, I've started listening to you, and, um, I was, um, my mom passed away a year ago, um, And she had been in an abusive relationship with my father for over 50 years.
And she passed away and I basically, with that happening and just kind of like looking at my own relationship, I'm realizing that I'm I'm doing a lot of the same things she did.
And I definitely don't want my kids to be bitter towards me like some of my siblings are towards, were towards my mom for her not standing up for us and all that kind of stuff.
How was your father...
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I mean, obviously, your feelings are very strong, and I respect that.
I'm happy to hear more about that.
But in what way was your father abusive towards his family?
Mostly verbal.
The older kids...
Like, there's a lot of kids in my family, and I'm the youngest.
So the older kids were...
I think a couple of the older ones got hit a bit.
But mostly my dad was just...
He kind of had little man syndrome, I guess.
He has to be the big man and act like the big shot.
Wait, wait, wait.
I've got some friends who aren't that tall.
I mean, come on.
It's like saying, well, this criminal, I guess he had black man syndrome.
Yeah, sorry.
He just, like...
I mean, can't he just be an asshole?
Yeah, he's just an asshole.
I mean, it doesn't have to be height-dependent, right?
Right, right, yeah.
He's an asshole.
There's reasons why he's an asshole.
There's reasons why my mom had a terrible childhood.
You know, I'm sure she married him to escape...
A worse situation.
And, yeah, so anyways, I just fear that I'm repeating what she did, but at the same time, I'm conflicted because I know, like, I'm a big believer in, you know, how important dads are, and I don't want my kids, like, I don't want them not to have their dad in their life, yet he's, you know, Can be an asshole, too.
But divorce doesn't mean that, right?
I mean, divorce doesn't...
It did for my family, but that's not necessarily the case, right?
Well, like, the situation becomes a little more complicated because the...
Like, I'm living overseas now, and if...
Like, we have a prenuptial agreement that if we get divorced, that I... Get to live with the kids where I want.
Meaning he had assumed...
What?
Yeah.
Like we had...
Tell me how...
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I'm just...
You know, my legal amateur brain is buzzing.
Yeah.
You what now?
So before you got married, you had a legal arrangement with this fellow that if you divorced, you got to live wherever you wanted with the kids and he obviously could follow or not as he wanted.
But it meant you didn't have to stay in the country you're living in now.
Right.
And we didn't have the kids in the country I'm living in now.
We've moved quite a bit.
But he basically...
Why did you have that?
Why did you have that rule?
That was one of the many things in the prenup.
But why?
Why did you have that rule?
He wanted the prenup.
He wanted to make sure that should he become enormously wealthy that I wouldn't take him for all he was worth or whatever.
My...
Or whatever.
Wait, wait.
Oh, see, here's the bit where we need to slow down, right?
Sorry, I'm going a million miles a minute and I'm kind of...
No, that's fine.
Listen, I'm still working on how to deal or how to have great conversations with female callers because there's a bit of a difference, right?
So, you know, excuse me, I'm fumbling too, right?
But a lot of it has to do with slow down and don't fire the canon of information at every particle in the known universe.
Okay, so...
Let's go back just a bit, and I'm sorry to throw you off the narrative, but you said about your dad there were reasons that he was an asshole.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think that's not correct.
Because if someone has genuine reasons as to why he's doing something, then he can't be an asshole, right?
Right, so let's say that I hit you.
Yeah.
Well, that sounds bad, right?
But let's say I just had a sudden epileptic attack that had never occurred before my arm lashed out and it struck you, right?
Yeah.
That is a 100% reason why I hit you, right?
Okay.
Yeah.
But that means that I'm not morally culpable.
Okay.
Right?
Yeah.
So what that means is that The degree to which abuse can be explained, then it is not abuse.
This is trippy, but it's very important, I would argue, to your understanding of your past and therefore of the options you have in the present.
The degree to which abuse can be explained, it is not abuse.
Right, so to give you another example, let's say I grew up in China and my mother never taught me Mandarin.
In fact, she shielded me from any knowledge of Mandarin, right?
Yeah.
That is 100% the reason why I don't know any Mandarin, right?
Yeah.
Which means I have zero responsibility for my ignorance of Mandarin because it's 100% explainable, right?
Okay, I get you.
Now, let's say I continue to live in China for 30 more years, as an adult, independently of my mother, and after those 30 years, I still don't know any Mandarin.
Is it my mother's fault?
No.
No, it's not, right?
Now, there is no 100% explanation of why I didn't learn Mandarin.
It was now my choice.
The more you increase causality, the less you increase morality.
The more something is deterministic, the less it is ethical.
In other words, the more reasons your father has for being an asshole, the less he is an asshole.
Arseholery must be freely chosen in order to be a label that sticks.
Okay.
Okay.
Yes, it is the free domain radio drinking game where a Mandarin analogy requires a shot.
As does the right and, you know, and tell me about your childhood.
Strangle a homeless guy?
Strangle a homeless guy?
Also useful.
It's not my fault Gwyneth Paltrow made that joke.
Anyway, so I really wanted to point that out.
Okay.
When I talked about your dad being an asshole, and maybe he is, right?
You say he's abusive and all that.
But assholery is not something that is conferred by circumstance or environment.
Assholery must be something that is freely pursued and chosen and maintained through voluntary choice.
So I just really wanted to mention that.
Okay.
Okay.
So, let's move forward.
If you can tell me a little bit about how you met your husband, what the courtship was like, how long you dated, and how long you were engaged for, just that kind of stuff, if you don't mind.
Okay.
We met on an online dating site in, I guess it was December of 2006.
By that, I guess, courtship-wise, it was just emails, then phone calls, and then I went to visit him twice.
Was he already in another country?
Yeah, he was living in the States and I was in Canada.
Right.
Okay, so not exactly the...
Romeo and Juliet warring family situation.
Okay.
I was thinking like, well, he was a Syrian rebel and I was...
No, but he's...
But culturally-wise, we grew up more different than that because he's from Africa.
And he...
He grew up being, you know, the boss's son and then the boss.
And it's a very kind of...
How do I put it?
Like it's a very much, you know, like when we visited over there, like you've been there I think in South Africa, at least I think you mentioned once.
Yeah, so hang on a sec.
So from Africa, it's like saying he's from Europe.
Can you be a little more specific?
Well, he's from – he grew up with kind of – like he kind of has a man of the manor kind of – like he grew up with servants and – But where in Africa did he grow up?
He grew up in, well, at the time, Rhodesia.
Oh, yeah, okay.
So that's where he grew up mostly, and then they moved to South Africa, and then he ended up going over to the States after he was over here.
And is he white or black?
He's white.
Okay, okay.
So is he Afrikaans?
No, the English kind.
Ah!
Colonists!
Excellent!
Alright.
So, yeah.
So, I visited down there.
Things progressed very quickly.
Like, I moved in.
Wait, wait.
What do you mean?
What do you mean things progressed very quickly?
Oh, I... I was thinking...
Sometimes when women talk about relationships, it's literally like...
The giant eagles of Mordor grabbed me in their fiery talons of lust and love and carried me over the moors.
I squeened and squealed and then eventually surrendered to their beating wings.
I mean, things progressed rapidly.
But this was you making choices, right?
Okay.
I chose to move in with him.
After how long?
Oh, just a few months.
So we started talking in December.
I moved in with him in June.
Oh, God.
This is a cautionary tale for all the listeners out there, I'm sure.
Okay, go on.
By October, I was pregnant.
It was...
Hang on.
Wait, wait, wait.
June, July, August, September, October.
Unless the baby was born four months premature, I'm guessing that you got pregnant in February or March.
No, no, no, no.
Oh, no, you were pregnant.
Sorry, you were pregnant in October.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
My family history, including your story.
But anyway, go on.
Okay, so you were pregnant.
You were living together and pregnant with the man 10 months after meeting him.
Yes.
And the pregnancy was not a whoops.
The pregnancy was, like in your relationship e-book thing, when you said about people making the decision they can fly when they're high on PCP. That was so hit home, that comment.
Because I was like, Jesus, no wonder I was...
Anyway, so...
No, tell me what you're feeling now.
Sorry, I'm a crier.
I don't want to blow past your emotions.
No, it's fine.
I mean, look, this is a hugely important issue.
If you didn't have any feelings, I'd be all weirded out.
Yes.
Tell me what you mean about the e-book.
You mean RTR? So, yeah, you were saying making major decisions when you're in the throes of lust is like deciding you can fly when you're high on PCP or something like that.
Yeah, I could take on 10 cops.
Yeah.
So it was very much like it was planned.
Yeah, I was eager.
When I started dating him, I was ready to have kids.
How old were you when you were dating?
Oh, I guess I was at the time I was 27.
Okay.
How was your life going?
Sorry to interrupt, but how was your life going before you met this guy in 06?
Because it sounds like you weren't leaving a whole lot behind when you were heading off to this new life.
No, but I'm kind of a person that moves around.
No, I wasn't leaving a whole...
I left a job behind...
But a job that I wasn't passionate about.
It could have been a career.
You know, they liked me.
I liked it.
They're okay.
And what did your friends say about this fellow?
Pardon me?
What did your friends say about this fellow?
Did they meet him?
What did your friends say about you moving to...
Oh, they thought I was nuts, of course.
The thing is that we were very much, and have been, since we got married, been very kind of isolated from friends and family.
Sure.
And my parents came down to meet him that summer.
And, um, uh, so, and then no, none of my siblings or, um, none of my siblings met him, um, until I was already pregnant and, and until, uh, the following Christmas.
Right.
Now, Laurel, do you mind if I ask you a question?
Not at all.
You have to be honest.
Well, you don't have to be, but I like it.
If you would, if you would, um, on a scale of one to 10, um, How pretty is this man?
How good looking?
Yeah.
Well, he's got about the same hairline as you.
So we start with a 10.
Okay, but is there anything that knocks it down?
Does he have a slight middle-aged role?
Has he got a slight muffin top?
Because that obviously, you know, again, keeps with my standards up at a 10.
Does he have slightly shaky man boobs that slowly sway in the African...
Gentle African breeze.
Yes.
No, but seriously, I mean, how pretty is this guy?
He's good looking.
Yeah, he's okay looking.
It wasn't that that was the thing that made me think, wow, I want this guy's genetics or anything like that.
It was more the way his personality seemed to me at the time that I found attractive.
All right.
Hang on.
And how wealthy is he?
Not at all.
Well, he grew up with sevens, but he's not wealthy?
No.
They don't have any of their original land or anything like that.
Oh, it got hacked up with...
Yeah, so he...
A lot of Rhodesians fled, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Obviously, particularly whites.
I mean, black-on-white murderers in South Africa and Rhodesia, particularly among farmers, is massive and horrendous and, of course, unreported because it doesn't fit the white oppressor stereotype that drives a lot of media bullshit.
But anyway, okay.
No, he's not.
So tell me, what was the magic for you?
What was it that broke down rational defenses of skepticism and so on, right?
I guess just, you know, this is going to sound so flaky, but, you know, he seemed exotic to me.
You know, he had an exotic accent.
He had been all these different places, part of me.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Well, so obviously still at an attractivist level of 10.
It's better if the exotic accent can't be identified and constantly shifts on a lightning quick tour of the colonies in mid-sentence.
But anyway, go on.
But yeah, it was that.
It was the fact that he just, I guess I'd never dated anyone that was so alpha male before.
And in what way is he alpha male?
If there's an issue, he knows how to deal with it.
If there's a problem, even if he doesn't, he would BS and you think while he does.
Well, I don't consider bullshit to be alpha male characteristic, but maybe I have a slightly different definition.
I'm more of a Socratic alpha male, but admitting of ignorance and so on, but go on.
Okay, I'll put it.
He seemed alpha male to me.
I now am...
Yeah, he was certain.
He was in command.
He was in control.
He was exotic.
And your ovaries went...
Yeah, and he wanted me.
I came from a relationship that was...
Before dating him, I had broken up with a boyfriend of about a year and a half that was not interested in sex at all and all this kind of stuff.
The boyfriend wasn't interested in sex?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I was like, that's a whole other can of worms.
Maybe, I mean, are you just really bad at it?
No, I'm not.
Do you bring like lemurs and tank muzzles and duck butter?
There was something else.
So I came out just really...
I don't know.
It just felt good to be desired.
It felt good to have somebody want me and all that kind of stuff.
And genetically exotic is sexy because there's less of a chance of genetic disorders with a wider matched gene pool, right?
Yeah.
I mean, just at a very biological level for those who don't know, and again, I'm no expert, but we are attracted towards disparate Gene pools, because there's less chance inbreeding is a problem, and genetically and so on, right?
It usually takes two pairs of genes to cause a lot of genetic problems, and the wider the gene pool, the less chance there is for those locks and keys to go together.
So there is, you know, an attraction to the exotic identity, Roy, kind of stuff.
But anyway, go on.
Yeah, so I basically...
Yeah, basically, after I was pregnant, very shortly after...
Wait, what?
Wait, what?
Wait, did we jump from the non-sex boyfriend to after you're pregnant?
Sorry, I just...
Transition jump.
You've got to give me a warning when we're going to switch narratives like this.
I like a fade-out, if you don't mind, between these things.
No jump cuts.
Okay.
So, after the no-sex boyfriend, or, sorry, very rarely sex boyfriend, I... Was he cheating on you?
Is that why there was no sex?
Oh, God, no.
No, no.
I really...
Oh, he was just like a turnip, basically.
Like, asexual?
He just...
Possibly.
I considered that.
I considered maybe...
I... I don't know.
I don't know.
I mean, usually a man's got to eat.
And if he ain't eating at home, there's a restaurant that's catering to his every whim, right?
But, you know, maybe he's just...
I don't know.
Maybe he works on the photosynthesis spectrum of sexual satisfaction.
I don't know.
I'm just curious.
I think he probably...
I don't know.
Like, I wouldn't be surprised if, you know, a year from now, I heard he's come out of the closet.
Like, I... That's possible?
Like, I don't...
I don't know.
You made someone gay?
Impossible.
No, I'm just kidding.
That's how bad I am in the bed.
Holy crap.
I'll take someone with more hair after that, but anyway, okay.
So I guess I was just really, I don't know, things went, seemed to be going.
You were on a biochemical high, right?
So the biochemical high of new romance lasts six to eight months, and then the smoke clears and you're left with what you're left with, right?
Yeah.
So yeah, I don't know where we're up to really.
Okay, so you moved in with this fellow and you wanted to get pregnant, right?
He wanted to take things quicker than I did as far as that goes, but I made the choice to So he wanted you...
So you moved in in June, and when did he say, by the way, I'd like you to be the mother of my children?
Like, when did that start to come up?
Oh, he started talking about kids probably in August.
June, July.
So two months.
Yeah, probably somewhere around there.
Like, we were very...
But not in the abstract.
Sorry, he wasn't talking about it in the abstract.
But like something like, let's do this now, right?
Yeah.
Oh, my God.
I mean...
I didn't like...
But two months?
I mean, God, under what theory did you think, well, two months, yeah, that's enough to find out if we're compatible?
Oh, just...
I was just stupid.
I would just...
No, that's not an answer.
Come on.
Self-abuse is not an answer.
It just poses another question, right?
I just...
I wanted...
I wanted him to be...
I wanted him to be a certain way, and so I just saw him that way, I think.
That's not really much of an answer either.
Okay, well...
No, because, I mean, again, it's one of these answers that raises more questions than it answers, which is usually not a very helpful answer.
Okay, ask the question again.
That might help.
Under what theory did you think that having a child...
with a man you met seven months previously and have been living with for two months would be a good idea let me ask you in another way if you're really stuck on it i I don't mean to interrupt you if you're about to come up with something.
What was your future going to be like living with this man if you said, no, let's live together for a year or two and figure out how compatible we are, then we'll have kids?
What would your life have looked like?
What would you have had to do if you hadn't gotten pregnant?
Um, I don't know.
Got to know each other better, I guess.
What we were supposed to do.
Well, it rhymes with wet a knob.
Pardon me?
It rhymes with wet a knob.
If you had moved in with this fellow, you moved to the States, right?
Yeah.
Would you have had to get a job?
Um...
Or would he have just said, yeah, I'll pay your bills.
For a couple of years until we figured this thing out.
I don't think that was even discussed.
Like at the time, I couldn't, like legally, I couldn't work down there.
Right.
So what would have happened if you'd have said, I'm coming down and you, fine, sir, will have to support me until I figure out whether we're compatible or anything like that?
I, I, I'm not sure he, well, when I did move down there, there was not, it wasn't like, oh, I'm going to move in with you and in a couple months I'll be carrying your baby.
It wasn't, so it's, so he was, you know, between June and October when I got pregnant, he was supporting me 100%.
Right.
And so.
Right.
No, I understand that.
But you started, when did you start trying to get pregnant?
Oh, the very same month I got pregnant, basically.
Like, I think...
Okay, so June, July, August, September.
We might have tried.
It might have been like...
I think it was...
I tried in September, and then by October, I was.
So...
Okay, so three months after you move in, you're trying to get pregnant.
Yeah.
Right.
Now, if you had...
Right, so I'm trying to help you with the decision-making process.
Okay.
Now...
I may not be correct, just so you know, right?
I mean, we're just talking for the first time, right?
But would he have been content to support you if you had not wanted to get pregnant right away?
I don't know.
My thoughts are probably not.
Right.
So, is it possible that you got pregnant to avoid what would happen when If you weren't pregnant?
Partly.
I'm not saying you didn't want a baby.
I'm not saying you didn't like the guy at the time or anything.
Are you suggesting that I'm not...
Like, are you suggesting that I was not wanting to work or that I was afraid that he would not want to be with me or what?
I'm kind of confused.
Well, if...
You don't know what your life would look like if you don't do something.
We tend to do that thing, right?
Well, I don't know what my life is going to look like if I don't go to college, so I guess I'm going to go to college, right?
Yeah.
I don't know what my life is like if I'm not dating someone, so I guess I've got to go find someone to date, right?
To avoid the ex, we often go for the sex, right?
The ex being the ex factor.
Don't know, right?
I don't think I was trying to avoid the...
The not knowing.
I don't think it was that.
I think it was just, I was so, so ready to have a baby.
No, no, I understand that.
I understand you were ready to have a baby because you had a baby.
The question is why?
Look, if you don't know, look, sorry, let me back up a second.
I'm telling you not to go too fast and I'm going too fast.
If you don't know why you made a series of really bad decisions, then you can't trust yourself in the future.
Yeah.
Now, I'm not saying that you having kids is a bad thing.
Obviously, I'm not trying to say your kids are a mistake or anything like that.
But clearly this is not where you want it to be a couple of years after having kids, right?
You don't want to be in this situation.
And the reason is that, let's say, I'm going right back to the beginning of the conversation, where you're concerned about not having a quality man in their life, right?
Now, if you end up moving away from this guy, if this guy is not going to be available or doesn't stick around or whatever, right?
Then you're going to have the highly challenging problem Of trying to get a quality man interested in you when you have another man's kids.
I'm not...
Now, if you also don't even know why you have these man's kids, no quality man is going to get involved.
So I'm trying to give you as much ammunition as possible to bring down a quality man into your life, which means that you need to know why baby daddy's not around.
I think I'm not sure if this is what you're kind of wanting me to get to, but I think the reason why I made these decisions so rapidly and so carelessly is we were very much raised in our family that that's where a woman's worth is.
That's what That's, like, my dad's only concern about his daughters was, you know, that they were going to get a man and that they were going to have lots of kids.
And that was, you know, that's where he saw the value in my mom.
And that's where he...
You know, like, there was no expectations, you know, academically, career-wise, anything on us girls.
It was just, you know, you get a man and you pop out a bunch of kids.
So you're like an egg factory with an apron, right?
Yeah.
And hopefully some cake dust on your arms, right?
Yeah.
All right.
Now, I mean, that's not causal, right?
So, I mean, look, not that I don't sympathize.
I mean, this is not a great way.
It's a bad way to raise a daughter.
It's a bad way to raise a son.
It's as bad as saying to a son, your job is to be a provider.
Yeah.
Right?
Of course, women have lots of complaints about being treated as egg factories, and men have lots of complaints about being treated as ATMs.
Who do we hear from more?
Generally the women, but I just wanted to sort of point that out, right?
I mean, the disposable mail is something, oh, you've got to go and provide and suck it up and all that kind of stuff, and man up!
Whatever the hell that means.
I mean, I don't know.
Would you hear, tit up, woman!
I don't know.
What does that mean?
Lie on my back?
I don't know.
What does that mean?
But it's not causal.
I mean, you know the old story, right?
Of two brothers with an alcoholic father, and one says, my dad was an alcoholic, that's why I'm an alcoholic.
And the other one says, my dad's an alcoholic, that's why I never touch this stuff, because I know how bad it is.
The alcoholism is not causal.
And your father saying that women's value is to be apron to egg factories is not causal.
Well, okay, well then the other explanation I guess I would have is that I just, it was just, like I had, like it's just where I wanted to be.
I wanted to be, you know, I wanted to be married with kids.
Right, because the rest of it wasn't, I would guess the rest of it wasn't going that well.
Like work and stuff like that?
Like your life, like your work, your social life, your, right?
Like if Buzz Aldrin is about to go to space and I say, let's go to Denny's, he's like, I'm not going to Denny's because I'm going to space, which I've just spent 20 years trying to get to, right?
Right.
Yeah, I would say...
Right, so if someone said to Ayn Rand when she was halfway through Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand, let's have three children, right?
She'd say, get away from my smoky Russian ovary factory.
They are shut down for the sake of philosophical purity in my literature, right?
Right.
Yeah.
That would be her response, right?
So you wanted to have kids compared to what, right?
Compared to other stuff, not much going on in your life, right?
So kids may have been, I'm just putting it forward as a possibility, so that you know why you are where you are, so that you don't end up here again, right?
Yeah.
But kids may have been...
Well, compared to what?
Well, here, there's a guy who wants you to be there, who wants you to have kids, and suddenly your life has shape, right?
Yeah.
I'm going to be a mom.
I'm going to be a wife.
Yeah.
Right now, next 20 years are mapped out.
Before, if there's not much shape and not much ambition and not much going on, suddenly it's like, oh, here's the answer for the next two decades, right?
Yeah, I relate to that.
And again, I'm not criticizing.
I hope you understand.
I'm not saying that's...
We're trying to sort of figure out...
That's the only sound I can make, right?
Yeah.
All right.
All right.
Is this useful so far?
I mean, again, I know it can be annoying at times to be bothered by this stuff, but I think it's really important.
Yeah.
I just would say...
I just would add to that that the going to the moon thing, that's...
That's what having kids, like, that was, it wasn't avoiding, I would say that there was at least as much, like, awesome, like, I get to freaking go to the moon, you know, that's what having kids, you know, like, that's what that whole thing was.
No, no, no, I don't accept that.
I don't accept that, and I can't believe that you're advancing that argument, and I apologize for being so abrupt and so blunt.
Okay, that's...
But you can't be that selfish, right?
Which is to say, good, I've got a sperm donor.
I'm having kids, damn it, because that's fantastic, right?
Because the quality of your mothering experience, as you know and as your emotions tell me at regular points in this call, the quality of your mothering experience is directly proportional to the quality of the father.
Yeah.
So for you, I can't imagine that it was just like, well, I want kids.
And I don't care how inappropriate the dad is.
I don't care how emotionally unavailable or how abusive he can be at times.
I want kids.
Because it ain't a whole lot of fun being a mom with a difficult dad around, right?
So this isn't going to the moon, right?
No.
This is waking up in the ass end of a spaceship not knowing where the hell you are.
This is like being the Sandra Bullock incompetent Ripley character in Gravity, right?
Yeah.
Okay, so I just really wanted to be clear on that.
I mean, hey, if you want to have kids, that's fantastic.
I mean, kids is a fantastic and noble career whether men or women pursue it.
But this is not the situation.
Okay.
So...
What does your husband do that is objectionable to you?
And I don't mean to make this sound subjective, like it's just your opinion, right?
right?
But what is it that he does or doesn't do that bothers you the most?
Just the just like he's just very very critical very He's got physical with me a couple of times.
Okay, don't give me euphemisms.
Okay, he's shaken me twice and punched me once.
Where did he punch you in the face?
No, just in the arm.
Right.
And the shaking?
Was it bruises?
Did it leave bruises?
No, no, no.
That's why I say it's not like I'm, you know, not a battered wife walking around, and that's what's made this decision.
That's what's making all this really hard, is because it's not...
He's not this evil...
Well, no, but we're just talking about one thing, right?
Does he call you names?
Yeah.
What does he call you?
Stupid woman.
Just, you know, it's not like an all-the-time thing.
It's more his...
No, no.
Don't.
Don't.
Look, just give me the straight dope here.
Don't give me all of the narrative and all of the editorials and all the subtitles.
Just give me the facts.
Okay.
So he calls you stupid woman, which is a phrase that you used about 15 minutes ago, but about yourself.
But go on.
Okay.
He just likes to rub my nose on the fact that he has more education than I do.
He's called me a peasant several times.
A peasant?
A peasant.
What does that mean?
Are you from the Middle Ages?
I don't understand.
It just means that I... Oh, you didn't grow up owning servants.
You didn't grow up with like a black underclass.
Yeah.
Right, right.
You weren't like an exploiter of a minority.
Okay, got it.
Yeah.
But it was for their own good, Stefan, right?
You know?
Right.
Because after all, like, he knows best and they knew best.
But...
Yeah, you know, that sexy alpha male stuff gets pretty fucking grating after a while, right?
He's so sure of everything.
That's sexy.
He's so sure of everything.
I want to strangle him in his sleep.
Right.
Okay.
So it's a lot of it.
If he's being kind, it's in a...
With this whole thing, he just doesn't know what's going on with my head.
Where is this all coming from and all this?
If he's not being an asshole about it, he's being patronizing.
I'm older than you.
I know.
He's just patronizing.
He's a know-it-all.
I don't know my own mind.
Yeah.
Oh, very much.
A know-it-all, a one-upper, a bragger.
I know better than you what you want or what you need.
And if I consult with you, I just get confused, so just listen to what I say and do, right?
So a man who grows up with servants is used to giving orders, right?
Yeah, he's very good at that.
Okay, sure.
Sure.
Okay.
Now, did this occur while you were dating?
Um...
The patronizing bit, yes.
Any of the physical stuff, no, that was all after I had kids.
And the name-calling?
The name-calling, you know, I really can't pinpoint when that.
I probably have only noticed it to the other people noticing it.
Like, well, if he's that stupid woman, like, obviously, like, you know, that's...
But as far as the, you know, nitpicking, denigrating, kind of, like, nothing I ever do is...
could possibly be, you know, like, anything I do, there's...
God, it's like he couldn't develop a bundle of characteristics more specifically designed to wall up your vagina if he tried.
Like, I'm sorry to put it so bluntly, but I mean patronizing and condescending and Threatening and so on.
It's like, man, he's just like, it's like the cast of Amontillado down there.
He's just walling up your vagina with all the mortar and bricks that he could find.
I mean, in terms of your desire and your openness to sexuality and so on, I just want to point that out as an aside for those who don't get that, right?
And then he'll be further frustrated by a lack of spark in the bedroom and therefore increases aggression.
And it's just a horrible, vicious cycle.
I'm sorry that you're bound up in this so much.
And did you just have two kids?
Yeah.
So after the first kid...
I knew you were going to get here.
Yeah, of course.
Listen, I mean, hey, if we're going to pull the band-aids off, let's pull them off one by one, right?
Yeah.
So after the first kid, when this stuff was all becoming clear, you thought, I know what would be great.
Let's make it...
Let's go for a twofer, right?
He didn't ever...
Nothing physical ever happened between us, although there was a threat of it.
But nothing, he never physically did anything until after my second son was born.
Until about seven or eight months after that.
But we, our marriage, the first year of marriage was really shaky and hard and I had asked for a divorce.
Oh, when?
When did you ask for a divorce?
It was almost exactly a year after my oldest was born.
Why?
Well, you see, it happened.
I asked for a divorce because I just didn't admire him.
And I suspected that he lied, not a little bit, but a lot.
About what?
Just little stuff.
It's more like just BSing and telling stories that are so grossly exaggerated that there's no truth in it at all, almost.
Oh, yeah.
No, I hear what you're saying.
And I share your eye-rolling contempt.
And this is true for wives and husbands.
When you see your partner embellishing to the point of fantasy without even seeming to know it, you see a giant chasm of emptiness underneath it, right?
Where they need to inflate themselves like a bullfrog's chin just to get any kind of attention.
You realize that they really don't think they're worth much of anything.
And then it feels very humiliating to be with somebody who thinks so little of himself, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, and especially if it's in front of other people, and this has happened throughout our marriage, is that, especially when he's with people that have to do with his work and stuff like that, you know, he'll be telling a story.
And I'm thinking, you're so fucking full of shit, and yet, to say anything would embarrass the whole...
would embarrass everyone kind of...
You know, you just...
I'm just sick of keeping my mouth shut and playing The Good Little Wife.
I feel like I'm part of the con and I don't want to...
And if you were to bring it up, he would say, listen, honey, you just don't know how the game is played.
This is the kind of person you need to present yourself as.
You're just a little housewife.
You don't know how business works.
He'd just give you this whole lecture about how he was right and you were naive, right?
Well, I have brought up several times.
I've brought up wanting him to see somebody and stuff several times in our marriage.
And my one gripe with him isn't how much he brags and bolts.
Like, isn't all of that stuff.
It's just the truth.
Like, you can think you're all that in a bag of chips, but make sure it's based on truth.
The stories surrounding it should be true.
Like...
And I also thought, hold on, if he's lying to everybody else, he's probably lying to me.
I'm not this exception to the rule.
And so it's just...
Just...
The calls are coming from inside the house!
Right, right.
But anyways, jumping to, like...
So why do you have the second kid after you've done a wonderful job of avoiding that topic?
Let's return to it.
Okay, so after...
Well, after the first one, like, I had weaned...
Like, I'd been breastfeeding, and when I weaned my oldest...
My hormones did some weird stuff as it happens and that's what I asked for the divorce.
Wait, what?
It was your hormones that asked for the divorce?
Well, that's what he came up with because he had read of this In my What to Expect When You're Expecting book that, you know, women can have hormonal, like that postpartum depression can happen later, like when you're weaning.
You know what I mean?
It's not just like once you have the kid and then women go through a dive sometimes.
It can also happen at other times.
And so he talked the whole...
I'm sorry.
I mean, again, a completely non-technical question.
Jump in here.
To me, postpartum depression is waking up to the fact that you're bred with a douchebag.
But that's maybe too simplistic.
Okay, so it was delayed.
Anyway, okay, go on.
Okay, so it was delayed postpartum depression then and waking up to marry a douchebag.
And then things seemed to...
So we went to couples counseling for two sessions, which was...
Oh.
Fairly useless.
And then...
Yeah, I went to the gym twice.
I'm ready for the Olympics.
Yeah, well, that was, you know, that was enough for, you know, him to think that things were fine.
And then, yeah, and then the decision on me getting pregnant with our second child was his...
The decision.
Pardon me?
The decision.
You've got to watch this language of externalizing things, right?
Yeah, okay.
Um...
My decision to do that was basically, my thinking at the time, he was, both of us were talking about it.
Things were going okay with us.
You know, we were very much both so in love and enamored with our oldest, and it was...
So he's a good father?
He's not terrible in every way.
It's just a few ways, and I don't know if that's the...
Anyways, the second child, he thought, well, if we're going to do it, let's do it kind of thing.
If we're going to have another one, now's the time.
And, um, just based on, um, that we wanted kind of a less of an age gap between the two than long, you know, a longer distance between the two, uh, which now I, in hindsight.
Okay.
But I still don't know why you asked for a divorce.
You're saying it's the hormones.
Why I asked for the divorce the first time was, um, was to do with the line.
Okay.
And what happened to that?
So he didn't obviously reform.
I mean, to bounce a couple of therapy isn't going to be enough, right?
I had thought I had caught him in a lie and he...
Like a lie about a stupid little thing, right?
But it was kind of the straw that broke the camel's back.
And then he had denied it.
And then it just...
I... I guess...
You were looking to get him, right?
Pardon me?
When you're surrounded by someone who lies a lot, you want to get him.
You want to get it in an unequivocal way that he gets it, that he understands that he's got this problem.
You want to catch him.
I'm not saying this in a malicious way, but you get frustrated because he's always getting away with it.
You want to get him, and then he'll get help.
That's sort of the plan, right?
Yeah.
I don't think consciously I had any kind of...
That I would have been thinking in such a...
Not to say that that's malicious, but in that...
No, it's not malicious at all.
You desperately want him to wake up to reality so that he recognizes he's got a problem, so that he'll stop doing it.
Yeah.
And that's why we tend to pin a lot of emotional energy on catching someone on what may be a kind of inconsequential lie because it's obviously part of a larger pattern that we're desperate for them to see to save the marriage, to save the family, to save your love and your desire and your respect.
I mean, it's hugely high stakes, right?
Yeah.
I guess a lot of came with the decision to have another one.
I just thought my decision, sorry, to have another one was just wanting my son to have a sibling, which is a terrible reason.
But I guess, you know, like, it wasn't a good decision, it wasn't a responsible decision or anything, but that's, I think, where my mind was at.
Well, it may not be the worst decision if you end up being a single mom, right?
Single moms and single sons in particular do, in my experience, the worst.
But anyway, that's neither here nor there at the moment because the decision has been made.
Yeah.
All right.
So you had a second kid and you said that he's a good...
Father.
Oh, you said he's not a terrible father, except for one or two things.
And what are those one or two things?
Well, those are the things that have kind of happened, that weren't happening with my oldest, but that are happening more with my youngest.
He's getting quite manhandly physical with him.
My youngest is...
What does that mean?
Again, you're giving me euphemisms.
Okay, like...
Just being too rough with him.
Like, my youngest likes to wrestle and this and that, right?
Like, little boys do.
And girls.
And girls.
Yeah, my daughter likes to wrestle too.
And when he gets too much, like, he gets too, like, grr, because he's very, you know, like, he's got a lot of personality in that three-year-old body, and I really identify with my youngest as well, because...
He can get very angry and stuff like that.
And I remember being like that as a kid myself.
So I really get that.
And my husband, he doesn't know how to correct the behavior in a calm, level-headed way.
I'm the parent, and I see you're down here, and your kid...
Like, this is going on in your head.
You're a little kid, you're excited.
He doesn't know how to bring it down peacefully.
He always has to up the ante, like, oh, like, oh, like, I'm the man.
He has to know his boss kind of thing, right?
And so it's just got...
A couple of...
There was an incident a couple of different times where he's...
One, especially when he was cutting my son's hair.
And my youngest didn't want his hair to be cut.
And I just said, well, like, it was late in the day.
Like, he was already, you know, tired and stuff.
And I said, you know, just leave it.
Just cut one or two strands.
Let him walk around like that for the next week.
And then try to get a little bit next time.
Like, whatever, right?
But my husband was like...
He needs to have his hair cut now.
I'm cutting it now.
And when I went to...
He needs to submit.
I'm the alpha male.
I'm right.
He's got to do what I say.
And so I went to intervene and he got...
I could tell.
I went to intervene and he was starting to look at me and he was going to get aggressive towards me.
There was going to be a...
Domestic situation.
About haircutting?
About haircutting, yeah.
And I backed off and felt like shit about backing off because, you know, I would like to pride myself on being, you know, protecting my kids above all else.
Well, which you're not doing, right?
I mean, no, but your kids obviously, they got that lesson, right?
What's the lesson that your son's learned in that moment?
That everybody has to submit to dad.
Dad's the boss.
That intimidating women is the way to get what you want, right?
Yeah.
I mean, they drink it all up.
They notice everything.
Yeah.
So, well, my oldest is always saying, Dad's the boss, Dad's the boss, and Dad knows everything.
And I'd be like, no, Dad isn't the boss.
Like, we're all bosses of ourselves.
And, you know, like, you know, trying to, I'm just, you know...
No, but if you're submitting, right?
I mean, you should be honest, right?
I mean, you can't submit.
You can't show them one thing and then tell them the opposite.
Exactly.
And that's what's happening, is that I'm telling them one thing.
I'm telling them, like, don't hit your brother.
We don't hit in this family.
Well, obviously, we do hit in this family.
He sees it happening.
Like, it's just...
And who does he see it happening with?
You said that...
Did your kids see your husband hit you?
They witnessed him shaking.
Yeah, they witnessed him shaking me.
Well, my oldest did.
My youngest couldn't see.
It was in the car.
And from where my oldest was sitting, he saw it.
But my youngest, who was directly behind me, maybe didn't.
Hmm.
And your husband doesn't spank, I'm going to assume, or you would have mentioned that?
No.
Okay.
I don't know, because he doesn't.
Like we have in the prenuptial agreement, I had wrote in there that any physical discipline...
Would have to be agreed to by both parents, like blah, blah, blah, blah, which now I would have like absolutely no physical, like I've never spanked the kids or anything.
Like I don't, I don't think that's the way to go.
Although, um, One of my sisters said, well, if they run across the road and da-da-da.
So I just, I put it in there, like, you cannot physically discipline the children until, unless both of us were to agree on it.
And he's broken that a zillion times, and I'm sure, and, well, I know of, and then...
Wait, sorry.
You mean, he has physically disciplined the children?
Well, when he is with the wrestling and stuff, yeah.
And there's stuff, there's a lot.
How's that physical discipline?
Well, if you're taking the child off you, you can take the child off you, like if they're getting too excited, you can go, okay, like here, da-da-da-da, and then just resist their, peacefully resist their wrestling advances or whatever.
Or you can take them off you way rougher than you need to and give them a bit of a...
Is he dangerous with the children?
When you say rough, what does that mean?
Sorry, is he what, with the children?
Is he dangerous?
I mean, could they get injured?
Because you said he's rough, right?
Well, I find it rough with the three-year-old.
I don't know whether they could get injured.
No, I don't think so.
He's never injured them or even come remotely close to it, as far as I know.
All right.
Let me ask you this then.
So, Laura, what's going to happen...
When your children get bigger and stronger and challenge him physically.
Because they're getting bigger, he's getting older, right?
So when they get bigger, they are going to get strong and fast and they are going to challenge him physically.
Yeah.
I don't think I'm...
I'm not on the fence, really, as to whether or not this needs to end.
I'm more on the fist.
No, no, you're not answering the question.
Now listen, you don't have to answer the question, but I'd appreciate it if you tell me you're not going to answer the question rather than go off somewhere else.
There's going to be a fist fight.
Okay, go on.
Because they're going to be, he's going to try to be alpha male and they're going to challenge it and say, you're an old man now and I can kick your ass.
And then there's going to be a fist fight?
I don't know.
Well, you just said it very certainly.
We know everything, right?
Yeah.
You know exactly what's going to happen in this family, I guarantee you.
Okay.
Can you tell me?
No, I can't tell you because you're the wife and mom.
You've got years of experience with this guy.
Is he able to admit that he's wrong?
No, no, no, no, no.
All right, so what's going to happen when he's wrong and his kids catch him?
What if they catch him lying?
And embellishing and bullshitting people.
And what if they catch him with all this stuff and they challenge him?
He's gonna become very violent, probably.
I don't know.
Well, he's gonna escalate, right?
Yeah.
Almost for sure.
And that's why you were desperate to get him to understand that he lied even about something inconsequential and then to change his behavior, right?
Because you know where this leads.
Yeah.
In the long run when your children get bigger and smarter and can no longer be cowed psychologically or physically by his size.
Yeah.
So...
yeah I guess like he's good with them in a lot of ways too And I don't want to...
Like, part of the reason why I wanted him as, you know, the father of my children was...
Like, a lot of the things he does with them, like fishing and, you know, he's outdoorsy and all this kind of stuff.
And I... Like, should I... If we're not going to be husband and wife anymore, and he's going to be the...
I don't know what kind of arrangement we would be able to come to, but should I be happy to have my kids exposed to him?
I don't want my boys to grow up and be like...
Like, oh, like, mom tried to keep us from dad.
Like, I don't want to be like that, yet I want to be the responsible mom and protect them as much as I can.
And I don't, I guess I just, I don't know what to do.
Well, there is no easy solution, obviously.
I mean, I sympathize with that situation.
I mean you have two kids and what are you going to do if the marriage breaks up, if you decide to end the marriage?
Again, I don't know whether you should or shouldn't, right?
I mean what are you going to do?
Are you going to go for alimony and child support?
Are you going to move countries?
Are you going to get a job?
I mean what are you going to do?
I don't mean that to sound antagonistic, like, what are you going to do?
I'm just curious.
No, I'm not worried about that.
Like, he stated explicitly in the prenup that I would not be getting paid alimony and that any offspring we had, they would have to be, you know, DNA test for to make sure they were his and all this kind of stuff.
And this is stuff he wanted in the prenup?
Yeah.
Yeah, and I married up.
Did you ever feel a little bit concerned about all this stuff in the prenup?
No, he'd go on with these rants about how 30% of children, the fathers aren't there, all that kind of stuff, right?
Well, that's not actually true.
Oh.
No, just to be clear, for those, I try to sort of correct statistics, I know to be false.
It's not that 30% of kids are not the fathers.
It's 30% of fathers who suspect that they're not the fathers end up being correct.
That's not 30% of all children.
Oh, okay.
Wow.
Right, so if you're like, hey, this kid has come out with nappy hair and I'm from Sweden, right?
Then you're like, okay.
So 30% of kids, so 30% of dads who bring in DNA samples because they're concerned end up being correct.
Yeah.
And the estimates are around 1 in 10, 10%.
As far as I understand, again, this is all very speculative.
Could be less, could be more, but it's definitely not 30% as far as I know.
There's one Welsh science experiment where 30% of the kids ended up, but that's more specific to a very specific environment with very specific socioeconomic conditions and so on, right?
But he's not correct about the 30%.
But it's maybe one of his embellishments.
I don't know.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Um, so he had, so he was, um, you know, and like a lot of the stuff I, yeah.
Yeah.
So he, so yeah, no, I won't.
I, so there's no, um, and I, I'm fortunate to be in the financial position that I, um, that I, that wouldn't be necessary.
Like, What would be necessary?
Financial assistance from him wouldn't be necessary for me and the kids to be okay.
Well, how did you have the money for that then?
My family has a bit of, like, there's a bit of passive income and stuff that comes through family business and stuff like that.
You mean your mom?
Yeah, my mom and dad.
My mom left us enough that, like, we'd be okay.
I wouldn't have to go on welfare and I wouldn't have to.
I probably would maybe need to work a little bit, but I have family where I would be planning on moving.
I have family support.
My sister also homeschools her kids and, like, I'd be okay without him as far as financially goes.
I don't need it.
And from him, I wouldn't...
If he were going to give me any money, I'm sure he would have his many strings attached.
I'm not interested in that.
Would you move back to Canada?
Yeah.
And so the kids would be out of his life.
I don't know how much he would visit and stuff like that.
But why wouldn't you...
Sorry to interrupt, but why wouldn't you just...
If you were going to separate, why wouldn't you separate and stay and just share custody?
Just because of the lack of support where I am.
No, but...
But it's not about you.
Yeah, I... It's about your kids, right?
My kids have...
My kids have more support.
Like, all of my side of the family is back in Canada.
Oh, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
Sorry.
Sorry.
I've got to interrupt you here.
No.
Oh, no, no.
No, no.
Fathers.
Okay.
Right?
Yeah.
You can get as many women as you want around your sons.
It ain't going to be the same as a dad.
No, I... You know the statistics, right?
I know that.
This is not specific to your kids, just for those who don't know.
These are not specific to your kids.
These are not predictive of your children, but just in general.
63% of youth suicides from fatherless homes, five times the average.
90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes, 32 times the average.
85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes, 20 times the average.
80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes, 14 times the average.
Um...
Fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of school, 40% less likely to repeat a grade in school.
Fathers with children who are involved are 70% less likely to drop out of...
Oh, sorry, that's twice.
More likely to get A's in school.
71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes, nine times the national average.
The list sort of goes on and on, right?
So 75% of all adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes, ten times the average.
And so...
This is what kids need.
Now, I'm not saying that having some guy who beats the crap out of them is preferable to...
I'm not saying that, right?
But you say he doesn't spank, he doesn't verbally abuse the children, so he can be a little rough, roughhousing with them.
But is that reason to have your kids grow up without a father?
Well, and that's why I really wanted to talk to you because you are...
I'm the advocate for the kids, right?
You're the advocate for the kids and you're also the advocate for why fathers should be in a family, which I completely agree with.
Does he recognize that the rough stuff, like the physical aggression and violence towards you is unacceptable?
Does he get that?
Or is he like, well, you push me to it and blah, blah, blah.
Does he get that this is absolutely unacceptable or is he justifying it?
He justifies it.
So that's not going to change?
No, I really don't because he does say, like, I push his buttons.
And the thing is that I really go out of my way to be...
Compliant.
Like, I'm sure that there would have been a lot more situations had I not just, you know, when I saw the sign, just backed out, backed out, you know?
Like, so I guess I'm just, I... But your anger and frustration with him is going to come out somewhere, right?
I'm not saying you're sitting there trying to push his butt, right?
But you are, you know, eye-rolling and distance and sexual withholding.
Again, I'm not blaming you.
I'm just saying that once you're in a situation where I mean, again, if you don't mind me saying and you don't have to answer anything, is your sex life still functional?
Is it still quality?
You know what?
It's functional because it really – like when this whole thing, when I first read your e-book and was having the whole thing like, oh, Jesus, this isn't going to work, and first talking to him about that, it was like I wasn't going there.
I don't know what that means.
I wasn't having sex with him at that time.
So basically he went to seduce you and just found a rolled-up copy of my book up there.
And he's like, hey, this is kind of in the way.
And you're like, yes, it is.
Yeah, well, yeah.
And basically I've just – I know the – I know he's capable of being pretty ruthless with people and stuff, and so I just...
If we're not going to be together, I want him at least not...
Like, I'm trying to just keep him...
Trying to tame the line a bit.
Like, at least keep him happy.
I don't know what you're talking about.
What the hell are you talking about?
Sorry, I'm trying to keep him happy.
I'm trying to keep him happy.
I just...
I still don't know what any of that...
Oh, you mean in terms of not...
In terms of not withholding.
Not provoking him.
Not provoking him.
If he wants sex, fine.
Because I'm not...
Are you having sex when you...
I mean, you don't want to have sex.
Is that right?
But you're having sex because otherwise he'll get upset?
You know what?
I like sex.
And the fact that I... I don't know what that says.
That I'm not completely...
I'm not criticizing.
I'm just asking a question.
I'm not judging this.
I'm not judging this.
You know, I mean, he's still got alpha characteristics, and obviously that gives you a tingle like a lightning bolt from an Old Testament day.
Okay, go ahead.
Okay, yeah, because sex is usually the last thing to go.
Like, once sex goes, it's like pretty much all over safe.
The lawyer is powering up angry dildos for everyone involved.
Okay.
So...
So he wants to go to this counselor.
He's finally agreed that because I was just like, I was like, well, like, we need to go get help.
And he's like, well, I'm, I'm, I'm not doing that.
This is your issue.
And I like he's seen counselors like he came from a You know, alcoholic, drug abuse, abusing mother.
And so he went through, is it Al-Anon?
Your what now?
Sorry.
His mother.
Mother was alcoholic and a drug abuser.
Like pill popper kind of thing.
And so...
Okay, potato, potato.
So wait a sec.
At what point in your courtship did you find this out about him?
I don't know.
Give me a rough sense.
Oh, God.
Obviously not the first text, but obviously somewhere before the second child, I would assume, right?
Yeah, it would have been probably between the first and second child.
Like, she had had two children die.
So it was...
When he said, you know, his mom was an alcoholic and pill popper, well...
You know, I... Wait, wait, no.
No, you've got to sit down here.
You're a slippery there.
I'm sorry.
It's all right.
It's all right.
Okay, so hang on.
So you found out that his mother was an alcoholic pill popper?
Yeah.
Not anymore, but she was when he was...
When he was growing up?
After her son died.
After my husband's brother died, she...
Dove into depression, I guess, or she had had depression.
I don't know.
I'm just hearing this all.
Was his brother still born, or did he die from some other...
No, no.
He had...
Well, he's had three siblings die.
One was...
One was at, he was just little, like he was six and got some sort of a infection to the brain and died.
And this was in Africa.
And then one of his brothers, that was before he was born.
And then there was a brother that died when he was about, he was about nine or 10 or something.
And his oldest brother died in a Freak farming accident.
His brother was 26 at the time or something like that.
It was a real father figure for him because his parents had got divorced early and stuff.
Then his sister died just right when we had first started our courtship.
What did his sister die of?
They think it was a drug interaction thing.
She was obese and had asthma, so it was some sort of asthma attack thing.
They think it was to do with a reaction between two different prescription drugs she was taking or something like that.
Huh.
All right.
All right.
Now, so from the age of six onwards, his mother was depressed and alcoholic and abusing prescription drugs, right?
Well, his brother died when he was sick, so from the time that my husband was born, his other sister has horrifying stories to tell about their mother.
She's not a stellar person, and I'm not a big fan of hers.
Sorry, I forget how we got on this topic.
Wow, you are drifting from fog to fog sometimes.
So, given your husband's upbringing, he's actually doing relatively well, right?
You know, three sibling deaths, obese sister, pill popping, drunken mom.
I mean, parents divorced when he was very young.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Given what their family has gone through and stuff.
Oh, no.
No.
See, again, you've got to watch your language.
Their family has gone through.
This is not...
The ground didn't open up from under them, right?
I mean, there's lots of ways to deal with tragedy than disappearing into drinks and pills, right?
Yeah.
So, he wants to...
He wants to go...
So anyway, so he was in counseling for that.
So he is very skeptic about counseling and all the rest of it because he says it doesn't help.
Wait, sorry.
He was in counseling as a child for...
Or when he was younger?
When he moved to the States, he...
He left Africa, South Africa, he was living at the time, right before his final year of high school, and he wanted to reconnect with his dad who was living in the States.
So he went to the States, and his dad got him to go to Al-Anon or something like that because his dad...
Wait, was he an alcoholic?
His dad?
No, was your husband an alcoholic when he was younger?
No.
Why would his dad want him to go to Al-Anon?
Because Al-Anon's like for support of, if your family member's an alcoholic.
Oh, Children of Alcoholics.
Yeah, yeah.
The Alcoholics Anonymous is for the alcoholics, but this is like if your parents were alcoholics.
Yeah, I might have the wrong name.
It might just be Children of Alcoholics.
I don't know if it's called Al-Anon or, I don't know.
Okay, doesn't matter.
So he went to that.
So he is, he just feels like he doesn't have anything to do.
But he has backed down and said, okay, well, we can see this counselor.
And so he wants us to see this counselor together, and he thinks everything can be fixed by going to see this counselor.
Given that I don't have this love and admiration, For him, is there any sense in staying together with him for the sake of the kids when he isn't that, you know, he isn't that abusive to me?
And I think if I change some of the ways I dealt with him, that that could be really handled better.
And he's like, from your point of view, Is there a case to be made for me just sticking together with him until the kids are...
20?
Yeah.
Well, like another 17 years?
Yeah.
That's a chunk of change.
Yeah, it's a chunk of change, but...
My mom was always fond of the saying that, you know, if you make your bed, you lie in it kind of thing.
Well, I understand that.
I don't particularly agree with that when there aren't children involved.
But as you know, one of the great joys and challenges of parenthood is it's for the good of the kids, right?
I mean, that's what you have to live for.
You know that.
I don't need to tell you that.
But I didn't really get that as much until I became a parent, right?
But yeah, it's for the good of the kids.
That's what you have to make your decisions around.
Do you wish, when you think back on your childhood, what do you think of, what would you advise your mother to do with regards to your father when she was young?
My sister and I have discussed this a lot.
Sure.
Two of my sisters and I have discussed this a lot, and both of them wished that she would have left.
But...
I don't know, but we're girls too, right?
And I think it's different from...
My sister was a single mom with her daughter for a while, and I even see that situation as different because it was...
I can't model being a good man.
I can model being a good person, but I can't...
I can't be a male role model for them.
I guess with my dad, I didn't live with my dad a lot.
From the time I was 10, I didn't live with him full-time because my parents were not legally separated but didn't live together because...
That's a whole other thing.
And I don't want to digress anymore, Stefan.
But yeah, I don't know the answer to that.
Because I... Right.
Although girls who grew up without dads have some pretty significant negatives that come out of it.
And look, either way, I mean, it's going to be tough.
I mean, if...
If you separate from the father, and particularly if the father is no longer in the picture, your kids are going to get mad at you.
I'm sorry, it's just the way it's going to happen, right?
And they have every right to.
Yeah.
Right, because you chose a man that you then took away from them.
Yeah.
Now, either it was not right to take him away from them, in which case they're going to get mad at you, or it was right, in which case, why did you have a child with that man, right?
So their problems with you are going to be big.
I personally am glad that my parents separated, horrendous though it was in many ways.
In many ways, I think it was for the best.
They were truly toxic with each other.
But with regards to your situation, I guess the first thing that I would recommend is to understand the degree to which you have recreated your history, right?
Your childhood.
Yeah.
Right?
Your ACE score, Adverse Childhood Experience score, was a 2, right?
Yeah, really low.
Which is kind of what your kids are getting, right?
Yeah.
And, um...
And I'm really...
I sound fucked up.
Sorry, go ahead.
I sound fucked up, but I've, you know, like...
No, you don't.
No, you don't.
No, I wouldn't say that.
I wouldn't say that.
No, but...
Go ahead.
So when you were a kid, you experienced verbal abuse and threats from your father, and your mother was compliant with those, right?
Yeah.
And this is what's happening with your husband and yourself, right?
Yeah, but I don't want to be...
No, no.
First thing to recognize, don't start justifying or interrupting.
First thing to recognize is the degree to which your childhood has replicated itself.
Yeah.
Okay?
Your parents divorced or separated but lived apart.
That's what you're contemplating, right?
Yeah.
Your dad yelled at you, kids, and your mom a lot, right?
Yeah.
Now, this guy, your husband, does not sound like much of a yeller, although he certainly can be intimidating, right?
Or am I wrong about that?
No, you're right about that.
He's not like my dad.
He doesn't fly off the handle.
He just, yeah, he's just an intimidator.
Okay.
So there's a lot of reproduction in this.
Now, I guarantee you, with virtual certainty, and you understand, this is all my opinion.
I'm not, right?
It's just my opinion.
But Laurel, I guarantee you, without sufficient knowledge, you can toss this guy out of your life and somebody else just like him will materialize.
You know, there's an old Simpsons thing where Thomas Wolfe, the southern writer who wears a white suit all times, he gets splashed with mud on his white suit and he rips it off and there's another white suit directly underneath it.
Yeah.
Right?
That's sort of what it's like with a lack of knowledge of history.
You can kick that person out of your life and like a gravity well, like a vacuum, the same person will come back in.
Even though he hasn't been the profile of my previous boyfriends?
Well, this guy was a better fit for your history, which is why you bred with him.
Right?
The other guys, you were shutting down the ovaries with a dissimilarity.
This guy happens to be a yin to yur tragic yang.
Yeah.
And then you're breeding, right?
Yeah.
So he fit more with your history.
He's more like your dad than the other guys, right?
Yeah.
I imagine your dad was an alpha too, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And women are like, wow, that's really sexy.
He's dominant.
He's assertive.
Right?
He knows how to solve everything.
He knows his own mind.
He does what he says.
He says what he does.
He's right.
And we're like, oh, that's great.
Oh, here.
Here's some eggs.
And they're like shooting eggs at him like tiny little white cannons.
Right?
And then the ex get pregnant and a woman is like, now I want a completely different kind of man.
I don't want a sexy and assertive man.
I want a soft, gooey, sensitive beta who's going to be loving and tender with the children, right?
Yeah.
Well, guess what?
Right.
This is like, it's like the sexy...
Mom dichotomy for men, right?
So men are like, I want her to be hot.
I want her to be crazy in bed.
And I want her to be a wonderful breastfeeding sensitive mom for my children.
It's like, pick one.
Because you're not going to get both, usually, right?
And it's the same thing with women, right?
Women want, I want them to be I want him to make money.
I want him to be at the top of his field.
I want him to be a good provider.
I want him to be assertive.
But all of this has to do with emotional coldness and win-lose interactions, right?
I mean, if you're a lawyer fighting a law case, empathizing with the people on the other table will get you losing it, right?
If you are a salesman trying to win a sale and you deeply empathize with the other salesman who's also trying to win the sale, well, your chances go down proportionately, right?
So women want this dominant win-lose alpha male, King Ape, right?
And then when they have kids with him, they want kind of the opposite, but still with all the income potential of the former, right?
Yeah.
So I think just recognizing that to some degree you are hardwired, you're softwired through history and hardwired through biology to seek out a dominant man, right?
Yeah.
And then when you have that dominant man and a lot of the things that you said were sexy about him when you first met, you now find pretty appalling, right?
Yeah.
Well, when I know the truth behind it, it's not real.
Come on.
Did you ever really think it was totally real?
I mean, based on what evidence, right?
This guy comes from a completely messed up history in a completely messed up country in a completely messed up continent, right?
How could he be a know-it-all?
Yeah.
Look, I have done years of therapy and decades of philosophy.
And how certain am I about what you should do?
I'm not.
No, seriously.
I'm not.
I don't know what you should do.
I can give you some perspective.
But, right, I have a huge amount of study that In the philosophy, and I've thought lots about philosophy and relationship, I can't tell you what to do.
My lack of know-it-all-edness is both catnip and, I don't know, getting scratched the wrong way by a cat for people.
So I am not a know-it-all.
I think once in this entire seven or eight-year show have I told someone what to do, and that's because it was a complete emergency and the man was about to die.
Right?
How could this man possibly be a know-it-all with his history and his environment and his youth, right?
You can't really have believed it, right?
No, I guess not.
But it's sexy.
Because when a man is a know-it-all, it means that he's more likely to dominate more uncertain men and get the lion's share of economic or natural resources in the environment, right?
Right.
Entitled narcissistic bullies do really well in a win-lose environment.
And some women, of course, I guess based upon your history, you were raised not in a cooperative win-win environment but in a win-lose environment.
And therefore, if your body is primed and your hormones are primed and your eggs and your vagina and your sexual response is primed for win-lose, then an arrogant know-it-all makes you tingle, right?
Because he's going to be the guy who's going to get you the most resources for your kids.
And if I understand what you've been saying correctly, he's doing an okay job with that, right?
Yeah, and that was one of the big turn-ons for me when we first started dating is that he had these big ideas and he was so entrepreneurial.
And I just found that really, yeah, it was really attractive.
Yeah, because, I mean, you are a vehicle for providing breast milk to the next generation.
And I don't mean this, I'm a vehicle for providing sperm and resources to the next generation.
Biologically, right?
Yeah.
And so your ovaries are scanning for resources.
And given your history, then a man who's an arrogant know-it-all, who wants to dominate, who doesn't empathize, right?
Who's got a bullying streak to him, he's going to be the guy who's going to get the resources.
in a conflict situation with beta males, right?
Yeah.
And he's going to bring those resources home to you, and you are then going to be able to feed your children.
And let me tell you, the simple truth, Laurel, is that your biology cares a lot more about your children getting food than your heart getting happiness.
And your vagina and your hormones and your sexual response only cares about bread getting into your children's bones rather than love getting into your heart.
This is not a huge shock to you, right?
No.
But I thought it was a little bit less rule by that, I guess.
Yeah.
In hindsight, I know I'm not, obviously.
No, look, you weren't thinking at all during this whole process.
Oh, no.
Your friends were saying, are you crazy?
What are you doing?
Yeah.
I'm sorry.
Ovaries are speaking, and I obey.
And, of course, with sympathy, and all of this is with sympathy, I hope you understand.
This is not...
Any kind of criticism, it's just that we need to know to the best that we can what's going on in this situation, but your father modeled and your mother modeled obey the balls, right?
Yeah.
Whoever has the testicles gets his way, right?
And then you get this domineering guy who comes along with said testicles and suddenly you find yourself like a salmon in a strong current swimming right with his desires, right?
Yeah, and I'm this...
Falling into line, right?
Yeah.
And I'm this, like, anarcho-capitalist, like, being bossed around and acting completely subservient at home, and it's just so...
But do you think that your ovaries and your eggs give one shit about your ideology?
Not at all.
Or mine?
Not at all.
Breed, get the kids to get some food into them, get to raise them so they can do the same thing.
That's what our biology is telling us.
You know, the tops of our brains, it's like three snowflakes on top of the mountain of snow of our biology.
And we think that the whole mountain is three flakes of snow on the top.
Well, that's the whole mountain.
The whole mountain should obey the three flakes of snow.
No, we are built up this way.
From our protozoa lizard brain to the very top of our consciousness is an unsteady pyramid of historical piling on and maladaption and failed experiments.
I mean, we're a house of cards.
And our ideology and our Neofrontal cortex and the seat of higher easing.
It's a wonderful thing.
It's what is allowing us to talk.
It's great.
And our eggs and our sperm don't give two shits about it.
Unless it can be used to fool us into getting them to meet and make more babies, right?
Tell me I'm not describing your courtship.
Oh, yeah.
So...
Okay.
Well, I have...
I guess, like, I just, right now, I just, um...
You want to be happy.
And right now you're not happy.
You know what?
I don't mean to interrupt.
Yeah, but you know what, Stefan?
It is, it's...
I can be happy in other ways.
I went to a Mises seminar thing earlier this year, which I hadn't done since before I got together with this guy.
I hadn't done any kind of libertarian things or anything like that.
Let me see if I can guess.
I'm guessing at the Mises Academy, they did not talk about your husband's arrogance bricking up your vagina, which doesn't actually turn out to be the case, but I'm just kidding.
They did it.
They talk about other topics there, but go ahead.
But I had a good time.
I had some really great discussions, and I came home, and I just thought, like, wow, I can do this.
Like, I can have...
I can get my intellectual stimulation that way and then have this kind of dual...
I don't need to talk about that with my husband because I can't anyways because he just is patronizing and thinks I'm whatever.
He just doesn't get any of that.
You have your little ANCAP hobby and knitting.
Yeah, so it's just like...
He just mocked.
I'm sorry to interrupt.
I get that you can be happy in other ways, but you want to be happy as a wife and as a mother, too, right?
Not just as an intellect, right?
Yeah, but what I'm saying is that I can be happy in this...
I can get enough for me, I think, until the kids are old enough.
But...
If it's best for them that I stay together with him and manage this as best as I can, and I think I can manage it better because I think if we do go to this counselor and I have more tools in my toolbox, then I think that a lot of the problems can be curbed a bit.
No, but look, there's a better way.
I mean, I'm going to give you a plan C here, which is not telling you what to do, but just giving you an opportunity.
Okay.
Okay?
So here's your plan C. You have got to stop inviting alpha behavior into your life.
Right?
So you will, I hope, listen back to this call.
Okay.
And you need to really listen, Laurel, To the number of times that you externalize your own choice and authority and autonomy.
This happened.
We decided.
This occurred.
When the children came and all this kind of stuff, right?
Okay.
So when you externalize...
What's called the locus of control, which is the sense of whether you are making decisions or other people are making decisions.
This is right back at the beginning.
There are reasons my father was an asshole, right?
So you have a habit which I see very clearly.
It doesn't mean I'm right.
I'm just saying I see it clearly.
It comes from your history.
And that habit is be scattered And confused until someone tells me what the fuck I'm supposed to do.
Dither and provide contradictory information, go on tangents until somebody gets impatient and tells me what to do.
Come on.
Right?
And if you understand that, and you listen to this call with all of your heart and mind, and you invite your ovaries as well if they want to come, they're not done yet, right?
No, you don't know.
You don't know.
But you are inviting me repeatedly, almost insistently, almost continuously in this conversation to alpha you up.
To just tell you what to do.
You're going to solve all my problems, right?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm going to tell you what to do and then I am like the next alpha that you can transition to in your mind so that you never have to be the alpha.
Why can't you be the alpha?
Which is one of the reasons I don't want to tell you what to do.
Not that I could.
I don't think I could tell you what to do, but that's not the point.
Let's say I tell you what to do.
Let's say it's exactly the right thing to do.
What the hell has that taught you?
Here, here's another guy who's going to tell you what's what.
Here's another guy who's going to tell you what to do.
Here's another guy who's going to scrape out your seed of decision-making and replace it with his charisma and intelligence, right?
No, no, no, no, no.
No, no, no.
No, no.
So your plan C is for me to grab...
Stop inviting him into your life as an alpha.
And that doesn't mean alpha him back and now you be the boss, right?
It means strive with all of your might to find win-win situations...
This is why, you know, when he was continually lying, that was win-lose, right?
So he won in the moment, you lost.
He won whatever he was getting from his audience and you lost.
And then you wanted to get him with the lie so that you would win and he would lose, right?
Alpha is all win-lose.
Philosopher is outside the hall, right?
Self-knowledge puts you outside the alpha, beta, zeta continuum.
Right?
So rather than accepting the win-lose paradigm and saying, well, either I get my way and my husband loses or my husband gets his way and I lose, step out of the whole paradigm.
I don't know what that looks like in your situation, but it is something unguessed.
Stop inviting him into your life as you've been inviting me into your life To tell you what to do.
Because that's the paradigm you have from your mother, right?
Yeah.
Look, are you telling me your mother didn't get any secondary gains from being told what to do?
There are massive, massive secondary gains, which means the hidden benefits.
Massive secondary gains to being told what to do in life.
Right?
It's less risky.
You get to be resentful.
Right?
You get to be self-righteous.
You get to feel hard done by.
And you get to blame other people For problems.
I'm not saying that's all you're doing, and I'm not saying that's all you are, but these are some of, just a few of the secondary gains of being told what to do.
And you want me to tell you what to do, and I won't.
I will not step in that ape suit into your pecking order.
Because that would be to diminish you as a human being, and that would be to indicate to you, hey, Laurel, don't worry, I will take the sweet relief of moral responsibility off your shoulders by telling you what to do.
Then you can either obey or disobey.
But I'm going to give you a binary choice and pretend that either obeying me or not obeying me is what you all need to think about instead of the creative, infinite choice of philosophy, of self-knowledge, of thinking for yourself how best to solve this problem.
Okay.
Okay.
Right, so you have to look at when he's being alpha, you can either ascribe it solely to his personality or Or you can ascribe it to something that you're doing that's inviting him into your life in that way.
And I'm not saying that he'll just step out of that role if you change what you're doing.
But in a relationship, if you change what you're doing, the other person absolutely has to change what they're doing, right?
So you walk up to someone and you go to shake their hand and they just stand there with their hands at their sides.
What do you do?
You can't just stand there and pretend you're shaking their hand, right?
You have to change what you're doing if somebody does something unexpected, right?
If I'm going to go play tennis with someone and they show up with a rocket-propelled grenade, I'm going to change my strategy a little.
We're not playing the same game, so I'm going to duck and roll.
So if you have a look at your own behavior and try and figure out how you are inviting him into your life as an alpha, Also recognize that you have an incredible capacity to be a know-it-all, and that's the main reason why you're in this situation.
That might give you some humility, and do you want to tell me what that is?
That I have a...
You have an incredible capacity to be an arrogant know-it-all, and that's exactly why you're in this situation.
What did your friends say about this guy and your choices?
Well, yeah, they thought it was a bad decision to move.
Right.
Did you listen to them, or were you an arrogant know-it-all?
I was an arrogant know-it-all.
Right.
But somehow, that part seems to have escaped your telling of the entire story of how you're the victim of an arrogant know-it-all.
Yeah, yeah.
Okay?
Don't give me that.
You were an arrogant know-it-all with regards to your friends who were looking out for your best interest and trying to prevent you from just this kind of situation.
So don't tell me your sob story about how you're the only victim of an arrogant know-it-all and poor little old me.
You were the arrogant know-it-all and your friends were trying to help you.
Yeah.
Right?
And knowing that you have that capacity is important.
Because if you understand the arrogant know-it-all in you, you will diminish your husband's power to be an arrogant know-it-all over you.
If you deal with your own inner arrogant know-it-all, you'll be far less susceptible to somebody else pulling that crap as well.
If you pull that crap and don't even know it, then other people can pull that crap and you'll just fall in line.
Because that's why I kept asking about your friends and what did other people say.
You were the arrogant know-it-all.
No, we're in love!
Right?
Wait, we'd really like to help you.
We think this is a bad decision.
Don't you want me to be happy?
I'm in love!
I know what I'm doing!
In my defense, I didn't sound like that, but yeah, that's the gist.
Yeah, yeah, of course.
Right, but the effect was the same, no matter how it was said.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, um...
And apologize to your friends.
Are they still friends?
They were work friends.
And I haven't kept in touch.
Okay, well get back in touch and apologize to them.
That's a really good idea.
You were right.
I was an arrogant know-it-all.
Everything that you said has come to pass, and you have every reason to be suspicious of me now because I'm in trouble after having not listened to you, so you think I'm just trying to become your friend again so I can bleed off your resources.
That's not my plan.
Tell me about your life.
Okay.
Right?
Okay.
Certainly don't end up isolated, right?
No, I have a...
Because you said you've been progressively isolated.
That's bad.
That's no good, right?
Yeah.
But yeah, look, if you have been an arrogant know-it-all to other people who are trying to help you, whether you stay friends with them or not, you owe them an apology, right?
Yeah.
Yeah.
You're correct on that, for sure.
And especially since, like I was saying to my one sister, I said, well, like I said, my nieces are going to be hearing all about this because they're all, you know, A lot of them are in their mid-20s, you know, dating and stuff like that.
Anyways.
Right, so...
And, you know, I mean, if your husband is willing to do more therapy and you're still on the fence, my...
51% would be to lean more towards doing the therapy and combined with, look, I have no problem with people who end relationships.
Everybody knows that, right?
I mean, that's what voluntarism is all about.
What do you mean you don't go to that restaurant anymore?
It was serving you shit sandwiches every day, right?
I mean, voluntarism is the essence of a free society and voluntarism, if it does not extend to our personal relationships, who gives a shit about the rest of it, right?
And, you know, I'd rather be paying 50% taxation and not be able to see my mom than pay no taxation and have to see her five times a week, right?
Right?
One is just money.
The other is my very mental health.
Anyway.
So...
If you want to end up leaving the relationship with no regrets, then you have to give everything you've got to try and maintain it.
And then if it doesn't work, you won't have regrets, right?
And the main purpose of life is to avoid regrets because to avoid regrets, we recreate bad situations.
Anyway, so there's a lot that you can do to change the dynamics in your relationship with your husband.
Yeah.
But I say this with the caveat That if there's physical violence, you absolutely, completely and totally must keep yourself safe.
And if there is physical violence, you cannot expose your children to that.
You know that, right?
I guess I just...
Now, this doesn't mean necessarily you immediately get divorced, right?
But if there is physical violence, you need to send your kids someplace for a week, and you and your husband need to work on so this shit doesn't happen.
Your kids cannot be exposed to physical violence.
They cannot be exposed to physical violence.
And you should not be, obviously, right?
But your kids cannot be exposed to physical violence.
Yeah.
Now, if you change, being an alpha is exhausting.
If you've got to be an alpha at home, this part of the tension comes from the exhaustion of having to maintain this pretense of being right older.
So if you invite him less into your life as an alpha, it may give him some relaxation combined with the therapy.
I don't know.
I mean, it's a possibility.
It's a possibility.
But...
Because – and this is why I was also hammering on about – and yammering on, of course, about why did you have kids, right?
Because the rest of your life wasn't a huge amount going on, right?
So this also was an externalization of agency, right?
Right.
I mean, yeah, you wanted to have kids, but part of that was so, okay, now I know what I'm going to be doing for the next 20 years, and I don't have to really figure it out for myself.
Yes.
Right?
Yes.
So there's this continual invitation of others, and your sons are part of those others, invitation of others in your life to tell you what to do to organize your life.
Yeah, and I know where...
I've been reflecting on that a lot, and I know where a lot of that stems from.
Like, I've been...
Yeah, I'm aware...
That I have that tendency to want others to...
Yeah.
And wherever you go, no matter what you do, that is the tendency that you will have, right?
Yeah.
And so you very much need to change that tendency in yourself.
Otherwise, it's simply going to recreate, right?
Yeah.
So what's going to happen is you're going to invite some other white knight.
And, you know, the white knights who come in to rescue damsels always turn out to be like Stalin with a...
Plume, right?
I don't want to characterize your husband that harshly or anything like that.
But men who rush in to save women and, you know, I'm going to now tell you what to do and I'm going to be so dominant and forceful that you're going to just comply and swept along and let's have kids.
Move in.
Let's, you know.
I mean, how could that ever turn out to be anything other than domineering, right?
Yeah.
I mean, you allow yourself to be domineered.
From the get-go.
And it's sexy for you, right?
Because this was your romantic template.
Your father was dominant and he got lots of kids.
And so your genes are like, oh, so, okay, so dominant men are around.
So let's find a dominant man and he's going to win, give us resources, and we'll be able to raise our kids, right?
So I'd say switch that.
Try and figure out how to become outside.
I sort of said be around alpha.
What I mean is sort of be outside the alpha paradigm.
And stop inviting people in your life to tell you what to do.
And otherwise, you know, you may divorce this guy, and then you'll be a scattered single mom, and some other guy is going to come along, and then he's going to be like, ah, this guy's going to organize life.
He's going to tell me what to do.
He's going to make everything better.
Oh, no.
He tends to be another kind of tyrant, and he's kind of a know-it-all, and he's kind of bossy.
All right, get rid of this guy.
Oh, look, now another guy's going to...
I just don't want that.
No, I've already discussed with my sister who listens to a lot of your shows, and she said, well, like, she said, whatever you do, like, you're going into therapy, You know, sorting yourself out.
And then, you know, maybe at some point, you could date again.
But yeah, like, I know that there's...
Like, I didn't just, like, whoops, trip into this situation.
And yeah, I need to be using a lot more of the word I did this and that instead of external.
And I am, you know, I'm incredibly sorry.
I'm incredibly sorry for the template that you received.
Which...
Primed you for just this kind of disaster and was not your fault.
Right?
And I really, I mean, I think we're done with the conversation, but I really wanted at the very end of this to just extend, you know, a massive cyber hug to the heart of you as a girl.
Thank you.
For this destructive template that you inherited that has played itself out in ways that are definitely problematic.
Whether there's a final tragedy here, I don't know.
I certainly hope that you can work things out with your husband.
And if not, that you at least will be in a situation to not repeat.
That's the major concern that I would have.
But I'm incredibly sorry.
This is not...
I sort of try and compare to what my daughter is receiving and what other good parents I know are providing to their kids.
And it is tragic that you saw this kind of template that primed you for this kind of problem.
And I'm sorry.
I'm incredibly sorry that you're not in a position more to enjoy Motherhood because of the stress of marital problems, and I hope that you can change to the point where these will be diminished to the point where there's enough love for you to continue, but I certainly would not do that at expense of physical safety and certainly the mental health of your kids.
Yeah.
Okay.
Thank you again for taking the call, Stefan, and it's been helpful.
Yes.
I appreciate that.
And thanks so much to your sister for listening and for, you know, hopefully she can email us and let us know whether we sucked or not.
I shouldn't say us.
Now, look at me.
Look at me diving off the moral responsibility bandwagon.
It wasn't like Mike was telling me what to say.
Hopefully she can email us and tell us whether I sucked or not in the call.
And I do appreciate her support of the show and enthusiasm for the show.
And of course, I hope, hope that you will let us know how it goes as well.
I will do.
I will do.
All right.
Big kiss to your kids for me.
Take care.
Bye.
All right.
Up next is Marcus.
Marcus wrote in and said, After waking up from 41 years as a tax slave Christian with white knight syndrome, I found myself completely disconcerned with my life.
My kids are indoctrinated into the Christian faith and my ex-wife has three of them firmly established in a very charismatic church.
I went to church with them while we were together.
How can I now explain to them what I have discovered?
Hi Stefan.
Hello.
Gosh, what a story.
What a story.
Yeah, there's...
Sounds like you can tell me more about that before we start.
Well, there's probably a lot more than that as well.
I'm open to starting where you want to start.
What woke you up, you poor bastard?
Look, I've always been inquisitive and I am a little bit nervous about this because I'm in counselling at the moment.
Okay, here we go.
I was just hugely dissatisfied with where my life had taken me and I heard something about the economy On YouTube and I got onto a website called goldandsilver.com and that led me to Jeff Berwick's site,
The Dollar Vigilante, and then I saw this crazy man do an interview with Jeff Berwick called Stephen Molyneux.
Great.
And, you know, I've started watching one or two of your YouTube shows and I thought, this man's a crackpot.
It's about half right.
Well, I mean, you know, I was firmly indoctrinated in the Christian faith.
And so much of what you say challenges people to their very core.
And just little pearls of truth just started to seep in and I heard a call and I should say thank you to you and Mike and to the other people from FDR because I started hearing people talking about their abuse in their childhood and after 34 years of Hiding from the truth,
I was able to confront sexual abuse in my childhood.
Oh, wow.
I'm incredibly sorry to hear that, but what an incredible and brave thing to do.
Tell me more if you can.
Okay.
Look, I'm not entirely sure how How it actually happened, but there is six kids in my family, of which I'm the youngest and I'm now 42.
At some stage, my two sisters have told me that they believe one of my brothers, and obviously I'll keep names out of it, was sexually abused by someone on our street in our hometown.
And he brought that abuse home into the house.
And do you know how old he was at that time?
He was 12.
And he started sexually assaulting both my sisters.
It started with my older sister, who was six at the time.
And...
And that went on until she was 12.
And he also assaulted my second sister, who was also older than me.
And unfortunately, my first sexual experience was with one of my sisters when I was eight.
And I remember her telling me, you know, I'm trying to show you how our brother has sex with us.
Oh, so she basically sexually assaulted you as an attempt to...
Okay, okay.
And I had never confronted this until literally a month and a half ago.
I'd never spoken to anyone about it.
And it was from listening to other callers.
Who had shared some of their life experiences.
I had a bit of a breakdown.
I lost my job because I wasn't sleeping.
I couldn't cope at work because I was having a lot of flashbacks.
I could tell you the colour of the towels on the towel rail.
Every little detail about the things that happened to me because that wasn't the end of The abuse that a few years later after that incident started getting exposed to pornography by the son of another man who lived on the street and that started a what turned out to be almost a lifelong
addiction to pornography because Later on when that kid left I would still go up to the house and the father would show me pornography and I didn't realise at the time but what he was doing was grooming me for abuse because he would show me pornography and then Later on,
that turned into watching him masturbate and then mutual masturbation.
You can see where it might have gone from there.
In my teenage years, after that particular gentleman left town, I was very confused about my sexuality.
It led to a huge amount of promiscuity in my teenage years from 17 until when I got married at 23.
I think maybe 50 sexual partners in seven years.
Male and female, is that right?
Or just female?
Two males and the rest female.
Right, okay.
And I was including him in one of those sexual experiences.
Having been raised in a Christian family, homosexuality was dirty, it was filthy, and I was trying to prove to myself that I wasn't gay because I'd been exposed to this You know I still to this day find it very hard to be around homosexuals because I associate pedophilia with homosexuality and I understand that's not the case but it's just that's something
I struggle with.
Well homosexuality and pedophilia are not related to my knowledge other than like so an older man Maybe sexually attracted to a 15-year-old or a 14-year-old girl.
And he may molest her.
But we wouldn't say that that's heterosexuality, right?
We would say that's pedophilia.
Yeah.
Anyway, I mean, same thing is true with homosexuality, but it's neither here nor there.
But pedophilia is the key.
Yeah, I'm not saying my view is correct.
It's just something I struggle with.
Of course, yeah.
No, of course.
So...
Yeah, I... I'd never confronted this and then when I started watching your show, I started questioning my religion.
In the last 13 weeks, I've lost all my...
I now classify myself as an atheist because I've I've looked at religion for what it is, which is basically a form of control.
I've confronted and tried to start dealing with the child abuse in my past.
It's been a bit of a rollercoaster ride.
Emotionally, I was a bit of a mess and the doctor put me on antidepressants which is in one way they keep me very numb and it's stopped me from being a A sobbing mess from time to time,
but on the other hand, you know, sometimes I feel like I want to cry about things and I can't.
But I am starting to heal a little bit, you know, like I'm starting to be able to process a few things.
Um, so anyway, that's, um, I was married at 23, um, to a woman who was patently wrong for um, to a woman who was patently wrong for me and I can see that now.
And in fact, I can't think of a virtuous, normal relationship with a woman that I've had ever, as sad as that is to say.
I had four wonderful, beautiful kids with my ex, but we stayed together because we felt our religion bound us together because Christians don't get divorced, supposedly.
And I started listening to your book, Real Time Relationships Against the Gods.
I've listened to so many YouTube videos and read so much literature in the last 13 weeks, my head literally feels like it's going to explode.
And I've talked to quite a few people on FDR in the chat and on Skype.
And it's just...
It's quite overwhelming, Stefan, to wake up at nearly 42 and try and confront all these things in such a short period of time.
Yeah.
There's a couple of major questions I'm really struggling with, and I know you can't offer solutions, but I'd really like you to maybe help me frame my thoughts, if you wouldn't mind.
Right.
Okay.
Yeah, I'm happy to help in any way I can.
Right.
Question one, I guess.
Last...
I had no idea that my sister's abuse had been so long-lived.
I hadn't...
What do you mean?
Your sister's abuse by your brother or...
By my brother.
By my brother.
I had no idea that it...
Six years, you said, right?
Yeah.
Now...
For obvious reasons, none of my family is very close.
you know, our parents didn't abuse us, but I found out in the last...
I just meant there was no sexual abuse from my parents and there was no...
How do you know?
Because both my sisters have told me that never once did either my mother or father Touched them in any way.
It came from my older brother.
And what does your older brother say about your parents?
He won't talk about it, period.
So you don't know?
I'm going on the information that my oldest sister has given me.
No, but your brother was ground zero for the sexual abuse.
That's right.
And he's not talking about it.
Now listen, I'm not saying your parents did.
Yeah.
I'm not saying your parents did, but let me tell you something, which I'm sure you...
Oh, are you still there?
Yeah.
I get a noise.
Okay, let me tell you something which is important and we're going to have to go quite fast simply because, not because it's late, I'm fine with that, but just because it's been 13 weeks and you're obviously in a chaos at the moment, right?
I mean, it's upside down, new soul, right?
I mean, this is born again, not what the Christians mean, but this is really born again, but for the first time, for real.
Your family had extreme dysfunction.
If, was it four children could be sexually molested and sexually molest each other?
Yeah.
In the household for six years?
Yep.
That is a completely and totally fucked up household that that can occur.
Let's say that the story is completely correct, that it was some creep down the street, right?
The question is, how did the creep down the street know That he wouldn't go to jail.
That your brother wouldn't go straight to your parents and say, this guy touched me and then that guy goes to jail.
And we all know what happens to child molesters in jail.
They don't tend to have a very good time of it at all.
So this guy down the street, let's just say this whole thing is true.
This guy down the street molests your brother and the only reason he's willing to take that risk is he knows for damn certain that your parents are either not going to notice or not do anything about it.
And then your brother Rapes your sister and then continues to rape your sister for six years.
Your sister then molests you.
You then end up as a pornography addict, as you say, and then end up being sexually molested if not raped by a man on the street.
Where the fuck were your parents during this whole goddamn time?
Did they not notice that their children were being raped?
This is the question that I'm trying to ask myself.
I tried to have a conversation with my mum, who's still alive, my dad's dead, on the 29th, the day before my birthday.
And her response, and I'll quote, is, I did the best I could You know, there's things in the past that just need to be forgiven and forgotten.
Lay it at the foot of Jesus and pray about it and just try and move forward with your life.
What?
Okay, alright.
So did you, as a child, ever get punished for wrongdoings by your parents?
Yeah.
Wait, no, but they have a philosophy of forgiving past wrongdoings and moving on and not getting upset, right?
So clearly when you did something wrong as a kid, they never hit you, they never yelled at you, they never punished you, they never sent you to a timeout, because the whole philosophy of your mom is to forgive wrongdoings and to move on.
So that must have been what she did as a kid, unless she's just being a fucking hypocrite now.
So were you punished as a child for wrongdoing?
Yeah.
Well, there's a wonderful old story in the Bible which goes something like this.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
You punish children for their wrongdoings, then those children have every right when they grow up to punish you for your wrongdoings.
Because you cannot say, well, you see, children, you children, they are...
Worthy of being punished for wrongdoing because we must be very Old Testament on children and then when the children grow up and say, hey mom, you failed the shit out of me as a mom.
Didn't even keep me safe from predation and rape and strangers and you didn't even notice that I was being molested and you didn't even notice that there was this guy who was molesting me and exposing me to pornography.
You completely failed as a parent in your primary obligation to keep your children even remotely safe from sexual predators of the world over.
And then they're all about, oh, well, you see, but forgiveness, you see, that's the key.
Forgiveness and letting the past go and not letting wrongs club up your arteries, you have to let go of upset.
And we don't want to be punished for any of our wrongdoings because we did the best we could with the knowledge we had at the time.
Well, how is that not true for every child in the known universe?
Every child in the known universe could be said to be doing the best they could with the knowledge they had at the time.
Yet parents have no fucking problem, and society has no fucking problem whatsoever punishing children for their misdeeds.
But when the children grow up and get angry at the parents for their misdeeds, suddenly it's all about forgiveness.
I mean, it's just hypocritical bullshit.
I hope you don't fall for it.
It's very tempting to, because it relieves us from the responsibility of anger.
She said...
But I hope that you won't accept that bullshit.
When I was trying to talk to her, and I said, you know, it was still going on when I was 14, 15, and she said, well, you're a teenager then.
You should have known better.
What was going on?
Going up and watching porn and engaging in mutual masturbation and things like that with this pedophile.
She said, well, you're a teenager.
Yeah, it's not mutual masturbation.
I know what you mean.
I know what you mean.
Mutual is the description of the physical proximity, not the choice of both, right?
That's right.
But she said, you're a teenager then.
You should have known better.
You should have come back and talked to someone.
And I was trying to explain.
No, the question is why.
The question is why, didn't you?
Because I didn't have...
And the reason, no, the reason why you didn't is that you had seen your siblings turn into this gruesome mutual pedophile sex orgy hellfest in your house with your parents not doing fuck all about it.
Because you didn't trust them because there wasn't a bond, because you didn't expect them to do anything remotely useful because you thought that they would just make your life worse, right?
Oh, look, he's been exposed to a homosexual.
Let's send him to Bible camp to cure him of his homosexuality, which could be incipient, right?
And God knows what would happen there, right?
I mean, wasn't that your fear?
That it would just get worse if you told your parents?
I just...
Stefan, I've been sad and angry for 34 years.
Yeah, of course.
I just...
I can't do sad and angry anymore.
off.
Go on.
Anyway, so...
Now...
Sorry, I'm just trying to compose myself a bit.
So, has your mother accepted any responsibility for massive child molestation that went on under her care, under her watch as a mother?
No.
Right.
So that's why you didn't go to her as a teenager.
Yeah.
Because she would have been a total bitch about it and blamed you kids, right?
And made your lives worse.
Yep.
And I'm incredibly sorry.
And this is exactly why...
You were targeted.
So blaming you as a 14-year-old for an environment of sexual abuse in the household of a woman whose job it was to keep her children safe, blaming you as a 14-year-old is about the most vile thing a human being can do.
So...
And see, this is, you know, all my life I've been taught to, you know, forgive and indoctrinate it.
You know, turn the other cheek and forgive and whatnot.
You know, it goes on.
Yeah, I noticed that with a lot of Christians around 9-11, that they were very much into forgiving the terrorists and forgiving the Muslims and so on.
But that's just hypocritical.
Now, the forgiveness bullshit is just when people are caught, they cry forgiveness, right?
Yeah.
The guy with the mugger with the knife to your ribs, if you get a hold of that knife, suddenly he's all about, can't we all just get along and burst into tears?
It's only because you got the knife.
It's nothing philosophical.
It's just the bullshit that people use when they're guilty and they want to defuse the righteous anger of the indignant.
So now I'm stuck with this problem where I'd never considered defooing.
I'd never even heard the term defoo before.
I started listening to a couple of the shows.
But it's not just my mother.
I'm faced with the problem of my older brother as well.
He's never, according to my sister, because the other sister who was abused, who abused me...
I'll clarify this.
My older sister, Who I'm now speaking to after 25 years of not speaking to her.
She went to three and a half years of therapy and she's been able to live some kind of normal life with a man who loves her and she's got two beautiful daughters.
My other sister The one who abused me is still single at 45 and she's lonely and miserable because she's never been able to get past the things that have happened to her.
Now my older brother, the one who actually abused my two sisters, He's had five kids to two different women.
He's married again with two little daughters.
Two very young, like, toddler daughters.
Do you think that he became a pedophile?
I honestly have no idea.
You have some idea?
I mean, he already raped your sisters, right?
It terrifies me.
I was having this discussion with the Councillor just briefly and I talked about it with two of the FDR listeners who were amazingly sympathetic and I'm now faced with the very real possibility that he's never Never had any counselling,
never dealt with the things that he's done in his youth.
And I would be completely certain that his new wife doesn't know about the things that he'd done.
Right.
And whether or not I should...
How old are his oldest kids from his first marriage?
21, 17 and 16.
And have you ever talked to them about it?
No.
None of the family...
Why?
None of the family is close.
I've only just...
Oh, you don't know them at all?
I barely know them.
I've met them, like, once.
Can you find a ways of contacting them?
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I think it would be a responsible thing to do to ask.
Because if he has preyed upon them sexually, then...
He needs to be called to account.
He needs to be kept away from kids, right?
Yeah.
If he prayed upon your sisters for 12 years through his sexually formative puberty years, right?
I guess from the age of 12 to 18 and when they were younger, right?
Yeah.
12 to 17 or 12 to 18.
Those are formative sexual years.
This is when sexual imprinting occurs and so on.
And if he was a pedophile, basically a child pedophile during that time, and he's never gone through treatment, the odds of him repeating, in my opinion, are very high.
And yeah, same here.
The only work that I've ever done that I loved was...
Being able to be a foster parent working with kids to keep other kids safe.
It was part of...
There's always been something within me that's like, if I couldn't be safe myself, I was going to make other people safe.
I was going to protect people and, you know...
Well, here's your chance.
Right?
Get in touch with his kids.
I mean, this is like the worst stereotype of a foster parent, right?
Yeah, I'll take those kids, right?
I mean, yeah, I would say try and get in touch with his adult children and try and find out what their childhood was like.
Yeah.
And, you know, if I were a betting man, that's where I would put my money on this tragic recurrence.
It seems...
I mean, how on earth could you possibly recover from raping sisters for six years?
I mean, in your formative sexual years, how the hell could you possibly recover from that?
I mean, don't people who get in touch with that stuff just kill themselves?
I mean, you have to repeat or you die.
I would guess.
I don't know.
Well, this is what terrifies me, Stefan.
I had never really considered, because I'd shut out, I hadn't dealt with the things that had happened to me.
I'd shut them away and been determined that I was going to make the things that had happened to me mean something, which is why I tried to help other people.
Right.
Because, you know, I needed my life to mean something beyond being a victim.
Right.
How old are your brother's youngest kids at the moment?
Seven months and 18 months.
Right.
And both girls, you said?
Yeah.
Yeah, well, I... So you think it's right and proper for me to pursue this?
You think I have an obligation to do so?
Right and proper.
I think if you have the knowledge of a significant risk factor, I think it's important to try...
I mean, obviously, you can't call the cops.
I mean, there's no evidences yet, right?
But if there is a way of getting in touch...
And you can't just sort of text them and say, hey, by the way, did this ever happen to you?
But if you could, anyway, to cultivate any kind of contact with them, wherein you can find out if anything unto what happened to them as kids.
It may be not that your brother is a sexual predator as an adult, but it may be that he has inherited...
Let's put it as nicely as possible, your parents' carelessness with regards to the sexual protection of their children.
But either way, it would seem to me that if your brother raped two children when he was a child and a teenager for six years and has never processed or dealt with it, that seems to me a huge risk factor, especially if he's not telling his new wife about any of this history.
I once watched a Dr.
Phil once.
I think it was a Dr.
Phil where some guy killed one of his family members when he was like 15 or something like that.
And then he got married later on and nobody told her.
Nobody told the wife about this.
And he ended up killing the wife and her best friend and the dog and all this kind of stuff, right?
Again, I mean, that's an anecdote.
What does it prove, right?
Other than if you've got this kind of stuff in your history, you've either dealt with it or you've not.
I didn't hide anything from my wife about my history and my past.
In fact, I told her everything because she asked, right?
And I told her everything.
And I didn't just sort of reply to like at a bare minimum to her questions, but was very descriptive and explanatory about my history and history.
And what I had done about it and what the effects were and how long I've been in therapy and what I had done in therapy and all that.
I mean there were no secrets.
I mean she knows every little thing I've done wrong in my life and there's no – right?
I mean why would you want to keep this such a secret if you've dealt with it?
Then you'd be keeping a huge part of your history from someone and why would you want to do that?
Wow.
And, like, if he's not dealt with it, and she's the kind of woman who's married him, then she's married someone who is an unreformed or untreated child rapist.
Why wouldn't she know that?
Well, she wouldn't know that because she would have experienced some kind of sexual trauma in her history that she was blind to, that would blind her to this dysfunction within him.
And again, that puts the kids at risk, in my opinion.
Yeah.
Okay, so...
What do your sisters think?
My oldest sister, I haven't...
I haven't talked to her about this because that was going to be the context of our next conversation.
My sister who abused me, I haven't talked to since I had my red pill moment about 13 weeks ago.
Because I just haven't had the strength to have that conversation with her.
And for no other reason.
I can't be in the same...
If I can't be in the same room as my brother or I may actually kill him...
Right.
I only found out that this had gone on for six years like a week ago, Stefan.
I didn't know.
What did you know previously?
Just that both the sisters had been at some stage abused by my older brother and that one of my sisters had abused me.
That's all I knew.
It was only when I spoke to my oldest sister two weeks ago that she told me all the gory details because I said, look, I need to know.
I need to know what happened.
I need to know how long it happened.
And she told me.
And I was just devastated beyond words, you know, that this is the truth of my family.
Right.
And now, you know, I never knew, I never understood why none of us were close, why the relationships were all crap.
And now I know.
And it's, you know, and just dealing with that grief, you know, like, I mean, we were robbed, you know?
Yes, you were.
It's okay to feel.
It's okay to feel.
This is heal, right?
To feel is to heal.
You were robbed.
You were robbed.
And you were robbed from normal and healthy sexual development by this older fucking creep.
And this, of course, was any kind of connection, right?
For you as a kid.
Look, someone's interested in me, right?
That's what grooming is about.
It's the loneliness.
It's the isolation, right?
I mean, you can do good with the hell that you received.
That does not justify the hell that you received or the hell that you were exposed to and that your sisters were exposed to and your brother was exposed to.
In my experience, religion and sexual dysfunction go hand in hand for a wide variety of reasons that are too abstract to go into here.
All I know is that I've got 34 years of bad memories and I've just got to get rid of them now.
I can't carry them around anymore, Steph.
What does that mean?
What does that mean, get rid of them?
Well, that's why I'm going to counselling.
That's why I'm talking to you.
I'm trying to get all this stuff out.
In the light of day.
But you know it's probably going to get worse before it gets better, right?
To be realistic about the next couple of months.
I hope it doesn't get any worse.
Seriously.
But you're 13 weeks into dealing with Six years of child rape for your sisters.
You haven't told me and I don't want to pry.
You said you can imagine where it escalates to from there with regards to the grooming by the elder pedophile in your neighborhood.
And, I mean, you don't have to tell me how far it went, but I imagine it did not stop at that.
So you were molested and perhaps raped as a child.
And there was rape and molestation going on for six years in your childhood home.
You're 13 weeks into dealing with it.
And, look, I mean, I'm not trying to alarm you, but it's a hell of a...
That's a hell of a mess to deal with.
And I say this with all humility in that I have not had to deal with this in my household, to my knowledge.
And I can't imagine.
I mean, to look back at your childhood and say that you were breakfasting, lunching, and dining with a boy and then a young man who was raping your sisters.
I mean, it turns...
A childhood into a museum of horror, isn't it?
You know, I just...
I'm heartbroken for my sisters, you know.
I'm heartbroken for myself.
Yeah.
And it was your mum's job to protect you.
And I can't believe for a split second that any even remotely competent or connected parent would not notice if a child was molested.
Well, my sister told me...
Excuse me a second.
When I spoke to my older sister last week, she said the only reason it stopped was because my mum actually caught my older brother in the act.
And apparently there was yelling and screaming and ranting and raving and she never left them alone again after that point.
But there was no...
When your brother was like 17 or 18?
I don't know the ages, to be brutally honest.
Well, no, but you said it started when he was 12 and it went on for six years, right?
It must have been just short of when he was 18.
But there was no counselling.
There was no doctors.
There was no nothing for my sisters.
Of course not.
Of course not, because counsellors would probably have had a duty to report rape, right?
Yeah.
So your mom had to keep the secret sealed up, right?
Yeah.
Because her reputation and her feelings are more important than your sister's mental health.
Yeah.
Or your brother's for that matter.
Yeah.
You know, it was the old what would people think, I think, was the kind of mental spot that my parents were in.
Rather than, how do we help the kids?
Well, yeah, I'm not that overly concerned about the spot your parents were in.
Neither am I. They're just selfish.
I mean, it's that very selfishness that the pedophiles rely upon, right?
It's that very...
Grim willingness to cover up crimes that pedophilia depends upon.
I mean, pedophilia would not exist if pedophiles knew that every child they molested would go straight to their parents and tell them.
There would be no pedophilia.
None.
Not even a bit.
Because then every pedophile would face charges right away, and pedophilia would cease as the abominable, satanic evil that it is.
And so the pedophile, it preys upon children but only as a consequence of the children's mistrust and lack of bond with the parents.
It is the fungus and the weed and the virus that grows in the damp cracks between parents and children where they are separate and isolated.
And it is the shadow cast by parental indifference and alienation.
Hyenas don't usually kill things, they just eat the carcass.
And pedophiles just eat the carcasses of isolated children.
So your mother's reaction is exactly why the pedophile was there to begin with.
I couldn't have talked to her about it.
There's no way.
I had no real...
I had no relationship with either of my parents to talk about anything remotely to do with sexuality or anything like that.
There just wasn't that relationship to be able to talk to them about.
You know, certainly wasn't going to tell them that, you know, my sister tried to have sex with me when I was eight.
You know, like, it's just...
So now I've got a few, and that's just, like, one of the bridges I've got to try and cross in the next couple of months.
Like, this, the...
I'll have to talk to my brother's kids or try to.
Well, I mean, it doesn't just, again, you may want to approach this from an isolated standpoint Do your sisters have any better relationship with your brother's kids?
Yeah, probably.
Well, I wouldn't take this cross on yourself, right?
I mean, if you have a relationship with your sisters, then you can all sit down and plan and strategize.
I would really recommend not doing this in isolation.
You guys have lived in isolation enough, right?
Yeah.
I would sit down and talk about it with them and say, listen, these are my concerns.
My brother was a serial child rapist during his formative sexual years.
He's never, to my knowledge, dealt with it or talked about it.
And I think he's keeping it secret from his current wife.
And they've had two kids?
Girls?
You know, what do you think?
What should we do?
I would try and act less in isolation.
Because that isolation was terrifying for you guys as kids, right?
I don't want to...
Well this is the thing, now I'm trying to rebuild my relationship with my sister because the really sick thing, the thing that makes me most angry is when my brother and sister, when my brother-in-law and sister got married, she had told him about her abuse and he had sent my parents a letter saying,
you know, you need to deal with the skeletons in your closet because eventually they're going to come out and My mother denied that there'd been anything like that go on and let me believe that my sister was trying to break up the family.
Wait, so your mom witnessed your sister being raped by your brother or attempted rape by your brother?
Yeah.
And then when confronted, she preferred that you think and that her husband or fiance think that she was insane and evil.
Well, my husband knew better, but I didn't.
No, but that's what your mother tried to get across to people.
That's right.
And I spent 25 years having little to no relationship with my oldest sister because I thought that she had stretched the truth about things because I was only a teenager when she left.
Young teenager.
And it's only been, you know, I've lost 25 years of my relationship with my sister because I thought that she had tried to hurt the family.
And it was only in the last couple of weeks where we started talking because I finally confronted my own abuse that she confided in me what had actually really happened.
And this is the...
And this is the mindfuck I'm going through trying to piece all this together.
You know, like it's...
Why do you think your mother told you this?
Because if she had to deal with it, you know, it would have come out and then, you know, An upstanding member of the community, an upstanding member of the church and all, you know, with four kids being involved in sexual abuse.
That would have gone down really well, so it was easier to hide it.
No, no, but what I mean is, why do you think that...
You said that your mum had told you now, or more recently, that she had caught your brother arresting your sister.
No, my sister told me that.
My sister told me that mum had...
Oh, your sister told you.
I'm sorry.
Okay, I understand.
I understand.
So your mother is still in complete denial over the whole thing.
Yeah.
Even now, even now that I know the truth, and I've tried to confront her about it, she just won't talk about it.
She said, it's all in the past, just let it lie.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You know, like...
Right.
And I just saw in the chat, you know, someone said, I hope the guy's got supportive people in my life.
Well, I do have supportive people in my life because I've got the FDR community.
And if it wasn't for the guys in the FDR community, I wouldn't be able to do this.
And I hope you all know that.
Well, and through this community, right?
I mean, your brother...
We'll either be prevented from harming children or if he hasn't harmed them, hopefully we'll be encouraged to go into therapy so that whatever dysfunction arose from his predation upon your sisters may not repeat and that's a goddamn fine thing to come out of a philosophical community and I appreciate the listeners who've helped you with that and I certainly encourage people to continue to help this fine man try to put as much of his suffering to good use as possible.
What is your sister's relationship like with your mother?
How did my sister put it?
Professional.
She's...
Why...
I mean, God, why would they have anything to do with your mother in any way, shape or form?
I'm trying to sort of understand that.
Because...
I'm the only now atheist in my family.
Because...
I've seen religion for what it is.
But my sisters...
This is not a religious matter.
I mean...
Well, but if you've been indoctrinated in something for your entire life and you've been taught forgive, forgive, forgive, no matter what happens, forgive, forgive, forgive...
Oh, right.
Okay.
Then...
So they forgive your mother for...
Being a shit mum.
...to protect them from serial molestation and rape.
Right.
Okay.
Well, they're trying to...
The oldest one has just sort of...
She said to me, she wasn't a great mum and she failed us in almost every regard, but she's 80 now and we're all she's got.
Who else is going to look after her?
And I said...
Well, I do believe there's something about as you sow, so shall you reap.
Yeah.
But...
I mean, I just...
But I can't even talk to her now, Steph.
I don't...
Your mum?
Yeah, I don't think I'll ever be able to talk to her again.
I just...
I can't...
Unless she was prepared...
Her failure...
If you're...
Yeah, look, if your brother has continued his child rapey ways, then your mother's failure...
Has been passed on to another generation.
To deal with this.
is directly causal in the serial molestation of the next generation.
Yeah.
And, like, that's...
Yeah, there's a C word that I don't even particularly like, but it sure does come to mind with your mom.
Can you see why the last 13 weeks have been such a headfuck?
Oh, completely.
Completely and totally.
I mean, the amount of history that is trying to run through your mind at the moment is like trying to pass the Indian Ocean through a garden hose, right?
I mean, you must be hypervigilant.
You must be unable to sleep.
Your mind must be in a whirl.
I mean, you must be focused on this to the exclusion of all else almost, right?
I don't sleep well at the moment, you know, like...
The flashbacks have stopped now, which is good, but that's only since I've been able to talk about it that they've stopped.
While I'm learning, I've discovered this massive thirst for knowledge since I've discovered philosophy.
I've started trying to find some reason Some light in the darkness, I guess, so to speak.
So I've just been trying to, while I'm learning and while I'm gaining knowledge and while I'm talking to other people who are enlightened, you know, other members of the FDR community and people like that, then I'm okay.
I struggle when I'm on my own and especially if I allow myself to start dwelling on the past, yeah, it gets pretty gnarly.
I bet.
This is just one facet of the things that I'm stressing about.
The other facet is my own kids and my own divorce and how that panned out for me.
As I said, I married the completely wrong person for me.
I've got only Two of my four kids speak to me because my ex has poisoned the two of them quite effectively.
I married the classic resource vampire 16 years and never worked.
I think she worked one month out of 16 years of our marriage.
I didn't begrudge her not working when the kids were small and when they weren't at school because I thought it was good for the kids to have a mum when they came home from school.
I still maintain I thought that was good, but when the kids were at school she still didn't work.
To cut a long story short, the other question I have My ex left me to have an affair.
The kids don't know that.
They still think I was, they've got the opinion that pretty much I was the catalyst, the reason why their mum left because I was not a great dad.
You know, I did make mistakes.
I never hit my kids.
I did yell at them.
Not all the time, but when they were naughty, I did yell at them and I understand that was a mistake now.
But I have...
I didn't know she was actually having an affair when she left.
Do you know how long she was having the affair for before she left?
Approximately three months.
And...
About a year ago, I found on Facebook a series of messages and they were from the wife of the man that she had been having an affair with.
Apparently, Facebook, even if you're blocked, files the messages into a file name called Other and they just sit there.
I found these messages saying, are you aware that your wife's having an affair with my husband?
I really need your help in this.
Can you help me get some clarity of what your wife's position was, etc.?
I'm sorry.
I'm just trying to figure out the timeline.
So this was Facebook messages from a year ago that you just found recently?
From two years ago.
My wife and I broke up three and a half years ago.
We separated and we've been divorced now a year.
But the wife of the man she'd been having an affair with sent these messages back in 2011.
I only found them last year in a file called other.
I only discovered that she had actually left me to have an affair last year.
Right, okay.
Now, I haven't told my kids because a counsellor at the time told me that it would be a very bad idea to show those letters to my kids.
How old are your kids?
My oldest is now 18.
I've got a son who's 18, a daughter who's 16, a son who's 14 and a daughter who's 12.
Wow.
And none of them know the truth.
Right.
Right.
Yeah, it's tough.
I mean, the 18-year-old is an adult, right?
Old enough to know, but, you know, do you want them to have to keep secrets from their siblings?
I mean, it's tough, right?
Yeah, so...
I mean, yeah, it's tough.
Yeah, I mean, but if you're being slandered, right?
I mean, if your ex is basically saying, well, he was a bad husband, I mean, I don't know, maybe you were, maybe you weren't, I don't know, but...
If she's not being honest, then that's a problem in terms of your relationship with your kids.
I've always been happy to accept 50% of the blame and I've told the kids, I made mistakes in our marriage, mum made mistakes in our marriage but you'll never hear her say that she made mistakes.
I mean, I personally would be, for the eldest, I would say, listen, your mother knows what event precipitated the end of the relationship.
And it's her job to tell you.
But she's not telling you.
So you need to go and ask her.
Yeah, see, I've never wanted to harm the kids.
And so I'm...
No, no, no.
Look, I'm no therapist, so listen to your therapist, right?
But I'll just tell you my particular perspective.
The idea that we can shield children from harm by lying to them and misrepresenting what actually happened, I think is a mistake.
You do?
I think is a mistake.
Yeah, because children know.
Children know, deep down, everything that's going on in the family.
Like, maybe twice in my daughter's life have my wife and I had disagreement, any kind of significant disagreement.
I mean, that's probably literally true, like twice in five years.
And if we start to have a disagreement and my daughter is around, we say, Mommy and Daddy are having a disagreement.
We'll be fine.
We really need to talk this out, right?
But we're upset with each other right now.
But we're not going to say, oh, everything's fine, honey, and then put a big smile.
No, we're actually having a disagreement.
And it's a significant one.
Because she knows that.
She knows that we're having a disagreement, and if we pretend otherwise, it's damaging to her.
Now, that doesn't mean that we slap each other silly in front of her, not that we ever would, but the idea...
Your kids know that the mom is not telling the truth.
Now, either you are going to be complicit in that lie, or you're not.
But if the marriage ended in the moment because your wife had an affair, lied to you, and I assume lied to your children as well because she wasn't telling them about the affair, by commission or omission she lied to them.
Then it is damaging to your children who know that something's going on deep down and the adults are denying it and you're participating in that.
I certainly would give your wife every opportunity to come clean, right?
And she can say it in an age-appropriate way, right?
I mean, certainly the 18-year-old is old enough, right?
Look, mom had an affair, right?
This was...
I was unhappy and she'll probably – because women can get away with this stuff tragically.
Anyway, I won't get into that.
But because when a man has an affair, he's a bastard.
When a woman has an affair, it's because she's unhappy, right?
This is just the myth that people believe, right?
The really hard thing was, Steph, my son came to me about a year and a half ago, my oldest son, and this was in prolude to him not speaking to me for a year.
We've only just managed to rebuild the relationship.
And he asked me how many affairs I had had.
So he'd had the idea implanted in his head that I had had affairs Wait, and how old was this?
How old was your son?
He was just before his 17th birthday.
Okay, so this is your one who's now 18?
And after that, he didn't speak to me for a year.
Okay, well listen, if your wife is telling your kids about affairs, then you have to tell the truth.
Right, so for instance, if your wife is telling your children that you had affairs...
Then the truth has to come out because they're going to be much more damaged by lies about affairs than the truth about affairs.
Okay.
Right?
I don't think children, particularly at the age of 14, should be introduced to the concept of parental affairs at all.
But if your wife has already crossed that bridge, then you've got to go in and tell the truth.
Okay.
Right?
I'm sorry that she brought any of this shit up with kids.
Well, we've never...
But if she did...
Yeah, go ahead.
I don't know whether you've heard this sort of thing before but I've never been able to have a private conversation with my ex about the kids or any disagreement.
Any time I've sent her a text or any time I've sent her an email, she's actually shown the kids the email and then put spin on it To make it look like I was trying to take the kids away or trying to threaten her and the kids have been on Facebook in the past saying, Dad, stop threatening Mum.
But you can have a sit down with your kids, right?
You still see them, right?
Yeah, so have a sit down and say, again, this is my suggestion.
I don't know what you should do, but I'm just telling you what I would do in this situation.
Have a sit down and say, look, kids, you know, I've heard from the eldest that mom has been telling you that I had affairs, right?
Do you know what that means?
Blah, blah, blah, right?
Well, the truth is that I didn't, but your mom did.
And I don't want to give you the proof.
I mean, it's something I don't even want in my head or whatever, right?
And I was certainly not a perfect husband, but the reality is that...
And I'm sorry that you're caught in this battle.
This is not something that I would have ever told you about.
This is not something that is appropriate, I think, to tell children.
But if that...
Bridge has already been crossed and if I'm being – if your mom is telling you that I had affairs and she didn't, the truth is that that's not true.
The reason that the marriage broke – look, the marriage was problematic and I'm not saying that this is all your mom's fault or anything like that.
But the reason that the marriage broke up when it did was that your mom had been having an affair for three months with a fellow named – whatever his name is, right?
Well, they know.
I can provide proof of this if you want.
I don't really want to because it's not appropriate for you guys to have this stuff in your head about your mom's sort of romantic feelings towards another man while she was married to me and the mom to you.
But your mom broke her marriage vow.
She stepped outside the monogamous relationship.
She is the one who took that step that caused the immediate breakup of the family.
I'm very sorry that you even have to know this, but if your mom is already telling you about this kind of stuff – and look, you're going to go back to your mom and your mom is going to tell you all this terrible stuff about me and I'm sorry that that's the situation.
I don't think you've heard me say all kinds of terrible stuff about your mom.
But she's in a place where she feels she can just kind of do this kind of stuff, and I'm sorry about that.
I really am.
And you may then not talk to me for a year, but at some point you will get that I'm telling you the truth.
And if you really feel the need for proof, I can provide you some evidence as to why or how I know this stuff.
But it is important for you to know the truth about the affairs if your mom has already been bringing them up.
Yeah.
Okay.
You know, it's...
See, this is the thing...
When you step out of the matrix, you can look back on your life and go, holy fuck, I've made every possible wrong decision.
But while you're still in the matrix, you can't see these decisions for what they are.
I was talking to a couple of the people from FDR and I know people are probably asking, why have you ended up with these people?
I haven't had a proper...
Solid, virtuous relationship with a woman in my life.
I can honestly say that.
I've gone looking for women I can save, protect, provide for.
Virtually every woman I've ever been with has been a resource vampire.
They see this white knight riding in on his horse Thinking, you know, like just wanting to protect people and help people.
And it's like I've got a big fucking target painted on my forehead saying, take me for a ride.
Well, I mean, there are certain kinds of women who will provoke that in a man, right?
That's how they present themselves.
And men have a built-in biological instinctive desire to protect women.
And some women will use that...
As a means of exploiting men.
And, you know, I mean, men have sexual desire for women and some women really tart themselves up sexually in order to put men into the resource providing days of sexual lust.
And some women will present themselves as helpless in order to exploit a man and become pretty ferocious.
After the relationship gets cemented.
And it's a pretty brutal situation to be in.
And as you see at the beginning, it seems all kinds of sort of compliant and so on.
But towards the end, it gets horribly manipulative and bullying.
And it is a great tragedy.
Something Dr.
Warren Farrell said, which was...
A man's illusion of strength is his greatest weakness, and a woman's illusion of weakness is her greatest strength.
Yeah.
But it's not real strength, it's just manipulative strength.
But like, for the first time in my life, I'm determined to beat this, I'm determined to get well, you know?
Oh, and you will.
Yeah, I mean...
You will.
I mean, I think you've come to one of the few places in the world where I think people will listen and understand and sympathize and really get it.
I mean, lots of people, I mean, you definitely have had a rougher childhood than almost everyone else on the planet, and I'm incredibly sorry for that.
I mean, it sounds like you've got absolute hellspawn of a pair of parents, and I'm incredibly sorry for all of that.
And what an amazing and miraculous thing that you've done over the last...
13 months?
I mean, that's...
Sorry, 13 weeks.
I mean, that's an incredible thing to be going through.
And, you know, there's that old thing that...
Let me show you a little something, right?
Which is...
It sounds like complete bullshit, but I think there's truth in it.
Do you know...
You know this, right?
So there's this old thing that Christians say, that God doesn't give you more than you can bear.
Right?
You've heard that, right?
Yeah.
I think in a weird way, it's kind of true of philosophy as well.
I mean, there have been times when I've just wanted to throw my hands up and forget it, right?
But it has always been the case that philosophy has not given me more than I can bear and more, in fact, that makes me flourish.
And the more the burden that philosophy places upon me, the greater the flourishing afterwards.
And the reason for that is not because there's a God called philosophy that tests you.
But because our inner strength responds to tests that it can handle at the time when we can handle it.
Our inner strength is scanning the environment for whatever ledge we can use to climb ourself up to a higher place.
Offline.
And in my experience, we do not take on, in general, more than we can handle and flourish thereby.
And that's why I feel very confident that you will flourish from this.
That you will have...
Look, you're less than halfway through your life, probably, right?
So you have a whole other 40 years to go or more.
Yes.
50 years, probably by the time we all get old, right?
And there is...
You're not 80, right?
There is time for a second life for you.
And this is probably what your inner horses are champing at the bit and pulling you towards.
Like, God, let's get out of the dungeon.
Let's get out of this underworld of abusers and rapists and molesters and...
Deniers and enablers of evil.
Let's get out of this underworld.
Let's climb to the light.
Let's find something good.
Let's find something virtuous.
We're not too old.
We can have it.
We can live that.
And I think that's probably why you are having such an amazing burst of energy at the moment, is that you feel desire where there is capacity for achievement.
I've learned more about truth in the last 13 weeks than I've known in my life.
And a lot of it's been really...
Really, really hard to bear.
Yes.
Truth is a lot of things, but it's definitely not easy.
It's not the easy path.
You know, it's just not.
It's the right path.
It's not an easy path because when you start dealing in truth, you've got to You've really got to confront a lot of demons.
It's like all good habits, right?
It's like all good habits.
It's like exercise.
You know, is it easier to sit on the couch and eat nachos?
Yeah.
Right?
Is it easier to put down the cheesecake and...
You pick up some fruit?
Yeah.
It's easier to hang on to the cheesecake and reject.
So all good habits are difficult in the moment and pay off in the long run.
All bad habits are easy in the moment and difficult in the long run.
So your lack of self-knowledge, which I don't want to portray as some sort of negative or deficiency on your part, the inevitable lack of self-knowledge that occurs from the family that you had the misfortune to be born into, Well, so you had a marriage, and you had four kids, and that's really not easy now, right?
But now, with this self-knowledge, it's harder in the short run, but in the years to come, you'll look back and say, that's when I came alive.
That's when I was born, really, for the first time.
I had my childhood in my 40s, my adolescence in my 50s, and my glorious matured down that road.
And it is tough at the moment, but it's like the guy who...
You know, quit smoking when he's 30, right?
And then, you know, when he's 50 or 60 and see the guys who still keep smoking starting to drop off from lung cancer and emphysema and so on, he looks back and he says, well, I know that was tough, but thank God I quit when I was 30, right?
Look, even...
It's funny, you know, like...
I've had to...
I've been saying to some of the other FDR people, I need you to do a philosophy for dummies because I'm not terribly educated.
I left school in year 10 and I've had to run to the dictionary quite a few times to understand some of the words that get used on the shows and on the chat.
But Like, now that I understand the truth and I'm starting to get a grasp, a really childlike grasp on philosophy, all I want to do is share it.
And I'm convinced that there must be...
One of the hardest things for me is there's been no services for men to talk about child abuse.
I mean, the counsellor I'm going to is great, but it was really hard for me the first two times to talk to a woman about it.
Right.
There's just no services for men who are the victims of child abuse, none at all, that I can find.
You know, so one of the things I want to do, you know, like the council said, it was really important to have some goals.
And one of the things I'd really like to do is I'd like to do something for men who are the victims of child abuse.
And, you know, it's, I want to be part of the fight, you know, I want to be, you know, I watched all the conference.
By the way, I thought you were fantastic at the conference.
I've got to say, I thought that was the best speech I'd ever seen you give.
I certainly agree with you on that.
I appreciate that.
I was very pleased.
I'm normally quite critical of my own speeches, but I came off that one thinking, that's about as best as I could have done.
Except when I stepped into the whiteboard and complained of initiating violence, I should have also said, and it's white!
That's the only thing that I felt I could have done better.
I'm sorry I haven't been able to To donate anything, I do shit.
Oh, don't.
Don't.
No, no.
Save your money.
Save your money for therapy, honestly.
Like, don't.
Don't.
You know, it's funny because we tell people, like, people, stop giving us money.
Like, people who get really enthusiastic, and I appreciate that.
Like, I don't want to diminish your generosity in this, but...
Yeah, there was a woman recently who had to say, please, please stop donating because, you know, I don't want it to fall on a few people.
Save your money for your therapy is the most important thing, right?
Save your money for any potential conflicts you may have with your wife or your ex-wife.
You know, donate later if you want, a year or two.
Honestly, please don't do it now.
I'd feel terrible because you need the money right now for that.
I do want you to know that I am sharing your videos on Facebook every chance I get.
Thank you.
But Steph, from the bottom of my heart, mate, thank you so much.
You are welcome.
You are welcome and thank you so much for sharing.
You helping men deal with child abuse is not just something you're going to do in the future.
It's something you've done.
In this very call which will be heard by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people and millions of people over the years who will hear this and hear the strength that you have and the courage that you have in tackling these issues.
I know when you're tackling these kinds of issues sometimes it feels like you're tackling them and sometimes it feels like they're tackling the shit out of you.
But your strength and resolution which comes across in this is incredibly powerful.
So I appreciate your thanks and I shoot them right back at you again.
If I were a general in the realm of philosophy, you would be weighed down with medals, my friend Marcus, at the moment.
That is an incredibly courageous thing that you're doing.
I'd like the chance to maybe come back sometime in the future and tell you how I'm going.
I would almost demand it.
I would chase you down and try to find – if you didn't call back, we'd find you somehow.
So please do.
I really do want to know how it's going, particularly if you end up talking to your kids about any of this stuff.
I would certainly be happy to know how it went.
And if there's anything that you need from me or from Mike to prepare for anything to do with this stuff, I'm certainly happy to share whatever wisdom I can.
And, you know, it doesn't have to be anything public and just be one-on-one, but I hugely appreciate your commitment to really breaking a pretty savage cycle of abuse that is going on in your gene pool for probably the last hundred or so thousand years.
So, fantastic.
You are welcome back anytime.
Thank you so much, Seth.
And Michael and my friends on FDR Chat, like, I just thank you so much for your support and your...
You're taking the time to speak to me and yeah, I guess that's it.
Well, thank you.
And I also really appreciate the community.
You know, there's so much stuff that goes on that I don't know anything about because I am a self-involved bastard.
But I really do appreciate everyone in the community who's helping people to deal with this stuff.
It's a beautiful thing.
You know, I love the fact that the community is humming along with no input from me in so many ways.
I think that's just absolutely beautiful.
So thanks to everyone who's helped Marcus.
Thank you to Marcus.
Thank you to Mike.
Well, FDRURL.com slash donate to help out the show.
Welcome again to worker number three.
And I guess we will see everybody on Wednesday coming, 8 p.m.
